Jazz Shaper: Tim Campbell MBE

Welcome to the Jazz Shapers Podcast from Mishcon de Reya.  What you are about to hear was originally broadcast on JazzFM 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 – drumroll - is Tim Campbell, MBE, winner and now co-host of The Apprentice, a business advisor and founder of Bright Ideas Trust encouraging young people from disadvantaged backgrounds to start a business and as if that wasn’t enough, and by the way there’s a lot more, he’s the host of reWORKING, a podcast aiming to help you solve your work and money problems. Often playing truant from school when his unrecognised neurodiversity met a rigid school system, Tim credits a teacher, Mr Foley’s support for- and I quote – saving him from the frustrations of education and a lot more by the sounds of it. Applying for a new television show, The Apprentice, while a graduate recruitment manager for transport for London, Tim’s world was soon completely to say the least, transformed. But when the failure of a newly launched business led to as he said, the lowest point in his life, it also sparked a new, clearer approach to work. Launching the Bright Ideas Trust in 2007 with Paul Humphries, the social venture supported more than 750 startup businesses from disadvantaged groups and as we’ll learn soon, is just part of Tim’s many routes to empowering others. Tim Campbell, MBE.

Tim Campbell

My big ears.

Elliot Moss

Your big ears. Yes, I can’t see your ears.

Tim Campbell

They’re covered now but that’s what my children say. It’s a great leveller having children who are very confident, they keep you in your place.

Elliot Moss

It’s so good to have you here.

Tim Campbell

Elliot, I’ve, I’m so excited for this conversation. To be invited into your space, right and to have what I hope is going to be an open conversation.

Elliot Moss

I think it will be.

Tim Campbell

Is very exciting. You’ll make my mum happy anyway.

Elliot Moss

Well I hope I make your mum happy, what’s your mum’s name?

Tim Campbell

Una.

Elliot Moss

Una, because I’ve read, obviously when I, before I meet my fabulous guests I do do a fair bit of reading and I didn’t catch Una’s name. Now we know that Mrs Campbell?

Tim Campbell

Yes.

Elliot Moss

Mrs Campbell, Una is…

Tim Campbell

You were brought up not dragged up you see, lots of people…

Elliot Moss

I was brought up.

Tim Campbell

…when you see people, everyone was an auntie or uncle…

Elliot Moss

Yes.

Tim Campbell

Or a Mr or Mrs.

Elliot Moss

Yes.

Tim Campbell

We’ve lost that now, everyone’s on first name terms, even teachers.

Elliot Moss

Well you know what it’s true they do do that although I used to call all my mum and dad’s friends auntie and uncle.

Tim Campbell

That’s right.

Elliot Moss

And of course they weren’t auntie and uncle.

Tim Campbell

No.

Elliot Moss

But it was a form of respect as well.

Tim Campbell

Mm-hmm.

Elliot Moss

Because you kind of were looking up to them. It’s brilliant to have you. There are certain people in life that you think you know because you’ve seen them on tele, which is ridiculous I know and I’ve done this before, we’ve all done it. You walk up to someone and go, hi and they go, hello and you’re thinking, they don’t me, I don’t know them. Oh no, they’re on The Bill or something and you’re one of those faces because…

Tim Campbell

I get mis… everyone says, were you on Big Brother or something (laughs).

Elliot Moss

I recognise you and they say embarrassingly, no that’s not me. That was a long time ago, Tim.

Tim Campbell

Yeah.

Elliot Moss

And some people have their, on The Apprentice, some people have their moment in the sun and they have a little thing and then they disappear. Not you. And again, I look at that because I think you’re a proper person with substance. Tell me a little bit about Una, Mrs Campbell and the sacrifice that she made to make you, at least the beginnings to craft and mould the person that you’ve become?

