Summary

Kiran Kapur, CEO of Cambridge Marketing College, joins Cambridge Radio to discuss her career in marketing, consultancy, and education.

An author of three marketing books, she is recognised for her work in podcasts, radio, and innovative learning approaches. A key milestone was leading the college’s move into apprenticeships in 2018, expanding its training provision.

 

Key Points

  • Embrace Unexpected Pivots and Learn from Setbacks - Sometimes career setbacks open doors to more fulfilling paths than you originally planned.
  • Follow Your Curiosity and Passion for "New and Shiny" Ideas, But with Balance - Innovation is valuable, but leaders must balance forward momentum with giving teams time to complete work, celebrate achievements, and consolidate gains.
  • Continuous Learning Enriches Leadership and Prevents Stagnation - Actively seek out learning opportunities and listen to honest feedback about your own engagement; stagnation is often a signal to pivot.
  • Know When to Step Back and Enable Others Rather Than Do It Yourself - Senior leadership is about prioritising and enabling others, not doing the work yourself, even when you know you can do it better or faster.
  • Maintain Multiple Interests and Community Involvement for Fulfilment and Perspective - A well-rounded life with diverse interests and community contributions enriches both personal fulfilment and professional effectiveness.

 

Transcript

Transcipts are auto-generated.

Linda Ness (00:00):
Kiran Kapur is the CEO of Cambridge Marketing College. Before joining the college, she worked in the marketing and communications business, and Kiran has authored no less than three books on various aspects of marketing. We want to find out more about Kiran so welcome to Women Making Waves.

Kiran Kapur (00:21):
Thank you very much. Nice to be on.

Linda Ness (00:23):
Well, it's lovely to have you, Kiran. Now I imagine that you might be feeling quite comfortable in this studio today because I know that you're no stranger to doing podcasts, and also you've had your fair share of doing radio work as well. Do you enjoy working in this kind of media, the voice media?

Kiran Kapur (00:44):
Absolutely love it. I am an oral learner, so I learn through listening and always have done. And basically I wanted to be Jenny Murray on radio for this is where I was supposed to be. So when the opportunity came up through the college of actually being originally on Star Radio when it existed, and now obviously on podcasts, I just jumped at it. In fact, I think the MD was actually planning to do it himself, and I think I jumped in first.

Linda Ness (01:11):
That's the way to do it. And that's the way to do it. You did a BA in English at Southampton University, and then you went on to do a master's in management studies at Oxford. Why management studies? If you were doing English before, I think you're obviously into literature and things like that. Why the switch to management studies?

Kiran Kapur (01:32):
Well, I sort of ended up doing English because that was pretty much what I was best at. So I ended up doing an English degree and absolutely loved it. But midway through, I think probably my second year, I started getting very interested in propaganda and how you could use language for propaganda and communication and manipulation and persuasion. And it's quite an easy step to then go, oh, marketing business that might be interesting. And also, what on earth do you do with an English degree?

Linda Ness (02:03):
If you're not going to be an English teacher, you're absolutely right. I guess it's either journalism and going down that route, or a lot of people, I guess, do go into business. Yeah. And you say you like the kind of the propaganda side. Was that a political thing ever, or was it just purely marketing?

Kiran Kapur (02:22):
Oh, I think back in the day, there was a bit of student politics, and the Southampton English degree was quite up to date. So we did post-structured some feminism and Marxism, I think, in our analysis. So there was an awful lot of that going on. Yes. And I think that's where the interest came, but then it wasn't too big a step going from that into the persuaders and going into marketing. I don't want to sound like marketing's propaganda and manipulating people, but that was sort of how the thought process went. I

Linda Ness (02:49):
Mean, I guess there's a little bit of that sometimes, isn't there? There's got to be, I suppose. In 1990, you started working for global asset manager, M&G. And you say that at the time, marketing to customers was considered an odd idea. What was the idea of doing something new? Is that what attracted you to the job?

Kiran Kapur (03:13):
Yeah. If there's one thread through my career, it's usually because I like the new and the shiny. And yes, I started off ... I mean, I graduated, I got a master's degree. I would have come from Oxford. I thought, to be honest, the world was going to be at my feet. You're quite arrogant at that age, let's face it. And I walked out into the biggest graduate unemployment crisis since, well, the next big one was the one we're going through now. So you took what you could get, and I was lucky I could live with my parents, and they lived in Guilford, so I had London available to me to apply for jobs. And I took a job as a marketing assistant at M&G at a very low salary just because it was something I could get. And then I worked up from there, and then somewhere along the line, I came across the idea of customer lifetime value and marketing to customers.

