One Click From Catastrophe

Chris Norton 0:00

You faxed a confidential price list to multiple retailers by mistake.

Allister Frost 0:04

It's it's really sobering. We are all, all of us, one button away from disaster in the modern age. Honestly, your cat could walk across your keyboard and destroy your life. It's that simple.

Chris Norton 0:15

Today, Alistair Frost, former Microsoft digital marketing leader and keynote speaker, breaks down how it happened and what it cost.

Allister Frost 0:24

That would have been a multi-million pound error right there, because every retailer in the UK would have come back and said, hang on, Tesco's only paying this much. That's our price from now.

Meet Alistair Frost

Chris Norton 0:34

If you've ever felt one click away from catastrophe, this episode will help you slow down under pressure and protect your reputation when the tech goes wrong. I'm Chris Norton, and this is Embracing Marketing Mistakes, where senior marketers turn hard lessons into better campaigns and sharper decisions. Today I'm joined by Alistair Frost, who has worked with global brands like Andrex and Kleenex.

Allister Frost 0:57

And then this thing, performance marketing or digital marketing, came along, and I was partly responsible for creating the damn thing.

Chris Norton 1:05

In this episode, you'll learn how to avoid tech traps, how to build a future-ready mindset, and what it takes to stay relevant in a world of relentless change. Let's get into it. Alistair Frost, welcome to the show. Hello. How are you doing?

Comfort Zone Versus Obsolescence

Allister Frost 1:30

I'm really well, thank you. I'm looking forward to a nice chat.

Chris Norton 1:33

Alistair, you describe yourself as being on a mission to save one million working lives from the slow suffocation of the stayers quote. So where did that mission come from? And what did you realize? And when did you realize the comfort zone, not the pace of change, was the real threat to organizations? I'm interested in that element.

Allister Frost 1:52

I've I've had this fear that there would be this sort of tidal wave of obsolescence coming, perhaps towards me, but also towards people of my vintage. When technology gets so moves so quickly, when the the change is just so radical and it's so constant that there comes a point where, you know, naturally, we know this, everybody gives up, don't they? You know, this I just can't keep up with this. I like doing it the old way. Um, but that is now happening, as I have predicted many years ago, at a far younger age, you know, used to our parents and grandparents never had to deal with this pace of change. So I've just been really worried about this. And so it's transformed for me. And so it's become my life's mission, is just helping people, um, not necessarily of my age, but people who are working, who have got a few miles on the clock, um, and they've got very good at what they do, they're very talented, but they're slightly bamboozled by the way the world is moving at the at the moment, and they are struggling to keep up. And sometimes it's to find the passion, the desire to want to keep up that's uh that's what's holding them back. So it's the comfort zone. That's the thing is uh the the more familiar you are with the way things are, and the more you want to protect that, the harder it is to let go of it, and that's why change is a challenge for many

AI Hype And Singularity Reality

Speaker 1 3:04

people.

Chris Norton 3:04

God, I mean, yeah, and I listen to a lot of marketing podcasts, obviously get guests on the show and stuff, and I also listen to a lot um the lit the regular listeners, but I'm a little bit obsessed with AI. Have been for since well, since before AI came out, because I've been in social media since before social media was the Facebook and all of that. Um MySpace back in the MySpace days when blogging was that's that's the era where I come from. And so I've seen that that I've in fact my first job, I got I got hired off the back of the um the what do you call it, the dot-com boom. And literally a year later we had the dot-com crash, and then we had the social media boom.

Allister Frost 3:45

It was your fault, wasn't it?

Chris Norton 3:47

Yeah, and is this is so I assume this is where like the the the different changes that have come from. But my point is that the AI one, I have never seen anything, even ever this quick, like because um I listened to this AI podcast, it's with AI specialists who uh coders and everything. I'm obsessed with it, and they went off for their podcast in on the 23rd of December, literally came back three days ago, and so much has changed in the time when everyone's on holiday. That is how crazy uh AI is, it's moving so fast that the announced AI is just an accelerant.

Allister Frost 4:27

I mean, it's it's one of many, but it's a very clever technology and it's very beguiling. And a lot of people look at it and think, wow, this is amazing, it can solve my my entire life's problems. Um and and we're kind of in the the the caught in the headlights of AI at the moment, and that's why it's moving first so quickly because lots of very talented, clever, um, or just simply ambitious human beings are trying to make the most of what this thing can do. Um, but I think it's always helpful to remember that this, you know, this is just pattern matching at scale. Uh AI is is not a brain, uh, it's no substitute for a human brain. Um, it's more like a giant stomach, really. It's just got all of the information. And increasingly the stuff that it's training itself on is stuff that it uh regurgitated itself. It's like a if I can use the word, it's like a dog eating its own shit. Let's be honest. You know, it's consuming its own stuff and it's regurgitating and it's going round and round and round again. It is brilliant, it is very clever, it will transform the world and all of us who work within it. Um, but it's it's just the latest, remember that, the latest example of a technology that that changes things, and it's that rhythm, that pace of change is what's making it so so challenging for people to work out okay, well, what's my role, what's my value, where where do I fit in all this? That's where I come in.

