Founding the original challenger bank, with Anne Boden
Graham Allcott 00:04
Hello, and welcome to our first post-Trump edition of Beyond Busy. This is the show where we talk productivity, work life balance, happiness and success, all the big questions for work and life. My name is Graham Allcott. I'm your host for the show and on this episode, I am talking to the amazing Anne Boden and is the founder and CEO of Starling bank, one of the very few people that can say that they started a bank from scratch. We just have a really wide ranging, interesting conversation more of which in a moment. So just before we do that, a couple of quick plugs which only apply if you're listening to this on the day, this episode comes out. I am a part of World Kindness Day on Friday, the 13th of November, speaking in a couple of different events, so Think Productive are doing a free webinar, which if you just go to thinkproductive.co.uk. Click on free webinars at the top and you'll see the box come down for our session, “The Productivity of Kindness”. That's going to be with myself and Christina Kisley. So, come and be part of that. It's going to be 45 minutes long, it's free. We'd love to see you there talking about my ideas around how kindness has been really central to the culture, I think productivity, everything that we do, and also why I think it's good for productivity. And then immediately following that, I'm speaking as part of an action packed and quite frankly, ridiculous lineup for Kindfest 2020. If you want to find out more about that, go to Teamkind.org.uk. The tickets are five quid, so really cheap, accessible price, but the speakers include General, Captain Tom Moore, who's the guy that raised all the money for the NHS, as well as Caroline Lucas, the green MP, as well as Frank Turner and Billy Bragg singing, Helen Tupper of Amazing If who's been on this podcast before Dr. Ryder, Mark Gill from the BBC Radio One Life Hacks podcast. Just a huge lineup of speakers and it's all about kindness. So Teamkind.org.uk, if you want to find out more about that. That is Friday, the 13th of November, it's two till 7pm. UK time. See you there. So let's get into this episode.
This is Anne Boden, the incredible founder and CEO of Starling Bank and author of a new book called Banking On It: How I Disrupt an Industry. And we just have a really wide ranging conversation, we talked about her working class roots, how she dealt with money, why she's still frugal, we talk about productivity. She's got some amazing just hacks and surprises around email, which is definitely worth checking out. And of course, I asked her about Monzo. And the kind of ongoing feud, if you like, between Starling and Monzo banks, the two kind of most disruptive banks really, in the UK. So really interesting episode, I think you're gonna really enjoy it. Let's get straight into it recorded just last week, actually, here's my conversation with Anne Boden. I'm with Ann Boden, founder of Starling bank. And what was funny about that was in your book, you talk quite a lot about being switched on 24 seven, and just the very frenetic, busy lifestyle that your role entails. So let's start with that, like, what have you been up to today? What's buzzing on your phone right now, that's threatening to interrupt this podcast?
Anne Boden 03:56
Well, there's lots going on today. And we've got a lot of things we're very, very into with regards to new lending to businesses. They have just announced changes to the various lending schemes are involved in all of that. My new book was published today. Therefore, I'd been tweeting about that, and reading some reviews. I just come up a call with a team of people looking at a new product. So pretty typical day really.
Graham Allcott 04:32
Congratulations on the book coming out, although you should never read reviews, right? That's just goes without saying. The book is called Banking On It, which we're going to talk about, and the subtitle really gives a good description for the journey you've been on, which is how I disrupted an industry. And not just any old industry, but banking, which I think you know, when I think of banking, I definitely think of a very traditional regulatory driven industry, that would be very, very difficult to disrupt. And not only have you done that, but you've made a huge success of it. Let's talk about that a bit on this episode. For anyone who doesn't know what Starling bank is, and we do have quite a few international listeners who may not know, do you want to just give us that at the beginning? What is Starling bank? And how is it different from a high street, current account bank or a high street lender kind of bank?
Anne Boden 05:27
Sterling bank is a UK based bank. We're fully regulated bank, we're regulated by the PRA, and the FCA. And we do come into account banking. We provide all the services to consumers and small businesses that you'd get from a high street bank. So we don't have branches. But we have the finest tech in the world where you can manage all your business through an app or on a laptop. We have been in business now for the last six, seven years. And we are growing very, very fast. We've been voted Top British bank, Best British bank three years in a row.
