hello hello hello and welcome to the starting line with me Rich Lee and episode 6 thank you very very much for all of your love and sharing and kindness about episode five with Andrew block Lord Sugar's PR advisor PR expert if you haven't listened to it go back it's a great chat PR is all around us much like love R you're weird anyway uh so go back there's some really good stuff in that episode I think a lot of people have been surprised by perhaps they didn't know who Andrew was or didn't know much about PR but they've been surprised by I guess the business side of things and the minations of PR public relations at play for those of you that have ever hated the Geo comp Mario go compare ads all love them you're about to hear the person responsible and of course not just the person responsible for the ads but for the creation of go compare itself Haley Parson's OB now Haley is a very special woman she is essentially responsible for the creation of the multi-billion pound price comparison industry she says it herself I created comparison she was right there building confused.com for Admiral and that was the first price comparison site and then she went from that to create and go compare obviously not quite as easily as that in fact she was overlooked for a CEO role having created confused.com for Admiral she took it to a million pound profit a month and they overlooked her and she says it's the best thing that ever happened to her that's when she went off to go and create go compare go compare eventually got bought for1 million valuation of just shy of 200 million and Haley invited us to her house in Cardiff where she is the proudest Welsh woman you ever did see dragons everywhere beautiful place overlooking Cardiff Haley is the first woman to have been appointed a non-exec director for Cardiff Rugby Club and she and I really get into the Weeds on Welsh rugby rugby in general so if you're here for entrepreneurship we've got that ticked if you're here for sport we talk about that we pretty much talk about anything and everything but um a special episode a fantastic guest and she does say she says I did indeed go out to create the most annoying ad possible and for many of you it certainly worked but you remember the name don't you follow the starting line at starting line show on Instagram and Tik Tok @ starting line show without the W on Twitter The Starting Line podcast on Facebook go to the website STP pod.com email us hello atp.com keep sharing keep supporting keep reviewing we got into the top business chats again last week with Andrew's episode I'm sure we'll do it again with this fantastic guest so without further Ado I bring to you my conversation with Haley Parson's OB and you won't want to miss the story about getting that OB I mentioned a moment ago that I listened to you on International Women's Day 2010 you were talking about female entrepreneurship uh but you also said that you'd not done very much in the way of public speaking very much in the way of interviews things like that why I've always focused on the business I you know for me it's always been work hard achieve your goals get where you need to get to not about me and self-promotion of myself and and and and that kind of thing it's not really something that I've particularly enjoyed doing or I'm comfortable with it's kind of it's the business and about the business and getting the business where it needs to get to I think for me it's always you know I've always from soon as I left school and started working I just loved working being in a work environment hitting goals making achievements building things working with people kind of so it's that team thing that I love it isn't actually being out there by myself do doing things that isn't kind of within my comfort zone really it's not it's not something I particularly enjoy and therefore I kind of stuck to what I was good at which is which is is building businesses building teams making things happen it was Insurance straight away wasn't it I left school at 16 I hated school I could not wait to leave school why I wasn't overly academic I didn't overly have friends at school I couldn't give you any nice positive memories about school really I just not really I just kind of stood out I just kind of survived through school I couldn't wait to finish I was quite a stubborn difficult independent person as my mother would tell me um so I think I was always kind of looking ahead and thinking I can't wait to work to wear my own M to do what I want to do what's amazing is you grew up in a place called tbox Road TX road yeah and there's a very famous other founder of a very successful business that also grew up just down the road from me on the street yeah yeah who was that David butress so he's a little bit younger than me we kind of went to the same school and kind of grew up in the same area so David founded juste or co-founded J with Jasper Jasper bue I think the funny thing is Haley you've both been clients in some way shape or form Jessy was a client when I was at my first PR agency uh in 201 10 or so yeah um and I've done work bits and pieces with good comp pair over the years so it's it's very very funny that that that originated on one road yeah what was in the water so no we lived on the same Council house Street in P newood do you think that contributed to you wanting to get out earn yourself some money know I don't think I don't think that was necessarily a driver for me that I kind of consciously thought of my biggest driver actually when I was young it was that I couldn't wait to leave school because I hated school I needed I wanted to work I wanted to do in my own money to do what I wanted to do make my own choices the main thing that I was driven by actually was a car and I tell you why my dad used to have the most awful cars he was a builder she had no seats in the car because he would always be carrying bricks and wood and building materials in the car so we would sit on milk crates he's he's known as Mr health and safety and I I would hate I would hate it and I was always like when I'm older I'm going to buy myself a dream car a car with seats a car with seats so that was kind of that was kind of my Fierce driver I think I remember saying to my mom when I was really young one day Mom I'm going to work really really hard and I'm going to buy myself a red Ferrari W okay so it was a Ferrari from the off it wasn't just I don't just want you know a Ford I don't I I want a Ferrari so in that moment it was a red Ferrari and one of the problems that I have is if I make a statement and say I'm going to do something I kind of have to do it so even when it got to the point then of kind of being able to buy a red Ferrari the sensible thing then would be to have a conversation with yourself is do I actually want a red Ferrari you know but it it wasn't about that for me that was a trophy that was something that I've worked for for the last however many years and therefore I had to buy the red Ferrari so you bought a red do you still have the red Ferrari I still have the red Ferrari yeah well so so that was a big driver for you was the I guess it's Independence isn't it every kid wants it I think because I didn't overly enjoy going to school I was I could also be a little bit mischievous I would Sky off school as much as I could any opportunity I had to not go to school then I wouldn't go to school so I would get into trouble for that I think I was always seen as a little bit maybe a little bit of a troublemaker right a little bit difficult um I can still best entrepreneurs can still be a troublemaker now I can still be very difficult now almost to a person the people I've spoken to on this I'd say that there's a mischievous glint in pretty much everybody I've spoken to you because I think you need it to take the risks need it to say okay well I'm not just going to conform and actually brings me to on on school I talk all the time about um to to my children about how it's not for everybody it's a system and it's the best system we have to get ton of people through it but it's not a perfect system I think a lot of people especially you know ones that perhaps let yourself quite independent you realize quite soon it's like okay this isn't this isn't going to be forther it feels like forther but also not everybody's perfect for this not everybody's then okay I'm going to do a levels I'm going to go to UNI you know I didn't it wasn't for me so I think it's the second you realize that second you realize Iz okay I've just got to get through it and then he start looking ahead so for you that was work at 60 yeah for me it was school was this is just something that I have to get through as soon as I can the day I can leave I leave I didn't care about doing my exams I didn't care about anything but leaving school and getting a job and I left school and I got a job the following day it so happened to be an insurance was it on the High Street did you walk in what was the so I joined up to one of the kind of one of the schemes that they had at the time where I think they pay you £29 a week and they send you out for interviews to kind of clerical clerical work so they sent me out to a place for an interview which is a local High Street insurance broker I actually went for the interview with my friend we had an interview together which was a bit bizarre really and then anyway they offered me the job and therefore started my love affair with insurance it's just amazing that one person put you in a position in insurance that has then created two incredible companies in confused and go compare but then also look look at what's happened to the priz comparison industry as a result you know you've been right at the center of that you could have been a hairdresser your mom wanted you to be a hairdresser right my mother's dream was for me to be a hairdresser she always wanted to have a hair done on a daily basis she's very disappointed in me yeah you could have done you could have done better I could have done better she's now working on the gr kids trying and get them to become hairdresses so you fell into Insurance fell into to Insurance yeah pure luck what were you doing then like what sort of stuff were you doing so I started at the very bottom so you know I was 16 started making the coffees started doing very very very basic paperwork but I I wanted to be on the shop floor I wanted to be selling they wanted to be talking to the customers big came in no it was a very small little independent insurance broker so I it was a husband and wife team but I I I kind of kept saying to them can I learn how to do insurance quotes can I learn to kind of talk to people that's what I really want to do I kind of just kept on and on really until they kind of probably got fed up of me but I would also put the hours in so you know if my role was making coffees and doing the paperwork I would and the filin I would do that and then I would say I've done my full day shift can you now teach me how to do insurance quotes if people come in and they want a car insurance quote so I I would always kind of do the extras and put the extra was in to kind of progress and learn things you've been an employer now when somebody comes to you when somebody comes to you and they show curiosity and they show a want to learn something it's the best you will give them all the time in the world absolutely and I think more people hopefully people listening to this especially younger people that might listen to this just be open be coachable be curious I say so I've been asked a few times in and around PR you know what traits do you look for in an employee I don't care about anything really you mean communication is obviously key but curiosity you you can't teach it you know somebody says how does that work why does that work that way and if you find that thing early like you did then it's incredible that husband and wife team do you remember their names Felicity and Aubrey Felicity and Aubrey Tyson Felicity and Aubrey Tyson yeah that's the coolest name ever um I wonder if they've seen what you've done and so I guess you've not had a conversation at any stage no I wonder if they'll come out the woodwork at some um FIS and Aubrey Tyson if you listen they will have seen in knew then a 16-year-old