In this episode, Mark McBride-Wright sits down with James Eder, a seasoned entrepreneur, author, and speaker, whose journey has been shaped by the power of human connection and resilience. From co-founding Student Beans to launching multiple ventures, James has always been driven by a single question: how can we connect more deeply in a digital world? In this conversation, he shares personal stories of growth, transformation, and unexpected moments of serendipity that have reshaped his perspective on life and leadership. James also discusses the profound impact of his heart condition diagnosis, which led to the creation of his book The Collision Code, a guide for breaking down the barriers that isolate us and unlocking the power of empathy, vulnerability, and purpose.
James also delves into his philosophy of leadership, emphasising the importance of permission, confidence, and context in building meaningful connections. Whether it’s offering a simple hello to a stranger or creating deeper engagement in the workplace, James highlights how small, intentional actions can have a ripple effect on our personal and professional lives. Tune in to hear how you, too, can apply the principles of the Collision Code to foster authentic connections, embrace vulnerability, and lead with purpose in today’s fast-paced world.
Read the Transcript
Mark McBride-Wright 0:00
Mark, welcome to the next episode of the safe leader podcast. I’m your host, Mark McBride-Wright, and today I’m joined by James Eder, who is a seasoned entrepreneur, speaker, coach and author passionate about the power of genuine human connection. He co founded student beans at the age of 22 helping grow into one of the UK’s leading student marketing platforms now part of peon pion, helping brands harness the power of 10 consumer groups, including students, military, health care and more, with full funnel insights, advertising and verification, the business has helped shape how brands engage with Gen Z consumers. James’s entrepreneurial path has been anything but linear, from launching and closing tech ventures like cosr to founding friendly Friday, a movement to get the world talking, he’s continually returned to one core question, how can we connect more deeply in a digital world. That question inspired his book, The collision code, a guide to breaking down the walls that isolate us and unlocking what’s possible when we connect with empathy, vulnerability and purpose. James now works as a coach and keynote speaker, helping individuals and organizations build resilience, foster connection and lead with curiosity and compassion. James, welcome,
James Eder 1:26
thank you. Hi. How are you doing you good?
Mark McBride-Wright 1:28
I’m I’m good. And do you know I’ve deliberately kept this quiet until we actually pressed record to start talking student beans. I remember that. I remember that. And so, so when? So you and I are part of another community together, Alex, Mary’s Mic drop. And when I got your profile in there that you were a founder, the founder of student beans, my God, it took me right back to being at Imperial in 2005 getting my, I don’t know, Cafe Nero voucher or gurmy Burger kitchen 25% off voucher, or free cinema vouchers, or whatever it was. You know, used to use that platform loads. Why did you say? Did you do? Was it launched at Imperial, or something literally?
James Eder 2:20
Well, I knew that you had been on Imperial as well. I’d obviously done the same. You’ve seen my profile. You make an effort, but, but also, it’s interesting, because that was such a heyday, you know, it launched in 2005 and then nationally, kind of in 2006 and so there was a real sweet spot. And a lot of, like our early fans, I still meet people kind of, we’re 20 years old this year, which is just wild, and I moved into an apartment building, and someone I met, they were like, I went to, I used to go the haircut using your discounts. And it’s just, it’s like moments, and that’s, it’s really interesting from a brand and marketing perspective, like, how, by leveraging, you know, if a brand was to do it themselves and just discount themselves, it’s very different. It feels very different from then a platform going, we’re doing something for students. Yeah, there’s that kind of safety around it from a brand perspective that actually builds a lot more loyalty in a strange way. When you do it yourself, it feels like you’re selling but when you’re doing it through a platform like ours, it feels like you’re giving something and building connection, really.
Mark McBride-Wright 3:25
But it’s funny when you shows you how much Tech has evolved since then, because people listening to this now not familiar with it. You know, you launched at the time when Facebook was launching, and it was only in 2000 and set, well, five actually, that they started rolling out to university students only, and at that that must have been just a very convenient happenstance for when you set up student beans, or did did you know that was coming and then you thought you’d ride this week? Like, did it? No.
James Eder 3:57
I mean, you know, if you think just to set the scene, like I started university 2002 and graduated in 2005 my I was on dial up internet in my halls, yeah. So I was one of the only ones I had an AOL account, and everyone else, most people, were going to the, you know, the internet room university, there were like, 10 computers that you had to, like, wait for to go, and then you had the big computer hub on campus, but I was one of the ones that had the dial up, you know, unlimited a month or something in my room that people couldn’t believe that was on the internet kind of thing still. But then that transition, you know, those three years, and when I graduated, in my last year of university, there were, you know, six of us living in a house with Wi Fi, so yeah, and with broadband, and that was, like, really the cusp of the change. And then, you know, absolutely, when I graduated, you know, smartphones didn’t exist.
Mark McBride-Wright 4:51
I was gonna say that was my next point. When you think about the tech, Facebook and the iPhone had only just come out.
James Eder 4:59
Exactly. I mean. IPhone was still years away. I mean, I was on my it was my Nokia E 61 which is kind of like the BlackBerry phone. And I remember, you know, calling and doing things, and that the data is GPRS or something like, yeah. And it’s amazing how we did, you know, again, what we did in the beginning. And, yeah, just to create, I guess, for people listening, if they don’t know what student beans is, or was, you know, it started off as a printable voucher, so I downloaded, yes, yes.
Mark McBride-Wright 5:29
I was going to say that I remember, like having to go and find a printer to print voucher to get a two for one. GbK, vouch, yeah.
James Eder 5:40
I mean, that’s how, I mean, the big, this is, like the origination. And it was like, How can we get, you know, students, it was online to get them offline again, because there was no, there was no digital marking, there was no digital shops. There was, I mean, it’s real. It was near of its time, and it was all literally, two for one cinema tickets, two for one meals at Wagga, Mama, Krispy Kreme, funnily enough, we did a great contra deal way Krispy Kreme gave us donuts in exchange for advertising, and then we gave away 100 boxes of Krispy Kreme donuts as a promotion, which we could never have afforded as a business, to buy 100 boxes of Krispy Kremes. But Jane’s was great, and it got lots of people, you know, talking about it and stuff. So that was the original kind of premise, how we can help students save money and help businesses promote to students. And as you mentioned, pion, now, I mean that evolved over the last 20 years, around 10 years ago, kind of really well, 2007 2008 online marketing, changing and affiliate marketing. And so a brand I remember, came to us and said, If you promote us, we will give you a percentage. And it was kind of a new concept, because we were just charging for flat rate advertising and as much as we can, and you’ll get as much as you can, and you pay us for that. And then tracking came, and then all of these kind of evolutions of kind of online marketing world. And I remember four on demand, which was the online TV player for Channel Four. Yeah, they used to pay us a pound or two pounds per download. So we would then be sharing, you know, watch 24 for free, or watch these different programs for free, which was then the revenue screen to evolve. And then, so we were generating revenues from all these different areas that we just when we first launched the business would never have been possible. And then, you know, coming up to today, and we do student verification, so helping brands verify students in real time. So our platform now, the technology, sits on a brand’s website, as opposed to being us needing to be a marketing destination. So you imagine, like Odeon, you go on ODE it says, Are you a student? Login with student beans, we provide, in real time, a discount code verify that they’re a student and that all takes place on the brand’s website. We really evolved. Sorry, go on.
Mark McBride-Wright 7:50
Do you do that using like this, like student ID or something, or
James Eder 7:56
it’s a whole host of different information sources, verification sources, whether it be an ID, whether it be an email address. So we’ve kind of set up the systems in the back end that we can facilitate it in multiple ways. And so that, you know, again, it was very much, if you think we started as a marketing play, student, beans, destination, website, come to us, and you’ll find these things we are still as we then continue to grow. So obviously, people still come to us, but imagine from a flywheel perspective, we’re sitting on 1000s of brands, websites, independently and so yeah, just to close that loop, we then evolved to pie on doing 10 different consumer groups. So we do just, you know, the discounts, but also insights, so helping brands understand those different audiences, but then also advertising solutions. So that’s like the full evolution over the last 20 years.
Mark McBride-Wright 8:43
And what I mean, I think in your intro, I kind of referred to some of them, but I don’t think I said 10 different consumer groups. What’s the full breadth of
James Eder 8:53
Oh, you’re gonna guide me to name the 10 of them, the doctors and nurses, the military. You’ve got, obviously, like the different blue light workers. So there’s kind of, yeah, a spectrum of those, okay? And it sits under the brand. It’s beans. ID is our kind of consumer brand around. Obviously, there’s a graduate, you know, you’ve got graduate demographic, you know, when people graduate, you know? And it’s interesting, because we were trying, you know, as on average, students are students for three years. So obviously, in the last 20 years, there’s going to be people that are each year. Yeah. So I think it’s always a challenge as a business to balance this focus versus then actually extending and expanding. And I think there was finally this momentum with the number of people, but also interest from brands that are also, you know, we’ll work. We’ve got the brand relationship as one challenging things to establish. But once you’ve got that relationship with the brand, understanding what the brand challenges are, and their demographics, what they want to focus on, and then us being able to leverage that and the technology and facilitate those kind of closed user groups, it just makes a lot of sense, but it took a step change to be able to actually kind of build that
Mark McBride-Wright 9:59
out you do. You. I mean, so is your use case for a client, very much about how to drive engagement and utilization with these user groups. Or, I imagine your services would also be interested in from a sort of recruitment perspective, or like to engage with with communities. Or, yeah, and it’s reminding me of the student room as well, like which, like an online forum. You know thing, is it very much for, you know, product placement, product awareness, or services that you still are conveying from the brands that you work with to these 10 consumer groups, or do you also seep into other areas where brands maybe want to engage from a talent perspective, for example,
James Eder 10:46
yeah, no, I know, I know that’s your kind of, your bread and butter, as it were, but yeah, no, we’ve kind of remained core and focused around kind of the deals, promotions, discounts, and that’s kind of what we’ve, you know, yeah, absolutely been known for. And what’s really interesting is, you know, over the years, I remember standing up so when you used to search on Google, and I used to do this presentation, and I used to ask everyone maybe bit of role play. So if I said to you, a game show, if I said to you, you know, name a bookstore online, who would you say?
Mark McBride-Wright 11:19
Water stones came into my head first.
James Eder 11:22
Okay, so water stones, but also, obviously Amazon Waterstones. But that’s what’s really interesting, and it’s a really good point, Amazon now you can get everything from Amazon. Yeah, when Amazon started, they were books only, yeah. And I asked the question, you know, when I was on these stages, saying, you know, name a bookstore. They say Amazon. Name a name an auction website. Who would you say? EBay, eBay. And so that’s still they’ve transcended time, right? EBay, whilst you can now buy a lot of things on eBay outright, yeah, need auction anymore. They still own our headspace for auctions brand when you’re creating a brand, when you searched for student discounts on line, you would get, at the time, a million responses, right? And this is back in 2005 so that’s a long time ago, to get a million responses for a generic search term, yeah. And but when I asked students, can you name a student discount website, online, no one could name one that was very much from a brand perspective. How can we, you know, you’ve got Amazon, eBay, own, that headspace to be like, that’s the brand. And that was very intentional from day one. And now I think if you go and search student discounts, I think there’s over 100 million. I’m gonna do it. Student beans. I’m doing it now, live student beans. Hold on, I’m searching student discounts. Of course, student beans is going to come up student discounts. So there’s, there’s a couple of us up there and and we are up there, obviously, which is great to see. Does it tell you how many millions responses are there? It doesn’t give you the number anymore. No.
