Some big news & new beginnings 🚀

The future of business and media ...

I feel the start of the academic year is wired into us from a young age and so five years on from leaving Downing Street, it is time again for a new beginning.

Today I’m writing to share the launch of my creative studio, Boxlight.

It feels a big milestone, built on the back of some amazing clients and tireless dedication from my team. 

Boxlight works with business leaders to create fresh, in-depth and insightful content, across video and audio. I’m so excited to see where we take it. 

The website is: www.boxlight.io

This substack is mainly a breakdown of that decision, and my musings on the future of media.

Ps. Don’t worry, the podcast isn’t going anywhere! (In fact, we have an incredible new Autumn series lined up).

Why now?

Four years ago in lockdown, I launched the podcast with a £40 Amazon mic and pillows to act as a vibration barrier. It was a crash course in content curation, production and - perhaps most crucially - the distribution. 

Along that journey, there have been brilliant highs but also the stomach churning fear of not being able to pay people at the end of the month. Entrepreneurship is like parenting - you know all the cliches before you embark, but until you go through it, you really have no idea. 2023 was a particularly tough year in podcast land, as we discussed, with the MD of Goalhanger podcasts, Jack Davenport. 

But, something else happened. More and more companies started reaching out to ask us about replicating the content we are known for with Jimmy’s Jobs, for their own platforms. We’ve since worked with the likes of Amazon, BGF, Local Globe, and Octopus - capturing the behind-the-scenes, and shining a light on some of the UK’s biggest and most innovative companies. 

It turns out we were really good at bridging the business and creator world. And it became obvious that it was time to go beyond making my own podcast, and create an independent agency that could meet the demand. Enter, Boxlight.

Breaking the business mould

This is polling from Frank Luntz about what people think of business in the UK. 

It always makes me shudder, because business provides 7 out of every 8 jobs in the UK. So why do people feel so negatively towards them?

This is what I have set Boxlight up to fix. I want customers and employees to know the company, and to understand the people - the humans - who make it up. The people who strive every day to create employment and economic opportunities. 

I think it’s time for businesses to stand up and really set their own agenda. PR is saturated. It’s now a $100 billion industry. The ratio of corporate comms people to journalists is staggering. And the reality is over the last 15 years, companies no longer need to just rely on the press, or a big splashy ad. Companies need to tell their compelling stories in a wide variety of mediums, and ultimately a key part of that is now video, YouTube is the world's second largest search engine, if you have no or limited presence there it will be filled by competitors. 

We have been told for most of the last 20 years that generational attention spans are shorter than ever, but the last four years has also demonstrated to me that there is also a yearning for proper understanding of business, their stories and the people behind them. Younger generations now have the ability to engage with a company and its content for a long time before joining or even purchasing from them. If you are going to give 50-70 hours to a company a week, it makes logical sense to understand it as best as you can before you sign up.

Some businesses are catching on - whether it’s making vodcasts, shorts for socials or full length docs explaining what their companies do. Look at Huel and Gymshark. Still, practically speaking, not everyone can have a media arm. So we want to make that possible even without an in-house team, through Boxlight. One of our clients described us as ‘a Netflix studio for business’. At first it felt a bit over the top, now I see some of the projects we are working on and I think its more accurate than I first gave credit for.

It is impossible to launch a venture in 2024 without mentioning AI. The truth is AI has fundamentally changed the way we make a podcast, it touches every aspect of production now, I see every day how the tools from transcripts to editing to subtitles is making the process so much leaner. 

​​​​Creating our own jobs of the future

We have just moved into an office and built our own podcast studio in London (I think most companies will build their own in-house studios in time). We are staffing up the team. I would love you to forward this email to people who you think might be up for the challenge. 

We’re looking for: 

• Assistant Producer -   a sharp, witty, and highly skilled individual with a primary focus on video editing. This role is perfect for someone who not only loves politics and business, but is also passionate about storytelling through video. Guest booking and community management will be a important too.

• Business Development / Sales lead - a creative sales champion who is ready to roll up their sleeves, full of ideas, and able to rocket launch a young company. 

• Social Media Manager, a better description might be head of audience growth and distribution lead

• Senior Events Manager: we are looking at putting on some amazing events in 2025, a festival of jobs and of the future. Commercial experience, a big plus. 

Ultimately creating jobs which have purpose and provide economic security is what I am most passionate about. It feels rather full circle to now be creating a whole bunch of jobs, it is a challenge to recruit because we cannot go and hire an individual who did X for Y company, because no-one has really done what we have done before.

On a personal level, thank you for engaging and all your encouragement. When I started this whole slightly bonkers venture four years ago, part of its purpose was to stop me going crackers at home in lockdowns. I remember being delighted when we got 500 listeners. We now have 90x that as YouTube subs alone and reach 1.2 million  through socials a month. It feels at times rather surreal that this actually my job. 

As someone who really gets what we are trying to do, I really appreciate you sending this and suggesting people to apply. Our first hire came from this newsletter and we would not be where we are today - thanks Gid and Leo!

Jimmy’s Jobs of the Future won’t be going anywhere if anything Boxlight will fuel its continued growth. We have just interviewed Nick Clegg on his transition from Deputy PM to most influential Brit an in Silicon Valley, Rory Sutherland on the future of marketing and advertising and Lionel Barber coming up to discuss his new biography on Masayoshi Son, the founder of Softbank.

And if i have learnt anything in the last 4 years, it is that as an entrepreneur you have to be direct and explicit, so if you are a corporate or you know a business thinking of shaking up its content strategy, get in touch and book a scoping session with the team using the link below: 

www.boxlight.io