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Episode 5 with Dean Paton
278 Plays3 days ago
We welcome Dean Paton, founder and CEO of Big Heritage, to talk about his journey with ADHD, his passion for history and archaeology, and how he ended up owning a U-Boat!
Check out the great stuff they are doing at https://bigheritage.co.uk/
Donate at www.adhd.co.uk/donate
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:00:07
Speaker
Okay, so hello. Welcome to the ADHD UK podcast. I'm Jamie. And I am Max. And welcome, yes, welcome, welcome all.
00:00:19
Speaker
Welcome, welcome everybody. Today we are speaking to Dean from Big Heritage, a community in interest company based in Chester.
00:00:32
Speaker
Big Heritage are an award-winning social enterprise connecting museums, schools and communities. I am really looking forward to this.
00:00:43
Speaker
Yeah, it's a great it's a great
Dean's Early Life and Passion for Archaeology
00:00:46
Speaker
chat. And we talk about Dean's beginnings as ah as ah as a sort of kind of kind of boy, a boy in Birkenhead who's sort of growing up, and like producing messy work and getting you of kind of called out for it, tramping around cemeteries with his family and getting ah going get getting bit by the kind of archaeology history bug. And then, you know, just sort mid-twenties revitalization of of his, after the birth of his first child is sort of pulling himself up through real kind of
00:01:18
Speaker
determination um to get a master's in the end in archaeology, a master's degree, and then set up Big Heritage and and go through all of the kind of ups and downs of of setting up a company and getting keep keeping it going for the last 15 years. it's it's It's a pretty amazing
Discovering ADHD and Early Career Challenges
00:01:35
Speaker
story, actually. I think it's told with real kind of humility as well. So I think i think we let Dean speak for himself and on with the show. Yeah.
00:01:45
Speaker
So welcome, Dean Patton, to the ADHD UK podcast. Thanks very for having me. No worries at all. Jamie's going to kick us off with our first question.
00:01:56
Speaker
Oh, Dean, so when, um can you tell me when you started to feel different then? When did it kind of click that there might be something there? I think hindsight, I can date it back earlier earlier to...
00:02:12
Speaker
things in childhood perhaps didn't notice they were different at the time. But um I was primary school was OK. It was quite studious. It was kind of visivorous as a reader and but really, really sloppy and scruffy with work and handwriting. handwriting atrocious now and disorganized with stuff. I actually remember one of those core cold memories that a teacher, not not a particularly nice teacher in primary school,
00:02:40
Speaker
they maybe stand up in class after done a piece of work and had little smudges on and the held held it up and asked the class whether they thought it was a good enough piece of work. And there was only what one guy, a good friend of mine, he's actually still a friend mine, put his hand up and then she tore the work up in front of me. My goodness. of the old class I think it was about eight. and The only reason it's quite a core memory is my mum's a pretty...
00:03:07
Speaker
tough old Birkenhead school mum and went home and told her and she went down to the the head teacher and said the if she does it again i'll'll I'll drag the teacher out and I'll ask all the parents in the playground whether she's a good enough teacher in front of everyone I think she nearly got banned from the the playground for for a while after that but so I think um she's great she takes no mess in
00:03:36
Speaker
I think challenge wise was high school really, because you can breeze through primary school on, on a bit of, you know, wit and the first year or so how too bad. And then all of a sudden you have to then knuckle down, make an effort, coursework, et cetera. And then it just kind of, for me, school just went, um,
00:04:00
Speaker
pretty much into free fall over that. So always work, always late or finishing off on the bus or um half-baked subjects i was interested in. I was really, really focused on or over a teacher was all right. then the rest of that was just, but I think I went to high school from 95. So I was very much, was still that a kind of,
00:04:22
Speaker
Naughty boy syndrome then it wasn't really, i think ADD had obviously been recognized, but still nothing like it is today. um So GCSEs went great. And then i didn't manage to make a levels. that started them and then I didn't get kicked out of the school, but i think they politely said they should leave, which it effectively did.
00:04:41
Speaker
um So that was what, age 17, 18. um And then a kind of job-wise just flitted for a few years. All friends gone to university and ah ah try set up a couple of businesses ranging from trying to import wheelchairs from China, which... Started out okay for the first few months and then I realized was meant to reinvest the money in the business and not being frivolous, drinking it type of thing. And then it was worked in a few bars and
00:05:12
Speaker
um yeah, my level of kind of commitment to any one cause, you know, jumping from one thing to the next was having an effect. And it was my my diagnosis was a bit strange because i was going through these kind of like depressive times and then like hyperactive time, um, bouncing around with ideas and then I'd gone to the doctors and they started, in fact, actually diagnosed me with bipolar this disorder. the
00:05:42
Speaker
Oh, right. Which was was, I was convinced it was based around these ups and downs. And I can't remember what I started reading into ADHD. And a sort of self-diagnosed in a sense as I went back to the doctors and thing and what I realized was doing is I was coming out with these big ideas and running with them for a while, they were just going
Founding Big Heritage and Academic Achievements
00:06:05
Speaker
nowhere. Then i was just plummeting into a depression because yeah yeah yeah getting into a load of debt and things weren't working and I realized these peaks and troughs were kind of chemical in balance peaks and troughs they were just natural you've messed up so now you're feeling down about I'm feeling yeah yeah yeah that's so disappointed and then you know you bounce back up again and you do something else and then it became quite quite clear it's funny a good friend of mine's wife's said a lecturer in
00:06:33
Speaker
and pharmacology and we had a chat about Christmas. He said, you need to come and speak to my pharmacy students because that's such an interesting case of misdiagnosis. It kind of makes sense.