(03:59):
So I pitched the idea of becoming the customer marketing person, and this was actually new and revelatory, and I had to fight to get it, and eventually I was given the customer marketing department, and I think more to keep me quiet than anything else, and I loved it. And we did all sorts of exciting things, communicating with customers in a way that the company hadn't done before.

Linda Ness (04:20):
So I guess you were marketing initially to get the customer, and once you had them, it was just up to the customer relationship manager, or whatever they would be called, account manager, I guess, back in those days, to keep them and maybe to keep them updated with new things coming out or were they not really doing that too well?

Kiran Kapur (04:37):
Well, M&G in those days, I mean there were the corporate clients which I wasn't involved in. That was a different side. So we were very much retail customers. So back in the day, we used to have posters all over the London Underground. People would know M&G from the London Underground posters, and we were marketing what had just come out PEPs had just come out, what we would now call an ISA, and so the beginnings of mass share ownership and also the beginnings of people therefore wanting to go into unit trusts and investment trusts. I don't want to get making this into a money podcast. So you were suddenly going out to a retail market, encouraging people to come and invest. So it was very much go out and kiss as many frogs as possible and get them to come princes and become customers. The idea that you then nurtured them hadn't actually occurred to anybody.

Linda Ness (05:29):
It's interesting looking back on that now, actually, isn't it? I guess things have changed a lot really. Hugely.

Kiran Kapur (05:35):
Yeah. I mean, regulations have changed. The attitude to investment has changed, and then the whole world is different. You have Marty Lewis now. You definitely didn't have anybody like that then.

Linda Ness (05:44):
How did you find Oxford University, having come from a different university? Was it very, very different from Southampton?

Kiran Kapur (05:51):
Oh yes, it was. I mean, it was a childhood ambition because I'd read Gordi Knights by Dorothy Elsayers, and therefore I wanted to go to Oxford. I suspect she was such lots of people might have gone the similar sort of route. So when I applied to business schools and discovered I could take an MBA from a business school or I could do what was then called an M-fill in management studies, which was an MBA by any other name.

Kiran Kapur (06:17):
Chose to go to Oxford just because I could. And yeah, I just wander around, and I loved it. It's a dreamy place, sorry, Cambridge.

Linda Ness (06:25):
Yes, be careful. But you enjoyed your time there. You stayed in Oxford, did you, or did you live in Gilford still? No, no,

Kiran Kapur (06:34):
I stayed in Oxford and did the full university life, met my future husband there, but yes, but completely involved in university life and music and all the things that you do as a student. I was just a postgrad.

Linda Ness (06:46):
What music were you involved in?

Kiran Kapur (06:48):
I was in a band and amateur musician, so I played the trumpet. Nice lady like instrument.

Linda Ness (06:53):
Really?

Kiran Kapur (06:54):
And I still play in the CSD brass band, the Cambridge and surrounding district brass band. In fact, I was out with them at the weekend and a couple of local orchestras, so yes.

Linda Ness (07:03):
Oh, interesting. I wouldn't have put you down as a trumpet player for some reason or other. In 1998 you became self-employed as a consultant. What drove that change?

Kiran Kapur (07:16):
I was made redundant.

Linda Ness (07:17):
M&G

Kiran Kapur (07:18):
Was a very, very political organisation. It's an investment company. It's going to be political. It's based in the city of London. They are political, and I just got on the wrong side of political argument. I knew that I wanted to leave and in fact, I'd been looking for other jobs and I wasn't landing them. I'm recently confident in my abilities. And I eventually sat down and my husband said, "Why aren't I getting these jobs?" And he said, "Because you actually don't want them. Fundamentally, you've got bored with this industry." And that was really profound, and I hadn't realised it. And then I think a week later I was made redundant. We just moved house so I'd just come back from two weeks off having moved into the house, painting and decorating and I arrived back on the Monday and was made redundant on the Tuesday and I thought, what am I going to do now?

(08:02):
I'd always wanted to write, you mentioned I'd written some books.

(08:05):
I'd always wanted to write. So I thought this was my opportunity to actually try doing some writing, learn how to write properly, throw myself into that, but also do some freelancing, which I naturally assumed I would be able to do very easily, and I'd bring some money in alongside. And for the first three months I was on gardening leaves, of course I've been paid, which was glorious, and I've got a house to paint and ex- colleagues from city of London and other companies were saying, "Come and have drinks. It's Christmas time." In those days you did a lot of entertaining if you're in marketing. So I was going to drinks, parties and networking. I was like a great time. And then we got to Christmas and then January, the phone didn't ring. It was like, "Oh, now what are you going to do? This sort of chill wind comes through you.