Tim Campbell

Well mum, as I have to refer to her, Mrs Campbell, she is the typical matriarch from a Jamaican background. She came to this country, part of the Windrush generation, I have had lots of conversation in this country and she just wanted to make a life better for herself and ended up first in Birmingham, Small Heath in Birmingham. Which for those who don’t know, is not the greatest part of the world to land in but it was where communities congregated. So lots of people from the Jamaican isles landed in a similar place. And you found and sought out people who understood you, understood your culture and can do stuff. And mum came with very little money in her pocket but lots of hopes and aspirations and skills. So the, the misconception for lots of people who come over from the Caribbean communities is they came over trying to take jobs and do everything else, but they came over to help. They were called, they were actually requested to come to the country because on the back of a low point in the British economy, it was individuals who were going to come and help with the National Health Service, who were going to come and help with the train’s etcetera. And my mum went into the community to help with people with slightly older, who didn’t have the support and she went and supported those. But she came over first into Birmingham and all she had was her ability to make clothes. She was a brilliant seamstress. So she had a Singer sewing machine and a pair of very sharp scissors and that allowed her to look at anything you were wearing and create an item and she used that skill to make ends meet. She didn’t know what an entrepreneur was but it was about making ends meet and she sold clothes to people and that allowed her to start her journey where she then left from Birmingham, went to London, met my dad, had me and then started the family that is the Campbell’s.

Elliot Moss

And I read that and I was like that is the classic Windrush generation story and again I think over the years, you know, as I was a young kid I was blind to that and I think for many brilliant reasons, as much as there’s tough times at the moment and people are talking in a way that is very divisive, the diversity of this country, the diversity that the Windrush generation and other generations from other parts of what was The Empire.

Tim Campbell

Mm-hmm.

Elliot Moss

It’s been extraordinary. It’s completely changed the face for the better in my eyes obviously, in the UK and my family too were immigrants at a certain point. But there’s, and you can now say this years later, but there have been things that you’ve said about that childhood which are tough and I’m just going to read this to you: ‘There wasn’t a lot of love in my house, I was told I had things to do so I’ve always measured myself as a result of that by accolades and qualifications of getting things done because that’s the way we were measured or rewarded’.

Tim Campbell

Mm-hmm.

Elliot Moss

And I say that not to, not to be difficult but to say that you are you probably because of that and because it wasn’t easy. Is that, is that fair?

Tim Campbell

Oh listen, nothing in my past am I ashamed of or worried about, right. And all the things that I’ve talked about come from a really honest place and the reality is that it was tough in our household to grow up. But we didn’t know it was that tough because it was just…

Elliot Moss

Yeah. You got on with it.

Tim Campbell

…you just got on with it and everybody else was suffering as well so you were in a similar place but in my household, I mentioned the things about my upbringing because now as a parent I have a comparison point. So I look at what I do in my house and what I had when I was younger and I know that my mum saw her only objective in life was to look after her children and make sure they were better and to give them more than what she had. So her only ambition, her only responsibility, her only reason for being was to go out to get the means that her children could have more than she did and for me that’s just a beautiful sacrifice. And I tell you a story, it wasn’t until she was probably in her 50’s that she learnt to ride a bike and I remember being a kid and going through the Argos catalogue, we’re old enough to remember these things, right. These kids with their Amazon, they can stuff that. We had Argos, right.

Elliot Moss

(laughs) I got…

Tim Campbell

I used to like that, listen Argos was brilliant. We go through the catalogue and mark every single page where we had a thing.

Elliot Moss

Yeah.

Tim Campbell

We knew we weren’t going to get any of the stuff.

Elliot Moss

No.

Tim Campbell

And one of the things that was in there was a BMX bike and I remember badgering my mum for a BMX bike and like she just couldn’t afford, I knew innately on some level that there was no way it was going to happen but I still wanted it and I badgered her. And I remember one Christmas waking up and I had the bike, and I had this BMX and I was the coolest guy. I put the little cardboard in the back to make the wheels sound like it was a speed bike and I, I had the best life but my mum couldn’t ride a bike. So she’d sacrificed everything and I know she was working numerous jobs, doing really crappy stuff in order to save up the money that I had the thing that I pestered her for. And it wasn’t until she was 50 that she could go and ride it herself. So when I make the comments about my mum, it’s from a position of huge amounts of respect.

Elliot Moss

Mm-hmm.