Mark McBride-Wright 13:03
Google’s now just one long page. I think it’s got rid of the moving along.
James Eder 13:08
They used to have a number of the thing, all I can say is, I know last time I think I looked it had a number of 100 million, yeah, like research results, and so we are now always kind of the top one
Mark McBride-Wright 13:19
or two. So tell us about some of your other ventures then that you’ve been doing, like cause or and friendly Friday. What are these? And we’re building a collision code your book, yeah.
James Eder 13:32
So it, you know, there’s really an evolution around it. I was at Student beans, day to day for 10 years. And I love the business, you know, the delivery of it, the engagement, helping students, you know, meeting people still 20 years on. Yeah, that buzz. And I, I kind of compare entrepreneurship to, like, if you are a songwriter and you write a song and you walk down the street and you hear someone singing the song that you’ve written, how awesome is that stadium of people singing it back to you, yeah, that is just like that. You’ve made it. And I kind of say, Look, I can’t write and I can’t sing. You definitely don’t want to hear me sing karaoke, I’m sure. Well, yeah. I mean, we’ve all got our karaoke song. What’s your karaoke song? Do you have a karaoke song? Lulu show? Oh, very good. I’m saved tonight by Eagle Eye. Cherry is anyway, but I was in a recording studio a few weeks ago recording the audio book, or the collision code, which we’ll talk about a bit more. And I just, I said, this is the closest I’m going to come to being a rock star, because I’m in the studio. We’re doing the recording. It’s 15 hours for about a seven hour book. It’s really, really great. So I’ll come back to talk about that. But you know, this idea of, yeah, creating something. I was there for 10 years, day to day, and I loved what the business, and I still think it’s absolutely amazing. I co founded it with my brother, the two of us, useful to say, from an audience perspective, you know, business ideas, you know, it’s about taking action. It’s about doing I had an idea when I was 22 I applied for a load of jobs that didn’t necessarily. It, or I didn’t get them, and someone gave me a copy of a book called The Naked leader. Yeah, really powerful story. Imagine if you couldn’t fail, who would you be? Where would you go, and what would you do? Yeah, and honestly, and I kind of, I know it’s the publishers faux pas to mention someone else’s book when you’re you’re on your own book launch, but he’s actually written the forward to my book. So I feel very like in Safe, safe company or safe hands, to be able to kind of pay that forward. But in that moment when I was, you know, 22 hearing that message, imagine if you couldn’t fail. It just removed my perception of, well, look, you know, I could go into, go work for someone, but like, being 22 what have I got to lose? Yeah, if you think about the trajectory, I’m sure many of you listen, it’s you know, you whether it be you go to school and then get a job, or go to university, get a job, and you’re on this trajectory, whether you get married, have kids or you don’t, but you’re like, living more life, and you’re expending more, and you get on the property market, and then the risk and what you’ve got to lose is far, far greater every stage going into but when I was 22 still living at home, fortunately supporting from my parents, you know, they weren’t about to kick me out just yet, yeah. And they, you know, are very, very supportive. And I thought, you know, if you don’t have the money, you can’t spend it. And so also, when I was starting a company, I was working almost seven days a week. You know, a lot of the time, 12 to 18 hour days. I didn’t need the money to spend the money kind of thing. But when you start getting the money, you start spending it as well. And, you know, there’s a whole kind of cycle of that, that actually, by working setting up the company, I didn’t need the money, perhaps that my peers had graduated and got on these jobs and and I didn’t know what it was like not to have it, so I just kind of threw myself in. And after 10 years, you know, running a company and setting up are two very different things, yes. And so I made the decision that interesting. I was on stage speaking at an event, and it was like, imagine if you couldn’t fail. And I just thought, I can’t be telling this story, still with something in me that I believe I’ve got this other idea that I want to explore, right? Yeah, like, you know, this kind of, you know, the easy thing to be would have to stayed at the company, because there’s a job, you know, I There’s so much I could still have added value or done, or we could have created new roles. You know, every year, normally it’d be a conversation with my brother. We’d come around a bit like it’s my birthday, so I’d be reflecting how much of an impact Am I having. What am I doing? I mean, you know, and there was, you know, very kind of crunch point. I was in the US, trying to launch in the US. And I had had a meeting. I was in South by Southwest, and I flew to New York via Chicago, had think, six meetings, and then flew back to London, and had about 1000 emails in my box when I landed and I was broken. It was very fraught time of just feeling like I’m not really having the same impact. You know, when you first launched, there’s so much, you know, this the adrenaline scale, yeah. And then the day to day, I just I wasn’t being utilized, I don’t think in the best way, and and so the idea kind of shiny lights of a new shiny toy, as it were, yeah? And I met an investor that said, Look, I will invest in your new idea, but you obviously have to do this full time, yeah. And so there was a real crunch point of making that decision, and it was almost an excuse I needed, right? Because to go to my brother and say, Look, Mike, I love what you’re doing, but I just, it’s, I need to go and do this for me. Yeah. So there was, it was a challenging time for the business as well, but I think, you know, again, on the other side of that. And so I’ll go into what that was. That was basically a location based LinkedIn, okay, the idea was you could log in on an app see who’s nearby, based on industry, what university they went to, what interests they have. So, you know, imagine you’ve got Procter and Gamble. They’ve got a big base in Geneva. So how many people are traveling to and from London to Geneva? Maybe they’re there over the weekend. They’re by themselves. So they cannot, they say, Oh, that person likes to ski. They went to Bristol uni, and they work at Procter and Gamble, and I work at Procter and Gamble. So even within the same organization, it’s just unlocking that connection and giving people the premise which led itself into the collision code, which is permission. So by being on the app, you’re giving people permission for confidence. You know, the technology is the segue in, you know, if you’re just sitting somewhere, you don’t turn to them necessarily, and go, Hi, do you like to ski? Do you want to go skiing this weekend? Because you’ve got the app that gives you that structure. And then context is kind of often they say in marketing, content is king, but actually context in this king, because if you can see that context, then that helps you have that conversation, which I can talk a few more stories about. But the essence of that, and I built that business up. We got 3000 users. I got some great PR coverage from like Richard Branson and in the my paper and some like real momentum. It was so exciting. And. And then eight years ago, I fainted in a theme park, and I hit my head, and I was in the Netherlands, flew back to the UK, thinking I’m fine. I’m sure I’m fine. Called the doctor and told them yesterday I fell I hit my head. They said, Could you hit your head? Come and see us? Yeah. So I go in, and they took my blood pressure, sitting up, standing down, and said, You should go to a hospital and just have an ECG done. It’s a basic heart scan and then have some blood tests done. It’s like, okay, so I drive, Park on pay and display, go into hospital, they do the scan, and the guy goes, Has anyone died from a heart attack at a young age? No. It’s like, just give me a moment. Just need to go and get the consultant. And they go, we need to do an ultrasound. Okay? And did the ultrasound. And then they were like, Okay, you can’t leave hospital. And I go, first response, but my cousin display, can I can I go? Can I move my car? And they go, Well, how far away do you live? I was like, five minutes. I go, Okay, move your car, and you need to come back immediately to accident emergency. And I was just obviously very shocked, yeah, of course, when I remember trying to call my brother, who obviously still close, but not working together now, but I call him, and he was busy. Sent me a text, sorry, I’m in a board meeting. We’re doing a planning session. So I replied, Oh, no worries. The doctor says there’s something wrong with my heart. I’m just going home to get my pajamas and laptop, you know, get I thought, if I’m not just gonna go back and park the car, may as well get something if I know that I need to go back. Yeah, and, and he goes, he immediately message, don’t worry, everything will work it out. I’ll be in touch and everything. And anyway, I ended up in hospital for three days, right? They diagnosed me with something called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, yeah, just the thickening of the heart. You know the condition?
Mark McBride-Wright 21:56
I’ve heard that there are a lot of people that have it, that sadly, end up passing away due to cardiac arrest, because they never knew.