it was desperate to make her way and yeah and they were that's fascinating you know and they they were great because they needed to put the hours in themselves and therefore they would put the hours in with me because I've all it's it's funny because I kind of went from school in not wanting to put the hours in not wanting to do the work coming up with any excuse I could not to go to school to the day I started working i' I'd work every hour I could I'd always be the first one in I'd be the last one out and I loved every second of it and they were running a small business at that time so to have somebody come and say teach me more please would have been incredible for them and also working for me from 16 that's where I started my Friendship Circle where I never kind of really had the big friendship circles through school and my and my early years as soon as I started work that Friendship Circle was just a wonderful thing for me and the friends that I've kind of made in those very early days still my dear friends now and then I've kind of just collected new fabulous new friends along the way on all the new different things that I do now and that's a wonderful thing was there anybody that you worked with at that first company what was company called so the very first company I worked for was called ATI Associates when I did kind of get myself customer face in and and doing the insurance quot and doing what I really wanted to do one of the first people that kind of came in for an insurance quote was a lady who was a lot older than me had just moved back from New Zealand she was looking for an insurance quote she ended up with a job so MIA she then became we we then became kind of inseparable and um we so we worked together really hard we we socialized together really hard we we just had best best time we worked together a long long time she was my PA in the end in Goen she unfortunately she's passed away now I'm sorry to hear that what's her name Katherine Katherine Slade so anybody that worked to goap will speak so high everybody loved Katherine she was the best so you know so immediately I started that wonderful friendship group and then that is built through everywhere I've worked so you know when I worked for Admiral I made wonderful friends when I set up confused.com I made wonderful friends and also go compare and we kind of we all stick together and and I think if you you're as an entrepreneur when you're working on a new startup business the bond that you have and the engagement that you have and that the way that you work together is quite unique and we'll kind of be bonded forever I think it transcends ability even it's just you get each other yeah you get each other and I think they all say in recruitment don't they it's about the fit as much as it is about the talent well possibly even more about the fit so at that stage you know each other well enough to know okay I can work alongside you but as startup businesses I think the journey that you go through together and that roller coaster ride and and the ups and downs and you know the really really bad hard times and the really great amazing fun times just create something really really unique and really special it's earlier than I was going to talk about but that brings me to rugby and we we'll dance around a little bit but it that's exactly what it is when you play a sport and you obviously you're involved in ciff you're on the board you were the first woman on elected onto the board of Cardiff indeed yeah and the camaraderie that you get from learning to win and lose together as a team it's unlike anything else and effectively everything I do when I in terms of running the company is it's as if I'm running a rugby team you're you're only as strong as your weakest player uh you know your weakest player in defense you know you're only as strong as um you know the your ability to work with and for each other all of those things combined I think that team sport ethos works so brilliantly in a in a team where you rely on people yeah you know if you just shifting units of something it's slightly different but in what you did then you can completely see how those people that you've picked up along the way and you know you stayed with along the way those bonds run really deep and do help you when times are hard because they will get hard indeed and it kind of did work that way you know I kind of had my first job and then Katherine would come with me when I went on to my next place and then I'd pick up another few other people and then I'd go from there to somewhere else and they would come with me and then my group just got bigger and bigger as I kind of progressed and moved on that's what you know they say like Lord CH is a business magnate you know you're a business magnet that's what you do you bring people with you so where after ATI so I worked with I I worked there for probably about a year and then I had a call from a head hunting company saying about a role for another Insurance Brokers that they wanted me to apply for um so they offered me they offered me role running my own branch of four people at I think I was 18 I was 18 I was 18 at time yeah I was 18 so that was a huge learning curve I worked for I then kind of took over my own branch which had had terrible fraud problems that had kind of gone on in the past so taking that on was an experience and I think probably my year working for for that company I probably learned in a year what other people would take 20 years to learn you know so I really learned all that was bad about insurance all the things that you really shouldn't do is any of that still in the industry no the industry's changed hugely you know at that point there was a lot there was a lot of fraud that went on there was a lot of C cash pay you know so things that you can't do nowadays but but back then was kind of rif throughout the businesses um so that was a really really tough challenge and and I kind of managed to turn the branch around and we was doing well and then a friend of mine that I was working with at the time left to join this new company called Admiral that was just setting up in Cardiff so she was telling me about this new company all that sounds really interesting maybe I'll have a little look at what they're doing but my heart was in being an insurance broker where admal was setting up a direct insurance writer which wasn't really what I wanted to get into I found Insurance Broken much more exciting much more Dynamic where the direct Market was a little bit more simple not quite as exciting my why Insurance then I'm just intrigued what excites you about I just loved I loved the people I loved the products I love I loved everything about it is it that there's a ready made an obvious audience for it like what's the well it's a compulsory product for starter so you have to have the product so that's what makes it a beautiful product from from business perspective beautiful product everybody has to buy it whether they like it or not so you markets there yeah and it's never going to go away it's only going to grow so so that was brilliant I I loved people I loved the people I loved all the different products I loved every element of insurance and all all different aspects whether it be car insurance home insurance commercial insurance I just wanted to get as much experience across all the products as I could which is why working for an insurance broker really suited me but the I when I was the more I hear about this new company called Admiral coming to Cardiff I thought that sounds really interesting I would I would like to find out what's what that looks like but my friend had also told me that they were floating with the idea of setting up Insurance Brokers so that's what really kind of interested me so I applied for a role there I got the job and I started working in their sales team and that was great fun so I really enjoyed that literally been on the phone talking to people selling insurance at that time it was very highly incentivized on sales when would this have been oh this would have been I would have been 19 so 18 19 then I I joined them in 1993 so it was there was a dynamic sales Flor it was very financially incentivized to sell I loved that I love the competition was it all inbound was outbound what was the it was it was all inbound and it was great because You' always have top 10 sales people I always wanted to be in that top 10 so generally it was me and nine blos that would be top in the top 10 so I love that competition was it always a very male dominated industry yeah yes always for all the time I was involved in it very much male dominated industry but that didn't I like that that wasn't a problem for me um I I'm quite happy to compete with men on on anything and everything I love the competitiveness doesn't matter whether it was male or female the gender thing never I'm win anyway yeah the gender thing was never a thing for me I guess because then it's all about your talent your ability to make that happen and it's it's a Level Playing Field that point I I always thought I'd go Toe to Toe with any man and achieve anything that they can achieve I can still do yeah I've always went with wonderful men I've always work with wonderful women and and that's how what about at a senior level were there were women given the chance at a senior level in the companies that you worked on well from you know from being very young I started working at the Admiral group who always again which is probably why gender was never a thing for me because they always embrac male female equally it it was never a thing there they always had great great women in in senior positions so it was always a very positive thing for me I've always I've always worked with great women in high positions this is important though to see that I guess there are some people that work in some Industries where that's not necessarily the most visible thing no that's right and it is and it is very tough and very difficult I think for a lot of people in a lot of Industries but for me I would just I just crack on and do my job just so as you say I'm going to be in that top 10 how how often were you number one on that list oh I'm sure a few times yeah a few so from Admiral how long were you there so I was with Admiral for 13 years in all okay so so I worked on the sales side initially um be in mind you know I was kind I was kind of 19 at that time but my ey was always on returning back to being an insurance broker and they' you know they kind of floated the idea of setting up an insurance broker so I would always go and knock on the door of the marketing director a wonderful guy called Stevens and I say David when are we going to set up this insurance brokers and I would go on and on and on and on about it let me just prove the concept for you let me just work on this idea of setting up this insurance brokers for you I can make it work so for anybody doesn't know what an insurance broker does what do they do so back in the day an insurance broker would deal with all different products so you could get your car insurance your home insurance your commercial insurance any insurance any insurance product you get life insurance any insurance product that you wanted to buy you could go to insurance brokers and you could get everything Under One Roof so that that's insurance brokers and you know when Admiral came along and and direct line that was kind of where that was a fundamental change in Insurance distribution where it kind of then went to a direct buying directly but then you you directly buying one product so you're going to them for car insurance right so it's and that's all they do yeah but they underwrite that product themselves so you potentially would get a cheap product but because they're not paying a commission because they're not paying a commission they're selling the product directly to you you're getting a cheaper product but you're only getting one product at that time it was car insurance and actually then where that market moved was two comparison sites so you know you know how people buy their insurance now to how they did when I first started has completely changed and it's been great for me because I've kind of been through every aspect of it it's fascinating