Decisions That Made Me: Julian Douglas (VCCP, Global CEO)

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It's hard sometimes to recall Donald Trump before he was President Trump. The president-elect, again, has been so ubiquitous in politics over a decade that you'd be forgiven for glazing over his business and reality TV careers. He is far, though, from the only high-profile figure to have had a big... career change. Think former actor Ronald Reagan, or think Arnold Schwarzenegger, who became governor of California in a second career. And it's not just US actors turned politicians.

Before Vera Wang was an A-list fashion designer, she tried and failed to make it as a competitive figure skater. In the UK, Professor Brian Cox played keyboards for pop groups Dare and D-Ream before he became the notable physicist. These career changes, they don't always work quite so well, though. I can't think of a successful film starring the former Manchester United footballer Eric Cantona, for example.

And sometimes people change careers and then change back again, realising perhaps the grass wasn't greener on the other side of the fence. I am Evan Davis, and in this episode of The Decisions That Made Me, a new series of interviews with business leaders from the team behind The Bottom Line. I'm going to hear about one such story. My guest is Julian Douglas, Global CEO of the advertising and branding agency VCCP.

Now, if you're a regular listener to the Bottom Line podcast, which you can find on BBC Sound, you might remember Dougie, as he's known, from an episode called Side Hustles. What's it like balancing two jobs at once? If you don't want to miss a single episode of The Bottom Line, by the way, do subscribe to us in the BBC Sounds app, change your notification settings and you'll get a message every time we publish a new episode.

But back to Dougie, because we were so interested in him from the bottom line, we wanted to hear more of his career journey. And Dougie, for people who didn't hear that episode, just give us a quick snapshot of VCCP. What is it? VCCP is a 2,000-strong advertising agency, fully integrated. So we do everything from TV ads to web apps to posters and everything in between. And notable adverts you might have seen from us are Walkers.

Domino's with the Yodel, Cadbury's, Virgin Media, Compare the Market, all sorts of stuff. Some very familiar advertised brands there. Right, now, decisions that made you. There's one that we want to focus on, but comes later. But we do need to focus on how you got into advertising. You went to university. The world is your oyster. What happened? I was all set.

to work as a derivative trader i had a job to be a city trader in london i'm from manchester i was excited to get down to london in my final year with the job wrapped up then i saw an advert on TV, and that did change my life. Lots of people say they fell into advertising, but I chose. The advert was shot in black and white, and it was a guy test driving an Audi A4. Money? Nothing to be ashamed of.

If you've got it, watch out, flaunt him. Call Yuppie, and he was a real show-off. Money, nothing to be ashamed of. The places you go... Clothes you wear, people you see. Place you go, people you see, car you drive. So he's actually the guy you're about to become when you get your ride. Exactly, and he pulls up to the Audi dealership, throws the keys back and goes... Nah, it's not really my style. You know what I mean?

and it's like the audi a4 it's not for everyone and i thought it was just out of this world And I just thought that's so clever, so smart. Clever, yeah. Instead of saying it's for everyone, you're literally saying not for these. My flat makes me silent because you couldn't pause TV back in them days. I'd be like, God, it's on.

And it was just the best thing. So I found my way into advertising. As a result of that, I found out how those ads are made. It's interesting, though, you had the choice of a high-paying city job, of what would probably become a high-paying city job. It was double the starting salary. I think my dad thought I was crazy.

I actually did a work shadow on both jobs on the same day. I came down to London. I spent the morning on the trading floor. I spent the afternoon in the ad agency. And I was like, there's only one. Only one of those felt like home.

The story we told in the side hustle bottom line, I think we should get a bit of it again, is how you left advertising. Yes. So remind us when this is. This is early 2000s. Early 2000s. I was working at a famous agency called BBH who made all the Levi's ads. They did the Lynx ads.

