The High Flyers Podcast with Vidit Agarwal
00:16:47 · Neil Plumridge
[00:16:47] S1: A couple of years ago I retired from full time work. Well, I thought I'd retired from full time work. A month into that retirement I reflected on the thirty years I had and the amazing people I'd worked with, including clients, and I started to write a LinkedIn blog. So the genesis of the book and our training business is actually a LinkedIn blog. But I don't write a lot of LinkedIn blogs so I kind of didn't know where to start. So I just started writing and it became a lot more than a LinkedIn blog. And by chance, again, my life's, you know, often sliding ball moments, met someone who said, well, why don't you turn that into a book? Because I never published that original LinkedIn blog. And they encouraged me to just share stories. Don't get into the theories and the frameworks and the models, but just share your stories. You've got amazing stories. This is someone I trusted. And involve others. So draw up a list of people that you would like to get their stories from. And so Robert was on my list of people to interview. I've had the privilege of working with thousands of partners and managing directors over the thirty years in those firms you've mentioned. But there were about 50 that I really wanted to understand their best deal, the deal where did it start from and how did it come about. So Robert was very early on in that because Robert's one of my heroes and rainmakers. I put him in that class. And so very early on in the interview I started interviewing Robert. I had all my questions just like this interview process, and I then said, hang on, time out. You're taking this to a different level that I hadn't even considered. You should be co authoring this book with me. It's your book just as much as my book. And so a couple of weeks went by, we went backwards and forwards and then, yeah, so very early thinking at the start was mine, but I would say I'm not the brains. It's a collective effort. We're coauthors. I'm very proud of Robert and being a partner of his. So then we went and finished the interviews. We did a lot of research on others that we didn't get the chance to interview but through different means we collected their stories. In the book we've got over 80 academic cited journals and thought leadership that we think every consultant, whether you're graduate or a senior partner, should be across.
00:19:09 · Neil Plumridge, Vidit Agarwal
We've incorporated that into the book, and here we are two years later. You've done the book launch. We've got one more to go, and we're doing this podcast, which we're delighted about. [00:19:23] S0: Robert, give us your side of the story. How did Neil convince you to come on board and what excited you about the project?
00:19:31 · Robert Nason
[00:19:31] S2: Yes. Well, somewhat like Neil, I think I've retired about seven times and had farewell functions and then come back again. So no one was surprised to see me back doing something, I suppose. But I was interested... Like, the conversation with Neil was good. Conversation with Neil are always good, and he'd done a lot of work and had some very good thinking behind the book. I had an opportunity of reviewing an early draft and gave him comments. I remember coming home and saying to my wife, look, Neil's written this. It's 80% there. This is going to be a soda. He wants me to go in. I'm happy to help him finish it and it'll be a bit of fun and he's got some good ideas of where to take it, so this will be an easy process. Well, then it became, know, Neil and I are both sort of serious people, and we have good conversations. We have good idea exchange conversations. Where we saw an issue, if the book needed rewriting or a chapter needed rewriting, we would rewrite it. Neil had the energy to go back after having completed most of the manuscript to say, okay, we've got a different thought there, let's have another go at it, We actually put that work into doing it. Became a very intense learning process to do this. I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed meeting the people we met, the rainmakers in other firms, some clients, discussing this topic. You meet high energy people that are changing the world, doing great things, and just exchanging views and ideas and concepts with them was really a big pleasure in putting the words down on paper.
00:21:26 · Vidit Agarwal
[00:21:26] S0: I'm curious, you both would have spent a lot of time writing the book and you probably would have learnt a lot about each other that perhaps you didn't know before the book writing process. Can you take me into that? Like was there something Neil, did you discover anything about Robert through the book process that perhaps surprised you?
00:21:46 · Neil Plumridge, Vidit Agarwal
[00:21:46] S1: So more reinforcing, Vivint, I've always known Robert as someone who kind of sees things that others don't. And that's one of the characteristics we call out in some of the early chapters of the book around origination. Raymakers see things others don't earlier. And I always kind of knew that, but then to commit that to black and white ink and actually write it was really great, right? You can have a conversation like this, but then to actually try and put it in ink and then both agree. So it was more reinforcing of a characteristics Robert has and other rainmakers have around seeing things that others don't. And then there was just the gaps. Okay, Robert's given me credit for doing a fair manuscript. Let me tell you there's a couple of chapters in the book that weren't in the original that are now, and one's on the importance of ethics and responsibility of rainmakers. So we spend a whole chapter talking about if you are given great access to boards and CEOs as a senior person, that's a level of trust that 99.9% of people don't have. You have a responsibility to treat that information and discussion at a different level than what's in a company policy on protecting information. So that was Robert's early ad that I completely missed. [00:23:10] S0: And Robert, did you learn anything about Neil through the process that perhaps surprised you? Yeah, look, Neil and
00:23:10 · Vidit Agarwal, Robert Nason
[00:23:10] S0: And Robert, did you learn anything about Neil through the process that perhaps surprised you? Yeah, look, Neil and [00:23:16] S2: I have always been close. We were close when we worked together. I was MC at his wedding back in the day. I felt I knew Neil really well. I didn't realize how good a write, like writing a book is different to writing a consulting report. Neil was very good at writing consulting reports, but his style of writing is very easy to read, interesting, and I learned the qualities. I sort of bowed to Neil on his ability to put down on paper thoughts and concepts in a book sense absolutely is something I've learnt out of this. And the other one is just how widely respected Neil is. When you've spent a long time in consulting, thirty years, you know a lot of people have worked for you and a lot of people move to different firms. Neil's coverage of the industry in all its respects, in all levels globally is astonishing. The number of people that know Neil, used to work for Neil, have fond memories of doing a project with Neil. That surprised me and made our collaboration on this in terms of learning from other firms very easy.