Chris Norton 5:45

Yeah, because I mean that that's the thing. Because yeah, I was just gonna say that um while over the Christmas period, they've announced that so um Elon Musk tweeted, we're now in the era of the singularity, which is basically the singularity for those who don't know, is Claude is now coding itself. And in not just coding itself, so you say it's not a brain, it's coding itself, it's looking at what it's coding. If it gets into errors, it's then reviewing its own errors, correcting its errors, and improving itself. That that era has now started, and that's on one of the one of the tools, and the the Gemini and the ChatGPT developers are using Claude because that is so much ahead of the others in coding. Um and Elon Musk tweeted, oh, we're we're in the era of the singularity. So for me, I I'm like really optimistic about, and this is why I want to I've got you on the show, like the the era of um comfort, comfort. Are we ever gonna feel comfortable again? That's the appeal for me. Or is it gonna give Brin's the ultimate comfort because we can all relax in a couple of years? Do you know what I mean?

Allister Frost 6:53

That's fancy. So um the singularity, the singularity as a concept is is this moment in time where technology genuinely surpasses the abilities of human beings, and therefore we enter a phase where we can't figure out what's gonna happen next because the technology is going to decide it for us and it's it's superior in so many ways. Um there are a few very narrow fields where we are just tiptoeing into the singularity, and that may be some primitive coding, some primitive thinking, and so on. And I'm being a little bit disingenuous calling it primitive, but it but it is. You know, if you want to remap the way the world's economy works and do some really complex banking and transactional thing, AI wouldn't have a clue, wouldn't know where to start. It would it would could build component parts of it, but it wouldn't put that whole thing together like we human beings have. So we're not there yet. And there are also many, many other areas that are totally unaffected or just very on the fringes being affected um by AI. So, you know, I mean somebody I walked down a high street earlier today and there was chuggers there, you know, the charity muggers over the box, you know, trying to get you to sign up something. That's totally unaffected by AI, that process. I I I don't like it any more than I ever have, um, but good luck to them. Um and that that they're carrying on with their lives. And so we shouldn't get um seduced into thinking AI will take over everything, but we should be paying very close attention to what the value that we bring to the world and what where we could use AI to be more efficient, to be smarter, to help more people fundamentally. And if you go about it that way, then I think you'll find some useful solutions in the current stack of technology options that are out there.

Chris Norton 9:58

Yeah. So you were actually the first ever digital marketing strategy leader at Microsoft, weren't you? How did that experience shape the way you think about text, hum sort of tech, human behavior?

Allister Frost 10:10

Yeah, that takes me back a bit. It takes me back a bit because that yeah, that I my team and I and and the people at Microsoft um to some extent invented some of the craziness that we're now living through. You know, we're now living with things like social media and uh you know, two-way communication channels between brands and consumers and things like that. Um and it but it really it it what it did is it shaped my understanding of what is possible and that there will always be something more that is possible and it will never slow down. So that's really what what plays into the conversation we were having earlier about is there ever any certainty? Is there ever a sense of feeling comfortable again, having a comfort zone in your work? I don't think there can be because uh the world outside of your comfort zone, the world outside of what you know, no one sits still because you choose to, it will carry on. And so the challenge for all of us is to uh pay attention and to keep up to what's you know what's happening at the moment and to try to figure out what's relevant to us. Um and that's that's probably the most informative thing that came from that experience is realizing that tech is we'll will always advance faster than humans can adopt it, which is why we get into these crazy conversations about the singularity. Um, and we are approaching some of that, but that's just a tipping point. After that, we have no idea what follows. We have no idea. And then there's you know, there are quantum computing possibilities that are around the corner. You know, I don't know if you're familiar with the concept of Q day, quantum day, you know, this moment when quantum computing uh finally realizes the the dream, and it is so powerful it can instantly crack every password on the planet, it can instantly decipher every piece of information, and everything that we've built falls apart. Now that is is another thing that this is a slightly terrifying concept, but that's what quantum computing has the capacity to do if we master it. So you think in AI, you're thinking, wow, isn't it amazing? You can write my emails and do all this and create pictures of me wearing a silly hat. Uh but we haven't even scratched the surface. No. So get used to this, get used to the fact that technology will move faster than you, but do your bit to keep up where it is relevant to you. That's the crucial thing. Don't don't try to be a master of everything though, because you'll die trying.