James Eder 22:04
You never know. And it’s the thing that doctor you know, marathon runners and footballers, those listening, yeah, your heart’s thicker than it should be. Yeah? Why? There potentially are, there are no symptoms, because the heart, the body, overcompensates, and you think you’re getting healthy. And a lot of people are lean, they’re strong, they’re fit, but if you think about the hearts of muscle, so they’ve been going to the gym, they’re doing their muscles that, you know, but it’s a genetic condition. And so what happens to the hearts? Like a coconut instead of banana skin? Yeah, when it’s pumping, it can’t pump effectively, and then suddenly it goes, I can’t do this. That’s how you think. And so they said, so they actually put in a defibrillator and to take a step back and to kind of weave in again, the kind of back to the collision code was a number of years ago. I was sitting on the underground, and a guy sat next to me with a CV in his hand, and I just turned him said, you’re looking for a job. And he came to work at Student beans. So there’s a recruitment piece in there, which was funny. And I remember Michael, my brother, Mike, talking to Nick, saying, can you just tell me? James told me this story about how you met. Can you just tell me what happened? And he’s like, I was just sitting on the underground and I had my CV in my hand, and James just turned to me and said, Are you looking for a job? And here I am, and we gave him a job, ironically, helping with some recruitment. We did not put him on the underground, searching for people, but there was a very practical and he was a great, great guy. And then I said I needed to speak to a specific brand, to my colleague, William, and it was something called Virgin experience days. So virgin experience days are like air ballooning, skydiving, that kind of thing, but they were powered by a company called acorn. So imagine acorn do everything in the background, but public facing brand is virgin, yeah, and so I remember distinctly, had that conversation with him, and like, really, what we should do is create a student beans experience days, because then we get more margin. It makes more sense, instead of us promoting kind of another sub brand that’s already run by another brand. Anyway, yes, 10 minutes later, I’m standing at Gold is green platform, which is where our offices used to be, and I can’t hear something over the tannoy, so I turned to the guy next to me and I said, Oh, is there a problem? Is the train coming? So again, that there’s the context, that there’s a theme of what we’re saying. Like, yeah, I wouldn’t just turn to someone to be I mean, sometimes we were just like, oh, you know, is this train going to that place? But it was just a very natural conversation. I didn’t plan it. I didn’t think about it. I just said, is the train, is it okay? And he’s like, Yeah, trains coming, and he was wearing a black tie. So I said to him, Oh, where are you off to? You know, you’re all dressed up. It’s not common that you see someone wearing a black guy on the underground. He’s like, Oh, I’m going to an award ceremony about points and loyalty. Oh, that’s interesting. I run student beans. He’s like, Oh, what do you do? And he’s like, Oh, you’ve probably not heard of us, but you know, Virgin experience days, we’re the company that power them. And that was within 10 minutes. It’s. Saying this thing, and I, I always get excited, you know, sharing this story, and I’ve shared it, obviously, a lot of times, but like, you wouldn’t make it up, you know, like, if you wrote a fiction book, you’re like, let’s change that, because that sounds too unreal. Yeah, it’s a similar company, or it’s a marketing company that would be useful, you know, it’s but you wouldn’t say the company, the person, and his name’s Darren Ziff, and I’m still in touch. I reached out to him when I was writing the book to say that I want to include you in this story, because it’s so wild, amazing, and so, you know, fast forward, though, you’ve got those like, examples, those experiences, and it’s like, how can I, as I was doing all this stuff, realizing, like, what is this code? Yeah, and so, you know, the code of the essence, permission, confidence, context, so I felt like I had permission to say something. As an entrepreneur, Running Company, I’m recruiting people the permission, the confidence piece is also, you know, often, sorry, go back to permission. People. Who do you need permission from? And I say in the book, you know, you need to give yourself permission. It’s not about me giving you, you know. And often we stop ourselves because we don’t feel like we’ve got the permission. Yeah, do something and the reality,
Mark McBride-Wright 26:14
or we just don’t, yeah, we don’t lean in and embrace that. I mean, I had a similar experience yesterday. Actually, I got on the Northern line at whichever station it was at to come south. And the carriage that I chose, I sat down and Peter Tatchell, the LGBT, you know, rights activist, was next to me now, I stood on a stage with him, like 12 years ago when I held a large engineering company launch its LGBT network. But I sat down and I thought, do I engage in conversation? Can I bother? And I sat there, and I was like, and he had these like free Palestine and all these causes that he marches for and that on him. And I thought, and I didn’t, but then the guys opposite me, who looked like big, you know, bruisers type thing, one of them actually leaned forward and went, are you Peter Tatchell? And Peter was like, oh, yeah, yeah. And then I can’t remember what their little exchange was. So then I said to Peter, nice to see you, Peter. You know, we were on a same event a few years ago, over a decade ago, and we got, we got chat, and so I didn’t give myself permission initially, or I could have had permission, but I just, I just couldn’t be bothered. But it was only when I saw someone else and I thought, serendipity. You know, maybe me and Peter, what might have given all the crap that’s happening in the world right now, maybe the five minutes that we’re on the tube together might lead to a little conversation about more collaboration, or something
James Eder 27:53
absolutely and I think there’s this, I think, you know what stops us? Sometimes, one is like, okay, the self doubt and what’s the point? And sometimes we don’t always feel like it. But then also it’s on that side of what should I say? And I don’t know what to say. And obviously, having been on the stage, you’ve got the context, yes, easier to engage. And I don’t you know Rory Sutherland. You heard about Rory? No. So he’s a fantastic speaker and kind of marketeer and behavioral economist, and he was in actually, the day that I fainted in the theme park, he was delayed at the airport the same time I was and he’s written a number of books, once called alchemy, it’s also a fantastic book, just talking about, kind of how we kind of function in society and consumer behavior. And anyway, he ended up, he’s written now the endorsement he’s on the back of the book. Oh, great result of that interaction, kind of back then that you’ve met. Yeah, you just, I mean, the point is that you never know you’re going to write a book and you’re going to then ask for endorsement years later based on that story. But it was, you know, we’d done some work with him in the past. He’d spoken at some events I knew about, so the context was there. I gave myself permission, and ultimately what I talked about in the book as well. And again, if you’re listening to this and they’re talking about action, I know we’re going to come on to but you know, if there’s something that you’re going to take from it and you want to get permission, I’m going to say I’m giving you permission. So you can say to someone, if you’re standing in line somewhere, or you’re at work and you just want to talk to someone, you can literally say, I just watched something and it said that I need to go and just say hello and speak to someone. And James, this author of this book, collision code, said I need to so honestly, I’m taking responsibility and blame, not for what you do or the outcomes, but for initiative. Disclaimer, I am not responsible, but, like, I joke about it, but it’s like, you know, if you need to say, you know, say, you know, I don’t know, you’re with again, your partner and you’re both sitting on your phones, and you want to break that. You say, look, I watched this thing earlier, and it said James, who wrote the collision code, say, we should put our phones down and have have a chat and ask the question instead of, you know, what are you looking for? What if we were to do something on our next date? What would you love to do? What would get you? Yeah.
Mark McBride-Wright 30:00
Yeah, just like permission to break the cycle of the monotony, or the track that you feel like you’re on. So in the collision code, then, is there a framework, or is this the framework, the permission context?
James Eder 30:15
Yeah, so it really flows as the permission, confidence, context, confidence, and, you know, I guess just a couple more. I guess examples kind of to, kind of bring this a bit more to life, the 21st of September, 2017 so I’d fainted, as I mentioned, in the June that year, got diagnosed, and I had number of tests over the summer, and the 21st of September, they said that I might need a heart transplant. Oh, and that was, like, obviously big news, and I was not prepared for it. It was my younger brother’s birthday, and on that day, and I thought, based on the results in summer, I’ll just go with my younger I take different people to different appointments, so I thought this isn’t going to be a big one. There’s gonna be nothing shocking. There’s just been adding up these different results. Anyway they come with this, and he’s a doctor as well, so good to have him there, but not in the context of them telling of them telling me you might need a heart transplant. Yeah, home that day, and I’m renting out my second bedroom on Airbnb. And I asked the guy, what are you what are you doing in London? And he says to me, I’m working on a documentary about the world’s first heart transplant 50 years ago,
Mark McBride-Wright 31:20
no, you’re making this up now.
James Eder 31:24
Literally infection. It’d be like, no, no, that’s too specific. Wow. And I swear to you, in that moment, I thought I’ve got goose pimples again. Think about it. You know, I’m going to be okay, even if I need a transplant. Yeah, the first one was done 50 years ago, successfully. I’m not the first person having this. And that just that moment. And I, you know, I talk about it in the book, it’s like when we open ourselves up, obviously, including having a stranger stay in your home, you’re more likely to be more connected. Find these experience have these opportunities in the book. I call the movie moments. Moment. If you know it’s not you know more movie moments. I talk a lot more about elevation, in terms of having an amazing experience where you look back and remember, you remember it because it’s so elevating. It’s so exciting. I appreciate that’s not necessarily the movie moment we all want every day, but it’s meaningful. It’s part I will remember part of the story. It’s part like I will remember, you know, that summer or that year, 2017, what do I remember? I remember fainting in the theme park, yeah. I then remember being told, and I remember having someone on Airbnb stay with me and have that conversation, yeah, that is the power, you know, from a living life and experiences and doing things that enriches our lives. I’m going to say because, again, it’s about that community and connection. I could have very easily, obviously, not be renting out my second room, not have met someone come home and be, you know, by myself and actually in quite a bad way. And obviously I worked through things and from a therapy and, you know, I’m not saying it’s all been roses, but it’s those moments that actually were really,
Mark McBride-Wright 33:05
really on a path, or keep you from going down that path. It might have been a darker path, and it’s just a sort of nudge to stay in the optimism.
James Eder 33:14
So could I share one more related story? Yeah, this is just, I think it removes, then me from and kind of thinking again, if there’s one thing you’re going to take from today is thinking, What would James do? Or in a situation, if you’re having that doubt, or you see something that you recognize, or you want to say something, and you’re stopping yourself thinking, or you’re in a scenario that you’re like, oh, how could I use the people around me or collaborate with the people around me that will help improve this situation. And so the scenario is, my dad is on the train coming down from Newcastle. He was working in Newcastle. The train had stopped at Milton Keynes. He was on a virgin train, and the train had stopped. And he stood up. He thought, What would James do? And he stood up and said, Does anyone want to share a car back to London? And these two women said, Yeah, sure. So I think after, you know, a little bit of hesitation, they put the hand, Yep, let’s go. So they’re in the taxi coming back to London. And my dad was like, Well, where are you going? And they said, middle way. And he goes, Okay, what number middle way? And said, Number 14. Number 14. Middle Way is the house that my dad used to own, and it was the house that I was born in. I lived there for five years, born in the hospital, but lived there for the first five years of my life, and it was the grandma of one of the people. And again, you can’t make it up. It’s just too, too specific, too unreal. And it’s like, you know, I always reflect thinking, you know, one of the chances the train stopped, that they were in the carriage, that my dad said something that they said, Yes, there’s so many things. And I think, you know, in the essence we started talking about causa was the idea of how technology can unlock these random moments, random you know, you could imagine putting on the app. Yeah, I’m on the train. Does anyone else want to go by taxi? Think technology would help unlock that much? Because that reach would not just be that carriage, it would be the whole train, you know, that would be and getting people to share, you know, maybe getting other scenarios, they could have got a coach together and gone by coach, or whatever it is, but it’s these moments. But then, actually, we don’t need the technology that, you know, the technology solution only got so far. But actually, when we start talking, and that’s why the book came about, was four years ago, I was in hospital, and they said my condition had progressed and I was borderline. I they were recommending for me to have a transplant. Yeah? And I decided not to, because I had an infection that was going to hopefully improve, and I was on new medication that I hoped was going to settle, right? But I left that appointment at pap wife in Cambridge, saying, I need to write this book, right, because if something happens to me on the
James Eder 36:01
I just wanted these stories. I’m so passionate about caring about this. There’s something called the Blue Zones as well. Do you know the Blue Zones? No, no. So there’s a guy called Dan Butner, and he’s done that on Amazon, Netflix, they’ve got a blue zone documentary. It’s basically in the world where people live over 100 years old, like they’ve done research.
Mark McBride-Wright 36:19
Oh, I’ve watched his documentary, yeah, yeah, in Italy and in Japan,
James Eder 36:28
yeah, and so in it, one of the pillars is community, is connection, is people,
Mark McBride-Wright 36:33
yeah, yes, yes, when you said that is good for your well being, it’s helps you live longer, because you’re connected to two people,
James Eder 36:44
people, and so you get, you know, what you get from it, and it’s so, you know, again, especially in the kind of developed world, we’ve put up these barriers, these walls, you know, historically, we used to be in tribes. We used to be in community, yeah, you know. And we’re so there’s so much pressure now that we put on one person or the one environment that we’re in that actually is very restrictive. So there’s kind of, obviously a few themes kind of coming out through the book. But I made that decision four years ago. Unfortunately, I’ve not needed a transplant. Today. I had an assessment this week. Okay, stable at the moment, which is great, but I’ve decided to, I’m donating 100% of the royalties for the book to charity. Oh, amazing. And so initially to the Heart Foundation and cardiomyopathy UK, and then to various other charities that have helped me along my journey and making a difference for them. And from an LBGT Q perspective as well, wanting to support also. And you know, men, and the biggest thing you know, mental health, men in their 40s, it’s the highest suicide rate. Yes, I know why it is, you know, travesty, and it’s, you know, there’s just more that needs to be done. And so really, the collision code book and concepts just the start, yeah, and something I’m exploring, as well as the concept of, like, the collision code collective, in the light on organizations, groups, communities, voluntary things that enable people to come together and almost give people the permission, confidence and context, yes, together, because whilst I was running a business, trying to do something myself with that, actually, there are some great people doing great things. Yeah, but people don’t know about them. True. That’s why I really kind of almost leveraging the code. And what I’ve done, it’s kind of having, like a seal of approval. It’s almost a community seal that, yeah, line posting. And so that’s kind of what I’m going to be working on, kind of my 2026
Mark McBride-Wright 38:36
so the collective will be a new people who, themselves, have helped initiate networks.
