[Music] Hello I’m Marcus Railton and this is the Scotscare podcast. Scotscare is the only charity dedicated to helping disadvantaged Scots in London through a range of support including mental health therapy, financial grants, advocacy, sheltered housing for older Scots, job coaching, social events, befriending and support for Children and Families.,
The Charity’s been running for 400 years to help break the cycle of poverty experienced by some Scots.
In this series of the scotscare podcast I’ll be chatting to celebrities and supporters of the charity that have also forged a life in the capital away from home and about the ups and downs that can bring.
Scotscare: supporting Scots away from home in London.
Russell Wardrop is my guest today, 22 years ago he started a company called Kissing With Confidence teaching professionals and businesses how to sell in that time he has trained over 50,000 people. His company works with forty percent of the UK’s largest law firms the biggest Management consultancy in the world and he’s regularly dealing in business pitches worth hundreds of millions of pounds today will no doubt be a lesson for me about the sharp end of business.
[Music]in need of support Financial practical or emotional help please
hi Russell hello there Marcus you you are the first wardrobe I’ve ever met
I’ve never heard of that surname have you ever looked into it well in a little bit a couple of interesting stories
there was that there’s a Wardrobe Street in Paisley and may have been named after a famous wardrobe in Pisa who was a
lawyer actually there’s some wardrobe twins that are swimmers but the most interesting thing is uh my son Matthew
lives in a place called the lope and there are about 20 wardrobes in this Malden lope Cemetery it’s the most it’s
the most common name in that it’s quite spooky and most of them are my relatives they’re Farmers for me are sure and as I
say if you go to the lot of cemetery a tiny little Scott’s Presbyterian Cemetery there are about 20 wardrobes in
amongst the four or five hundred Graves which is quite an interesting an interesting little tip bit so that’s a
farmers from here show is really where my uh my precedence come from my ancestors come from have you ever done
one of those DNA things my wife got me that as a birthday present A couple of years ago which is a kind of odd
birthday present but she got one for both of us 20 23 and me and we tested our DNA and she was really interested
she comes from a Jewish Family and she had what’s it called echinacea econazi
akanazi Jews and a bit of Moroccan and a little bit of Arabic and some interest in European and I was pretty boring to
be honest that was Scott Scott Scots in a bit of Scandinavian abscot Scott’s Irish I think I mean that’s that’s
pretty much it and as far back as my as my father’s side goal it is west of
Scotland Scottish and I’ve got I’ve got farmer in my bones yeah I’ve still got four chickens out the back garden and
I’ve got farmer in my bones I think for centuries for centuries up at five o’clock in the morning like the dark
like the cold don’t like the heat I’m not white on Blue you know that’s that’s you know that’s if you look at the if
you look at my coloring I don’t I don’t do tan and that’s that’s pretty much what what’s been the past number 100
years for for the wardrobes I think so were you brought up in Paisley I’m always a Scotland boy I was brought up
in Eagle Sunbury Village in the south side that we went to school in piercing my dad had a business in Paisley
actually a very successful Industrial Waste business and actually what did they say the Apple doesn’t fall far from
the G and I live in Brookfield I built I built I’m An Architect by profession that built my last architectural project
was building my own house in Brookfield which is Linwood or Johnson
middle of those three yeah new braces so I bought a garden and built a house 10
years ago in in Brookfield so I know pays very well and yes I’m at I’m at Glasgow South cider I have been all my
life so explain to me what your business does for other businesses just for anyone listening because this is what
enticed me to get you on the podcast yeah we we started a business my uh
partner and I you know my wife Sean McClellan uh called kissing with confidence 22 years ago we started
teaching presentation skills uh pitching skills essentially uh to give you an indication of that the last bit of
pitching I did and the next bit of pitching I’m going to do is for a uh uh construction business here in the center
of London uh for projects worth about a couple hundred million pounds and if they win these projects that’ll be a
billion pounds in contracts we’ve helped them win in the past five years so we’re now working very big pitches our big
programmers the rain maker program we essentially teach professionals how to
sell that’s it so 40 of our work is in the low so we we create rain makers that’s what we do but do you what what
is it odds because I follow you on social media and and I don’t know if you’d agree with me but I think your
Humanity comes out in every single post and what you’ve just told me sounds like Wall Street Sounds like golden Gekko and
that sounds like the antithesis of Russell wardrobe well well