Future-Ready Mindset Not Today-Ready

Chris Norton 12:28

No, no. Well, I I just love tech. I've I've always loved tech. So it's one of the areas, the area that I'm into. So that's why I thought you'd be great for this. But there's I'm not like everyone. So people listening to this will be some of them will be into tech. Some of the our our audience of marketers and comms professionals will be people listening and they'll be like they just yeah, if you just you do feel a little bit overwhelmed, let you say. So just I don't think I I personally don't think there's people out there in their comfort zone. I do think comfort zone in in your respective, like people are just getting on with their jobs and thinking, oh, fuck it. It's AI will sort it out, and when it's ready, it'll be here, and I'll just deal with it when it's here. Whereas other people and are looking at quantum computing, AI, and all the other different and trying to stay just behind the curve. Everyone says I'm ahead of the curve. No, I don't think anyone could be ahead of the curve. I don't even think Elon Musk's ahead of the curve anymore.

The FROST Growth Cycle

Allister Frost 13:21

He isn't because he hasn't got the best tech company in the world, uh, so he can't be. But look, um there there is there is just massive uncertainty about everything that's going forward, and the job that we have to do is to figure out the the the bit that's relevant to us and how we're going to use it in our daily lives, and that means constant little experiments. And and your audience, yeah, there'll be some in tech, some not in tech. Um, but by definition, you are you have to live in this technology-fueled world because there's no uh there's no other planet to um live on until you know Elon cracks that one. So we're we're we're in this, we're in this game together. Um technology can be very helpful, but uh to you come back to your point about comfort zone. I think a huge it is natural biological human instinct to want to be in your comfort zone, to want to be familiar with something, to know how to do it, to have a sense of mastery, to feel comfortable, you know, and and we all have a comfort zone. And there are there are certain behaviors. So I talk a lot about what we need to have is a future ready mindset, which is a little different to what many people have today, I believe. I think a lot of people go to work, do a great job, and they get through the day and they're today ready, is how I describe them. You know, they kind of they know what's coming up, they've planned for those meetings just about, they're probably riding on the skin of their teeth a lot of the time. They go home exhausted, have a little kip, and then they go back and do it again tomorrow. And it's like this treadmill, horror, horrifying. It's not even a treadmill, it's a hamster wheel, isn't it? Let's be honest. It never stops until you you fall off or you're pushed off. Right. So the the the that that come the comfort zone is the sense that I know what I'm doing. I it's a psychological safe place where you're not really being stressed, tested because you're you're familiar with what you're doing. And a lot of us, you know, if we've been doing marketing or whatever your profession is for a period of time, there are lots of things that you are doing within your comfort zone. You know how to organize a a call with a client, you know how to set up a meeting, you know how to um run um run an ad campaign on whatever platform, you know, you know that stuff. That is a comfort zone. Because since you learned how to do that, it almost certainly has changed. There is almost certainly a better way of doing it. And that was something that Bill Gates was saying when I was at uh Microsoft uh to help us understand how quickly the world would move. He would say, Today, if something works, it's obsolete. And I think that's the mindset that we need to take to our work each day, is to say, look, I'm doing okay, I know what I'm familiar with, I know it works. But let's be honest with myself and everybody else, uh this can all everything we do can be done better. Someone somewhere somehow has figured out a better way, maybe through technology, maybe just because they're smarter than us, but everything can be done better. And the way you schedule a client meeting, the way you run your ad campaign on that platform, there is a better way, I guarantee you. And now that doesn't mean you have to embrace that better way, but you need to be aware that everything you do can be improved in some way, which comes back to my central thesis, is you then have to decide what matters most to us. What matters most to us about about this thing, and how what am I going to improve today? So, what do I focus on uh because I can make it better? That's that's really what a future ready mind says. It's different to being today ready where you get through each day and go home exhausted. Future ready is you're carving out a bit of time, say, hang on, this thing was really hard work. I don't want to go through that again tomorrow. What can I do to make that thing better and improve? And it's a constant state of iterative improvements.

Chris Norton 16:57

And so, how does that work on a day-to-day basis then? How do you how do you how do you do that? Is that like process drawing out your processes and looking at mapping them out and then taking it from there? Is that what you suggest?