Graham Allcott 06:09
Tell us more about why is it different from the traditional banks because you don't have branches. But you grew up in, you know, through your career in having senior roles in all of those banks that do have branches, right? So tell us why Starling is so different?
Anne Boden 06:25
Yes, well, I'd spent a long time working in traditional banks. I'm a computer scientist by background. I did a chemistry and computer science degree. And I started in Lloyds Bank many years ago. And I had a long career in Lloyds Bank, Standard Chartered Bank, Union Bank of Switzerland, ABN AMRO Bank, Royal Bank of Scotland, Allied Irish Banks. And I came to the conclusion that banking was broken. And the banking industry was trying to repair itself after the last financial crisis. It's so inward looking, it has forgotten what the customers really wanted. And technology changed every other industry. Technology had changed the way people shop. Technology had changed how people bought music. But banking hadn't really got it at all and in 2013, I decided to quit my job to start a bank. People said people don't start banks and that was the challenge I needed to start Starling. Starling at the moment has 2 million customers, 4 billion pounds worth of deposits, a billion and a half of lending. And they're growing very, very fast. We have something like 250,000 small business accounts. And those businesses use us for all their banking needs. And we're also lending to those businesses in these very difficult times. So we are a technology driven bank. What we mean by that is that we put a lot of effort and care into crafting, beautiful technology that's easy to use. That's very pleasing, that's highly resilient and because of these technology tools being so, so good. People embrace us and love banking with us. We do have people on the end of the phone 24 by seven, so 365 days a year, you can phone somebody at Starling to answer a query but primarily we're all about technology. We're using technology to give you a wonderful banking experience. And that took some doing. We are really at the top of all the ratings charts, when it comes to customer service. We rank really near the top of all the various ways you can categorize service and performance. We are very proud of that and we are going to be becoming bigger and bigger. We're trying to extend our offering across Europe as well.
Graham Allcott
Yeah, and you talk in the book about whether one of the lovely things from the book was you talking about your vision for helping people to manage money, right? And I think what you say in the book is that a lot of banks see current accounts as almost like a loss leader thing that isn't, you know, actually where their priorities lie. And also, it's a bit arm's length. That idea of being able to 24 seven be able to phone somebody from the comfort of your own home rather than having to go into a branch is obviously a better customer experience. And you talk about in the book, how some of the earlier innovations to try and disrupt banking were basically to turn bank branches into something that looked a bit like the Apple Store. But then it's like, you know, you don't really want to have to go all the way to the Apple Store. You know, you want to get that service when you want it in a flexible way direct to your phone and do it in a much better way. I felt like you had a really strong vision about helping people to be able to manage money and to do that in a way that they didn't get into debt. I think you use the phrase at one point in the book, and they run out of months before, before the next paycheck. And so people are going into overdrafts regularly. And, you know, your vision was really about helping people to have a better experience with money rather than with banking, right?
Anne Boden
Yeah, exactly. Money's very, very difficult for lots of people. And that's people with lots of money or no money at all. Money is a problem for most people. It divides into the people who spend every Sunday evening with the Excel spreadsheet counting up all the pennies, and the ones that never open the brown envelopes. And we all need a better relationship with money - something in the middle. And what we try to do is to help people engage with their finances much more regularly. We have every time you spend on your card, you have a notification saying how you spent the money, you can categorize all your spending, you can have joint accounts, you can have euro accounts, you can have cards for your children, you can see how you're spending your money, you can sort it in lots of different ways. It's all about giving people the tools to manage the day to day finances. We find that our customers range from those that are very young to people in their 90s. And people embrace this new way of having control. The important thing is that nobody wants to put effort into getting control, you want to be able to have these tools operate themselves. And that's what we've done, we work really hard in getting products that really are quite satisfying to use and give you that control.