James Eder 38:45
And I did, the most simple way to think about it is it as a directory of things and places. So, for example, I think I’m probably going to list, you know, target so, like, if you’d have, you know, Glasgow or London or so, then you’re in a city and you’re like, What? What can I do? That means I can go and be part of a community or do something right? I’m not alone, so I’ve got the permission, confidence and context. So for example, there are running clubs now, yes, I think there’s games that’s like doing really, really well, and like bringing people together and going running and they have a social afterwards. Yeah, okay, I think there are so many people still that aren’t exposed to those things, don’t know about those things, and I kind of feel like my role today, because I can’t commit to running and setting up another company like causa or doing something like that. Yeah, actually, you know, we find our place and my flow, and the story is partly showing these stories to show as individuals what we can do. So yeah, of the collision code community. Yeah, I’m toying with the idea of having something on LinkedIn where you join part, and you’re kind of saying, I’m part of the collision code community, and I’m just open to, yeah, yeah. I know some people, you know, thinking can be very salesy, and people trying, but it’s, it’s remote, it’s not, it’s kind of, you’re signing up to an ethos about, well. So that’s something I talk about. But net giving instead of networking. How can you help other people? How can you show up? How can you help others? How can you contribute, and what can
Mark McBride-Wright 40:09
you do? What can you do to connect people? Even doing a passive introduction, you’ve no idea what that can go on to help achieve for that individual in that business or that organization.
James Eder 40:20
And so it’s, it’s anyway, these are, kind of, there they are, kind of the the grassroots of things that I’m kind of playing with, exploring, and I’ve kind of saying to the charities as well, like, I’ve rate, we’ve so far raised over 10,000 pounds, which, oh yeah, start just, you know, being very playful in this time of, kind of, yeah, showing up the books. It’s the beginning.
Mark McBride-Wright 40:45
Really, right, right? Exciting. Come out. Remind me, was it June?
James Eder 40:50
So yes, but we did like a formal launch on the 17th of September. And then I’ve just been to the US, actually, in San Francisco and New York to do launches out there. They were amazing. And you know what? I applied for a load of jobs in 2001 in New York, which I didn’t get. And I then got a work placement in San Francisco. And then September the 11th happened.
Mark McBride-Wright 41:15
Yeah, it’s gonna say probably good time to not have moved to New York.
James Eder 41:18
Jobs that I got I applied for in New York. Some of them were within the square mile. And so the book, you know, people are like, Why did you go to the US to do a book launch? Apart from that, it’s a fun thing to do. It’s in the book. Right at the beginning of the book, the story starts with this kind of moment of, I was meant to be there, but I was there. And again, how serendipity can affect, you know, when you think something wrong has happened, actually, that’s the opener, and that’s the opportunity behind it. And so, you know, Steve Jobs quotes, you don’t know how the dots join until you look back, and then you can see how it works. Yes, for me, that’s what everything I’ve been doing is really
Mark McBride-Wright 41:58
how so we’re going to move on the Quick Fire question shortly, but just just to close out the How did you find recording your audio book?
James Eder 42:07
It was wild. It was fun. They did something called, I want to call it drop and roll. And even if they didn’t call it drop and roll, let’s say it like it is, because they do like instead of like, rock and roll, drop and roll. So the idea is, if you make a mistake in what you’re saying, you hear back the beginning of the sentence, and then you hear your own voice in your head, and then you pick up the word. So it means that in real time, they’re doing the editing. So really cool process, yeah, basically to get it because, because imagine you’re doing 15 hours of recording, they need to go back at the beat, and then you need to drop in do different words, and words and different Yeah, we’re doing in real time. So you fudge something, and you say, you know, I don’t know entrepreneurialism. Were you meant to say entrepreneur or something? And then they then literally go back to the beginning of the sentence. And then you can listen. You listen to your bits. You hear your voice. I’ve got much better at listening to my voice, yeah, but, but I’m enjoying the did you?
Mark McBride-Wright 43:08
Did you have so there has been a bit of a gap, a little gap between you finishing the book and then recording your audio book. And how did you find when I recorded mine, there had been a gap as well, and I found it so interesting, like re experiencing my content in a condensed window. And when I finished the audiobook recording, I feel like I had taken a chip out my brain and it was now there, and I felt this kind of well headspace. You talked about headspace earlier. I felt this like brain space be freed up to be able to focus on different creative projects, like, I know it’s now there, locked away, available, and I can now listen to it freely. Other people can listen to it, and we can kind of CO create new ideas using this foundational content, which we’ve now done with, you know, training programs and stuff. So how did you find did you feel similar? Like, is that helping you? There was your collision called Community collective?
James Eder 44:13
Yeah, I think I’m not quite there yet, because it’s not online, so I’ve got them on the computer, I’ve got the files that they’re on the cloud and on my computer, and have not launched it just yet. Partly logistics, partly timing, and so I don’t but doing it was, was amazing. I think also any advice, if anyone’s going to publish a book, I would do the audio book. It was much quicker, too, than I realized in the fantastic company in North London in King’s Cross called 2020 recording. So if you want that, then they’re amazing. But I did it in five sittings of three hour sittings. So it was kind of very succinct. It was good, but so there was a cathartic kind of process of doing. It and doing in your own voice as well. There was also a learning though, that I picked up a few mistakes. Oh, yeah, it’s good. So I would my advice, because I’d already published the book and then did the recording a few months later. My advice would be, do the audio book before you’ve done the final publishing, because you’ll pick up some mistakes no one else will get because as you’re reading it aloud, oh, that does not make sense. Yeah, yeah, I went through the process. Did you
Mark McBride-Wright 45:29
find that Barb or something, or M or the R? And so you’re like, you’re like, wait, this sentence
James Eder 45:37
doesn’t, doesn’t, doesn’t work. So, that would be my, my learning back to myself, is write the book, then do the audio when you’re completely final, when you think you’re completely final, and that will catch a few things that you everyone will have missed. That’s a Sideline Story. And so, yes, I do think, you know, you talk about, you know, space, and we’ve both talked about maybe writing another book already, or thinking about the future, and I’m not ready to do that until I’ve completed, I guess, this journey process that I feel like I’m on, and, you know, I’m starting to get the reviews in. So if you’re listening and read, please write your review. I know for both of us, it means such a world of difference, because it means that when other people are reading, obviously, the social proof, it validates it. You know, somewhere I’ve got 27 reviews so far, so, oh, well done watching this. You’ll, yeah, there’ll be a few more on there as well. But also reviews from people I don’t know. So thank you again, because that’s even none of my family have done reviews yet, which I’m still also really proud of, that it’s, you know, it is really, I guess, people but it’s out in the world, and seeing it kind of, yeah, permeate and resonate. And you know, when I wrote the book as well, because it was very personal, driven about my heart stuff, I just decided it was a legacy thing, and if no one reads it, that’s okay. And obviously the doubt inside you really want people to read it, you want it, and now it is out in the world, and people are and the feedback is coming in. So yeah, in advance, thank you for taking the time and obviously listening. It will be out. The audio will be sound soon,
Mark McBride-Wright 47:07
wonderful, right? Quick Fire questions, okay, what is a myth about connection? You’d love to bust
James Eder 47:16
a myth about connection. I think you know when people say it’s, it’s hard, okay? And I think you mentioned the word curiosity. Be curious.
Mark McBride-Wright 47:26
Be curious. What’s one book that’s shaped how you lead
James Eder 47:31
so 100% the naked leader. Imagine if you couldn’t fail. I mean, it’s just and there’s a lot about authenticity in there, being yourself and showing up.
Mark McBride-Wright 47:40
What’s a quote or mantra you return to again.
James Eder 47:46
So if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. It’s an African proverb, and I heard it first by it was then the CEO of Unilever, a guy called Paul Polman. He’s an amazing leader and very, very respectful thing.
Mark McBride-Wright 48:02
What is your go to, creative, recharge activity.
James Eder 48:09
From a recharge perspective, I just love people, I mean, and catching up with people and going out. I know the days where I’m when I’m not with people, yeah, I just, I’m like, what? I’m like, Oh yeah, I’ve not, I’ve not spoken. So that’s my, my go to
Mark McBride-Wright 48:27
what’s one thing you’ve learned from coaching others
James Eder 48:32
and the themes that we’re all on this journey and we’re often chasing, it’s called like, means goals instead of end goals. So often, so many people are, you know, what job, what level, what house, what car, what material things. And actually, we realize, on a deep level, there’s these end goals that ultimately health, happiness, connection, meaning, purpose. And it’s these themes that I’ve kind of worked with over clients. And I can just say there’s, I call it SAS. So clients want space. Often we don’t have the space. We’re so close to it to take a step back so that space accountability just and I have a coach, and I love it and the books in the world because of my coach, because I said to her, by next session, I would have done the first draft, I would have done the first chapter, I would have and it’s that. And every time I’ve learned not doing it, I’m like, Oh, I’ve told my coach I’m going to do that, and I’ve got my next session next session next week. I’ve got it, you know, and it’s really an action to accountability. And the third one is support. You know, the light. You know, it can be quite lonely, whether from an entrepreneur, I Coach Wright with a lot of entrepreneurs, but individuals as well. You know, your family and our friends, they do support us, but they also maybe don’t want to see us hurt or challenged or so when you go to a friend, I’m going to set up a business to go, no, no, don’t do that. And that’s Yeah, and it will parent, you know, they just want you to be secure and happy and safe. And my role, I see it, is to support you in whatever success means to you. And it’s a very neutral I come from a you know, the. A from a coaching perspective. So those over all my clients, I’ve looked at the themes a lot of people as well. When they say they’re going to become a coach, they don’t, you know, you’re like, what’s your niche? What’s just with it? And I just said, start doing it, and then look back at what the themes come up, and then your answers will be there. And that’s my coaching.
Mark McBride-Wright 50:18
Well, it’s an everyday act of courage. More people should try. I’m guessing the answer.
James Eder 50:23
It’s obvious. I mean, it’s you know, challenges, just say hello to one, yeah, random stranger every day. And James said, okay, yes. And James says, Okay. And James said, James has helped me a challenge. I listened to this podcast. It said, I need to say hello to someone. Can I say hello to you?
Mark McBride-Wright 50:37
Done? And what? Finally, What’s one word that describes your leadership style. Authentic, authentic. Lovely. Well, James, I’ve really enjoyed this. Really, really enjoyed this. If, if people want to get a copy of the book or connect with you find out more about your work, how do they do that? Amazing.
James Eder 50:59
So, LinkedIn is my kind of go to so feel free to reach out to me. It’s James Ida. You can see the name on the screen, and I’m sure there’ll be a link, but yeah, James Eder on LinkedIn, the book is available from Amazon. If you want to support obviously, local bookstores. I’m big fan. You can go and you can order the book, request it, and they’ll get it in for you. Absolutely. Amazon is the best place, really, and you can get it, obviously, a hardback and paperback. And as I said, 100% of the royalties are going to charity, initially, the Heart Foundation of cardio month of the UK. And then if you follow me, you’ll see the other charities we’re going to be contributing to, from LBG, Qt and youth leadership and kind of all those different organizations that really helped me along my way to really, kind of pay it forward. Thank you for your support. And obviously, if you do buy or listen to the book, which will be out soon, then please write a review, because it really, really does mean the world to me, listening and tuning in.