(08:48):
" And an ex- colleague of mine phoned me and said, "Kiran, I've got this job teaching at Kensington and Chelsea College. It's three half days teaching local businesses how to do marketing." Right. And I've done one, and I don't really enjoy it, and actually I've got a better paid gig now, so would you like to do it? Of course, I've got nothing else to do. So I said, "Okay." And then round about the same time, the Charter Institute Marketing introduced the Chartered Marketer mark, and I was one of the first wave to get it and the local Cambridge branch decided very kindly to organise a dinner. So I thought better go to the dinner, better network, sat next to this very, very charming older gentleman and he said, "So my dear, what are you doing?" And I thought so I'd be mode redundant. And I hadn't actually done any teaching at this point, but I said, "Oh well, I've got a contract to teach at Kensington and Chelsea College, and I'm teaching local businesses how to do marketing and PR." And I certainly didn't say it was two half days, and I also didn't say that I haven't actually delivered it yet, but I sort of said, "Are you enjoying it?

(09:52):
"Oh, I'm really enjoying it. It's lovely having a different perspective and whether you call that chutzpah or bending the truth or just marketing it out, I don't know. But this charming gentleman said, Oh, I run a marketing college and we're always looking for young female tutors. Would you like to come along for an interview? "And of course the rest is situy, that was the Cambridge Marketing College. So I was teaching alongside being a freelance

Linda Ness (10:18):
And was teaching when you did start teaching, was it something that appealed to you?

Kiran Kapur (10:24):
Loved it. I still do. I still teach. I still keep my hand in with the teaching. It is the fun part of the job. You get asked questions that you've never thought. You're dealing with students that are working in industries that I have never worked in. I mean, you have technical background. I've taught at ARM before now, and they're talking about technical products that I don't know about, but I understand about marketing, and so that's the side of it. That's taking the marketing theory and applying it to different areas and helping other people to do so. That's such a fun part of the job.

Linda Ness (10:56):
Do you find that you actually learn from them, not just about their own industry, but maybe they've got ideas that just doesn't occur to you.

Kiran Kapur (11:03):
Absolutely. And I mean if you are not magpieing other people's ideas, what are you doing? Yes, they look at the world differently. I mean, you've just been going through my CV, and I'm thinking good grief was like really that long ago. Probably reasonable to say that I'm possibly not the same generation as some of the apprentices. And they come with a different attitude, a different look and a different way of applying things. No, it's great. You learn a lot.

Linda Ness (11:31):
And in 2016 you became CEO of the college.

Kiran Kapur (11:38):
Gosh, that 26 years went really quickly.

Linda Ness (11:41):
We zoomed like a time machine in here. How was the transition into that role? Because you've been one of the, I don't know, high polite and suddenly you're in charge of everything.

Kiran Kapur (11:53):
Yeah, it's quite a shock because when you start teaching, you start teaching. You do one Saturday and then three months later you do a series of eight evening classes and then six months later you come back and do a weekend. You're not teaching all the time by any means.

(12:06):
Means. I had started to work more. I was looking after the college's international expansion. So I was working there three days a week as the international development director. I think that's what my hypholuting title was. And so we were taking on brand ambassadors around the world and pushing into international markets. So it's not like I wasn't just teaching. I had also done some of the other side there. But yes, I mean one day I am part of the team, which I think was six at the time, so it's six, five and I'm just turning up and locking around with the team as you do and going out for lunches and doing all the other things that you do as a team and working alongside the tutors and phoning tutors and going, "How do you teach this one? What do you do? " And all the things that tutors do and then suddenly overnight, because I knew it was coming, but other people didn't, the announcement went out and Kiran is now the CEO

Linda Ness (12:59):
And nobody had any idea that was coming.

Kiran Kapur (13:01):
No.

Linda Ness (13:02):
Was the job up for grabs? Were there people being interviewed for it?

Kiran Kapur (13:06):
No, I don't think so. The original founder, Charles Nixon, sorry, he was one of three original founders, because we've just celebrated the college's 35th birthday and we had a representative, the founders there. So he was one of the original founders, but he then carried on. He ran the college for 25 years at the point he decided that he wanted to hand over to younger hands and I'm now jazz handing my hands at you, and I mean he had spoken to me I think three or four years beforehand about whether I would be interested. So we'd had a conversation and understanding and at that stage family was too young and I wasn't ready and then quite suddenly he sort of said, "Now is the time." And I went, "Well, end of the summer holidays, please. I don't want to do it at the beginning of the summer holidays." So it was early September 2016.

