Working it Out with Charlie Merrett-Clarke (S3E3)

Working it Out with Charlie Merrett-Clarke!

This week I have the CEO of Playfinder, powering Bookteq, Charlie, who I have crossed paths with a number of times over the past 10 years. 

I really appreciate how open and honest all my guests are in the first half of these podcasts but especially Charlie for diving in deep, and showing the how physical activity is entwined in the highs and lows in your life. 

I also really appreciate his professionalism for carry on talking when my camera flipped upside down then crash for absolutely no reason! I've decided to leave a little bit of that script in (for a bit of fun behind the scenes) and gone audio podcast only this time. 

The joys of being a one person band is learning on the job and making sure these errors never happen again. Fingers crossed next week's is error free! 

Finally, this podcast again shows the diversity in thought across our sector leaders, and I'm glad to be adding aspects relating to 'Digital' to our map. I'm really keen to speak with diverse thinking leaders on so please do recommend people! 

Transcript

Alex: 0:37

Welcome to another episode of the working out podcast. I'm here today with an old friend, someone who I've crossed paths with a few times in different roles. He is now the CEO of Playfinder. We've got Charlie Merrett-Clarke with us. Welcome to the podcast, Charlie.

Charlie: 0:52

Thanks very much, Alex. Yeah, I really look forward to talking with you. First time doing something like this, so we'll see how it goes, but excited.

Alex: 0:59

That's great. No, as soon as I saw you in the CEO role back a while ago now, I was like getting him on because we've always had some good conversations in the past. I was like, this is a completely different type of organisation you work for, which we'll find out for in a bit. And so I'm hoping for a completely different perspective of that as well. So what we do, we jump into our first question straight away. And that's our working out locker. This is a locker which all guests have to put one item into related to their relationship with physical activity. So we've had so many different options in the past from pull up bars to compression socks. I always give those examples. I need to say some of the other ones. But this is, it's something personal to you to do with your relationship. Could you induct one item in please?

Charlie: 1:42

Yeah, absolutely. Not always something I'm always using just for physical activity, but I can talk a little bit more about that. If you're someone who works with me on a day to day basis or family or friend, my husband at home you'd know that on my right left arm I've always got the extension of my Yeti water bottle. And it's well over a litre, I think. I can't remember the literage of it. But it's far too big for its purpose of just drinking water. It's one thing as to why is it related to physical activity for me that, whether I'm in the office, doing things that aren't necessarily physical activity, I try and walk up the stairs from the basement up to our office floor, or I'm out on a tennis court going for a run, that water bottle is always with me, and so it's a consistent hybrid. Yeah, it's attached to my arm at all times. And something that I resonate with when I think about my physical object relationship.

Alex: 2:28

This isn't going to work well for viewers, but I also get slated for the size of my water bottle because I have, I feel like the bigger the water bottle, the more it makes me think about drinking water. I used to be really bad at it. So completely resonate with having a water bottle too way too big for what's needed.

Charlie: 2:43

It's very simple as well. I don't want to be this can easily be seen as God, that's a boring object, but you realize how much of a necessity it is when you haven't been drinking enough and you just don't feel right for whatever you're trying to take on, whether it's a late afternoon meeting or a run in the evening.

Alex: 2:56

Yeah, no, exactly. And so you mentioned a few different activities in there as well. So you mentioned tennis. Is that the activity that you like to do?

Charlie: 3:04

I've been really lucky along my path, if I'm honest, as a youngster, I got so many opportunities to play. And there's probably, The times I've dipped into rugby or cricket or hockey or football or tennis or squash, etc. I've been able to try lots of different things. Some I took to and some I was complete garbage at, if honest. You've got to reflect honestly. where I really found my love was, with a racket in my hand. I played competitively through my school years and university and same with squash, but I struggled to balance them, especially at university when they were happening at the same times fundamentally. So that was frustrating. Started coaching in both of them when I was a late teen. I really enjoyed my coaching years and, I often go back to that in my day-to-day work of, what coaches need and what the challenges there. Yeah, racket sports became the kind of, call it specialism, but I'm a amateur at best.