They did Audi ads. I got to make an Audi ad. And I was working with a strategist called Johnny Shaw, who was from Belfast, and he'd done an exchange to Japan, worked to learn Japanese. And whilst there for a year, he had little to do and little money. So to pass his time, he did what is everywhere in Japan, which is karaoke. When I started working with him in BBH, we used to go to this little...

It's a karaoke bar above a sushi restaurant on 5th Street. It's still there now called Karaoke Box. In Soho in London. In Soho in London. And it was extremely basic. The sushi chef had imported four 1980s old... Really poor quality karaoke machines, loads of Japanese songs and a handful of English. Frank Sinatra, Beatles, Elvis.

But in small rooms, instead of singing to a whole pub, you were just in a small room with three or four of your mates. So you didn't have to feel self-conscious in front of the entire... suddenly it's not about performance it's about actually participation and how you it's not how you sound it's how you feel so johnny and i used to go along a lot we were pretty obsessive then we started taking friends

colleagues, we'd start doing work parties, I'd start taking clients, and we were like, there's a business in this, you know, the amount of money we're spending on cans of Sapporo in a really horrible grotty bar above a sushi restaurant, we're like, if we did this well...

this could be a real business. So this was our pipe dream for about three, four years. And we'd spend our time thinking, how would we do this? But then one day through advertising, we got to meet Martha Lane Fox of lastminute.com fame. We met her as we were doing a pitch for a travel company. And we won the pitch, went for dinner with Martha to thank her, and we pitched the idea. And she invested. And, you know, I think she got it straight away.

Great mind for it. And she'd also lived in Asia, crucially. So she'd seen how vast this industry is in the whole of Asia. The model was proven. So the business was born. Yes. Lucky Voice Private Karaoke was born. And it was a success. Well, me and Johnny did it in our spare time around our day jobs. By this time, I was an agency called TBWA, which is a really good agency. Did PlayStation at the time and all things like that. And the managing director...

considered my involvement in a karaoke business to be a major distraction. He said, you're more interested in your own business and your clients business. Why don't you get off and run it. And so I was firmly booted out of the door so For me, I had no choice. I had to go and work at Lucky. You see, this doesn't count as a decision. No, that wasn't my decision. That was someone else's decision. That was someone else's decision that made me back it. I guess my decision was...

within a year to leave it and to go back into advertising this is this is the decision we wanted to focus on because you have actually now got something where you're you know you've created it yeah from scratch you brought

I mean, no one can say you brought karaoke to Britain, but you did a... We brought into the mainstream, for sure. You had a part in that, a significant part, and I could feel that would be like a lifetime achievement. It was... a very difficult decision to go back into advertising for sure because i think when you create a business from scratch from a germ of an idea

It's embryonic. It's like you've brought something into the world and you feel it's part of you and you've got a bond with it and you've got control of it. And so it becoming real and building it and sketching out with chalk where the rooms would be. bar in soho where we opened the first one it was there's a lot of us in that business so to leave it was very difficult but i don't know i think for me what i found the most rewarding was the idea part

the innovation part, creating it, birthing the first one. That's an amazing moment of creativity to see an idea, a pipe dream come real. I can imagine that's amazing. I think architects must feel that when they build something and it's real. For me, I realised in that first year that what I could bring to that business of kicking it off isn't necessarily...

what was going to be needed to take it forward. Although it's an interesting one, I still have a lot of regrets about it. Perhaps the delivery... is things like chalking out where the rooms are going to go after you've done that a few times. Yes. Maybe. Well, the business becomes far less exciting because actually what the business becomes is finding more sites where you can get the footfall.