I I maybe I think I’m Kinder than I appear and uh I don’t want you to be
crying in the first five minutes Marcus but funnily enough one of my colleagues um did that interesting little exercise
and she asked all of us to give three adjectives about her so I did after I
gave her the three adjectives I asked her to give three adjectives um about me and one of them was kind of
leadership in being assertive and being the kind of you know the man out front that kind of idea I can’t remember what
the second one was it might have been humor but the third one was kind okay and I was quite taken aback by that but
I do believe I’m low in empathy but I am a kind person um I think but you’re absolutely right
about the corporate environment I mean I think the thing about business is if you’re going to be in consultancy of any
stripe unless you want to be a poor consultant you have to go where the money is so where the money as I’m
sitting here in a hotel in Holborn overlooking the city um I’m here for a month
and uh I can look over a lot of my clients and yeah yeah we we go where the
money is so we work with big corporates 40 in the big law firms and uh my next
business my next bit of business funnily enough is with the largest Management consultancy in the world who is our
biggest client but you know what you do is you seem to cut through the BS there’s there’s an honesty to your
approach because when I read your posts and you’re talking about you know big clients you know but you say stuff
like oh you know I was I was in my hotel room and I was trying to prop up my whiteboard and I used a pair of trousers and a biscuit tin and so you know you
you notice you’re not trying to create this insta life this Facebook tastic well I think that was
interesting about what you’re saying about that I mean I would say a very a very surface level with your damage what
I’m demonstrating there is humor is where the humanity so you could call it humor or humanity and there’s no
question that if you think about the best I nearly said it’ll be just there but
but my my thing is oratory in public speaking so you know getting my confidence I’ve trained 50 000 people
when they’re kissing with confidence method and I’ve trained that 25 000 of them so I’ll work with individuals and
make them better keynote speakers platform speakers and I can look right into your soul when you do that
and I would I would say to you if you think of any effective leader or good speaker let’s say it’s another it’s a
good speaker there isn’t an effective speaker that hasn’t got humor in them so
I think that humor is what is it the Churchill say the jokes are very serious thing so if you can make people laugh
which is a an involuntary thing in other words you can’t tickle
yourself and make yourself laugh you can’t you you people you’ll laugh because of juxtaposition because someone says something that
surprises you so what I try and do in those Joy posts is two things first of
all make people laugh or smile or be interested in them so they read them again the second to have a little bit of
a moral to it yeah yeah so that last post you reckon there is sitting behind us here is we do work at high-end
corporate the people was working with yesterday are senior directors and a fairly significant business and we’ve
got a fantastic wonderful Marcus yeah it’s very high tech but I’ve also got a kids flip chart behind me because I
don’t have my whiteboard at home so that juxtaposition I think makes me a human being a real person and
not some kind of corporate entity [Music]
Edition for Scots in London did you see the world of business change
after cover did people did employees want something different from their lives and their their business World well come on to your employees in a
little minute but I can tell you that in fact in this very Hotel I came down to this very Hotel two and a half years ago
one Monday in March with a full diary and by that evening we were in lockdown
yeah and I tried to go home into Tuesday morning and flights from City Airport were 750 pounds wow so I got the train
back North and my diary got white and a hundred thousand pounds coming out of her diary two years ago last April and
another five hundred thousand pounds come out in the next six weeks and her business was done Marcus forget humans
for a minute in the broader Society we had done for 20 years every single penny
we had earned was physically standing in front of a group of people delivering training to them and I mean every penny
and we had nothing because you weren’t allowed out of the house and zoom saved our bacon and we’re in our Global
business so that’s the first thing I would say that people talk about business pivoting markets our business didn’t pivot we didn’t have a business
for six weeks yeah a a couple of lessons I suppose that we learned about
people we didn’t have a business and I said to our guys as I suppose the boss like go and get another job folks
because the NHS is hiring um Amazon’s hiring they need delivery
drivers because we’re a training business I don’t know what’s going to happen and nobody left
which was just fantastic uh and um come September we thought this Zoom thing
