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 is Jonathan Simmons, I am very pleased to say. Co-Founder of digital agency Zone, Co-Founder of experiences marketplace, Yuup and CEO of NPC, New Philanthropy Capital, a think tank and consultancy helping philanthropists make smarter, evidence based decisions about where to direct their resources. After a 25 year career building multiple purpose driven businesses and charities, including digital agency Zone, later sold to US consultancy giant, Cognisant. Jonathan embarked on philanthropy, impact investing and mission lead businesses full-time. A CEO of NPC which over the last 20 years has supported charities, philanthropists and funders deliver impact and distribute millions of pounds, Jonathan believes although there’s certainly a culture of giving in the UK, there needs to be a culture of talking about it and we’ll certainly start talking about that very shortly. He’s also Trustee of the Jewish Community Centre, JW3 and leading donor advice fund provider, Prism. A lot of stuff Jonathan, it’s lovely to meet you here. I mean, we know each other so I should say that. Talk to me about how an entrepreneur becomes a Chief Exec of an organisation like New Philanthropy Capital. Most founders I meet are founders and then they’re founders again and then they’re founders again. Not you?
Jonathan Simmons
Yes, I hadn’t thought of it this way but I guess there’s a point of it where, um, once Zone was sold and we were out and it was finished there was a definite question for all of us, for all the founders which was about and often I think for many entrepreneurs, what do I do now and I kind of really positioned that as a bit of a second album actually. So I kind of think that I wanted to do something really different. I didn’t have the desire, the, the business had already scratched an itch for me so I, I felt that the next step was to spend all my time doing something that had a positive impact on the society that we had and so from that, then you, you look around and, and you don’t necessarily need to create something, you don’t have to go back to the beginning and NPC was there and in a really good position and wanted, wanted to do some new stuff and, and wanted a disrupter. So I did it.
Elliot Moss
And the movement into becoming an entrepreneur, you’ve done the usual thing, come out of University and go, what do I do. I think you did a history degree?
Jonathan Simmons
I did a history degree.
Elliot Moss
History degree at Leeds University. A fine University I may add.
Jonathan Simmons
Indeed.
Elliot Moss
Also I may have gone to Leeds University. And then you do the bits and bobs and then you discover the world of digital. This is the late 90’s. And then ripple dissolve and suddenly you’re the founder of a, of a business and it gets bigger and you start doing stuff. What was it like going back then to that foundee mentality? Why did you become a founder do you think looking back?
Jonathan Simmons
Um, two questions. I think it was amazing, it was, it was really great fun and you got to make up your own rules and do things your own way and we got to do that twice, right. Once as an entrepreneur, you get to make up your own business and do, follow the rules you want to follow and then we got to do it in a space where there were no rules. Digital was every, every time we did something it was the first time anyone had ever done it. So we did the first sports website, we did the first charity website or we did, these were all firsts that no one else had ever done and that was great. So there was a lot of fun. Uh, I don’t think we ever realised that we were starting anything particularly. It, we, we needed to generate revenue and have a business and then from there it kind of just got bigger and bigger every year and at that point you realise you’ve, you’re an entrepreneur and you’ve got something going and we just thought that no one else would hire us so we go that way.
Elliot Moss
And the structure that you then had to bring to the thing that you happened to be doing which was, as you said, building a website for a sports, what was it?
Jonathan Simmons
Channel Four. That was Channel Four’s cricket website.
Elliot Moss
Channel Four. Channel Four Cricket website. Again they knew nothing about websites. They didn’t have one and then you go, lovely white space. Luck or do you think you naturally were drawn to that digital space at the time?
Jonathan Simmons
No I think it was, it was the bringing together of two different skill sets and actually I think digital and technology has always been this. It was the, it was the kind of creative storytelling, what’s become kind of user experience. How does, how does the consumer interface with that which has always been part of the creative industries and lots of things and then, and then the kind of technical mind set of actually, how do you make that work seamlessly and make sure it works every time and we were very clear. I sat on the very creative storytelling brand consumer side of that, that, fence and when Channel Four said to us, look we, we want to build a website around this. Then we had to go and get those technical skills and one of the things that we did very, very well in the early days was we, we married those technical skills with that creative set. We didn’t pick one or the other and actually all the way through we had both of those teams working side by side.
Elliot Moss
Was that just instinctive because obviously you go to 2018, you sell to a big company like Cognisant. They’re buying ideas but they’re really buying delivery.
