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In this episode I speak with Daniel Cooper. Daniel Cooper is a former trader, a programmer and serial entrepreneur who streamlines businesses across the globe through the use of technology and automation. Daniel is on a mission to help as many business owners as possible ride the wave of technology turning sluggish companies into fast-paced technology backed enterprises. Recently Daniel has written a book called Upgrade, a book to help businesses benefit from transformative technology. It was fascinating talking to Daniel about the future of technology and business in a post-pandemic world. He had some fascinating insights into AI, the future of the internet and business. Daniel describes his own pivot point from being a city trader into his current business.
Personal website: danielcooper.im
Company website: lolly.co
Andre Radmall:
Hi, and welcome to pivot points the podcast about change. I'm Andre Radmall, life coach and psychotherapist, a lot of my life has been devoted to one question, how do people change? My work is focused on helping people shift out of old stories and pivot into new narratives. On this podcast, I speak with guests about their pivot points, and what we can all learn from their experience of change. Hi, and welcome to pivot points, the podcast about change. My name is Andre Radmall, and today, I'm talking to Daniel Cooper, who is a programmer and Tech consultant. Hi, Daniel, and welcome to the show.
Daniel Cooper:
Hi, Andre, thank you for having me. I appreciate it. And I'm so looking forward to speaking to you.
Andre Radmall:
It would be great actually, I was thinking, knowing a bit about your background, if you could share with us how you made some changes and pivots yourself to move towards what you're doing now, and I gather that you were around the whole trader industry to begin with. Can you tell us about maybe how you got into that? And then how you got out of it?
Daniel Cooper:
Sure. Yeah, absolutely. So from a young age, I was really heavily into computers. And I think my parents were often frustrated at my lack of not leaving my bedroom, and wanting to tinker with computers. And I don't think that I really thought about that love for computers as I grew up, and settled into trying to find a vocation that would net a good income, and something that is sensible and respectable. And by sheer coincidence, I felt and thought from the films that I'd seen on TV and of course, at the cinema, that working in the financial district was the thing that one should do if you wanted to be a successful person. So I ended up moving to London and looking therefore, to become a trader. I worked for a small company at first, and started off as a junior there and sold my soul to the devil, if you will, and work very long days, or grinding days, 16 hour days often practically, slept in my tie. And for a number of years, that seemed like the life I should live. And I think as I slowly became more and more senior in my roles within that world, it started to really jar my own moral compass. We all have we all have a moral compass, we know what's right and what's wrong. And I think often, when what is right and wrong is far far removed - distant, outside out of mind, it becomes easier to deal with. Now in trading, you think well there can't be much moral bankruptcy in that. I mean, unless you're inside a trading or or doing all sorts of, you know, under the table style deals. But the reality of it is, I think that Baron Rothschild summed this up nicely. Here's a famous quote, and it is 'the time to buy is when there is blood in the streets'. Now, if that doesn't tell you anything about finance and trading, nothing will do. And I think it really came to a head for me in I think it was 2011. This was around the time of the Arab Spring, so we were seeing a lot of Arab countries, we were seeing like revolution, and a lot of dictatorships being overthrown. Some of those never toppled - Syria, and other places like that. But one thing that really sticks out in my brain is Egypt. Obviously, during those types of situations, people lose their homes, their livelihoods, sometimes they lose their lives and their family members. But being a trader and someone on the financial markets, you're not looking at that part, you're looking you're looking really beyond that and ignoring all of that noise, if you will, and looking to where the opportunity is. So we were making money, of course from gold mining stocks in Egypt as everyone was dumping them because of the geopolitical issues there. There was true value and that really didn't sit well with me. And in the same year, we saw the Fukushima meltdown when a tsunami swept into Japan. People again lost their homes, their livelihoods and some of their lives. But they're unable to return to their homes for a long, long time. And compounded with the natural tendency to have a lot of stress in that job, I remember just walking in one day and thinking, I don't want to be here anymore. This isn't me and I'm unhappy doing this and whilst I can present outside of this role, the face of well, I'm a professional financial person, really, you know, deep down the what you're doing is wrong. So I stood up and, and walked out of the office, and I never went back.