Alex: 3:54

Yeah, I did see that when I always say I like to do my digging into you guys, and I don't pull out anything bad, but the one I did see was tennis and squash coach. So was this whilst at university, or is this like a, was it a side job, or was it something that you just

Charlie: 4:08

so yeah, I was, I did some I'm from the sticks, I haven't lived up in, in big cities and towns most of my life, and so I did a lot of coaching for my local clubs. A lot of youth coaching, getting out on a Saturday morning at eight o'clock and doing doing kids activities for two or three hours. Sometimes it felt more like babysitting than it was sports coaching, but suitable at my level of skill as well, I'd suggest. And then I took coaching abroad. I coached in in Kenya and East Africa for a few months at a secondary school out there, which was an awesome opportunity, brand new course they'd built. I had contacts out there who were teachers at the school and they thought it would be a good chance to try and connect what I could do with some young people out there. So I loved that. And then I dip my toe in, as you do through university, both playing and encouraging others. But that wasn't really formal coaching as many would be familiar.

Alex: 4:55

I'm really interested in the Kenya experience. What was it like out there and being part of that school environment? Cause obviously it's a completely different culture. How was it? What was it like in terms of, from a physical activity perspective?

Charlie: 5:07

I had the benefit of seeing both ends of the spectrum and nothing in between. It's probably this one. So in the mornings, I was actually walking about two miles to get to a local primary school and doing some English and maths teaching and, we do some sport late morning, lunchtime and just get out and play. And, there you really do see the vibrancy of young people just playing and loving the benefit of play with nothing, no equipment, no, no facility whatever they've got on their feet and the quality of the ball they might have. And then in the afternoons, I'd be back at what was an independent school out there with, real plush facilities, brand new, as I said, and putting on what was much more of a programme. But as well as, being able to talk about the challenges on both sides of that, what was really consistent, especially with tennis was a new sport at that school, was how much people in the same way just wanted to take it on, try it, develop. real eagerness to learn and enjoy it as a result. And you just realized whether you've got nothing or you've got, got everything. Sports having the same effect which was really cool to see. So yeah, there isn't a huge amount in between as well. I'm sure it's developing as a country in different ways, but, just being able to see both ends of that spectrum and be involved in both on a daily basis was incredible.

Alex: 6:19

That does sound incredible. And then you picked up a few words there in terms of how people out in Kenya with their emotions towards physical activity, which is all a part of our second question here is that I've asked you to give one item and the next part is one emotion. So this is what one emotion first comes to mind when we speak about physical activity. What one thing, what one emotion would you like to give to us?

Charlie: 6:43

So when I think about the, I played a lot of sport through my time. I've not always been the most active of people and certainly struggle to find that balance as a, as an adult. When I think about sport and all of the memories I have as a young player as a aspiring player and the things I achieved good, bad. And even now, when I get to revisit that for, if I'm going and playing a competitive match, my local club there's always such pride in participating and being involved. And I think, the matches one, those moments you remember. And even now when I, if I do go out for a jog, I'd need to be doing it more often than I am. You're still proud of what you've achieved. And yes, there's all of the mental and wellbeing benefits that come. But one of those is the emotion of pride that comes out when you do achieve that thing. Even if it's just taking my dog out for a walk, you've been physically active and you're proud of yourself for just getting it done. So yeah, pride for me I think is probably the word. I'm very proud of the things I used to do and play and what we achieved and the little moments I take back now to make it happen.

Alex: 7:38

That's First time that was come up. So it's a really good, really great one. And I want the first thing I had, I thought of was, can you think back to a time when you feel like that's my proudest moment

Charlie: 7:50

Oh god, this one let's go deep. This is

Alex: 7:52

to hear

Charlie: 7:53

very personal actually, but I don't mind sharing it because I think it defines me and who I am and who I am. how I work with people. I had a very unfortunate moment in my life when I was an 11-year-old boy where I lost my dad. And I lost my dad the same day that I was playing a cricket match. It was a May summer afternoon, a Wednesday. And you'll get a sense of my sporting prowess now, when I say I was the I was the ninth or 10th batter. Was I contributing on the bowling? I don't even think I was but that's where I was in the batting order. And we were it couldn't have been more poignant. We were one run short of the total we were chasing. And it was the last ball and Gubbins here was the one, one facing it. And I just gave the bat a swing, hit it, it went straight to mid off. I can impress with the words I know now.