Jonathan Simmons
Yeah they were definitely buying delivery. It, it felt instinctive to us. It wasn’t the way a lot of the industry went at that time. A lot of the industry thought that the front end was the cool bit and the bit that everybody needed to worry about and it turns out the back end was the really cool bit and the stuff you really needed to worry about. There, I think the, the technical bit of what we did and when, when we build digital that there’s stuff that kept the lights on that made the site work, that made it work whether it be a site on Apple, whatever project it was, made it work was the really important bit. And, and over the years that became, the utility of it became more important than the creative of it if I am honest.
Elliot Moss
Don’t just like the utility of things even if it’s really shiny. Stay with me for much more from my Business Shaper, Jonathan Simmons, entrepreneur turned chief exec of New Philanthropy Capital and sits on a bunch of boards. I mean you’ve not got much going on. Have you thought about doing something else? I think you need to.
Jonathan Simmons
Always.
Elliot Moss
A lot of energy right, I mean you have energy.
Jonathan Simmons
I’ve got a lot of time.
Elliot Moss
You think?
Jonathan Simmons
Yes, there’s loads of time in a day. So you’ve got to fill it with stuff otherwise there’s a brilliant organisation, uh, called The Good Ancestor Movement which basically goes, what are you going to leave behind. So like, you can’t leave nothing behind if you’re doing, you know, you have to do stuff.
Elliot Moss
What, what’s interesting Jonathan is you look at your background. This is, I alluded to this question and, and the thing that I’ve been thinking about before today. You go to a nice…
Jonathan Simmons
Cool.
Elliot Moss
…you go to a nice University, you do what a whole bunch of people do and then you went into a digital agency that’s commercial but immediately you have an angle on it which is, we’re going to do stuff for good. Which is the one, one part of the business and I think, if I am right, there was a percentage of all the profits that went to…
Jonathan Simmons
No.
Elliot Moss
How did it work?
Jonathan Simmons
We, a percentage of all the work was purpose driven.
Elliot Moss
A percentage of the work was purpose driven.
Jonathan Simmons
Yeah we had to, we had to have, so we always worked with charities and when you put what a charity pays up against what a, a commercial…
Elliot Moss
Reduced anyway.
Jonathan Simmons
Yeah, you, you’re making us money or and then that kind of morphed with some really big projects, with big brands on their purpose driven work but yeah.
Elliot Moss
So there’s all that stuff going on there. Then, then you move into this New Philanthropy Capital thing and I’ve heard you speak a lot about impact. At what point did this notion that, and you just said it then, going to leave, what are you going to leave behind? Why is it so important to you? What’s influenced this brain and your thoughts?
Jonathan Simmons
Um, I think probably a couple of things. One is I grew up in, in a youth movement and, and when you kind of, a lot of these organisations whether it be kind of like, the Scouts or I grew up in a, in a Jewish youth movement, all those kind of organisations. You, you sit around talking about what, what’s the point of you or with this stuff you’re going to do. So I had that kind of very early on. I grew up in, you know, my parents did philanthropic stuff so it, it was very, it was all part of my kind of life growing up. When I got to work and I can definitely pinpoint this. I remember really clearly I won’t say who I was working for at the time, but I did two or three years out of University where I worked for, for corporates. Um, someone said that you’ve got to leave your personality at the door. You, we have a culture here and you have your culture outside of work and that just was bonkers to me. It made no sense at all. I was like, well hang on, but you’re hiring me right and either I come or I don’t. And so, to me at that moment I made the decision that where I could, everything I would do would be, would have an impact lens across it as well as a, I have to pay a mortgage, I have got children, all of those things but they, they had to align, um, and I don’t think you have to separate them and, and I, there’s a kind of a more, maybe old fashion way which is you can make your money over here and then you be philanthropic over there. That never made any sense to me. I thought cut out the middle person and just always do something impactful. And if you and make some money out of that as well, then good but, but impact should always be part of the consideration. So it was just, it was just obvious to me and it’s weird that when people don’t do it if I am honest.
Elliot Moss
Yeah, and, and therefore you’re, the way that you live, have lived your life and we’ll come to the latest, uh, album that you’ve released as you said. Um, the way you lived your life has been in accordance with that and so it isn’t about as you said, just simply giving money and time over to the left, it’s about integrating that. And do you think you did that really successfully in the, in the digital Zone world? Are you happy with it as you look back on that time?