Graham Allcott 12:00
I've got to ask you about your own relationship with money then. You grew up in a Welsh mining town, the dad was a steel worker and your mom worked in a department store. And you say in the book that they were kind of two sides to the town that you grew up and your side of town was the working class side of town, the industrial side of town where the banks didn't even bother to put branches. What was your relationship with money growing up and your household and your kind of the ways that you would think about money personally?
Anne Boden 12:35
Yeah, I came from a family that was very, very good with money. We may have lived to the wrong side of town, but we had a very nice life because we were very good with money. Incompetitively spend, one of the things that I see an awful lot of is people spending to keep up with friends or keep up with family.What my early sort of learnings where that you can save, you can be frugal, you can get a lot of pleasure from getting good value for money and for saving and for saving up for something that you really want. I was very privileged, I had a family that were and that had very ordinary jobs. But we had a lot, you know, we went as foreign holidays. We spent a lot of time traveling because we were very frugal. We spend money on the right things. And of course, you know, I loved it. I loved having that control. I didn't know where to go along and end up going to work for the banking industry. And then many years later, founding a bank. But I was part of a family who would manage money and we were very accomplished at it.
Graham Allcott
I feel like being frugal is seen as deeply uncool these days and I would say I'm probably quite sensible, frugal with my money. You're now someone who owns a large stake in a bank. Do you think you still frugal yourself?
Anne Boden
Yes, I think I am. Yeah, I think that it's quite important to enjoy your money. And I think that money gives you control over your life. I think money means that you can have more choices and more and you can make more decisions. But I also think that you can enjoy making good financial decisions. I have quite a range of quite expensive designer handbags. But many of those handbags. I buy pre-loved. A nice euphemism for you know, somebody very rich bought them. But I think that is that sort of thing where you can still appreciate and have pleasure from buying things and buying it at a discount still gives you a bit of a buzz.
Graham Allcott
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's the thing isn't it is like I love where I live there's a car boot sale just up the road for me every Sunday. I just love the idea of digging out treasure and finding things for a pound that someone else was about to throw away. And actually they're really valuable. You know, and I could go and buy that thing for full price. But there's just this there is a bias isn't there it like that kind of idea of uncovering little treasures and getting a good deal.
Anne Boden
I think that that is human nature. We're all in this world where we try to optimize our life in some way. And whether you're looking for the best value on a holiday, or you're looking for the better exchange rate on your foreign exchange, or you're looking for a good deal on the laptop, I think these are all things we do to optimize our life where it's a bit of a goal involved and achieving that goal gives you pleasure.
Graham Allcott
Yeah. Do you ever find yourself spending money in a way that is a little bit more reckless or with a sense of abandon like, "Ah, screw this, I'm going to lavish a load of money on it on one particular thing?"
Anne Boden
No. I think I enjoy my money. But I am so careful.
Graham Allcott
I really respect that. That's cool. That's, that's really good to hear. And one of the things that struck me about the book was about motivation. And you talk very early in the book about how you're working at AIB big bank in Ireland, you've got a huge job there. You're the group CEO. And you're going through this very painful process of restructuring, you're making a lot of people redundant. And you're going into work every day thinking, how long will I do this before I retire. The contrast really struck me that that's at the very beginning of the book. And at the end of the book, you're talking about how you've got this huge buzz from running Starling and you're the founder and the entrepreneur, and you've got this very entrepreneurial approach. And then you say that even if the stock exchange bell rings, and therefore you've sold the company and you're suitably rich, you probably do all again, and then start something else. Just really interested in your motivation. So presumably, you know, when you're working at AIB, when stuff isn't going well, the motivation for working is to sort of get to the stage where you have enough money to retire. But now with Starling, the motivation feels like it's very different.
Anne Boden
Yeah, I think that I am very lucky, in that I have lots of options. I think at AIB, it is really very difficult to deal with the day to day restructuring and making people redundant and living in an environment where you are shamed for doing the job to be honest. People didn't like bankers in Ireland. I was part of an industry that wrecked the country.