Alex: 8:37

Yeah.

Charlie: 8:37

We ran to about three or four young guys went to try and catch it, bashed into each other. No one caught the ball. We ran two runs and ran two runs and won the match on that last ball. And an hour later I walked into my headmaster's office and my family were there and I found out the news that I'd lost my dad that day. Talk about pride of having such a poignant moment happen, that couldn't have been more aptly timed because it is such a moment that you don't get very often at all. It was to be the one hitting the winning runs for a match for you with your schoolmates. So yeah, if that's a really like deep example of where pride can take you with sport, hopefully it resonates with some.

Alex: 9:13

think this is where some, when people ask me, do you think you're going to ask different questions next series? I go, why ask a different question when every answer is different? I haven't come across, I don't come across many at the moment that we're on the 18th CEO and we've got, I haven't had the same answer once so I'm not stopping yet because that really firstly thank you very much for sharing, sharing that I think a lot of people resonate with that. And It sounds like a really, you're never going to forget that day, of course. And the fact that physical activity is entwined with that, was there how was it for you in terms of your relationship with either cricket or physical activity after your dad then passing? Was it, which way did it go? Cause I know that some people may have that negative connotation with it, or maybe they know this was quite a positive thing. So yeah. How was it for you?

Charlie: 10:03

I think it's hard, and it'd be wrong of me to say that in the year or two, I can particularly remember physical activity playing a role for me, I was a young boy at that time and, I was, I've always loved sport. I was saying all the things I tried that my mum and dad used to drive me left, right and centre to go play hockey and go and play tennis out of school. As well as getting the opportunities I got in school. But if I think about when I got a little bit older especially when I became 11, 12, 13, got to secondary school, I was doing hours and hours of afternoons playing sport. I think it for me became, really do know something that is that absolute escape. Tuesdays and Thursdays for me were, I'd be out for four hours and I would go and I used to frustrate a lot of my teachers because, they expected me to be playing hockey, but I wanted to go and play an hour squash first and then go and play hockey and I'd, get them to schedule if I had to play a match, get to schedule my match first so I could get that out the way and then go and play hockey and then I'd go and do something else afterwards, yes. I was lucky at those opportunities, but it was a kind of, it was almost religion for me at that kind of age in playing. I lost a lot of weight, but in a really positive way. And I think it was just, all of that was just well being, I think, at that age. If I think back and reflect now it's always played that kind of positive reinforcement. And I obviously look at back at that particular day of going, yeah, awful, absolutely awful, but it can't be changed. But it's absolutely got a connection to something incredibly positive. And it's, made me the person I am and sport played a role in that. And it's something you wear all the time. You never let that, something like that go, but it just, it does shape you. And hopefully shape my relationship with sport as well.

Alex: 11:36

So stop, have I flipped upside down for you?

Charlie: 11:38

You have, yeah.

Alex: 11:40

So I didn't want to interrupt you because I'm going to just pause that there. I don't know what the hell has happened. So I'll do the countdown and then jump straight in. Three, two, one. Thank you very much for sharing that. What I think does show through what you've said right now is that there's some really influential and important people in your life, in terms of your relationship with physical activity, whether that be your parents or, by the sounds of it, it sounds like you've had really good environment from a school perspective and there may be some people there. So that's why we've, a great reason why we've brought back this third question around this inspirational dinner party. Is there three people who you would like to invite to your dinner party who have inspired you in terms of relationship with physical activity?

