Welcome to the Jazz Shapers podcast from Mishcon de Reya. What you are about to hear was originally broadcast on Jazz FM however the music has been cut due to rights issues.
Elliot Moss
Welcome to Jazz Shapers, with me Elliot Moss bringing the shapers of the business world together with the musicians shaping jazz, soul and blues. My guest today I am very pleased to say is David Mansfield, ex-CEO of Capital Radio. We’ll talk about the Euston Tower shortly because we’re not far from it. And he’s director of many companies including Car Phone Warehouse and the Game Group and creator of The Monday Revolution, aimed to help you seize control of your business life. Having left school at 16 for an engineering apprenticeship, David became a chocolate salesman for Terrys where once labelled the worst rep in the country, he grew to become one of the most successful. After helping to build capital radio into a multimillion pound company and building a portfolio career as a director, David became a serial angel investor and entrepreneur. He’s also, in his spare time by the looks of it, chairman of Rajar and a speaker, mentor and business coach advising companies and individuals from students to high profile business leaders. And in 2020 he became a Founder himself, he founded The Monday Revolution. On a mission, he says, to simplify business behaviour and provide all executives, whatever their role or size of company with the tools and approach to get more done.
It’s funny when you must here these things David, um, snippets of a life incredibly well lived and continues to be well lived but amazing accolades, amazing titles of big companies and directorships and all sorts. Does it sound like you?
David Mansfield
Well it all feels a bit surreal to be, to be honest you know, um, I mean when I was an engineer and apprentice you know, that was a five year thing and, um, I can remember, you know, going through all the learning to be a toolmaker, working on all of the machines and everything else, you know, I mean it was a proper apprenticeship and college and everything to, to go with it but I remember when my, you know, my hair, I’d go home and my hair would be covered in sort of bits of bits of metal and slurry and everything else, thinking, you know, I, I’m not sure this is me really, uh, and I, I’ve always been interested in business and so I sort of, you know, I left there and, uh, I didn’t ever go back to it. I did lots of part-time jobs, I got fired a few times, uh, I was on benefits for a bit and I, I turned up at a, I’d interviewed to be a trainee sales rep for Terrys and really that was the sort of pivotal shift from engineering and being an engineering draftsman which is where I ended up into I suppose a bit more, you know, a commercial world where I was responsible for sales and I had to live or die by what I sold and mostly I didn’t sell very much.
Elliot Moss
(laughs) You got free chocolate though probably.
David Mansfield
I did yeah.
Elliot Moss
Yeah I image, it doesn’t show by the way. Um, you’ve obviously, you’ve run it off now. Um, you said, I was always interested in business and at what age did it fascinate you and, and why?
David Mansfield
I think if I am going to be, you know, brutally honest about it, I’ve always been interested in money really, um, because my family didn’t have a lot of money and my dad died when I was quite young so, um, I, you know, my mum was great, I don’t want to sound like I grew up in poverty because I didn’t, obviously I didn’t but, but, you know, if I wanted to buy a pair of Levi’s, you know, my, my mum would say, well we’ll go and buy a pair of jeans from the Co-op because they’re just as good you know, and half the price but of course, you know, you couldn’t be a cool guy in Woking, you know, if, if there was anybody cool in Woking, other than cool weather of course, you know.
Elliot Moss
It’s pretty cool.
David Mansfield
You, you couldn’t, um, you couldn’t go out in Co-op jeans so if I wanted Levi jeans I had to go and earn the money for them. So I had, you know, I did everything from paper rounds, uh, but my big, my big thing was really working at the local garage on the petrol pumps, I mean that’s, you know, I, I would do that so during the week I’d be an apprentice engineer and at the weekends I would earn more money doing other jobs and that was probably my most lucrative because I wanted, I didn’t want to be the guy that went down the pub and said, I can’t afford to buy a round, you know, I wanted to be able to do things so I therefore had to go and earn the money and, and I enjoyed that, you know.