Jonathan Simmons
Yeah. Yeah I think, I think we did it in two ways. I think we did it loads actually in the work we did and we did some brilliant, you know, we built the first, um, diabetes tracker in the UK or something like that. So we built stuff that, that made a difference to peoples’ lives. We built stuff that raised money for charity. We did all that. I think one of the other things you get to do when you’re, when you’re a business owner is you get to do it for the people that are in the business which I wasn’t expecting. Like you get to, you get to have an impact on lots of people’s lives and you can chose how you do that and I, I hope, I think, it’s probably not for me to say but I think we did a really good job in that as well. Um, so you kind of, there’s two ways of having an impact on you when you, the work you do and the people, the culture you set for the people, the way you run the business.
Elliot Moss
And the management team that was at Zone at the time, were they in the same boat? Did they, did they agree with you? Were they totally aligned to Jonathan Simmons’ view of the world?
Jonathan Simmons
No but, but there’s no problem with that right like, like I wasn’t totally aligned with their views of the world either. I, I think that, that we weren’t trying to, they were totally supportive and they totally understood what motivated me and it didn’t, you know, I don’t know if it made the business better or it was better for the business but, but it, it was my motivation and that didn’t make them any less good or good purpose driven, it’s just that that’s not the bit of the business they wanted to do. But yeah, you know, they were, they were fully willing to let me do that thing.
Elliot Moss
Bring your personality through the door.
Jonathan Simmons
Well we, they all definitely brought their personalities through the door. That, everybody was aligned with that idea and, and the idea that, that, you know, we’re best off if we are who we say we are, there’s a line, you know, play everyone in their best position. And kind of that, but I think they didn’t, I don’t think they overly thought it through whether it was okay or not, they just were supportive of me and they supported. And then we hired a lot of people who wanted, who came for that reason so supportive of them as well. It was who we were. It wasn’t, I’m not sure there was ever a real decision that we would keep doing this. It was who we were. I think is the point, it was part, and businesses that grow from, you know, five people up but have a DNA and it was part of our DNA.
Elliot Moss
And is it conscious though as you’re doing it, you then suddenly have to go away from the craft skill of delivering the, the, the website for Channel Four whoever it might be and then you’re actively going, I mean there’s questions, are you actually going, what’s the shape of this business and what’s the character of it?
Jonathan Simmons
No I think…
Elliot Moss
Or did it just happen?
Jonathan Simmons
Yeah it just, I think that there’s a different, there’s different parts of it. There was the clients that we had and making sure that the clients that we had, you know, were representative of, you know, whether it be charities or social enterprises or purpose driven organisations or, or things like that. Like that was deliberate.
Elliot Moss
Yeah.
Jonathan Simmons
Let’s go and get more charities and the more charities we had, or the more kind of social projects we had, the more we got. As any of these businesses work, because you become known for doing something. I think the, um, the cultural thing about running the business in a certain way was just natural to the people that were running it. I think it’s, I think if you don’t care about that and you don’t believe in it every day, then, then it won’t work. You can’t fake culture.
Elliot Moss
Yeah, yeah and you can’t push it in a certain way if it’s not real.
Jonathan Simmons
You can’t do a, like a let’s do a culture session and work out who we want to be.
Elliot Moss
No.
Jonathan Simmons
You are who you are and the people that I, you know, built Zone with were brilliant people, are brilliant people.
Elliot Moss
Much more coming up from my guest Jonathan Simmons in a couple of minutes. Right now though we are going to 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 Paul Beastall, CEO of HutanBio, a technology company aiming to de-couple long distance transportation from fossil fuels with HBx, their zero carbon bio fuel.
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 Shapers’ into your podcast platform of choice. I am agnostic, you can do what you like. My guest today is Jonathan Simmons – I’ve said that before just in case you missed it – and he is Co-Founder of digital agency, Zone. Co-Founder of experiences marketplace, Yuup and CEO of New Philanthropy Capital - a tongue twister – a think tank and consultancy helping philanthropists make smarter, evidence based decisions, all very serious stuff Jonathan, about where to direct their resources. Just talk to me for a brief moment about Yuup, because there’s another thing that you, you have gone and Co-Founded.
