Everything End of Life.
This podcast is dedicated to talking to experts and others about all aspects of death and dying. You know, that thing we don't really want to talk about!
As a hospice carer and former psychiatric nurse as well as writer and former Theatre director, I invite guests to talk about their roles in and what to expect in the last four weeks of life. What happens to the person dying, what help is there, what to do before and after the event.
Many of the families we go in to see have one thing in common and that is that they don't know what to expect. I thought that a Podcast may help and then discovered so much to explore that is of interest to people such as alternative funerals, what do Hospices actually do, what role do religions play?
So join me for the first interview as we begin this Podcast with Clinical Nurse Specialist Becky Rix where we grasp the nettle and discuss what happens to us generally in those last four weeks.
Time to explore "Everything End of Life".
Everything End of Life.
Sir John Timpson on Family Values Shape a Business Empire and 90 Foster Children
Discover the remarkable journey of Sir John Timpson, who transformed both his family's historic business and countless lives through revolutionary management practices and profound personal commitment to fostering children.
From the humble beginnings of a shoe shop in 1865, Sir John shares how Timpson evolved into a service empire built on a radical premise: trust your people completely. "There are only two rules," he explains. "Look the part and put the money in the till." This "upside-down management" approach has not only driven business success but created a platform for extraordinary social impact.
The heart of our conversation explores the parallel between Sir John's business philosophy and the fostering journey he shared with his late wife Alex. Together they fostered 90 children, an experience that profoundly shaped their approach to business. "Alex worked on instinct," Sir John reflects. "She trusted people to give them a lift in life." This instinct-led compassion became the foundation for Timpson's revolutionary approach to employment, including hiring ex-prisoners (now over 10% of their workforce) and creating programs like "Dreams Come True" that fulfill employee wishes ranging from family reunions to medical treatments.
We delve into the challenges facing foster care today, with Sir John advocating for less bureaucracy and more trust in foster carers' judgment. His passionate belief that children benefit most when carers are trusted to include them fully as family members offers valuable insight for anyone considering fostering or working within the care system.
What emerges is a powerful testament to how compassion can drive both business success and meaningful social change. As Alex Timpson simply put it: "You can be nice and make lots of money." Join us for this inspiring conversation that challenges conventional wisdom about business, family, and what it means to truly care for others.
For those interested in what Palliative care looks like at home there is "The Last Kiss" (Not a Romance)
Available on Amazon now
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Last-Kiss-Romance-Carers-Stories/dp/1919635289/ref=sr_1_1?crid=13D6YWONKR5YH&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9._59mNNFoc-rROuWZnAQfsG0l3iseuQuK_gx-VxO_fe6DLJR8M0Az039lJk_HxFcW2o2HMhIH3r3PuD7Dj-D6KTwIHDMl2Q51FGLK8UFYOBwbRmrLMbpYoqOL6I5ruLukF1vq7umXueIASDS2pO91JktkZriJDJzgLfPv1ft5UtkdQxs9isRDmzAYzc5MKKztINcNGBq-GRWKxgvc_OV5iKKvpw0I5d7ZQMWuvGZODlY.fqQgWV-yBiNB5186RxkkWvQYBoEsDbyq-Hai3rU1cwg&dib_tag=se&keywords=the+last+kiss+not+a+romance&qid=1713902566&s=books&sprefix=The+Last+kiss+n%2Cstripbooks%2C107&sr=1-1
Hello and welcome to Everything. Foster Care, with me, jason Cottrell and guests, and my guest today is Sir John Timpson. From the Timpson, I want to say foundation, but it's actually more an empire, really, isn't it? So hello, sir John.
Speaker 2:Hi, very good to see you.
Speaker 1:Okay, can we start off by you telling me a little bit about, I mean, I think your first shoe shop opened in 1864 or somewhere around 65?.
Speaker 2:Well, 65, my great-grandfather got involved in his first shop with a cousin and then four years later, 69, he opened his own first shop which is probably the start of the business in the centre of Manchester his own first shop, which is probably the start of the business in the centre of Manchester. And, being a pretty frugal guy, he didn't spend too much money on wild living.
