SPEAKER_01 0:00

Alright, well I I I started my career working in magazines with National Magazine Company and Condo Nas and I worked for their distribution company. This is way, way back in the beginning of the nineties. And it was at a time when magazines ruled the earth and you know you could get a copy of Vogue, and it was like the size of a telephone book. And and I used to market everything from Vogue and House and Garden to Viz and all the Paul Raymond pornography titles and Bob Gucci's penthouse and good knows what else. So I had one of the most popular desks in the office. It's the sort of thing that you wouldn't get away with now, and these offices would clearly be raided now, and so they should be. So I was always into the media after I left university. I went into PR very, very early on, after doing some editing and some journalism, worked in B2B, working for a lot of media companies in in PR terms, went on to work in consumer PR and ended up working um with some of the luminaries in the PR industry, some of whom are in have been in prison and are now dead, some of whom have just sort of retired but you know inspired things like absolutely fabulous. So I had quite a grounding in the 90s of working with some quite iconic PR people who taught me a lot about you know how to tell and sell a story. And I think the that actually turned me into the person who didn't want to just do PR and just do marketing. I actually sort of wanted to be the story at times, and that led me uh probably to my cost to end up sort of where I've ended up today, as a sort of combination of trying to use my career and use my job to further my own narcissistic endeavours.

SPEAKER_00 1:43

Narcissistic endeavours. What you should do is launch a podcast, Mark. That's what you need to do in your announcement.

SPEAKER_01 1:50

That brings us sort of round to what my biggest mistake is. And in thinking about this show and what is my biggest mistake,

Nineties Magazine Scene

SPEAKER_01 1:57

it actually is over the last 30 years, it's probably about confusing adaptability with focus and direction. I've spent years trying to sort of keep up with myself, being versatile and throwing myself into wild situations and new skills and new cultures. Um, but ultimately, adaptability just means you don't focus on anything whatsoever. And I think it's a glorious lesson for people. You can have a lot of fun on the way, but one day you wake up three years, three, three decades into your career, and you're like, hmm, what what have I got to show for it? I've been building everybody else's brand for the past 30 years, and I've sort of forgotten about my own.