Andre Radmall:
Wow, that must have been some moment but it sounds like, and this in my kind of model of pivot points, would be the first pivot point, which is making the initial jump. And I think that people often think about the word jump as something that you just do, suddenly, like suddenly you woke up one day and decided to leave, and this was enough for you. You go out to the office and never go back. But actually, you're describing a process here of becoming more and more uneasy with the role and with the identity that you were occupying to the point where you ended up saying those immortal words, this isn't me. What was the reaction from people around you, when you made that shift and left the office that day?
Daniel Cooper:
I think it was very much a surprise to everyone on the trading floor, there was almost a lot of look of shock that someone had just stood up and walked out. It's almost like a cinematic type of exit, if you will. I think my father was was shocked. Of course, the question what will you do now. Even though he was slightly more shocked when he said, you've become a trader? you did it? So people were very surprised and I think that they couldn't quite fathom that, because it is one of those roles where it's seen as highly successful but again, at what cost? And whose cost?
Andre Radmall:
So once you've done that, what was the journey after that? What happened to kind of get you from there to where you ended up?
Daniel Cooper:
I think I meandered for a while for sure and I that was a good thing, actually to have some time to consider what it is that I like to do. And what I realised in the end, is that I like to build things, not physically, per se. But I like to understand things, deconstruct them, reconstruct them, build systems and processes. I enjoy the process of building businesses is what I like to do and also helping other people build their own businesses by understanding them.
Andre Radmall:
So do you think they'd been clues to this in your background that they've been things maybe you'd love to do or enjoy doing that, kind of always pointing this direction? And then it became really clear this was the thing?
Daniel Cooper:
Yeah, absolutely. I should have really stuck with computing. From a young age and taking that as a vocation, I would think I mean, I am a self taught computer programmer and the majority, actually, of computer programmes are self taught, some will take Computer Science degrees, but we all pretty much learn our craft in the same way that a plasterer would or a bricklayer would or or any labourer would have any skill - we will do it the same way and that is one person teaches another but of course, we have the internet to help us now, YouTube is a is a wonderful tool. But I think if I if I look back at the early signs, and I've talked about this before, but I strongly remember coming up to my GCSEs, this story may cost me my math GCSE, but that's okay. But at the time, they were handing out these new Casio calculators, they were scientific calculators, were quite modern. The schoolchildren didn't really know how to use them. And I don't think the teachers knew either. But it turns out, they had a computer language on them called basic and you could programme the calculators. And I worked out that actually if you looked at the books, you could study the books to the point where you could programme the calculator with the equation, the mathematics, where if you input the mathematical question, it would spit out the answer and some of the workings, so I did rather well in maths in the end, although one could argue that slightly, roundabout way of learning the syllabus, but I think it it really did cement in me as far as my work ethic is concerned that, you know, I can learn pretty much anything if I really, really put my mind to it like I believe other people can. And it's not one of these sayings where you can achieve anything you want in life, you can learn anything you want in life is really that what the point should be. And I think that that likely should have been the further journey I should have taken not to cheat everything, but to be a programmer from the start.
Andre Radmall:
Yeah. I think that's often the way that true vocation shows itself in early life in his in some other area where just sort of pops up, and it might come out in an unconventional way like that. But it's a signpost to something that's to come and is in development. It reminds me of a phrase that I think I've heard you use, 'do what you can't', that mentality, or that white way of looking at things has really propelled you forward. Can you say a bit more about that?
Daniel Cooper:
Sure. You know, someone said to me, You can't pass your maths GCSE about studying, yes I can. You can't move to London become a trader without having a financial degree? Well, yes, I can. You can't quit your job in a city and start a company from that, Yes, I can. And it's do what you cant. So if someone tells you, you can't do something, then all you need to do is go away and find absolutely everything you can about that thing, and then do it.