Speaker 1:He invested back in the business and grew shop by shop and sort of happened from there. So then there's a chain of shoe shops and there's also successive Timpsons looking after these shoe shops, culminating in yourself, and you changed the face of the business a little bit, I think, did you not?
Speaker 2:Well, it got changed quite a lot even before that, because we had a time when the business went out of the family because there was a boardroom bust-up between two cousins my father and a cousin and my father was ousted. So we sold all our shares and became part of someone else who I worked for, and then they got to run the family business for them. 10 years later I got the chance of buying it back. So, but that was quite right. It was shoe shops. Shoe shops were not a great thing to be. In the late 80s Sold the shoe shops and just concentrated on a small part of it that was left, which was the shoe repair business Although we don't do many shoe repairs now because shoe repairing has gone down and down and down as a market but thankfully discovered and now we do loads and loads of different services key cutting, watch repairs, photo dry cleaning and it's got better and better.
Speaker 1:Yes, so I've got to say, my first introduction to you and Timpsons was taking a pair of my daughter's boots that she bought on holiday from a charity shop and they're covered in spikes and she loved them. They were really fashionable and they were just one size too small for her and the guy in the shop was really kind and he just stretched them out for us. And then I turned around and I noticed the little books about the foster care and I got chatting with the guy about the whole thing and um, and then that's when I realized you know that actually the timpsons is really involved, uh, in a lot of charity stuff regarding foster care. So you yourself fostered 90 with Alex, your wife you've got that the wrong way around.
Speaker 2:Alex fostered 90. I was the dog's body at the weekends and Alex was remarkable as well.
Speaker 1:Your late wife I don't want to over dwell on it, but you met at a tennis club, is that correct?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was trying to persuade someone to go out with me who happened to be Alex's friend, oh right, and I failed. But this friend was taking Alex home in the car and the car wouldn't start.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:So she had to abandon the car and get this friend, get the father, to come round. And he said I suppose I've got to run Alex back to Lim. I heard this and I leapt out and said I'll take her.
Speaker 1:And that's how I met her, and that's how I met her and that's how you met her. That's absolutely fabulous and clearly you made an incredible partnership because she helped from what I've read, she helped the businesses as well to grow. So when, when did you decide to foster? I'm really interested in this, because we fostered that sort of later on in life, when our kids were grown up, and I'm wondering when did fostering kind of come into your circle, come into your understanding that there was a need for fostering and that you'd be a good match for that, or that Alex would be a good match for that?
Speaker 2:Alex. When I met her she was a nanny. She'd been trained as a nursery nurse, so children were her thing. That's what she did. We had three children Victoria, james and Edward and couldn't have any more children. And when Edward went off to school she looked around for something else to do naturally to do with children and she looked at working in a nursery or whatever and then saw an advert for foster care. I think we had a bit of a discussion about it, but I think she really pretty well told me that's what we were going to do.
Speaker 2:We got started and the usual thing I met a social worker, another social worker and the original social worker again You'll be familiar with all this Went to panel, got approved. Then absolutely nothing happened. I got more about it and then I arrived home one Friday night to find I've got two more children. That's how it starts. So we were short-term foster carers, which meant in those days, six months, and six months to the day the children left us because they weren't allowed to stay with us anymore. We were told they were going. This was 10 days before Christmas and we were told they were going to another family, which was untrue. They went to the local children's home Through a local authority. Then we got another two, which were the first two didn't teach us that much. They taught our children quite a lot of different words they'd never heard before.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:But the second two. They came with cigarette burns on their bodies, oh God, All signs of they're great, they're really attractive, nice kids. But they did do things which showed like the boys found a sledgehammer and smashed 110 panes of glass in my greenhouse.
Speaker 1:Right, OK, so behavioural issues.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and suddenly you realise that this wasn't as straightforward as we thought. So we've seen a whole range, or saw a whole range of, as you say, 90 children. We've seen a whole range, saw a whole range of, as you say, 90 children, and some for a very short period of time, some for two and a half years, and one long-term foster child who I still see on a regular basis.
Speaker 1:It's lovely.