Mark McBride-Wright 51:53
Thank you so much, James. We’ll put all those links in the on the web page as well and on the socials. Thanks so much.
James Eder 52:00
Thanks, Wright, have a great day. Take care. You.
E049: The Power of Unexpected Connection
Podcast Description
Read the Transcript
Mark McBride-Wright 0:00
Mark, welcome to the next episode of the safe leader podcast. I’m your host, Mark McBride-Wright, and today I’m joined by James Eder, who is a seasoned entrepreneur, speaker, coach and author passionate about the power of genuine human connection. He co founded student beans at the age of 22 helping grow into one of the UK’s leading student marketing platforms now part of peon pion, helping brands harness the power of 10 consumer groups, including students, military, health care and more, with full funnel insights, advertising and verification, the business has helped shape how brands engage with Gen Z consumers. James’s entrepreneurial path has been anything but linear, from launching and closing tech ventures like cosr to founding friendly Friday, a movement to get the world talking, he’s continually returned to one core question, how can we connect more deeply in a digital world. That question inspired his book, The collision code, a guide to breaking down the walls that isolate us and unlocking what’s possible when we connect with empathy, vulnerability and purpose. James now works as a coach and keynote speaker, helping individuals and organizations build resilience, foster connection and lead with curiosity and compassion. James, welcome,
James Eder 1:26
thank you. Hi. How are you doing you good?
Mark McBride-Wright 1:28
I’m I’m good. And do you know I’ve deliberately kept this quiet until we actually pressed record to start talking student beans. I remember that. I remember that. And so, so when? So you and I are part of another community together, Alex, Mary’s Mic drop. And when I got your profile in there that you were a founder, the founder of student beans, my God, it took me right back to being at Imperial in 2005 getting my, I don’t know, Cafe Nero voucher or gurmy Burger kitchen 25% off voucher, or free cinema vouchers, or whatever it was. You know, used to use that platform loads. Why did you say? Did you do? Was it launched at Imperial, or something literally?
James Eder 2:20
Well, I knew that you had been on Imperial as well. I’d obviously done the same. You’ve seen my profile. You make an effort, but, but also, it’s interesting, because that was such a heyday, you know, it launched in 2005 and then nationally, kind of in 2006 and so there was a real sweet spot. And a lot of, like our early fans, I still meet people kind of, we’re 20 years old this year, which is just wild, and I moved into an apartment building, and someone I met, they were like, I went to, I used to go the haircut using your discounts. And it’s just, it’s like moments, and that’s, it’s really interesting from a brand and marketing perspective, like, how, by leveraging, you know, if a brand was to do it themselves and just discount themselves, it’s very different. It feels very different from then a platform going, we’re doing something for students. Yeah, there’s that kind of safety around it from a brand perspective that actually builds a lot more loyalty in a strange way. When you do it yourself, it feels like you’re selling but when you’re doing it through a platform like ours, it feels like you’re giving something and building connection, really.
Mark McBride-Wright 3:25
But it’s funny when you shows you how much Tech has evolved since then, because people listening to this now not familiar with it. You know, you launched at the time when Facebook was launching, and it was only in 2000 and set, well, five actually, that they started rolling out to university students only, and at that that must have been just a very convenient happenstance for when you set up student beans, or did did you know that was coming and then you thought you’d ride this week? Like, did it? No.
James Eder 3:57
I mean, you know, if you think just to set the scene, like I started university 2002 and graduated in 2005 my I was on dial up internet in my halls, yeah. So I was one of the only ones I had an AOL account, and everyone else, most people, were going to the, you know, the internet room university, there were like, 10 computers that you had to, like, wait for to go, and then you had the big computer hub on campus, but I was one of the ones that had the dial up, you know, unlimited a month or something in my room that people couldn’t believe that was on the internet kind of thing still. But then that transition, you know, those three years, and when I graduated, in my last year of university, there were, you know, six of us living in a house with Wi Fi, so yeah, and with broadband, and that was, like, really the cusp of the change. And then, you know, absolutely, when I graduated, you know, smartphones didn’t exist.
Mark McBride-Wright 4:51
I was gonna say that was my next point. When you think about the tech, Facebook and the iPhone had only just come out.
James Eder 4:59
Exactly. I mean. IPhone was still years away. I mean, I was on my it was my Nokia E 61 which is kind of like the BlackBerry phone. And I remember, you know, calling and doing things, and that the data is GPRS or something like, yeah. And it’s amazing how we did, you know, again, what we did in the beginning. And, yeah, just to create, I guess, for people listening, if they don’t know what student beans is, or was, you know, it started off as a printable voucher, so I downloaded, yes, yes.
Mark McBride-Wright 5:29
I was going to say that I remember, like having to go and find a printer to print voucher to get a two for one. GbK, vouch, yeah.
James Eder 5:40
I mean, that’s how, I mean, the big, this is, like the origination. And it was like, How can we get, you know, students, it was online to get them offline again, because there was no, there was no digital marking, there was no digital shops. There was, I mean, it’s real. It was near of its time, and it was all literally, two for one cinema tickets, two for one meals at Wagga, Mama, Krispy Kreme, funnily enough, we did a great contra deal way Krispy Kreme gave us donuts in exchange for advertising, and then we gave away 100 boxes of Krispy Kreme donuts as a promotion, which we could never have afforded as a business, to buy 100 boxes of Krispy Kremes. But Jane’s was great, and it got lots of people, you know, talking about it and stuff. So that was the original kind of premise, how we can help students save money and help businesses promote to students. And as you mentioned, pion, now, I mean that evolved over the last 20 years, around 10 years ago, kind of really well, 2007 2008 online marketing, changing and affiliate marketing. And so a brand I remember, came to us and said, If you promote us, we will give you a percentage. And it was kind of a new concept, because we were just charging for flat rate advertising and as much as we can, and you’ll get as much as you can, and you pay us for that. And then tracking came, and then all of these kind of evolutions of kind of online marketing world. And I remember four on demand, which was the online TV player for Channel Four. Yeah, they used to pay us a pound or two pounds per download. So we would then be sharing, you know, watch 24 for free, or watch these different programs for free, which was then the revenue screen to evolve. And then, so we were generating revenues from all these different areas that we just when we first launched the business would never have been possible. And then, you know, coming up to today, and we do student verification, so helping brands verify students in real time. So our platform now, the technology, sits on a brand’s website, as opposed to being us needing to be a marketing destination. So you imagine, like Odeon, you go on ODE it says, Are you a student? Login with student beans, we provide, in real time, a discount code verify that they’re a student and that all takes place on the brand’s website. We really evolved. Sorry, go on.
Mark McBride-Wright 7:50
Do you do that using like this, like student ID or something, or
James Eder 7:56
it’s a whole host of different information sources, verification sources, whether it be an ID, whether it be an email address. So we’ve kind of set up the systems in the back end that we can facilitate it in multiple ways. And so that, you know, again, it was very much, if you think we started as a marketing play, student, beans, destination, website, come to us, and you’ll find these things we are still as we then continue to grow. So obviously, people still come to us, but imagine from a flywheel perspective, we’re sitting on 1000s of brands, websites, independently and so yeah, just to close that loop, we then evolved to pie on doing 10 different consumer groups. So we do just, you know, the discounts, but also insights, so helping brands understand those different audiences, but then also advertising solutions. So that’s like the full evolution over the last 20 years.
Mark McBride-Wright 8:43
And what I mean, I think in your intro, I kind of referred to some of them, but I don’t think I said 10 different consumer groups. What’s the full breadth of
James Eder 8:53
Oh, you’re gonna guide me to name the 10 of them, the doctors and nurses, the military. You’ve got, obviously, like the different blue light workers. So there’s kind of, yeah, a spectrum of those, okay? And it sits under the brand. It’s beans. ID is our kind of consumer brand around. Obviously, there’s a graduate, you know, you’ve got graduate demographic, you know, when people graduate, you know? And it’s interesting, because we were trying, you know, as on average, students are students for three years. So obviously, in the last 20 years, there’s going to be people that are each year. Yeah. So I think it’s always a challenge as a business to balance this focus versus then actually extending and expanding. And I think there was finally this momentum with the number of people, but also interest from brands that are also, you know, we’ll work. We’ve got the brand relationship as one challenging things to establish. But once you’ve got that relationship with the brand, understanding what the brand challenges are, and their demographics, what they want to focus on, and then us being able to leverage that and the technology and facilitate those kind of closed user groups, it just makes a lot of sense, but it took a step change to be able to actually kind of build that
Mark McBride-Wright 9:59
out you do. You. I mean, so is your use case for a client, very much about how to drive engagement and utilization with these user groups. Or, I imagine your services would also be interested in from a sort of recruitment perspective, or like to engage with with communities. Or, yeah, and it’s reminding me of the student room as well, like which, like an online forum. You know thing, is it very much for, you know, product placement, product awareness, or services that you still are conveying from the brands that you work with to these 10 consumer groups, or do you also seep into other areas where brands maybe want to engage from a talent perspective, for example,
James Eder 10:46
yeah, no, I know, I know that’s your kind of, your bread and butter, as it were, but yeah, no, we’ve kind of remained core and focused around kind of the deals, promotions, discounts, and that’s kind of what we’ve, you know, yeah, absolutely been known for. And what’s really interesting is, you know, over the years, I remember standing up so when you used to search on Google, and I used to do this presentation, and I used to ask everyone maybe bit of role play. So if I said to you, a game show, if I said to you, you know, name a bookstore online, who would you say?
Mark McBride-Wright 11:19
Water stones came into my head first.
James Eder 11:22
Okay, so water stones, but also, obviously Amazon Waterstones. But that’s what’s really interesting, and it’s a really good point, Amazon now you can get everything from Amazon. Yeah, when Amazon started, they were books only, yeah. And I asked the question, you know, when I was on these stages, saying, you know, name a bookstore. They say Amazon. Name a name an auction website. Who would you say? EBay, eBay. And so that’s still they’ve transcended time, right? EBay, whilst you can now buy a lot of things on eBay outright, yeah, need auction anymore. They still own our headspace for auctions brand when you’re creating a brand, when you searched for student discounts on line, you would get, at the time, a million responses, right? And this is back in 2005 so that’s a long time ago, to get a million responses for a generic search term, yeah. And but when I asked students, can you name a student discount website, online, no one could name one that was very much from a brand perspective. How can we, you know, you’ve got Amazon, eBay, own, that headspace to be like, that’s the brand. And that was very intentional from day one. And now I think if you go and search student discounts, I think there’s over 100 million. I’m gonna do it. Student beans. I’m doing it now, live student beans. Hold on, I’m searching student discounts. Of course, student beans is going to come up student discounts. So there’s, there’s a couple of us up there and and we are up there, obviously, which is great to see. Does it tell you how many millions responses are there? It doesn’t give you the number anymore. No.
Mark McBride-Wright 13:03
Google’s now just one long page. I think it’s got rid of the moving along.