00:06:44
Speaker
So then, yeah, got um a proper diagnosis, think, 28. um And then I'd waited a lot a long while and I went through all the tests from the, you know, the little ping pong ball on your head through to all the kind of self-surveys and it was just...
00:07:00
Speaker
cut and dry and ah what what was really good for me in the sense is the GP, I was going to have a ah young GP who was starting to branch and specialise in adult ADHD. So I think it became a bit of a ah test case experiment. Yeah, that's all it can be. It was, and I was quite open about, and because it was reading a lot around it myself and saying, look, I think this is happening. that She was almost making notes and learning as she went along, but just having someone a bit more open-minded to it was...
00:07:33
Speaker
like literally life changing really so that that's how that kind of come about so didn't so of yeah i didn't actually you know career-wise certainly my life didn't kick kick off until i was probably like 20 i had a daughter my eldest daughter was 23 who's now she's now 19 but not until after that did they actually get into ah the career path that i'm and i in now so um I went kind of back to the beginning and ah kind of restarted if you like. you know so it the The restart and the start of Big Heritage, which is your current but your your company, that started around the time. I'm still stuck at the ping pong ball though. Like i I really need to know about this ping pong ball. Sorry, we need to go back to the ping pong ball. Very good point. back shall i Shall I come in at this point and explain what that is?
00:08:24
Speaker
So that is the QB test. um And the ping pong ball has probably been superseded. That sort of there of dates you a little bit as to when you went through the diagnostic process. But I also had a ping pong ball in my head, not for the diagnostic, but at the time I was working. Ping pong ball exciting. I was actually working in Reading, and diagnosing ADHD, and we were one of the first e areas to have the QB. The QB is ah it's a continuous performance test. I describe it sometimes as the world's most boring video game. It's sort ah of, you have to click at some points and not click at some points, and you have to concentrate on, it is painfully boring. I almost think it's most useful.
00:09:01
Speaker
It's... Its greatest utility is how unpleasant people find it. People with ADHD find it very, very, very unpleasant um but because it is so dull.
00:09:11
Speaker
But it does also glean some useful information. It's slightly taken over in a way that's not terribly helpful because it's not actually as accurate as the manufacturers claim. But that's what it is, if that makes sense. Oh, whoa, that's like, where did this stop? The ping pong ball on the head is tracking your head movements. So the more you move your head, the more hyperactive it thinks you are.
00:09:35
Speaker
When did that stop? Oh, well, that basically when um tracking software improves, so you didn't need the ping pong ball, you just tracked the whole head. I think it was like an Xbox head controller or something originally. Oh, really? It could have been, yeah. You have like a small target and then the closer your little dot is to the target, the more
Big Heritage's Innovative Approach
00:09:54
Speaker
you can focus. Oh, that's very old version then, yeah. Yeah, well, I stood up half of it in the end because I couldn't focus. And she's like, yeah, think we'll just finish that one. really ticked the ping pong ball test. Honestly, I need to find some stock footage of that to put in the background of a rave or a club or something like that. That sounds fun. Yeah, I'm feeling really old now. said it's dated me, but yeah, it kind of did. Sorry about that. You're not as old. Yeah, I did. That was not my intention. Some comfort there.
00:10:28
Speaker
But yeah, that was, and then in terms of the great reset, if you like, was actually when my daughter was born and I was working in a bar and then took over to manage another bar, which was daft move. It was in a fairly cushy private members club and then ambitiously got offered the brewery office to manage me this own pub, which was just like this really rough social club fight can't believe I took this on managed it and coming home at silly o'clock not to see my daughter. And I was like, I need go back. And I've had so many different career changes and failures in like the last four or five years. was like, right, if I'm going to do it, especially because I've got daughter, what did I enjoy doing? Like, what do I love in life? And,
00:11:17
Speaker
I'll go back and do that. And, you know, it's fairly naive, really. But when I was younger, well, all all through my life, I've just been really passionate about history, archaeology, ancient history, local history. And ah when I was growing up, used to go, mean, the joys of probably with hindsight, just growing up not much money, you go to museums and old cemeteries and churches because they're all free. So it just kind of was embedded in me, really. So i was like, do you know what? i want to, I want to,
00:11:47
Speaker
go back and I think I had chip on my shoulder as well about not having qualifications and and all my friends had graduated from uni and everything else because I knew I wasn't daft.
00:11:59
Speaker
I thought I'd be capable of getting a degree but felt like I obviously wasn't capable of ah getting onto the course. So we went back and done an access course and went to Chester university to do, to do, um, to do archeology. Um, it was one of those degrees at the time where it's only so many hours a week, you know, in terms of lectures. So I've got a full-time job working at an, like an autistic sensor kind of residential home, still managed to do a full-time degree course. Cause there was only so many hours committed. So nights and then I just found my niche and, um,
00:12:40
Speaker
was really, really driven. I was classed as a mature student. And i remember at the time thinking, um am I too old to go back to uni? And I think it was 23, know, you think god just a baby, isn't it? 23. and I just, I just kind of fell it fell in love with, with, with learning. Then I was at the front of the class and I know I'll kind of throw in some kind of ADHD cliches in there, but that hyper-focused stuff, because i was really interested in landscapes and maps and, you know, reading the work. So word I'd sit and look at old Tide maps for hours and hours of the nighttime and start picking out things and patterns that people hadn't picked up before. And so just...