that the people I've spoken to they get obsessed with the thing that they then become well known for it feels like you might have been slightly obsessed with insurance to a point to to get yourself to a knowledge base where you are the expert in the room so I was very much obsessed with insurance I knew my product inside out I understood my industry I understood the business that I was in and I was good at it so it's quite interesting now because after kind of leaving the insurance world and entering the Rugby World I understand business I don't necessarily understand or tend to understand rugby where how did you get to from Admiral to confused was that the next step from working on the sales floor at Admiral I was given the opportunity to set up an insurance broker for them after many years of you banging the door mainly because I would keep knocking on those door saying please please please let me prove this concept for you I promise I can make it work and the idea behind the concept was if you're a direct writer which Admiral was they might only want to ensure 15% of the people that go to them so what happens to the other 85% of the business that they don't want to ensure so they would sell those leads on to Insurance Brokers so I was kind of like well why don't we set up our own insurance brokers use those leads ourselves create a separate business and you cover the whole Market you create another strong Business from The leas that you're already generating and paying for so that was the idea behind setting up an insurance brokers so they did give me the opportunity to kind of prove the concept so I kind I kind of worked on that for six months with another insurance broker just to kind of pro prove that concept to them the board gave go-ahead setup and insurance brokers qu still still under the Admiral Banner still owned by Admiral 100% so this was a new business 100% owned by Admiral you know very quickly we took that from being one employee which was me to over 100 employees we took it from no Revenue to uh revenue of 20 million pounds wow you know we created a a phenomenal business there so so that that was kind of 2021 22 so you got this 20 year old let me do this and they're saying oh go on then2 million pounds later they're like all right fight we should have let you do that sooner possibly so so that I mean that that business worked great however the insurance Market was changing so so that business was very much high risk high performance Vehicles there was a lot of um a lot of your clientele might have had more bad debt than that's the 85% so what what reasons would you turn somebody away for insurance well this is the beauty of broker you wouldn't turn anybody away you but the 15% that they would say yes to they'd say yes for reasons like you said there maybe they don't have the bad debt maybe they're maybe the car's just you it's it's not a high performance car so so go back to when the direct writers first come to Market they wanted all a nice safe good business of course and then where does all the other business go so Insurance Brokers could ensure anybody we wouldn't turn anybody away yeah so we would find a market for everybody you just got to find the right premium but there would be a premium for it you know so we would ensure a lot of high premium high performance non-standard risk and it was all vehicles at this point yeah yeah yeah so you built that so we built we built a big business but that big business is kind of highrisk business and and at that point that that business was changing and the market was changing um and you had you had the introduction of of online and where that was going to go when did when did online start as a sales kind of channel for insurance so it must have been kind of late '90s mid mid 90s yeah late 90s so that's when I started messing around on the interet that so you built this broker so we we then created this broker called Gladiator um and that was a great time so I we kind of worked on that building that up fully for about five years and then the market was changing the business was going a lot more online a lot more people was the you know was buying from direct writers so the broken Market was you could see that the broken Market was starting to turn and it was therefore a good idea to kind of move away from from that market so I actually work we we actually sold that business on to another insurance company so I managed the Outsourcing of that so that was your first I guess experience of an acquisition yeah again were you close to the acquisition I kind of managed the whole process through it was it was a real learning curve really interesting did you have any shares or anything in Gladiator no I was only ever an employee but they you know they they taught me a lot I you know the majority of what I learned I learned within my time at Admiral the opportunities that they gave me and the things that they allowed me to do really was phenomenal partly because I think I would just ask to do these things and put myself forward for them and I think also because of my experience and my insurance knowledge that I had there was anything that was a little bit tricky or they didn't quite know what to do with and didn't kind of fit into their Standard Insurance boxes it would almost be oh let's throw it Haley's way and leave it with Haley to deal with and again I loved that that that was great so after we outsourced Gladiator and I was managing that process the Admiral group were looking at the idea of setting up a commercial business to to anal Commercial Insurance direct so they asked me to do a proof concept for that and is this to go across insurances so not just motor so this would this would be to move to business Commercial Insurance so this would be a new product um for them so I kind of worked on proof concept of that for them for the year so I was kind of working on the Outsourcing of gladiator I was working on the proof of concept for a commercial broker you know so so so good interesting things I kind of got to the point where the commercial broker had got board approval to go ahead so think the adal group kind of wanted me to go down that route but at that point there was this idea floating around of this of how they deal with the leads that are now kind of going through the internet so so the market was changing insurance was changing distribution model was changing so there was this idea of how do we take leads that we can't C for that we don't want to ensure under Admiral Direct we can't now sell those leads on because the leads actually drying up on the telephone and they now all kind of come through the internet how do we deal with those internet leads so there's this idea of taking them online and that's kind of where confused.com came from so there was this idea floating around and I kind of thought oh that sounds quite interesting that's a complete change of distribution model for insurance we don't quite know what we're doing with it but it would be really interesting to kind of be at the Forefront have a little play around with it and see what we can do a wonderful lady and a wonderful friend of mine called Kate Armstrong who was one of the original founders of Admiral she spoke to me about getting involved in that project so that that was a bit of a game changer I guess I guess for me and for the industry because that was where insurance comparison was bornn so at that point there was no comparison services in the UK we were literally making this up as we were going along I I kind of always say there was there was a number of us that were kind of troublemakers within the Admiral group that they kind of knew we were really good at what we did we knew our stuff they didn't quite know what to do with us so they kind of put this team together gave us this concept that became confused.com and left us to it so we we were playing around with this concept and this idea and literally we were locked in a room we had no windows in our in this they really put you this is the equalent to put you in the basement this is we don't know what to do with them put them in there they'll create in the basement see what they can create um yeah so we kind of played around with this concept we had a couple of it developers then to kind of work on some te some technology so there was nothing to kind of Base this on there was nothing to kind of Copy in any way we really were making this up as we were going along so the concept was build some technology that can use the leads that Admiral don't want to insure themselves take take those leads pass them on to the insurance other insurance companies and insurance brokers make an income from it and we we we played around with the concept we played around the technology oh for for a good year what did Brokers say as you approached them and said hey we're doing this at this point my role was to convince the insurance Market that this was the new way forward and the new distribution mod the good thing was I kind of knew all the insurance brokers so I had a good in there um and I had a good Network I didn't so much know the direct writers but I kind of got myself out there I got in contact with everybody and I started to talk to them about this concept initially they weren't Keen so we we kind of changed the like like any good entrepreneurial business I think you kind of the model changes as things happen so what you initially set out to do you realize it isn't going to work that way so you adapt and you change really really quickly so the first thing was um these insurance brokers and insurance companies are not really bur into this concept so we need to prove it to them Alo this is post 2000 right so you've had the dot bust the boom and bust you've had people that possibly don't trust it so much so there's nothing there's nothing out there like this insurance companies and Brokers didn't really want to see the market change but they were all desperate for leads so we we we kind of figured we need to prove concept to them that it works because they're not actually going to sign up and work with us to get there we'll make it work we'll give them the leads without them knowing they're getting the leads and then we'll go to them say hey you're getting all this business from us now you need to pay us for it or we'll turn the top off oh turn the tap off indeed so we had enough funding to advertise on TV for two months was that all internal funding this was this was all within the admal group so we had enough funding to we made the very most basic TV ad I think we spent about 75,000 pound a month if I remember two months to see if we could generate any leads we did generate some leads right the problem with that is as we started to drive volume websites at the time couldn't cope with that level of volume so we kind of crashed a number of websites where they couldn't kind of cope with the volume but what was great with that is we could then approach them and say look we've proved to you now that we can give you this volume so we need to can we now come up with a commercial deal to kind of work with you going forward on this new distribution model of the way that car insurance is going to transact in the future it's funny that crashing a website for a period of time especially as I got into PR as 2008 it became the thing you wanted to do I want to drive so much traffic to you that it crashes your site and you know something that sounds terrifying all of a sudden you're like okay that that's proof of that's proof of you know what whatever's driving that traffic so so you did that we did but also our business model kind of evolved and changed as as we were going along you know bearing in mind nothing like this existed we really were making it up as we were going along our very first kind of business plan and con was we would charge the consumer a fee for using our service so we did a number of different tests on that my view was always that will never work and our income needs to come from the insurance companies and the insurance brokers and not the customer there was there was already a model for that in terms of commission and things like that in the industry there an understanding that indeed there was already that model but for for me the whole point of