Charlie: 12:25

You mentioned, influential people. It'd be so easy to pick people from more recent times who influence me now. But actually, there's a Our sports center manager, and he probably if he ever listened to this and there's no way it would get back to him, I'm sure, but if you ever listened to this and I got the title wrong, he may go. That's not what I did. It's much more than that, but he also happened to be the kind of lead of squash and got me into playing and fought because he knew I was distracted with doing everything left, right and center, had to, I know, pushed hard to get me playing and get me on court as often as possible. So a guy called Alan Deadman. Yeah. And, thinking back to someone who really did champion and push and encourage and forge the space and opportunities to play. I would say Alan was one of those people I could look back to and go, I would not have done as much of that and almost certainly not become a coach in the sport if it wasn't for his influence. And he knew him from when I was about 13 to about 18. And thinking more, more recently, and this might get onto topics we'll talk about someone is a name we all know and she probably hates me for me starting to parrot her words but I always do cite her, I promise is Preeti Shetty from Upshot and what, it's because I've met the clash of trying to work in the digital space within our industry and, the trials and turmoils of trying to integrate with a sector who's, that's trying to integrate itself with digital. And, What I resonate with the words I resonate with Preeti is when she talks about being, not being scared of the F word and not wanting to keep this clean, the F word being failure. and I think this, we're, we've always been at risk and continue to be at risk of being scared of getting it wrong. And I think that lays out whether it's, us as professionals within the sector trying to encourage and and get people to adopt physical activity for them and the benefits of or it's, us as individuals actually going out and doing it ourselves and not being scared to do it. It resonates across the board, but I think it's, I think about it in my day job all the time. The times I see people who I can see are hesitating on doing something, doing a piece of work, moving something forward with digital and that fear of failure is just sitting inside them and you're trying to eke it out and get rid of it inspire them to not be scared of it. So I think Preeti would have to be there. Last one. And again, it might cross over in terms of what I do today and why I do it. I've been lucky to take over the leadership of the organisation I'm leading now and the amazing team I lead on a day to day basis, but we've lost one person from that on the day job. And that's Jamie Fole who is one of the founders of the business I work for and has led it for over 10 years. Jamie still involved in our business, thankfully, and work with him really regularly. He's still extremely passionate about what we do as a founder and a non executive director of the business. But what I find so inspirational and, I now just live and breathe on a day to day basis representing him is, Our mission and our vision to break barriers and access and seeing someone who could so easily be labeled as just trying to build a commercial business in a in a sort of public sector environment and looking for a commercial opportunity. Actually, the motivation from him that I've inherited. to genuinely try and break down barriers in access using digital and doing what we do on a day to day basis is incredible. And it's an opportunity that I don't take on lightly. And, I now have to, I have to wear those shoes and, really have him in my, on my shoulder all of the time and thinking about what we should be doing and how we should be doing it.

Alex: 15:39

Three amazing people. I think we've got great that we've got a sports center managers and cause I've grew up around that atmosphere as well. And these will be people who. I always refer back to Greenhouse, who they've probably influenced hundreds, thousands of kids in the same way that they've influenced yourself, but it feels very special and you feel you make you feel that you're really engaged and that you're the most important person. They're going to help you throughout anything. Those are highlighting those types of people who the unsung heroes is a really great one.

Charlie: 16:12

Yeah, no, totally. That's exactly who Alan was to me back in those days, and there are others like him, he really sticks out as someone who really tried to nurture the best, get the best out of people, because I certainly didn't have any talent, but able to extract whatever was there.

Alex: 16:27

And then the other two, it really interests me because where did the passion, the love for this digital connection to physical activity come from? Because you've highlighted that you've got Jamie's a real mentor and motivated you. And you've said speak about Preeti Shetty in it, but the, where did where did this start for you? How did you figure out that this was going to be the path that you would take?

Charlie: 16:49

That is a really good question. And yeah, a hard one. I've always been a bit of an experimenter. I wouldn't say an entrepreneur. I don't see myself as that. If someone said you want to start your own business, and some people have asked me that, I'd go, no, what a terrible idea. That sounds very difficult. and a lot of hard work. And that's coming from a person who works, who's worked in startups almost his whole career and now in scale ups. So where with technology, I, I'm always in a classic academic term, you'd probably call it a first adopter. when it comes to technology, I have always been just interested to see how something works. And, I don't use the help article. I just want to use it and use it. Even if that's the slower way to go to see. What I can get out of it. and I've always been someone in the workplace again, maybe driven by working for small businesses and small organisations where you've had to wear several hats, I've made myself a content creator cause I can use the tools to be able to create content and have to do a lot of that in my, the first iterations of my job and just always picking up digital tools that would help me achieve my own goals. And I just, so I recognize the value digital and technology can play when used correctly or incorrectly, and you learn from that. And that's okay to going back to the fear of failure. So I just love what digital can do to make things easier, help deliver on an outcome. And genuinely deliver and it's a hard one, hard bridge because, sport and technology are two inherently very different industries. And so trying to, Connect those in what is a hugely, at least in the UK, and I have conversations with those outside the UK and the UK is recognized for how fragmented and complex are our industry's kind of paradigm and structure is, and so working out how you can solve that with data. Technology is extremely difficult'cause it's because it's so fragmented.