Speaker 1:It's like we've got a young lady now who was a friend of my Sarah's when they were at school and she had a really tricky childhood and got thrown out of her own house and we helped her set up and get her own flat, and all of this for the local authority and she's become like another adopted daughter because she's here quite a lot. You know, Shania, and we love her to bits. Our story is very much like. Yours is as much as we did that whole year of social workers coming to visit, make sure that we're okay, and all of that, and then went to panel and, yes, fine, nothing.
Speaker 2:I don't know, Perhaps that's part of the test to see whether you're thorough. You wander off.
Speaker 1:So I'm bored with this now, I don't want to do it anymore. And now we've got two young girls who came to us with neglect and you'll come across this, I'm sure quite a lot and they were I wouldn't say feral, but not far off it, and they've been with us for eight, nine months now and the little one is still having a few meltdowns. Bless her. But it looks like we'll be doing long-term foster care as opposed to your short-term foster care. Yeah, but we have to see.
Speaker 2:It's this week we find out. Yeah, we turned one into a long-term foster care situation and we've also made one.
Speaker 1:We adopted one of our foster children and we adopted one who was never a foster child with you know, not as employees, but as colleagues, it seems like know the two seem to be quite intra-growingly linked, I think. Is that fair to say?
Speaker 2:Certainly along the way. There's a lot in what you say. I mean the actual idea of giving people the freedom to do the job the way they wish started as a way of improving the service to our customers. Right, Because I wanted. I had a big competitor at the time Don't have it anymore because we bought them in the end, but we had a major competitor. We're a rich company. How am I going to compete? And the only way to compete was to give fantastic service and do a great job. And I realized that the only way to do that was to trust people to give a great service, the. And I realised that the only way to do that was to trust the people to give a great service the way they wanted. You can't do it by a set of rules.
Speaker 1:Okay, so not imposing from managerial downwards.
Speaker 2:but so I changed the rules I just said. Right, there's only two rules for people who work in our shops You've got to look the card, wear the uniform, turn up on time, keep the shops tidy. And the second rule is you've got to put the money in the till, and that was it, that works, yeah, that works. And we've been doing that for 30 years and we've learned to do that. You had to do certain other things. One was pick people with a very positive personality.
Speaker 2:This is the Mr Men sort of approach, the Mr Men thing, yeah, so I want Mrs Happy, mr Helpful, mrs Tidy and so on.
Speaker 1:Not Mr.
Speaker 2:Grumpy or Miss Slow? Yeah, not Mr Grumpy or Miss Slow, or so. We've been employing people on the basis of what they're like as people for 25 years plus and then it comes to that they all wear a bag which says member of the family. We regard them as members of the family it's family again, isn't it?
Speaker 2:and if you've got someone who does a great job for you, you've got to look after them, so that really a lot of it is to do with kindness what sorry kindness? You'll get a lot more out of people if you're nice to them rather than if you're actually nasty and tell them what to do. And we don't tell people what to do, we let them get on with it, and so we do a whole lot of things that most companies wouldn't dream of, like we give them their birthdays next to the next day's holiday. We've got 19 holidays around the country.
Speaker 2:I know this is 160 foster families that we give a free holiday to as well each year. That's lovely. Then we have this thing which I'm very proud of because I invented it, called Dreams Come True, which we started by saying every month if someone's got a dream we can find. If they've got a dream, ask us. And the family I've never seen before in Australia, yeah, yeah. Going off to Vegas to get married. We've done IVF treatment Really Okay. A lot of dentistry, an awful lot of dentistry, dentistry, dentists.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, and we've even paid for a couple of divorces which have made quite a few people a lot happier than they were. Yeah, yeah, love that. I love that idea. Yeah, but looking after people actually isn't. The most important bit is that a lot of our management team's time is spent not helping people in work, but helping people with their problems outside work.
Speaker 1:Right. Because, Almost social work, absolutely yeah.
Speaker 2:They are like social workers, dealing with problems associated with stress, bereavement or family problems of all sorts debt, obviously, because if someone is really good starts to perform not as well at work, you're guaranteed there's something else going on in the rest of their lives which is quite difficult.