Jonathan Simmons
Yeah, that was, that was actually kind of the bridge from commercial business into kind of the philanthropy thing which is, I, I’m a huge believer in business and the ability for business to have a positive impact and the, the challenge that we looked at with, with Yuup was really two things. One is that, um, loneliness is a real thing, physical contact and the, the lack of it or the decreasing amount of it is a really very serious, I would even say, epidemic and it’s causing I think a lot of the problems that we have in our society. And secondly, one of the solutions to that are high streets and, and because you meet people when you go and buy bread or you quite literally break bread with people, right. And those businesses are getting hammered by e-commerce is not please shop locally because we, you know, like it’s good for us, you have to kind of take a business view of it. So we, we looked at those businesses and thought well experiences is something that they can do that the internet can’t do. So baking bread or, you know, working with music as I’m sitting in Jazz FM, working with a music shop to write a song or build your own guitar or do, do one of these things.
Elliot Moss
These are experiential things.
Jonathan Simmons
Yeah they are experiences and then so, but the problem if you’re a music shop and you want to, you know, do something with a guitar or, or some kind of experience in that music shop or a record shop and, you know, build your record collection one day with us, come to us and we’ll curate your record collection. Um, the problem with that is it’s very difficult for them to do that because how do they market it, how do you accept money for it, what’s the ticketing system, all that. So we, so digital is really good at building that platform so we built that platform that then allows hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of those businesses to come on and offer those experiences and that now exists in five cities in the UK. So it’s very good.
Elliot Moss
And this was actually just at the beginning of lockdown is that right?
Jonathan Simmons
Yeah that was really not good. No.
Elliot Moss
Funny that. Experiences you can’t actually do.
Jonathan Simmons
Yeah that was a really difficult…
Elliot Moss
But still going?
Jonathan Simmons
Still going definitely and, and, and really making a seriously positive impact putting real money in to small businesses, small independent businesses on high streets. So the, the, the objective of it to do that is absolutely working. It’s, it’s an amazing success.
Elliot Moss
Now I know you maintain that you’re not evangelical about other people and what they think. You are incredibly evangelical about yourself though in the sense that you’ve applied your philosophy of life to the way you’ve run your life. And have you thought of it like that because as I am listening to you and I, you know, read up about you, it’s like you’ve really stuck to your guns and this latest iteration is not a surprise?
Jonathan Simmons
Yes, if I think I’ve ever thought of it like that. But yes, but that’s because that’s who I am and I am evangelical about being who I am. Like I don’t, I don’t think you should try and be someone different and this matters to me. I, I just wouldn’t know what to do with myself if the thing I was doing wasn’t trying to have some kind of positive impact. It doesn’t always work, you know, I’ve done stuff, I have done stuff that has, you really struggle to see an impact because it might be a personal impact and I, you know, I don’t take anything away from someone who feels that they, you know, they’ve got to put food on the table and if that means they have to do something that doesn’t have an impact for a society then go for it, because they’re doing something positive. I, I do question people when they’re, when they’re having no positive impact, like it’s like, what are you doing? You are part of a society, come on. So I may get evangelical there.
Elliot Moss
Jonathan Simmons is my Business Shaper, he is the CEO of New Philanthropy Capital, I can’t actually say it of course, I didn’t band it, I didn’t name it.
Jonathan Simmons
It actually does what it says on the tin.
Elliot Moss
NPC, um.
Jonathan Simmons
NPC my kids yeah.
Elliot Moss
NPC, I know it’s not NPIC obviously. Um, what is it like being the Chief Exec? Are you still an entrepreneur?
Jonathan Simmons
Oh wow, that is a tricky, well, I’m not an entrepreneur because…
Elliot Moss
Or are you entrepreneurial?
Jonathan Simmons
I’m definitely entrepreneurial but I think.
Elliot Moss
I like it, this world, I mean it’s not a world that you would associate with fresh and new ideas and leadership which is vibrant and dynamic, and I don’t mean that to be rude to the sector but the sector does not have that perception.