00:13:17
Speaker
I just, I flourished at Chester Union because it was, you know, it wasn't like this big red brick university, but they had some really great understanding lecturers and, ah you know, they gave back what you put in.
00:13:30
Speaker
So I ended up getting a first class honours degree there. And then there was a ah professor, the area, my kind of academic area of interest, like the early early medieval kind of eighth to 11th century in the Northwest. And there's a professor called David Griffith, who's from similar area from Wirral as I am. And he was a professor at Oxford University. So I'd done ah one of my with dissertation, won a prize around the same interest of study as him. So then I ended up getting a ah two years master's course at the University of Oxford, which is quite a ah jump from not getting any A-levels. So it's a kind of professional master's.
00:14:13
Speaker
And that's when the kind of concept for Big Heritage came from there. and I think the irony was we were doing a lot of field work down in Oxford and was in like Dorchester on Thames, all these really beautiful... Yeah, Dorchester on Thames is particularly beautiful.
00:14:28
Speaker
It is lovely, but we were doing field work in this lady's garden and she happened to have like a medieval chapel in a garden. And you're like, I had a wheelie bin or something in my garden. was like, this is not...
00:14:42
Speaker
normal life up in the Northwest. And I was trying to work out how I could make archeology specifically the time more accessible for young people, people from my background, where it was from. And I basically set big heritage up as a vehicle to try and make that more accessible. And there was a a different type of like archeology called test pitting. So rather than the huge, big, massive trenches, you do tiny, small, one meter trenches. and um you'd do 30 or 40 of these rather than one big one and then you could start analyzing fines data so you chart the pottery and you know little shirts of pottery and for example brombro an area started working on you could see that after the black death it kind of really died off and but then really shot back up and a lot of
00:15:31
Speaker
villages after the Black Death disappeared where some of them flourished because there's a bit of a kind of trade boom afterwards. And so we could chart these unknown bits of local archaeology, but you were digging in like a pub garden or on a of grass verge or a a roundabout. And we were getting local people to do the digging with as children and everything else. said And we say we it was kind of me and one other the person at the time. And it was just a an unbridled success we got some funding from heritage lottery fund and that that was the kind of the impetus in the beginning of of it really back in back in 2011 um and then
00:16:10
Speaker
and then Well, fast forward. so So what happened was we kept carried on growing and still doing these kind of project by project. And a lot of them were were grant funded. And then we realized we do a great project. The grant comes to an end. You've got to go back to the beginning or start something new. It was a really unsustainable method of of doing what we wanted to do. So we started looking at ways of...
00:16:34
Speaker
generating our own income, which certainly within heritage is is obviously tourism and, you know attractions that people be prepared to pay to get into. And at the time we'd run a project with Wellcome Trust, obviously big medical charity. We'd done a project around the history of Roman medicine and, you know, the the science of ancient medicine, and but also the kind of the the blood and guts and gore of horrible histories-esque stuff that, you know, kids find interesting.
Expanding Big Heritage and Overcoming Challenges
00:17:00
Speaker
So we opened, what we thought was going to be a pop-up museum called sick to death in Chester and took on an old, old building, set up a little museum that we thought would last six months. And, uh, that's 10 years old this year. And it's, I think it's the busiest ticketed attraction in the city center, um, in Chester. Um, and that approach meant we could charge people to to come in, pay, pay wages, pay, pay the, pay the the lights, pay, pay the rent and,
00:17:30
Speaker
reinvest any any surplus. and And then we we took some risks. So we took on then and a second place, Western Approaches, which was a at the time derelict underground bunker in Liverpool, but was, is, you know, the most, you know, one of the most important Second World War sites in the world and command centre of the Battle of the Atlantic and 50,000 square feet under underground of concrete and steel and ridiculous risk at the time to take that on.
00:17:57
Speaker
But now, again, it's it's it's that's our flagship. You know, huge huge amount of visitors recognised, you know, a lot of work worked with the Royal Navy. And yeah I think it's the highest rated museum in Liverpool on TripAdvisor, which is no mean feat because it's some fantastic museum. because it's got some pretty hefty competition in Liverpool. And they're all free. We've got a charge, you know what I mean? So we do we do well to to to get get that. And um it's kind of...
00:18:25
Speaker
grown from there and it's kind of snowballed into its own little industry. A lot of museums are, so we're not for profit and we reinvest either in projects that we find really interesting that we wouldn't normally get funding for. For instance, we're working with Class Bridge Cancer Centre at the moment on a veterans, Navy veterans project around prostate cancer, um which is a bizarre thing to say that we do, but we can kind of help fund stuff like that. Or We reinvest into into growth. So um we are technically, well, the only kind of private owners of ah of a German U-boat in the world, which is not something I thought. Yeah. how does that and's Let's unpack how you managed to end up. How have you got a U-boat? Honestly, is it is, I think my brother said it's the most ADHD story you can ever tell being is that you've accidentally got a U-boat. How did that happen?
00:19:23
Speaker
So, well, look, Shortening the story, there there's um there's only four U-boats left in the world. One one was captured by the Americans and is now in on display Chicago. There's two still in Germany. And then in 1993, there was one yeah U-boat that refused to surrender at the end of the war, tried to escape, and they sank it.
00:19:43
Speaker
But because it wasn't a war grave, no one died on board it. They razed it in 1993.
00:19:50
Speaker
on the assumption that it was full of gold and that's why it was trying to escape, but it wasn't long story. So then the Danish donated it to a, um what was a ah ship, historic ship charity in Birkenhead.