Speaker 1:You know it's interesting. You mentioned bereavement because my last podcast was Everything End of Life and it was, you know, exploring exactly that. And one of the characters that I came across and interviewed was a guy called Martin Rodis who used to work for Cruise and he would train people to be Greece first aiders. He doesn't do that, he does something else now, but I must send him your detail put the two of you together because he gets people normal people like barbers and shop workers to be able to spot. You know those repeat people that keep coming back to you if you're in a shop, you get to know them. And he says you know, if you see, you can see when somebody's having grief. So I think you know there's a bit of a symbiosis thing going on there. Can I veer off a little bit? Yeah, and let's talk about social workers.
Speaker 1:So you know, one of the things I've noticed and everybody's noticed, is there definitely is not enough foster carers and the difference that I see between local authority and private.
Speaker 1:We've got a fabulous private agency called Eastern Fostering Services and they look after us.
Speaker 1:We can phone them up 24-7, and they'll be answering the phone and helping us out, and we have had to do that on several occasions. They'll be answering the phone and helping us out and we have had to do that on several occasions and the local authorities the local authority have got to pick up everybody so they're so incredibly busy. I don't think they always are able to cover the basis in our experience, whereas a private agency Eastern Fostering Services are more able to cut their cloth according to their means, so they probably don't take on too too many children so they can give the ones that they have got and the workers, which is why you know the foster thing you said about, uh, which is why we get such a great service from them. And we have noticed that you know we don't get that from the local authority and I've heard you say I think you know in a different that the local authority social workers are really under the cosh. They have to do something like 70% or 80% paperwork to safeguard themselves.
Speaker 2:Well, that's the problem. The whole problem of children's social services is that less than 20% of their time is spent with children and families, and it's because they're required by the local authority to actually fill in so much. Report back, have a total detail, this that the error in every case, and so on, which is all done in the name of safeguard.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You're not safeguarding the family.
Speaker 1:You're safeguarding the local authority very much so I think it's interesting that r2 are now. The judge is making a deliberation on what happens with r2 and they have evidence, yes, evidence. Or she has evidence from the social workers, the children's guardians, you know a whole range of professionals. The one person they don't talk to is us, no, I'm absolutely right.
Speaker 2:I've argued about this, actually a very senior family judge who totally disagreed with me. They seem to think that we should not be put in that position of having to go to court. Well, in actual fact, we are the people as foster carers who know the kids.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean, we hardly ever saw a social worker.
Speaker 1:I don't know. I'd say our private agency. They're brilliant, they're out here almost every other week for something or other. But the local authority ones, you're right. The Children's Guardian we saw about four times in a year, and their own social workers probably three times, four times. It's just like how can you be the mouthpiece of this child if you don't know them? We used to be invited to the case conferences, but four times.
Speaker 2:It's just like. You know how can you be the mouthpiece of this charm if you don't know them? We used to be invited to the case conferences, but they always really annoyed Alex, particularly when they said well, you come on Hot Bus 3, because we've got a meeting of the professionals of Hot Bus 2.
Speaker 1:They were like we're not professionals, were they?
Speaker 2:Alex considers she really wasn't a professional as you can well imagine.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can imagine. I can see her ire at that.
Speaker 2:Because she did everything the way which is denied social work, really, because of all the system. She worked on instinct. I mean she, she worked on instinct. I mean she ran her life on instinct, right? She never filled in the stub of a cheque or anything, she would never check a bank statement and she trusted people. She trusted people to give them a lift in life. If someone was in a problem and needed some help, she just went on her instinct as to whether it was the right thing to do. So. That's the way. She taught me a lot from that. That's probably where the upside-down management, where I had the courage to do the upside-down management, that's exactly what she liked to do.
Speaker 1:That sounds just beautiful. Also, I've been invited Interesting. You probably won't know this, but Colchester has been awarded a Compassionate City status and I've got to go and do a talk with a bunch of businesses who have started to get together to become a kind of group of compassionate businesses. And you know, I've got to do the flag signposting and just send them all in the direction of Sir John Simpson and the upside-down management, because I think so many businesses could really benefit from that approach, rather than the models that we see from the NHS and from private top-down management styles. So I'll do that and I'll have a chat about that.