Jonathan Simmons
Oh so many questions. So, if I just break some of that down right. So, so it’s not mine so I can’t be an entrepreneur. It’s a charity. It is, there is a completely different relationship between the people that work there and the mission because it’s, the objective is not to, we can’t build in whichever way we want, we have, we have objectives and, and governance. I’ve got, you know, a board of ten trustees that get to hold me to account every, you know, and so, so I think that is, um, that’s a huge difference when you’re working for an organisation that is, well for a charity frankly. I think I absolutely take task with the idea that as a sector it’s not entrepreneurial or exciting or, I think it’s different, it’s much harder to do it in this sector because, um, (a) your decisions can have a much bigger impact, right, um, and, and (b) because of governance and there is certain governance rules that make it harder to be entrepreneurial, um, so for example we always have to have months and months’ worth of money in reserves because that’s what a charity has to do. You know, I mean fortunately at Zone we always did have that because it went very well but in a business case, sometimes you are quite literally going hand to mouth. We could not do that because that would not be responsible so there are, there are differences there. Being a CEO without the team that I built Zone with is new and its enjoyable in some ways, because I get to work with brilliant people but I miss some of the camor… I don’t think I realised how lucky I was when I, when I was working as a team of six.
Elliot Moss
Yeah, well you all grew up together.
Jonathan Simmons
Yeah exactly.
Elliot Moss
There were six of you, you’re a gang and suddenly you’re the CEO and of course there’s a hierarchical thing.
Jonathan Simmons
Well we didn’t all join together.
Elliot Moss
They must look to you.
Jonathan Simmons
They, they do, they do and, and you know, I don’t really believe in, in kind of, I don’t think many people do anymore, that kind of hierarchal or whatever. I think an organisation we’re not the army, um, but I think, um…
Elliot Moss
But the buck stops with you…
Jonathan Simmons
The buck stops with me…
Elliot Moss
…in a way Jonathan it probably didn’t quite as, as, it’s much more of a solo affair with you sitting at that level. Is that true?
Jonathan Simmons
No, I, because, because in a funny way this isn’t mine in the same way so, so the buck doesn’t stop with me. I feel really responsible, um, in both cases. I think possibly the difference now I am thinking about it is, um, that I did… we didn’t all go on the journey together. People have joined at different parts of the journey and I joined, NPC is 23 years old, so I’ve joined at a point that it’s 23 years old and there’s some really important legacy stuff which I have to maintain and there’s DNA in NPC which maybe isn’t in my DNA so we have to figure all that stuff out. But it’s, it’s a different project and that’s super exciting. But I am the same person, I still come in with my kind of entrepreneurial definitely people would see that, that I’m very entrepreneurial about the way we go about it. If it works, let’s keep doing it. If it doesn’t work, let’s stop. Which is I think, one of the kind of traits of entrepreneurs right, you don’t, you don’t mess around with stuff that isn’t working.
Elliot Moss
But you’re still bringing you right into the business and into the organisation rather?
Jonathan Simmons
Yeah.
Elliot Moss
Absolutely you. Final chat with my guest today, Jonathan Simmons in a couple of minutes and we’ve got some Kamazi Washington for you too. That’s in just a moment, don’t go anywhere.
Just for a few more minutes I’m with my Business Shaper, his name is Jonathan Simmons - just in case you didn’t catch it - he is the CEO of New Philanthropy Capital. New Philanthropy Capital in a nutshell, what’s it’s mission?
Jonathan Simmons
It’s mission really two things; one is that we, if people want to point their money at doing good, then we want to make sure that money is impactful. So lots of measurement, lots of evaluation. Does your money or does that money have the impact that you want it to have but secondly, and very importantly, it’s about growing that amount of money. Looking at, if you look at wealth as a whole and say how much of someone’s portfolio is focussed on positive impact. Whatever that number is we can talk a bit about that but whatever that number is, um, we want to make that number bigger because the bigger that is, the more impact we might be able to have and we are at a time where we, we need to do some positive impact on stuff.
Elliot Moss
It sounds like there’s two sides to the balance sheet there, one is if you tell me how I’m using, you’re using my money to make positive impact then I’m probably going to give you more. If you’re going to have to measure the thing then you are going to have to measure it accurately and in ways I understand.
Jonathan Simmons
Yeah, the, well the measurement problem is, is because people are very used to measurement in pounds and pence.
Elliot Moss
Yes.
Jonathan Simmons
And so, and that’s really difficult right.
Elliot Moss
Of course.
Jonathan Simmons
When you’re, when you’re measuring the kind of things that we’re measuring, um, and also as in business, things don’t always work so you want to be careful of lets only back the stuff that works because if you, so, so it’s important that you, it really is about building a conversation around what is the change you want to see and what is the problem that you and your community or particularly a community is finding and then let’s make sure that we’re investing in the right things and then when those things start to bear fruit, then, yes, we need more money, we’ll come in. It’s also a commerce problem, we’re not very good at telling the story…
Elliot Moss
No.
