Greg Jackson

Presenter0:01

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio Podcasts. Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne, and this is the Desert Island Discs Podcast. Every week, I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book, and luxury they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. And, for rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:44

My castaway this week is Greg Jackson, the founder and CEO of Octopus Energy. In just seven years, it has become the UK's second largest domestic energy provider, with over five million customers, and is one of Europe's leading investors in renewables. The company shook up the established energy market through innovative technology. Its operating system, the enjoyably named Kraken, is now used by suppliers, including many rivals, around the world and is estimated to be worth billions in its own right.

Presenter1:15

But as well as being a CEO who understands the global market, he's one who knows how it feels to be scared to open your gas bill. He grew up in a single parent family in Halifax, where money was tight and the supply was sometimes cut off after a final demand went unpaid.

Presenter1:30

He was entrepreneurial from a young age. He tinkered with tech and became so successful as a bedroom coder that he left school at 16 to work for a games manufacturer. Later he returned to education and studied economics at Cambridge, where he began honing his business strategy. He says, I'm not going to tell everyone they should be an entrepreneur and go and do it, but what you shouldn't do is sit there wishing for a different life. Either do it or don't. Greg Jackson, welcome to Desert Island Discs.

Greg Jackson1:58

Thanks for having me.

Presenter1:59

So Greg, you are clearly someone with drive. Is it a powerful motivator for you today as much as it ever was?

Greg Jackson2:06

Yeah, it is. I don't necessarily think drive's a good thing, by the way. It enables you to do a lot.

Greg Jackson2:11

But I think it also means you're often very restless and sunny for me.

Greg Jackson2:15

It means I'm not very good at relaxing, not great at watching movies, but I wouldn't change a thing.

Presenter2:21

How and where do your best ideas come to you, I wonder Gregg?

Greg Jackson2:24

It's always when you're getting your hands dirty. So if I'm with some of our engineers, software engineers, and seeing what they're capable of and then realizing I can solve a problem elsewhere in the business. I think a lot of people in companies and other organisations will go away for an innovation session, all sit there and try to think of ideas. But of course, you can't think of ideas on demand, not good ones. Last February, I was walking home, it's 10 o'clock, 10.30 at night, bitterly cold. And I knew that in the energy crisis, the early stages of it then, some of our customers will be scared to put their heating on. But I remembered a conversation I'd had with a PhD engineer who said, look, it only takes 40 watts to heat a human. And a gas boil is 10,000 watts. So if we can get 40 watts into someone, we can keep them safe and warm. So I phoned up our chief product officer. It was 10 o'clock at night, 10.30. And I said, look, can we get 5,000 electric blankets? And when someone's speaking to our team and they're worried about their health because they're worried about turning the heating on, send them one. We didn't announce it. The last thing I wanted was kind of people saying, look, an energy company says you can't turn the heating on. But actually, it came out.

Speaker 13:19

Uh

Presenter3:19

Hmm.

Presenter3:27

It came out on social media.

Greg Jackson3:28

It did. After a few months, some of the customers were so happy. They posted on social media and I think we ended up giving away forty thousand electric blankets to help people. Our customers really matter to us. And having custodianship for that rather than just selling electricity and gas, I think that's kind of such a source of the innovation.

Presenter3:45

Right, it's time to get stuck into your first disc, Greg Jackson. What are we going to hear?

Greg Jackson3:49

When I was about 16, we'd just finished GCSEs and with three mates we went camping across North Yorkshire. We had very little money and tents on our backs and cans of beans in the bags. And we had a little radio, a little FM radio, that could pick up two radio stations. Almost all the time, at least one of them was playing Yaz in the Plastic Population, The Only Way Is Up. There are four 16-year-olds who don't really know what camping gear is, yomping across, I don't know, places like Osmotherly and Pickering, through very peaceful countryside with that blaring out of the tinniest radio you've ever seen.

Speaker 34:24

Hurt no

Speaker 14:30

Baby

Presenter4:38

The only way is up

Presenter4:43

You will be now.

Presenter4:46

The only way is a

Presenter4:51

Who will make it a little bit more?

Presenter4:55

The only way is up. Yaz and the plastic population. So Greg, I want to go back to the beginning. Your dad, Brian, was a surveyor in the army and you were born on a base near Hanover, Germany, nineteen seventy one. What do you remember about your early years there?