Tim Campbell

But at the same time although I had materialistic things, I was never hungry, we were never cold because we had to wear 300 jumpers to make sure that we didn’t have to spend any money on the electricity bills. I also know that there was a gap there.

Elliot Moss

Yeah.

Tim Campbell

There was a gap there which it, we didn’t hug lots in my household, we didn’t say the words, I love you, lots in my household when we were growing up because I realise now that for my mum to take the time to express that, it wouldn’t have allowed her as a single parent mother, to have the disciplined strong side to make sure that we stuck to the things that she was teaching us about, about the world that we were going into. And if she had taken the pause to be slightly softer, I don’t think I’d be as resilient as I am now because I wouldn’t have been prepared for the environment I was walking into. So I always say this, is that in our household love was very expensive because it meant my mum would have had to remove the barriers, the walls that she’d built up which allowed her to walk out to an environment where people would spit at her, where people would have signs on doors, there’s no dogs, no Irish, no Jews, a whole range of signs, right. And that, that scar tissue she had to build up just to make sure every day she could go out and do the same repetitive thing. Go out and clean somebody’s toilets in the morning, come back, get us ready for school, take us off to school, go and work for the local Council, come back in the evening and work to 2.00, 3.00 o’clock in the morning sitting at a sewer Singer machine where someone could pick up trousers that she was making for Marks & Spencer and sell them down the road. She couldn’t remove the scars of all the pain that she felt to give us the love because she had to get up the next day.

Elliot Moss

And that’s, and you say it so eloquently and you make it clear and there but for the grace and all that.

Tim Campbell

Amen.

Elliot Moss

That you are sitting here right now, Tim Campbell, my Business Shaper, thank you Mrs Campbell. And a thank you is never going to be good enough and the words don’t quite bring even what you just said to life, the reality of that.

Tim does many, many things and there’s a kind of a doing gene in him. Whether it’s the reWORKING  podcast, the column in the Iron Investor, an advisor, I mean I could go on it’s kind of crazy and I’m going to talk about that in a bit and where that, I think we’ve listened to your story about Mrs Campbell, your mum, I think that’s probably where some of that drive comes from. But there’s something very specific about your school experience which I just want to touch on and I mentioned Mr Foley in the introduction. You bunked school a lot and then you got expelled and I hear this often, there’s a teacher that actually – quote unquote – saves. Tell me just a little bit about what you now remember of that experience and how you have held on to what he gave you?

Tim Campbell

I was at a very interesting time in my educational career where I think now it would have been classed as neurodiversity but I just found the structure of school very restrictive and because I wanted to express myself, I wanted to articulate myself in different ways, it didn’t fit the system so I kind of got myself into lots of trouble. I was the kid who could get a question, finish it in 2 seconds and then be looking around just talk to everybody else and make everyone laugh.

Elliot Moss

That sounds familiar.

Tim Campbell

Do you know what I mean, right. So we were coming from similar places.

Elliot Moss

Yeah.

Tim Campbell

It was more so I got a reward for making people laugh and that was bigger than the reward of being told I was smart and that was the thing that I don’t think any teacher really understood at that particular time. So the, the accolades meant nothing to being cool and respected by my peers and as a result of that I kind of didn’t take into school life and I just said, forget this, I’m going to go and be the black Paul Newman of East London and go and play pool in snooker clubs instead of going and staying at school. So that was my aspiration.

Elliot Moss

Yes.

Tim Campbell

Once again we’re showing our age, right. But I didn’t realise on two things; firstly, my mum having Columbo-type powers and finding out what I was up to.

Elliot Moss

They always do Tim.

Tim Campbell

They always do but I was foolish then, I thought I could do better and the Jamaican discipline dragged me back into school and put me back into the school environment. But as a result of truanting from school I was put into isolation and what that meant is that I signed in in the morning with my form teacher and then was separated out from the whole of my year and that went on for about 6 months and imagine this, I was placed outside the head teacher’s office with a desk and every time the teachers walked past the head teacher’s office to go to the staff room, they would laugh, they would joke, they would flick my ears and they would point and ridicule me. And I did that for a long period of time until there was a wonderful man called Mr Foley who was my religious education teacher and he saw this and he put a stop to it. And he didn’t do it like a big commotion way etcetera. He said, ‘Tim, I’m going to take you out of this environment but I’m going to teach you how to navigate the system’ and I was like, ‘What are you talking about?’, like I just thought you was trying to set me up for whatever and Mr Foley he educated me around how power dynamics worked and he taught me through the power of religious education…

Elliot Moss

Mm-hmm.