Andre Radmall:
Yeah, what I like about that approach is that you're essentially starting from a position of 'do', so the first word in the sentence is 'do' that you can do it. And I think that releases the imagination to think about what that would be like, actually to do it. And, so often, I think we're programmed, we know, neurologically that we're predisposed to think of the negative, much more than the positive. So it's very easy for us generally, as human beings to think, well, I can't do this for that kind of line of thought you just explained, I can't do this or can't do that. And that's not to say there won't be difficulties in doing something or there may not be genuine reasons why something would be difficult. But I think what you're doing with that phrase is you're starting from, and it's more than just starting from a positive, it's starting from imagining a different possible future, really, from the get go. And then you build in stuff to support that like doing the work, reading the books, studying, learning, whatever.
Daniel Cooper:
Absolutely. And it's the it's the only way really to defeat not only the negative seeds sown by someone else, which can be very powerful when people purposely or accidentally sow a seed in someone's mind. But the power of resistance as well to start something as very strong. Resistance is a very, very difficult thing to overcome. Often, when we're talking about change, people resist change for a number of reasons or to pivot for a number of reasons. Because resistance is built of a number of emotions. So it could be fear, or anxiety, you're defensive, you might be irritated, you might feel paralysed, frozen, or resentful. And that combination is very powerful and the only way to really defeat that is to look at the end goal and say, How do I slice this up into manageable pieces, and slowly crunch through them one at a time, even if that's an hour a day, two hours a day on that one thing, it will help. And you will slowly achieve that thing if you just stick to your own prescription, if you will.
Andre Radmall:
I think that's very helpful when you're going through, the often slow process of change and transformation, is that if it's one step at a time, then that one step is manageable. It's within our kind of scope that we can imagine ourselves doing that. If we did 20 steps at a time it would becomes unmanageable and then what happens is, of course, people give up. Not only do they give up, but they get discouraged, and they're less likely, in fact, they become resistant, more resistant to making steps in the future. So breaking it down in that way seems to keep the energy going, actually to keep moving forward. And that kind of leads me into the area that you're working in now, which is in the as I understand it, the business sector and helping businesses organisations with the whole process of pivoting and changing. Can you just say a bit about what you're doing in that area? And how you do it?
Daniel Cooper:
Yeah, sure, so change is something that we all deal with every day. Change is something we've all become very used to in last year, and change is accelerating every day with technology. And it's hard for us to accept that and to deal with it on an individual level, or as a group of people. As a company, a company is just a collection of people, it's nothing else without people, the company is nothing. So we help people with change. So we look at it from a technological standpoint. So technology is accelerating really rapidly. Now, we witnessed that in the last year where we've seen 10 years worth of technology adoption squeezed into a year, many of us didn't know anything about a new piece of software called zoom, someone has said to you, let's have a zoom call back in of January 2020, you'd say what's a zoom call. And we have other things like that, that are now very, very common, we have people who weren't really using the internet to buy anything and now they're fully fledged shoppers on all sorts of websites, much to the delight of people like Jeff Bezos of Amazon. But what we do is we try and help people really, really delve into it. So as I've alluded to, a company is a collection of people, so our very first thing that we do is we come into a company, and we sit down with key members of staff who are doing their individual roles and we try and understand and sit with them, and really delve into the processes of that job, whatever it might be. And every job has number of processes, my job has it, your job hasn't and anyone listening, their job has it too. And we all know those processes when we start our mind starts to wonder now and think about all those processes and all the things we've got to in the back of mind, I send an email to that person, I'll chase this thing up and all those things. What we try and help people do is to understand that the march of technology continues with or without them. And that rather than being something to fight against, we mustn't try and fight the tide, because the tide is coming in whether you like it or not. So we need to try and say, Well, how can technology help us in our day to day roles in business, to automate some of these things that they were dealing with, to free us up to do the things that we like to do, or that customers would like us to do. Which business doesn't have customers who would like to speak to them more, have a human on the phone! Machines can handle all the boring mundane stuff and the humans can deal with the human stuff? And that is what we do, at its absolute essence.