Greg Jackson5:09

My first language was German. I think my mum at the time was very keen that we integrate. So did you.

Presenter5:14

So did you you didn't live on the base then? No, I think

Greg Jackson5:15

No, I think she actually had us live in the town and she spoke fluent German and it was my first language. I still remember being chased around the house with mum shouting, you know, Rausch Raus, Schnell, Schnell. So you know, there was that sort of early exposure. But sadly, I've lost all my German now.

Presenter5:30

So your your your mum and dad both came from Halifax?

Greg Jackson5:33

Yeah, look, I mean they were both super bright people, but because of the social structure at the time, they both left school at sixteen. I think they both had A A's at O level or something like that.

Presenter5:42

So they they should have gone on to university but but didn't have the opportunity.

Greg Jackson5:45

It would be more likely today that that would be what happened. And so I think they were quite cosmopolitan, but came back to the UK when I was about three years old, so it was it was a very brief period of my life.

Presenter5:47

That would be

Presenter5:56

Your dad left the army and the family came back to Halifax. How did they adjust to being back in the UK?

Greg Jackson6:01

Dad found a job in um in construction working on surveying road building projects. I mean typically those projects are wherever they are and so we didn't see him much.

Presenter6:11

And it wasn't long after they came back that y your mum and dad told you that they were going to get a divorce. Do you remember the moment they told you?

Greg Jackson6:18

Yeah, I do. I was I think I was I was seven-ish years old and uh they sat me on the washing machine which is kind of uh CRI level I guess with parents and and told me yeah that that dad had been leaving and I remember um it really hit me. I think it's about that age when a boy sometimes transfers his closest parental imprint from mother to father and I think it was around that time so for me personally it hit me hard.

Presenter6:46

I can see that you feel the emotion of it now, looking back.

Greg Jackson6:48

Yeah.

Greg Jackson6:49

Not long afterwards, mum took me to a sort of child psychologist or therapist, I don't know what you call it these days, provided by a local council. And um it was transformative actually. One or two sessions made a world of difference and probably gave me the confidence and everything that has helped me be who I am and I'm really grateful for that.

Presenter6:55

Nice.

Presenter7:08

I think we'd better have some more music, Greg. Your second choice today. What have you gone for, and why?

Greg Jackson7:13

This was one of the first records I ever bought. There was a small record shop in Halifax and we used to get the bus home from school so I could drop by and flick through. At the time I had a babysitter whose boyfriend had a motorbike and they were both into heavy metal and so I had this kind of early indoctrination. The song is Run to the Hills by Iod Maiden, laden with meaning and also with the most powerful, optimistic driving guitars.

Speaker 17:29

Uh

Speaker 17:32

Late

Speaker 38:00

Soldier blue in the barren wastes, hunting and killing the game, raping the women and wasting the men, the only good engines.

Presenter8:10

Iron Maiden and Run to the Hills. Greg Jackson did life change for you after your dad left the family home.

Greg Jackson8:16

I don't think I noticed it in that way. It was an interesting one at the school once and someone told me about their dad telling them off. I was like, what, your dad tells you off? It didn't feel like, you know, it didn't feel like something I missed. And then mum was incredible, you know. I think when they first got divorced, she had no job. She started working in a pub in the evening. She studied by day to get a degree. She had three kids, you know, I was about eight, my sister about seven, and my youngest brother was a baby. I think she's about four foot eight. She'd get on the bus to go into central Halifax, come back carrying all the week shopping and carrier bags. We had so much freedom. Mum's way of making it all work was to devolve responsibility and freedom to us as kids. I was probably about 10 or 11 years old when she said, right, there's a thing called family allowance. I get a few quid off the government every week. I'm supposed to spend it on clothes and food for you. So from now on, I'm going to give it straight to you and you can buy your own clothes and things like that. Having that freedom early, for example, I chose not to buy clothes. I bought little bits of electronics and tinkered. So I think I truly relished the freedom and the creativity that we had as kids.

Presenter9:18

How did she manage all of those financial, emotional pressures that she must have been under? And were you aware of?

Presenter9:25

How much she was dealing with. You paint a picture of her on the bus with a week's shop in it, not even five foot tall, and three kids. I mean, you can see it.