Allister Frost 17:08

I actually try and simplify it right down. I have this process in my book, my book's called Ready Already, and it's got this process in it that's called the Ready Already growth cycle. But almost everyone I've ever shared this with ends up calling it the Frost Framework, which is my surname for Alistair Frost. Um, but because the five steps in the process, F-R-O-S-T spell my surname uh quite deliberately because it makes it easy for me to remember. Now, the the the that that's really what I try to do with people is I say, Well, look, let's just do one thing, let's focus on one thing, let's figure out the one thing that's most important for you to be a little bit better at in the near future, and that'll be different for everyone. And a lot of people, when you ask them that question, they say, Oh, yeah, AI. I've got I've got to get my head around AI. I want to be good at that. Okay, that's too wide. Let's narrow it down. What's the one bit of AI you really want to be good at? And then you go through the five steps. Um, and you you basically follow this process of really narrowing down your focus, learning all you can about it, but learning intelligently, I think we've lost the ability to learn intelligently because it's too damn easy, isn't it, to go to Google or to go to AI and just say, what's this thing mean? It gives you an answer. It's like, oh, that'll do. No, if you want to master something new, you've got to put in some cycles, you've got to do a bit of you know, proper work. It might mean talking to a human being who knows more about it than you. It might mean reading a book. Remember those? It might mean going to a conference, it might be listening to podcasts, doesn't matter how you learn, but you really got to immerse yourself in that subject for a short period of time so you go deeper than your colleagues, deeper than others, and you get to figure it out for yourself. Um, so that's the the follow and the react steps of basically in that. And then the bit that I layer on top of that is there are three things that AI and technology will never do as well as the biological human brain. And I call them open, surprise and tell, the O S and T of Frost. And they're open is about reopening your mind to new possibilities and looking at the thing with absolute curiosity, not thinking that anything in your life is set and fixed and has to be the way it is. Um, almost looking at it like an like with the naivety of a five-year-old child is often a good place to go. It's like, so if you're trying to improve, let's say you're trying to improve the way you do advertising on Instagram, I don't know, whatever, or Facebook. Um, let that that's the thing you want to get better at for whatever reason. Um you know, literally ask yourself, why are we advertising on Facebook? Why do people use Facebook? Why does the plat why does the platform look like that? Suddenly you start to actually question the way things are and realize actually those things don't have to be exactly the way they are. I've always assumed that I have to run an advert advertising on a daily basis or a monthly basis. Actually, I could run it, I could create a totally different approach to that if it were right for me. So open is about suspending your experience and looking at this thing afresh. That's what technology companies are really good at. That's why they rip up industries and transform things because they don't take the status quo as the as the Bible. They say, well, that's just a thing. What could we do that's better, that's different? And then there's no constraints then on the way you approach the problem. So that's the open surprise, then, is about being really genuinely creative. You're really using your imagination to think bigger than you ever did before. Um the reason being is in my experience, I consistently observed myself and others would have ideas, but we'd kill them off ourselves. We'd say, Oh, well, we won't get the budget for that. And the boss wouldn't like that. I was too ambitious, we haven't got time. Um, and actually, in killing the idea at that early stage, we lost the magic that was within it. So open is about allowing yourself to indulge more in, well, what if I could do this? And maybe that is possible because sometimes it is. Um, and then the final step uh is tell, which is where you just share those, share your crazy ideas, share your wild ideas, the things that others will look at you and go, uh, are you all right? That's a bit that's a bit out there, isn't it? But then but then with the brief to those other to your colleagues to say, well, yeah, but let's let's now work on this, let's let's bring it back to reality, let's figure out where the magic is within this idea. And then you see, oh, actually, we could improve the way we do advertising, we could do it differently, we could, we could, we could have a totally different structure and payment process and different agency, all these things suddenly come into play, and we'll find something that actually is the future that we need rather than the future we felt we were just sort of on our treadmill, destined to eventually reach.

Chris Norton 21:33

So focus, react, open, surprise, and tell.

Brand Thinking Beyond Performance Marketing

Allister Frost 21:37

Well, the first one is follow. Um, and actually, it's called follow and it's about focus, but follow because um the the easiest way to do this for your for your your fans is is really simple. Sit down with a blank bit of paper and a pen and just write down all of the things, skills, know-how, knowledge, whatever it is that you think you need to be a little bit better at in the near future. Things that might be holding you back. Think sort of three months' time. Don't don't go crazy and it's not we're not talking about 20 years' time. Three months, six months from now, what what what might you be thankful to know about? Because you can kind of see that there's a change coming. And we'll all have a list. We'll all have a long list, actually, when we start dumping that stuff down. And that's the first step in becoming future ready, is having the humility to admit I don't have all the answers. There's stuff I'm not very good at. So that's why it's called follow, because you write your follow list, all of these things are interesting, but you only pick one. You pick the one that is talking to you most loudly, and you say, you know what? The one thing I would I would really regret, if I don't do that one now, I'm gonna feel bad about it, I'm not gonna sleep well. So let's focus there, let's do that. And that that gives you the answer to your follow. And it again, this is born out of uh hard-learned lessons in my marketing career. Far too often you're spinning four or five different plates, everything's a priority, and of course nothing's then a priority, and you never get deep and good at the one thing that mattered most. Um, and if I could turn back the clock on my career, that's something I would absolutely do. Fewer things done better rather than lots of things done to a okay sort of standard.

Chris Norton 23:16

Future ready. So, what behaviors tell you that a marketing team isn't future ready then?