Graham Allcott
And this is after the turn of Celtic Tiger collapse.
Anne Boden
So I went into AIB post crisis, did the rescue squad to turn the bank back to profitability. And that was something I was really excited about, you know, to be able to restructure, which means make people redundant. And it was horrible. It was the people, you know, who came in the branches, the people, our customers were suffering. We had to restructure the organization, we had to sell off loans, we had to make people redundant, change systems. It was all of a downbeat. I have to do it. And I was very good at it. You know, this is a very, very successful period. But it had to be something better than that. So I went around the world talking to people in different parts of the world about what they were doing with their banks. And everybody was doing roughly the same thing. Let's refurbish the branches. Let's put nice sofas in them. Now let's get people to come into the branches in order to get mortgages, but the local population wanted somewhere to pay in their cash and coin. They didn't want a mortgage. They didn't want to sit on the sofa. And the only thing that was different about all these strategies was the color of the carpet. Everybody's trying to do the same thing. In every turn to convince themselves that this tragedy was going to work. And I started dreaming about the fact that somebody should start a new bank with new technology, I spend quite a lot of time in Silicon Valley talking to tech firms. And the technology was out there to build a very, very different bank. But nobody really could do that transformation. They came to the conclusion, if you could start from scratch and have a new banking license, a new technology, you can have a whole new way and different business model and a new way of relating to customers. And this will be fantastic to do and somebody should do it. And then one day, I was brave enough to say, well, that's what I'm gonna do.
Graham Allcott 20:48
And you say about going around the tech firm. So you went and did tours around Google and various various other businesses around Silicon Valley. So you were doing that tour? When was that when you were AIB? When you were going around Google?
Anne Boden 21:01
Yeah, twice? Actually. I visited 2011-2012 after I left RBS and before I started AIB, and then whilst I was at AIB.
Graham Allcott 21:12
Do you just email people at Google and say, Hey, I'm Senior in the banking industry in the UK? Can I just come for a tour? Like, how did you set that up?
Anne Boden 21:19
Yeah. What you can do if you just ask! You know, if you actually reach out to people and say it, now we're interested in X, Y, Zed, can we come and talk to you, these big companies such as Google, and whatever, they have visitor centers, they have a machine that allows you to go and visit. A bit more complicated to get to some other companies. And it's very complicated to get into big banks around the world and let that just, you know, stand behind the counter and serve customers. But unless you reach out and talk to people, you don't get that perspective. Though, you may have to send out half a dozen emails, you'll get one invitation. But you should do it. This is how you learn about the world.
Graham Allcott 22:15
Love that comes across so many times in the book of different bits where you talk about things that seemed very daunting in a very Matter of fact way. Like, there's that story where you're sat and someone comes up to talk to you on a cruise, and you're looking at all the different industry headlines around FinTech and wherever and at this point, you're not even in a job and someone says he or your you know, boss is not going to give you some time off. And you're like, No, I'm doing this all because I want to. And then they're like, what you're doing and Oh I'm just gonna start a bank. It's just like, I think if someone that was on a cruise on New Year's Day was doing off their own back with no employer telling them they had to, and then they came out with the line. I'm about to start a bank, I'd probably think they were mad, wouldn't they?
Anne Boden 23:10
Yeah. And I think that's the magic of it all. I think that if you start thinking about things that surprise people have never been done before. And, you know, it's brave. It's exciting. And if you do hard things, they may make a difference. Where do you think you get that sense of bravery from I Don't know. I think that I have a cousin, who's also done some remarkable things quite late in her career. So there could be slight family bias towards doing things which are unusual. But it's my father that gave me all the energy. And my mother, who gave me the skills to talk to people and to, I think, to empathize.
Graham Allcott 24:20
There's a thing in your book where you say something like, I'm going to paraphrase this and probably get this wrong. So you can correct me, but something along the lines of if you have a small ambition and you fail, that's failure. But if you've got a really big ambition and you've failed, and that's bravery, is that right?