Greg Jackson9:33

She was really emotionally open. But I mean, most of the time, she wasn't struggling. She was working. I mean, not only did she do a part-time job and study and bring up three kids, and anyone who's bringing up kids as part of a couple knows how hard it is, never mind doing it on their own, never minding that situation. But she also spent, you know, her spare time-campaigning, you know, for the stuff she believed in. She helped set up women's refuges. She was part of the CND movement. She used to go on marches. She packed it all in. The inspiration there, in terms of being able to pack so much in and be fully human.

Presenter9:37

True.

Greg Jackson10:06

And work so hard on the things you care about and the things you need to put right on the table for the people you love. Yeah, I think that's inspirational.

Presenter10:14

Your man found it difficult to pay the bills often. Was that something that you were aware of? You said she was very open with you all.

Greg Jackson10:21

Yeah, she it's quite I I remember her schooling me in um'cause I'd say, Mom, there's a final demand that she said, Ah, but it's not in red. So she knew kind of the order the different bills would come before you got to the one that meant you were on final demand.

Presenter10:34

We've really got to start doing something about this.

Greg Jackson10:36

Yeah, and and even then

Presenter10:38

before even opening the envelope.

Greg Jackson10:39

That's right. And and even then, you know, back then people would send a check and says, you know, how many days you could post data check?

Presenter10:45

And you did have services cut off to the house.

Greg Jackson10:48

Yeah, back then, um, a guy would turn up with a wrench, I mean, for the gas. Yeah, I remember that very well.

Presenter10:55

It's time for your next disc, Greg. Your third choice today. What are we going to hear and why?

Greg Jackson10:59

We were a Radio 4 house. It was on all the time. Mum listened to it from the moment she woke up to long after she went to sleep and there's nothing more Radio 4 than the shipping forecast. I think when I was about fourteen, after she'd gone to bed on Christmas Eve, I started drilling holes and laying wires around the house and putting speakers in multiple rooms so that she could listen to Radio 4 everywhere in the house. And she woke up on Christmas Day and I think she liked it.

Speaker 111:25

Dogger, Fisher, easterly, five or six. Increasing gale eight in Dogger, and perhaps later in Fisher.

Speaker 111:33

WINTRY SHOWERS

Speaker 111:34

Moderato good.

Speaker 111:36

German Bite, Humber, Thames, Dover, White.

Speaker 111:40

East six.

Speaker 111:41

Increasing gale eight at times, perhaps severe gale nine later in white.

Speaker 111:47

Rain or sleet later?

Speaker 111:49

Moderate or poor.

Speaker 111:52

Portland, Plymouth, East seven to severe gale nine.

Speaker 111:55

Rain at times

Speaker 111:57

Moderate or poor.

Presenter11:58

An extract from the shipping forecast read by Eugene Fraser for your mother, Greg Jackson.

Presenter12:04

I know you didn't see much of your father when you were growing up, but the two of you did reconnect later. How did it happen and what's your relationship like today?

Greg Jackson12:12

I think he's incredibly smart and funny and he's he's a big fan of Rugby Lee of of Halifax. And and also by the way, um of Halifax Town Football Club. And and both of them end up coming to Wembley sometimes. And because I live in London, he always comes and stays and it's so nice to have him there and share his passion for blue and white. My dad and I look the same. Like if you look at a photo of my dad when he was young he looked like me. I therefore know what I'm gonna look like when I'm older. That's it kind of gets you by the heart.

Presenter12:40

So at school you did well in your exams, but you decided to leave at sixteen as soon as you'd finished your O levels. Why did you want to do that and how did your mum react?

Greg Jackson12:50

I think the kind of freedom responsibility mum had given us meant that there wasn't really any discussion. There wasn't really, I don't remember any expectations that I was trying to fulfil by staying in education. I was with that generation of bedroom programmers that learned to code on a single air spectrum and you could feel that was a moment in time and that really appealed. So I think it started probably a bit younger than that. I mean I remember about the age of seven or eight getting those electronics kits that you get for kids. I got one for Christmas I think where you make lights and buzzers and things. And I remember probably about that age actually taking the wall clock off the wall and then wiring it into a tape recorder to create a music alarm clock. And now it was 240 volts and that was when I got my first bad shock. So I was learning that stuff quite early. And when we moved to Saltburn there was an electronics shop there with this lovely guy that ran it. I used to go in and say look can I buy a couple of transistors and some capacitors and resistors or whatever. And he'd start talking to me about more advanced circuits and how different microchips would work and point me at books that I could learn from. And it was always that joy of building and solving problems.