Allister Frost 23:22

Well it there's the classic things, like y y there is all sorts of signs. You pick them up all of the time, you know. It's like, oh well we we just do it that way because no one's really questioning why things are. Um one of my favourites, you'll hear people say, Well, you know, we're gonna change that, but we're gonna wait for the new we've got a new system coming on board in a few months' time, new CRM system or new new this or new that. So we'll wait till then. These are the sorts of behaviors, the very natural comfort zone behaviours, where we sort of tell ourselves, oh, it will be easier in the future, or we're not doing that for good reason, rather than what should we be doing and what's truly stopping us? Um, because in my experience as a technologist, and I can say this with my hand and my heart, having worked at Microsoft of all places, the next technology won't necessarily make your life better. It won't solve all your problems. It might look slightly shinier and be but be faster, better in some way, but it only opens up a whole load of new problems, a whole load of new challenges for you. So again, it's it's those sorts of things. If you're in your comfort zone, um you probably haven't stopped to question what you're doing. You're on slightly on autopilot. Um, next year's plan kind of starts with the this year's plan, but we changed the date at the top. You know, that sort of behavior, uh, there are signs that you know you're probably not challenging yourself fully.

Chris Norton 24:41

How do you think marketing leaders can balance performance today with readiness for tomorrow then without getting the burnout that you're talking about?

Allister Frost 24:48

Yeah. I performance, that word performance marketing. I hate that expression. I mean, marketing's always been about getting results, it's never been about just you know colouring it and to oh, here's a nice ad. Um many parts of the business might think that, but marketing marketers know of course it isn't. It's about building meaning, it's about creating brands that people connect with and and hold in their hearts and their heart and their minds. Um so if you want performance today, um I'm not sure that's ever been a thing. Uh a slightly provocative statement, but um there are very few disciplines, truly, even with the advent of all of the marvelous digital marketing that we now rely on, that truly translate to meaningful performance today. Yeah, you can get short-term results, but can you get a meaningful, embedded long-term uh growth for any business today? You you you you can't. It's a slow burns, a continuous thing. So, what you want from marketing teams is that yes, they're trying to be smart and efficient with what they're doing, but they're always looking to okay, what's the bigger picture here? Where's this what does this brand stand for in the future and and how do we get it there? What can we do today that will mean that destination is more realistic than it would otherwise be?

Chris Norton 26:04

Yeah, I uh I'm with you on, I mean, yeah, listening to know that. Well, we just we talk about bloody performance marketing because I've seen that I mean marketing week, people have said that it should uh marketing week that's uh they said that performance marketing should be you know set set to rest, let it die or whatever, because the power of brand. I mean, PR, what I do, is all about it. It was always about reputation brand anyway. It's what if you think about what a brand is, whether it's graphics, creative, whatever, but actually I have to when we when I was at university and I'm teaching my students at uni, I used to say, you know, brand is what people say about you when you've left the room. That's even personal brand, you know. So that's what it is. It's when people walk out of the room, what do they say about you? That is brand. That's kind of what PL always was, and it was always it's always been like the intangible stuff that people can't measure. And in the era of social and clicks and digital marketing, measure everything. And now I think we're sort of coming full circle where we're getting at. So we don't need to measure everything. I think there's a mindset is changing with the way you know ironically, technology, you know, we're just talking about problems. It's it it I suppose that the technology measuring every single ad, every single click, actually did that. It did create its own set of problems because we came obsessed. A lot of people came obsessed with it, didn't they?

The Faxed Price List Mistake

Allister Frost 27:25

I look, I'm an old school marketeer from you know, I'm I'm in my mid-50s now. So I grew up, um, I was advertising brands like Androids and Kleenex and Huggies, so consumer goods, really old-fashioned, lots of TV advertising, um, big brand stuff, um, getting it into the retailers, it was about all about distribution, huge scale businesses. And then I went to Microsoft and it was a tech company, and they frankly hadn't got a clue about how to do marketing, which is why they were bringing in people like me. Um, they could they had a strong brand, but almost by accident rather than design. And um and then this thing, performance marketing or digital marketing came along, and I was partly responsible for creating the damn thing. But I I you sparked a memory in my mind. I remember sitting in a meeting, I think when I was in Paris, uh, a big marketing meeting at Microsoft, and um there were the tech guys, because I mean developers are sort of ten a penny at Microsoft, you can imagine. If you think your tech stack is impressive, go to Microsoft. You could you literally could have an idea and you come in in the morning and somebody's written the damn thing. Oh, oh, it exists, crikey. That was quick. Um, but we they had this this visualized data visualizer tool that came out. And I remember sitting there and I was sat sort of towards the back. Um Sir Martin Sorrel was right next to me. Um he was there because of part of the agency, the advertising companies that we we worked with. And um this they this thing, this visualization thing came out, and they had the data, and they said, Oh, it's got a customer data point here. And we can zoom in and it did this sort of 3D fly through. There's probably somebody from the flight simulator team had done this. So you could sort of fly through the data, and then you could land on this person, you could see where they were and you see all the connections and stuff. And it was just like it was amazing. And and then the the the crowd at the audience just clapping like seals, like wildly, oh my god, this is incredible. And I just sat there with my arms folded, as did Sir Martin Torrell, um, thinking, why? What's the point? What is this? Why do I need to that makes I don't, as a marketeer, I don't care at the individual user level. I have no interest in that. I I care about making a societal impact. I want people to believe in me. I want to be part of the everyday conversation. And this stuff, all of this stuff, is not really helping. It makes me feel like a very clever marketeer, probably could help me convince the CFO uh or you know the big boss to give me some budget. But honestly, it's it's nonsense. And so there's always it's always been in my heart that you've got to build strong brands, and that's of course is what PR is about, that's what advertising about is about. That's a lot about really big thinking is about, and uh we have tragically lost a lot of that uh in the marketing industry because digital takes all of the headlines, and that's what we think marketing is in many in many companies. It shouldn't be.