Anne Boden 24:33
Yeah, I think that this comes from my decision to start a bank. Okay. And the question was, if I started a dress shop and failed, that can be a bit of an embarrassment. But if I set out to do something really audacious like a bank and failed, it wouldn't be a failure at all. And so, as long as the goal is big enough there's no fear in failure.
Graham Allcott 25:02
That's super inspiring. And I really love that one. Some of the stories in the book about being a startup, where you go around giving cases away in exchange for people downloading the app. And you had had to sell your house in Swansea to help fund it. And it sort of struck me that that's not the kind of behavior that you tend to find from someone who say, you were doing this when you were 55. And you were starting and also someone who is breaking out of, you know, well paid jobs in the corporate world to start from scratch. I'm just interested in how you found that transition from presumably having a good team of people around you and your role being really defined to suddenly having to be like the jack of all trades, quite late on in your career. So like, what was the what what did you find was most interesting to you about the contrast of that, so going from the corporate life to very much kind of startup energy?
Anne Boden 26:06
I think, you know, when you're a big corporate you have infrastructure around you, you have a big title, and you can phone people up and they do stuff. You also have money to get things done. When you're in a starter, you have none of that. You're very much on your own. You're on your own wits, really, to get things done. It's also you need to do things that are quite difficult. You know the day when I went around the perimeter of the rugby field in my hometown, and gave away gloves with Starling bank on the side. And when people, you know, sort of took the gloves and said, what's going on here? I said, I'm the CEO of a bank. I'm basically giving away freebies and want them to count. People did think that was rather strange. I had to do that, it means that other people in the organization are also prepared to do things that they find uncomfortable. Nothing as uncomfortable as going up to an executive sitting in an office and saying, Would you like an ice cream? Here's a brochure about Starling. That is pretty scary to do. And I think you have to be prepared to do scary things if you want to break a mold.
Graham Allcott 27:44
So I want to talk about productivity, obviously, that's a very close subject to my heart. And also one of the key things that we talked about here on Beyond Busy. And there's a thing in the book where you are talking about your relationship with email. And you say that you answer as many as you can and you've got a system for processing your email within three seconds. And that recently, you emailed a customer and they thought that you must be a bot because it's like, "Are you pretending to be Anne, the CEO of my bank?" And you're like, "No, I am Anne."
So tell me about email and what's the secret of processing all within three seconds?
Anne Boden 28:28
I get a lot of email and my email is very guessable. So I get all sorts of people sending me emails but I'm quite good at quickly scanning, figuring out who it should go to, or very, very quickly making a decision. Yes, no, maybe Whatever. Dwelling on certain things and taking my time when I have to think it through. I tend to process emails only once and get through them very quickly. I tend to clear all my emails every hour, every two hours. So I rarely have more than a couple of emails sitting in my inbox. If I can't deal with it then and there, I need to think it through. Or if it's for something later on in the day, I will mark it as unread and I'll come back to it later. So normally, I have something like zero emails. I don't file emails. I just open them and then just search when I need them. I normally have, say, I could have up to about two or three unopened emails which are things I have to do during the day.
Graham Allcott 29:51
So when you're saying processing it and getting it to zero, is that the other ones that you've read? Are they still in the inbox? Or are you filing those into one folder. Like what does the screen look like in front of you?
Anne Boden 30:04
I just leave them in the inbox as unread, as read.
Graham Allcott 30:08
Or as red.Yeah. So processing it down to zero is about getting the ones that are unread to a point where they're red. Yeah. Nice. And do you have any - So I'm getting geeky now with the productivity questions, but do you have any sort of triage systems? Where assistance helping you do that? Or do you do all on your own?
Anne Boden 30:25
On my own.
Graham Allcott 30:26
Really? Wow.
Anne Boden 30:28
Yep, I have an assistant who will be in my email, looking at what I'm doing. Okay. And, and seeing the things I've done, and catching up on my calendar, and checking that my calendar and other people know what I'm up to but I do all my emails myself.