Presenter14:01

So you left school and then became a freelance coder for video games. Your first game didn't go down too well though, why not?

Greg Jackson14:08

If you looked at the software, you go nice. Elegant, great code.

Presenter14:12

The coding was lovely.

Greg Jackson14:13

Yeah, but the game was not fun to play and So what

Presenter14:16

So what was it called?

Greg Jackson14:17

It was a professional wrestling simulator.

Presenter14:17

Yeah.

Greg Jackson14:19

And the people I was writing it for said, we're not going to publish it. And I was gutted. I suddenly realised I'd done months of work. I was not going to get paid anything. And I think what that taught me was this incredible lesson that it doesn't matter what how good you think your work is, what matters is it what customers want. And what I created there was something customers wouldn't want. Because the ultimate thing of a game is got to be fun to play. It doesn't matter what the coding is. And I think that lesson stuck with me. So I've run technology businesses since then. I'm always thinking about what is it we're doing for customers rather than what is it we're doing for ourselves.

Presenter14:52

So by this point in life, I think your mum had got a job as a sociology lecturer at a further education college in in Redcote and moved the family to Saltburn, which is nearby. You stayed in Halifax, though. Where were you living?

Greg Jackson15:04

My grandparents had gone traveling, so I stayed in their house.

Presenter15:07

So you were rattling around in there at sixteen. That's quite a big responsibility, isn't it, for a sixteen-year-old looking after yourself?

Greg Jackson15:13

I just didn't see it like that. It felt perfectly normal, and I could cook very basic meals, and I truly loved the freedom.

Presenter15:20

Time for some more music, Greg, your fourth choice today. What's next and why?

Greg Jackson15:24

While I was living in West Yorkshire doing the video games, U2 played a concert around Hay Park and I'd never been to a big music event before. U2 with this tiny dot in the resistance but the music was so powerful. U2 is something that is something I turn to when I've played too much heavy metal. And it's hard choosing the track but I still haven't found what I'm looking for.

Greg Jackson15:49

Maybe it resonates a bit with me. It's that desire to keep on making things better.

Greg Jackson15:56

You grow

Greg Jackson15:58

I'll scare you.

Greg Jackson16:01

Referral.

Speaker 116:01

City walls, these city walls

Speaker 116:08

I'll let you be with you

Speaker 116:13

But still have a fire

Presenter16:25

You too, and I still haven't found what I'm looking for. So Greg Jackson, when you were seventeen, you decided to return to education and take your A levels at a local college. You then got a place at Cambridge University to read economics. What made you decide to go back to school?

Greg Jackson16:41

After discovering that it was possible to spend several months working and not get paid for it, I thought I want to make sure I've got fallback plans and I did an economics A level and I just fell in love with the subject. It's not about money, it it's about people and resources. I found it absolutely inspiring because our entire lives are governed by, you know, do we have access to the resources we need or that we want? And how do we make more of those resources without trashing the natural resource of the planet?

Presenter17:06

So off you went to Cambridge to study economics, and it was there that you met James Edison, who now works alongside you at Octopus. The two of you developed your first tech project together. What was it?

Greg Jackson17:17

James and I were on the sort of student council, the version of a student union there. We organized events and we organized one very big event and we decided to use technology to the security. We did infrared barcodes back in 1992.

Presenter17:33

So this was like a club night then, or a ball or something? What kind of event was it?

Greg Jackson17:35

A bit of everything. We had live bands, we had hypnotists, we had people dressing up in sumo suits, we had Velcro barfly jumping where you put Velcro on the wall and spring into it. Starts at 6pm, ends at 6am. It was kind of our first tech project. It was also our first kind of business venture.

Presenter17:37

Yeah.

Presenter17:56

After university you joined Procter and Gamble's graduate scheme working in marketing, but you left there after four years. Why didn't you want to stay?

Greg Jackson18:04

And I could feel that I was getting more and more tempted to stay on a corporate conveyor belt.

Greg Jackson18:09

And life would be comfortable and easy, but I wanted to make more decisions. I wanted stuff that I did to matter, not to feel like a small cog in a massive machine. And so I just had to leave.