comparison and building a comparison system this was to put the control in the consumer's hands not in the insurance companies and the insurance broker's hands so it was to really kind of switch switch that control and kind of who was in charge and giv it back to the consumer and actually that that we really did achieve that how how long after confused.com did Money Supermarket come well when we were launching when we were working on fuse.com we also knew that money Supermarket was also trying to launch car insur right so for me I wanted to change the distribution model I wanted to simplify the insurance product I wanted us to be able to create this wonderful concept of insurance comparison but I also wanted to beat M Supermarket to to launch how did you know what they were doing oh insur the insurance industry they talk know everything that's going on so so we knew kind of what they were working on and there was competition there was real competition between the two of us so so I was flat out I must we must beat them and launch before them what was your launch schedule kind of so from right we sat down in this room we're making this we're starting to build do you remember how long it took from that to launch in all we we really worked on it hard for a good two years there was an awful lot of work to be done you know the hardest thing was definitely convincing the insurance companies that this was the way insurance was going to be purchased in the future luckily I had the contacts and then and the networks to work with so we created these tv ads we started giving the the leads over just to kind of prove the concept test how it all works and actually I remember and this is probably one of the most defining moments in the insurance industry and it can of still stands today I had this phone call from um out of the blue from nor of Eva as they are now and it was the marketing team and they said we think you're hitting our website and putting some leads through to us I said absolutely we are we've been giving you a lot of business and it's about time we had a commercial conversation of how you're now going to pay us for those leads so the conversation continued and he can said well how much would you want to charge us so at that point we'd never had any conversation about working this kind of business model out so you're on the Fly completely on the Fly he and you know at this point we're a startup business we're making it up as we're going along we got can you know we really are flying by the seats of our pants but you're trying to kind of you know pretend like you know exactly what you're doing and your professional and all these things are kind of all planned out so completely on the Fly I made the price of40 I did have some logic in my head on this at that point you know your figures well enough at this point I thought right the average premium is £400 right 10% sounds fair 40 I also knew that the insurance Market at that time if they were advertising themselves might have been paying 150 the lead if they're paying 150 themselves why wouldn't they pay us 440 so we struck a deal in that moment at that time completely randomly made up and they started paying us some money and it was the first time we ever made any money so with Norwich Union 40 pounds a lead how many leads were you sending them oh we were decent enough decent enough where I say we made some money instead of losing money we might have made 100 quid yeah you know but we didn't Lo we weren't losing money and that was kind of the turning point then and then it was like right we have to now go down this rout of talking to all of our insurers they want to work with us now they have to pay us for the leads and that was you know a very difficult time but very exciting you know get getting those insurance companies on board getting them pay us but for me that was probably one of the best most exciting times you're in start you start making money in your start it is so exciting when you're just making those deals and you you know you start making money and all of a sudden you kind of it's not even about the amount of money is it it's not it's again every business person I speak to there's it's the deal yeah it is it's all about the deal absolutely but that was that was the point H and I can picture it now like it was yesterday you know sat sat in our room with no windows no furniture you're back to your it up making it up on the flight and that price inst structure is still in place now and that is how it has creeped up knowing what I know now I would have said it's 40 pound but it increases as the insurance premiums increase but there we are that's incredible so that one phone call kind of defined standard that was absolutely the moment that was the game changer did you beat money supermarkets a launch we did we did launch first so confused.com was first comparison service to launch which was wonderful however the real goal was get to realtime pricing and money Supermarket got realtime pricing for us we were only a week or two behind was that a technological yeah and they were quite a while behind us then on car insurance because they started to work on insurance so when did you move from motor into broader Insurance products we kind of we we cracked car insurance first and we got that right we got that working perfectly and then home home insurance became an easy thing to get into other products then became an easy thing get then it just becomes a spend off doesn't it yeah and you know our uh the technology and and the business model that we kind of made on the Fly it's kind of kind of all still in place now just operates exactly the same way really I I talk a lot now everybody wants everything yesterday right especially young business people or young people entering into the business World they think if anybody listen to this takes anything away from your story so far it's you're curious you get obsessed you learn you keep learning you keep learning and then you take that away with you you said a moment earlier in the in the chat you said that it was almost when when I said about Equity you're like yes but I was an employee still you know and that's you're still learning you're still but they're still teaching you oh absolutely you've had all that experience it's never it's never been about money for me it's always been about building things doing things for the right reasons having goals and targets that and that competitiveness of what you're looking to get to and achieve it was it was never about it's never been about many five years we worked on confused.com and in that time we'd completely changed the distribution model we'd completely turned Insurance on its head you had confused a money Supermarket hugely successful businesses I remember having a moment where I kind of thought you know we're making over a million pound a month profit but we don't have the desire to continue with the change needed to do what's right for the consumer it was all about we've built this we're at this point we make a million que month we don't need to change anything we don't need to develop we don't need to improve it any further it kind of just works okay yes it works for you as a business wasn't quite working for the consumer at that point so I where I really then kind of wanted to Champion be the consumer champion and do what's right for the customer and what was happening was insurance companies still had that control they still had that power and they were stripping down their policies and giving the consumer less because all they cared about was getting to the top of the list because in what comparison done had made it all so price sensitive people was only buying on price and that's fine if you know what you're buying insurance is a it's a complicated product sometimes it is a very complicated product and at that point the consumer didn't know what they were buying the product they were buying was being reduced all they understood was how much they were paying for the product I had a moment and Kate who I set the business up with Chief Executive she decided she was going to retire and leave so I kind of thought okay that job should be mine you see and believe in the value you're creating for the company and you'd hope that that see the same thing oh absolutely I worked so hard on that business on building that business on making it what it was but I wasn't actually then considered for the chief exal they automatically just brought somebody else in so that didn't sit Comfort like a massive kick in the te that didn't really didn't sit comfortably with me don't get me wrong best thing that ever happened happened to me um in the end it didn't feel like that at the time so a little part of me was like okay that's not right but I I kind of crack on regardless I carry on I do my work I give it my best I still put in all my hours um I still keep building but in the in the back of my mind I'm a wee bit gutted and you know so that that that kind of happened and then I remember then I don't know possibly 6 months later getting a call from somebody in the industry that I worked with who who said to me Hy just to let you know I've been offered a job at a competitor of ours to set a comparison site and I remember having one of those moments where I think to myself hang on a minute if you're going to set up a comparison site I've got much more knowledge much more experience if you can go and do that I can go and do that so that that was fundamental moment for me that convers so were they getting in touch to say hey do you want to come with no they get in touch to just say look I deal with you now just let you know I'm not going to be here anymore I'm leaving my job I've been given this opportunity a company called you switch set up Anar a comparison service and I was like well hang on a minute I can bloody well do this did you make up your mind then I that was one of those um that was definitely one of those moment I think you know that was the moment that was the first time that I ever thought hang on a minute I'm good enough now to go and do this by myself so that was a bit of a game Cher there late 20s at this point and you'd had 13 years with Admiral yeah it was the first time that I kind of thought my time's up now here been given some great opportunities I've done some great things I I've set up a number of businesses for other people now is the time that I've got my confidence and I can I really truly believe I can do this for myself I understand this industry better than anybody else I created comparison so if anybody else can go off and do it again it's me I'm so glad you said that and it I'm going to say that for you anyway but I'm so glad you said that because Chang the industry it was that moment of realization that was kind of do you know what enough is enough now later on that day had a business meeting with somebody that wanted to kind of join our our services and we're just having a general conversation out of the office and he kind of says to me what do you actually want to do now what do you want to go on and do would you like to come and work for me and set up an insurance company for me abroad you want to set up insurance I said no that's not what I want to do I want to set up comparison site and I need some funding for it so instead of employing me fund me invest in me to help me set up a comparison site this conversation just so happened at that time and it it it wasn't planned it wasn't thought through it was just good luck and time at the right time I've worked with a lot of companies a lot of Founders that have gone after investment and it doesn't just fall into your lap so I've heard you talk about that initial investment was it was it from that person by the way so we both had a conversation we both got excited about the prospect then of setting up comparison side so I was excited about the idea he was excited about the idea but it really was a conversation on the flight in the moment and he said well I can introduce you to somebody that you you know might be interested in funding it I said great let's do that literally a couple of days later a meeting was set up we had breakfast early one morning and I think within about an hour at the end of breakfast Tom my initial investor