00:20:04
Speaker
Then that that went bust and the local authority runs runs the ferry operation Merseyside, took it on, bought it for a pound, took it on and created a museum at one of their ferry terminals, which closed during COVID.
00:20:19
Speaker
And so the Battle of the Atlantic is effectively Western approaches was the Battle of the Atlantic Command Center. And then this U-boat, which is on the other side of the River Mersey, was that other side of the story. And it kind of it kind of slowly become anonymous, really. And we wanted to kind of basically take it on and revitalise it. So literally said, can we have your yeah U-boat? ah ah but ah Pretty much in them. Have you got any U-boats lying around that we might have? Yeah, well, it's the only one knocking about. And we've we took that on about two, three years ago. And
00:20:56
Speaker
We've got about a £6.5 million pound new new Battle of the Atlantic Museum that's being built on that site as we as we speak now. So it's ah due to ah well due to be completed by early summer next year, which is the only dedicated Battle of the Atlantic Museum museum in the world we've got the us navy canadian navy royal navy all kind of endorsing it and um all on board with it and obviously we've got a plane there as well a grumman avenger u-boat killer basically bomber which which we we've acquired but yeah we've got that's the only
00:21:32
Speaker
only u-boat of its kind it's uh i should tell people i've got a private yacht it sounds a bit more uh yeah it's interesting i think yeah put it on your tinder profile that you've got private yacht and she turns up and it's a rusty rusty so that's so that's that's where we're at now and i think god they're about 35, 40 staff or something across all the sites. And I'm in the position now where I go and do the silly stuff, like ask people if they want to give us the U-boat and a few other daft adventures along the way. And the team I've got surrounded me after years of getting the wrong people or people who just...
00:22:15
Speaker
that didn't get how I needed to operate and I've got a really small but really loyal and and understanding and very very capable team and who fill in the gaps where I've just got to the point where I just ah don't beat myself up about stuff and rubbish out anymore and just I've brought in people who are better than I am and um it seemed to have worked worked worked well.
Embracing Neurodiversity in Business
00:22:38
Speaker
ah Because I think that brings us to one of our other questions doesn't it Jamie? Yeah, I mean, like, I guess, at what point did you realise this is time, i need to sort of outsource some of the things that I'm not so good at to other people? Was there a moment? of I think there was a specific moment, i think. So I've had people, obviously, since...
00:23:03
Speaker
kicking off in 2011, the staff that have come and go. And that there has been times where I've kind of gave away a lot of control to people. So there's once or twice I've had people come to work here with, I don't know what is the opposite of someone with ADHD, but you know what mean? They're very anal, very detailed and this, ah and the other. And certainly the last time I did that, the kind of in ah in some sort of shame gave gave them so much of control of running stuff because I was like, I can't do this. and there There was a bit of guilt on my part of like, gosh, I'm running this company out and I'm useless at it. And it went the other way, become very vanilla and dull. I was kind of blocked out of some decisions, even though it was my company in that sense. And that ended fairly acrimoniously. um
00:23:49
Speaker
I just thought then, you know what? I'll live with the with the stuff, I'll live with the filing things later, live with the forgetting to pay bills on time and this sort of the, because actually the essence of what the company is and how it should be run and the the fun and the kind of zeal about it is more important than like paying bills on time. And I know it's that probably people out there rolling their eyes, but paying bills on time is just what you just should do. It's fine. and um within reason anyone can do that but what my skill set was was just thinking a bit differently about things taking a bit of a risk being a bit more playful and and moving away from what a traditional kind of museum would be and I thought uh stop I literally stopped beating myself up over it and go do you know what I'm never going to be that person my you know
00:24:39
Speaker
kitchen doors that get left open as piles of clothes on the floor that know from a personal perspective it is what it is um so it really was that moment where it's like had to get control or had to kind of make sure things were in order, but in a way that I wanted to do. And also just not worry if things are late the late. And if you don't want to work with us because we're scatty, then fine.
00:25:07
Speaker
um But the team I've got around me now just know what I'm like. And I know there's there's decisions and stuff now they don't bother me with or there's HR problems and they they' just don't tell Dean because he'll... he'll deal with it differently and that and i'm grateful for for the way that is but and likewise they they appreciate which is important that you know what i do is is you know adds adds so much so uh it's a long journey. And I think there's loads of times along the way we could have gone wrong or, you know, we've mistakes, there's made so many mistakes along the way, but, um, you know, if I've fought, you know, or effort we're, we're kind of thriving and and, and, and doing really well. And i think just that embracing that neurodiversity of anything is, uh,
00:25:53
Speaker
is an asset. ah I think it's a bit slightly cliche where people say, oh, it's a superpower and you go, oh, because it's yeah it just kills me. And I think, no, it's it's horrible. But there are, certainly in business, and on and I know there's a kind of correlation with entrepreneurship of that kind of thinking differently and and also taking the taking the risk is a big one. But there's so many risks of talking kind have just backfired and they go, oh my God, I can't believe you. And you don't tend to people don't tend to tell you those kind of horror stories, but there's been so many of them, ah you know, it's been a a slog.
00:26:26
Speaker
Um, but yeah, it's, so, so the company's kind of ebbed and flowed as, as I have personally and meant, you know, mental health and everything else. But, uh, yeah, it's been, been fascinating because it's a little niche. There's no, no other real museum group. That's not kind of paid for by the government or the council or taxpayers, but,
00:26:48
Speaker
fairly unique in that sense. But yeah, we're doing all right. And I'm just completely and utterly unemployable outside of this. I would not employ me. I would absolutely not employ in a million years. So I've just long made survival continue. So I don't end up on the double.