Elliot Moss
So I’m going to jump forward and then I want to go back because the money thing’s interesting to me. What you’re doing now as the Founder of The Monday Revolution is helping people be more effective, helping people I suppose, tap into their purpose and stuff. What role does money play in all these conversations you have with people?
David Mansfield
I, you know, I’m a commercial guy, I’m a business guy really and business is about money, isn’t it really. And, you know, I’ve done a lot of different things since I left Capital maybe 20 years ago now and really money is at the heart of it, um, particularly with start-up businesses and founders. You know it’s all very well having a dream and everything but actually most of them go bust because they run out of money. So money, money’s really important to, to people and my book, you know, it’s not all about making money, I don’t really talk about it in that sense but it’s really about having commercial plans and sort of being realistic about stuff and saying, what do I need to do starting on Monday, you know, which will help me achieve what I want to achieve. And that’s, that’s really; I have a commercial approach to my advice with people. But I do business coaching and I’m a qualified business coach and, and that’s, you know, with people of all sorts of levels and quite often it is about things like business development. You know, so you can take a partner in a law firm – you’d know all about this – you take a partner in a law firm, they join because they’re a great lawyer but you know, there comes a point at which someone’s looking at the spreadsheet and saying, well you’re supposed to bring in a million dollars a year and you’ve brought in half a million dollars and we’re not very happy about that. Um, and of course the person was a great lawyer but they weren’t a great business development person and you need, you know, there’s a recruitment issue there of course but really I work with people like that to help them build a commercial plan, a network and, and teach them how they can be successful by doing a number of different things.
Elliot Moss
What am I going to do on Monday? I hope you’re thinking about that because it’s Saturday and David Mansfield’s my Business Shaper here and he’s the founder of The Monday Revolution, he used to run a small radio company called, well actually the, the station’s Capital Radio but it went on to do other things in the world of radio that were even bigger, mergers and the like. That corporate world, I just want to talk about it for a moment. Were you, yourself, all that time, all the way through it? Was David Mansfield true to exactly who he was and what he stood for or did you find yourself becoming what some people call a ‘corporate animal’?
David Mansfield
Yeah I mean I think, I think, uh, all of us we adapt to the context and the situation that we’re in, you know, I mean if you’re, if you’re out with a certain sort of people in a certain environment then you tend to reflect to some extent, you know, the environment you’re in so you might talk differently, you might have a different voice, you know, that, that is very normal and it’s what happens all the time. I mean in terms of my, my sort of underlying principles and being authentic, to use perhaps an overused current sort of word, uh, I was, I was always like that and in fact I, I think, you know, modestly, I was known for it. I mean when I stood up in front of, um, analysts, investors and shareholders I, I, I told them the way I saw it really so if things weren’t going well, I would say so. And I did it the same with um, the, the teams at Capital, you know, I was, I was very happy to stand up in front of 300 people in Leicester Square and tell them that actually the numbers were pretty poor and the sales guys were doing the best they could but frankly it, you know, well we weren’t hitting our budget so don’t ask for extra staff, um, don’t ask for more money for expenses because it’s not going to happen. You are probably going to get less but that’s the truth of it and I, I used to run a communication thing which I refer to in my book, because we’ve had lots of radio stations around the country, I thought it was really important because I couldn’t go and visit them all at the same time to give them all the same news. I used to go and visit them a lot but I couldn’t do it all at the same time. So when I had something to say, um, they all used to dial into a call and it was called ‘The Horse’s Mouth’ and the reason it was called The Horse’s Mouth because when I spoke to the station directors, and there were a lot of them around the country, I could say, right this is what we’re doing, this is the situation, this is what I need you to know and you can ask me questions now but when you leave this call you can confidently go to your people and say, the CEO told us, it was The Horse’s Mouth. So it didn’t get filtered or reinterpreted, um, I had to be careful with that because obviously there were, you know, there were people between me and, and those guys who were managing them and doing all that stuff but everyone accepted it. You know, I didn’t put anyone in a difficult position, but I always tried to remain authentic but it’s, you know, it’s quite often got me into trouble really, um, saying what I think, you know.
