Mission Ctrl
In this episode, we talk to Ben Ford, a former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy helping companies drive efficiencies.
We discuss the challenges of scaling a tech start-up, we dive deep into how to grow brand awareness, tailor your messaging, and pivot through uncertainty using vital skills gained during military service.
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00:00:01 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Hi, I'm Chris, founder, senior brand designer and growth marketing strategist at Haus of Hiatus brand Growth Studio, who wants to document innovative and disruptive ideas from successful small to medium sized enterprises. Tell startups to get strong market position as quickly as possible. In this episode, we talked to Ben Ford from the Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Control.
00:00:21 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
The full service data and systems transformation consultancy helping companies, Dr Efficiencies we discussed the challenges of scaling a tech startup. We go deep into how to grow brand awareness and pivot for uncertainty using vital skills during military service.
00:00:50 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Great stuff mate.
00:00:51 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Ben, it's a. It's really good to chat to you. Thank you so much for joining me on the podcast. How are you doing in in wintry UK?
00:00:57 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
At the moment.
00:00:58 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Well, it's probably not quite as wintry as where you are, but it's it's pretty icy outside, but yeah, great. Great to be here.
00:01:05 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Yeah, it's it's very, very cold here. Actually. It's it's nice, proper winter finally.
00:01:09 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Yeah, yeah, you have. You got any snow? I guess that's always a question that people ask in winter, isn't it?
00:01:14 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
No, we had we had some snow a few days after Christmas, so we literally just missed it. But at the moment it's just really icy and yeah, bit dry. So it's like like kind of.
00:01:20 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Oh.
00:01:22 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Crisp.
00:01:23 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Crisp, dry winter's day. It's nice.
00:01:25 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Like, yeah, all the obviously with the ISIS, all the downsides of winter isn't it? But like none of the benefits of it's.
00:01:31 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
You know, and I guess, like kids don't get a snow day, do they? And like, get a chance to get to school? Nice. Well, mate, let me let me ask kind of a bit more about Mission Control anyway, because I realise it's something we've spoken about the last few months.
00:01:36 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
No, they just have to go to.
00:01:37 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
School with their sore throats and.
00:01:51 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
From from the ostensibly, it looks like a really cool business. I love like the space age and branding of it and and positioning of it. So I just wanted to kind of get a bit more understanding about what, what what it is.
00:02:03 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
That does.
00:02:04 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Yeah, sure. So I mean, I I taught myself to to code back when I was in the car. I had a lot of dead time on.
00:02:10 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
On board HMS.
00:02:11 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Ocean on the way for Iraq in in 2003 and I guess Mission Control has been.
00:02:12 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Yeah.
00:02:17 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
The the sort of end of that end of that journey in a way.
00:02:21 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
So I yeah, I went into into technology, became a programmer, ended up doing loads of stuff in finance and startups.
00:02:30 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
And I don't know. I guess the penny dropped probably about 10 years ago, that first of all, the military had some really, really useful stuff that I kind of discounted and and also that most of the operations in the places that I was working at were complete disaster and actually very fixable with, you know, appropriate technology and automation. So I started Mission Control a couple of years ago.
00:02:37
Yeah, yeah.
00:02:53 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
And you know, and then a year ago, roughly everything changed when.
00:02:58 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
AI came out, so now I've got this kind of.
00:03:02 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Business that can very quickly wrangle and automate companies, data and processes and make them loads more efficient. So yeah, it kind of is a bit that futuristic. I really need to revisit the kind of messaging of the brand.
00:03:15 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
The the futuristic thing is definitely app because we are definitely living in the future with AI at the moment.
00:03:20 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Yeah. No, I completely agree. I I I saw it. Obviously when we started speaking, I saw the the website and I was like, I like the I like the positioning of it cause it's it's very easy to go, like really kind of bland with with business that deal with obviously data and optimization and stuff. But I like the way you've taken more of like a more of like a like a millennial approach to it. It looks like something like cool that you actually go on the website.
00:03:43 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
And just have a I mean I I went went through the pages and I was.
00:03:47 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
You know, curious just to see what learn more about it, which I think is a good marketing tactic because it makes people want to go in and kind of understand and and learn a bit more about the business. So yeah, I think it's, you know positioning.
00:03:58 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Wise.
00:03:58 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
It's a win, a huge win.
00:04:01 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Yeah. It's. It's ironic, isn't it, that you know that you can have the good brand, but what I've really not done a very good job of is content creation. And you know, I, I chat a lot of, uh, a lot of stuff on LinkedIn, but I don't kind of.
00:04:16 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Right.
00:04:17 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
You know good.
00:04:18 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Relevant content on my website and there's no reason for that really, because I've got a proper content management system that.
00:04:24 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Sits behind it.
00:04:25 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
It's just, I don't know. I guess I'd rather write code than talk about.
00:04:30 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
No, but I think I think like being being fair to us kind of like you know, both veterans, I think you know we we've we've followed through with that like don't use social media narrative all the way through the military. You know my military career, it was always like don't tell me where you are, don't put anything on social media. You know there's always that kind of like underlying fear that you're going to.
00:04:49 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
You know you're.
00:04:50 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Like, let the let the cat out of the bag as such and I think that definitely carried on afterwards because it was something I had to like, actually physically entangle and say well, I can't. I can't really run a business without putting myself out there, but then I'm holding myself back by not wanting to put myself out there. So I don't like driving with the.
00:05:06 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Yeah, you know what?
00:05:07 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Handbrake on, isn't it in some ways.
00:05:08 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
It is totally is and actually that's really interesting cause I back in the summer I did a a series of interviews with veteran founders.
00:05:16 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
And there were several really interesting themes, one of which was a general kind of allergic Ness to being a ******** online.
00:05:26 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Yeah, yeah.
00:05:26 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Which is? I mean, you know marketing and and.
00:05:30 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Branding and everything is not about that, but this kind of.
00:05:34 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
You know, the militaries focus on humility and you know, not not being the big man and and being.
00:05:41 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
You know the quiet professional? Yeah, it definitely. It has its place. Like I think when I when I go in and talk to clients having that calm kind of yeah no problem it will get handled kind of attitude is great but.
00:05:55 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
When it comes to saying how cool you are and how you're different and how you know, I can really help you it it just it. It's still not something that I do naturally and I think that that is quite common with lots of veteran entrepreneurs that I've spoken to.
00:06:07 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Yeah, maturity. I mean, my my kind of like research of the last few years, like looking at neuroscience, looking at and understanding the parallels with marketing as well is that.
00:06:18 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
There's there's there's a direct correlation between how much people see your brand and and actually engage with it versus kind of what it results in. The sales at the other end, but then also.
