The Mishcon Academy Digital Sessions. Conversations on the legal topics affecting businesses and individuals today.
Emily Nicholson, Partner, Mishcon de Reya
In this episode, what does security mean in our modern world? How do the different generations approach a secure lifestyle and should we all be our own bodyguards?
Hello and welcome to this Mishcon Academy podcast. I’m Emily Nicholson, a Partner at Mishcon de Reya and I’m joined by Kate Bright, CEO of UMBRA International Group, a leading Private Office which offers protective and proactive security solutions to its high net worth clients. Hi Kate, thank you so much for joining me.
Kate Bright, CEO, UMBRA International Group
Thank you for having me.
Emily Nicholson, Partner, Mishcon de Reya
So, you are extraordinarily, a Chartered Security Professional and trained in close protection. This is obviously quite unusual for a woman. How did you get into this?
Kate Bright, CEO, UMBRA International Group
So, yes, you are absolutely right, it doesn’t sort of trip off the tongue but if I take you back to the start of my Family Office and Private Office days, so, I left university in 2001, 2000 and started working in what now would be called ‘Private Office’ or ‘Family Office’ and started working as a personal assistant. As we all know, they are the gatekeepers with the most and they have the ability to protect with a pen, I guess, and over my fifteen year career working with those clients, three families in particular, I was exposed to this idea of their physical safety and then obviously between 2000 and 2015, there was a huge change in the way that everyone worked. My first job, I barely had a computer and then by 2015, I was doing everything from, from an iPad and running around you know London and internationally. And it was during the course of that time that there was a Head of Security, that we still work together now, for one of the families that I worked with, who said that I should undertake this close protection training. Having managed the physical aspect of close protection, so bodyguards to you and me, for so long and I don’t know if PAs ever get offered any training, let alone the training that you could then go and sort of physically protect your client, I jumped at the opportunity because it was so, for me, so logical and I guess the only left field aspect of it was that the Day One of my training course, I suddenly sat in front of the class and looked like some sort of secret geek at heart, answering all the questions. We were taken out on our first sort of exercise and I realised I was in charge of six people on my course because of my Chief of Staff by then background and training and the whole security function became quite a natural part of what I was doing in my day job and so I took that back to the role that I was doing at the time and became operational and started to see how useful I was as a, as I thought to myself, you know, just a PA with a close protection licence, actually that was my point of difference and the golden thread of my whole career has been that sort of, that lightbulb moment after that training thinking actually, I’m really useful to these teams that I’m working with and still operational to this day because it’s a profession that doesn’t get enough celebration and it also doesn’t have enough diversity within it, for the client demands.
Emily Nicholson, Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Yeah, I mean diversity obviously is something that springs to mind when you think of a female bodyguard. How do clients react to having a woman protect them?
Kate Bright, CEO, UMBRA International Group
The culmination of the answer to this question was when I did a TED Talk in 2018, called Invisible Security and I think that was the moment that I suddenly realised that all clients who don’t know that diverse teams and mixed, mixed gender, mixed teams in general, in general protected characteristics, actually provide a better veil of protection and so, if you think about a, a group of all male protective operators walking around London, for example, that would be pretty easy to spot to the trained eye but also to the untrained eye and so I think the last sort of ten, I would say ten years since I became operational, there’s been a lot of perception shifting but also I think historically, because we only represent 5.75% of 16,000 licence holders in the UK, I’m guessing that ten years ago when if a client said, “oh you know what, I’d actually like to have a more diverse team,” there simply wasn’t the routes that access to the humans and the women that were trained accordingly. So, I think part of the job that I’ve taken upon myself in the last ten years is that male clients actually, regardless of where they’re from and any cultural sensitivities, they get it, they understand that it makes perfect sense, not just when you are working with families and young children, to have a diverse looking team, to have women on the team that can perhaps help from a family perspective but also from a gender perspective going in protecting and being around things like bathrooms or, as I say, you know there are certain cultural sensitivities where it’s only a female operator that’s going to be appropriate. So yeah, there’s been a lot of perception shifting that I think I’ve subconsciously done in setting up the business, as I say, as a female operator, now Chartered Security Professional. There are not many people that go from that operational part of security to then the management part of it and I think clients like that sort of transition and that, that ability for me to actually understand the boots on the ground bit, as well as now the sort of the management side of it. So, yeah, I think, I think we tend to move away from gender discussions with our clients now and look more at the sort of mapping of who they are, what the risks are and I think, particularly our clients that are more entrepreneurial, our average age of client is 38, they are just open to the best people that and the best services, the best technology that could protect them. So, we’re in a very different place than we were ten years ago but we do need more women to come into the industry, that’s for sure.