Graham Allcott 30:54
Props to you for that. I've had a couple of times where I've either worked with people or been talking to people about this. And, you know, like, MPs will quite often have a system in place where one of their staff will, you know, they'll file things into a folder that I like, here is the thing about the road traffic dispute or whatever. So send them the sort of stock answer about that particular dispute or whatever. So you must have certain replies to emails that you feel like you're doing over and over again.
Anne Boden 31:28
No. I have a big team so I can pass things down to people. Yeah, things I do. I shouldn't be doing repetitive things and if I read a customer send me emails and I find it interesting, and it hasn't been dealt with before and there's not a natural home for it. I'll ask a few questions myself. In that case, where, you know, the customer thought there was a bot. And then they'll say, it's not really Anne... I said, Yeah, it's really Anne.
Graham Allcott 32:10
It's what a bot would say, isn't it?
Anne Boden 32:11
Yeah. Probably a bot would say that. And they also basically say, do I do my own social media? Wow. Okay. I have quite a big Twitter following. Oh, yeah. I tweet.
Graham Allcott 32:27
I suppose I have to ask about Monzo, don't I? Yeah. So I guess the the thing that came out as an extract from, from your book banking on it was the story of, well, it was characterized by someone else in the process, team Anne versus team Tom. And this goes back to some of your members of your founding team leaving to set up Monzo. Do you want to tell the story, first of all, and then I've got a couple of other things that I'm going to ask you about? I promise I won't...
Anne Boden 33:04
Yeah, that's fine.
Graham Allcott 33:07
...cover the ground too much. If you don't want to.
Anne Boden 33:08
No problem at all. I was starting Starling and I was doing that with people who I knew from previous roles. I knew Tom Blomfield, who subsequently became CEO of Monzo. From a previous business encounter a few years earlier, I hired him onto the team. He resigned, leave me in the lurch and raised money and took the team with him. Leaving me with no team again, and a substantial amount of people who expected me to pay them. I built a team and lost them. And in doing so, Tom went off to create Monzo, which is another new bank. So we've got Monzo and we got Starling and we are probably the big new banks in the UK.
Graham Allcott 34:17
Yeah.
Anne Boden 34:19
We have quite a connection.
Graham Allcott 34:23
And one of the things that you talk about in the book is just that you had some quite different working styles. So I just want to focus on that and, you know, everybody's probably been in similar situations at work, where you've got someone that you're managing who just feels like they're talking cheese with you, or it's very difficult. So I'm just interested in what you learned from that experience in terms of how to try and make those relationships work when the personalities are really, really different.
Anne Boden 34:55
I think that, probably, the Starling-Monzo story is a case where it didn't work. So I'd much prefer to talk about circumstances where it's worked much better. When you put an organization together, you put together a bunch of people who work together and not necessarily have the same working style. And putting together a bank, Starling, there's a huge number of people who are technologists, who are very into data and logic. And then you have people who have more creative backgrounds. They're going to be helping us with our marketing. Combining those in one organization where people support each other and can appreciate each other is quite a challenge. But that's what I've been doing my whole career. I'm very, very good at putting teams together. And so much so that I've created two banks.
Graham Allcott 36:03
That's a really nice way of putting it, and it feels, in the book, like it's quite a painful story. There's definitely some pain in there. Is that fair to say?
Anne Boden 36:15
yeah, it's very painful.
Graham Allcott 36:16
And why did you want to include that in the book, because you also say that the book is not a memoir. And so you could have chosen to just leave that out or just mention it fleetingly. Why was it story that you wanted to revisit?
Anne Boden 36:32
I think there's a couple of things. First of all, you have to be authentic. You have to put the stories about things that went wrong, as well as things that went right. And the story I tell about creating a team and losing a team, I hope will will help people in building their businesses and dealing with similar issues. People tell people normally tell the stories, but how everything went right. People normally tell the stories of their the hero at the end, everything was fantastic and they made all the right decisions. And in the end, they succeeded. You rarely get the stories of things that go wrong. And when things fall apart, because those people are less likely to survive, and are not going to have a platform. I have the platform to write banking on it. Because I now am a CEO of a very successful organization of a successful bank. Unless I had that platform, I wouldn't be able to write the book and share the book. And if I only wrote the stories that were the good stories, I think that'd be false. It wouldn't be authentic, it wouldn't be transparent. And people would feel as if I let them down.