Andre Radmall:
Do you have any particular kind of tools or exercises or approaches that you found, can help people get over the hurdle of resistance or fear or anxiety about being able to do something differently?
Daniel Cooper:
Yeah, two things. Listing down the reasons why we're feeling resistant on paper can be very, very good. Once you've got those lists, it's about having an open and frank discussion with management in business. Because people's biggest fear when it comes to change in the workplace, and new technology and automation is my job will be replaced. I don't want a robot replacing me, I need to earn money, how can I feed my children or, you know, support my family if I don't have a job. And those open and frank discussions often lead to the realisation, for the staff member, well actually this doesn't mean the company is spending my wage and paying a robot this wage every day, far from it. The robotic process is far cheaper than the wage, what actually ends up happening is that the staff member is actually utilised elsewhere in the business for the human touch. And that root base fear of loss that people don't like or the base fear of not being needed, we all feel a strong need to be needed, you know, I need you to need me type of thing. And I think sitting down and open and frank discussions about that is how we how we deal with that, and it has to be confronted, otherwise, we will find resistance, which is a waste of our energy and a waste of the person we're dealing with with their energy and it actually just upsets them.
Andre Radmall:
You're listening to pivot points, and I'm talking with Daniel Cooper, who went from being a city trader to helping companies navigate technological change. In this next section, we're going to chat more specifically about what the future might look like when it comes to work and communication. What would you be saying then to people who are perhaps worried about the future, I'm thinking here about people who drive lorries and things like that, like road hauliers, and the concern about while they may not be needed in future, because that'll be automated through AI. And they might be concerned that well, will they get another job? What will happen to them really, and their incomes? What would you say to people in those sorts of positions who perhaps are getting more and more worried these days?
Daniel Cooper:
Sure, we've got very difficult economic conditions right now, we know that we've had to spend a lot of money with COVID and continue to do so, unemployment is high, people have started to worry a bit about inflation, potentially spiking. And we've got a lot of technological change coming over the horizon that we are, we don't really understand for many of us, we don't really know how that's going to change things. And we feel like it threatens our jobs, but I think that there really is some, there is some sanctity to be had in it all. For a start, Ai isn't the godlike picture that likes to be painted on TV, you might be able to create a piece of AI that can be a world leading chess champion but then if you ask that same AI what to recommend you for dinner, it falls apart? The answer would be Bishop, or it's answer would be pawn, it wouldn't be able to give you any answers. And at the same time, training, ai to do these things is very, very hard. You need a teacher, a programmer to create a syllabus, and they need a lot of data. That's why they have these self driving cars driving out a lot. And even when all of this does come online, what you will likely find is that it creates such an economic uptick, that we do find things like universal basic income that like they've experimented with Finland, where everyone has a base wage, they experimented and said, everyone gets $600, there's no questions asked, that's what you get on top of whatever you're earning. And they track that people are massively happier, massively more fulfilled. And work will change for the better, anyone who is displaced from work will naturally find that the invisible hand of economics will provide a job for them elsewhere in the economy, supply does meet demand and it will naturally be found. And it's not going to be an overnight change. This isn't a switch that we suddenly turn on. We're talking many, many years here that this slowly comes into play. So I think that the benefits actually far outweigh the drawbacks by considerable amount.
Andre Radmall:
If we were looking ahead, and I know this is all very speculative. But if we're looking at the next few years, maybe even up to the next five years, I think people might have a general sense, especially with things suddenly coming in like zoom becoming obviously so popular because of the circumstances. But do you foresee there may be other things that we as people in the culture are going to need to adapt to and change to accommodate coming down the pike that that you see sort of on our way?