Tim Campbell

…how I could navigate the system. Because up until then I was trying to head butt my way through and I was just getting a headache and he saw that and he said, ‘I’m going to teach you a different way to do it’.

Elliot Moss

And just give me one, one sense of what that looked like in terms of, you know, navigating power dynamics because we all see it, whether its visible or invisible, we have to work our way through it and then it becomes second nature and then you see people succeed, whether it’s setting up your own business or being a really good employee. Just give me a sense of the first thing that he gave you as a tool?

Tim Campbell

The tool that he gave me was he repositioned my sense of power in a situation where I felt powerless and he did it this way, he said, ‘Tim what do you, what happens when you put up your hand in a classroom?’ and I was like, ‘Well they have to answer my question’. He said, ‘That’s your power’. He said, ‘If you go and seek the information which leans into how they are seen as successful, you get them to do your bidding’. And for a pubescent, very arrogant young man, that was like a lightbulb. It was like, so they have to do what I tell them to do? And he said, ‘Yeah, but you have to ask the questions, you have to get the information, you have to deliver results’. I was like, I can do that because I believed I was in control. I had a sense of power, I had a sense of autonomy, I had a sense of agency which no one had ever give me before because it was very much a one direction from the omnipotent authoritative individual who I was trying to rebel against. And he said, ‘Don’t rebel, get them to work with you’ and once I understood that, it actually set up the whole ethos around how I do everything. I don’t go into rooms and take command. I try and work, how can I get you to work with me so we both get what we want.

Elliot Moss

Stay with me for much more brilliant insight from Tim Campbell, my Business Shaper. He’s back in a couple of minutes.

All my former Business Shapers, apparently over 650 of them can be found on the Jazz Shapers podcast, just pop jazz and shapers into your favourite podcast platform and they will appear. My guest today is Tim Campbell, MBE, winner and now co-host of The Apprentice, a business advisor and founder of Bright Ideas Trust, encouraging young people from disadvantaged backgrounds to start a business and he’s the host of reWORKING, a podcast aiming to help you solve your work and money problems and investor too. Tim, why do you think you won? What was it that they saw in you back in the day and are you a more evolved version of that person and if so, what’s changed for you?

Tim Campbell

I think reflecting now, I think the reason that I stood out is a heady combination of luck and authenticity and I would do them in that order. The luck is there were several candidates who were miles better than me in terms of, should have really won, the one that stands out to me is a wonderful lady called, Adele Lock, she was a Mancunian, worked in her dad’s business and had grown that substantially. Similar to what you’d done with a company when you were a managing director, grown it massively and taken over, right but she had to step aside because a family relation was ill. So her stepping to the side gave me a clear pathway to get through because I think she was probably the number 1 or 2 person in Lord Sugar’s eyes. I wasn’t definitely number 1 at the beginning. The authenticity piece is from the beginning I walked into this room, imagine the foyer, reception, everyone sitting there. The music’s there, no-one’s speaking, everyone’s eyeing each other out, looking at the shoes and the suits and the handbags that they’ve got and I’m sitting there thinking, what the ** am I doing in here. Because you had INSEAD grads, you had Oxbridge candidates, you had people who worked in the city, people who run very successful businesses and then you had East Londoner Tim.

Elliot Moss

(laughs).

Tim Campbell

What am I doing here? But I realised very quickly I couldn’t compete with them on those terms, I had to change the perimeters and I said from the very outset, because I stepped forward to be the project manager at the beginning, so I had to show that I wasn’t afraid of any of them but also this. I said, ‘We have to have a rule and the rule is, we fight as we can to win any single task but we fight together. If we’re on the same team, no matter what happens, we stick together and I will give you 100% if you give me 100%’. The soap box was crumbling underneath me but it was very important…

Elliot Moss

(laughs).

