Charlotte Mair: Is British Culture Killing Your Business Dreams?

This transcript is auto-generated and lightly edited for readability, it may contain errors.

[0:19] Charlotte: My personality and my beliefs are very much driven around America, right? And how they really nurture from a brand perspective the depth of DNA as to why you love something that then makes you go on and consume and spend money with it, but also the value in relationships. The UK is so much more transactional. You’re gonna prove to me that you’re good enough to do that before I give you the chance. America, hey, I’m gonna co-sign you because I think you’re really fucking cool. And it’s such a different energy. And everyone’s like, where’s Charlotte this week? And she’s like, she’s fucked off back to New York because I need that for my soul, right? To see those big ideas and to operate around people with high levels of delusion. Yeah. Right. I always say founders are no different to anybody else. We just have higher levels of Dululu. And delusion is what gets you through on the days when you’re having your ass absolutely kicked and you need to keep going. Yeah. And that is everything that TFR embodies every day in everything that we do. That’s like one of the most important things ever. It’s a high level of delusion that someone told me I couldn’t do that. Well, fucking watch me go and do that, actually. And it’s, you know, it brings up a challenge of spending a lot of time exhausted. But the sentiment, I think, in business, if you want to get anywhere, has to remain. I think it’s Timothy Armoo that talks about being unreasonable. Yes. Being an unreasonable founder. Big fan to me. Brilliant, right? Absolutely brilliant. Also came through when the world was focused on more, say your Stephen Bartlett’s that had the bigger profile. And he was just almost in the background, just doing really great work that allowed him to sell the phenomenal business that he did. And, you know, there’s always two ways to approach business, isn’t there? Like you’re out there so much, so everyone believes that you’re incredible, versus you’re just in the background doing the work, and everyone knows you’re incredible because word of mouth and referral does everything for you. And he’s such a great example of that. And I love that he’s having his social moment at the moment, and people are really giving that man his flowers for what he achieved.

[2:12] Sammie: Absolutely. He’s got a book coming out soon, which I’m really excited about, actually. Read a couple other pages of it and was like, wow, like where he’s come from as well. It’s just really close to here. He’s from Borough, isn’t he? So it’s like it’s it’s amazing to see. Um, but I love what you said there because I think it’s really important about America and Britain and the way that we see kind of the culture is like push people up. And it’s like, oh, you you’ll get there soon, buddy. Yeah. We’re jeering for you. Yeah. In the UK, I feel like, especially for small business owners and people that are perhaps have those dreams, we’re like, no, no, no, no, no. You need to stay where we are on our level. And like that mentality in the UK, I feel like is really holding us back at the moment.

[2:57] Charlotte: A hundred percent, because we have this mentality around staying humble. Like that is your lane, that is the box that you’ve been put within, and that is where I expect you to operate. And often what I found in my career is those conversations have been built on the projections of others. And I think that’s something that founders don’t talk about enough is your inner circle. I always say, from the people you hired at TFR to the people that are in my personal life, they have to have like a star winner’s mindset because that that I don’t want the people around me that are like, no, you can’t, right? I need my finance to be team to be like, absolutely fucking not. But the people that I want to deliver cool shit with, I need them to be like, yeah, you can. And this is how we’re gonna do it. And that is one of the biggest things with founders. I know they talk about the five people that you spend the bulk of your time with. I think that’s true to a degree, but in the business day to day, you need the people that are gonna elevate you. And in the UK, that is a really hard thing to find. Energy matching skill set and then a level of delusion. Like that, you know, where where Timothy says unreasonable, I say obsessive. Like I am pop culture obsessive. Yeah. Our vision is to be in the UK the agency that is famous for being the home of pop culture because popular culture influences absolutely everything. As we even just saw with the last election, right? Kamala going on and doing Call Her Daddy, and then Trump going on and doing Joe Rogan. Those podcasts and that pop and those little bite-sized sounding trends that went everywhere played a significant part in how all of that rolled out.

[4:32] Sammie: Yeah, 100%. Like, don’t get me started on the whole like stifling the Joe Rogan episode as well. Like that was mad. Like, I’m sure we’re gonna tuck into that. But um, like the biggest word buzzword on the internet right now is personal brand. It’s like everywhere. Like every guy and their dog is going, you need a personal brand. And I just feel like it gets totally misinterpreted because it means one thing to one person completely different to another. For someone for you that’s like essential on brand and like bringing this together, what do you actually feel about it?