Graham Allcott 38:12
But I suppose ultimately, the people talk a lot about this idea of survivorship bias, right? Where we we tend to associate certain people or certain stories around success, almost like because they're the last one standing. But that doesn't mean that like everybody that starts a technology business in their garage is going to be Apple or Google, right? There's all the ones that fall on the wayside who don't get to tell their stories. So yeah, it feels like you're doing a really important service to people by talking about that so honestly and openly in the book. I really enjoyed reading the story, particularly a bit about the domain names. Do you want to tell that story?
Anne Boden 38:51
Yes, yes. Monzo was originally called Mondo. They had to change their name because they were challenged. They didn't know the trademark and we found out that they were probably going to change it to Monzo. And we spot they hadn't registered all the names such as Get Monzo or whatever. We were trying to soften the relationship between us and Monzo. Now everybody knew that there was history between the two organizations. We were in the same space, we were competing against each other. And so I had the idea of when they announced the new company name to simultaneously launch a website which was Get Monzo and when people search for the new company name. Up came the screen with congratulations on the rename, the rebrand, lots of love and it was intended to soften the rivalry, the competition, and perhaps it did.
Graham Allcott 40:13
Also in that message you had a bit about when you start a new bank, everything is possible. That sort of link back to your previous name as well. Right? which is kind of like, that's a bit of a dig, isn't it?
Anne Boden 40:24
It was very much a secret message? Yeah. What would the journalists get? Look, starting a company is not life or death, you know, it is his commercial, it is financial. It's about your career and your financial success but it's no more than that. And it's very different. It's very easy for people to get these things out of control.
Graham Allcott 40:54
And having revisited the relationship with the book. That particular piece, I think, was serialized in one of the newspapers recently as well. What does the relationship look like now?
Anne Boden 41:06
We occasionally see each other on panels? Yeah. where, you know, there's a panel and there's a, there's a moderator...
Graham Allcott 41:17
People must all the time, try and book you guys to be on the same panel together to try and, you know, that becomes like a FinTech kind of attraction, right? It's like just Anne versus Tom. Does that happen?
Anne Boden 41:33
Incredibly, it's never Anne versus Tom because what actually happens is this for you sitting on a panel, okay, it says, there's somebody say, from Lloyds Bank, or somebody from Barclays, Anne and Tom, from Starling and Monzo, and somebody from the audience asks a question, and instinctively, Tom and I both know we're going to answer it in the same way. Yeah, we have a lot in common. We're a new banks. And we've, you know, we're a technology driven bank with a vision and a mission and therefore, when the question comes, and we glance at each other and go - who's going to answer this one? But we know very well we probably have the same answer. So it's so it's more core deal than it was previously? I think we're very, very respectful of our customers. And the first thing is our customers, and we have an obligation to our customers and to the regulators and to our employees, and nothing will get in the way of that.
Graham Allcott 42:43
It's a good answer. Let's move on. I will ask you about systems. You mentioned computer science degree and you mentioned the book that you feel like your brain thinks in systems. I was just curious about what that meant for the rest of you, the way that you set your own work up and your productivity and your company and team and everything around you. Yeah, tell me just a bit more about systems and what that means to you?
Anne Boden 43:11
Very, very good question. I think that things are very organized. Everything I do is quite routine. And how can I explain we have lots of time during the day when we meet to discuss certain things. And most of the time, my desk is pretty clear. Most of the time, my emails are down to two or three that are unread. I use a few systems, but I use them very well. I don't believe in doing things like change management, or project management. Although my history and my background is project management and running big programs. I believe that we're now in a world where it's easier to do things than to plan them. And it's easier to do something and redo it than work to get it 100% right the first time. We have certain rules of Starling, we don't do presentations for each other. We don't believe in a huge amount of planning. We do everything we do. We do it in a way which is very low risk. So if you make a mistake, we can undo it very, very quickly.