Alex: 18:35

I feel like this is segwaying perfectly into the second half of this because what we do first is we've we now know about Charlie that this is the main part of the podcast is we say let's get to know our sector CEOs and now before we transition into the second half is we ask you to Introduce yourself in the role of CEO. So if you could introduce your organisation that you work for and their focus and their link to physical activity, please.

Charlie: 19:00

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I'm CEO of of Play Finder. We're actually a two-sided organisation. Sitting on top of it we're a B Corp certified organisation, B Corp a logo that people would recognize that knowing, they recognize it as being businesses for social good. And that's a really important stamp of of approval for us. And we wear it with great pride to go, we're here. We're here to deliver positive outcomes for society. And we do that by providing a play finder marketplace which is our consumer search engine where, the public can go online and find them book at the moment, local sports facilities, a place to play and if they find the thing they're looking for, yeah, get that booked in. So it's a really easy and smooth, seamless user experience to, to get playing after that without that being a big trapesy journey through all the different ways you might've needed to to find them, find a book. And we also, the other side of what we do is provide a booking software to those who are running those facilities. In some cases sessions on the ground. And that's a big, there's a big world out there for those who operate sports facilities in this country, but we specialize in working with the education sector, schools and multi academy trusts. as well as some third party lettings operators who do an amazing job of providing access to schools to school sites after hours in the evenings, weekends and school holidays. We work with local authorities, councils who own and operate many great quality facilities, but need to make them easier to find and book. And discover and collect payments around, et cetera. And then we work with quite a few different types of community venue, whether it's a club, a charity, associations who run something on someone's behalf or their own and a few other weird and wonderful facilities that we love. Yeah, by providing them software that makes their day jobs easier we can also help them not only make their processes as efficient as possible these are often venues that are not the most income generative of venues and or it's not their priority to, to operate as a sports venue. A school is there to educate our young people. On lots of different, in lots of different ways. But after hours, they don't necessarily have the resources and bandwidth to have marketed their facilities, priced their facilities, take bookings for their facilities, handle the inquiries, collect the payment, that's it's a huge administrative overhead. So how do they do that without it being a burden, to them and still generating income without cost that means they've got a bit of extra for some school budget and to buy equipment and to do other things. The relationship we as an organisation have internally between our PlayFinder marketplace and our book tech software means we're both making it easy for people and doing the marketing bit for them as well and connecting our 1.2 million searches on PlayFinder. Every single year with what's currently over 400 venues across the country that we support. And what's I think intrinsically special is how we can connect that demand to play with people who can facilitate that demand. And that's what I'm up to as a day job with my team is making that as easy as possible.

Alex: 21:43

So now we know about yourself and you, and what you do as a organisation and your role, this now, this part now is around tackling inactivity. And if we were going to start this huge journey, if Charlie was going to start mapping out how he was going to tackle inactivity where does your mind first go to? Where would you start in the process?