00:27:10
Speaker
That is interesting, isn't it? That so how how much of the museum sector is basically an arm of the state in some way. yeah so you're saying in some sense yeah and and i think it should i mean for me i've so in in the uk every you know so many museums are free either the it's the local authority that pay for them like a council for like for instance the grove museum chesto close to us it's is funded by council taxpayer or your national museums which are effectively government funded and i i think that's important you know i i would say free museums are ah great but there is a
00:27:45
Speaker
a weird side you know you go abroad you go to rome and you'll pay i'll pay to go into any any museum you abroad and in this country i don't know whether there is an element of value so you know you'll pay 10 quid to get into a museum and you'll moan about and go off 10 quid but then you'll go and have two gin and tonics that are 14 quid each you know after did the museum and you'll you'll neck on in 10 minutes and have another one and that seems fine but 10 quid to spend two hours around the museum i think it's just because we naturally don't pay for museums across the board we're just used to it and therefore was to an extent we don't value them we could just go in there
00:28:23
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's so because it's raining and you want to be in the dry. think you actually value the experience. Yeah, it is a sense of value, but you know equally as well, Western approaches, it's um kids don't basically pay to get in. we we We fund all that as well. So it is important, that especially in the Northwest, and in those areas that we're not... um re So Western approaches is quite similar to the Imperial War Museum's, the Churchill's War Room's, same experience, bunker underground. Ours is actually bigger. I think theirs is like, I know it's in central London, but it's about four four times the price for a ticket to to get in. so It is, it's pricey that one.
00:29:02
Speaker
It's, you know, we've got to, we've got to pay the bills and everything else, but we are mindful of making sure it's, you know, accessible. well I think you need, I suppose i suppose you suppose you think of yourself and you said as growing up, you you would go to museums and churches and cemeteries. Oh, 100%. It was um form very formative. So i am I am conscious of that and um We do a lot of, certainly with schools, et cetera, where we do a lot of pro bono work and put back in where where it's quite Robin Hood, especially if you get look at Western approaches, you'll get Americans coming off
00:29:37
Speaker
you know know 15 000 pound cruisers and they all come to liverpool because their dad was in the second world know the battle of the atlantic and they're absolutely enamored to pay whatever the charge is and you know you've just paid paid 15 grand cruise like 10 15 quid for tickets nothing can spend a fortune fortune in the gift shop and often you know come out spending hundreds by the end of it and that allows us to kind of make sure the kids you know are a quid or something to get in for everyone else.
00:30:06
Speaker
So yeah, it's, you know, we see tens and tens of thousands of school kids who come directly with schools every every year as well. So it's, ah yeah, it's quite a varied, varied organization.
00:30:21
Speaker
I suppose I'm thinking about your ADHD and your relationship with failure, because it sounds like, because this this doesn't feel like a sort of typical CEO podcast um interview, although I haven't listened to that many of them, but you're, you seem quite relaxed about failure, about there will be future failures. There have been past failures. Do you think that, do you think that your relationship with failure and your relationship with your ADHD is, is a similar process?
00:30:53
Speaker
I must admit, like I don't, a lot of the terminology I don't have, I'm not always akin to or really tuned in, but but I know I suffer really badly with imposter syndrome and there are still times where i'm like, what am I doing in this? Like, yeah this is, and ah I think that is obviously reflective of kind of past experience in childhood and, um you know, a thousand times I've been told, you know, negative things. I think I've started to learn a lot more about that as ah I've got a bit older, but I think it's that,
00:31:26
Speaker
The failure thing for me is ah fail at loads of other stuff and adjust I just...
Making History Engaging for All
00:31:33
Speaker
ah maybe Maybe I'm fairly tenacious and just get on with it or maybe I'm just oblivious and I've just just carried on, but I think...
00:31:42
Speaker
I always, especially when you hear, like listen to some kind of podcast, your CEO stuff, it's a bit like Instagram, everyone loves sharing the best things that they go on. No one's honest about the rubbish stuff. And then, so, you know, you look at people on Instagram and go, oh my God, their life's perfect because they don't post it when they're crippled with anxiety and stuff like that. So everyone else just thinks, oh, my life's terrible compared to theirs and projects. We thought this is, tell you what we nearly did wrong and glad we pulled out. Sick to death is, um, we re re re revitalized. They got this new, um, new site 2019 and took us six months. We had the plague doctor as this great kind of character. And we were thinking of this stunt to relaunch it to the public. And there was this little virus that was kicking about in China at the time called COVID. We were getting the news a little bit about it and I said to Rob, who's the manager there, I tell you what we'll do, we'll get some of that biohazard tape for the day before and we'll do a bit of a funny stunt and pretend it looks like some virus has come to sick to death and it will be absolutely hilarious and people will love it.
