Jim James 01:25
Yeah, Tim, first of all, thanks very much indeed. And I've watched the growth of Telum the start of tell him and the growth of tell him over the last number of years and you guys have done a brilliant job of providing a great service to the industry. So thank you for that as well. I moved back from China last summer. It's been actually pretty much a year to this week that we moved back with the girls to get them to school here in the UK. And yeah, I mean, I mean, what I call the TARDIS if you hear a noise it's because my Beagle is is sleeping on the on the rocking chair that he likes. To be with me. Overall, it's been interesting because to come back to COVID Times has meant that the business has been quite, you know, quite challenging in some respects. But you mentioned about this idea of a virtual agency, I want to sort of maybe talk to that first if I may, which is that I'm virtually my definition doesn't mean that we just work from home. And but the relationships between the company and the consultants are the same. So one of the big trends was that people didn't want to travel because in Beijing, the staff would have to travel so far. And the cost of living in town by the offices was so so high, that it became impossible to do so what happened was increasingly staff wanted to work from from home anyway. But when I flew to Singapore to manage the office there people said, you know, they came in specifically to see me and have nots in India as well and people would have to to come in and I thought, well, there's something going wrong here. And when I look at companies like Airbnb or Uber, but also at films, like film production, actually, it's not a permanent crew sitting around waiting for another movie. It's experts, stylists, script writers, producers who come together for that particular film. however long that project is days, weeks, months, they will have a role. So I kind of took my cue from what was happening in China in terms of people wanting to work from home and present themselves. We see the growth of sites on Upwork and Fiverr. And so I decided in about four years ago, fat to not employ more people, but to be the brand and the process and the legal entity that clients need because they have to have one to do the proper billing and have compliance and so on. But then to find consultants, many of whom are my former staff, by the way, but to have them on if you like it back to a contract So virtual for me doesn't just mean we work from home, it means people turn up to work because they're actually kind of self employed and working on clients.
04:09
Now, as I mentioned in the intro, you arrived in Singapore in the mid 90s. with, you know, a laptop and a dream, as it were, what brought you here and setting up an agency right in Singapore, then, versus the kind of experience that you had more recently in moving back to the UK?
08:21
Now you on that subject, you've launched speak PR and the 25th. Year of, of eastwest. Just explain a little bit about the thinking behind that and what that's all about, because it's very closely tied to the broadcast, isn't it?
11:44
where it talks about you setting up in Singapore and then setting up in in China and you set up PR businesses and you set up businesses outside of PR and not just businesses, but you've been very active in the British Chamber of Commerce in China. As well, coming from a sort of entrepreneurial PR background, has that been helpful in the other in the other businesses that you've you've become involved with? And how is that all kind of unfolded? Having? How have you kept it all going?
19:14
Jim James Founder and Managing Director of East West PR, thank you very much indeed.