[5:04] Charlotte: I think personal branding is the most wanky term to ever exist in marketing. Um it’s probably up there with authenticity, actually, as well. Another word that I absolutely hate. Um, to me, personal branding is your skill set and your personality, right? It sits at the intersection of that. And actually, if you think about it, personal branding that is now been predominantly driven by LinkedIn, right? This was the rebirth of LinkedIn as a channel, is the same as what we were doing 15 years ago with publicists, right? The role that publicists used to play in celebrities’ lives. It’s exactly that now, just reinvented. There’s just a new wrapper around it. And I think that I think that the the challenge with it is so much of it is pre-made. Um, that what people get isn’t always what it actually is. And as I said to you before we started recording, like one of my biggest fears in life is someone reading a LinkedIn post or watching one of my TikTok videos and then meeting me and being like, oh, she’s not fucking vibe. Like that’s a completely different energy to you know what she brings across. And there are so many people that I’ve met that have got big followings. I’m like, you are dry as. Yeah, man. Like this has been so cleverly constructed that I don’t even know if you know the difference between your personality and what you what you are, like what you’re presented to be. And I think as well, it’s a bit of a it’s a bit of a dangerous game because I also don’t think that it talks to the other side of what getting a platform looks like as a business owner and as a founder. I am very in tune with my business and I’m very uncomfortable. And you can see it with patterns on my LinkedIn of how of how I post. If we’ve got a shitstorm going on, I’m not very comfortable getting on the internet and being like, everything’s amazing, because I know chances are that client’s gonna see that and be like, well, well, actually, it’s not, is it? We’ve just been doing this. And I take it to that level of personal, which I know a lot of people are able to push past and just, you know, carry on because everything gets sorted out. But there’s another layer of pressure that comes with it that isn’t spoken about, and another layer of criticism and people’s perception of knowing you because they watched a 60-second video where you spoke about something. And I don’t think founders are set up for that necessarily in the same way that someone that’s been striving to be famous or a celebrity since high school or has been in acting school or whatever. It’s a completely, it’s a completely different thing.

[7:28] Sammie: So turn that on its header touch, like the guy that’s working his job in account management, et cetera, et cetera, and they say to him, you know, put three, four LinkedIn and post that a week and talk about what you’re doing. That’s building his personal brand in a way and that may elevate him up to AD or even a, you know, even higher than that, head of marketing or whatever that might well be, that might give him the platform. Do you see that?

[7:52] Charlotte: Yeah, well, I think that’s slightly different in the sense that I think that’s a show of building reputation actually as a trusted voice within whatever your um sector is, and also confidence and a big part of business and career growth comes down to confidence, actually, because you know, there’s it’s actually a small pocket of people that actually post on LinkedIn out of all the people that have got a LinkedIn profile, right? So I think if you’re already attempting to put something out there, you’re already ahead of 95% of people that have the platform and that are scared to post. I think the balance that then comes in with that is understanding the part that your employer plays in what you’re putting out as well, because these things are all interconnected from a um ESG perspective, but also being really clear in what you want, you know, because that should influence the strategy of what you’re talking about. But that’s where I think that it starts to become really contrived. I just talk about the shit that I love.

[8:53] Sammie: And that is my business. Like if you’re working in account management for a marketing agency, but you love rockets, yeah, talk about rockets, dude. That’s it. Like, have fun. That’s it. Like, it doesn’t have to be that deep. Yeah. Because actually that’s going to help your marketing job eventually, because they’re like, oh, cool. Like you’ve got something about you.

[9:10] Charlotte: You that’s it, right? In a time when soft skills are being completely drained because everyone’s so used to doing everything on screens and on their phones, confidence and an actual personality that can function of making small talk with strangers in a room. For me, as a business owner, is an underrated skill that is going to become more and more needed as we have these generations that have never been into an office, have never had to do stakeholder management within a business. It’s all been done over screen. So they don’t have the understanding of those little mannerisms and how you work that room, which have been fundamental to my career. And all the the women, predominantly, that I know in my career that have gotten to high places.

[9:50] Sammie: That’s work the room.

[9:51] Charlotte: Yeah, that’s a really important part. Like I always say, women are tricked into believing that we need to be nice. I’m not a big believer in needing to be nice. I’m a believer in needing to be liked. People have to want to work with you. And to a degree, that is a set of soft skills that you cannot get from being able to write a really fucking bang-in hook for social media versus coming into real life. That’s a completely different skill set.

[10:13] Sammie: I’ve seen it uh too a million times over because the language is so powerful. And like you can just put across this whole persona, yeah. You can be a fantastic writer, but a complete and utter bore.

[10:23] Charlotte: Yeah, that’s it. And so many are.

[10:25] Sammie: Yeah, so many of the biggest authors on the planet. They have these insane stories. And then they you give an interview and you’re like, boring, like turn off. I can’t listen to you. So it like there’s a there’s a position there. Like, you know, yes, probably if you are perhaps a touch dry and boring and you spot that about yourself, then elevating yourself to perhaps be positioned as not is a good thing. But yeah, I think it’s a difficult one for me. When it comes to investing, choosing a stocks and shares ICE for me is one of the most important steps you can make. And it comes down to three things. What can I invest into? Are they trusted by their customers? And most importantly, how low are their fees? So after testing over 10 different providers, I have landed on Trading 212. They have an excellent mobile app with thousands of stocks and funds available, and they offer commission-free trading with zero platform fees. Plus, they’re fully FCA regulated and have FSCS protection up to the value of 85,000 pounds. And right now, they’re offering listeners of this podcast a free share worth up to 100 pounds when you deposit just one pound into your account. So if you’re looking for a low cost stocks and shares ISA to start investing, it’s hard to look anywhere else other than trading 212. Use the code MGP for Money Gains podcast to grab your free share today.