kind of said Haley if you if you want to do this I will invest I will invest up to a million pounds and I I saying that is great I will go away and work on a business plan but if we're doing this we're doing it straight away there's no messing around if you're up for it then I'm up for it and we're leaving straight away and we're starting and we're starting on it straight away so he was like yeah yeah okay I'm not sure he quite could believe me so yeah within the hour he'd kind of agreed to million pound investment I think when I rang him the following day and said Tom we we're good to go we're doing it I think he a little bit taken back and surprised but again if I say I'm going to do something I'm going to do it going to do itari comes back to that so how soon did you then because as I understand that you then went back to some of the team at confused actually do you know what there is a process on this so the following day I was going off to business meeting and my partner in crime that um I'd worked with for a long long time Lee was kind of I picked him up we were in the car together we were we were driving along and I remember saying to him G I'm leaving I need to know where your loyalties lie are you staying where you are or you coming with me so at this point i' had no discussion with him on what I wanted to do what my intention were nothing and he just kind of looked to me and said I'm coming with you h of course and that was the end of that discussion because we then got to where we were we were going to carried on with business and you know had no more discussion on it so I kind of um not up a little business plan but actually I was so busy at that time on the confused business that I didn't get to have the meeting with the um investor for about six weeks so I got my little business plan I'd put together in my bedroom which had taken me about half an hour it really was a back bag packet um best absolutely I still got it still got do you really yeah I do I would love to see that thankfully we didn't million times better than what the plan uh predicted which is wonderful so I look back on it now and laugh and think oh my God we did so much better than that so Lee who I had the original conversation with six weeks ago I had a follow on conversation with him and kind of said right Lee I've got an investor I've got a business plan we're leaving tomorrow been in mind we hadn't spoken about this for six weeks we've been too so busy we've just been so busy so he kind he kind of said oh my God I thought I dreamt that conv ation so I said no no you haven't J the conversation we're on and we're leaving tomorrow and um yeah we resigned the following day you mentioned it wasn't he didn't resign did he so the the way the kind of conversation went was rightly we're leaving and we're leaving tomorrow and we're starting working on this straight away and he was like oh hang on a minute now we can't do this until we get Dan on board who needs to come and do the it build the I platform I said right so you saying we can't resign until we get him on board he said no we got to get him on board first I right okay quickly got hold down Dan D I need to have a conversation with you when I kind of had the conversation about leaving and setting up by ourselves that scares the life out of him you know he he he almost can't cope with with that concept I really sold the concept to him sold exactly what we were trying to achieve B mind I was making this up at that point hours and hours we all spent together together so the three of us then we spent hours all together talking about the concept talking about the idea talking about our vision of what we wanted to achieve was going to achieve and then I said right we're going for this boys yeah so they said yes so we're resigning tomorrow yeah they said yes I said what happens if you go in to resign tomorrow and the person you resign to begs you not to leave or even cries because they're so upset that you leing they're like oh I don't I would cope with that right I right I'm going to have to resign for the three of us I can't trust you guys not to back down when when when push comes to shove they like yeah you're right Tate you're going to have to do it for the three of us did you I did you did I did God did they cry it was it was quite a traumatic um leaveing confused was quite a traumatic time being in mind you know I joined ad from the very early days I'd spent 13 wonderful years with them I was very very loyal I loved that business I loved everything about it and actually if you'd have asked them at any point who is the most loyal person in your business they would it would have been me and I was right up until that moment I think there's a lesson in for business phoners that that don't respect and kind of act accordingly according to that loyalty and again you don't need to say it but I'll say it for you that role should have been yours and the fact that it wasn't I felt the role should have been mine I'm so glad that it wasn't I mean I am so absolutely glad that that role wasn't and I do I do kind of think that things happen stages happen and you evolve and you you you kind of come out completely a different person and actually the the change in me from not getting that role to getting to the point of me realizing just what I was capable of and that I was ready to kind of go on and do it for myself I became a different person in that moment and the person then that went on to create go compare was a different person to what worked on confused.com did it ever feel like a risk it was a huge risk the whole for the three of us actually leaving was quite a traumatic experience because it's the loss of something isn't it it we it really was we we LED that business confused we built that from nothing that was our baby we had such a tight group that we worked with so for us to go off and do what we did and the way it was viewed internally you know and I get it was quite traumatic were there any kind legal kind of fingers wagged there was but actually we didn't do anything wrong we had noncompete we hadn't worked in the background on anything you created an industry of this all of a sudden how do you compete with the industry you've created absolutely you do it bigger and better and better we hadn't done anything we hadn't worked in the background on anything um there was no planning or anything that kind of went on in the background to get us started we were we were leaving and we were starting from scratch with nothing um I remember having this moment of leaving the building so there was me Lee and Dan we'd left the building remember being stood outside the build I remember having this cold sweat come over me and I remember looking at them both and thinking oh my God I'm responsible for this these pin out the rest of my life I think they made a good decision I think they'd agree right they they'd agree now that they made a good choice I've had a couple of moments where I just get that cold sweat come over and just have a Oh My God moment there was that one and I remember having a another one a we while later where I signed a loan agreement for30 million having another moment where I think oh my God this is huge how much what was the distance between that initial investment and that 30 million pound loan so my initial investment was enough to set up office build technology build make an initial TV ad get to the point where we could launch had no money spent on marketing after that point you knew straight away that TV was the way to build a brand yeah yeah at at that point at that point I knew exactly the business model worked we'd got the business model pretty much perfect through all the work that had been done at confused.com and money Supermarket the business model was nailed down things happened and changed during that time as we were building our website and getting ready to launch one of the things being that Tesco compare was looking to launch and that became quite a scary Prospect all of a sudden that Juggernaut come in so we're at the point where we are six people we're in Newport little office in Newport we had windows in our new office which would be sucess um we had our little 50 pound Ikea desks that we built ourselves the guys were building in language they'd never used before that was all a learning curve because we couldn't do in the same ways we built confused.com because that would have led to legal problems you know so we're back to the stages of making it up as we're going along with technology that we're building then somebody brings me up and says just had a meeting with somebody at tesos they're launching test scope their aim is to take you straight out of the market and and just wipe you out completely they they're going for it big style see again you have that moment where you think so at that that point we were six people we had half a million pound Tesco compare we're looking at having 200 staff they were looking at spending 20 million pounds how on Earth do we compete with this we have to get to Market as quick as we can we we have to escalate everything get to Market as quick as we can which you'd already done with confused because of money Supermarket so you knew how to rush yeah but we we're writing in different technology now that we've never used before so when I wanted to set up goir the main thing I wanted to do to change the way the model worked so I wanted it to become about the right product at the right price not just the cheapest product that's at the top of the list that everyone so we had a different concept that we wanted to go with so that I wanted the consumer to know exactly what they were buying it was quite interesting actually because when we did launch where were the other sites everybody 100% policies was bought at the cheapest price actually only 50% of ours was bought at the cheapest price because we were really clearly showing people what they were getting this is where the power started to shift then consumer the consumer was kind of getting what they wanted and making their own informed choice so that was um that was quite a fundamental thing I had had had this business meeting that was to talk about them this insurance company joining our panel and working with us but actually what I really wanted to do was to get to their their found and CH set and talk to them about the best money because I kind of thought any 20 to 30 million pound investment I can't just rock up to a bank and get that no it's going to have to come from within the industry so somebody that knows what I've done knows what I'm capable of understands the market and somebody that has got the balls to take the risk on what needs to be done so at the time you thinking investment you were thinking investment but it ended up being a loan right I did indeed have a conversation there with the person that I wanted to have a conversation with about investment about that threw him and no not at all because he went he got there with the same intentions no way so I went there with the intentions of I want I want investment from you and he came with the intention that he wanted to invest in me so it was a wonderful thing you know 20 minute conversation is kind of all it took for us both to know this was we had the ambition to kind of do this together so Qui C we had agreed a 30 million pound investment because at that point we decided that's what we would need to do to really take on Tesco and really go for it did that just from a business perspective did that scare you from Equity no no not at all I was I was thinking bigger picture so I was thinking if we're serious we have to go for this big time now and whatever we need to give away to get the investment that we need that's what we have to do were the three of you still able to retain majority share so I always kept full control legal control of the business I was always in charge of the business from day one to to my last day then so it was always my shout on everything and then the shareholding kind of was was a separate thing so we all took a dilution down everybody was quite happy to do so because actually nobody was kind of in it for the money we were all in it to change the market to prove ourselves to do what we could do you know a big driver for me