Graham Allcott 44:37
Nice. And you reference the lean startup is that a book that's been quite influential for you in terms of how you set the organization up?
Anne Boden 44:46
In the early days, yes. It's quite difficult to do a Lean Startup bank. And the problem is that the regulator wants everything to be very, very well tested. Very, very rigorous, and hundred percent foolproof before you can have a banking license. And that's a bit of a contradiction to the lean startup. Yeah, but you know, there aren't any books about starting a bank.
Graham Allcott 45:14
If your audience is all going to be people who want to start a bank, you're going to have a small audience of very, very committed readers. But I think you will have a much bigger audience beyond that, too. There can't be that many other people out there who are just like, I need to start a bank tomorrow, right?
Anne Boden 45:39
Now I think the idea is the... I hope that what comes through in the book is the fact that it's optimistic, and it is dealing with having the resilience to deal with things that go wrong. It is enjoying the process. I hope people enjoy reading the book, because I enjoyed starting the bank. I think that people can take away a few stories about entrepreneurship, and about career change as well. And how you can do things at all stages in your life, that really take you out of your comfort zone.
Graham Allcott 46:17
I mean, it just reads in a way that there's this sort of can-do. You know, screw it, let's do it kind of attitude that goes through the book really jumps off the page. I think for someone who, you know, anyone who's listening to this, who is thinking it's too late to change career, I mean, you were changing at 55, you're going into a world where it's a very male dominated industry, FinTech and you're there is the the female 55 year old founder. I just think it is super inspiring, as well. So there's a whole bunch of reasons to go check out banking on it. And you don't have to have that motivation to start a bank. I was just going to ask you one final question. And then I'm going to let you run in two minutes, because you've got another appointment. And I want to make sure I'm respectful of your time. But before we were talking about this idea that if the stock exchange bell rings a new set up, you probably do it all over again. And you love that sense of being busy and the 24 seven lifestyle of that, and there's a bit in the book where you talk about, you could never go on a holiday where there's no Wi Fi, because you always need to be connected to back at the ranch. And I just wonder that sense of being busy and connected. It's so clear why that's, you know, like, so clearly there's adrenaline around that. It's exciting and satisfying. But do you feel like there's anything that you've sacrificed for that to be your life over the last few years?
Anne Boden 47:46
No, I think that I am extremely fortunate to do something that's so engaging. It is such a privilege to be able to do something as relevant. And has such an impact to Starling. Have I given anything up for Starling? No, I wouldn't have had it any other way.
Graham Allcott 48:19
And that's such a lovely note to end on. And we'll share in the show notes, all the links to how you can follow and on social media and how we can get copies of the book. Anne, thank you so much for being on Beyond Busy.
Anne Boden 48:31
Thank you so much. I really enjoyed talking to you. Thank you very much.
Graham Allcott 48:43
So thanks again to Anne for being on the show. And thanks also to Matt Crossey from Penguin Business for helping me to set up that conversation. My producer for the show is Mark Steadman, his podcast platform Podiant is well worth checking out and our sponsors for the show are Think Productive. So if you're interested in productivity training and coaching, if you want to help your team to be more productive, just go to thinkproductive.co.uk. And we have a range of workshops delivered both online and in person, all of which talks you through all the main habits for my book, 'How to be a Productivity Ninja', and more importantly, how to put them into practice. So if you're interested in that, just going to thinkproductive.co.uk Final thing to say is we have all the show notes and previous episodes available at getbeyondbusy.com. So just go to getbeyondbusy.com for more, and we'll be back next week with another episode. We have got the incredible Max Dickins who is talking about improv comedy and what you can learn from improv to help in the world of business. And also a whole range of other stuff, how he had a number of adventures with the website, Groupon and lots of others. Great stuff as well. So really looking forward to next week's episode.
So until then, take care. Stay warm, stay safe, and I'll see you next time.