(13:49):
So no, I don't think he was interviewing for other people. I don't think people even knew that he was necessarily planning to retire, but he and I had an understanding that this is what was going to happen.

Linda Ness (13:59):
And how did everyone take to that then?

Kiran Kapur (14:02):
Surprisingly well actually. I mean, there is that moment when you walk in the first day and you know the announcement's gone out and you think, "What on earth are people going to think? " And the first tutor conference that I ran, I was absolutely terrified because I mean I had been previously just sitting in the back as one of the tutors and now suddenly I'm the one up the front. It does take a while to get your own head around it and there's so much to learn.

Linda Ness (14:27):
Yeah. And did you go in with lots of ideas about changing everything when you started?

Kiran Kapur (14:32):
I actually saw my original job there as to be the stability candidate because it was such a big change. The person that had been running it for 25 years had now retired. People knew, I mean I'd been around, had to set up and I thought it was really important that to the outside world it was all very smooth and very calm and very under control. So I think in fact I didn't make, I made some changes. I did change the website. That was something I'd been working on because I wanted to change it into a slightly more up to date version and there were a few other little things. They were big things in retrospect. We changed the whole way that our learning materials were presented. So I don't know if outside you would see those as big changes. I knew they were big changes and then in 2018 I took us into apprenticeships and that's when everything really changed.

(15:19):
We pivoted.

Linda Ness (15:21):
So what brought that on? Was it just the change in the market please?

Kiran Kapur (15:26):
Pretty much I have to be honest and say that I was at a conference and I think it was coming up to coffee break and somebody was standing up and going, "I think we're going to do a 20 minute section on the changes of apprenticeships." And I was stuck. I was stuck in a middle of a row and I thought I could go and get a cup of coffee, we're going to have to push past all these people. "God, this sounds really boring. I will just sit here and listen. It's only 20 minutes. I'll go and get my coffee. "Actually the end of 20 minutes I was up the front of the stage talking to the guy talking and going, " I need to know more. This is clearly important. "And for the first time apprenticeships were opened up to marketing and to business and to various other things.

(16:04):
So at that point I thought yes, that's it. And in my own unimitable style, I wanted back to work the following day and went," Great, so we're going to be doing apprenticeships now, no lead up, no rolling the pitch, nothing like that. My team who were very small and of course had all worked with me, just all went shrugged and went, because she's off on one again, we'll do apprentices. "If I'd known the tsunami of paperwork I was going to unleash, I might have thought twice

Linda Ness (16:31):
Because

Kiran Kapur (16:31):
You move from being only taking private money because you're teaching CIM and CIPR qualifications into taking public money because it's government one. It's a very different kettle of fish.

Linda Ness (16:43):
I can imagine. I can imagine. But you know what? And I've said this before on this programme, I love the idea of apprenticeships. University is not for everybody and I think there's such value in working in the industry, but also getting some days off for training and that kind of thing. I think that's a really, really valuable thing because you're learning as you go, you're hands on.

Kiran Kapur (17:08):
I mean, employers sometimes say, but I'm paying them five days a week and they're only working four days a week. And I go, yes, but when they come back in on the following week they will be different because they will have spent that day learning and they will have learned something new that they can bring back to the business and we employ two apprentices at the moment. We've had others through and they really do learn and they grab and it's fantastic.

Linda Ness (17:32):
I think you mentioned that you're still involved in tutoring because you love it so much. You're still doing that. You can fit that in around all of the CEO duties.

Kiran Kapur (17:41):
Well, I mean, CEOs do have control over their own diaries so it is up to you to decide how much you can and cannot do. I wouldn't commit to doing a run of eight evening classes anymore, but I can tutor to apprentices because that's a commitment, that's a tutorial commitment and I do, we taught summer school last summer of Chinese students. I could commit to part of that. So you do have to be careful not to overcommit. I'm not very good at that bit. Fortunately, I have an assistant who's a rock vialeringer looks at me and goes, "Are you sure about that? " But you learn.

(18:13):
Isn't it? Absolutely. You learn to put people around you that have skills to you because they do challenge and they do go, "Are you sure?" And so that's useful. But yes, the teaching, I wouldn't want to lose the teaching anymore than I'd want to lose the podcasting.