Elliot Moss
Has it though? I mean you say that with a glint in your eye?
David Mansfield
Yeah, well I suppose…
Elliot Moss
I mean, you are who you are?
David Mansfield
Yeah, yeah, no but I, without sort of naming names, I mean, you’ve mentioned companies that I was on the Board of and I haven’t always been the best non-exec director, uh, in terms of getting my thoughts across. I mean, I’ll give you an example, um, so I was on the Board of, um, Game Group and, uh, I wasn’t there for very long and I joined it from Car Phone Warehouse and, obviously I bought my Car Phone Warehouse Board experience to, to Game and it was a very different experience and I probably didn’t do enough due diligence before I joined the organisation. Anyway I joined Game and it became apparent to me quite quickly that the business was sort of going to run out of money. Uh, they’d made a lot of expensive acquisitions, most of them were losing cash outside the UK and I pointed this out, not very carefully, around the Board table more than once and basically I got fired from the Board for being pessimistic, miserable and not understanding the cyclical nature of the games retail industry, you know, and when Call of Duty comes out, you know, everything’s great and we can all go and buy a new Porsche because, you know, things have gone well but, you know, Tesco’s were selling Call of Duty and it didn’t quite go to plan and I pointed this out and I got, I got fired and then the business went bust a year later and felt vindicated and sort of thought, well, you know, I told you so but actually when I reflected on it, um, I think that I hadn’t done a good job because, um, if I’d been clever and smarter and framed my criticisms in a different way, I think I might have persuaded the non-exec directors and maybe the executive directors that actually there was something here that was a bit of a trouble, a bit worrying and that we should do something about it, um.
Elliot Moss
Mm, mm. And that’s, it’s interesting and I want to pick up on that in a moment, I want to float this for you to have a think about because we’re going to go to the Mishcon Innovation Series in a moment, but the, this, this distinction between being tough and pessimistic and also motivating people to do the right thing, not just at that Board level but team level is a, is a conundrum for me and I want to come back to that specifically. Much more from my guest, David Mansfield coming up in a couple of minutes. Right now as billed about thirty seconds ago, let’s hear a taster from the Mishcon Innovation Series which you can find on all the major podcast platforms. Lydia Kellett invites Business Founders to share their practical advice and industry insights for those of you thinking about starting your very own thing. In this clip we hear from Robert Elding, Founder and CEO of Mystoryboarder, an AI-powered platform aiming to revolutionise visual storytelling and indeed content creation for businesses, creatives and marketers.
You can enjoy all our former Business Shapers on the Jazz Shapers podcast and you can hear this very programme again if you pop ‘Jazz’ and the word ‘Shapers’ after that, not too difficult, into your podcast platform of choice. My guest today is David Mansfield, ex CEO of Capital Radio, director previously of many companies including Car Phone Warehouse and as you were just hearing, the Game Group and importantly, the creator of The Monday Revolution, aiming to help you seize control of your business life. So yeah, Mr Pessimism, Mr Curmudgeonly, Mr Mansfield. There he is, he’s telling the truth, his truth to power. (a) the Board is like, as you said, I reflect and that’s obviously it’s a good thing to reflect, that’s the learning moment. You reflect, and actually if I had said that in a different way and framed it we could have done that better and maybe they would have had, there would have been a series of interventions and they would still be alive. Part two of that is you’ve got a big team of humans and they are hearing David who they trust and respect but they come out feeling, and this is a hypothesis, they come out feeling depressed and going, well how am I going to deal with that? I mean, where can you, where did you try? Did you try to motivate people beyond the tough news broadly teams before the Board bit because that’s the bit I’m interested in.