Emily Nicholson, Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Do you think, I mean I know you said that you’re moving away from gender conversations and I promise I will move away from the gender conversation very shortly, but do you think women bring a different viewpoint to close personal security? Do you think having a woman on the team brings a different angle that you wouldn’t get from a purely male team?
Kate Bright, CEO, UMBRA International Group
So I can talk from experience and I have been in situations where because I am a woman and different and also you know have a different background, a different frame of reference, I’ve been in situations particularly where you’re talking about younger people, particularly in I remember a sort of night-time scenario where you’ve got crowd noise, sometimes enclosed space, sometimes for example in a bar situation where people are drinking, so there’s already a sort of a very kind of stressful job that you have to try and work out where risks and threats could emerge, and actually you know, maybe misconstruing what could be a conversation to something a little bit more sort of intense and I, I know that on several occasions in going and physically being amongst, in that environment, has diffused things before they’ve happened perhaps but been a very invisible, very sort of different kind of approach to going over with you know three or four of my team and digging into it because also, I think the approach that we’ve had with this golden thread, as I say, of female security in general, is that, that invisibility allows us to do and be in places that clients don’t necessarily have to know that we’re there, so there’s that sort of extra layer of protective, almost surveillance-based protection that we can, we can give to our clients. I think, additionally, women, again if we’re sort of looking at it from a gender perspective, bring other skills and sometimes have enhanced or amplified softer skills and so, again, you know I’m always loath to talk about it from a gender point of view, I want mixed teams to work with my clients because we have a, a bigger matrix of strength of different backgrounds, of different opinions, different bits of training, different languages, different cultural nuances but I think, again, speaking from experience, examples such as checking into a hotel with a head of security as a female with a male, just things that can make our clients’ lives a little bit less obvious to either the trained or the untrained eye. So I think the role of women is becoming much more important, more broadly, not least of which in public safety and I think people are starting to see more operators at every sort of level, whether that’s in hospitals, whether that’s crowd safety or sort of more broadly, we do need industry to reflect the society that it’s protecting, it’s no different in terms of our clients and their needs.
Emily Nicholson, Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Excellent, thank you. So, Kate, your business is incredibly interesting, not only for the boots on the ground work but also I see you’ve developed a kind of philosophy around security for families and for individuals. Can you just explain a little bit about your concept of secured lifestyle and what that means?
Kate Bright, CEO, UMBRA International Group
Yeah, absolutely. I was talking to a client about this only yesterday. I think when you say the word ‘security’ already you are on guard, you are thinking something has gone wrong, what do I need to do? It’s stressful. Maybe, there’s costs associated with it. And so, right back from my experience as I say now, almost in sort of 20+, 23/4 years, facing these sort of clients and the work that I did when I was working client side, is this idea of you can have all the best protocol in the world but if it’s not relevant to the life that somebody is living then it can be either compromised or it can just be ignored and so what you are always trying to do is make things relevant, make them accessible, make them something that also helps to amplify where a client’s business life is going. You know, we work with a lot of clients that are going through big changes, whether that’s entrepreneurial clients going through a big moment, selling a business for example, there’s a big shift in expectation of what that secure lifestyle can mean and we’ve just found over the years, it’s a nicer way of talking about a more broad approach to the physical, the digital, the reputational and the emotional. I think lifestyle has always been a bit of a bone of contention when I’m talking to, or reflecting with other colleagues, particularly when I was going through my Charter process because I’m trying to bring a whole new paradigm to an industry that’s set with the word ‘security’ but actually, I’m responding to what the clients need, which is a much more holistic approach, a much more bespoke but yet similar, if not the same sort of Top 10 hits of things that you would need in those sort of four pillars and so secure lifestyle has sort of stuck and I see now, proudly, a lot of people taking that, using that and I think it’s something that, particularly with this average of client now, just coming down and down and down as we see the