in setting up go be was to be able to stick my fingers up at the the guys at Admiral and say look at what look look at what you could have had yeah me so that was a big driver for me you know so and and all of us actually our drivers were all around showing what we could do delivering on what we said we could do and really shaking things up fast forwarding you said that TV you knew was a way to build a brand um you've done it with confused goir is very very famous yeah for well a couple of reasons um but one of which is the lovely win the lovely win um how did you and wi meet each other we had a marketing campaign our very first marketing campaign it was working it was doing fine it was doing its job you know and the it it was getting competitive it it was a competitive space between the different comparison sites you know and you kind of got to the point where you had had money Supermarket confused.com us switch compar Market all doing well all Tesco compar nowhere to be seen ah we blew Tesco compar the market they were gone probably one of my best moments has to be the thought of six of us in go in our little go compare office with half a million quid to build our technology um we did it in six months months then you had Tesco compare with 20 million quid with 200 staff took him two years never got anywhere a few days well done we were just about to start talking about win and marketing and building a brand yes so it would be remiss of me not to talk about marketing building a brand with you how did you do it and where does win Evans Gio compario come into play we had our ads and then many supermarket actually went to our our Ad Agency and produc an ad that was pretty much identical to ours so that really cheesed me off that we had kind of two two ads running that was kind of pretty much same messages doing exactly the same the same agency yeah I thought no no non-compete no well it shouldn't have it should never take a CL on that yeah okay we were looking at that point then we were looking at kind of where we take our advertising it kind of got to the point where I was getting a bit at that I couldn't find kind of what we wanted to do next and where it went next remember sitting in front of the TV it was Christmas time and this ad came on and it was the Mir it was the mirat and it was compare the market and it was first time the ad had come on air and I remember watching again talk about Game Changer I remember watching the ad all the way through and thinking Bloody H how this is a game changer this takes us in a completely different direction now instead of talking about messaging and educating people on what comparison services do this kind of takes us into the entertainment space and I don't know what that looks like for us but it looks completely different to how we look now so I remember then kind of going back into the office working with the marketing team looking at different and nothing you know nothing was right TOS I remember kind of getting a little bit frustrated with it kind of saying right I've had enough of this now I'm going to go and S it myself so I got in touch with an old retired couple that had done some wonderful things in the past in media and I sat down and had a conversation with them they were retired and I sat down and had a conversation with them and kind of said look would you come out to retirement and work on a concept for me this is what we're dealing with the only message that we need to give out is our name and that's it so let's take the view of everybody has to buy car insurance so let's be front of mindes and how do we get go compare ahead of any other brand that's your brief to be fair to the other ad agencies they didn't have that brief if they did they might have come up with something different that suited but I literally changed about the name I literally changed the brief on the fly in my conversation with these guys and at that point we've never paid for um concept to to be delivered they were like well yeah we we can do that but you'll have to pay for the concept we're only going to one concept and and that's it so I was like yeah off they went and I met with them then a couple of weeks later they had one concept for me that was it thankfully I loved it so I remember them yeah I remember them kind of they had this drawing of this um this cardboard drawing of a figure which is a very slim figure it reminded me Al almost of the Ask Jeeves character it was this slim character with a wiy mustache and they started singing the over there song they started um talking through an advert of taking over there to go compare and I loved it immediately and I think within 30 seconds I kind of said I absolutely love it and this is what we're going to do so I remember then going back to the office and I Happ to have a board meeting so I kind of sat down with my um board director and I kind of you know I kind of like to work on on a basis of selling a concept getting everybody to buy in and everything being good and positive and happy I was thrilled with this concept presented it to the board and they all looked at me like I was crazy kind of said we absolutely hate it it is terrible and I remember having a bit of a diva stop and kind of saying I do I try not to do this I yeah I had a diva stop and I kind say well quite frankly I don't care what you think I'm doing it anyway and off I trotted and um yeah that's where it started amazing and they gave me the concept actually what they said to me was great we will start recruiting for the character but we'll have to get a singer an opera singer and an actor because we won't get somebody that can do the acting and the singing it'll have to be two and I said no I don't want that I want one person that has to be the voice and the performer I want a round opera singer I don't want your scrawny little ask Jeep's character I want a proper round opera singer that can sing phenomenally that can act fantastically and he has to be Welsh so they looked at me like I was stupid and they kind of said Haley you are being ridiculous we are not going to find that for you and I kind said that is what I want that's what you must find me and they kind of to off saying yeah we're just not going to get that um anyway that's what they got me how so so all I the the next stage for me then was I got a tape with a number of auditions on to watch there was quite a few there's quite a lot of auditions on there so sat down watched the first one no the second one was win so he his audition started to play and pretty much straight away I watched through his audition I stopped the tape and I said he is the one for me that's the one so I didn't watch the rest of the auditions because I knew straight way he was the one for me and it just so happened he lived around the corner from me no way seriously so I said set set up a meeting let me talk to him and see where we get and we've been best friends ever since that's incredible so that that first meeting how did that go fantastic just bril literally the second that we met each other we just started on a wonderful friendship that will last forever the first had launched 14 years ago yesterday so it would be just over 14 years ago that's completely changed his life as well right completely changed his life absolutely I do remember kind of in that thir meeting sitting down with him and saying to him you do realize if you do this this is going to be a game Cher for you but there will be a lot potentially a lot of negative stuff that comes with it and are you prepared for that and I kind of spoke talk talked through with him all the potential downside that might come to him personally how did you foresee that at that time I knew the ad was going to be a nin Our intention be annoying I went into it wanting to be the most annoying ad on television I wanted it to be a little um thing in your head just kept going and with that would come a lot of good and bad and he was like yeah I'm really it's great and and there had there was there has been an awful lot of negative stuff for him and an awful lot of wonderful stuff as well I think the thing with win as well you hear it's it's always his his his singing ability as well as always mentioned his singing ability is phenomenal one of the things one of my greatest Pleasures in life and in fact we'll do it on Saturday now when we go to the rugby together I love standing next to him at the rugby and he sings the national anthem and it is the most wonderful thing so I'm jealous of the Welsh national anthem as an English rugby fan I'm very jealous that you get to sing that and we I have I mean I'm very patriotic I love you know I love English rugby but yeah it's just a bit better right I have the worst singing voice You' have ever K and he has the most wonderful voice lucky that he's really loud and I love that he will almost he he will just belt out the anthem He he'll almost kind of try and hide back so people don't see him and he will belt out the anthem and everybody's looking to kind where is that voice coming from because it really is a wonderful thing do you credit the ad with a lot of the brand awareness and and success Sol go compare you know we were doing well everything was good it took everything up a level I think for for all the comparison sites because it just became about brand recognition and that was it and it actually then allowed the comparison industry to kind of get to a point where it completely dominated there was no point anybody else kind of promoting what they did or Shou in their services because we just dominated them so quick and kind of had the market and that was it there was no going back did you did you have eyes on SEO were you really aware of search visibility and yes how you R CU money supermarket at one point so I used to keep an eye on them um for a couple of other clients of ours kind of in that personal finance money saving space they would put a story out every day that there was something new something new they're getting hundreds and hundreds of links a month those links were equa to better search visibility we know that at the top page one number one page one number two there's a massive difference in number of clicks yeah so how much do you spend think or how much time did you spend thinking about that how much money did you spending about that a lot an awful lot and we we we kind of dedicated a lot of our time and resources to it it was you know equally up there with TV that that we did U and PR was a big thing for us as well and that was great but you know next D the SEO was kind of right up there you know we were a bit flying some of the things that that we would do we got banned had to and had to buy Google and had to get ourselves back up oh good back up to the top what was that happened there just some of the strategies that we would um we would adopt in the early days you know again as a new startup company flying by the seats of our pants everybody was doing it we try everything but as the business grows and the more successful you become you kind of have to clean those things up um so we kind of then kind of took the approach no everything has to be clean everything has to be whiter than white see what was wonderful is I so I started my agency in 2014 and it became an agency and this is something actually I had I didn't mention to on the phone became an agent so I left my agency before that and just said right I'm I'm going freelance I'd started a couple of other things they were doing okay said I'm going freelance and go compare was the first client that I had uh I put my hand up on Twitter I've always been quite noisy and I put my hand up and I think it might have been Andrew is adoro got in touch or Victoria Cal Victoria yeah one of them got in touch and I remember coming to your offices I and I I thought about it as you were speaking earlier on I've got a photo did you have a car in the in the middle of in the office or you had some there a dragon wasag was a dragon one these dragons so I've got a couple super dragons here you had a dragon in the office this um right in you know in the entrance hall and I remember taking a photo of that and feeling like well this isn't half bad I've just put my hand up to say right I'm going freelance and Goen per was one