Chris Norton 30:17

Well, you mentioned the a your age and the fact that you've been in P uh you've been in marketing for a while. Um, I mean you worked for Microsoft nearly 10 years, didn't you? Um and I think you know, I'm a little bit younger than you, but I do remember, I do remember this era. So though for those of the uh you shared something with me before the show, which was quite interesting about uh when you used a fax machine and the mistake that you made using a fax machine is before we get um for for our younger listeners, a fax machine, you can put some you can do a scan and you could scan something and you put it in one end and it is coming out the other. Now, when that came out, when well not I don't I can't remember exactly when the fax machine came out, but in my first year in a job, um I remember sending press releases. I worked in uh near Heathrow, and we used to send press releases to the national media, and I used to think it was an amazing piece of technology that you could take a press release because we were posting them every day then, and that was our job. Writing them and bloody posting them, feeding it through a fax machine, and it feeding it through a so this is arriving in 15, 20 different places, and they're all getting this uncrappy quality paper. And it takes just minutes to do. Yeah, and it's amazing, and then you spot a typo on page three, and you're already, oh my god. Anyway, so what was your mistake with the fax machine, Alistair?

Slow Down And Add Safety Checks

Allister Frost 31:34

Oh, you know what? It does data, doesn't it? A fax machine, but they were incredible things, you know, the early days before email, before all of these of electronic communications. Um, fax, uh yeah, I I was a young marketeer. This has haunted me, this thing, and I've I've never told this story before, I've never shared it. There were only two people in the world who know about it, or maybe three actually. I had I was working late one night, and there is there's a lesson here that I will share afterwards. I was working late, uh burning the midnight oil, trying to get on top of some tasks, and I had a national account manager for one of the big um pharmacy chains. Um, if you're in the UK, you can probably work out which one that was. Uh, and he said, Oh, you know, I've I've I'm doing working through the pricing and the margins, and and he was basically in charge of the category pricing for us one of one of Andrex's big sect, one of one of our big product lines. And he said, Can you fax me the um the price list? So this is a very confidential document, as I'm sure you can appreciate. It's got the pricing for every retailer in the UK, from Tesco, Asda, you know, they're all on there. Um, and and everybody gets a different price because that's the nature of you know the job you do. They people negotiate and we all big big stores get a better price and the smaller ones you know pay a bit more. And uh he said to fax it over to me. He was working from home, so I went to the fax machine. I hadn't used the fax machine before because we back in the day you had somebody who knew what they were doing, a grown-up who you used the fax machine for you. Um and I thought, okay, so and and I sort of I I he was with this retail, so I pressed the button for this this retailer, and it's like, oh no, that's not his number. Pressed another button, pressed another button, then eventually I found him. Oh, there he is, he's there. Um so and I pressed send. So the fax goes out. What I didn't realise is in pressing those buttons, I basically created a CC list. So it's going to not just one person, but it was being faxed to multiple people. So I had just faxed the price list for all the UK major retailers, not just to the guy that I want to send it to, but also to several major retailers who now had their competitors pricing. Now, I I I immediately got on the phone to the guy I was sending to say, Whoa, I've done a drops right here. What the hell? What? I'm dead. What are we gonna do? He was brilliant because he knew people who worked in those companies and he phoned them out and said, Look, I really need a favour, I need to get this off the factory and dispose of it confidentially because it shouldn't have been sent to you. And they did, or at least they said they did. It never came back to us, we never had a major, but that if I'd done that, that would have been a multi-million pound error right there, because every retailer in the UK would have come back and said, Hang on, Tesco's pricing, because they were the big boys at the time, Tesco's only paying this much. That's our price from now. And we and that would have that would have finished me off. So that now look, here's the I got the lesson for you because this is the but I mean, firstly, don't work late. Um when you're tired, you make mistakes, you don't, you know, just just just cut yourself slack, come back in the morning, you know, don't do anything ever tired. But the the the other thing is um it's really dangerous when you work alone. Uh, I mean sometimes you don't have a choice, but you you know you have to make things do things. But always try to get another pair of eyes on things, do do important things together. Um, it just helps you. And and absolutely don't use tech that you don't understand, um, and assume that because you can handle one piece of technology, you you'll be safe with another. It's the modern day equivalent of email, emailing all of your customers the price list, which you would which would be catastrophic and it would have major data protection implications as well nowadays.