00:06:27 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Kind of paradoxically, the insects becoming a louder place that you know, there's there's we're 5 million users, so 5 billion users on social media these days. Of course, all social media platforms and websites have exceeded the 2 billion barrier, as in the there's 2 billion websites, some, you know, out there and I'm like, and that's on the obviously the, the, the known Internet, which absolutely blows my mind.
00:06:47 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
I think well.
00:06:49 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
You know, we're we're there wrestling with our SEO. We're kind of see kind of like content marketing putting ourselves out there and trying to do stuff. And on one hand it's like.
00:06:56 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Well.
00:06:57 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Should we even bother? Because there's there's, you know, we're. Are we gonna get lost in the noise of everyone else? You know, how do we find a way of standing out? So it's like talking to people like you and and other veterans. It's useful to kind of get my.
00:07:10 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Get my the two sides of this kind of like closer together, if you will.
00:07:17 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Yeah, I mean, I I've never. I've never done anything in that world of, you know, attraction based marketing where you end up you know where you build a website that has like a big following and gets those clicks. So that SEO side of things. You know I I know enough to know that I don't.
00:07:32 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Know anything?
00:07:34 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
And I guess you know, one of the benefits of of being in in.
00:07:37 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Being a veteran and being in veteran networks is that when you are offering.
00:07:43 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Particular services. You've immediately got that kind of connection and that rapport with people, and I think that's really important and that's why, you know, one of the reasons why.
00:07:47 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Yeah.
00:07:54 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Well, well, one one reason why I've refocused Mission Control on veteran owned businesses. But the other reason is all of the stuff we learn about communication and writing a good brief and you know just.
00:08:06 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
How to express what you want is so important when it comes to building operations and technology.
00:08:14 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
And I've found that to be.
00:08:16 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
That really useful kind of shared skill.
00:08:19 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
To have when you're talking to potential.
00:08:22 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Customers who are veterans. So yeah, 2 two reasons why veterans.
00:08:27 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Do business well with other veterans.
00:08:29 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Yeah. Yeah. And I guess you're, you're probably like me and that you you work with your B2B company and you're you're often talking to CEO's, CEO's and like, C-Suite decision makers who don't really have the full, you know, hour to talk through, you know, a concept. It's like, wait, give me the headline.
00:08:47 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Points and now cut it.
00:08:48 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
In half, you know it's like.
00:08:51 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Like you know how much?
00:08:52 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Does it cost and what what what?
00:08:53 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
We can get.
00:08:53 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Out of it, the two two main questions.
00:08:57 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Yeah, absolutely. And and also you know with with.
00:09:01 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
You know, one of the things that you have to learn to do when you build technology.
00:09:05 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Or or when you do anything that you don't have the native skill in is learn to delegate. You learn to trust, and obviously that's something that.
00:09:10
Yeah.
00:09:11 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Yeah.
00:09:14 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
It when I say learn to, I mean it. You know, it's a skill that you have to learn and.
00:09:17 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
And it's.
00:09:18 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
A skill that is not particularly common, you know, unless you've gone and done some leadership training or something in City Street.
00:09:26 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
The majority of.
00:09:28 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
People in City Street are winging it and you know anyone who served anytime in the military has had quite an extensive they might not realise it, but they've had a quite extensive kind of training in leadership, communication and all of that good stuff. So it it actually translates really well to business.
00:09:44 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Yeah, 100%. I mean that that's one of the things kind of what you said. There is one of the things that attracted me to the Marines. So I kind of spent the first half of my career and non commissioned in the in the in the army.
00:09:52 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
The and and failed my first entrance test for the Marines and then had realised I had to wait another year before having another go at it. In the meantime, the armour is saying well, you know you can come and Commission into Sandhurst if you want and I was like, no, no, I resonate most with.
00:10:05 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
The Marines and so.
00:10:06 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
I'm gonna wait another year. You know. You know all that, all that grief that will give you, you know, in the backs and you know the.
00:10:13 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Afterwards, cause I was because I was like, well, I can see the power of being a Marines officer because you you lead specialists as and you leave people who know more about things that you should know than obviously you do and. And one of my one of my favourites.
00:10:26 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Quantifiable data points on this was saying in my first book command in 40 Commando, I think five of my Marines had stronger degrees. You know my, my my pithy HND, you know was kind of eclipsed by five of my Marines. I was like right, I need to work my **** off hard here to prove, you know, to prove that I'm, you know, competent at this stuff and so.
00:10:47 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
You do like you say you do learn to delegate and then also but also take reverse feedback when it comes to you as well and and learn how to listen without, you know, cutting people off, which is is something I think makes makes Marines and marine officers actually quite a unique species because we learn that ability.
00:11:03 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Of of you know, get getting the things done that we want done, but then also learning to you know when to shut up and listen to you know people who know more about something than I do.
00:11:14 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Yeah, I think I think that's something that.
00:11:17 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Certainly when I. So I spent the 1st.
00:11:19 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
10 years.
00:11:19 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Out of the call, you know pretty much thinking now that I was a programmer that you know the call was something I did that was fun in my 20s and, you know, gets my CV up the pile a little bit out of interest sake, but really had no relevance.
00:11:32 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
And it wasn't until I started digging into things like agile and you know, a lot of these kind of business.
00:11:40 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
I don't know what do we call them? Frameworks, methodologies. You know, it took me quite a while to realise that actually many of them, if not most of them are military derived. Yeah, right. They they are derived from the way the military manages.
00:11:43 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Yeah, yeah.
00:11:51 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Yeah.
00:11:55 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Chaos and uncertainty.
00:11:58 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Repackaged.
00:12:00 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
You know, watered down.
00:12:02 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
And then you know, framework defied until they're no use anymore.
00:12:08 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
And.
00:12:08 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
What you get is you get all of the kind of the echoes of, you know, mission command and all the good things that work to make the military work. But the people that are implementing it don't have that, you know, very long, very arduous onboarding process that the military calls basic training through embed all the principles. So it's kind of like.
00:12:30 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Yeah, it's a bit anaemic, but it's still really, really.
00:12:32 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Important.
00:12:33 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Yeah, no, 100% agree. Well, so it it does lead me on to come out the the next question I wanted to ask and do you know when it's OK if you don't like how would customers and people find your company as and how do they how do they come across you? I mean I've I've seen the website and you've done some cool work with Bear Grylls amongst other people and some you know some fairly punchy clients here. Do you do people find you?
00:12:53 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Like through the Internet, through word of mouth, by meeting you and, you know, kind of events and stuff. What's?
00:12:59 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
The perfect.
00:12:59 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Yeah. So, I mean, it's definitely on my list to scale the kind of to scale and systemize how that happens at the moment, it's it's probably mostly word of mouth and just being, you know in the communities and you know posting stuff on LinkedIn pretty much.