Presenter18:20

You got a job as a commercial director for a company called Richmond Mirrors, which funnily enough made mirrors. And after a couple of months, the owners promoted you to managing director, and that was your chance to run something. I think you're about twenty seven then, so pretty young to be given that responsibility. Can you remember how it felt?

Greg Jackson18:37

When I took it on, I'd know we had sixty or seventy staff and a half a million pound overdraft and a half million pound overdraft limit. And every month to begin with was just about making sure that we could look after the team financially and then find what was it that would break us through. So we had a couple of products in the Argos catalogue and they sold okay.

Presenter18:55

To these it mirrors.

Greg Jackson18:56

Mirrors, yeah. But um I opened the catalogue and noticed that of course when you look at a picture of a mirror, you can't see the frame'cause it's tiny. What you see is just all the mirrors look the same. So we designed a mirror with really fat frames, which meant in the Argos catalogue you could see the design. And it sold like hotcakes.

Presenter18:56

Mirrors, yeah.

Greg Jackson19:13

That small detail, in a way, transformed the business. And I remember I used to go to Pies, and everyone there would be a lawyer and a management consultant. I was like, I manufacture mirrors. But I loved it. I loved the autonomy, the freedom, and the creativity we had. It's real. You know, you could go into the factory floor, operate the machines, talk to the team. I learned to drive a forklift truck, it was fantastic.

Presenter19:34

I think we better have some more music, Greg. This is your fifth choice today. What's it going to be? What are you taking to the island next and why?

Greg Jackson19:40

When I was at university, we were organising these events. We had attractions like the Velcro suits, but also fantastic music that would get everyone up and dancing. And I remember time and again dancing to Dizzy by Vic Reeves and the Wonder stuff. It was just such a fun time. All of your mates sweating as we bounce around.

Greg Jackson20:06

I'm so dizzy, my head is spinning

Greg Jackson20:10

The world rule, it never ends.

Greg Jackson20:15

It's you girl making it spin. You're making me dizzy.

Greg Jackson20:23

First time that I saw you girl, I knew that I just had to make you mine

Presenter20:31

Vic Reeves and the Wonder Stuff with Dizzy. Greg Jackson, the Mirror Company was sold in the year 2000 and you walked away back then with a six-figure sum. Then in 2003 you co-founded a tech business that built software and databases for clients. Now by 2011 you were looking for a new challenge and you found one in the form of the energy market. Why energy specifically?

Greg Jackson20:53

Energy stood out, you know, globally. It's a $2 trillion sector and yet it was running on software that's two or three decades old. And when I thought about it, it's like, hang on, that's why service is so bad, because you have computers says no, because someone's sitting in front of six different systems trying to help a customer. You've got brilliant people held back by technology. And then we paid too much for it. Back then, there were a lot of stories about energy costs, which of course are dwarfed by the current crisis. But you could see that the route to cutting costs was going to be innovation.

Presenter21:21

It must have had a personal connection for you as well, you know, having grown up in a house where the relationship with basic service providers was stressful and fraught and a little bit unpredictable.

Greg Jackson21:33

I just remembered that cutting off moment and

Greg Jackson21:36

the phenomenal stress of final demands. And I think really understanding the extent to which if you're selling watches, it's fine to try and make expensive products. But if you're selling something everyone needs, like energy, we've got a moral sort of imperative to try and drive the cost down. And that we could see that technology could do that.

Presenter21:55

But I think it was a night in the pub that really clinched it for you. Tell me about it. What happened?

Greg Jackson22:00

I'd moved house and finally got around to opening an energy bill and it was eye-watering and I phoned up the energy company and they said, oh we'll cut that for you. I said, what? Is that easy? And they said, yeah, you weren't on a contract because you just moved in. And then sometime later, maybe a couple of years later, I remember looking at the bills again and going, hang on, this is eye water. And I phoned them up and they said, oh, we'll cut that for you.

Greg Jackson22:23

And I was like, no, no, you've already done that. And they said, no, no, the contract expired. So you went onto the default rate. And I was like, what? So I have to phone you up every year to get a decent price. And that felt so wrong. And I was complaining to my mates about that. And I said, I should set up an energy company. And they were like, you'll never do that. And I thought, well, maybe we will.