David Mansfield
Yeah definitely, definitely. I mean, particularly when I was chief executive, I mean when we were at Capital, you know, we had lots of high and low moments. I mean, when you are CEO for 8 years, you know, I mean you have, you have great times and you think well there’s no reason why these shouldn’t continue, you know, then some, then something comes out of left field and the things change quite dramatically, um, and sometimes those things are outside your control so you have to think about how you are going to pick people up and, you know, you don’t want to be the leader that goes missing in action really and, uh, so again, it’s something else which I talk to people about. You know, it’s really important to be, uh, visual and I think it’s important to have something to say and so, but you have to be, you can’t, you know, it’s like a lot of things in life really. There is, when you don’t know about the future because it’s unknowable, you can’t say to people, it’s going to be okay because it may not be okay and they know it may not be okay. So what you have to do really is to say as a leader, these are the practical, immediate steps we’re taking to do the best we can in difficult circumstances and, you know, I’m going, I’m going to be here at the front of this and I’m going to be doing it with you, you know, and that’s, that was always my, my mission.
Elliot Moss
And what do you think they said about you when you weren’t in the room?
David Mansfield
Um, I, I think that, that probably, you know, a mix of things really. I mean, there were, there were people there that, um, that probably, uh, would have preferred a different leader. I, the leader before me was a really, really good guy but he had a very different style and he was, uh, I think probably came across as more compassionate and, perhaps more in tune with people’s feelings. I, I was, you know, not, not ruthless, I would never describe myself as that but I was really quite sort of practical and I’ve always, we said earlier, I’ve always had a reputation for telling it how it is and sometimes, you know, people don’t always want to hear how it is, you know, they’d rather hear a more sort of sugary version so, um.
Elliot Moss
But the practical thing is important and I think just, and you can tell me if this is incorrect, but I think in terms of The Monday Revolution, you say, top line, now not later.
David Mansfield
Yep.
Elliot Moss
Get on with it. Invest time wisely, it’s your most precious commodity as a leader or as a founder.
David Mansfield
Yep.
Elliot Moss
Keep it simple. Just because it’s a complicated question, doesn’t mean the answer should be complicated, in fact the opposite is true. Find better ways, look beyond the usual well-trodden paths and evidence based decisions. It’s the Thaler and, I forget the co-writer of Nudge basically saying…
David Mansfield
Yeah.
Elliot Moss
…we’ve all got internal bias and we just go to my gut’s telling me…
David Mansfield
Yeah, Sunstein.
Elliot Moss
Sunstein, thank you and, and Richard Thaler I think it is, isn’t it?
David Mansfield
Yeah, yeah.
Elliot Moss
Yeah. Those are lessons from life, those are lessons from work and are people receptive to that, David because they sound very sensible?
David Mansfield
Yeah I think they are. I think they are. I mean, I don’t preach them as a list but I, I try and practice them when I am talking to people so if someone says to me in my coaching environment, you know, I’ve got a particular problem that I need help with then I will help them explore that problem and, you know, quite often of course, it happens to all of us, you know, we, we end up trying to solve the problem by thinking what the outcome should be and really what we need to do is have a process to, to examine what the problem is. I mean that’s the most important thing first of all. What are we dealing with here? What do we know? What don’t we know? Not starting with the end.
Elliot Moss
And in fact there’s a lovely quote, ‘how you decide determines what you decide’.
David Mansfield
Yeah.
Elliot Moss
I think that’s one of yours.
David Mansfield
Yeah that’s, um, that’s my current studies. I mean at the moment I’m doing a doctorate in, um, strategic decision making processes, you know, it sounds a bit highfalutin really, uh, but, but basically I’m looking at how senior people, particularly in everything from start-ups to FTSE 100 companies, how they make decision and I’m interested in the process of the decision making, not necessarily outcome and I’m currently, I’m in the third year of my doctorate and I’ve interviewed around half of the forty people I’m going to be interviewing to ask them to come up with an example, it’s all anonymous, an example of a situation where they had to make a very fast decision and the only thing that they could, they only had two things that they can go to which is the information and their intuition.
Elliot Moss
Are they, are they strange bedfellows the rational on the one side and the intuitive on the other because just putting myself in my own executive shoes and watching decisions being made, often it’s a combination and you get this whole thing of, well we only look at spreadsheets, or I only ever use my gut. Surely there’s a middle ground?