00:13:17 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
I I mean the reason we started talking is because I don't think that the website does a great job, certainly doesn't do a great job of expressing what I'm doing.
00:13:24 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Now.
00:13:25
Yeah.
00:13:27 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
So yeah, it's definitely.
00:13:30 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Probably you know person to person, I mean or as close as it gets. In today's world, where, where, where, person to person is where you're talking to.
00:13:36 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Somebody.
00:13:36 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
On the screen.
00:13:38 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
But yeah, so it's probably the network more than anything I would.
00:13:41 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Say fascinating it, and the power of the military network actually is something that's come up a few times in the in the podcast so far, and I think Duncan.
00:13:41
Yeah.
00:13:50 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Mentioned it from frontier risks and who else? Ben mentioned it from Redeployable as well and that they were saying they said actually the the way that you can you know if you're bootstrapping a business at the start of it the.
00:14:00 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Way.
00:14:01 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
You don't grow by, you know, kind of putting stuff out on social media straight away. You get out there and and energise your network and kind of get and, you know, get and talk to people and and you know.
00:14:12 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Get get known. You know, kind of like get put yourself out there, which I know is is really difficult for things if you if you've got like a a service or a product that's a bit intangible then that's obviously a lot harder than usual. And so that can take a lot.
00:14:25 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Longer than if you're selling, say, I don't know. Coffee or apparel, you know, like T-shirts and stuff.
00:14:32 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
I guess so.
00:14:33 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Yeah, yeah, that, that, that spot on that.
00:14:35 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
The same.
00:14:36 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Yes.
00:14:36 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Spot on. Yeah, it's it's so you.
00:14:38 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Know.
00:14:39 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
What I what I do at Mission Control is kind of like a.
00:14:43 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Consolidation of 15 years of experience in tech, so you always have to bear in mind that the people that you're explaining it to won't.
00:14:50 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Have.
00:14:51 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Yeah.
00:14:52 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
The understanding I you know, I could go and sit.
00:14:54 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
With.
00:14:54 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Another techie, and they they will understand what I'm talking about in 5 minutes.
00:14:58 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
And then we probably, you know, go off down a rabbit hole of how long?
00:15:01 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Of it is.
00:15:04 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
But as you said earlier, you know business owners want to know.
00:15:08 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
I mean, yes, I think as a as a group, veterans are probably slightly more open and kind of UM.
00:15:17 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Slightly more focused on.
00:15:19 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
What you might expect, what's the word looking? Looking for opportunities like they're less focused?
00:15:25 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Immediate benefit and perhaps more open to or well, what if we combined this and this in a bit more creative perhaps than as as a group? I mean obviously that's a massive generalisation, but ultimately, you know, businesses hire people to to do things that they think they need and they hire.
00:15:31
Yeah.
00:15:43 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Business partnerships to do things that they think they need.
00:15:46 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
And when you do something that.
00:15:48 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
People don't necessarily know that they need or they don't, or they think they need something else.
00:15:53 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
That's a yeah. Difficult.
00:15:55 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Job to.
00:15:56 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Difficult.
00:15:58 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Unpick it and explain it in their language.
00:16:00 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Yeah, and and and I guess probably that's kind of where the benefit of like seeing people like person to person, like actually at events and I guess I think about DSI have come up a few times, you know where you can actually get, you know people can see your product or get hands on and see like the interface and see the way that you kind of do things actually see the value rather than communicating it by.
00:16:20 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Like like like words or or voice or something like that. They can kind of combine it with the the system one and system 2.
00:16:27 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Sense of understanding, I guess. So fascinating.
00:16:30 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Yeah. And that's I think that's even more difficult when you're.
00:16:32 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
And.
00:16:33 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
When you're actually a service business, right? A service.
00:16:37 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
You know, especially Mission Control actually and is, you know, we we don't really have a product we can buy lots of open source products in something that our client then owns and builds as a capability internally. Now that's not a very common.
00:16:46
Yeah.
00:16:54 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Thing right, most technologies are consumed as products because most technologies are.
00:16:58
Yes.
00:17:00 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Are funded by venture capital. Venture capital wants to spend a load of money upfront to develop something that you then get kind of rental income from high margins etcetera. So most people when you enter into a conversation about technology, they expect to be.
00:17:12
Yeah.
00:17:17 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Sold a product.
00:17:18 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
And you know, I think if anything we've got too many products, you know, go into an average business now and.
00:17:25 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
You know what might have been five or six technical products 10 years ago, like a, you know, an ERP or and A and a CRM and maybe a finance system.
00:17:33 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Well, now you've.
00:17:33 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Got you know, 50 or 100 different little little products that each do individual jobs. So the last thing I want to do is.
00:17:35 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Yeah.
00:17:42 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Whack another product in there like we we are a service that knits those products together and it's quite difficult to explain that. You know, I can explain it like this when we have when we.
00:17:53
Yeah.
00:17:53 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Have a conversation.
00:17:54 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
But you know to to get over the.
00:18:00 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
What's the word? I guess the heuristic that people will have when they're looking at this is a technology thing.
00:18:05 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
And make them realise, no, actually it's a service thing and the technology is a capability that you end up owning. It's completely sort of, it's more like hiring a hiring a team of developers than.
00:18:10 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Yeah.
00:18:18 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Then buying your product.
00:18:20 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Yeah, it's interesting actually because that's you. We've kind of kind of linked it to actually there's a well known UX law about this sort of stuff in that when you're building website.
00:18:28 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
You you tried to reduce the amount of variables as in the amount of decisions that something has to make, because you'll overload them and and kind.
00:18:35
Of.
00:18:36 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Bring them out, obviously. What's referred to as analysis paralysis. So they reckon that the the human mind can hold 7-7 different ones, although that can be scaled back to five if the complexity is big enough between each one of those.
00:18:48 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Those variables and that's kind of what you're saying there is that if you've got, if you've got 100 different software products, which is say for accounting and you're like, I can't make a decision with this because the, the, the differences between them are so minuscule that I can't figure out what is the best one to start with. So I'm not gonna make the decision. I'm gonna kick it down the road.
00:19:07 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
You know, I'm doing it by paper or, you know, accountants, you know, they're they're in the background, whereas kind of I see what you're saying is that you you can optimise people's ways of working and actually bring about, like, cost saving by doing things a lot.
00:19:22 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
And you know a lot, a lot more, a lot better, a lot more streamlined and and just saving kind of, man. But what I'd say, human, human power, probably morale focus and actually shift onto things where it need does need, you know, which is probably pivoting in this in this new era of AI as we're experiencing.
00:19:42 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
I 100% I mean AI is I. I've been doing a.