Chris Norton 35:06

Um I mean we've all had the BCC email that wasn't meant to go to everybody, haven't we? People have done that. But that I sometimes get people applying for jobs and they put high they put high prohibition PR, then they put their pitch in, and they think they've put obviously their students or they're they've maybe not students as well, and they put it instead of the C the BC, they put it in the C C so you could ever like literally there's 150 PR agencies, and we're one of them, and it's just like yeah, you you're not you're not gonna get you're not gonna get I mean that you're not gonna get a job out of that. I can see that what you did there with the fax machine. I've had yeah, I've done a few things, um, but I don't think I've done anything where I've emailed the the price list. I did have I did have a boss who once sent a pitch to um he he I don't know how he did it, but we had a proposal and he was editing a proposal for a new business lead that was in a bit of a conflict with a client that we had, which is years ago, just 25 years ago, and he'd saved it some sort of document name, and he he he emailed it to the the CEO of his client, and it was a pitch to a competitor. It was yeah, and I I spotted it, I was an account manager at the time, and I spotted it, and I just I emailed him. I called him up actually and said, Did you mean to send that document to and he literally went, oh my god, and I don't know why he did it, but he must have just been thinking, um, and you know, like sometimes people do send emails or send fax machines or what fax is to the wrong people. We've all we've all done some sort of everybody's made a mistake, but yeah, I think it's it's it's really sobering.

Allister Frost 36:44

We are all, all of us, one button away from disaster in the modern age, you know, it's literally one unintentional click. I mean, honestly, your cat could walk across your keyboard and destroy your life. It's that simple. So it it's and and I think that that actually AI will also have some extraordinary headlines where it does horrifying things in disclosing information or you know, in a smaller vein, it will uh where people will automate systems and they won't have sense checked it and it will run off on its own and there'll be stuff coming out left, right, and center. So if you are you know using technology, which we all have to do, uh just uh try to slow down. Um, we're all trying to do too much. Slow down, pause, reflect, think about is this the right thing. Actually, one thing, because I used to be the um product marketing manager for Outlook. You Outlook, I still use it to this day, Microsoft Outlook. I do, I still use it. Yeah, and I still hate it. Um, but I was the it was my it was my product, but I got really good at it. And there's one thing that I I still do to this day, which I thoroughly recommend to everybody. If you use the Outlook client, you can set a rule that delays the email send by one minute. So every time I'm email, yeah. It's not set up by default, so it delays it by one minute because there is something, I don't know what, magical that happens in your brain. The minute you press send, you're you're like, you're no longer writing the email, you're now on to the next thing. And instantly you'll think, oh crap, I was supposed to put that in there. Or I oh I forgot to mention that. If you put the one just one minute, it's all you need, it will be set there in your app box. You can go and get it back and quickly change it. Um, that has saved me hundreds, hundreds of times in my career. It's so simple to do. Set up a little deferral. And and I have an override, so if I mark the email as urgent, it will go straight away. Um, you know, because I don't want to sit waiting for somebody to an email, I want it to go straight away. So you can you can figure all that stuff out in the clients. It's it's super simple.

Chris Norton 38:40

I think they've I think they've set it up as it because uh uh obviously, yeah, we've all done that where you've sent an email thought and you see it, we we see it with clients sometimes, the recall. And for those of you out there that try and recall a message, it's only internal that it works. It's internal Alistair, when you were at Microsoft, if you'd sent an email to Bill, big Bill, and he'd sent it wrongly and it went out to everybody, the BCC thing, which you can literally recall, and if if it doesn't get there too, it recalls for everybody that hasn't seen it. Exactly. Um, but only internally. If it goes externally, you screwed basically.

Allister Frost 39:16

Well and sometimes it's worse because it will send it'll pop up a recall message to the other person and say, the person would like to recall this message, which of course, because we're all human, you immediately go, Oh, what did that they sent me then? I'll have a little look. Um, so you're actually flagging it. So I I think actually sometimes with email particularly, unless it's unless you've got a very strong relationship with the other person, there's a high probability they're not reading it anyway. So um you it's depressing, isn't it? But that's the truth today. So um possibly your best strategy is just to sit quiet and hope that nothing happens.

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Chris Norton 39:48

Uh yeah. Uh yeah. You can't believe Outlook is still the de facto Outlook, PowerPoint, Excel, they're all still there, still fighting on. There've been so many products that have come out over the years. The death of PowerPoint is going to be dead. It's like, but it's not, it's still here. Still here, like 30 years later.