Speaker 2:No, I remember very clearly in our kitchen at home, Peter Jones, the tall guy on Dragon's Den, did a programme on me and it included going to our house. He was chatting to Alex. He found it quite difficult to understand that we weren't interested in KPIs and budgets. Yeah, yeah. And Alex just looked at him and said well, you can be nice and make lots of money.
Speaker 1:I mean the word Dragon's Den just says it all really in that respect, doesn't it? So that's quite funny. So fostering-wise you've got. You've also got. Alex opened the restaurants, one in Anglesey and some, and you she was helping I'm not sure you know young adults to get into that kind of industry. Is that correct? Did I read that right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, the story of that is that she bought a holiday home on Anglesey. And another thing about Alex she hated cooking. Well, she didn't cook. If you could help it, the best Christmas present she ever had was a cook. I gave her a cook for Christmas, turned up and did the whole of the Christmas period and it went so well that about two or three years later we had someone who came and did the cooking for us and this cottage is fantastic. There's one real problem there's nowhere decent to eat around here.
Speaker 2:But I got the answer let's buy the local pub. Well, I it was a bit with Alex, it was a bit like that. He went along with it, because there's no point in arguing. She was always right.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Once you've made up your mind. Yeah, but the pub wasn't for sale, so that's okay. Then, suddenly, two years later, the pub came't for sale, but that's okay. Then suddenly, two years later, the pub came up for sale.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:I bought this pub for 350,000 pounds, which I thought was enough, but it wasn't actually that much and she turned it into what was a really good gastro pub, yeah. And then we were offered another one down the road. And then we were offered another one down the road and her idea was to put in there a kitchen to teach people from Anglesey they came up with this phrase with multiple barriers to employment, which is a nice phrase, okay, whether it's their education or what they did in prison or whatever it was, and we did that. It became too expensive to work, but we did successfully run it for about five years.
Speaker 2:And I still meet one or two of the young people who brought that, who were still in the train. One or two's gone. One's gone to a Michelin star restaurant, having started doing that, which is great, but was still in the train. One or two's gone. One's gone to a Michelin-star restaurant, having started doing that, which is great, but both those pubs are still going, plus another one and her son James is just as mad as her and he's acquired a hotel-stroke restaurant in Morseyi in France with a ski resort.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay.
Speaker 2:Busy, spending a lot of money but changing that, but all run on the same upside down, looking after people, looking after the customer principles.
Speaker 1:It is, and do you know what? It's interesting because this is putting compassion before profit. But you can do the same thing. As you just said, or Alex said you don't have to be horrible to make money, and I think that's really important and I think it's a move that you've been probably championing for some number of years, and if this little podcast can do that in some way with the compassionate business community, our culture and surrounding areas, I'll forward that without a doubt, because it's the right thing to do, isn't it?
Speaker 2:Since we've been running the business this way for 25, 30 years, we've done really, really well, and one of the things that we ask customers about because one of the reasons why they come to us is the fact that we employ people straight from prison- yeah, I think. Over 10% of our colleagues came straight from prison and I was terribly worried when we started to do that. What customers would think? No, we think you're great because you do that.
Speaker 1:That's just fabulous. I mean, I guess there must be one or two that it doesn't work out for. But you can't cover everybody's story and it might just be that your stories don't converge.
Speaker 2:Well, you've got to use the same principles that I missed about picking the right personalities. If you're employing people wherever they're coming from, so if they're coming from prison, the same thing applies. You've got some really rich personalities that come from prison who do fantastically well Because they are talented, but we try to direct their talent into a more honest direction.
Speaker 1:I like that. Yeah, I mean somebody was I don't know know. It was from the timpsons here. I was talking about somebody who was saying you know, there's a person, I think it might be you. There was a drug dealer who came to you and uh, and he was he's got all the perfect skills because you've got to run a good business if you're a drug dealer. It might not have been you, I don't know, I can't yeah it would.
Speaker 2:It wouldn't be me, it would be my son james, because I've heard him say that and and his his generally. He says well, the best people who employ other drug dealers because they're really good at business they're great, great salesman that's brilliant, that's really funny.