00:19:45 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Lot of.
00:19:47 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Research on AI and I, you know, I'm really resisting again going back to this earlier point, I'm I'm resisting talking about.
00:19:52 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
It on.
00:19:54 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
LinkedIn because I think I'm not enough of an expert at it. But you know, in comparison to probably a lot of people, I am fairly knowledgeable about this thing. So.
00:20:03 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
AI is going to be an an enormous impact, right? It's a massive opportunity for.
00:20:11 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Businesses who want to automate and streamline processes, but again, we've got this kind of category thing that most people have seen AI in the context of.
00:20:22 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
ChatGPT.
00:20:23
MHM.
00:20:24 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
ChatGPT is an absolutely incredible tool.
00:20:27 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
But it's a tool for an individual to have a back and forth kind of text conversation with.
00:20:32 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Yeah.
00:20:33 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
With a, you know a piece of technology that you hire.
00:20:37 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
As a product.
00:20:39 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
The real power of AI is going to come when that's all integrated into the processes that you have and.
00:20:45 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Yeah.
00:20:46 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
So what? So what we're looking at in Mission Control is we've already got, you know, the the biggest impediment to that for most businesses is that their data is scattered all over the place.
00:20:55 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
You know, AI is really, really good at doing something within narrow constraints. Another shout out to something that means that veterans are probably more suited to operating this environment cause.
00:20:59 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Yeah.
00:21:06 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
One of the things that the audit process teaches you is how to describe what you want within the constraints of within which you're going to operate in.
00:21:14 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Yeah, yeah.
00:21:15 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
So so AI as applied to operations.
00:21:20 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Mission Control is actually in a great place because what we what we do is we already connect and digitise.
00:21:26 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
The operations from all those different systems.
00:21:29 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
So I haven't been talking about it much on online yet, but I I'm gearing up for it because.
00:21:36 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Yeah, the the.
00:21:38 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
What you do when you when you grab.
00:21:41 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Some of these agent based frameworks that are coming out now and you put them with your operational data is you just get an enormous capacity uplift from the people.
00:21:48
Yeah.
00:21:50 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
You know, they get to stop doing all of the rope boring nonsense that that makes them want to leave. They get to do the human stuff, which is the creative kind of human to human conversation piece. And, you know, pretty soon I think there's going to be.
00:21:58 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Yeah.
00:22:04 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
You know, companies that are 510 X more effective because they've worked out how to like the type One Type 2, thinking all of the type one stuff. The the straightforward.
00:22:17 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
UM.
00:22:19 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Easy to describe.
00:22:21 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Stuff that people are doing at the moment will be done by AI within, within, within a few months, I should think.
00:22:23
Aye.
00:22:26 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Yeah, I agree, because the things I'm reading at the moment or the the, the, the mood music that I'm hearing is saying that kind of leaner, more agile business is the.
00:22:36 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Better with better, more capable to withstand that. Obviously the changes of what we're seeing with AI and the new iterations of it than a big multinational prime company which has got a huge workforce and has a huge expenditure in its operational costs every kind of month in the month out. And so therefore it can't, it can't pivot to change its core offering.
00:22:57 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
You know, every time something like Chachi pita is.
00:23:00 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Is or. There's a new variation of it, or it it it kind of widens its scope to to something else, like illustration, as we've seen in the past. You know, websites, the UX, all that. All that sort of stuff is slowly getting subsumed within, you know, kind of the, the, the changing offerings by the AI it's it's, it's.
00:23:20 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
I mean, for me, from my perspective, it's kind of it's exciting at one point and terrifying at the same time because.
00:23:25 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
It's, you know.
00:23:25 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
It's like like, wow, I feel like I'm living in the future, but at the same time, I got this giant big hairy beast called AI. You know, they're like, chasing, chasing me to to be like, right, keep innovating, Chris, keep trying something new. Keep.
00:23:37 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
You figuring this out?
00:23:39 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
I mean, that's exactly it. And and you know, that's another another point at which veterans have an advantage.
00:23:47 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
You know, be the first to understand the 1st to adapt and respond the 1st to overcome.
00:23:50 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Understand. Yeah.
00:23:51 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
That is a business motto as much as it is the core motto, right? It's, you know, putting yourself in in the right position to take advantage of changes in the environment is as relevant as it is in business as it is as it would be if you.
00:23:54
OK.
00:24:07 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Were on patrol in.
00:24:08 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Afghanistan and AI is.
00:24:08
Yeah.
00:24:12 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
You know, they'll be the people that do that and the companies that do that and then they'll be the rest.
00:24:16 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
And I want to be.
00:24:17 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
In the first bucket 100%.
00:24:20 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Completely agree. Like it's you don't want to be kind of like, overtaken by something which is, you know, makes you, makes you completely irrelevant, does it? So it does get me on to my next question. So I'm kind of interested to know if if you see the business, if you see Mission Control launching any new products or services based on kind of the market.
00:24:39 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Change you've seen with party, with AI, or anything you found that's actually this is something we could really, really look at going into.
00:24:45 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Yes, definitely. So one of one of the things I would, there's two. There's two things I'd like to like to get to in Mission Control. One of them is.
00:24:53 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Medium term, the other one's kind of longer term, so the medium term 1 is.
00:24:58 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
I would love to be able to offer.
00:25:01 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Veterans who want to start a business, a kind of, you know, operations.
00:25:04 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
In a box.
00:25:06 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Which is.
00:25:07 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
You know a choice of CRM, a choice of website hosting, all of the all of the OPS stuff that we already do. You know, with all of the kind of requisite automations already available. And and I think you know there's there's obviously parts of any business that are unique and there's parts of the business which are.
00:25:21 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Nice.
00:25:28 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Fairly similar. So it's like, you know, the orders process is the same.
00:25:32 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
No matter where you're operating, but you're talking about different stuff. Mm-hmm. So, you know, I'd like to get it to the point where it is more of a product than a service, which is, you know, we've built a bunch of stuff that's useful. And you can use it as it is. And then there's a smaller amount of service. Therefore, we can offer it cheaper for the customization. So that's one thing.
00:25:52
Yeah, yeah.
00:25:53 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
I'd love. I'd love to be able to.
00:25:55 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Partner with more.
00:25:57 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Veteran owned businesses to help them in earlier in their stage. At the moment we're working mostly.
00:26:01 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
With.
00:26:01 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Very cool.
00:26:02 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Semi established businesses that need to like Re re reconfigure their OPS for scale.
00:26:09 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Like kind of scale ups and stuff.
00:26:11 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Yeah. So I'd, I'd love to be able to get involved earlier in earlier in the pipeline when when they're a smaller business and help them actually get.
00:26:17
Yeah.