Charlie: 22:06

I personally and it certainly a part of this obviously drives what I'm doing, day job. The second bit is more of the round is problem, I guess I see. I do think we have an intrinsic issue with connecting demand with supply in this industry. I, we, a lot of funding goes into providing opportunity. But that is done without ignorance too, but without the fact, without thinking, There is already quite a lot of supply here. The amount of opportunity there is in from anything from an after school club, to a youth club, to a local sports club to your leisure centre, to school provision direct, to college and higher education, to funded programmes, unfunded programmes. All of that is happening all of the time. And some of it stops and starts, but fundamentally, sports is always happening. There's always supply. If I speak to a lot of parents and, keeping your children engaged busy after school and in school holidays is a challenge. And I often, this is how I often speak to people about, why we do what we do. It's a, if midweek on half term, you need to find something to do, what are you going to do, where are you going to go? And actually the plethora of websites that they'll need to go searching through and Google to find stuff is challenging. It's a long user journey. And often, this might be grandma, it might be a guardian who's actually needing to complete this. And if that's hard, they'll probably eventually stop. It's the whole three clicks adage. They'll probably eventually stop. I'm driven on a professional side by believing we genuinely have a discovery issue in our industry. And I'm not saying we are solving that on our own at the moment. We're there to solve the whole problem. It's a complex problem. But if we can better understand how we handle demand, And how we how we provide a user journey for that demand to find what they're looking for. I think we would solve a lot of our challenges not necessarily convert every inactive person to an active person. That's a complex problem but certainly help convert the ones who come looking to find the thing that they that might be right for them. Or might be advised to them or recommended through them from a from a health pathway or a social prescribing pathway, et cetera. It's just so many applications for good discovery. Whoever might be doing the search. And the second, which is maybe the more personal one is I, and I've talked a lot about, I've talked a lot about this, the people I've worked with through my time in the industry that I think there's a a major challenge we have about the drop off a cliff because of a life event. I moved out of the city two years ago and I've moved to a much more rural location on the edge of a village in Hampshire. And as a result, my play, my tennis has almost stopped completely. And life events, whether it's a child, a job change, a job, a location change can have a really major impact on our relationship with activity. Whether I often refer back to access it's very hard to discover. And I myself went on it. on a journey to try and discover how I might play tennis here. And I found it difficult. I just did. And that's frustrating when I work in the industry of discovery. That for me is a big one. And there are only parts of the problem, as I say, but they're the two, and I think there is a connection there that it still becomes a discovery issue at a life event that you need help to sustain it. It can't, it's not just going to happen through your own intrinsic motivation.

Alex: 25:07

That's exactly what I was going to say, is that access link is there throughout. I think there's a few things to dig into there, because you've spoken around digital and life event, and you've said a few times that this is your personal opinion and things that are quite specific to you, but that's the point of this. The point is What's your personal opinions and what would you focus on if you could have this magic wand or budget to do there's kind of two pieces there. They don't feel separate, but I'm trying to, what I try to do is narrow the person down into focusing on if they were going to advocate for something or work towards a campaign for something, what one thing would they choose to do? Without saying, I would do, I would work with, I'm definitely working on Playfinder because that's what, that's my life mission. How would you, what would you prioritize here in terms of if you were going to take the first steps? What piece here, because there's a life event that you were leaning into the fact that it's hard for people to find activity and access activity and the lack of support there. But then you've also said around this user journey supply and demand piece that there would be two very separate piece of work, or do you see them overlapping?

Charlie: 26:08

I do see them overlapping at the very top, and this I I understand myself the simplicity by what I'm going to say here but it's something I must repeat to myself often enough to not think that there's a, a problem, an issue to solve, and I love solving issues, I'm a problem solver you, my team hate me for talking, seeing an issue as a positive thing, because if we solve it, it'll unblock us and the issue I see and have seen for the last 10, 15 years in the early stages of my career are the intersection of the public and private sectors in our industry not finding a way to integrate that blocks progress. And we are all working towards the same end goal, but often a business. And they do get seen as soon as they get seen as commercial entities who, are labeled as someone there to make money from the exercise are not to be worked with because of that risk. And what I see often happening, especially in digital, to link it back to my work, but not necessarily the organisation I work for people try and recreate and prototype the solutions and the technology we have. And they're doing it in a very local level. And we'll only have a limited impact in imitating, not necessarily copying what we do. I'm not saying that, but they don't know how to work with us and they have. I don't think we've solved that either. I think it's both sides of the coin to be able to collaborate. On the middle ground on how both can achieve the end goal and have something truly sustainable. And, I see it as a commercial operator of a business that the commercial piece should be seen as a positive thing because it will be more sustainable in the long run. If it's generating its own funds to sustain services it's providing rather than it being funded from the channel that the local project might be delivering. It's not to say your work needs to be national and not local. I think this could still be highly targeted. But it's just working with the specialists who are doing this work already and not being scared of what they're trying to achieve. Cause often they're people I'd like to think like me, extremely passionate about getting people moving. And it's finding that synergy.