Tim Campbell

…to set the perimeters, the rules…

Elliot Moss

Yeah.

Tim Campbell

…at the beginning and it almost, no-one could disagree with those rules.

Elliot Moss

Yeah.

Tim Campbell

Because it would be bad for them if they did. So what I used is my ability to bring people together and I said, ‘In the house’ because after you did the task, I said, ‘In the house no one talks about business. We don’t compete, we leave everything that we did outside and we’re just human beings when we come inside’ and what that did I think now, reflectively, is it meant that people would give me as much as they could because they knew I would give them the same.

Elliot Moss

Mm-hmm.

Tim Campbell

But also they trusted me and trust in business is the most important commodity you’re ever going to have. I said what I said and I delivered against that promise. I didn’t ever throw anybody under the bus. In the house I was your best friend, I’d cook meals for you and on task I would compete 100% because I respected you as a person.

Elliot Moss

But you realised very quickly as you walked in that it’s only going to work if I’m me.

Tim Campbell

100%. I couldn’t be a carbon copy of anybody else.

Elliot Moss

No, and where now, so I ask you the second part of the question around, so you talk about trust, you talk about authenticity, now Tim Campbell, a little bit older, quite a lot older. You’ve done a bunch of stuff, some things have gone well, some things have not gone well. Where are you at? What’s the, if authenticity was important then, I’m sure that still is true. If developing trust is critical, 100% agree. What’s changed? What have you learnt that you didn’t know then?

Tim Campbell

I think going through the stages of my career I lost that after that show. So I let go of what had got me through the show.

Elliot Moss

Okay.

Tim Campbell

And I started to buy in to the messages that people were telling me about how good I was and I lost some of that authenticity and I started to become a bit of a caricature. I think where I’m at now as I’m older, allegedly wiser and just a little bit slower, is I don’t worry so much about other people’s opinions. I don’t worry about comparing myself to other individuals, I’m much more comfortable with who I am, what I bring to the table and being in rooms where I don’t have to know everything. Before I wouldn’t have been as comfortable to admit that so I think where I’m at now is a refined version of where I was back 20 odd years ago, having gone through several different filters of pain, success, arrogance and failure and coming out the other side realising it’s okay to be vulnerable and actually be really honest. The more honest I am, the more vulnerable I am, the more I seem to succeed.

Elliot Moss

Tim Campbell’s my Business Shaper and we’ve been talking about all sorts of things and I am struck by your honesty and your ability to express, express quite complicated feelings and changes we all, as we evolve we do change. Often people aren’t, you know, you don’t see it.

Tim Campbell

Mm-hmm.

Elliot Moss

But you see it and you can help people understand it which is brilliant. Part of this I think is you have said before, you know what you’re good at and I look around and I see, as I’ve said, a plethora of things that you get involved with. I mean it’s, Tim your energy is extraordinary but I think it is back to mum and again I read, but I want to tell mum to tell me I’m a good boy and being a good boy is doing things and lots of things and achieving. You’ve done that but in terms of knowing what you’re good at, if you had to crystallise that, what is it?

Tim Campbell

I think I’m good at energising people at the idea, ideation stage of anything. I can come into a room and impart the energy that makes people believe it’s possible and that’s a good and a bad thing.

Elliot Moss

Yes.

Tim Campbell

It’s a good and a bad. So I used to recruit people for graduate training programmes and we used to have assessment centres and I remember the first time I realised how people were judged and you’ll see loads of graduates sitting around and they will ask them to go and, you’ve landed on the moon and the moon, the spaceship’s crashed. How are you going to survive and then the first person who speaks is the person who’s rewarded with the highest amount of points. And the first person who steps into a leadership role, is given the most amount of points after that. And I realised that was the wrong way to assess and judge people because they could all die in any decisions, you could be the loudest in the room but you could also be the most wrong.

Elliot Moss

Mm-hmm.

Tim Campbell

And I never wanted to be that person. I wanted to be the person who could come in, see where everybody was going and then empower the right decisions because I’m not detail focussed and I tried for too long to be the detail kid. But what I am is a person who can see where energy is best served and get everybody to run 100 miles towards it.