00:26:19 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Get over the line as well, and then the other thing is, you know we we're building.
00:26:25 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Automations AI powered?
00:26:28 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Kind of programming and I'd love to be able to offer that as a first step on the ladder for veterans leaving the forces who want to go into technology because you know, when I.
00:26:37
Yeah.
00:26:39 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
When I did that.
00:26:41 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
You know the advantage that you have in the military is you've got, like a year's resettlement.
00:26:46 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
And what I think the sweet spot is there is the people that are leaving the military come out with a huge amount of.
00:26:54 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Talent when it comes to operations and managing complexity and communicating with people. And I'd love to offer a kind of.
00:27:02 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
UM.
00:27:04 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
A progression where they can come and do that stuff that they really good at, but overlay it with learning.
00:27:10 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Automation and technology along the way, and then you know after after a year, there were pretty weaponized business operator at that point. You know they've they've understood how to, uhm, translate their military experience into something that's like super useful for for business operations.
00:27:28 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Yeah, 100% of well say that you, you, you kind of what what you're saying is is something that I've seen with, I've been chatting with tech bets in the last few months about wanting to help raise their profile or or and fundraise for them actually cause I can. I can see this real opportunity now where you got veterans who could learn.
00:27:37 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
M.
00:27:38 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Yeah.
00:27:48 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Some. There's some some.
00:27:51 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Basic skills and then find themselves on an entirely new path. That's beneficial. There's a business need for, obviously, cybersecurity given it's, you know, it. It's kind.
00:27:59 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Of.
00:28:00 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Meteoric rise over the last few years, but then also dealing with that complexity like you said, understanding seeing a clear path ahead and then and then helping to kind of push and pull.
00:28:10 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Went through that so I I can 100% agree with. Like what? You know what you're saying around that. There's there's it seems like there's a lot of opportunities.
00:28:11 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Yes.
00:28:19 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Here, where people you know.
00:28:21 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Might necessarily choose the traditional like security pathway. That's certainly what I did when I left the the core. Yeah, as I think everyone else does for that, that vital first step and then say OK, actually, you know, what else can I do? I'm actually pretty good at this. Or I've got some kind of skills in this. So I need to kind of re now that I've got my now that I've got my bearings.
00:28:41 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Can start to think about actually, what's what's on this direction here in in, you know in cyber security or perhaps coding or or or and or you know the use of AI and and robotics and so.
00:28:46
Yeah.
00:28:50 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
I think it's, you know, I in some ways I kind of like wish I'd left a little bit earlier and gone, you know, you know, I've learned about, you know, code, you know, coding like we said before, you know, I wish I'd started that so many more years before because it would have just been, you know, a game changer in my in the direction I'd gone, you know, post, post military. So I.
00:29:08
Yep.
00:29:10 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
100 agree what you're saying there is providing those opportunities for veterans that you know. But like what tech vets have done with the, you know, getting a a black book of of names who've passed, you know, competir courses and and cyber security courses and then pushing them into industry. I think it's, yeah, it it's exciting and it's.
00:29:29 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
You know, I'm. I'm sure your transition was probably the same where it's, you know, you kind of come out in like, oh, what happens now what? What what do I do? What's you know which way is up? Where's where's you know dinner coming or from a rent getting paid from in like 8.
00:29:43 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Months time, I don't know.
00:29:44 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Yeah, yeah. I mean totally. I I was lucky in two ways. One is that I.
00:29:52 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
You know, chose to use my time on HMS Ocean and and build some skills. I mean they weren't commercial grade skills. By the time I left, but I was also lucky that I kind of landed into.
00:30:04 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Jobs with other veterans.
00:30:06 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Yeah.
00:30:06 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Veteran heavy kind of businesses and that gave me an opportunity to kind of stretch my legs a little bit and learn, learn a few more scripting skills and use them in, in the telecoms build that I was in, but.
00:30:18 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Yeah. You know, I think I think one of the things I really love about what redeployable are doing is that, you know, as a an, an endemic kind of underemployment of veterans because yeah, I mean, you think about it like anybody who's who's even done.
00:30:29 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
100% agree.
00:30:30 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Agree.
00:30:35 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Any. Well, any kind of military service?
00:30:37 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
I mean the core or paras or, you know, SF or something is is a level above this but.
00:30:43 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
You know, they've had the equivalent.
00:30:44
Of.
00:30:45 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
An NBA spent on their development and that that development has been, you know, about making them gritty about, you know, allowing the, you know, giving them discipline, all of that good stuff.
00:30:49
Yeah.
00:30:58 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
And because it doesn't have.
00:31:01 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
You know some sort of degree or some kind of qualification. It's there's.
00:31:05 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
The civilian world doesn't understand it.
00:31:08 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Yeah.
00:31:10 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Which is a shame, because then you've got, you know, my default choice. When I left in 2004 would probably have been to go and do maritime or go and do, like watch keeping in Iraq or something, you know, relatively well paid but.
00:31:20 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Yeah.
00:31:23 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
**** work. Really.
00:31:26 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
And.
00:31:28 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
I think.
00:31:29 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
I think veterans have so much more to offer than that and you know, there's so many of them that leave every year.
00:31:34 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
It it would be good for for for them, but also for society at large if those skills that have been.
00:31:41 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
You know very expensively tool and developed were better used.
00:31:47 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Yeah, yeah, no, 100% agree. And I'm. I'm just thinking back to like what you said earlier about like learning to code on on HMS Ocean. I I think you know any anyone that's learning to code is, you know, got huge respect from when you're doing on, on ship. You know where you know the scroll isn't great. You know as you, you know your watch or you're doing, you know you're kind of.
00:32:06 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
And I, and I'm definitely guilty of this. You know, when you when you're you, you've got a lot of people who are underemployed and you've got to find something worthwhile to do with their time, you know, and it's like you've got a, you know, you've got maybe the vehicle deck for, say, an hour or two and you've got to.
00:32:20 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
You know, just create something interesting out of like, you know what's what? Is this a vehicle deck without making it just fizz without making it, you know, without any resources cause all you've got is really like weapons. Some sandbags, you know, some vehicles and it's like well, you know, you got to take quite a creative approach. And I was I I you know I think back to when.
00:32:40 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Troop Sergeant who? You know who just, you know, come back from an Afghan tour and had loads of ideas, you know, and was just.
00:32:46 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
This is a godsend. Like not had to rely on anyone quite as much as that where you're just like, well, Chris. Like when we when we do this or do this or this. And I was like and it's operationally relevant as well and I'm like.
00:32:59 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
This is brilliant. You know, I'm just literally look at a vehicle that going, I can just see vehicles and like some water. Now I just think like, you know, learn to code that's that's like, you know, next level on ship. So yeah. Like I would want to make sure that wasn't kind of like just disappeared into the into the podcast. That's that's really cool. But.