of my first ever clients and and it was all around that PR and SEO kind of remit I think I did a story it was like the burglar's guide to home security or something it was you know it was something like that it was basically like you know we went found the burglar to tell you the things that you shouldn't do and it was it was it was all home insurance orientated oh we had really funky offices and we had themed rooms my favorite one was the 1970s disco room where we had glitter balls on the ceiling think pleasure that was always my favorite room but yeah we always had we always had crazy stuff going on we always had great fun you know and it was all way it was always entertaining you lose so much of that with what's happened you know with working from home with the hybrid model you know the that just that team camaraderie you know the togetherness of it the feeling like you're working with them for each other again you lose so much that I guess you sold and you probably haven't had to worry about being in the office since no I kind of I don't know how I would cope with that you know for me it was all about been in the office being with my guys being with my team and we all love just being together yeah and that's that's what I was saying earlier on about the rugby analogy or the team sport analogy it's like do you think that Wales prepare by a few Zoom calls and then you turn up do a bit of training and then you play it just doesn't happen that way so how long did you run goken power 2006 2015 what what what made that the right time the intentions was always to build business to get the business as big and successful as we could my skill set and the skill set to the initial team was entrepreneurs building businesses from the ground up and I kind of think businesses kind of get to a point where they then need to go onto a different skill set to be taken further and where they kind of need to go so I kind of I did what I set out to do in the time scales that I wanted to do it in I'd achiev what I'd wanted to achieve and it was time to let it go into the corporate world you know I like that entrepreneurial world the corporate world is a different Beast you'd effectively retired Yourself by 40 yeah it's a dream right yeah did it was that an intention no no I it was always i' I've got this thing where I can kind of split personal and business and I can keep them separately so for me with the business is always what's right for the business um whether that's right for me personally or not I deal with that separately so it was always build a business do what's right for the business it will always go on into different hands when it's ready to do so did you feel a sense of loss having sold because everybody goes through that and I say this as somebody has hasn't gone through this of course but the people that I speak to that have exited you know in large exits there's that Elation and the you know we did this and then there's quite quickly the okay that's not part of my life anymore so I'm very emotional about it I loved I still love go compare.com I loved you don't have to promote anymore.com I loved all my time at Admiral so I feel very um protective and attached to all of the business I worked for because I put my heart and soul into all of them the key thing for me with the exit of go compare was that it stayed in Wales and that my staff is protected so that that was the key thing for me on that so I actually sold out to my investors in a way that it could remain protected my people were protected and the business would just continue did Dan and Lee stay with it Lee still there le le the executive there now so he's been there from day one and he's happily still there now brilant and Dan uh no Dan um Dan exit in fact all of the original people that were involved of all exited now apart from Lee there you go our connection is Anders Nelson Anders works with me at radioactive he worked with you at go compare as head of external comms and doing doing all of that good stuff he says that when you left it did change you and and somebody like you not being in a business will fundamentally change it you know and I mean you said that it was for the reasons of I took it to a place and then it becomes you know it has to become more corporate to to succeed in a way that pleases investors and all of those things I thought you'd like to know that he said that it was a a very different place under your stewardship and a wonderful place to be yeah and it changes you know when you go you a business gets so big that it it unfortunately does change from that entrepreneurial startup Spirit to a corporate animal you know they are different things the only constant is change even if you were still there you know there' be differences you know your lifestyle changes you know things happen you know I've seen it again my business is almost nine years old I've seen it happen in around my own mean the the the last few years you know we we've all I think especially in the pr industry in marketing you know we've all kind of gone through you know something of a of enormous change in fact um it's not it's just an underdog mentality isn't it it's wonderful and it's been great and you know I as a startup and the things that kind of interest me it is the making things up as you go along doing things by the seat you know flying by the SE of your pants on the things that you do and the decisions that you make and being able to react quickly to things and make things happen and the the Chase and the sale and all those kind of things but you you know the business does get to a point where it's just just runs and it just works and and those fun elements then are not there anymore and then that's when it's time I think like start a bunch of to kind of move on Haley you have an OB I do you do tell us about going to Buckingham Palace ah it was quite a funny story actually before I got my OB uh maybe I don't know a year before my PA and dear friend Katherine she kind of came she came into my office and she's said oh my gosh I'm so excited you've been invited to an event up um 10 Downy Street with prime minister why do I want to go to D Street and might meet the Prime Minister Katherine you know I don't want to get involved in anything political at all so she was like well that's rude you must go and I was Katherine I'm far too busy there is no way I'm going to London to go to a do at DST Street can't think of anything worse she said that's not acceptable that is really rude she said in fact I'm going to ring your mother and tell your mother how rude you're being OB she trotted about 10 minutes later my phone rings it's my mother young lady I bought you up better than this if the Prime Minister invites you to T down in Street you will go to T down in Street you will not be so rude as to turn them down said momam I'm really busy I have not got time to go she said you will find the time you will go and in fact I'm going to escort you there to the door to make sure you go in she also said to me Haley you know my dream is to get to Buckingham Palace and to get me to Buckingham Palace you might have to go via Downing Street who said your mom said this is my my mother said to me so I go so she she's got it planned out she's thinking step this obviously she must have right anyway she made me laugh so we went we went to London we had a lovely lunch we drank couple blocks of champagne so I turned up at bucket I turned up at D Street drunk um and then there was this little wine waiter that kind of followed me around and got me more drunk and I've got this terrible habit where I have too much to drink my shoes get on my nerves and I have to take my shoes off and I walk Barefoot so as I kind of decide to leave down in the street I'm at the top of the stairs now and I've got a couple of flights to walk down I like to use I ain't not getting down there in my 4 in heels so I took my shoes off wandered down out of Downing Street and my mother's there at the gate waiting and her head just drops with embarrassment she is so embarrassed to see me leave Dr carrying my shoes walking barefoot out of the door she's still embarrassed deeply embarrassed by it now well do you know what we probably shouldn't tell that story then sorry M so so that was that incident and then about I don't know a year later um I'm in the office and um Laura who kind of looks after a general office and and the mail comes running in she comes running in she shuts the door oh my god look look at this and she showed me this letter from um buckingam Palace saying they wanted to reward me with an OB so I was like oh that's a joke somebody's taking the mick so she said yeah that's what I thought so we have a bit of a laugh and a giggle about it we said yeah some somebody's winding us up you know they are I said have you got the have you got the envelope it come in said well let me go let me go and dig out of the bin so she want and dug the envelope out of the bin came back with it and we're both looking at it it kind of looks real like a rubber on it was a seal yeah it can well it looks official it all sounds fine but I don't know anything about how these things work and it kind of said but you you know you kind of need to keep quiet about it and not tell anybody until the event happens New Year's honest list so Laura and I kind of agreed could could be a joke let's not tell it obviously we're not going to tell anybody about it and let wait and see what happens so as we were kind of getting closer I was convinced somebody was winding me up and it was a joke but um no indeed my name was on the honest list and it wasn't a joke and it was quite fine and I did get to take my mom to buckin Palace oh my god did was she really happy did it make her life she absolutely she will say next to her her grandchildren seen her grandchildren being born that is her most special moment do you think your parents are proud of you do they tell you that they are oh yes my mother will still tell you I'm in absolute pain in the backside um but yeah definitely and then how did Cardiff rugby come about so 2015 when I was leaving Goen I knew that they were looking for a female board member and in fact it was quite a convenient thing for me because when everybody was asking me oh what are you going to do next Haley after you um leave Goku here it was an easy thing for me say oh well you know who knows I might take a completely different direction I hear they're looking for a a female um board member at the W Union so um so I did I had a couple of initial conversations to kind of understand a little bit more about it and actually the way that the the board operated and the makeup of the board was something that needed to be changed and it was certainly something that the the chairman at the time wanted to change however I remember him saying to me I want to reduce down the number of directors that sit on the board I want to change the type of experience that these people have however I haven't got the power to do that if I try and make those changes I will get voted out and lose my job which is pretty much what happened so he you you know he kind of set out trying to do the right thing and in the end couldn't make that happen and also they they did appoint they did make an appointment they did make a female appointment on the board and I think actually it was the start of a a positive change for them it wouldn't have been a right move for me because I would got very very frustrated with the way things worked and operated and I would have had no power to change anything having come from somewhere where you had power as and seniority and the ability to make change absolutely ability to say do you know what I'm doing this Opera thing in this ad yeah indeed you know and to then go into an organization where you have no power or say wouldn't have been a good thing for me at all do you think Rugby's scared of change like any business it needs the right people in the right roles to to do the job and things evolve and change as time goes by and you need to bring in as the as the business evolves you need to bring in the right skill sets at that time and I and I just think it was kind of in the Dark Ages and remained in the dark ages for a long you know until it's now been made