Daniel Cooper:
I see some really good benefits. One of those benefits, I believe that we will likely be looking at over the next 10 years of reduction in the nine to five working hours that we do. If you looked into Victorian age, the typical working hours was 70 to 80 working hours a week. There aren't many of us to do that anymore. And that will likely reduce as AI and machine learning comes in, you'll likely find the four day working week to potentially become the norm. Remote working will also become much more easy. Internet technology will soon allow you to get a very good internet connection, no matter where you are. Satellite Internet technologies coming online now, technologies such as starlink, by a chap called Elon Musk from south africa originally, but now in the states who also owns space X, a large space company. That will allow connectivity from anywhere so you will be able to work from anywhere with reduced hours. We're going to also see I believe a big shift in energy technology. Whilst it's nice to move to electric cars and trying to have all of these green, electric powered things that we like to use every day the energy has to be produced from somewhere. But more and more renewables are now becoming so cheap to produce, they're actually now outstripping coal. I think that coal burning power stations and shale coal producers will likely have their day in 10 years time and will likely almost be fully renewable energy, which will be fantastic. So the environment will obviously take an uptick there. And another thing that I would think that we will be looking at, over the next 10 years, although of course, many of us have heard of it, and thought potentially, not really going to be a thing, but we did also think about that, about the internet in 1999/2000, is cryptocurrencies - edge case, or basket case, very nerdy stuff. Those are likely to become the norm over the next 10 years. Soon, we will witness China bring on their own government backed cryptocurrency. And I think we will likely see the end of physical money, you won't be able to get coins or notes anymore. It will be like trying to explain the half penny to a 10 year old now, where they don't know what that is, and physical money will be the same.
Andre Radmall:
Do you think that as we as we go forward, that there will be changes to the way we function as human beings and the way we kind of see ourselves in the world, because of the impact of, of technology going forward?
Daniel Cooper:
Yeah, yeah. That's likely, I think that the natural thing that we're going to witness is an increase in our longevity, we will live longer, medicine has taken an incredible step forward in the last year with the vaccinations that have now been produced and the repercussions of those will be felt over the next decade, and will provide some amazing solutions to diseases that we previously thought were unconquerable. So as we live longer lives, I think that we will really start to look to do what we like to do, rather than what we've been told we should ike to do. And I think that th re will continue to be a movemen really, into potenti lly more creativity in human c ntric work rather than the dro e, you know, cog in a big mac ine type thing that we have no .
Andre Radmall:
I guess I was also thinking, in terms of people as networks and groups and the relational aspects of humanity. I guess with the internet, there is a whole approach to networking and connecting, that just wasn't there before in that sense. I just wonder how you see that going forward, the way people relate to others? And our concepts, even of what relationship looks like.
Daniel Cooper:
Yeah, absolutely. As humans, our own senses really are what allow us to build a relationship. If we're on the phone, we're just using, you know, audio. So we've just got, we're just talking back and forth. But if you're on a video call, it feels suddenly much more human. If we look at virtual reality, that's something that has, again, always been on the fringes of technology is a very hard thing to crack. But they're getting much closer and closer, I would think the next wave of communication, which is what we're really talking about here, will likely take place in the virtual realm. We know that if we we've all seen videos of people putting VR helmets on and falling over on a roller coaster, because your body really is mimicking that real life encounter. And that is likely the next digital movement for communication, which is very, very important. And I think it will allow us to have a much bigger sense of belonging, and community. But the internet will expand rapidly, we are still at the very early stages here of the internet. We have to remember that large swathes of people around the world still aren't on the internet and that the majority of them who will be joining will be Chinese. So we're likely to see the language of the internet probably change. At the moment it's 80% English, you will likely see that change to pretty much I'd say the dominant language would be Chinese at that point.
Andre Radmall:
Which begs the question in terms of us pivoting and changing whether we might literally be looking at learning new languages in the future, as more of an imperative than it has been less optional as it were than it might have been in the past.