great wealth transfer, a secure lifestyle is also an aspirational aspect to someone’s life. We all want to live safely and securely in times of change and crisis, whatever we are going through, we want to know that certain things, the controlling the controllables, can be put into place and so this idea of making it relevant, making it accessible has been hugely important to me in growing the business and conversely, hugely important to clients who feel heard rather than this is what your security will look like, it’s actually a conversation and it’s, and it’s also an evolving process as well and I think it goes back to this idea that one of the big things that I talk about a lot is the best security is proactive, the best security is slow time discussions about what good looks like, what a lifestyle looks like, rather than reactive, that’s when we start using the word ‘security’ because it’s something’s gone wrong and we’re fixing something. So, this idea of secure lifestyle sort of sits with that proactive, pre-emptive approach, where we don’t like being caught off guard, we don’t like having the wrong people at the wrong place at the wrong time and part of the training that you do, in any level of security, is about that sort of Plan A, Plan B, Plan C and if you can have a client working with you, you’re then not disempowering them from their own sense of security. I wouldn’t want a client that came to me and said, “Make me safe,” you know, “Give me the bill,” that’s not the kind of client that would actually work with us very well because we want a conversation and that takes time and that takes relationship building between us, the team and them so, yeah, Secure Lifestyle, proud to see it used as a sort of more widely, approachable way to talk about security and that, that’s what we’ve really done within the industry is enable this world that wasn’t really talked about very much to be made something that is more, more relevant, more accessible and not just to our clients but more broadly, to society as a whole.
Emily Nicholson, Partner, Mishcon de Reya
I mean that’s really interesting because you’re essentially talking about a really integrated approach, you are going right into the heart of how your clients live and enabling that in different ways. I’m particularly interested, obviously because the types of clients you’re talking about will live incredibly dynamic, international lives, in various different jurisdictions, how do you work the security across so many different jurisdictions, I mean presumably there’s different local laws etcetera?
Kate Bright, CEO, UMBRA International Group
So, the majority of our clients are globally mobile and so we say, ‘international client’. As a business, we’re dealing mostly with those sort of clients that have a UK footprint of sorts, whether that’s a property, young people, children in the family at school here, education and then up from there in terms of business dealings in the UK, and I have to say UK and Europe now, will be on some form of either sort of regular or yearly travel pattern and so, the clue is in the UMBRA International, I was very, very clear right at the start of setting up the business that having only worked for international clients that are and have a base in the UK, that we have quite a unique position, not least of which operationally because we can reach eight hours one way and eight hours another way and have a really nice working day that’s sort of 8 till 8, which is, pleases me greatly, but this idea also that from a UK centric point of view, I think a lot of the talent and a lot of the, from a security background point of view and the sort of military and the pools of individuals that we tend to recruit from, they tend to come from British military backgrounds and there is a tendency for clients to want to have that kind of Best of British approach so, when we’re talking about clients that are spending more time in different jurisdictions so, for example, Covid, great example, the UK based clients that were either stuck somewhere or decided that actually, Dubai was a great place for them to be, transact and move and with all the kind of complexities around immigration and tax and why would we be involved with that? Because that’s also part of the discussion around safety and secure lifestyle. Secure lifestyle touches wherever a client wants to be, for whatever reason they need to be there so, as a result our international networks are really deep but also our UK and Europe based talent know how to interface and know how to work in the major parts and the major hubs of the world. If a client started to sort of go on minibreaks to hostile environments every weekend, we might be then suggesting a different type of approach for them and with them and certainly the skills that they’ll need the team may well need to then be enhanced with a provision, a person, a team that have experience in a particular jurisdiction but we tend to work in a quite a UK centric way, that’s to say not least of which operationally that’s quite helpful for our international clients who are all scattered around the world.
Emily Nicholson, Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Kate, you are the expert, help us, what makes good security?