David Mansfield
Yeah that’s, that’s a very shrewd observation and it’s absolutely right and, you know, as part of my, um, doctorate, you know, I’ve reviewed a huge number of academic papers and done a literature study and looked at what we already know and what we don’t know. Um, basically my work that I’m doing at the moment and my research work I’m doing at the moment is looking at how intuition and rationality could be incorporated to help people make better decisions because quite often as you suggested, you know, people take a polarised view, you know, they sort of go, well I haven’t got enough information so I’ll trust my gut. You know, and that could be great but it could be really dangerous. I mean you’ve only got to watch Traitors, you would never trust your gut like that. So, I, so therefore, but there’s a paradox there because those things appear so far apart, so rationality is all about numbers and data, arguably and a linear process and intuition is all about how you feel about stuff and what’s in your sub conscious and…
Elliot Moss
But, but in the middle David there’s this motorway called the real world which is, there’s real things happening, dynamics are changing, you don’t have perfect information.
David Mansfield
Exactly.
Elliot Moss
People do come to the table with prejudices and within all of that swirling mess, the executive, the leader or the founder is meant to make the right decision. It is a tough call.
David Mansfield
Yeah it is a very tough call and quite often we don’t get it right and there’s a lot we could do to improve the outcomes. I mean roughly half of strategic decisions never meet their outcomes.
Elliot Moss
Just give me one way of improving the outcome? Just one simple thing before I ask you a border question.
David Mansfield
Okay, well a good example would be if you are looking at a set of data and it’s telling you something but it doesn’t feel right, you need to explore the feeling. You need to sort of say, well why doesn’t it feel right, what’s missing here. Equally, if your intuition is telling you to do something, you shouldn’t just take it. You should go and try and find some evidence to back it up. So what we’re really saying is that you are incorporating intuition and rationality as it’s described academically into the same process. It’s not an either or. You are moving between the two.
Elliot Moss
Okay.
David Mansfield
To try and get a better outcome.
Elliot Moss
And reflection both ways?
David Mansfield
Yeah.
Elliot Moss
Education as I look at you David, obviously you left school, not many GCSE’s, not great. You then went and did your engineering piece.
David Mansfield
Yeah, yeah.
Elliot Moss
And here we are now, and I, again when I am researching my guests, I go, oh he or she has got that one, that one. I mean the number of academic accolades you’ve got. I’m not saying you’re collecting them but there must be something in your psyche that says, I’ve got the itch, I need to scratch that I’ve wanted to do from a very young age. There’s something to me that you’re obsessed about learning and I’m trying to work out where that’s come from. Is that true firstly? Are you obsessed with learning?
David Mansfield
Yeah.
Elliot Moss
And where, where is that from?
David Mansfield
Well when I meet, I still meet the guys that I was in class with at school and I mean I got asked to leave, um, at the end of GCSE’s because my results were so poor. I was in the top class but I was far more interested in listening to rock music and girls and doing all sorts of stuff, you know, so, so I just gave up on academic stuff really. But I always liked writing, uh, and I was always interested in reading and when I meet those guys now, you know, they talk about what a great time they had in the last two years of school and of course they always forget I wasn’t there, you know, I, I got chucked out so I felt it was unfinished business really. And I get asked a lot about, you know, I did a, why did I do a Masters four years ago? Why am I now doing a Doctorate? And I’ve struggled a little bit with that answer but I think I’ve sort of, I think I’ve worked it out now, uh, and the answer is, I just want to see if I could. It’s the same reason that, you know, I go running.
Elliot Moss
I was going, because the, the drive, the drive in you David is extraordinary. You just have to look at, even without, we’ve just met but the, what you’ve done in your life is what some people might, you know, they might find 5% of the, of the output that you’ve done. So you, you’re doing all this stuff, obviously you’re just, there’s a compulsion in a good way?
David Mansfield
Yeah.