Daniel Cooper:
With everyone being your neighbour and everyone being local, we do know that the best way to learn a language was to go and live in the country you wanted to be a native speaker. Well, you can now, you can move there physically or you could move there digitally. Either way, whichever one you choose, you're still able to do your job as you were before.
Andre Radmall:
Yeah, I think that's very interesting for lots of reasons but one of them is that we, I have a sense from almost from a therapeutic point of view from my work in therapy, that people sometimes develop, when they develop a kind of more of a patois language, almost where they can interact and communicate in different contexts with different people more effectively. And things tend to be more difficult if people are locked down into a very individualistic monologue, as it were, I think what you're talking about is, not just even a dialogue, is beyond the dialogue, is into multiple kind of interactions. And there's something about that, that I've always felt is a pivot into a greater openness, a greater flow, and potentially, that's very life giving and creative as well, creativity, I think thrives in that kind of environment, actually,
Daniel Cooper:
yeah, absolutely. These types of groups that congregate, you've always had to do that physically, you know, let's say that you're into pottery, that's what you really enjoy and that's your interest. Well, you'd have to go to a pottery group before but in the future, that may not be the case, you may be able to talk to these people in the digital realm in VR and feel like you're there with them. And these people can be from anywhere around the world and this applies to any interest, which is great, because it gives a sense of inclusion for everyone, a sense of belonging, community. And I think that's what we've all been feeling that, potentially, we've been missing over the last year. And I think those technologies are over the horizon now, only just because all of these young people, or anyone who's now creating these new software companies, the next stage of those or the next things to come, we'll all be influenced by COVID and what we've all had this collective grief over if you will, to solve that, many of us be very lonely, it's very isolating. And I think that's what this will solve.
Andre Radmall:
Fascinating. In terms of your own kind of journey, you've talked about how you got to where you are now, to some extent, and are there any other pivots or shifts or changes that you've got in your kind of path ahead of you that you can see coming up? ,
Daniel Cooper:
Yes yeah, there are, I want to personally pivot more of my time to writing. I've only in the last year since COVID, realised how much I enjoy the process. Currently, I try and prescribe myself 20% of my working day to writing I try and get jumped the gun on that and get an hour in before the day starts and an hour afterwards when everyone's packed up for the day. But I very much enjoy it. So I'm really looking to pivot into that. But the real pivot isn't in the act of writing, I think for me, personally, it is in the act of putting something out into the world that other people will read and absorb and not be so concerned about, potentially what they think of my writing. You'd find if you look me up on Facebook, I'm not a Facebook person, not really into overly sharing, which you could be surprised about I suppose for a technology person. Or Instagram, I don't really find I'm comfortable in sharing like that and that may be something to do with who knows? Who knows why I'm sure you could tell me Andre, we could speak afterwards. But, you know, this is quite a big thing for me to put something like that out into the world. So I'm really looking forward to pivoting more into the writing I think and challenging myself.
Andre Radmall:
And actually, that leads into how people can access your work, and what's the what would be the best way for people to read your work.
Daniel Cooper:
Yeah, if you want to read more about my thoughts on technology and pivoting and change, there is a my book, released in June, but you can get on pre release on the website, and that's upgradethebook.com. Or if you'd like to speak to me professionally, our website is lolly.co and I'm always open to help people wherever we can. It's part of my penance to be paid for my previous life for trading.
Andre Radmall:
Okay, well, thank you for much for talking with me today, Daniel, it's been really fascinating. Actually, I could really talk to you for hours about this stuff, and I think, I really appreciate you coming on and wish you all the well with the book coming out as well. So thanks very much.
Daniel Cooper:
Thank you so much. It's been a real pleasure. I've loved talking to you today.
Andre Radmall:
I hope you enjoyed that conversation with Daniel Cooper. I really thought it was fascinating. If you want to find out more about my work, including the pivot point programme, you can reach me at andreradmall.com. And if you're enjoying these pivot point podcasts, please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts from. See you next time. Bye