might be possible and I said right we’re gonna go for it we put everything in the table we put all our chips at the table
so we’ll risk it and we’re now a global business because Zoom is fantastic but here’s the interesting thing about
people Marcus have you heard the phrase culture each strategy for breakfast no no so that’s one from Tom Peters and I
always thought it was quite trite in other words you know be nice to hear people in culturally strategy for breakfast it never became to her after
lockdown because if you’re a pure character in your organization you were toast in other words if the people went
all on the bus so so nobody left our business and I do
think culturally strategy for breakfast and I think one of the big things that’s coming out of lockdown is that if you’re
too much of a hard ass and if you drive your people too much even if you give them lots of money people are looking for a whole range of things now yeah
other than just the work and the money and funnily enough we preempted all the
stuff that I’ve done we went to a four and a half day week a year ago and uh we sorted
everybody’s words he’s out and kissing with confidence about six months ago because we saw inflation was coming coming hard at us now that doesn’t mean
that nobody’s gonna leave her business but it does mean that one thing that Sean and I are passionate about
is uh and it says I I always think it trading but let’s see it is a
it’s doing the right thing and and and and people enjoying working with us and they’re being able to pay the bills what
gives me great pleasure is that I see people in their business markers they started off maybe three wrongs down and
their wages are now doubled over a few years and they’re buying houses they’re buying cars they’re having kids they’re
they’re getting on with their lives and part of that is because Sean and I started the business 20 odd years ago
and get big money from corporates in London to hold back up to Scotland to pay everybody’s to pay everybody’s bills
that gives me a huge amount of pleasure and of course helping clients when big pitches and becoming better at selling
and do you think employees won’t tolerate this kind of Glengarry Glen Ross type of throw people under the bus
type attitude anymore well here’s what for you this but we can have a debate about this if you like I think we might
have reached Peach Peak that you know the great leave and all that kind of stuff I mean I mentioned to you I’m a bit of a stoic yeah
um things can change very quickly Marcus and why you need to embrace stoicism
which is about acceptance and purpose and stuff like that is that right now it’s an employee’s game right now it’s
it’s the recruiting crisis but a big recession has and if if things
happen in Taiwan or out in Russia or Ukraine or something like that you’re old enough to know you look old enough
to know and you know what a recession is Marcus huh yeah yeah I remember back in
the last crash when I bought a house and interest rates were five percent yeah yeah yeah so so so for me
um I think the employers the big change the biggest change for me has been that
homeworking has made you’ve had to be able to trust the people that work in your business to be working remotely
from the office yeah yes and the funny thing a lot of the cons a lot of the businesses I’ve been working with for
the past 15 years a consultant at a Management Consultant spends most of the time away from the office not being
looked on yeah so I think the biggest change is that you have to be able to be
self-actualized in a self-startered as an employee because employers still want you to Be an Effective worker but
employers have to must Trust the people who work in the organization and teams must trust one another because
you’re not you’re not eyeballing them the whole time and seeing that you know Jim’s off for half her coffee again today or Sandra spends 15 minutes 20
minutes extra at lunch that kind of stuff I’ve never cared about people doing nine to five I’ve cared about the
results kissing with confidence we’ve always the flexible approach to work yeah flexibility Marcus is a business
owner means you are flexible enough to work 60 hours a week so what what do you
think Russell made you you did you have did you have jobs as a teenager because I I when I was a kid I had a paper round
then at a potato round and then and then I watched in B and Q
in the gardening department where was this Marcus where was this this is in Clyde bank right so I was just over the
other side of the river from you I’m probably a little bit older than you but I the best every job I’ve had has been
the best job I’ve had but I was a waiter in a post restaurant between the ages of 14 and 17 it was called the pepper
Porter eaglesome oh yes yeah and I learned to do Silver Service and table cooking and I can still cook
because I used to I was cooking steak Diane’s and beef strong enough and Crepes rosettes for people when I was 15
and on a wee gas burner at the end of a table and they were paying the equivalent of 50 Quid a pork for it no
and a very very brief funny story the first thing you learn to cook at the tables is Crepes Suzette because it’s
only pancakes and orange syrup yeah but you have to flambe it at the end yeah usually means which basically means