00:32:56
Speaker
And then I can't even remember why, we just thought, no, let's just see how this plays out. Let's see if there's global devastating global pandemic that kills millions. Yeah, you know, you look back and go, yeah, that was a good one. We swear. but you bought We bought the tape and like a biohazard lock up somewhere. And you think sometimes, yeah, that might've been the,
00:33:19
Speaker
like sleeping yeah yeah that's terrible in death so so that, that, that was a near failure, but, uh, but, but put yeah, I think, um, for every, you know, we've, we, we view some brilliant stuff but there's 10 things that we try and you don't quite work. And, you know, some, some of them aren't massive, but you know, you give it a whirl and, and everything else. But I think, um, what I do get with, which is kind of typical kind of ADHD kind of symptom is bouncing to new ideas and coming up with new ideas and have a hundred of them. And,
00:33:54
Speaker
because I'm in the position now work wise where I'm fairly free with my time to go and do that and pursue different things. I do have reign that in and I bring them back to the, this kind of senior leadership team and some of them will go, okay. And then the others will go, that's stupid, but he'll have forgotten that like in in a couple of days type of thing. And then, but then some will, will run with and and they work out, you know, great. It's just, um,
00:34:20
Speaker
yeah you know we've add we've had our own gene we've got a clothing brand that's going to be launched soon which I think will be actually quite quite good fun but um there's been yeah there's been plenty of things that we get wrong so I'm i'm quite open and honest about that because ah it's part of the learning experience really i I find it kind of interesting that you said and you've got your own jed in a clothing brand so you're clearly doing quite a lot to make and you know, heritage kind of fun. And I mean, we think about a lot of heritage sites are often framed as something that's quite rigid and and academic spaces, which, you know, by definition, we would we'd probably put a lot of people
00:35:04
Speaker
who are ADHD off. Do you do you do anything? Is there any measures that you you take to make the heritage sites fun for you know children who might have ADHD?
00:35:16
Speaker
Well, yeah, I mean, if you're going to sick to death, I mean, it is just, it's like a a playground of of history of medicine. There's a flying toilet machine you can sit in called the TARDIS, which is like a visual... bit that That was one of my favorite ones. That one is plague doctor flying around. There's dirty undies hanging that with with germs that you can use spotlights. And the whole thing is so insane. In fact, it's it's maybe go the the too far. the other way to so' saying what what was useful though is that i got really good grounding when it was anyway it was a Chester University with the that was my first real kind of understanding of academia and and peer reviewing and understanding because there's a lot of nonsense in history it's the same with science you know a lot of
00:36:09
Speaker
idiotic science on the internet where people don't understand what peer review means and and how something becomes you know published, et cetera. I got that really good ground at the first the degree was some great lectures there.
00:36:23
Speaker
So what we've always done is embed that first. So there's nothing... factually incorrect at any of our sites by any stretch the imagination. We can reference, you know, if if if there's something mentioned on an interpretation board, we'll give you the the academic reference to back it up. But if we choose to do that by a flying poo across the sky, then that's fine. But yeah we can draw that back. So we've kind of flipped it the other way around.
00:36:47
Speaker
i don't really... say the word museum often for one of our sites because they're very kind of interactive and hands-on and ah more of experiences than they are museums but using the past as a as a touchstone and and for learning so so sick to death brilliant because we do tackle some really interesting subjects so there's a big wall of shame there there's loads of doors that you open and it's kind of bebunking medical myths from i don't know gwyneth paltrow's vagina candle we've actually got one in there you can see Donald Trump drinking bleach through to... Right, I mean, you've got the whole the whole ah RFK. He's got his old own wall of shame all of his own, hasn't he? oh Well, yeah, we maybe need to update it with him. yeah if that was
00:37:29
Speaker
I mean, that was we we actually planned and built all that just before COVID come in, and it was so pertinent when we did, because then all of a sudden we had these kind of um people trying to argue what you know the efficacy of vaccines and you know then linking...
00:37:44
Speaker
vaccines back to to autism and all the nonsense that goes with that. So so what you know they for us, it was great because actually we're talking about history through the you know the development of vaccines and Jenna and everything else, but we can use that as a in a modern sense to kind of push home as best we can to the public what what is the scientific process what's the scientific method you know galen pergamon was practicing this back in the first second century when he was testing repeating the tests see it happened again and um like a famous one where he found that he vivisected a pig and showed that the laryngeal nerve um controlled the voice by um
00:38:26
Speaker
know, pinching this nerve and the pig stops squealing and open it again. And so we talk that because it's the, you know, the baby steps of science and the scientific method. so it's Experimentation and observation. Yeah, it'ss an not of it's not quite comp comparable to Modus and Medes, but it's that, you know, Vesalius dissecting bodies and proving things by viewing and observing. So, yeah, it's, I know we're kind of going off on a tangent now, but that's, it's not just history really.
ADHD and Societal Structures
00:38:54
Speaker
It's that kind of,
00:38:55
Speaker
crucial skills and especially if you people don't go and study a science at university you'd be surprised that people don't know what peer review means and how how you know science can kind of brings it back to adhd and medication and everything else the whole point of science is to potentially prove prove a theory wrong because it helps you advance it's to falsify it's yeah Do you have any, you know, ADHD history information up there?