come out of the Dark Ages and make the changes that needed to be made do you feel like it's in a more positive place now there's potential now for I I think it's going in the right direction I think the changes that have been made are huge huge changes it's a real shame that they've only come about because of recent events that has happened and been exposed being claims of sexism and racism and bullying I think it's a real shame that it's that those changes are born out of those issues but um change changes come in it's like it's any business though isn't it any business needs people in those roles that are capable of running that business that understand that business and have clear strategies and goals to do what needs to be done so one of the frustrations I I kind of have in the Rugby World is I'm a business person before I'm a rugby fan so I look at everything through with my business hat on and I look at it I look at the commercials I look at the people and the way that they are cheated and all and all those kind of things and the culture and the environment and and actually and this is where I think differently to other people I think in the business rugby just so Happ to be the product but you have to get all the stuff off the pitch right and everybody's so focused on what happens on the pitch and whether you win or lose rather than the actual business does any Union get it right in terms of balance in both being a business and getting that product on the pitch I don't know I don't think so I'm thinking you know a New Zealand the union to look to are is or is New Zealand the union to look to you know do the rfu get it right I mean you you'd arguably say based on you know what was it Carling famously said it was um a load of old farts in suits or something wasn't it I mean I you completely ruined the quote but I I think that's still very much the cas I think that is a perfect statement on where we've been you know and I think Whenever there was any trouble the guys in suits at the top would all link arms and they would all sink together the Blazer Brigade the Blazer Brigade would all link arms they would all stand strong together because they don't want to change what they've always known and what has always been which is fundamentally built around their love and their passion for rugby which is no bad thing it's a lovely you know it's a sport to love I mean you know it's a stupid Sport and I love it still it's I'm crocked at 35 because of it but um you know I still um you know I still love it so there's there's nothing wrong with it should still have a strategy it should we should all know you know it is for me is still a business it needs to be a commercial operation and you need to have a clear strategy on what it's trying to achieve and I don't is a clear strategy on what is it I mean player safety that's obviously something I'm looking after the postretirement absolutely all of those things I mean do you think it's doing any good work in in the sense of those things I mean you you involved obviously with card of rugby as an on exec you how being involved in a re how does being involved in a region support you know the national team or is it not about that is it about supporting the regional Team all of for for all of my time involved it's been a very difficult time there is an awful lot of of negativity that surrounds it you know I come from a business background built on positive culture great things positive things and and just a joy like good environments and then you you kind of I kind of start to take a little look into the into the the rugby environment it's a very malale dominated business Environ a very male dominated environment um but it's also very um there's an oldfashioned trying say there's an oldfashioned culture that is kind of bullying and or they don't set out to be bullies but that's how they've always done things the problem is I care about the people there is an awful lot of good people that there's there's there's an awful lot of good people that really really care about it they absolutely love it um but there's a lot of decisions that are made that are fueled by self-interest or their passion for the game which doesn't necessarily translate as the best business decisions that that that should be made and there's also I also see a lot of negativity around around it and actually the way people talk about each other which I've never experienced any anywhere else that I've been involved in that actually have a conversation with somebody about rugby and all they want to do is tell you how useless somebody else is at their job or in their role so it's all quite a diff it's just a difficult it's been a difficult place to be one of the questions one of the questions I quite often get asked is what should we what what should we be doing about the 60 Cal and my true answer to that is I do not know what we should be doing on that because until I know what the overarching strategy is of what we're all trying to achieve at the top level they've said more people more often more enjoyment more Ry I don't know what the right answer is what the right business answer is to that question until I know what we're trying to achieve and where it then kind of what what would sit better with you if it was something like you know with within two World Cup Cycles we want to be in the final is that a better strategy isn't that that's a strategy so a strategy is we will do X in y way to achieve Zed the thing I always hear is it's a smaller playing pool uh that you know the RF you've got a massive playing pool in England not not to throw strategies at you I don't want you to be number one in the world but is that not to is you know to be number one in the the home Nations we will be number one in the home Nations you know by looking after our players by ensuring player Welfare by um you know ensuring you know funding is going into the regions by ensuring but that's maybe the buy that's where the 60 cap role mate might come in you know to achieve X to be number one a c rugby you know we have had this little thing called Co that's caused a bit of difficulty few things but actually all we've been able to operate on the only strategy we've been able to have the last couple years actually is survival and that is it we have literally been working towards no pointless talking about what we can win on all those kind of things literally the last couple years all we can really focus on and talk about is Survival how do we survive to get to the point where we can fight another day that's you know you talk about rugby as a business that's a lot of businesses I know exactly the same my business was the same I've seen agencies fall in the last in the last couple of months I've seen a good agencies people that I know and care about and they fantastic what they do their agencies have gone into Administration or cease trading and things like that in the last couple of years last few years we've seen it in rugby with Worcester with wasps um you know we've seen how ill management and or bad management and or I mean I don't know the ins and outs of rugby finances and how it's run as a business but so let's if if we're optimistic and we say are we still in that fight for survival is is is Cardiff still in the fight for survival post pandemic we are absolutely still in that fight for survival we are now in a position where we can live on and fight another day it has been in a really really tough challenging time I've actually found the rugby experience much tougher and much more challenging than what I found my other businesses to be um and honestly the amount of times I've just wanted to put my head in my hands and cry um over the last couple years because the situation is unbelievable however I do really have hope now that things will change for the better that the right group of people should be able to work together with some common goals and a common strategy for the great good of Welsh rugby and there's no reason why the national team and the four regions can't actually all do phenomenally well with the right investment with the right strategy and everybody working together um you know we really could create something great so I do have that hope for the first time in a long long long time I have hope do you think it's partly because there's a feeling it is a privilege to pull on any Jersey and I mean it must be a point of personal Pride to see go compare on the back of the well shirt now well done you it's fabulous it's incredible to see I I thought as I was watching I had the opportunity to sponsor the national team many many years ago but at that point we weren't the number one comparison site we were the second biggest comparison side I didn't have Admiral on my panel and Admiral were going for the sponsorship and in fact they'd agreed to sponsorship and they were quite far down the lines of kind of um the artwork and getting everything um developed and I had the opportunity if I wanted to of almost gazumping them and um I remember when I I remember on this particular day thinking you know what I want to sponsor the team for the but it was for the hell of it it wasn't because it was the right business thing to do it was because of the sheer devilment in me and the hell of it and I was like do you know what I'm gonna SP I'm gonna do this just because I can and anyway I went home I went to sleep I woke up in the morning thought this is stupid so I gave up I gave up my dream sponsoring the team at that point to put business first and work on smoothing my admal relationship so you're getting them on board so to get them now like 15 years later is amazing you're telling me that for a bigger strategy you made the right choices with the right people at the right time I did indeed is is this what success always looked like to you Financial Freedom and the ability to do what you just said I don't think I ever really stopped along the way and thought about what success looked like I just kind of go on with it it has been the most wonderful Journey but within that there's there's the wonderful Journey with go compare with confused.com with gladiator with Admiral you know I've had the most brilliant opportunities and roller coaster Journeys through business which has just been phenomenal up and down um you know I do feel like I've the experience that I've I've gained the experience that most people would never experience in a lifetime in in in a short period of time um which is which is wonderful fantastic well I think brilliant thank you thank you thank you thank you where's the red Ferrari and there we have it Haley Parson's OB I know it's kind of the done thing to say thank you to the guest and of course we should and you know they were wonderful to spend time with Haley is a right laugh she's just a joy to be around a lovely lovely human being and if only there were more people like her driven kind optimistic a really nice afternoon spent with her I usually use this opportunity to plug the guest social media profiles but you won't find Haley on any of them those of you that do follow us on social media again that starting line show on Instagram and Tik Tok starting line show without the W on Twitter and the starting our podcast on Facebook we post on them all you will have seen so this is week five so it was a month last week and I put some figures to things and uh By the time we'd released five episodes our videos on social have been viewed more than 50,000 times we almost broken into the top 50 business podcasts in the world we have listeners in more than 20 countries and as I say with more than half of this series still to go we've got some more amazing guests for you so keep listening keep sharing keep writing or leaving those five star reviews they do help again if I can give you an insight into the podcast World reviews as well as listens of course help our rhythmically help push us up the charts help get us out to more people and you're listening right now why don't you just go if you can if you haven't already leave a five star review it will push us up thank you keep things moving nicely tell your friends and all that good stuff all right that's enough for me Isn't it thank you very much as ever we'll be back next Monday with our seventh guest by