00:33:00
Pretty.
00:33:19 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
So it it it's it's interesting like you.
00:33:19 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Going back to what you.
00:33:21 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Know.
00:33:21 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
I think today you've got so much more. I mean, particularly today, you know, early, early 2 thousand, 2024.
00:33:30 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
There's so much more material out there.
00:33:33 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
But correspondingly, there's so much more distraction out there. So you know, if you were to learn to code today.
00:33:37 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Yes. Yeah.
00:33:40 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
I mean, first of all, you could get ChatGPT to generate most of the code that you'd want, so you don't have to learn as much of the fundamentals, which means that we're gonna have a generation of.
00:33:44
Yeah.
00:33:50
Of.
00:33:51 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
People that can get the shallow kind of stuff. What that they want done.
00:33:56 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
I don't know what that's gonna mean for the kind of depth, but I you know what? What I had was one book on one programming language and a laptop that wasn't working properly, and **** all to do and.
00:34:00
Agreed.
00:34:10 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
So in a sense, like not having the Internet and not having distraction, but literally just having a screen and a laptop and a book and no, no way to distract myself from the pain of being a mom and not understanding.
00:34:17
Yeah.
00:34:23 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
What I was.
00:34:24
Doing.
00:34:25 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Was was a godsend because I know if I was going to try and do that in today's world of, like, my kids are going to try and do it, you know they.
00:34:26
Cool.
00:34:32 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
They've got TikTok over here, they've got TV on their wall, they've got, you know, any number of social media, things blaring for their attention.
00:34:39 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
So in a way, you know, yes, yes, it was. You know, I guess smart of me to do it, but also I was pretty lucky that I didn't have.
00:34:49 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
That the distractions that people would have nowadays.
00:34:52
So.
00:34:53 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Yeah. Do you know what I I think in the same way. So in 2019, I had a mountain accident and and kind of shattered my leg. And and this this is what kind of led into the pandemic. But the two things were connected but you.
00:35:07 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Looks like I was responsible for that, but the recovery happened whilst I was in there, you know, while the the pandemic was on and so I had, I had nothing really better to do with my time.
00:35:15 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
And and so I I set about teaching myself to pass some medical school entrance tests, you know? So I wanted to. I was like, I've had this idea in the back of my mind for a long time. Could I can learn enough chemistry, biology and and physics to, you know, to pass these entrance tests. And I and I and I managed to do it after like some.
00:35:35 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Gruff for like, I think almost two years, you know, going through lessons and reading through textbooks, watching YouTube, and using all the the different things available to me. I I scraped 2 paths in different entrance tests and.
00:35:48 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
And it just it kind of reminded me, like the power of like focus, you know, when you are, when you do, when you cut out all the other distractions and you go right and focus on this one thing because it's it's measurable. I can. I can get to the end of it. And if I don't pass the test, then I've not lost anything. Just, you know, I've kind of, I've I've generated some new new new connections, if you will. But it it kind of like.
00:36:08 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Reminded me about, well, actually know I really love learning and so this is something which I'm gonna make sure there's is maybe not in Med school, but definitely, you know, keep on, keep it on that learning path because.
00:36:19 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
I guess all the you know, since university the that for me was like 20 years ago and and I'm like I'm kind of hungry for that feeling of like learning and being like, you know, at the bottom of a the absolute bottom of a pyramid again, you know, where the only way you can go up is by putting the hard graft in rather than being kind of good at something. You know, whether that's design.
00:36:39 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Or or or marketing. Or you know something else is you want to be want to be a beginner again at something which is kind of intimidating but also fun as well because like, I can see what this.
00:36:50 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Might turn into.
00:36:51 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Yeah. Yeah. And I mean that's also.
00:36:56 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
A really good attitude to have for business in general, right? As you know, there's.
00:37:00 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Going to be a.
00:37:00
Hmm.
00:37:02 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Metric shipped tonne of things that you don't understand when you get started like one of the big things that came up in those veteran interviews and something that's bitten me multiple times in the past is, you know, despite having worked at hedge funds or in and investment banks, I don't actually know that much about finance when it comes to small business that was that's been a gap that has.
00:37:06 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Yeah.
00:37:22 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Tripped me up a few times.
00:37:24 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
So I've.
00:37:25 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Spent some effort in understanding it. It turns out having a an understanding of sort of basic finance concepts.
00:37:32 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Is a skill that will.
00:37:34 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Last me forever because it's it's massively important. It's a skill that is definitely lacking in.
00:37:42 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
The the experience that you're likely to have had in the military. So while all that operational stuff that I was talking about is absolutely valid, there are some gaps and you know to your point having the.
00:37:55 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Drive and the urge to learn.
00:37:58 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Is the perfect thing to fill those gaps.
00:38:01 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Yeah, yeah.
00:38:01 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
And you know one one of.
00:38:02 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
The interviews I did.
00:38:04 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
With with Josh Keeley.
00:38:08 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
You know he he's basically.
00:38:09 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Taught himself how to build a multi £1,000,000 business by doing it and that's like.
00:38:16 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
So you know, you know we've, we've, we've, we've kind of gone from.
00:38:20 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Sat on a ship looking at great walls with nothing to do with that, forcing your focus to the complete opposite end of the spectrum with which is all the **** you have to learn how to do while you're doing it to to build a business. And I think you know, there's there's elements of, of military service that help you in both of those scenarios. Happily enough.
00:38:39 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Yeah, yeah. And to play this, it's funny when I'm still laughing. You mentioned Josh because we we were in 40 commanded together. And actually we're in talking interviewing him in like 2 weeks time for the the podcast as well. So it's it. It's funny how the same names, you know, pop up when you're like, oh, yeah, I need to do this.
00:38:56 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
And so there's other people. But yeah, no, I I 100% agree. Like I I had the same approach with cyber security because it was, it was something we had responsibility for in the BBC as the the, the security advisor for the bureaus. And it was something when I was like, well, I'm, you know, we've got these, these, these tech departments who know lots and they, you know and I don't understand in the conversation. So I need to I need to.
00:39:17 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Improve myself in this stuff because you know I'm. I'm the conduit between them and the and the and the the management team and then kind of like over the last few years it's also come back around again because we worked with some.
00:39:29 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Like, you know, kind of like trust based systems and cyber security companies. So it was actually those, those things like hardware security modules and you know penetration testing and and the basics that I've learned. You know all those years ago were then coming back up again and and also in building like your own business as well as you learn you learn some of these things where like cool well I need to make sure I've got multi factor.
00:39:50 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Authentication building for you know, working with these clients. So it's interesting how the that kind of desire for learning.