Jonathan Simmons
…of when stuff works, um.
Elliot Moss
Is that, and I was going to ask you briefly, is that kind of number one on your list of, what Jonathan in his CEO role is trying to do not just for NPC but for the impact sector?
Jonathan Simmons
I think it’s really strange that I can, if I make an investment in the business and that business makes money, I tell all my friends about it.
Elliot Moss
Yeah.
Jonathan Simmons
And if I put my time or my money or my expertise into some kind of philanthropic, whether that be a purpose driven business or a social enterprise or a charity and that does really well, I’m probably a bit more quiet about that. That feels completely the wrong way round to me.
Elliot Moss
So you want the volume to be up on the things that are great that are happening?
Jonathan Simmons
Yeah, I want it to be, I want it to feel like a super exciting, I work in the most exciting sector in the country. I work in, in the impact sector is the most exciting sector, um, because we spend our time making our society better and there are, you know, millions of people that work in the sector but it doesn’t feel very exciting to the outside world, it feels, you mentioned it earlier, you asked the question about kind of the differences between working inside the charity and stuff like that. I want that difference to be, this is amazing. It’s amazing to be purpose driven, um and I don’t think it necessarily feels like that at the moment for people, so we have, and that’s a storytelling piece so yeah, it probably is my number one priority at the moment, yeah.
Elliot Moss
And it’s going to be my last question just before I ask you what your song choice is. The challenge facing you now, if you solve this, do you think you would have done something more important than the thing that you did before when you were an entrepreneur?
Jonathan Simmons
Oh massively. Well, I say that. So the thing I did for an entrepreneur was largely for my family, like it allowed me to own a home and, you know, put food on the table and do those kind of things. Um, this is a completely different scale of, of, you know, if we can shift the dial a little bit on philanthropy or social purpose or impacting investment, if we can just shift the dial one or two percent that’s billions of pounds and so we’re not the only people doing this, there’s a big community of people trying to do and if we can move the dial and, and encourage anybody who’s got more than they need to, to, and that’s, that’s a personal thing, how much you need. But once you think you might have more than you need if we can point that toward doing good, then that’s huge. I mean that’s huge. So yes.
Elliot Moss
Good. It’s been really great chatting to you Jonathan, go off into the sunset and go make it bigger. Make, make the contribution bigger and make the impact bigger, um, and I love the way you have just, this is the thread that binds everything together, I think it’s incredible that you’re so focussed on it and it’s, um, it’s fantastic to, to see that. Just before I let you go, what’s your song choice and why have you chosen it? And you can tell me the truth about why you have chosen this but didn’t choose this but you may have chosen something else.
Jonathan Simmons
Well, so I wanted to choose…
Elliot Moss
It’s okay.
Jonathan Simmons
…uh, Ready or Not by the Fugees because like I’m the most unmusical person in the world, like one of the things you made me laugh when you said there was a relationship between entrepreneurs and kind of musicians because I’m yet to find it. So I decide I’m going to go home and practice, um, but, but the only time in my life I ever discovered a band for anybody else was the Fugees and I mistakenly thought maybe they could be a bit jazzy so I loved Ready or Not and I listened to that over and over again. But it turns out that the original is a, is a jazz song, so, so is it the Delfon...
Elliot Moss
The Delfonics.
Jonathan Simmons
The Delfonics. See I don’t even know the name but I do know the song so I am going to go with that.
Elliot Moss
Here it is, Delfonics, Ready or Not Here I Come (Can’t Hide from Love) for you Jonathan Simmons.
The Delfonics with Ready or Not Here I Come (Can’t Hide from Love), the song choice, kind of, of my Business Shaper today, Jonathan Simmons. He talked about that question that every entrepreneur when they exit has, which is well what do I do now. He talked about playing everyone in their best position and how that had informed the philosophy of making people perform really well in the business that he was running and indeed the camaraderie around the six people that were at the core of the leadership team. And he talked about impact and affecting people in the business and how he hadn’t thought that that would be an important thing but it has been and finally, we all need to better tell the story of people making a positive impact on our society. That’s it from me and Jazz Shapers, have a lovely weekend.
We hope you enjoyed that edition of Jazz Shapers. You’ll find hundreds of more guests available for you to listen to in our archive. To find out more just search ‘Jazz Shapers’ in iTunes or your favourite podcast platform or head over to mishcon.com/jazzshapers.