Presenter22:44

So in the early days, how easy was it for you to win customers? It's one thing you having a sense of belief in what you're doing, but how did you persuade them?

Greg Jackson22:54

We had to talk to customers almost one to one to begin with and in social media and by email and everywhere we could find them. We were winning one customer at a time. It's like hand to hand combat. And I mean, to begin with, we had a little bell in the office every time we won a customer. There'd be a pinging sound off there's a computer bell. I cobbled that together myself with my remnants of technology skills.

Presenter23:13

And how ambitious were you back then? I mean, if I'd looked at that first business plan that you created, would I have seen a sense of the scale that you've already achieved?

Greg Jackson23:21

The first draft did have that scale in. I've got to say, we thought, like, no one's going to believe this is possible. So we kind of.

Greg Jackson23:28

Massaged it down. The numbers were so big, we thought this is what we want to build, what we think we can build. But we just didn't know whether investors would believe us. So, yeah, we.

Presenter23:33

Mm-hmm.

Presenter23:38

You made it look more realistic.

Greg Jackson23:40

Well, less ambitious. But the reality is we've delivered the ambition and more. I never know where the answer for this is.

Greg Jackson23:47

We should be braver in declaring our ambitions. Maybe we should.

Presenter23:52

It's time for some more music, Greg. What's next?

Greg Jackson23:54

There's a beautiful song by um Kenny Rogers. It's The Gambler. There's a bit that says Never count your money when you're sitting at the table. There'll be time enough for counting when the dealing's done. It's not really about money.

Greg Jackson24:06

It's really about while we're living our lives, we can't declare success or failure.

Greg Jackson24:11

That all comes at the end.

Presenter24:12

Is that a a motto that you live by?

Greg Jackson24:15

Yeah, it is. And when people say, look, you've been successful, it's like I don't know whether we have yet. We've had lots of successes, but a bit like, you know, the gambler, during the game of poker, they'll play many hands, they'll win some and they'll lose some. They don't know until the game's over. And I think, yeah, we've got to be humble all the time and recognise that we've got to just keep on working unbelievably hard rather than at any point getting comfortable.

Speaker 124:38

And his face lost all expression Said if you're gonna play the game boy, you gotta learn to play it right You gotta know when the whole

Speaker 124:50

Know when the folder

Speaker 124:52

No wind to walk away

Speaker 124:55

No when to run, you never count your money.

Speaker 125:00

When you're sitting at the table, there'll be time enough for counting

Speaker 125:06

When the dealin's done.

Presenter25:11

Kenny Rogers and The Gambler. Greg Jackson, when you started the business, you were taking on a sector that had been dominated by what were then called the Big Six energy firms, and you became known as something of a disruptor. How do you feel about that term?

Presenter25:24

You're wincing.

Greg Jackson25:25

I don't like the term, but really it's that challenge. It says, look, energy's been a sector for 150 years. Most of the way that it's been thought about has not really changed dramatically in that time. And yet, by the way, the energy sector is going to change more over the next 10 or 15 years than over the last 100 because we've got to increasingly use renewable energy rather than fossil fuels. Cars will go electric not because of legislation, but because electric cars are better and they're just going to keep getting cheaper. Heating will go electric because it's going to keep getting cheaper and will get better. All of that is change that we can bring. Now, is that disruption? I don't know, but it's improvement. It's an upgrade.

Presenter26:05

Last year, you took over Bulb Energy, which had collapsed as a result of the energy crisis, and you're in the process of buying Shell's household energy business in the UK and in Germany. Isn't there a danger that Octopus Energy will get too big and that the customer service you pride yourself on will start to suffer?

Greg Jackson26:21

Actually, I think it gets easier to provide better services as we get bigger because if you take a problem that only one customer had when we were small, we might now have one hundred or one thousand or ten thousand with it. So we can create better solutions in the technology to remove those problems. We can learn more and we can reapply learnings across the world.

Presenter26:38

And of course you've been growing the business alongside bringing up your family. You've got two boys, Lucas is sixteen I think, and Zach is six. And you don't live with their mums but they do stay with you a couple of nights at the a week and on alternate weekends. How do you juggle the competing demands of work and family? I mean you're running an international business now.