getting a glass of Brandy heating up the pan playing the brand in and you get the flames and all the people go oh that’s
fantastic well I’m getting taught how to do this I’ve got the glass of Brandy and I’m heated up the pan and I shut the
Brandy into the pan except I missed the pan and basically it goes beyond the pattern
onto the table but of course it caught fire in its way so my first introduction to table cooking
was a Flaming River going down the middle of the table to that actual table
I love that and you know split shift split shifts 10 20 6 till 12. five days
a week 80 quid whatever 80 quid a week when it was 16 years old I love having that money in my pocket I then delivered
toilet rolls and janitorial supplies from my dad’s business um during the summer and uh cash in my
hand loved it and also my dad was an industrial waste guy so he’s always up
at five in the morning he worked from six till six five days a week and went in for half a shift in a Saturday used
to take me to my football in Paisley because it was on the way to get there in the morning used to be in at six so
where I’ve come from Marcus is you get up early earlier than you think you should and you uh stay a bit later than
you’d like yeah that’s that’s that’s that’s where I’ve come from I love working the one of the reason I ask you
about what you did as a teenager because I read I know and I had a lot of LinkedIn the social media platform I I
don’t engage with because I think it’s nonsense but one of the things I read is that teenagers these days are less
likely to have part-time work I don’t know why I didn’t say that and it says as a result they can become more
disengaged from their employers and when I look at a lot of young people’s
profiles you’ll see a state eight months here a year here 18 months here you don’t get the five years here six years
do you think we have to treat young people differently well I think that you
know I I you gotta be careful you don’t write I’m gonna be careful don’t rant about this and I wouldn’t do that but what I think this takes me back to the
stores and stoicism thing and uh let’s talk purpose
through the Divi back in the morning you have to faint purpose no I’ve turned a
hobby into a job I used to do debating a bit of after dinner speaking I used to train people and read speeches for free
through Junior International I used to do it as a hobby so I’ve turned a hobby into a job yeah
I want to say to any young person that basically everybody’s younger than me if they ask any career advice I say Focus
find something you’re tolerably good at and that you quite like to do you don’t
have to love it and you don’t have to be brilliant at it and face the wall and get brilliant at
it one of my favorite you know there’s a guy called Stephen Bartlett does podcasts you know if you’ve listened
yeah another guy you mean I love them and my favorite podcast of all the ones is not all the famous people it’s a guy
called will store and I’ve never heard of it when I bought a couple of these books and he was asked
for his best piece of advice for kids and he said don’t tell your daughter
she’s Beyonce and I thought that was brilliant because your daughters get two left feet and she
kind of sing a note she’s not going to be Beyonce and even if she can dance and sing a little bit she probably isn’t
either so in other words you know I wanted to play for Arsenal and then be United probably because he was younger
because I supported these teams but I wasn’t good enough at football so what I say to to anyone who wants to feel have
fulfillment forget happiness the happiness industry is the biggest coin out because seeking happiness is like
seeking the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow when you should be looking at the colors life is about purpose and
if you can find that Focus that gets you up in the morning and gets you going in the morning yeah gets you up out of bed
you will then find contentment in the sacrifice you make for that purpose
once or twice during the week and once or twice a day if you’re lucky you might get a little bit of joy and that’s as
simple as 186 calorie bag of Maltese a cup of Hotel coffee I can be happy in the
biggest city in the world for 69 Pence so find purpose and you will gain
containment and once you’ve nailed that your life will be jeweled with joy if
you’re lucky and you’ll also be able to cope with any of the slings and arrows of outrageous force and that are flung
at you and that is life that is life that is the penalty we pay for for being
alive Marcus is is suffering and death that’s what we all get but if you can
find your purpose you will bear sacrifices and you will get contentment and out of that will
come joy and nobody teaches anyone that these days no I agree I think we’re
entitled to happiness for some reason why are you entitled to happiness what’s happiness what is the purpose versus
ambition thing isn’t it you know you know and I think my kids and I worry about my kids because they watch a lot
of nonsense on YouTube and as you know I can be a YouTuber I can have 60 billion subscribers and I you know I have to
constantly say to both of my boys you have to have a reality check this is you