Kate Bright, CEO, UMBRA International Group
Good security or good secure lifestyle, let’s use our UMBRA terminology, as I said, is when we’re looking at life in a proactive, slow state way and I think the veil of Covid was a really important moment for us as a business because we were all united in that idea of an instant crisis and something that happened very quickly and certainly in terms of the sort of various lockdowns, there was a sort of confusion or lack of clarity around where and how and what the information that was coming out of the sort of, so many different news outlets that we ended up for a period of time become a bit of a, an aggregator and a navigator. The learnings from Covid I think are the sort of the themes of what makes good security is that clarity in chaos and reality versus paranoia and that peace of mind versus you know what may be a risk and a threat and I think being able to do that in slow time, we’ve seen fantastic results with clients actually taking control of their own security, as I said, rather than you know outsourcing mentality but that’s not to say that we’re not solving problems as they happen as well because risk is an evolving beast. We can do a sort of technological sweep let’s say of, of any building or any private home but it’s as useful as the next person that walks into that home and compromises that, the safety and security and integrity of those technical services. So, I think the best security and the best approach to security is that knowledge that there is an evolving aspect to it and we have a maxim of a client for life because we would like to think that we can support clients through any of the unforeseen and with a good, solid, proactive plan in place, whilst also regularly checking in on what the future holds, whilst working with an intermediary and advisory network that we can speak the same language with, I think gives clients the best possible vantage point to then face those unexpected, risk changing moments that, as I say, we all collectively felt in March 2020.
Emily Nicholson, Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Well, indeed, and on to that, have you found that clients are looking for anything different in the post-Covid world? Has Covid changed the way people live, the way people think about their secure lifestyle?
Kate Bright, CEO, UMBRA International Group
100% and I think, I won’t bore you with the sort of increments of time and the different requests or different flavours that we had from the lockdowns and certainly then the unlockings and the restrictions on travel but I think one of the key themes certainly became hyper personalisation and in every aspect of whether that’s service provision on a human level, so the people working in the teams and enhanced, overnight expectation of trust like never before and I think this is something that across the whole kind of protective infrastructure of our sort of clients’ worlds, knowing that the people that they are working with are going to grow with them and go with them, I think that was something that we’re now seeing as a takeaway, this idea that they’re sort of specifics, the requirements that they’ve had have become much more hyper personalised and therefore the people around them need to respond to that. That hyper personalisation also extends to things like travel so, wanting to move in a safe way, transact in a safe way and so, becoming a little bit more sort of not isolated but enabling our clients to do that in a way that is perceived to be a bit safer. I think coupled with that is this idea of information aggregation and so, knowledge is power. Having clients bought into this idea of, you know, they are part of the process of designing their own secure lifestyle, we’ve been looking at the ages that we can start to really kind of interact in a positive way with our clients and with this average of clients, 38, I should add that some of the resources that we would highly recommend to our clients start from as young as 8 so, knowledge is power, it’s not just a sort of client led piece, it’s actually how early can we start to talk to younger clients about their role that they’re playing and certainly the vulnerabilities that are specific to them. So the National Cyber Security Centre has some amazing resources that we’ve then looked at in terms of what do you need between the ages of 8 and 18 that can help to support the wider family, to help children to understand and create that conversational space and I’ve seen it first-hand myself when you have age appropriate resources and I’m not the trainer in this regard, we work with absolute specialists in the field and educational specialists, it’s a very individual, very bespoke conversation that needs to happen between child and parent and so it’s the facilitation of that, creating an environment where a child can say that they’ve seen something inappropriate or that enables them to have a really approach to their own digital hygiene, so that idea that secure lifestyle training I wouldn’t ever say that we’ve you know sat there and you know drilled in security knowledge to an 8 year old but certainly now the ages that we’re seeing clients wanting to integrate this idea of secure lifestyle have gone down and down and down and down. And also this question that I get asked now increasingly is, tell me what I don’t know, so whereas February 2020, it was still you know security, as I said we were still trying to help this perception shift of reactive to proactive, increasingly now, it’s a very slow time conversation and that tell me what I don’t know is a fantastic approach for a client to have to us or it’s a fantastic approach in general because a lot of the pro bono work that we do is trying to help to support more widely in terms of society, those that might be facing issues that they may not understand the full sort of nuance or all the risks that they face. So this idea of now clients being more proactive and asking us the things that they need to be considering, is a real win. And I just think more broadly that idea of the wealth of health and this uniting factor that well, what’s security got to do with that? Well actually, security’s role in sort of keeping everything running during, particularly the initial part of lockdown, a lot of my friends and colleagues were called in to help support, an unknown time, the security in hospitals, security in all these different places that we sort of maybe took for granted, I think the role of security was quite visible at that time and so part of my I guess championing of the industry is that this post-Covid world perhaps we’re starting to see a shift in the perception of the importance of security and as I said, this word, people say security and think god, you may think security now, close protection, bodyguard, hopefully that that can be a sort of genderless role as well but part of my sort of bigger work is that clients particularly, I think have seen that security, certainly some of our teams were involved in the implementation of things like temperature checking, I mean that’s just a you know very different aspect to the role of protection but protecting health, protecting wealth, protecting society, all one and the same thing. So yeah, and so I think, I think this idea of hyper personalisation but one thing I’ve always said is that as technology advances, humans are going to have to become more exceptional and I think this idea that the selection of the people that are around you, I think for all of us, has become acutely more important and more, I would say, hyper curator, we all know that we’ve had kind of quite shared moments with and deeper moments with those around us and I think this idea of digital, physical, reputational, emotional being all considered as part of the sort of the same protective bubble, I think more broadly is something that I think we’re seeing post-Covid, people not looking at things in isolation but also not just relying on the tech actually, realising that as humans we have to have a role to play in our own sense of safety and security as well.