Alex: 28:05

So I know that's really interesting that I think the commercial can equal sustainability is something which I just completely agree as a project manager in looking after awards in my day job. There's only a small number of things on the list that are consistent throughout. It's award process, achieve outcomes, try to sustain that project. And that last bit is. If we'd figured that out Spot England may not exist, right? Because if all the projects that we had funded previously had actually sustained, we'd be in a much better place. That's the hard part, so I completely agree. And that's why you can see them starting to pilot work with, at the moment, it's small scale, entrepreneurs type, or different types of organisations and structures. I think the part for me that you're saying, and I'm interested in your thoughts on is, the role of active partnerships and these local delivery pilots. And so they're creating, trying to create these local networks of activity. And exactly like you're explaining, they're create, they're trying to present the opportunities available in those areas for people in different places. You've tried to do this work previously, but how do you feel like an organisation like yourselves or what you're suggesting can support the work that's happening in the public sector.

Charlie: 29:24

Yeah I'll come back to answering that with the point I can make actually, which is, what's a tangible example of how the commercial sector can drive sustainability? Because you phrased yourself and I really liked it. I can, there's an amazing programme that's gone on for the last three years called Opening Schools Facilities, which I'm sure, sure, I don't think there'll be a professional in our industry who doesn't know, sits very close to our hearts as an organisation of what impact it could have has had in many cases. Might have been missed. And I don't mind saying that because, I'm not scared of the fear of talking about, failure if it hasn't had all of the impact it could have done. But if I give an indicator, an example of where we work with a single school where they might be opening up their, opening their school facility, already doing it or to an extent, dipping their toe in it after school weekends and school holidays, but they need help with it. We will work with those schools on a day to day basis, provide them our software, provide them our marketing expertise with the demand we've got from Playfinder to book places and spaces they have. I've got examples where, you know, not only are they, those schools making more money. As a result of working with us our services actually cost them on an annual basis but that they are making additional money in the realms of the grant they're receiving for an annual project to run the Opening Schools Facilities programme. So what that indicates is, if they can come and work with an organisation like us, where we can help them run their facilities and manage their bookings really effectively. And we can help them with the ongoing marketing piece so that they're not having to and generate demand, process those bookings, process those payments, take all of that overhead away. We can, make that same pot of money, that grant value, year on year, every year, from the point that we've done that. So that pure commercial outcome, that means they could use that money to run the same project they would have done, deliver that activity programme they're thinking of, buy those bikes that they need to run that cycling programme. and that's what I find most frustrating, because actually what we're not talking about is the schools that haven't done that in the last three years, but they have an amazing estate of facilities where they could have done or they could be doing it better than they currently are on. So we and many others in our industry, a specialist in that space, and we could offer an incredible amount of value to educators in helping them do it. But how we bridge that where the problem is at the moment. And I'd love to, I'd love to talk to more people about how we solve that.

Alex: 31:43

So is that where something that you yourself is passionate about? Is that, is it that the education space or is it more how digital and the public sector and the private sector needs to work better with public sector? And say, for example, how could an organisation like Sport England work better with private sectors?

Charlie: 32:04

Who's responsible for it is the root, is definitely one of the questions that I think we haven't answered yet. Sport England as an example have a digital innovation team or have done it's taken different forms over the, certainly last 10 or 15 years. And there's a question there which I can't answer. I'd, I, again, I'd love to help. I'd love to try and work out whether, the right place in the room could answer it as well. If that is Sport England's a responsibility or accountability, and if it's not who is, it could be a mix. It could be a mix of partners. there, there could be a piece, there's no, as far as I'm concerned, because I'm not as a CEO pulled into these spaces, there's no working group trying to work that out at the moment. There's no system partner who can either help bridge that public private sector relationship or, where no top of mind, I'm happy to be told if I was wrong, but no system partner is a digital business. So there's a lack of leadership there, that's coming not from us. We're just one player in the space, but a lack of leadership in our sector about how we drive the digital agenda forward. I think it was maybe better, certainly. COVID impact, I'm just referencing our timeline, but pre COVID and 10 years ago, it felt like there was more of a digital strategy. I don't sense that there is that digital strategy or connection at the moment. But, I certainly or believe I recognize that the system partner framework could provide the framework or environment to types oforganisationion in who could help, connect other partners, achieve some of these outcomes. I think there could be conflicts in how that could happen if they are commercial businesses, but, to the wrong person, whether that's true or not. And then, going back to your question about how, system partners, active partnerships, how do we work together? I think there's hopefully you've heard from what I'm saying. I think there's specialism in how we can both connect demand and supply. And, sometimes it might be more weighted on one side or the other. There's actually quite a few organisations who who have got supply. There's a lot of, there's a lot of, there's digital systems in the market. There's a lot of what we would call inventory availability of activities and facilities that are on digital. What no one has a huge hand on at the moment is how to channel people, the user journey, the user experience to provide that access, and that's definitely a role that we believe Playfinder can have in the future and I'm starting to see that bubbling a little bit more at the moment and people recognizing the role Playfinder could have, and I sometimes describe it as, is Playfinder a part of our part of our national infrastructure that something like that is just needed. And now the danger there is you go back to a Spogo mentality which I wasn't around. I wasn't in the sector when the investments into Spogo happened. But I think what might have happened is something didn't go quite right with how we approach that project. And rather than deal with that, wash that up, really understand why where it went wrong, we've actually been fearful of talking about the failure of it. And now people are quite scared to work with it, work on a similar line, but actually that means our discovery side is just not moving forward very quickly or easily. So I think we could be working more closely, even if locally with active partnerships to help drive better outcomes on helping people find and book or do at least find an access. If it's, it doesn't always have to be booking but find an access to the thing they want to get to. That experience be much shorter. I've got some amazing examples where that's been really successful on a really local level.