00:39:27
Speaker
you know what? We don't. We have. That's a really good good point. I'm personally fascinated about, and I still think its there's a lot of work to be done on it. I'm quite interested in human evolution ah of ADHD, and I know there's like the whole pharma-hunter theory, which I don't think is quite right, but it is interesting that it – um for For me, i just just as a person, go think I think the Industrial Revolution is what caused so many problems because making people sit sit at a school desk. Yeah, yeah, yeah. yeah that like um
00:40:03
Speaker
We've done a transport project recently, and people don't realise that, like, clocks and watches just you know like the time to the minute only happened because of the railway system. So when railway came in, we needed to leave at this time and arrive at that time. And it blows people's mind that before the steam train, no one had a watch. because he didn't need to you know you meet you meet me when you know just before dawn or you know, between the hours of one and two or whatever. And I think that's really interesting with ADHD actually is because the parameters that we set certainly the kids in school sit sat down seventy many hours a day that the absolute, you know, millisecond of of human of evolution where that is necessary. And even agriculture's, you know, with humans kind of,
00:40:53
Speaker
farming and um staying in the same place is just so modern compared to kind of the the long durée of evolution the human brains what you know maybe 300 000 years it's been exactly the same so yeah maybe we should put sorry to answer your question absolutely i mean we should put something into that about about adhd or just i guess i'd have to um maybe kind of defer to to to adhd uk to pull in some yeah kind of current up-to-date science on it and help us with us in fact that sounds like i'm off on a project already yeah right i think i think i think it is interesting i think that the i mean all of this evolutionary biology of neuro neurodiversity is very speculative you know there's also what do you meaning, the evolutionary meaning of autism and all of that sort of stuff. um
00:41:44
Speaker
But but but and nonetheless, I think you know it speaks to the fact that so much of the difficulty of ADHD is a lack of fitness, lack of fit between the person's brain and their environment. And if yeah you can have that in an individual level, but also you can blow that up to a population level that we are living in a an environment and ah and a culture that a good proportion of people don't fit in with can't fit within the expectations of the culture and that is a broader societal question of whether we should be more accommodating to people who don't fulfill the expectations to go back to your original story your your original
00:42:34
Speaker
anecdote, you know, when somebody holds up a piece of work in front of a class and say, is this a good piece of work? For me, the answer is, well, have you read it? yeah have yeah it doesn't i like yeah i don't get what it looks like to have you read it? Or, you know, how do we look at pick different We look at a piece of work and see what the what the different virtues of it are. is it Does it look nice?
00:42:58
Speaker
Does it read well? Is it funny? Is it made on nice is it is it made with nice paper or on a nice pen? I don't know. Anyway, I don't know where that's going, but I think it's partly what we value about people as well.
00:43:10
Speaker
Yeah, I think, as I say, I don't actually think she'd read the content of what was. Maybe the content was terrible. I don't know. But the point- Yeah, it works with the anecdote. The content was brilliant. So let's stick with that. It was fantastic. But the point was, the judgment was on the presentation when it was a piece of written work, it not the content. And I think you're right. It's that kind of, it's like that judge a fish how it climbs a tree and it's not, you know,
00:43:35
Speaker
it's not going to be any good type of thing and i think um you're right about ah the society thing because at some point you've got to fit in to to so some systems we can't just be anarchy and you can't just kind of no say I'm not I'm not doing it but but like I think society just changes, especially with the the internet and social media has brought people closer in different ways that there are new, the new like mental health issues and and neurodiverse conditions that are coming across certainly around like the likes of anxiety and stuff, which are far more prevalent and, oh or, or more visible now, or maybe people are just communicating, talking more about them now. But, um,
00:44:20
Speaker
it's it's how they fit in, as you say, it's what what was a fit because, you know, I've travelled all over the world there's been to, you know,
00:44:30
Speaker
The depth of Ethiopia with a tribe and ADHD didn't exist with their kids there because they were just running around busy, busy, busy. So what a surprise no one had ADHD and no one had depression because they had to get out bed and do their stuff anyway.
00:44:45
Speaker
I think society makes these things and we make we make the society as
Future Hopes and Community Impact
00:44:50
Speaker
well. So i think it's not not the disparaging of any conditions, but i think these conditions are exacerbated or... or a torch is shone on them by the rules that we've got to follow which is yeah think that's good way of putting it yeah it's a good way of putting it i think should shall we should we draw ourselves to a close because we've started to speculate wildly just should do do you have any other questions jamie do you do anything else you wanted to cover with dean
00:45:19
Speaker
I think that was quite in depth, to be perfectly honest with you. I suppose I wanted to start, I wanted to hark back to the ah the the story, the the question we used to ask all the time when we used to do Extraordinary Brains, me and Tess. um What are your hopes for the future, both for yourself, for your company, for ADHD people in general?
00:45:42
Speaker
So I think I've... I've reached a kind of mental limit in terms of expansion. We've got a couple of other new big projects we've finished and then i'm going to take a a ah break. For me personally, I've got loads of ideas and other things that want to pursue that are not necessarily heritage related as well. So going to get to a point and ah I'm always handing over a lot of the the big stuff to staff and explore some new projects abroad. I've been out in, I was out in Kabul in Afghanistan in January working doing some basic stuff around museums and education, which was. oh long and And again, in Ethiopia, there's ah there's a project I want to look at doing some some work in. But um my my main thing, the biggest joy of having a company from myself is
00:46:29
Speaker
i I've always picked my kids up from school. I've always dropped them off from school. Um, you know, people who are entrepreneurial in a business, you go, what's the, what's the advantage? And they go, oh, we can money this, I know that mine is, I'm the dad outside the school gate and the youngest daughter's six. And so my aim is just, you know, whether they are having any more kids or not, it's just, you know, be the dad at the school gate. It's a very boring ambition to somebody. No, not at all. What life's all about.