Speaker 1:So, um, I've probably taken up a lot of your, but if we could sort of just talk a little bit about how you think the foster care, or how do we get more foster carers in? I mean, I know you've talked about the weekenders who are trying to bring people in by starting off with respite care so they don't have a child full time but they can look after one or two on the weekend, which sounds like a bit of a hobby. Really, it's a great way of getting people, I think, introducing them to the idea. And not only that, but when the children come, that's their honeymoon period, isn't it? So they're going to behave quite well.
Speaker 2:I think the best yeah, well, you're quite right. I mean, the best bit is the first two or three weeks.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Because bits the first two or three weeks? Yeah, oh yeah, is it because they're? They're just getting used to the territory and once they get familiar with, with you and where they are, that's when they start the testing bit. Yeah, the whole background yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 1:I mean yeah so, but I think problems which we've overcome.
Speaker 2:I think somehow, as you mentioned, I've got involved with an organisation that's testing the idea of getting another group, because a lot of the foster carers tend to be in working-class homes that's the way it tends to work without much space. So you can't take on so many groups. You have to split up families, which is a very sad thing to do. I think I suppose that's why people were quite interested in the fact that Alex and I became foster carers, because they didn't expect people like us to do it, which is odd.
Speaker 1:You mean posh people, john. That's how they said posh people with a few quid.
Speaker 2:Well, I suppose. So, yeah, You've got a big house, but I think that what we need to do is to get across to people. It's great fun. It actually brought a completely different part into my life. I'd never imagined it would happen, and Alex and I were very lucky we had a still out there down the road who qualified as foster carers so they could look after our foster children while we went away for a fortnight's holiday. Uh, and what do we do when we're away? We spend most of the time talking about the foster children. Do you remember this one? And what happened?
Speaker 2:yeah, I can imagine it does if you do learn, they're learning a lot about life, but you're learning a lot about life at the same time connecting those memories as well, which is Absolutely so. I think we need to, the more the best advocates for foster care are the foster carers telling their stories.
Speaker 2:I mean, I remember I was. I was with probably two or three children in the local garage sometime and the woman said you've got the grandchildren. I said no, they're not grandchildren, they're foster care, foster children. I always thought about doing that, but there's so many people who don't do it, they don't pick up the phone and that's the thing you've got to get through and hopefully they find it's actually not such a bad thing. Going through all the process, as we talked about, get to panel and then I think you've got to encourage the foster care this should happen more To do what we do in our business.
Speaker 2:Trust them to do the job of the children the way they know best. There are more rules now than when I started. People are worried about oh, what am I going to do about this? How are we going to make sure we fill in forms and that and this is a problem. It isn't just affecting the social workers, it can affect foster carers too. So just lighten up. The biggest risk, all this safeguarding thing, the biggest risk to children is actually the regulations themselves.
Speaker 1:Okay to explain. So you think because of the amount of paperwork they're discouraging people from becoming foster carers.
Speaker 2:And discouraging the idea of going on holidays where we took our foster children on holiday. Okay, we did have to get one piece of paper to make sure that we could get them out of the country.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But a lot of social workers are actively discouraged, so to say, making it too difficult for them. You want the children to live the lives of your family. They are part of your family and equal with the other children, and the more you allow people to actually look after the kids in the family the way they know best, the way they used to, the better it works. We don't need we just need to be given the freedom and the authority to do the job the way, the way we know it should be done I've, I've got to say, one of our assets, one of our best assets, is our own children.
Speaker 1:Uh, because we've got two teenage girls and I don't know if you've noticed this phenomenon, but when you're five and seven, or five and eight, and you look at a teenager, they're not adults and they're not children, they are gods. And when the teenagers talk, the children listen, whereas if we talk, they'll go. Oh, yeah, well, maybe not, yeah.
Speaker 2:No, you're very useful having that Absolutely. Our children played a pretty big part. They're all used to changing nappies and all the rest of it, so they were well-tuned for when they got married.
Speaker 1:I kind of think that helps them to be more rounded people too. You know, your children uh well lucky ours are, two are just blindingly good, you know.