Alex: 35:17

I'm really interested there in the piece around of no system partners to bridging that private and public piece. I think there's that is correct. And there's themes throughout the system partner investment where investment is going into digital. But again, correct, there isn't, I wouldn't say there is one digital system partner, I may be corrected. But for example, the investment into CIMSPA and the digital marketing hub. There's a lot of projects where we're trying to work with organisations to improve infrastructure like UK coaching. So we're investing in them so they can develop their learner platform so that there's, so that people, so coaches have a better experience. So there are some bits, but as you say, yeah, there's not one. strategy across the sector which it's happening at the moment. And I think that's conscious within Sports England as well, but not something that we're, we have those partners working on in terms of what we're going to do with the sector. So yeah, that is a more than a fair challenge.

Charlie: 36:19

It's just a little bit fragmented at the moment. And that's okay. It doesn't matter. You get there sometimes. But yeah, there are some great projects going on at a setting where we seem to criticize any of those. And even some of the ones that. are, failing fast, arguably, there's lessons we can learn from that, or we can turn them around. And if it's a startup or scale up, you've got a bit of a turnaround plan. That's okay as well. I think we need to join those things up a bit better. And I'm not sure if anyone is actually joining them up at the moment. And that's okay. I'll keep saying that, but when are we going to, when are we going to realize we're not doing that? Joining them up and when are we going to start doing it? And who's, who can help do it?

Alex: 36:51

I think that's a fantastic place to end on that statement. So thank you very much for joining me today, Charlie.

Charlie: 36:56

No pleasure. It's been really good to chat. We went deep.

Alex: 37:00

Absolutely love to. And one thing, he doesn't know I'm going to say this, but right. Right at the end, when I, when this started out. I was, it was previously called Humans if HIIT because I was helping people doing workouts during lockdown. And it escalated into people sharing written stories. And I started putting them on a webpage and have a couple of friends were helping out with that. And then I was getting stories from people from all over the world, which was crazy. And then people were accessing the website quite a bit to read the stories. And I was like, Oh, actually I want to try and direct them towards activity. So the company Charlie was working for at the time they sorted out so that I could access their resource for free. So then people could find an activity on the old Humans of HIIT website after they've read a story. So do you like this sport? Find that activity in your area. So for throughout lockdown, they offer that for free. So just wanted to say, thank you. I really appreciate you doing that.

Charlie: 37:50

No pleasure. It's an example, hopefully, of what we can be doing more to collaborate. All I wanted to do there was stretch an arm out and say we're here to collaborate because we're trying to do this. get to the right outcome. And it's a fantastic example of trying to generate demand and then lead them to the thing that they're searching for. The blog was generating the demand and the search was there to then get them active. And so that's what we're doing at Playfinder. So I absolutely love revisiting that example. And it's a pleasure to do it and a pleasure to have had this conversation.

Alex: 38:16

Thanks again, Charlie.