Emily Nicholson, Partner, Mishcon de Reya
I mean, there’s so much that’s interesting in there and we’re not going to have time to go through it all because there’s stuff I’d love to speak more about but just to pick up on one of the points, you talked a bit about the pro bono work you do and I know one of the things that is really interesting about your business is your impact initiatives and the diversity of them. So, can you just tell us a bit about that and how that feeds into your business plan.
Kate Bright, CEO, UMBRA International Group
Sure. So, the title that we use when we’re talking internally and now externally, is the UMBRA Academy and I think it was my sort of perhaps quite lofty ambitions right at the start of the business journey because around all of this and the shifting of an industry and Covid, you know I’ve been growing a business and so I’ve been learning as I’ve gone as well and actually, some of the things that are the most important aspects of my own value system, such as young people and more broadly, bringing in a wider range of diverse talent into the security industry particularly but also sport, I am adamant that sport and business will always for me, go hand in hand, I’ve learnt so much from sport in general and from sportsmen and women but also how to bring and enhance teams, from a military point of view but also sport points of view, there’s a real sort of link there and so, actually, the UMBRA Academy represents three or four pillars really, young people, diversity in the industry, sports to security and this idea of making security accessible to all and a lot of the thought leaders that I’m listening to, talk about these impossible goals that you set yourself when you’re running a business and there’s a great happiness specialist that set up an initiative called 1 Billion Happy and I was listening to him articulate this ambition that’s completely out there but I thought actually, how great would it be if the tools and toolkits and resources that we’re trying to make more broadly accessible, could be into the hands of one million people so, the UMBRA Academy is this idea that everything that we do with a client has a cause and effect onto something within those sort of four pillars and those projects, so for example, when we’re delivering our digital safety training with our younger clients, we will deliver exactly the same to one of the apprentices on the Coach Core programme. So this sort of cause and effect so that we’re looking at ways we can have impact through the work we do with our clients and that actually it wasn’t designed as something that we were going ever really talk to clients about but these clients are now becoming much more sort of curious and involved with their own, curating their own secure lifestyle, started to see me talk more about this and started to get more interested in, you know, for every pound or dollar or whatever they’re spending with us, there’s this, this other aspect to what we’re doing and so it’s become hugely important to me, particularly where we’re talking about young people, particularly when we’re talking about diversity in the security industry, I’m a woman within it and I didn’t realise that when you talk about your story and you tell your story, that you are, you know, a de facto role model and I take that responsibility hugely seriously and my LinkedIn fires up you know on an almost daily basis with young me and young women who are saying well hang on, if you managed to go from being operational to running a business and you now advancement in the board room, how, you know, can you help me and I think part of the, I don’t like using the word legacy because I think it’s about something that when you’ve gone, it’s the impact now, we want to measure it, we want to increase that impact because we want to be able to give these tools and resources to a broader audience, we want to help sportsmen and women for example coming into security, that was something that with this sport and business juncture that I find so fascinating, a lot of my professional and my personal network have played professional sport and talking about what they were going to do after sport, you know suddenly you are faced with an ex-international female rugby player, centre, who you’ve seen you know whip around the field and she’s saying well you know, what am I going to do next and I’m like well, if you want to do your close protection training, I think you’d make a fantastic operator. So all these sort of things have absolutely risen from my own, you know, friendship groups, my own professional networks but also the desire of clients to actually support this through the work that we do with them on the client side so, yeah, if we can, 1 Billion Safer, just to rip off the 1 Billion Happier, I’m sure he wouldn’t mind but these aspirations that you can have, I never really understood this idea of building sustainable businesses other than the environmental impact and I now really get it, being so in