James Eder 13:08
They used to have a number of the thing, all I can say is, I know last time I think I looked it had a number of 100 million, yeah, like research results, and so we are now always kind of the top one
Mark McBride-Wright 13:19
or two. So tell us about some of your other ventures then that you’ve been doing, like cause or and friendly Friday. What are these? And we’re building a collision code your book, yeah.
James Eder 13:32
So it, you know, there’s really an evolution around it. I was at Student beans, day to day for 10 years. And I love the business, you know, the delivery of it, the engagement, helping students, you know, meeting people still 20 years on. Yeah, that buzz. And I, I kind of compare entrepreneurship to, like, if you are a songwriter and you write a song and you walk down the street and you hear someone singing the song that you’ve written, how awesome is that stadium of people singing it back to you, yeah, that is just like that. You’ve made it. And I kind of say, Look, I can’t write and I can’t sing. You definitely don’t want to hear me sing karaoke, I’m sure. Well, yeah. I mean, we’ve all got our karaoke song. What’s your karaoke song? Do you have a karaoke song? Lulu show? Oh, very good. I’m saved tonight by Eagle Eye. Cherry is anyway, but I was in a recording studio a few weeks ago recording the audio book, or the collision code, which we’ll talk about a bit more. And I just, I said, this is the closest I’m going to come to being a rock star, because I’m in the studio. We’re doing the recording. It’s 15 hours for about a seven hour book. It’s really, really great. So I’ll come back to talk about that. But you know, this idea of, yeah, creating something. I was there for 10 years, day to day, and I loved what the business, and I still think it’s absolutely amazing. I co founded it with my brother, the two of us, useful to say, from an audience perspective, you know, business ideas, you know, it’s about taking action. It’s about doing I had an idea when I was 22 I applied for a load of jobs that didn’t necessarily. It, or I didn’t get them, and someone gave me a copy of a book called The Naked leader. Yeah, really powerful story. Imagine if you couldn’t fail, who would you be? Where would you go, and what would you do? Yeah, and honestly, and I kind of, I know it’s the publishers faux pas to mention someone else’s book when you’re you’re on your own book launch, but he’s actually written the forward to my book. So I feel very like in Safe, safe company or safe hands, to be able to kind of pay that forward. But in that moment when I was, you know, 22 hearing that message, imagine if you couldn’t fail. It just removed my perception of, well, look, you know, I could go into, go work for someone, but like, being 22 what have I got to lose? Yeah, if you think about the trajectory, I’m sure many of you listen, it’s you know, you whether it be you go to school and then get a job, or go to university, get a job, and you’re on this trajectory, whether you get married, have kids or you don’t, but you’re like, living more life, and you’re expending more, and you get on the property market, and then the risk and what you’ve got to lose is far, far greater every stage going into but when I was 22 still living at home, fortunately supporting from my parents, you know, they weren’t about to kick me out just yet, yeah. And they, you know, are very, very supportive. And I thought, you know, if you don’t have the money, you can’t spend it. And so also, when I was starting a company, I was working almost seven days a week. You know, a lot of the time, 12 to 18 hour days. I didn’t need the money to spend the money kind of thing. But when you start getting the money, you start spending it as well. And, you know, there’s a whole kind of cycle of that, that actually, by working setting up the company, I didn’t need the money, perhaps that my peers had graduated and got on these jobs and and I didn’t know what it was like not to have it, so I just kind of threw myself in. And after 10 years, you know, running a company and setting up are two very different things, yes. And so I made the decision that interesting. I was on stage speaking at an event, and it was like, imagine if you couldn’t fail. And I just thought, I can’t be telling this story, still with something in me that I believe I’ve got this other idea that I want to explore, right? Yeah, like, you know, this kind of, you know, the easy thing to be would have to stayed at the company, because there’s a job, you know, I There’s so much I could still have added value or done, or we could have created new roles. You know, every year, normally it’d be a conversation with my brother. We’d come around a bit like it’s my birthday, so I’d be reflecting how much of an impact Am I having. What am I doing? I mean, you know, and there was, you know, very kind of crunch point. I was in the US, trying to launch in the US. And I had had a meeting. I was in South by Southwest, and I flew to New York via Chicago, had think, six meetings, and then flew back to London, and had about 1000 emails in my box when I landed and I was broken. It was very fraught time of just feeling like I’m not really having the same impact. You know, when you first launched, there’s so much, you know, this the adrenaline scale, yeah. And then the day to day, I just I wasn’t being utilized, I don’t think in the best way, and and so the idea kind of shiny lights of a new shiny toy, as it were, yeah? And I met an investor that said, Look, I will invest in your new idea, but you obviously have to do this full time, yeah. And so there was a real crunch point of making that decision, and it was almost an excuse I needed, right? Because to go to my brother and say, Look, Mike, I love what you’re doing, but I just, it’s, I need to go and do this for me. Yeah. So there was, it was a challenging time for the business as well, but I think, you know, again, on the other side of that. And so I’ll go into what that was. That was basically a location based LinkedIn, okay, the idea was you could log in on an app see who’s nearby, based on industry, what university they went to, what interests they have. So, you know, imagine you’ve got Procter and Gamble. They’ve got a big base in Geneva. So how many people are traveling to and from London to Geneva? Maybe they’re there over the weekend. They’re by themselves. So they cannot, they say, Oh, that person likes to ski. They went to Bristol uni, and they work at Procter and Gamble, and I work at Procter and Gamble. So even within the same organization, it’s just unlocking that connection and giving people the premise which led itself into the collision code, which is permission. So by being on the app, you’re giving people permission for confidence. You know, the technology is the segue in, you know, if you’re just sitting somewhere, you don’t turn to them necessarily, and go, Hi, do you like to ski? Do you want to go skiing this weekend? Because you’ve got the app that gives you that structure. And then context is kind of often they say in marketing, content is king, but actually context in this king, because if you can see that context, then that helps you have that conversation, which I can talk a few more stories about. But the essence of that, and I built that business up. We got 3000 users. I got some great PR coverage from like Richard Branson and in the my paper and some like real momentum. It was so exciting. And. And then eight years ago, I fainted in a theme park, and I hit my head, and I was in the Netherlands, flew back to the UK, thinking I’m fine. I’m sure I’m fine. Called the doctor and told them yesterday I fell I hit my head. They said, Could you hit your head? Come and see us? Yeah. So I go in, and they took my blood pressure, sitting up, standing down, and said, You should go to a hospital and just have an ECG done. It’s a basic heart scan and then have some blood tests done. It’s like, okay, so I drive, Park on pay and display, go into hospital, they do the scan, and the guy goes, Has anyone died from a heart attack at a young age? No. It’s like, just give me a moment. Just need to go and get the consultant. And they go, we need to do an ultrasound. Okay? And did the ultrasound. And then they were like, Okay, you can’t leave hospital. And I go, first response, but my cousin display, can I can I go? Can I move my car? And they go, Well, how far away do you live? I was like, five minutes. I go, Okay, move your car, and you need to come back immediately to accident emergency. And I was just obviously very shocked, yeah, of course, when I remember trying to call my brother, who obviously still close, but not working together now, but I call him, and he was busy. Sent me a text, sorry, I’m in a board meeting. We’re doing a planning session. So I replied, Oh, no worries. The doctor says there’s something wrong with my heart. I’m just going home to get my pajamas and laptop, you know, get I thought, if I’m not just gonna go back and park the car, may as well get something if I know that I need to go back. Yeah, and, and he goes, he immediately message, don’t worry, everything will work it out. I’ll be in touch and everything. And anyway, I ended up in hospital for three days, right? They diagnosed me with something called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, yeah, just the thickening of the heart. You know the condition?
Mark McBride-Wright 21:56
I’ve heard that there are a lot of people that have it, that sadly, end up passing away due to cardiac arrest, because they never knew.
James Eder 22:04
You never know. And it’s the thing that doctor you know, marathon runners and footballers, those listening, yeah, your heart’s thicker than it should be. Yeah? Why? There potentially are, there are no symptoms, because the heart, the body, overcompensates, and you think you’re getting healthy. And a lot of people are lean, they’re strong, they’re fit, but if you think about the hearts of muscle, so they’ve been going to the gym, they’re doing their muscles that, you know, but it’s a genetic condition. And so what happens to the hearts? Like a coconut instead of banana skin? Yeah, when it’s pumping, it can’t pump effectively, and then suddenly it goes, I can’t do this. That’s how you think. And so they said, so they actually put in a defibrillator and to take a step back and to kind of weave in again, the kind of back to the collision code was a number of years ago. I was sitting on the underground, and a guy sat next to me with a CV in his hand, and I just turned him said, you’re looking for a job. And he came to work at Student beans. So there’s a recruitment piece in there, which was funny. And I remember Michael, my brother, Mike, talking to Nick, saying, can you just tell me? James told me this story about how you met. Can you just tell me what happened? And he’s like, I was just sitting on the underground and I had my CV in my hand, and James just turned to me and said, Are you looking for a job? And here I am, and we gave him a job, ironically, helping with some recruitment. We did not put him on the underground, searching for people, but there was a very practical and he was a great, great guy. And then I said I needed to speak to a specific brand, to my colleague, William, and it was something called Virgin experience days. So virgin experience days are like air ballooning, skydiving, that kind of thing, but they were powered by a company called acorn. So imagine acorn do everything in the background, but public facing brand is virgin, yeah, and so I remember distinctly, had that conversation with him, and like, really, what we should do is create a student beans experience days, because then we get more margin. It makes more sense, instead of us promoting kind of another sub brand that’s already run by another brand. Anyway, yes, 10 minutes later, I’m standing at Gold is green platform, which is where our offices used to be, and I can’t hear something over the tannoy, so I turned to the guy next to me and I said, Oh, is there a problem? Is the train coming? So again, that there’s the context, that there’s a theme of what we’re saying. Like, yeah, I wouldn’t just turn to someone to be I mean, sometimes we were just like, oh, you know, is this train going to that place? But it was just a very natural conversation. I didn’t plan it. I didn’t think about it. I just said, is the train, is it okay? And he’s like, Yeah, trains coming, and he was wearing a black tie. So I said to him, Oh, where are you off to? You know, you’re all dressed up. It’s not common that you see someone wearing a black guy on the underground. He’s like, Oh, I’m going to an award ceremony about points and loyalty. Oh, that’s interesting. I run student beans. He’s like, Oh, what do you do? And he’s like, Oh, you’ve probably not heard of us, but you know, Virgin experience days, we’re the company that power them. And that was within 10 minutes. It’s. Saying this thing, and I, I always get excited, you know, sharing this story, and I’ve shared it, obviously, a lot of times, but like, you wouldn’t make it up, you know, like, if you wrote a fiction book, you’re like, let’s change that, because that sounds too unreal. Yeah, it’s a similar company, or it’s a marketing company that would be useful, you know, it’s but you wouldn’t say the company, the person, and his name’s Darren Ziff, and I’m still in touch. I reached out to him when I was writing the book to say that I want to include you in this story, because it’s so wild, amazing, and so, you know, fast forward, though, you’ve got those like, examples, those experiences, and it’s like, how can I, as I was doing all this stuff, realizing, like, what is this code? Yeah, and so, you know, the code of the essence, permission, confidence, context, so I felt like I had permission to say something. As an entrepreneur, Running Company, I’m recruiting people the permission, the confidence piece is also, you know, often, sorry, go back to permission. People. Who do you need permission from? And I say in the book, you know, you need to give yourself permission. It’s not about me giving you, you know. And often we stop ourselves because we don’t feel like we’ve got the permission. Yeah, do something and the reality,