Elliot Moss

And that’s a gift of course and from a Lord Sugar point of view. You’ve been very, you are very positive about him and often people do just see the kind of, you know, the pantomime version of Lord Sugar on tele but obviously there’s a lot more to it. What’s, if you had to choose 2 things that he’s taught you, what would they be? Or even 1 thing?

Tim Campbell

I think the 2 things that Lord Sugar has taught me is first, if you’re going to do something, do something that you’re, you’ve got an idea or a passion about. But not passion in terms of a love, something you’ve got the credibility to do. There’s lots of people who have aspirations of doing what you do, right. Of sitting in front of a microphone but they’re incredibly nervous and they don’t like speaking in public. Don’t do that then. Find something that’s good and that’s okay, you don’t have to be great at everything but find the thing that you are. He always says, know your onions and I never understood what that meant but he’s like, know what you’re good at and be okay with that.

Elliot Moss

I think we should try and do a Lord Sugar impression at this point.

Tim Campbell

(laughs).

Elliot Moss

You’re not going to do it.

Tim Campbell

You know I’m not going to do it. I’m not going to do it.

Elliot Moss

I’m not going to do it either. I think it’s probably best we leave that there.

Tim Campbell

Wise man.

Elliot Moss

So first one, know your opinions.

Tim Campbell

Know your onions and then the second one is, surround yourself with good people and in that good people has to be your family. So what most people don’t see with Lord Sugar is that he is an incredibly passionate family man. He’s been with Lady Ann for many, many years, they’ve got 3 beautiful children and loads of grandchildren and I saw first-hand in the company, he had people working for him for over 30 years and against the belligerent…

Elliot Moss

Mm-hmm.

Tim Campbell

…image you see, people don’t do that. You can walk with your feet and people won’t stay in bad places and then his family and seeing him with his grandchildren, you see the real person that he is. Those are the things that really give him joy. He loves business and good people in business and he loves his family and that’s what centres him and I’ve tried to replicate that.

Elliot Moss

Final chat coming up with my guest today, Tim Campbell and we’ve got some Taj Mahal for you too. That’s in just a moment.

Just for a few more precious minutes, Tim Campbell is my Business Shaper and what a treat it’s been for me and I hope it has been for you too. A few quick fire ones because we’re going to run out of time otherwise. You said, I can’t be an entrepreneur anymore because I no longer have no fear. Do you stand by that? Is that true?

Tim Campbell

Yes. I think the thing that propelled me into taking the mad maverick risks that everybody thinks is so exciting is that I had nothing to lose and when you don’t have anything to lose it’s very easy to take risks actually…

Elliot Moss

Mm-hmm.

Tim Campbell

…because there’s not far to fall.

Elliot Moss

Yeah.

Tim Campbell

But now.

Elliot Moss

You’ve got a life. There’s lots of things.

Tim Campbell

I’ve got a wife.

Elliot Moss

A wife, kids.

Tim Campbell

No, no. Wife is always first.

Elliot Moss

That’s true.

Tim Campbell

(laughs). Happy wife…

Elliot Moss

Happy life.

Tim Campbell

Right but the reality is that I now have to go through several different filter checks before I make a decision.

Elliot Moss

Yeah.

Tim Campbell

Where before it was all about gut, intuition, do I feel this, can I run 100 miles an hour and I think you come up with a very important thing about rivers and bends which is, now I kind of have to consider. I used to just go head long as fast down the waterway as possible but now I have to pause ever so slightly.

Elliot Moss

And the push back on that Tim, for a moment is, you still want to help young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. That’s still part of your DNA, you still want to help as you’ve said, the young Tim that might be out there. So you want them to take risks, how do you keep pushing for them if you, yourself are in a slightly more stable place?

Tim Campbell

100% and from the outside it can look like that is contradictory but actually when you boil it down, I was in a position where I took risks with no support and by the grace of God and a lot of fortune and a lot of hard work, I made it on the other side. The problem I have with individuals who have done that and are selling that as a story is that why would you want everybody else to have the same kind of stresses and headaches.

Elliot Moss

Mm-hmm.