00:47:01
Speaker
part of the reason kind of motivated to come on speak to you guys is I think, you know when you kind of look back at yourself when you're, I don't know, eight, nine, 10, 11, and you thought, I'd love to go back and give yourself a pat on the shoulder and go, actually, it's just this, it'll be sound and there's ways of coping with it. And I think we've come on so well collectively, you know,
00:47:24
Speaker
and the medical industry and everything else that it's it's so fantastic but I think I'd also love to kind of do some kind pro bono voluntary work of being that like pat on the shoulder for some especially young lads I've got a 14 year old son who's upstairs I would hate to be a teenage boy at the moment growing up in Britain you're getting battered from pillow to post for you know everything and really bad role models and everything else so think I'd like to kind of lend some time
00:47:56
Speaker
and kind of give, give for better or worse, my experience and help, help some other people kind of maybe have a bit less of a rockier early start than I did really. So some of the work you guys are doing, for instance, ah probably sign me up as an extra volunteer type of thing, because i think it's fantastic advocacy and sharing. So yeah, really appreciate the work you guys are doing. And yeah, this is probably like one of the first steps of coming on this podcast where thought, yeah, I can share some, some, wisdom yeah no he's been fantasticly absolutely We're always looking for ambassadors, so, you know, come and hit me up. Come and hit me your line up and we'll not you can Come and sit me, you both, and we'll have a chat. Oh, that sounds... yeah i'll definitely i'll be into that definitely at some point absolutely absolutely fantastic so dean pan thank you very much for joining us on on the adhg uk podcast um that's it for now bye-bye so i really enjoyed that what was what was what was your sort of what was the thing that really stood out for you jamie
00:49:01
Speaker
um I really liked the invitation to come and hang out on the U-boat, to be perfectly honest. Yeah, that was a highlight. that was I mean, I didn't actually know what a yeah U-boat was until the conversation, and then I Googled it, and I thought, oh, my Lord, firstly, I need to find out what, i need to do a deep dive on U-boats, and secondly... No pun include intended.
00:49:26
Speaker
Exactly. Very good. and And secondly, like I want to go hang out on that boat. So like yeah i hope whoopop was I hope it wasn't an empty promise. Well, I hope so too. Otherwise we will we will send some ADHD UK enforcers around.
00:49:41
Speaker
We could have a party on it, couldn't we? Let's not get ahead of ourselves. No, I thought it was great. i mean, the yeah U-boats are fascinating. It's interesting because they were, I mean, they're they're both terrifying to be around in the sea and also be inside. I i find them fascinating because they're such a ah terrifying machine of warfare um and had such an impact on on the course of the war. Yeah, anyway.
00:50:08
Speaker
So, yeah, I suppose it's probably good that Dean and I didn't get into the kind of details of the War of the Atlantic, but it's a fascinating story. you know could do centrally There are other podcasts that will tell the story of the War of the Atlantic better than this one. um Yeah, no, that was that was great. I mean, I love, I can't get past the story of the his mum.
00:50:30
Speaker
ah you know, when the teacher pulled him up. Oh, would she I love that. When she's like, oh, I'm going to, if that teacher does that again, I'm going to bring that teacher out into the playground and get all the kids to see if this is a good teacher. Oh, I love that. And it's it's such poetic justice and it and it's sort of, it usurps the kind of power dynamics of what was going on because that was accumulation. That was ah obviously quite an important thing.
00:50:56
Speaker
memory for him because it's quite humiliating it's quite traumatic probably horrible and it's a sort of thing that's i mean i found very quite moving because the sort of thing that not quite as extreme as that but sort of happened to me and i think it's definitely think as adhd people it forms our sense of ourselves as somehow broken somehow not good and enough i've got similar story as well like you remember at your vendor and you it you know Yeah. um and And just not being, finding things as easy as other people. and and And it's sort of the, it's the feeling slightly out of place and and and a bit wrong is almost the the thing you always get from ADHD stories if you dig under the hood, really, even people who've been very successful, and as as Dean has.
00:51:46
Speaker
um And so I thought that's why I pulled him back up on the the thing about failure, because he's very different to most CEOs you talk to in the way that he speaks. Yeah, no, absolutely. There's certainly, yeah, there's like a ah sort of sense of almost like self-awareness. I don't know if that's even the right words, but like...
00:52:06
Speaker
Yeah, he certainly it was it was it was a great chat. It was an interesting interesting chat for sure. And we you may get him as an ambassador. And of course, you may get some of our listeners who might be inspired to be and ambassadors as well. so you know Who knows? you might We might get some ambassadors out of this. They are the lifeblood. They are the lifeblood of the organisation, the ambassadors. Yeah. If you want to join the lifelood our lifeblood, that seems like that sounds a bit weirder than it makes. That's bit cultish, isn't it? We're not a cult. ADHD UK, not a cult. um Anyway, but what we are is charity. So if you have enjoyed ah this episode or any of the podcasts we've put out for the last couple of years, um bear in mind we don't have Patreon, we don't charge, we don't advertise. So the only source of income is the charity itself. And if you want to give any back, please go to ADHDuk.co.uk slash donate or just just Google it, of course, which is what everyone will do. um And give us some money. Not me, not not Jamie, but the the organization, ADHDuk, which, we don't like Big Heritage, has grown from... a tiny teeny uh was not really my idea but henry's idea to to a to a big to a great big successful thing um but always needs more support in a very tough environment so please do uh go to the website and and uh drop drop some drop some virtual coins in the tin yeah i mean any like you know even even just even just one pound is is you know oh hundred percent valuable it's invaluable it's invaluable
Podcast Conclusion and Charity Support
00:53:47
Speaker
100%. everyone just gives a pound who gives like who who um listens to this episode. yeah But I'm not going to tell you how many pounds we'd make because commercially sensitive. It's confidential information. Yeah, it's decent information.
00:53:59
Speaker
yeah um Anyway, so so I think that's it. We've had a a great episode and and who knows what's next because we haven't recorded it yet, but who knows it'll be something good. up It's coming up. All right. Oh, no, I think the next episode is the Pride episode.
00:54:15
Speaker
No, I think it is actually. You are great. Happy Pride, everybody. and um Yes, enjoy. Be yourself. Be marvellous and go in peace.