Mark McBride-Wright 26:14
or we just don’t, yeah, we don’t lean in and embrace that. I mean, I had a similar experience yesterday. Actually, I got on the Northern line at whichever station it was at to come south. And the carriage that I chose, I sat down and Peter Tatchell, the LGBT, you know, rights activist, was next to me now, I stood on a stage with him, like 12 years ago when I held a large engineering company launch its LGBT network. But I sat down and I thought, do I engage in conversation? Can I bother? And I sat there, and I was like, and he had these like free Palestine and all these causes that he marches for and that on him. And I thought, and I didn’t, but then the guys opposite me, who looked like big, you know, bruisers type thing, one of them actually leaned forward and went, are you Peter Tatchell? And Peter was like, oh, yeah, yeah. And then I can’t remember what their little exchange was. So then I said to Peter, nice to see you, Peter. You know, we were on a same event a few years ago, over a decade ago, and we got, we got chat, and so I didn’t give myself permission initially, or I could have had permission, but I just, I just couldn’t be bothered. But it was only when I saw someone else and I thought, serendipity. You know, maybe me and Peter, what might have given all the crap that’s happening in the world right now, maybe the five minutes that we’re on the tube together might lead to a little conversation about more collaboration, or something
James Eder 27:53
absolutely and I think there’s this, I think, you know what stops us? Sometimes, one is like, okay, the self doubt and what’s the point? And sometimes we don’t always feel like it. But then also it’s on that side of what should I say? And I don’t know what to say. And obviously, having been on the stage, you’ve got the context, yes, easier to engage. And I don’t you know Rory Sutherland. You heard about Rory? No. So he’s a fantastic speaker and kind of marketeer and behavioral economist, and he was in actually, the day that I fainted in the theme park, he was delayed at the airport the same time I was and he’s written a number of books, once called alchemy, it’s also a fantastic book, just talking about, kind of how we kind of function in society and consumer behavior. And anyway, he ended up, he’s written now the endorsement he’s on the back of the book. Oh, great result of that interaction, kind of back then that you’ve met. Yeah, you just, I mean, the point is that you never know you’re going to write a book and you’re going to then ask for endorsement years later based on that story. But it was, you know, we’d done some work with him in the past. He’d spoken at some events I knew about, so the context was there. I gave myself permission, and ultimately what I talked about in the book as well. And again, if you’re listening to this and they’re talking about action, I know we’re going to come on to but you know, if there’s something that you’re going to take from it and you want to get permission, I’m going to say I’m giving you permission. So you can say to someone, if you’re standing in line somewhere, or you’re at work and you just want to talk to someone, you can literally say, I just watched something and it said that I need to go and just say hello and speak to someone. And James, this author of this book, collision code, said I need to so honestly, I’m taking responsibility and blame, not for what you do or the outcomes, but for initiative. Disclaimer, I am not responsible, but, like, I joke about it, but it’s like, you know, if you need to say, you know, say, you know, I don’t know, you’re with again, your partner and you’re both sitting on your phones, and you want to break that. You say, look, I watched this thing earlier, and it said James, who wrote the collision code, say, we should put our phones down and have have a chat and ask the question instead of, you know, what are you looking for? What if we were to do something on our next date? What would you love to do? What would get you? Yeah.
Mark McBride-Wright 30:00
Yeah, just like permission to break the cycle of the monotony, or the track that you feel like you’re on. So in the collision code, then, is there a framework, or is this the framework, the permission context?
James Eder 30:15
Yeah, so it really flows as the permission, confidence, context, confidence, and, you know, I guess just a couple more. I guess examples kind of to, kind of bring this a bit more to life, the 21st of September, 2017 so I’d fainted, as I mentioned, in the June that year, got diagnosed, and I had number of tests over the summer, and the 21st of September, they said that I might need a heart transplant. Oh, and that was, like, obviously big news, and I was not prepared for it. It was my younger brother’s birthday, and on that day, and I thought, based on the results in summer, I’ll just go with my younger I take different people to different appointments, so I thought this isn’t going to be a big one. There’s gonna be nothing shocking. There’s just been adding up these different results. Anyway they come with this, and he’s a doctor as well, so good to have him there, but not in the context of them telling of them telling me you might need a heart transplant. Yeah, home that day, and I’m renting out my second bedroom on Airbnb. And I asked the guy, what are you what are you doing in London? And he says to me, I’m working on a documentary about the world’s first heart transplant 50 years ago,
Mark McBride-Wright 31:20
no, you’re making this up now.
James Eder 31:24
Literally infection. It’d be like, no, no, that’s too specific. Wow. And I swear to you, in that moment, I thought I’ve got goose pimples again. Think about it. You know, I’m going to be okay, even if I need a transplant. Yeah, the first one was done 50 years ago, successfully. I’m not the first person having this. And that just that moment. And I, you know, I talk about it in the book, it’s like when we open ourselves up, obviously, including having a stranger stay in your home, you’re more likely to be more connected. Find these experience have these opportunities in the book. I call the movie moments. Moment. If you know it’s not you know more movie moments. I talk a lot more about elevation, in terms of having an amazing experience where you look back and remember, you remember it because it’s so elevating. It’s so exciting. I appreciate that’s not necessarily the movie moment we all want every day, but it’s meaningful. It’s part I will remember part of the story. It’s part like I will remember, you know, that summer or that year, 2017, what do I remember? I remember fainting in the theme park, yeah. I then remember being told, and I remember having someone on Airbnb stay with me and have that conversation, yeah, that is the power, you know, from a living life and experiences and doing things that enriches our lives. I’m going to say because, again, it’s about that community and connection. I could have very easily, obviously, not be renting out my second room, not have met someone come home and be, you know, by myself and actually in quite a bad way. And obviously I worked through things and from a therapy and, you know, I’m not saying it’s all been roses, but it’s those moments that actually were really,
Mark McBride-Wright 33:05
really on a path, or keep you from going down that path. It might have been a darker path, and it’s just a sort of nudge to stay in the optimism.
James Eder 33:14
So could I share one more related story? Yeah, this is just, I think it removes, then me from and kind of thinking again, if there’s one thing you’re going to take from today is thinking, What would James do? Or in a situation, if you’re having that doubt, or you see something that you recognize, or you want to say something, and you’re stopping yourself thinking, or you’re in a scenario that you’re like, oh, how could I use the people around me or collaborate with the people around me that will help improve this situation. And so the scenario is, my dad is on the train coming down from Newcastle. He was working in Newcastle. The train had stopped at Milton Keynes. He was on a virgin train, and the train had stopped. And he stood up. He thought, What would James do? And he stood up and said, Does anyone want to share a car back to London? And these two women said, Yeah, sure. So I think after, you know, a little bit of hesitation, they put the hand, Yep, let’s go. So they’re in the taxi coming back to London. And my dad was like, Well, where are you going? And they said, middle way. And he goes, Okay, what number middle way? And said, Number 14. Number 14. Middle Way is the house that my dad used to own, and it was the house that I was born in. I lived there for five years, born in the hospital, but lived there for the first five years of my life, and it was the grandma of one of the people. And again, you can’t make it up. It’s just too, too specific, too unreal. And it’s like, you know, I always reflect thinking, you know, one of the chances the train stopped, that they were in the carriage, that my dad said something that they said, Yes, there’s so many things. And I think, you know, in the essence we started talking about causa was the idea of how technology can unlock these random moments, random you know, you could imagine putting on the app. Yeah, I’m on the train. Does anyone else want to go by taxi? Think technology would help unlock that much? Because that reach would not just be that carriage, it would be the whole train, you know, that would be and getting people to share, you know, maybe getting other scenarios, they could have got a coach together and gone by coach, or whatever it is, but it’s these moments. But then, actually, we don’t need the technology that, you know, the technology solution only got so far. But actually, when we start talking, and that’s why the book came about, was four years ago, I was in hospital, and they said my condition had progressed and I was borderline. I they were recommending for me to have a transplant. Yeah? And I decided not to, because I had an infection that was going to hopefully improve, and I was on new medication that I hoped was going to settle, right? But I left that appointment at pap wife in Cambridge, saying, I need to write this book, right, because if something happens to me on the
Mark McBride-Wright 35:56
table, yeah, you’ve not, you’ve not, yeah, like, yeah,
James Eder 36:01
I just wanted these stories. I’m so passionate about caring about this. There’s something called the Blue Zones as well. Do you know the Blue Zones? No, no. So there’s a guy called Dan Butner, and he’s done that on Amazon, Netflix, they’ve got a blue zone documentary. It’s basically in the world where people live over 100 years old, like they’ve done research.
Mark McBride-Wright 36:19
Oh, I’ve watched his documentary, yeah, yeah, in Italy and in Japan,
James Eder 36:28
yeah, and so in it, one of the pillars is community, is connection, is people,
Mark McBride-Wright 36:33
yeah, yes, yes, when you said that is good for your well being, it’s helps you live longer, because you’re connected to two people,
James Eder 36:44
people, and so you get, you know, what you get from it, and it’s so, you know, again, especially in the kind of developed world, we’ve put up these barriers, these walls, you know, historically, we used to be in tribes. We used to be in community, yeah, you know. And we’re so there’s so much pressure now that we put on one person or the one environment that we’re in that actually is very restrictive. So there’s kind of, obviously a few themes kind of coming out through the book. But I made that decision four years ago. Unfortunately, I’ve not needed a transplant. Today. I had an assessment this week. Okay, stable at the moment, which is great, but I’ve decided to, I’m donating 100% of the royalties for the book to charity. Oh, amazing. And so initially to the Heart Foundation and cardiomyopathy UK, and then to various other charities that have helped me along my journey and making a difference for them. And from an LBGT Q perspective as well, wanting to support also. And you know, men, and the biggest thing you know, mental health, men in their 40s, it’s the highest suicide rate. Yes, I know why it is, you know, travesty, and it’s, you know, there’s just more that needs to be done. And so really, the collision code book and concepts just the start, yeah, and something I’m exploring, as well as the concept of, like, the collision code collective, in the light on organizations, groups, communities, voluntary things that enable people to come together and almost give people the permission, confidence and context, yes, together, because whilst I was running a business, trying to do something myself with that, actually, there are some great people doing great things. Yeah, but people don’t know about them. True. That’s why I really kind of almost leveraging the code. And what I’ve done, it’s kind of having, like a seal of approval. It’s almost a community seal that, yeah, line posting. And so that’s kind of what I’m going to be working on, kind of my 2026
Mark McBride-Wright 38:36
so the collective will be a new people who, themselves, have helped initiate networks.