Tim Campbell

If you can make it a bit more streamline. I’m not saying take away the pain, take away the risk but what I am saying, what I do now for those young people is present almost like a business in a box or a pathway in a box that says…

Elliot Moss

Okay.

Tim Campbell

…these are the things that you should consider…

Elliot Moss

Yeah.

Tim Campbell

…which I didn’t even know existed.

Elliot Moss

Okay, so you’re giving them some properly good guidance which enables them to feel less pain as it were?

Tim Campbell

100%.

Elliot Moss

Two more questions before we go to your song choice. A quick one. I’m going to ask this one first quickly as it’s easier in a way and I want a pithy answer. You talk a lot about AI and education and it’s one of my pet things which is, in a world which is changing fast, how are we going to make sure our kids, and our kids are a bit older, but our, the kids of people slightly younger than us. How are we going to make sure that AI’s integrated in a way where they are still learning because you need workings in the margin and AI enables you in theory to duck that. What is your one line answer to that?

Tim Campbell

My thing is that AI is going to amplify our abilities to be creative and the bit that we own is the creative catalyst of things.

Elliot Moss

Mm-hmm.

Tim Campbell

And artificial intelligence is only going to amplify that.

Elliot Moss

Good. But it starts with our creativity, I 100% agree. And the question before I ask you your song choice and it’s something that Stu, producer has, I go through my notes, I’m a student of trying to do a good job here on JazzFM.

Tim Campbell

You’re doing an amazing job.

Elliot Moss

Well I appreciate that, I do my best. How can people support you, Tim? You have gone through your life supporting other people. That’s what you do. How can people support you?

Tim Campbell

Wow. That is a great question. I’m really rubbish about asking for help. I am the worst because I believe, I’ve been taught I have to do everything by myself and that is one of my greatest weaknesses. I can’t believe you’ve asked me that question because I really do struggle. So how can people help me? They can help me by listening to the work that we put out and supporting the work that we put out because that is for other people and that sounds really rubbish but I find it very difficult to accept stuff for me.

Elliot Moss

You’re going to have to start accepting it at some point because you’re an amazing guy. We all need help.

Tim Campbell

We do.

Elliot Moss

And by the way, I’m really awful at asking for help as well just for the record.

Tim Campbell

Terrible isn’t it.

Elliot Moss

It’s a nightmare, it’s terrible. You’ve been amazing, I’ve really enjoyed talking to you Tim, so pleased we met, genuinely.

Tim Campbell

Likewise.

Elliot Moss

And I’ve learnt so much and I really have and I hope you listening have also learnt so much too. Just before I let you disappear to go and do more amazing things. What’s your song choice and why have you chosen it?

Tim Campbell

So my song choice is Pharoah Sanders, You’ve Got To Have Freedom because ultimately not only is it a banger of a song but it’s more about what I’m trying to do. My reason for existing is to create freedom for myself and my family, but also for as many different people as possible. Growing up in an environment where freedom was an illusion, it was more about we’d have to do things, follow paths, work until you die and hopefully retire with a bit of time on the other side. I now have the privilege of seeing different rooms where freedom actually exists and I want that to be whatever it is for individuals. That could be a great relationship, a better relationship with your kids, it could be owning the ideal pet, whatever. But freedom is really important and freedom is about having choices.

Elliot Moss

Pharoah Sanders with You’ve Got To Have Freedom. The song choice of my fabulous Business Shaper today, Tim Campbell.  Asking questions gives you autonomy, the lesson he took from his brilliant teacher, Mr Foley. Luck, authenticity and building trust, the 3 things he talked about as to why he was successful in The Apprentice and I love the luck point because it talks to Tim’s humility. The evolved Tim is someone who’s much more comfortable in his own skin, he talked not needing to know everything in the room, he talked about being okay to be vulnerable and he also talked about not worrying about what other people think. I think that’s all brilliant advice. And finally, what’s it all about for Tim, and it was his song choice as well. It’s about giving people freedom, whether you are in a for profit world or a not for profit world. What a wonderful sentiment. That's it from Jazz Shapers and me, have a lovely weekend.

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