Elliot Moss
And that’s you and you’re not slowing down, you’re speeding up. I think I read that somewhere, 71 going on 30?
David Mansfield
Well I said when I was 60, you know, people say, are you going to slow down and that’s what happens when I’m 71 now and people still sort of say, well you must be slowing down and I go, no, no, I’m speeding up because time is, you know, it’s a bit more limited now so there’s more to fit in, so I, I try and, I try and do that and it’s just, it’s just me but you know, as people sort of say, anyone can do it, you know, I’m not a remarkable person. I’m not, you know, I’m not super bright, I’m quite the opposite in fact and I’m not super fit, or at least I wasn’t you know, it’s, it’s available for everybody. I went for a, I went for a sort of cardiac check-up thing the other week and the guy said, oh yeah, you’re really fit. He said, I, I hope I’m as fit as you are at your age and I said, well how old are you and he said, I’m fifty three. I said, he was a cardiac surgeon, I said, well that’s a choice you can make.
Elliot Moss
Give your cardiologist advice, I love it.
David Mansfield
Well you know.
Elliot Moss
No quite right too, why not.
David Mansfield
Well it is a choice he could make. He was a bit overweight, he could do something about it. He should know better.
Elliot Moss
He should know better. Final chat with my guest today, David Mansfield, who will tell you, you should know better too. We’ve also got some Esre Collective coming up for you, that’s in just a moment don’t go anywhere.
David Mansfield is my Business Shaper just for a few more minutes. We are running out of time too. We’re all running out of time. I know you, you’ve presented yourself David as, you know, you tell it as it is and you mentioned your predecessor at Capital. You said, maybe we had different styles and all that. There’s, um, a few things, there’s a lot of, you talked about Rock and the fact that you ended up I radio is not coincidence to me at all. The passionate feeling side of David Mansfield, has it played more of a role than people might realise in the way your life has gone?
David Mansfield
Um, yeah maybe. I, I’m not particularly demonstrative, you know, I don’t, I, you know, I’m the sort of guy that, um, I, I don’t dance.
Elliot Moss
(laughs) That’s funny.
David Mansfield
You don’t, you don’t find me standing up at football matches high fiving when we’ve scored. In fact I’m known for not high fiving.
Elliot Moss
What’s going on inside though. Is there anything going on inside? Or you are just…
David Mansfield
So, no I’m passionate about, about a lot of things but I’m not very good at, um, I’m quite shy, ultimately I’m quite shy and I, I don’t particularly like that although I do, you know, when I was at school I, you know, my idea of hell really was having to talk in assembly or big part in some school play. I would go sick rather than do that. I was painfully shy and you know, one of the things I’m quite proud of is I’ve sort of conquered that over the years and I do a lot of speaking now and I’m, you know, I do that so I like showing off, I do speaking at, um, state schools for charity and I really enjoy that, it’s very challenging because you never know what you’re going to get.
Elliot Moss
Yeah. Is that the Speakers for Schools?
David Mansfield
Yeah, yeah.
Elliot Moss
Yeah that’s excellent.
David Mansfield
So I do that but yeah I am, I, I think probably, um, people who know me well wouldn’t describe me as passionate. You know, I don’t, I don’t light up a room with energy when I walk in you know.
Elliot Moss
But the, the confronting the fear thing.
David Mansfield
Mm.
Elliot Moss
And that in conjunction with what I now see in front of me, The Monday Revolution and the things you write and the things you do with coaching. You seem to like helping people. Is that fair?
David Mansfield
Ah I think it’s a privilege to do that and I, I have, um, I have a sort of, uh, a slight obsession in that I think that people as they get older, you know, have an awful lot of experience and I see, uh, friends of mine who have stopped working and they’re spending their time doing leisure things and travelling which is lovely but they’ve got a huge reservoir of knowledge they could pass on to other generations and my experience of doing Speakers for Schools, I also mentor two or three people who are in their sort of late teens, doing one tomorrow actually, he’s a son of a friend of mine. She’s a single mum, you know, he, he needs a bit of help and I think it’s really important to pass stuff on. You know, and other cultures do it.