Greg Jackson26:59

Travel means that it's much harder now than actually it was even just working hard before. And so because of this importance of particularly the Wednesday night with the boys, I've done things like flying to Japan on a Sunday night. I get to Tokyo Monday morning, meetings there, meetings in Yokohama on Monday afternoon, dinner in Tokyo Monday evening, and then plane overnight to Sydney, meetings in Sydney on Tuesday morning, and then to Melbourne, meetings in Melbourne Tuesday evening, then back on a plane to get to the UK in time for school pickup on a Wednesday. And that sort of thing is quite hard. I talk to the boys about it. I try to be present, but if something happens, then I take a phone call. That phone is what enables me to be here, and I'll get rid of it as quick as I can. I also try and, I'm not massively into cooking, I'm not a very good cook, but I think for the boys, it kind of shows love. I was cooking spaghetti and fish fingers. I mean, a quality meal.

Greg Jackson27:53

Charlie Jimmers of the boys.

Presenter27:54

Italian classic.

Greg Jackson27:55

Getting a phone call, cradling a phone'cause my headset had fallen out and then um Zach was climbing up the cupboard so I had to try and prevent that. Cradling the phone and then dropping the spaghetti over my feet and definitely trying to pack it all in. At least some fairly uh messy kitchens.

Presenter28:13

It's time for some more music. Greg Jackson, your seventh choice today. What's it gonna be?

Greg Jackson28:17

I got this beautiful video of my two boys growing up.

Greg Jackson28:21

The soundtrack to it is One Day Like This by Elbow.

Greg Jackson28:24

And I can't watch it without welling up, and it's just all the fun times and happy times. Anyway.

Presenter28:32

This is for them.

Presenter28:35

Make me be happy

Speaker 128:36

Pave the way.

Speaker 128:41

You say words I never say I do only

Speaker 128:48

Uh

Speaker 328:48

Most people

Speaker 328:52

Oh, anyway.

Greg Jackson28:54

Uh

Speaker 328:54

Uh

Greg Jackson28:56

It's looking like a beautiful day.

Presenter29:05

elbow, and one day like this.

Presenter29:08

Greg Jackson, Octopus Energy has yet to make a profit. Why not exactly?

Greg Jackson29:12

We're in the very early stages of building a global business and we've only really just started. I'm incredibly proud of what we've achieved if you look down the mountain. But if we look up, we've got so much further to go.

Presenter29:24

Yeah, I think you've actually said we could have made a profit, but now's not the time.

Greg Jackson29:28

As we went into the energy crisis, we didn't know how long it was going to last and how deep it was going to get. And we're still.

Presenter29:34

Still on it.

Greg Jackson29:34

We're still in the crisis, right? And I think

Greg Jackson29:37

The world is more prepared for it now, but we just had to put everything we had into helping with that.

Presenter29:41

You gave it with salary.

Greg Jackson29:42

Yeah.

Greg Jackson29:43

But things like the reason I gave up my salary and went to minimum wage was to be able to put money into looking after our staff and customers myself.

Presenter29:53

You own a six percent stake in the company worth many millions.

Presenter29:57

How important is money to you personally?

Greg Jackson30:00

It's easy to say it's not about the money.

Greg Jackson30:03

For people who've got no money, it's all money's really important. I think I know that person from childhood. You know, for me, all my money's tied up in the company. If the company's successful, then

Greg Jackson30:12

I'm I'm very well off.

Presenter30:14

And how do you answer those who think that this is all very shrewd PR? I mean, however laudable your intentions, your company is primarily concerned with making money.

Greg Jackson30:23

Yeah, look, I mean first of all, I'm not ashamed that we will have to make money. After all, investors have put an awful lot of money in. But the real challenge is the system needs completely overhauling. And if we can use the investment we've received in conversations like this to talk about a cheaper system, then there's room to slash prices and for companies to make a little bit of profit.

Presenter30:47

Are you optimistic about what the future holds?

Greg Jackson30:49

I'm really optimistic about energy. I know that all the solutions are there for a cheaper, cleaner energy system. The combination of wind and solar, electric cars, long distance cables connecting continents so we can ship electricity from where it's sunny to where it's not and from where it's windy. The UK could be a clean energy powerhouse because it's windy here a lot. We've got fantastic wind. We don't need to be at the mercy of a global fossil fuel sector.

Presenter31:15

You've got a new challenge ahead, Gregg. You're off to the desert island in a minute. How will you approach life there?