know and this this you know brings me to your catchphrase find purpose gain contentment and when I first read it I
thought this isn’t new if you read what Plato or Socrates were writing two thousand years ago it was about get one
thing that you’re good at well this is this is stoicism this is suicide and the other thing about stoicism and it’s the
the Darren Brown’s happy book is is the best exploding of it you won’t ever look at darrenberg’s book called happy and
his other books actually I’m reading stoicism in the art of Happiness now and it’s interesting it is it is an ancient
art but the reason that that the reason that it will come back is that it does come back when times get a bit harder
because you don’t think at a higher level things and you can’t the fancy restaurants or whatever it might be when
you’re having a hard time so so this isn’t to decry I mean you know we have never been wealthier as human beings one
of my favorite books to Stone reading is called super abundance and it gives you statistics that everything is better
than it was before and I think what’s interesting about the happiness thing is for some reason we don’t seem to feel
that but that’s because we’re well and for my money we’re chasing the wrong things
we’re all trying to be Beyond CT to use our uh a metaphor so I do think that the
the stoicism thing has got a whole range of things to it and what this stoich will tell you what practicing stories
will tell you is just so you have to physically exercise your body to lose weight or get a little
bit more and more trim so you can fit into your clothes it’s kind of like exercising your mind
Scott’s care supporting Scots away from home in London
one of my favorite aspects of it and I’ve touched it a couple of times in the joy posts is negative visualization yeah
now that I was going to ask you about that use negative visualization for inspiring positive action and do you
know that you know that reminded me of Russell there’s a quote by Roger mcgough the poet he says every day I think about
dying about disease starvation violence terrorism War the end of the world it
helps keep my mind off things well well here’s what I I love that and I’m going to look up Roger mcgov after this
podcast but here’s the interesting thing a very practical reason because people think it’s morbid to do negative
visualization bit I’ll not describe it as well as say a Celica or an epic that is dead but here’s what they say is or
Marcus it really is here’s what this says imagine the worst things every day
that could happen to your wife your kids your business ever imagine everything was taken away from you and here’s the
reason you do that Marcus the first reason you do that is because that kind of thing sometimes
happens to people and so that you you will be prepared for it and it will not kill you when it happens yeah first
reason but here’s the kicker here’s the second reason if you imagine your children not being able to see your
children again or not be able to see your partner again or your business going south it makes you appreciate all
the more that you have these things so when you’re in the moment with them it makes you feel the joy I’ve been able
to see your grandchild or your child or your wife or making sure your business is all right so it’s not about being
morbid it’s not about being depressed about it it’s about preparing for the
worst which also allows you to appreciate the things you have because everything goes in the end none of us
are Immortal but you know Russell it’s a bit of an existential mind bomb to get your head round every day is it not well
it is and the funny thing is we had to please chat about this before we started the recording Marcus I have spent the
past couple of years you mentioned YouTube I uh listen to a lot of a
historian called will Durant on YouTube and it’s a guy called Rocky who does different he’s a fantastic narrator and
he does everything from the Renaissance to the history of China to the history of India to all the philosophers now I
go to sleep with it and I generally don’t hear all of it yeah but what it does is it puts it puts the modern world
in proper historic called context and without being too blunt about it
pandemics and Wars are nothing new you don’t even have to look very far back and they actually happen within living
memory so in other words why should we be surprised by any of this
and we should be well as a society we should be prepared further but we should certainly be prepared personally
prepared for the inevitable disappointments of life but a lot of the narrative these
days is you have to be happy all the time which I think makes people miserable can I just tell you a little
secret Marcus I know nobody else is listening I’m actually the happiest person in the world
true it’s true let me let me ask you one thing but we’ll kind of run out of time but what
before we end what I want to I want to actually ask you about failure and resilience and equipping yourself with
the right tools which you’ve also spoken about you know and how important is that because ultimately as you said without
failure you can’t have success we’re going to feel at least 10 times a day just to get through life so what kind of