James Eder 38:45
And I did, the most simple way to think about it is it as a directory of things and places. So, for example, I think I’m probably going to list, you know, target so, like, if you’d have, you know, Glasgow or London or so, then you’re in a city and you’re like, What? What can I do? That means I can go and be part of a community or do something right? I’m not alone, so I’ve got the permission, confidence and context. So for example, there are running clubs now, yes, I think there’s games that’s like doing really, really well, and like bringing people together and going running and they have a social afterwards. Yeah, okay, I think there are so many people still that aren’t exposed to those things, don’t know about those things, and I kind of feel like my role today, because I can’t commit to running and setting up another company like causa or doing something like that. Yeah, actually, you know, we find our place and my flow, and the story is partly showing these stories to show as individuals what we can do. So yeah, of the collision code community. Yeah, I’m toying with the idea of having something on LinkedIn where you join part, and you’re kind of saying, I’m part of the collision code community, and I’m just open to, yeah, yeah. I know some people, you know, thinking can be very salesy, and people trying, but it’s, it’s remote, it’s not, it’s kind of, you’re signing up to an ethos about, well. So that’s something I talk about. But net giving instead of networking. How can you help other people? How can you show up? How can you help others? How can you contribute, and what can
Mark McBride-Wright 40:09
you do? What can you do to connect people? Even doing a passive introduction, you’ve no idea what that can go on to help achieve for that individual in that business or that organization.
James Eder 40:20
And so it’s, it’s anyway, these are, kind of, there they are, kind of the the grassroots of things that I’m kind of playing with, exploring, and I’ve kind of saying to the charities as well, like, I’ve rate, we’ve so far raised over 10,000 pounds, which, oh yeah, start just, you know, being very playful in this time of, kind of, yeah, showing up the books. It’s the beginning.
Mark McBride-Wright 40:45
Really, right, right? Exciting. Come out. Remind me, was it June?
James Eder 40:50
So yes, but we did like a formal launch on the 17th of September. And then I’ve just been to the US, actually, in San Francisco and New York to do launches out there. They were amazing. And you know what? I applied for a load of jobs in 2001 in New York, which I didn’t get. And I then got a work placement in San Francisco. And then September the 11th happened.
Mark McBride-Wright 41:15
Yeah, it’s gonna say probably good time to not have moved to New York.
James Eder 41:18
Jobs that I got I applied for in New York. Some of them were within the square mile. And so the book, you know, people are like, Why did you go to the US to do a book launch? Apart from that, it’s a fun thing to do. It’s in the book. Right at the beginning of the book, the story starts with this kind of moment of, I was meant to be there, but I was there. And again, how serendipity can affect, you know, when you think something wrong has happened, actually, that’s the opener, and that’s the opportunity behind it. And so, you know, Steve Jobs quotes, you don’t know how the dots join until you look back, and then you can see how it works. Yes, for me, that’s what everything I’ve been doing is really
Mark McBride-Wright 41:58
how so we’re going to move on the Quick Fire question shortly, but just just to close out the How did you find recording your audio book?
James Eder 42:07
It was wild. It was fun. They did something called, I want to call it drop and roll. And even if they didn’t call it drop and roll, let’s say it like it is, because they do like instead of like, rock and roll, drop and roll. So the idea is, if you make a mistake in what you’re saying, you hear back the beginning of the sentence, and then you hear your own voice in your head, and then you pick up the word. So it means that in real time, they’re doing the editing. So really cool process, yeah, basically to get it because, because imagine you’re doing 15 hours of recording, they need to go back at the beat, and then you need to drop in do different words, and words and different Yeah, we’re doing in real time. So you fudge something, and you say, you know, I don’t know entrepreneurialism. Were you meant to say entrepreneur or something? And then they then literally go back to the beginning of the sentence. And then you can listen. You listen to your bits. You hear your voice. I’ve got much better at listening to my voice, yeah, but, but I’m enjoying the did you?
Mark McBride-Wright 43:08
Did you have so there has been a bit of a gap, a little gap between you finishing the book and then recording your audio book. And how did you find when I recorded mine, there had been a gap as well, and I found it so interesting, like re experiencing my content in a condensed window. And when I finished the audiobook recording, I feel like I had taken a chip out my brain and it was now there, and I felt this kind of well headspace. You talked about headspace earlier. I felt this like brain space be freed up to be able to focus on different creative projects, like, I know it’s now there, locked away, available, and I can now listen to it freely. Other people can listen to it, and we can kind of CO create new ideas using this foundational content, which we’ve now done with, you know, training programs and stuff. So how did you find did you feel similar? Like, is that helping you? There was your collision called Community collective?
James Eder 44:13
Yeah, I think I’m not quite there yet, because it’s not online, so I’ve got them on the computer, I’ve got the files that they’re on the cloud and on my computer, and have not launched it just yet. Partly logistics, partly timing, and so I don’t but doing it was, was amazing. I think also any advice, if anyone’s going to publish a book, I would do the audio book. It was much quicker, too, than I realized in the fantastic company in North London in King’s Cross called 2020 recording. So if you want that, then they’re amazing. But I did it in five sittings of three hour sittings. So it was kind of very succinct. It was good, but so there was a cathartic kind of process of doing. It and doing in your own voice as well. There was also a learning though, that I picked up a few mistakes. Oh, yeah, it’s good. So I would my advice, because I’d already published the book and then did the recording a few months later. My advice would be, do the audio book before you’ve done the final publishing, because you’ll pick up some mistakes no one else will get because as you’re reading it aloud, oh, that does not make sense. Yeah, yeah, I went through the process. Did you
Mark McBride-Wright 45:29
find that Barb or something, or M or the R? And so you’re like, you’re like, wait, this sentence
James Eder 45:37
doesn’t, doesn’t, doesn’t work. So, that would be my, my learning back to myself, is write the book, then do the audio when you’re completely final, when you think you’re completely final, and that will catch a few things that you everyone will have missed. That’s a Sideline Story. And so, yes, I do think, you know, you talk about, you know, space, and we’ve both talked about maybe writing another book already, or thinking about the future, and I’m not ready to do that until I’ve completed, I guess, this journey process that I feel like I’m on, and, you know, I’m starting to get the reviews in. So if you’re listening and read, please write your review. I know for both of us, it means such a world of difference, because it means that when other people are reading, obviously, the social proof, it validates it. You know, somewhere I’ve got 27 reviews so far, so, oh, well done watching this. You’ll, yeah, there’ll be a few more on there as well. But also reviews from people I don’t know. So thank you again, because that’s even none of my family have done reviews yet, which I’m still also really proud of, that it’s, you know, it is really, I guess, people but it’s out in the world, and seeing it kind of, yeah, permeate and resonate. And you know, when I wrote the book as well, because it was very personal, driven about my heart stuff, I just decided it was a legacy thing, and if no one reads it, that’s okay. And obviously the doubt inside you really want people to read it, you want it, and now it is out in the world, and people are and the feedback is coming in. So yeah, in advance, thank you for taking the time and obviously listening. It will be out. The audio will be sound soon,
Mark McBride-Wright 47:07
wonderful, right? Quick Fire questions, okay, what is a myth about connection? You’d love to bust
James Eder 47:16
a myth about connection. I think you know when people say it’s, it’s hard, okay? And I think you mentioned the word curiosity. Be curious.
Mark McBride-Wright 47:26
Be curious. What’s one book that’s shaped how you lead
James Eder 47:31
so 100% the naked leader. Imagine if you couldn’t fail. I mean, it’s just and there’s a lot about authenticity in there, being yourself and showing up.
Mark McBride-Wright 47:40
What’s a quote or mantra you return to again.
James Eder 47:46
So if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. It’s an African proverb, and I heard it first by it was then the CEO of Unilever, a guy called Paul Polman. He’s an amazing leader and very, very respectful thing.
Mark McBride-Wright 48:02
What is your go to, creative, recharge activity.
James Eder 48:09
From a recharge perspective, I just love people, I mean, and catching up with people and going out. I know the days where I’m when I’m not with people, yeah, I just, I’m like, what? I’m like, Oh yeah, I’ve not, I’ve not spoken. So that’s my, my go to
Mark McBride-Wright 48:27
what’s one thing you’ve learned from coaching others
James Eder 48:32
and the themes that we’re all on this journey and we’re often chasing, it’s called like, means goals instead of end goals. So often, so many people are, you know, what job, what level, what house, what car, what material things. And actually, we realize, on a deep level, there’s these end goals that ultimately health, happiness, connection, meaning, purpose. And it’s these themes that I’ve kind of worked with over clients. And I can just say there’s, I call it SAS. So clients want space. Often we don’t have the space. We’re so close to it to take a step back so that space accountability just and I have a coach, and I love it and the books in the world because of my coach, because I said to her, by next session, I would have done the first draft, I would have done the first chapter, I would have and it’s that. And every time I’ve learned not doing it, I’m like, Oh, I’ve told my coach I’m going to do that, and I’ve got my next session next session next week. I’ve got it, you know, and it’s really an action to accountability. And the third one is support. You know, the light. You know, it can be quite lonely, whether from an entrepreneur, I Coach Wright with a lot of entrepreneurs, but individuals as well. You know, your family and our friends, they do support us, but they also maybe don’t want to see us hurt or challenged or so when you go to a friend, I’m going to set up a business to go, no, no, don’t do that. And that’s Yeah, and it will parent, you know, they just want you to be secure and happy and safe. And my role, I see it, is to support you in whatever success means to you. And it’s a very neutral I come from a you know, the. A from a coaching perspective. So those over all my clients, I’ve looked at the themes a lot of people as well. When they say they’re going to become a coach, they don’t, you know, you’re like, what’s your niche? What’s just with it? And I just said, start doing it, and then look back at what the themes come up, and then your answers will be there. And that’s my coaching.
Mark McBride-Wright 50:18
Well, it’s an everyday act of courage. More people should try. I’m guessing the answer.
James Eder 50:23
It’s obvious. I mean, it’s you know, challenges, just say hello to one, yeah, random stranger every day. And James said, okay, yes. And James says, Okay. And James said, James has helped me a challenge. I listened to this podcast. It said, I need to say hello to someone. Can I say hello to you?
Mark McBride-Wright 50:37
Done? And what? Finally, What’s one word that describes your leadership style. Authentic, authentic. Lovely. Well, James, I’ve really enjoyed this. Really, really enjoyed this. If, if people want to get a copy of the book or connect with you find out more about your work, how do they do that? Amazing.
James Eder 50:59
So, LinkedIn is my kind of go to so feel free to reach out to me. It’s James Ida. You can see the name on the screen, and I’m sure there’ll be a link, but yeah, James Eder on LinkedIn, the book is available from Amazon. If you want to support obviously, local bookstores. I’m big fan. You can go and you can order the book, request it, and they’ll get it in for you. Absolutely. Amazon is the best place, really, and you can get it, obviously, a hardback and paperback. And as I said, 100% of the royalties are going to charity, initially, the Heart Foundation of cardio month of the UK. And then if you follow me, you’ll see the other charities we’re going to be contributing to, from LBG, Qt and youth leadership and kind of all those different organizations that really helped me along my way to really, kind of pay it forward. Thank you for your support. And obviously, if you do buy or listen to the book, which will be out soon, then please write a review, because it really, really does mean the world to me, listening and tuning in.
Mark McBride-Wright 51:53
Thank you so much, James. We’ll put all those links in the on the web page as well and on the socials. Thanks so much.
James Eder 52:00
Thanks, Wright, have a great day. Take care. You.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
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