the business, on the business and then sort of futuristic about the business and I think it’s something that the security industry I can see is gradually grasping. The part that we have to play in creating and inspiring sort of sustainable goals for our clients, it starts with the provision of the services and also the things that we do on a pro bono basis so, for example, last week I was helping and you know I call everyone my clients if I’m talking to somebody and giving them advice, it doesn’t matter if they’re a private client, it doesn’t matter how they’re referred to us, within a certain sort of context of course, I can’t be sort of speaking to the world yet, that’s where the resources come in because in fact, one of the conversations that I was having with this particular client could have been prevented by some digital hygiene and some, just some little simple tricks and tips that she hadn’t gotten in place and so we were able to help her to sort that out and send her on her merry way but we’re trying to have that cause and effect through everything that we do so that we’re not just building a business with private clients and full stop. Actually, there’s this who yin and yang effect which we’re really enjoying as a team and it helps to, I think, grow a team that’s committed to going that extra mile, as opposed to just the security projects, it’s actually woven into our contracts that if you do, if you come and take part in any of these events, you know, that’s part of your choice but obviously there’s a, there’s a benefit to you if you want to take that time in lieu and things like that, that I never really understood the importance of because, you know, you work in security, people in the industry work pretty hard and there’s this idea of time off and certainly running a business now, I’m like where did that idea of time off go to but I think when you’re growing something like this, this idea of being passionate about what you do and building a business of impact and impact for me is one of the biggest goals that I have now for the business to grow.
Emily Nicholson, Partner, Mishcon de Reya
That’s all fascinating. I love your idea of 1 Billion Secure and I think it’s, you’re sort of talking about the democratisation of security and I’ve seen on that point you have this concept of being able to be your own bodyguard. How does that work? Because that is obviously, that’s just the next step isn’t it in your 1 Billion Secure?
Kate Bright, CEO, UMBRA International Group
Absolutely. Be your own bodyguard, it started as the sort of lunch and learn sessions that I was doing for various different sort of groups of clients and more broadly, people that just wanted to kind of jump onto me talking to them for thirty minutes about things and tips and tricks that they could, they could take into their daily life and it was starting to become something that was more, less client focussed and more about a lunchtime takeaway of top tips and I’m known for having my sort of slightly sort of kitsch you know phrases, you know I think ‘secure lifestyle’ and ‘be your own bodyguard’ but actually it’s really captured the attention, particularly of some of the younger clients, this role that they can play in taking responsibility and ownership, not just for their own safety, this isn’t about creating little sort of you know UMBRA secure boxes around people, actually the role that you have in keeping other people safe and I think good security starts with your own self-awareness but this concept has now given rise to, yeah, the sort of be your own bodyguard toolkits but also this ability for us to keep ourselves safe without any commercial transaction. Some of these tools and tips are things that you know you could do in the next five minutes and they would have a significant impact on your safety and so I quite like the idea that when I talk to people about you know, close protection training and there is, you know, it’s a three week, 160 hour course, it’s like okay, you know time poor people are like give me the, give me the sort of the shortcut and it’s not about creating a shortcut but one of the inspiration I would say behind this was when L’Oréal launched their bystander training because the training that you do when you are doing close protection is actually about keeping your client safe and so, if we could all adopt this mentality of looking out for other people, being that sort of eyes and ears for your friends when you are out, when you are at work and looking out for things before they’re problems, then you would know what to say, when to say it, when to intervene, if to intervene at all and I just think that that flipping of that sort of being your own bodyguard actually, is part of that sort of 1Billion Secure, 1 Billion Safe, I think if all of us had more tools and tips that we could use in a sort of quick time, then perhaps we could create this ripple effect of people looking out for each other a little bit more, which is what security is all about.