Speaker 2:So I'm very proud yeah, I mean, that's what, but that's one of the questions you're often asked what effect does it have on your own children? And I can't see anything other than positive. I mean the fact that my three children we haven't adopted. One became a teacher, one became the government's minister for children and families and the other one is James, who runs the business in a very compassionate way. Well, he doesn't.
Speaker 1:Now he's the minister for prisons, and yeah, yeah, I saw that and so on, so they must have learned something without a doubt and at the heart of it all, compassion, I would say, for other people and knowing that I think sometimes there's only so much you can do for some people and they self-sabotage a bit, um, maybe because of their past, their own troubled backgrounds, and there's only you know, you can try to help as many people as you can. You're not going to cover everyone.
Speaker 2:So yeah, that's part of the judgment. It goes back to you know, have they got the personality to be able to take advantage of what you're doing? Because we've fostered her. We fostered her when she was two and then she came back to live with us when she was 15. Not as a foster carer, but because Alex thought she would never get her GCSEs while she was living at home. So she came to live with us and she actually left when she was 29.
Speaker 2:while she's living at home. She came to live with us. Yeah, she actually left. When she was 29 last year she left. But I mean she's done fantastically well. She's. Now she works in a prison. She's on the wings in a prison working at a prison border.
Speaker 1:And he's doing amazingly well. That was something that it just does go to show you and I think there's an element of ripples here, isn't there? So you do one small good thing for someone and it does ripple outwards and you don't see, maybe a couple of years later I had a lady contact me. I used to have a horse for about 20-odd years and I used to, you know, down in Dovercourt and I'd ride her out. And I had this lady contact me on Facebook and she said I just want to say thank you very much. And I went, what for? She said well, I remember there was some bullies that used to bully me from when I left school and on one occasion you rode your horse between me and them and then walked me home.
Speaker 1:I have no recollection of that whatsoever, but obviously that's affected her quite a lot. And she said you know, I maybe see things in a different way, you know from there, and I thought that was really sweet. See things in a different way, you know from there, and I thought that was really sweet. So, yeah, I think we do the effect that you and Alex have had on so many people, not just from fostering but from the business side of things as well. I mean, it's pure altruism and sensible altruism.
Speaker 2:I think our colleagues out in the shops generally do an amazing job in spreading goodwill around. We ask them to perform a random act of kindness every day. Is that right? At least once a year?
Speaker 1:And it's going to work that into my life for sure.
Speaker 2:Of course, because they're free to do things the way they want. They can give things away for free which they do a lot. We reckon about 4% of our sales that we do for nothing. Jobs we do for nothing.
Speaker 1:Okay, so it's a charity on a charity.
Speaker 2:Best ways to develop a business, because there'll be a reason for it. There'll be someone who might have been getting a photo frame to get something ready for a funeral and they say, I'm very sorry, just have it on us. And what do they do? They tell about ten people immediately. What happens Now? That's good advertising. We don't have a marketing department. We don't have a marketing department. We don't have advertising. My marketing department are the people who work in our shop.
Speaker 1:Right, so actually Congress sells itself essentially.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. If you've got nice people being nice to customers, it's not surprising.
Speaker 1:It tends to do quite a lot of good listen, john, I better cut it there, because otherwise I'm going to take up all your day, because I could sit and chat for hours about this with you. Um, uh, it would be lovely if, in maybe six months time, um, I could maybe tap you to come back on and see how life is for you then and the family, or families, because there's so many of them that you've helped. So, yeah, is there? I mean, I think we talked about the Weekenders, which is a respite care, so people can look that up online. I would encourage anybody to look up online just the whole Timpsons. You've got so many websites that describe your journey and it's good, I think, for people, especially businesses, to take a good look at. So, john, I want to say a huge thank you very much for your time. It's a real honor and I hope one day maybe to meet you in person. But, manchester, are you in Manchester?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's a bit far away from us. It's a bit far away from us. We're down in Essex, in Colchester.
Speaker 2:Well, I know we've got a few shops in Colchester.
Speaker 1:Yes, you have indeed. That's how I got introduced to the old Timson family, which was a delight, and I've still got your books on our shelf, so that's a part of what we read, that's good. Thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 2:It's my pleasure Good to meet you.