And you become like a property job, really. So you only come with the name once, the design once. That was done. And then it takes really level-headed, decent, good people running that business. And I felt... There were muscles I more wanted to use that were back in advertising. How did you go about getting back into it? Obviously, you knew lots of people. I got a phone call from an agency I'd worked at to say they'd just won the Manchester City account and there was nobody in the building.

who liked Man City, and I'm a massive City fan. So I started doing a day a week. I do karaoke all week, but one day a week doing Man City ads at Grey London. And when I went back in... to the office, having set up a business and bootstrapping it like you do when you start off, even with investment, you bootstrap, every penny counts. When I went back into an agency,

I realised what a brilliant industry it is to work in. It's an industry of ideas. Every day you're thinking of ways to influence people's attitudes, their behaviour. The blank piece of paper, it was such a privilege to go back in. I think stepping out of something often can make you realise what you miss. So I saw it anew. I saw it anew like when I first had joined after I'd seen the Audi ad.

I was like, do I stick with this thing that I've helped to bring into the world, my baby? It feels like your baby when you start a business. Or do I go back into an industry where I have less control? So that was the... No, I can hear. Did I hear you say you still have some regrets? Yes, of course. Overall, it's definitely worked out well because I've enjoyed a successful career, but I still have a sort of slight regret because...

I look back at Lucky Voice that I don't have any running of that business anymore. It's run by decent good people, but it's sort of like watching someone else raise your child. If I hadn't jumped back when I did... I think we'd have probably rolled out into more spaces more quickly. And there's things that I'd do with that that we haven't done. It's just a chain of successful bars. It isn't what...

All the stuff we had as the vision as founders of what it could have become, which was much bigger than that. Think about what business you're in. It's not the business of singing in a small room. It's the business of communal singing. And communal singing is much bigger.

bigger thing than a bar it can be kids learning to to read it can be old people in old folks home having the most energetic exercise of the day there's there's much more to communal singing than than karaoke and that's where we wanted to take it

You go from side hustle to sidelined, and that's quite a strange feeling to have in a way. But what is weird about your stories, I think most entrepreneurial-minded people... are frustrated if they're working in the corporate life and they're dreaming of mapping out the chalk marks on the floor as to where the booth is going to go.

That is what they dream of. And you've literally tasted it and then said, no, I'm actually going back. Now, in fairness, A, you're going back to advertising, which is not the most corporate of businesses. and b you've gone in at quite a high level or achieved quite a high level so you do i didn't return no no that's true i think i think it's about opportunity

feeling out and you never know for sure, but feeling out where is the biggest opportunity. And for me, I think there was a bigger opportunity in an industry where you... In advertising, you try and change the world. You persuade yourself of that. I mean, really, you're trying to make people buy the product that the client is sending. It's a good debate. I look at it as far bigger. I look at it.

You're trying to either make things of cultural significance or you are trying to make societal change often. Sometimes, yeah. Sometimes you need to tell a bag of crisps, but sometimes you're doing something a bit more progressive.

I think we should talk about the next decision. I like to end these conversations with the next decision. Is there a decision coming along? I've got another side hustle that I'm working on. And I think there's always a dilemma on side hustles of going, how does it become bigger? The side hustler's dilemma of having something on the side and giving it enough time to realise its potential.

So I've got one of those going on. Are we allowed to ask what that is? It's still too early. It's still too early. Maybe you'll get me back on if I go for it. It's been great talking to you, Dougie. Thank you so much for talking us through. A decision, several decisions that have made your life. And good luck as you make the next one on the next side hustle as well. My thanks to Julian Douglas, global CEO of the advertising and branding agency VCCP.

Thank you for listening. We will be back with another business leader to hear about the decisions that made them. Don't forget to subscribe to the Bottom Line podcast so you don't miss a single episode. In the meantime, we'd love to hear about the decisions that made you and your career. Our email address is bottomline at bbc.co.uk. This podcast was produced by Simon Tudor, the editor was Matt Willis, and it was a BBC long-form audio production for BBC Radio 4.

At the BBC, we go further so you see clearer. With a subscription to BBC.com, you get unlimited articles and videos. Ad-free podcasts. The BBC News Channel streaming live 24-7 plus hundreds of acclaimed documentaries. From less than a dollar a week for your first year, read, watch and listen to trusted independent journalism and storytelling. It all starts with a subscription to BBC.com. Find out more at bbc.com slash unlimited.