Greg Jackson31:20

People pay a fortune to go on sunny beach holidays and I've got one to myself. That's amazing. So first of all I'm gonna make sure I enjoy it. But I'll be restless so I'm gonna want to spend as much of the time as I can doing two things. I think one is trying to build stuff to make the island ever more enjoyable. Maybe build a surfboard. Like let's make the most of the thing, right? But also try to build stuff to leave the island. Because although I'm gonna love it, I've gotta try'cause I can't always go back

Presenter31:45

So you're going to attempt escape quite early then.

Greg Jackson31:48

Yeah, I don't want to call it escape because, you know, I want to make sure I'm making the most of this, but I would love the opportunity to explore other places too. But you know, I might quite like this, so I might want to come back as well.

Presenter31:58

Okay, you just want the option.

Greg Jackson32:00

Yeah. Uh

Presenter32:00

Excellent. Well, one more track before we send you to your island. Final choice today: what's it going to be?

Greg Jackson32:06

It's Rockaway Beach by Motorhead, right? So this is covering Ramones. Yeah, it's covering Ramones and Lemmy's gravelly voice is so human. This is a song about enjoying yourself on the beach. And whilst I'm working on making the beach better and indeed perhaps finding ways to explore, I'm gonna have this banging.

Presenter32:09

And this

Speaker 132:27

And now I'm so It's not hard, no fun

Speaker 132:32

That you like to

Greg Jackson32:37

Praise the Hamdah.

Greg Jackson32:41

What are you doing?

Speaker 132:42

Uh

Speaker 132:42

Bastard rhythm on the radio

Speaker 132:45

Rock, rock, rock, away be

Speaker 132:48

Uh

Presenter32:48

Don't you?

Speaker 132:52

Uh

Presenter32:56

Motorheads cover of Ramones Rockaway Beach. Final track for you then, Greg Jackson. It is time to send you away to the island. I'm giving you the books to take with you, the Bible, the complete works of Shakespeare. You can take another book of your choice. What are you going to go for?

Greg Jackson33:11

I'm going to take a book called The Apollo Guidance Computer Manual. It's been by the side of my bed on and off for years now and I turn to it and just randomly open pages. Now it's basically about the computers that formed the guidance system that took men to the moon in 1969. But the reality is it's a story of unbelievable human ingenuity.

Presenter33:35

It's yours. You can also have a luxury item to make life more enjoyable or for sensory stimulation on the island. What have you gone for?

Greg Jackson33:42

I'm going to take a pinball machine. It's this combination of the physics and the electronics and actually pinball's got quite deep gameplay with a storyline. And so the one I want to take is one called Monster Bash. And it's a whole series of fantastic rocky tracks that you unlock by achieving certain goals with the pinballs. It's going to be solar powered and it's going to be on full volume because there's no one there to complain.

Presenter34:06

Monster Bash It Is, it's yours. And finally, which one track of the eight that you've shared with us today would you save from the waves first?

Greg Jackson34:14

One day, like this, because every time I listen to it, I'll be pitching the boys.

Presenter34:19

Greg Jackson, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs.

Greg Jackson34:23

Thank you, Laura.

Presenter34:48

Hello, I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Greg. We'll leave him playing very loud pinball on the beach, I think. We've cast away many people from the business world, including Tom Alube, Deborah Meaden, Joe Fairley, and John Cordwell. You can find these episodes in our Desert Island Discs programme archive and through BBC Sounds. The studio manager for today's programme was Sue Mayo and the producer was Paula McGinley. Next time, my guest will be the film studio executive, Dame Donna Langley. I do hope you'll join us.

Speaker 335:30

Hi, I'm Robin Ince. And I'm Brian Cox. And we want to tell you about a great series we've made for BBC Radio 4. Let's just say it's average. It's above average. Each one is a handy little guide to everything from the supernatural to the meaning of infinity. Supernatural one will be short because there's no such thing. I am so gonna haunt you for saying that. We've pulled the best moments from the past 27 series of the show, that's nearly 15 years worth, to bring you some of the most surprising science and sometimes, hopefully in your judgment, some of the funniest moments with guests including Steve Martin, Brian Blessed, Josie Long, and some scientists, lots of scientists as well. Listen now on BBC Sounds.