00:39:52 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Yeah.
00:39:57
Mean.
00:39:58 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
You know when you're running a business again, like you say is it's so vital, isn't it just being like, right? I wanna you need to take an interest in something that's kind of a bit out of your your niche outside of your subject area so that you can grow as a a business owner be more resilient and actually just you know face some of those challenges when you when you encounter.
00:40:16 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Them.
00:40:16 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah.
00:40:17 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Good to hear.
00:40:20 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Nice. Well, let's let's just jump onto the the the, the penultimate question.
00:40:27 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
What do you see as the main challenges for startups trying to grow and stand out in the current current economic climate? It's quite unstable, so there's no right or wrong answers here.
00:40:39 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Wow, that is a massive new.
00:40:42 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
It's a deep question. Umm. So one one of the things that you know, the reason I say it's a deep question is because the business landscape.
00:40:49 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Has changed.
00:40:51
MHM.
00:40:51 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
So much like I'm on the forefront of this with technology and technology is a.
00:40:55
Yeah.
00:40:56 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
A movable feast, right? It's like.
00:40:59 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
You know, being on the surface of a balloon that's being blown up, right, everything's moving away from you constantly, faster and faster and faster.
00:41:06 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Yeah, yeah.
00:41:08 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
So I see this in technology and that obviously technology is kind of a driver of the rest of society, so.
00:41:16 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
There are two things that that means is.
00:41:20 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
It's probably an order of magnitude to start a business at cheaper to start a business now. So you know nowadays you can go to tide bank, you can sign up for a bank account, you can have a business incorporated and be up and running and trading and taking money the same day if you want.
00:41:26
Yeah, yeah.
00:41:37
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:41:39 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
So that means that.
00:41:42 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
You know that's good because it's cheaper to get up and running, but it also means that the barrier to entry.
00:41:47 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
You know, if it's cheaper to get up and running, there's lots of people that are getting up and running so. So that means that there's more and more.
00:41:48
And.
00:41:55 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
More and more smaller and smaller niches being addressed.
00:41:58
Yeah.
00:41:59 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
In addition, from a technology point of view, if you're, you know, building something that's kind of technology enabled, which pretty much everyone needs to be thinking about now, because otherwise you're not going to be competitive is that?
00:42:09
Yeah.
00:42:11 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
It's now.
00:42:13 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
You know something that would have when I when I was the CTO of the start up in back in 2013, I think we probably spent about half a million.
00:42:20 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Building out.
00:42:22 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
You know, version one of some of the of the service that we were doing.
00:42:27 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
And that was, you know, doing it properly with a really good team. And you know, everyone in in place in London and.
00:42:32 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Blah blah blah.
00:42:34 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
I reckon if I was tasked with doing that again.
00:42:38 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
I reckon it would probably be something that I could get done for 30 grand.
00:42:45 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Wow. Like what? 7 or 8% of what? It would have cost back in 2013 essentially is what you're you're saying for for the MVP, for the minimum viable products?
00:42:46 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Yeah.
00:42:52 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Yeah.
00:42:55 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
So yeah, an order of magnitude difference in getting something up and running. So you know that means that there's two things happening, there's.
00:43:01 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
There's businesses that start, let's say, a couple of.
00:43:04 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Years.
00:43:04 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Ago that are getting to that scale up point and now there's more and more smaller and smaller.
00:43:10 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Businesses nipping at their heels and sort of.
00:43:14 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
You know, offering smaller and smaller kind of chunks of what they do.
00:43:17 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Yeah.
00:43:17 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
But equally, you know, they've been built on the legacy of, you know, if that business that I was working at then was still in effect and they hadn't moved with the times.
00:43:26 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Not only would there be smaller and smaller businesses chasing them, they would be operating 10X faster.
00:43:34 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
10X more efficiently. So so it's.
00:43:34 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Yeah, yeah.
00:43:38 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Yeah, I mean, it's massively interesting and AI is just gonna completely, you know, exponentiality that, you know, I I've seen.
00:43:45
Yeah, I agree.
00:43:48 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
I've seen demos of.
00:43:52 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
AI chat bots or correlation cooperating groups of AI chat bots.
00:44:00 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
That you can have a conversation with that can literally build your product as you go.
00:44:05 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Wow. Wow, now I don't. I don't think it's there yet where somebody that's got no technical background.
00:44:12 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Is able to to to access that yet.
00:44:15 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
But somebody who's maybe a product manager who's not technical.
00:44:19 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Or, you know, technical enough to know what to ask for, but not a programmer.
00:44:25 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Yeah, I think I saw something the other week that somebody had taken that approach and they'd wanna. They'd won a startup competition.
00:44:32 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
So they have no employees, no programmers.
00:44:35 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
But they built and launched a product.
00:44:38 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Well.
00:44:39 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
And that is like mental.
00:44:39 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Yeah.
00:44:42 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
I mean it, it does remind me of a story. Actually, it's funny.
00:44:44 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
That because I remember back when ChatGPT came out well like 2 Novembers ago and there was a guy who who'd he'd used it to write like a kids book or something like that. And he'd employed mind as like mid journey to make the imagery for it. And he he basically put the two things together and sold on Amazon and.
00:45:03 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Made like.
00:45:05 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
I I'm not sure. I don't think it's. I think it's being out, you know, grossly proportional. But I think it was like $1,000,000 from that. You know I think it wasn't ridiculous and he was just the first to market but the the backlash on it was you.
00:45:17 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Know horrendous like people were.
00:45:18 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
You know, apparently like criticising on social media, online on, you know, articles. And he was like, well, look what I've done is I've just taken 2 services, put them together and then sold the product. You know, it's, you know it it's not for them. You're not buying it because somebody put the work into it. You're buying it because the product is good enough for your. The problem that it's all for you isn't like.
00:45:36
Yeah.
00:45:38 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
To read to your kids or to show to so on and so forth. So it it raised like an interesting conundrum where it was like well.
00:45:44 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
You know what? What? What? Why are people buying things though? Is it because they think it's coming from a human that's built it or have they? Are they just looking for the output? It's certainly. It's certainly made me stop and think about more things in, you know, in this space, you know, like the services we offer or the, you know, how we how we can use.
00:46:04 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Incorporate it without losing kind of reputation in in that sort of sense as well. So it's.
00:46:10 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
I'm glad to hear kind of other people are are, you know, wrestling with.
00:46:12 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
This same challenges as well.
00:46:14 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Yeah, I mean it's I think.
00:46:17 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
So one of the things that I'm finding a little bit difficult to sort of talk about in.
00:46:20 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
This space.
00:46:20 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Is that you know, the narrative is all about our AI is going to decimate jobs.