Emily Nicholson, Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Well I mean I am obviously going to ask you for your top tips, please Kate, tell us.
Kate Bright, CEO, UMBRA International Group
So, I guess if we look at the physical, digital, reputational, emotional, let’s sort of stick to that as a sort of thematic. I’m always asked about physical and I think people are expecting me to talk about situation awareness training and all of the things that we can do to, as I say, keep ourselves physically safe but I actually think one of the top tips that I see always when I am talking to, particularly to young people in schools and things like that, is keeping your phone charged and having a power pack, having three power packs, having a charging cable, having a charging cable plug in your bag at all times and if you think about it, actually your phone is your navigation tool, it’s your SOS tool, it’s your keeping in touch generally with what’s happening, Push notifications I would actually say if you’re looking at keeping physically safe, knowing what’s going on around you, is a really good start but again, that comes through from a phone so, the amount of times you know I keep millions in my bag that you can then be that legend for somebody else that’s perhaps lost power in their phone and doesn’t know how they’re going to get home or isn’t able to call somebody in the event that something is going wrong so, that’s a sort of a top tip, okay, there’s a little cost associated with that but I think, if you just keep a charging cable and a plug, you’re good to go. Digitally, I keep talking about, increasingly about this idea of being a good online citizen and I think if we could all to that point about be your own bodyguard, if we could all be online as we are in real life so, you know, thinking about the things we’re saying and how we’re saying them, I’m not about over curation of social media at all, that’s not what this is about but the things that you say online, would you say them in real life? As a sense check. I think having a kind approach to human beings online would then, from a client perspective, doesn’t then leave them open to things that can happen as a result of that physically and as we know, digital and physical risk are linked, the one affects the other and I think as a human being, I want to be a good online citizen and again that’s not about sort of censoring what I say, it’s about using social media as a platform to support, to champion and that’s just the way that we would advise our clients and more broadly, people to live their life. Reputationally, quick and easy one is the Google, the humble Google alert. So, I have set up Google Alerts for myself and various names of clients or business name and you get a little, nice little email in the morning of all the things, all the places that you’re mentioned. I think that sort of idea that forewarned is forearmed and information about you or information about those that are important to you, that can often be a really good reputational tip even for, for anybody, to take control of their sort of digital presence. And then emotional, people are often surprised at the amount I talk about emotional wellbeing and by emotional, I mean physical and mental health and I think it’s such an important part, it’s the fourth of the pillars but it links with so much in terms of things like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, if we don’t have safety and security at the base, we then can’t self-actualise or exist or you know live our truest sort of best self, if you like. So, I would always say that some form of practice around that, like I said before, we’re always trying to help clients to understand what’s real, what’s perceived, what’s paranoia perhaps and so knowing that our clients have taken control of any aspect of their physical and mental health that they may be challenged by, the amount of people that I tell about Calm, I do know Michael Acton Smith so I’m expecting to perhaps be made an ambassador some day but even if you don’t, you know buy into meditation or what have you, I do and it’s been a functional tool for me to amplify my performance and I couldn’t have built a business without it, but even if you’re talking about things like the Sleep Stories, even if you’re talking about you know five minutes a day when you’re doing breath work, I’ve first-hand seen the importance of that for me as a business owner and also my clients but then also, more broadly, in some of the things that we’ve learnt through our mental health First Aid training courses. If you don’t look after yourself then you can’t help other people and putting that oxygen mask on first is something that we place huge importance on for our clients.
Emily Nicholson, Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Brilliant. Thank you so much, Kate. Well, for now, let’s wrap up there. I’d like to say thanks so much to Kate Bright for joining me for this Mishcon Academy Digital Sessions podcast.
Kate Bright, CEO, UMBRA International Group
Thank you so much for having me, it’s been great.
Emily Nicholson, Partner, Mishcon de Reya
I’m Emily Nicholson. The Digital Sessions are a series of online events, videos and podcasts, all available at Mishcon.com and if you have any questions you’d like answered or suggestions of what you’d like us to cover, do let us know at digitalsessions@mishcon.com.
The Mishcon Academy Digital Sessions. To access advice for businesses that is regularly updated, please visit Mishcon.com.