Elliot Moss
Yes.
David Mansfield
Yeah, but we don’t do it in the UK and I feel quite passionate about that.
Elliot Moss
And, and just briefly before I, um, ask you your song choice. The mentoring thing, I’m going to go flying right back. If you could tell me the one thing that that mentor, that person at Terrys that converted the young David Mansfield from a really bad sales person to a good one. What is it that he did?
David Mansfield
Well he, he, his name was Mike Orchard. Uh, he died some years ago. He changed my life, um, that was, that was a moment really because I was going to pack up Terrys because I was the worst rep and I knew I was the worst rep because they published a table every week and my name was at the bottom you know, and it was, um, and he got promoted as a sales manager and I was in his team and he came out to see me and I said, you don’t want waste time with me because I’m leaving mate, you know, I can’t do this, this is not for me really and he said, do you know what, I can show you how to do this. And he showed me now to present sales, you know, to sweet shops and Tesco’s and, and to build orders with people and I went from being pretty rubbish to pretty good. Uh, but it was him, he mentored me, he showed me how to do it, he believed that I had the skills when I didn’t believe it myself.
Elliot Moss
And is that the kind of life that you’re, you know, that you’ve come from?
David Mansfield
Yeah, I think so yeah, yeah. I think when people, I think other people perhaps, you know, where they’re standing back, mentors, coaches, um, friends, you know, often you can see the talent in someone that they don’t recognise and I think if you are able to help people, um, have the confidence to, to acknowledge that and perhaps do something with it, it can be life changing for them. I mean most people don’t, don’t get to, as far as perhaps as they would like to because they’ve put a false ceiling in and I think well that’s not for me or I can’t do that and actually most people are capable of an awful lot more than they believe.
Elliot Moss
Good luck with the ongoing Monday Revolution and converting people to believe.
David Mansfield
Thank you.
Elliot Moss
It sounds like you’re, you’re going the right way and good luck with the doctorate.
David Mansfield
Thank you.
Elliot Moss
I’ll have to call you Dr Mansfield next time we see each other.
David Mansfield
Yes I hope so.
Elliot Moss
I hope so too. Uh, just before I let you disappear to go and do that. What’s your song choice and why have you chosen it?
David Mansfield
Well my song choice, I mean I, you know, music is a massive thing for me, um, and, uh, when I was sort of growing up with music, when I was sort of 14 or 15, which was, uh, a long time ago, sort of ’68 really the blues, uh, revolution if you like came over from America and the traditional blues players of, you know, Champion Jack Dupree and people like that, I just span all of these people and the, the UK musicians were adopting this and becoming sort of blues bands really and the godfather of all of that was John Mayall, uh, who only died I think relatively recently, and John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers was where, it was where they did their apprenticeship really. So Eric Clapton was in there, I think Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck. All these people passed through his school if you like, learning the blues, um, and I was privileged enough to meet John Mayall, I went to a gig of his in, um, Seattle, and I was, I was there on holiday and I went to a supper club and he was playing and I had a chat with him afterwards and I just really enjoyed talking to him. He’s a legend and he was a really friendly guy and you know, completely unassuming, just loved doing what he was doing and he was still doing it in his 90’s. And then I saw him at Ronnie Scott’s club, uh, yeah and the track is All Your Love, just a great track and he was so influential.
Elliot Moss
That was All Your Love from John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, the song choice of my Business Shaper today David Mansfield. Most people are capable of a lot more than they believe, I am sure that is true of all of us. How you unlock that, well he talks about passing on knowledge, he talks about mentoring, absolutely critical to actually realise your potential. Making better decisions where intuition and information come together and working out how you navigate between one and the other. And finally, I love this, ‘I don’t dance’ he said. And the message for me isn’t for you, be yourself, if you don’t dance, don’t dance and if you do, do. But don’t worry if you’re not one or the other, be yourself. That’s it from me and Jazz Shapers, have a lovely weekend.
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