tools do you have to equip yourself with to pick yourself up and get on with it so that’s resilience so that I like to
teach a little bit of a resilience and I put the word quit and don’t quit up in a flip chat I’ll say three things about
this right quit and doing quit and I put the word don’t quit up first I say that’s what resilient people do they
don’t quit is that right and I do is yeah and then I put the word quit up I said but he’s a bit resilient people
could do they quit there’s a big pause I said yeah they quit doing the
the busy work the nonsense work so that’s the first thing I’ll say about resilience but let me see a bit failure in terms of business in terms of
personally I regularly put myself in front of hundreds of people for up to three hours with a flip chart and a pen
yeah and there’s a little voice inside my head before I start Marcus up the back the week was region guys saying
you’re gonna be born today be man your your shite at this he’s in my head
as well yeah right so here’s let me give you a cast iron guarantee I will bomb again the worst I ever bombed Marcus was
it the biggest burnt supper in the world the Bridgeton Burns Club I was the last speaker on
and I had 10 minutes and I bombed so badly the taxi drivers in Glasgow were talking
about it in the Monday morning oh well yeah I’m still doing it every single bloody day so what doesn’t kill you
makes you stronger yeah first thing so that’s the personal thing about failure let me talk a little bit about business
and failure the financial crash and the covert situation where existential
crisis for our business both times we were advised by really well-known people
that we knew business people you could just Chuck it because it’s not a business to be and it’s such a discretionary business in fact with the
covet crisis our chairman said why don’t you just stop and take all the money at the bank and get everything other jobs because you could just Chuck it now
anyway you got enough money yeah so let me tell you what coming up with the financial crisis when everything’s
stopped for us that’s where we started teaching sailing yeah yeah
because we thought nobody’s doing presentation skills now we would not be teaching sailing without the financial crisis Marcus we wouldn’t it’s a biggest
sailor it’s our biggest Money Maker now yeah covet
everything we were doing was in the room before covert and those 70 of her stuff
is on the zoom let me tell you about our last Art of Storytelling course it was done delivered to people in India
China Mainland Europe and America all at the same time
from my front room in Brookfield that’s a massive game changer for us so in terms of failure
it’s truly the case that when change is imposed upon you when you are stress
tested here’s the great thing about human beings we don’t give up we become
innovative we think stuff through and I’m certainly my background’s architecture so I’m the
I’m the big picture guy who thinks I’m I’m the big right brain guy that says okay this is how we’ve been doing it how
can we do it differently how can we do it differently so what I think about failure is failure is inevitable if you
put yourself out there and there’s no more putting yourself out there than physically standing in front of an audience yeah but more strategically in
our business the two massive failures that nearly killed our business in 20 years the two big ones the financial
crash and covered in hindsight they were the best things that ever happened to
our business because we could still be delivering presentation skills in Scotland if I hadn’t been for the
financial crash and for covid I mean that is the kind of brilliant irony and when you come home at the end of the day
you’ve got a good support network because you’re also working with family you’re working with your son Matt and
with your wife Sharon yeah and does that give you peace I I don’t know if peace is the one that I certainly don’t think
you’ve shouted Matthew and say that was peace there are pluses and minuses working with your family yeah certainly
Sean and I are like that we’ve got one another’s backs and that can be hugely I think comforting was the one that was
looking for there the disbenefits of that is that you provide you maybe rinse it fence yourselves a little bit and it
means other people will get to penetrate the the ideas generation might suffer a
little bit because of that but there’s no question that having a solid foundation in your business is one of
the reasons you last 22 years and you don’t because lots of especially small consultancies there are very very few
that last and a significant amount of time or with employees because a lot of
them are kind of one-man practices so no question no question it’s usually benefit you gotta you gotta trust the
people that you work with Russell it’s been great chatting to you today I really enjoyed it and I’ve learned a lot actually
thank you you just send you send me your invoice it’s been a real pleasure Mark is speaking to you and I look forward to
let us know when it goes up in your on your podcast and I’ll let some people uh alert some people listen to it brilliant
speak to you again soon nice to speak to you Scott’s care supporting London Scots
with financial grants welfare advice counseling sheltered housing jobs