00:46:26 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
But that's never really happened before, right? We've had breakthroughs in technology that haven't suddenly meant that everyone's redundant.
00:46:34 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
It just means that you need smaller numbers of people to produce the same output. I mean, everyone else still needs to do stuff, so I think what actually happens is that.
00:46:39
Yeah.
00:46:44 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Instead of, you know, let's say something becomes 10X more effective instead of 9090% of people not having jobs.
00:46:52 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
It just means that there's gonna be, you know, 1000 more times stuff being done so with books.
00:46:56 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Yeah, yeah.
00:46:59 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Yeah, I I would imagine that at this point.
00:47:02 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
A very high percentage of books, or at least AI.
00:47:07 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Contributed.
00:47:08
Yeah.
00:47:08 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Like if I was gonna write a book tomorrow.
00:47:12 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
About you know how you can use military thinking to do really well in business. I certainly wouldn't be writing everything myself.
00:47:19 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
No, no. Totally. Well, yeah. I mean, you know, we we use it for for things cause it's it can, it can shape ideas in something far more coherent than you know like.
00:47:28 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
I'd.
00:47:29 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Have to sit down and and spend the time. Actually, you know, scribbling on paper or or, you know, trying to compose these things into a more logical, understandable sequence. Yeah.
00:47:39 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Whereas you know something can can put my thinking into a more sequence and add a better depth of reasoning for me. Then of course I'm gonna.
00:47:46 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
You know that method because it's like having you know, it's just like employing five people to do it for me. You know, it just it just means it's it's a service that's just done by, you know, one machine, one subscription rather than employing 5 people. So yeah, let's say people are gonna change tack when it comes to, you know, that that personal career pivot like we.
00:47:58
Yeah.
00:48:06 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
You know, like we've spoken about before, is it just it's going to bring that about.
00:48:09 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
It's a bit, you know, a bit sooner, perhaps for some people than it is for others, but like I I don't agree. I don't think it's gonna put, you know, 90% of people out of work overnight because it takes a long time to understand and integrate this stuff into your operations and your ways of.
00:48:24 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Working, doesn't it? So it's.
00:48:25 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Yes, and and those, those five people that you haven't then employed well then got their own specialisms and their own things that they can offer and they can offer those things 5/10 times more effectively as well. So they may decide that they want to spin up a little micro enterprise offering.
00:48:37
Hey.
00:48:40 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
What they do?
00:48:43 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
You know same same cost, but five times more.
00:48:46 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Capacity.
00:48:48 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Yeah.
00:48:49 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
So it's just, it's just going to mean that.
00:48:52 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Societies sort of general kind of trajectory increases and you know that's not necessarily a good thing because as output increases, so does so does consumption. And you know we all we all know that that is probably.
00:49:05 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Yeah, yeah.
00:49:08
Yeah.
00:49:09 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Probably not gonna end in a happy place for society. The current trajectory that we're on. So I mean, who knows? Like, we could just be accelerating ourselves into oblivion. Who knows?
00:49:21 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Well, wait on, on that note, have you got any final words or advice for startups and scaleups particularly better known ones who you know who may be, you know, think about setting up?
00:49:29 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Their.
00:49:29 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Own their own company or going into a new field or setting up a new like a career pivot any any kind of.
00:49:36 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Words of advice or thoughts for them.
00:49:38 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Yeah. So I mean, as we've as we've discussed the, the world, the world's your oyster now really when it comes to.
00:49:46 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Being able to kind of get something up and running off the ground so you know it's super easy to to start something. It's very easy to reach people, you know, make it maximum use of that kind of veteran network and reach out, you know, almost any veteran.
00:49:50
MHM.
00:50:02 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Will be open for a up for a chat including me, so you know if you've got, you know.
00:50:04
Yeah, yeah.
00:50:07 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
If if there's something that I can help with, I'd be open for chat. I you know, I would do.
00:50:12 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
A.
00:50:13 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
I'd do a chat with almost anyone, even if there wasn't any expectation of a of a sale, because you know, I believe in that kind of veteran's network and veterans helping each other out and and, you know, leverage every opportunity that you can find and.
00:50:18 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Yeah.
00:50:27 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
The big one at the moment is that.
00:50:31 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Having a basic understanding of AI, what it can do, how it.
00:50:35 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Can help.
00:50:37 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Is.
00:50:39 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
It's not even.
00:50:41 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
It's not even a suggestion. It's a must. Like there's there's no way this isn't going to.
00:50:43
Yeah, I agree.
00:50:45 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Change.
00:50:46 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Everything about how you build and run a business, so yeah.
00:50:52 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Get get crappy now. Like you know, you're you're in a race. You better get started cause you know somebody's gonna figure out how to run quicker. So the only the only, uh defence is being ahead.
00:50:58
Yeah.
00:51:05 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Yeah, man, that's that's a that's a that's a. That's a cool saying. I've that's a.
00:51:09 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
The any, any defence is being ahead. That's that's a. Yeah. That's a great place to end.
00:51:14 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
It there I should should leave me a suit.
00:51:15 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Yeah, well actually this, I mean maybe a slightly different framing on that. You know, everyone talks in everyone in business or you know certainly technologies and and venture fund venture funded technology companies talk about having a Moat.
00:51:27 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Yeah.
00:51:28 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
You know a defensible kind of position and. And you know when you think about it, a Moat is simply.
00:51:34 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
An invitation to get in circle.
00:51:38 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
You know.
00:51:40 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
The siege and to rock yourself into existence until someone figures out how to smash your walls down, and then you're.
00:51:45 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Screwed. Yeah, or or just put artillery, you know. Gonna you.
00:51:49 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Know fire onto your position.
00:51:49 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Yeah. As soon as somebody invents utility, your vote is completely screw. So I always, I I I have a different sort of saying which is you know my motto is in manoeuvre right manoeuvre warfare and all of the.
00:51:59
Junior.
00:52:02 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Manoeuvre warfare and everything that teaches you about business agility, that is your Moat, that execution is your Moat. Not having some sort of technology that you think is.
00:52:12 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Or even an idea, right? An idea is not a execution as you note.
00:52:16 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Yeah, 100% agree, agree epic stuff. Well, I love the metaphors and this is like literally like like create creating like cool ideas. So on Monday I'll leave you to it to get to kind of work. And then thanks again for joining me. It's really great chatting with Ben and hearing how he scaled.
00:52:22 Ben Ford, former Royal Marine turned founder of Mission Ctrl, a full-service data and systems transformation consultancy
Yeah.
00:52:30
Well, cheers, Chris.
00:52:34 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
His.
00:52:34 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
Company want to know more about Mission Control?
00:52:37 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
You can find the links to the website in the share notes below.
00:52:39 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio
And I'll see you next time.
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