Allister Frost 40:06

That's a tribute. I mean, um people have very strong opinions about Microsoft. I have quite a soft spot for it because they were a good company to me, and and and genuinely there's full of people who really want to do the best they can, um, who sometimes have a really tough time because they're trying to create an open platform that anyone can use, interface with any other technology. It's really hard to do. It's a lot easier to do the Apple thing where it's a closed system and you know you're in control of everything. So um I I I have a soft spot for all those platforms. Um and PowerPoint, there is nothing wrong with PowerPoint. The problem is the users is people use it and they think, oh, I should I must create bullet points because there is a bullet point function. No, you don't have to do that. It's really okay. You can you can put a picture in. Imagine that. It's it's a it's a platform, it's a whiteboard. Do what you want with it. And um that was uh again, uh that was actually my favorite ever reference I got was from my first boss at Microsoft when I left. He he left me a uh reference, I think it was on LinkedIn or somewhere, and he said, Alistair came to Microsoft and showed us how to use PowerPoint. And I love that, um, because that wasn't my job, but I I'm a marketeer, I'm a communicator, and PowerPoint is just a tool, and you don't have to follow the rules of PowerPoint. You you be you, use the tools to express yourself. That's what they're for.

Chris Norton 41:27

Yeah, yeah, communication, definitely. Um and what's it like so now Alistair, like day to day, what do you what's your day to day? What do you do with with clients? It's all about embracing, we've talked some of the stuff, but what is your day to day that you you get involved in today?

Allister Frost 41:41

Well, we said at the top, you know, I'm I'm just passionate about helping as many people as I can to keep up. And uh I've got a mission which is about saving one million working lives. I want people to um to stay relevant and useful in the workplace for as long as possible. So that translates into I've got a book which is called Ready Already, which has got that frost framework in it, it's got the step-by-step process. So that's a fantastic, you know, quick starter guide as well. Um, but what I do mostly is I I speak at events. So we have company conferences, uh, department events, industry association events, things like that. And I'll try to you know help people to think about change differently, to acknowledge the flaws in their comfort zone, and uh to have the enthusiasm and excitement to say, you know what, actually, I can learn, I can do growth, I I I've got it within me, and actually I don't have a choice. And then you know, they can then follow that framework to uh to start making it a reality for themselves.

Chris Norton 42:40

Um and if if uh well we ask a few questions of people, um I'll ask you in a minute, I'll give you a minute to think about this. We always ask somebody, obviously, because we asked somebody about the mistake that they've made in their career, and somebody that can share something that's quite interesting. So we usually ask our all our guests if they could recommend uh you've been on the show now, who would you who would you recommend to be our next guest and why? But before I'll let you think about that, and before we get to that bit, um if people want to get hold of you, Alistair, how can they, you know, they think, oh great, I need to get involved in some change management in my business. How can they get hold of you and um yeah, hire you, basically?

Allister Frost 43:16

Well, it's it's really easy. Obviously, I'm on that lovely LinkedIn platform, that crazy place, which everyone enjoys. Uh you can find me there if you can spell my name. Alternatively, an easier way is you can go to my website and that's ready already.me. So uh if you want to get ready already, that's the name of my book, then go there. That'll give you some information about what it means to have a future ready mindset. We'll also explain the steps, but most importantly, it'll make it really easy to contact me and yeah, reach out. I love hearing from people. I love hearing about their struggles and trying to help them. Even if I'm not coming in to talk at your event, I will always talk with people if I feel I can make a difference to their lives.

Chris Norton 43:54

Yeah, great. And so, yeah, do you have um if if I if we asked you who our next guest should be and why, who do you think would make a great guest on the show?

Allister Frost 44:04

Oh, it's it's a really unfair question, isn't it? Because there's so many great people I know. Look, I'm gonna go to um a fellow speaker. Um, because there are people uh the the speaking industry is very opaque. Um there are a bajillion people who are allegedly keynote speakers, if you read their LinkedIn bios, but there is a real difference between somebody who says they're a speaker and somebody who actually gets paid big bucks to turn it on on the on big stages. Uh and there's a guy um who's a fellow speaker who's called Jeff Ram, uh G-E-O-W-F-R-A-L-M. Um, you'll find him online. And he has a fabulous speaker. Um, I shared the stage with him very recently. He's a Brit and he talks about celebrity service. So if you do customer service, if you are trying to figure out, you know, what sort of service should we give to people, if you're perhaps bedazzled by this AI thing and think that's the answer, let's just chatbot this thing to hell and back. Uh Jeff is quite a nice uh uh foil to that because what Jeff does is he challenges you to think about uh the true nature of customer service and realise there is so much more you can do uh for your customers than perhaps you're you've even considered today. Uh so he's a great speaker, but also a smart guy. Got some books out too, so you can look him up.

Chris Norton 45:21

Oh, great. Thanks. Good recommendation. Uh yeah, um that was great, Alistair. Thanks for coming on the show and sharing your uh your uh career experience. Appreciate that.

Allister Frost 45:31

Uh it's been an absolute pleasure chatting with you, and uh I'm gonna have to have some more therapy about that fax incident because you've reopened that wound. But uh uh thankfully uh there's no faxes in my office now, so I should be safe. But yeah, it's been lovely chatting with you. I I I really enjoyed thinking about these things.

Chris Norton 45:45

Yeah, thanks, Mike.