Linda Ness (18:26):
And do you think that there's a lot of difference between the content that you were teaching when you first started and the content that you're teaching now?

Kiran Kapur (18:35):
Oh, that's a nasty question. Some of it I have to say still carries on. We still teach the hands off matrix and porters five forces and those were things that I was taught at business school and we still roll out now because some things are evergreen. You don't necessarily update them because they work and you use them. Other things, yes, of course when I first started teaching, I was still teaching how to do direct marketing, which was all physical and we were teaching how to do ... Sales promotions was all about how to write a coupon so you could stick it in a newspaper and have it cut out and that sounds like forever ago now, doesn't it? But I mean, yeah, I very proudly started my working career in junk mail because it was physically male and physically stuffed in envelopes and of course that's what you taught.

(19:25):
Then e-Marketing came in the idea of e-commerce came in and now of course it's all, I mean, we would be teaching social media and analytics. You didn't do as much analytics in the earlier days because you didn't have the data to do it. Now you do. So obviously you've got to be taught not only what is data, what is useful data and how you can manipulate that data properly

Linda Ness (19:48):
And how you can prove that campaigns are working, I suppose.

Kiran Kapur (19:51):
Yes, definitely.

Linda Ness (19:53):
As I mentioned in the intro, you've also written some publications and books on marketing. Is writing something that you still enjoy and kind of guessing you did lots of that in your first degree as you mentioned, is that something that you still love doing?

Kiran Kapur (20:09):
I do and I don't. I love the outcome. I actually, I sweat over my writing so it worries me and I worry at it. As a result, it takes me way too long to produce things, but I am very proud of the fact that I've written marketing books. I'm always very proud of the fact that I was published in Women's Weekly Summer Special. Wow. I know I have a couple of short stories published over the years and also in Jane Austin Regency World. So I have written other things. It's not just marketing, but I'm not a quick writer and my poor old learning materials person trying to get me to produce stuff on time will tell you it can be a bit like pulling tea because I've always got another idea.

Linda Ness (20:46):
Oh, I see. So it's not that you can't be bothered sitting down and just getting stuck into it. It's that you don't know when to stop.

Kiran Kapur (20:52):
Yes.

Linda Ness (20:54):
I think that's better than not knowing where to start and having the empty page syndrome, you know?

Kiran Kapur (21:00):
Yes. And actually of course, now we would teach you to not do that because we'd probably teach you to use AI to help you with getting over that white page syndrome. But no, it's learning when to stop.

Linda Ness (21:10):
On a completely different tack, you were a trustee at Jimmy's homeless charity for five years. How did you get involved with that charity?

Kiran Kapur (21:21):
I think it was a playground discussion of from an old school. She was a trustee. She got a legal background and they were looking, they'd done a skills analysis of gaps that they had in trustee skills. One of the things was marketing and she knew that that's what I did and I jumped at it.

Linda Ness (21:37):
And did you enjoy that? Was it something that you really enjoyed at the time?

Kiran Kapur (21:40):
Yes. It's very different because if you're not careful, you tend to want to be over interfering. You're not there to micromanage, you're there to guide and support and I did find that quite difficult. Sometimes you want to sort of jump in. That's not your role. Your role is a trustee, the same way as being a governor of a school. You're not expected to go and teach the children. You're expected to keep a sort of overview. But I mean, the work that they do is fantastic. The difference that they make is fantastic. So it was very rewarding to feel like you were bringing some of your skills to something else. And again, like everything else, you learn so much.

Linda Ness (22:19):
I can imagine it would actually. I can see a little bit of a theme here with you. You're saying that when you start writing, you don't know when to stop and also when you were the trustee, you wanted to get far more involved and far more hands on. Yeah.

Kiran Kapur (22:31):
It's one of those skills you eventually learn when you become more senior that your role is not to do. Your role is to guide or to prioritise or to help people through. When you've come up through the ranks, I think that's one of the hardest lessons because you know you can do it. So helping Jimmy's to realise that they needed a PR media strategy and then finding a trainer who could come in and do that, that is a trustee's role. It is not your role to sit and write the press releases, even if you can. And it is something that you learn slowly and sometimes painfully for everybody, not just you.

Linda Ness (23:07):
Yes. I completely agree. I also find it really, really hard not to start writing the press release or whatever it is at the meeting itself and have probably finished it in that time and produce it, but you can't do that. You're trading on people's toes and it's not what you should be doing.

Kiran Kapur (23:24):
And also you're squashing somebody else's learning experience and maybe you ... We don't necessarily like to admit this, but maybe somebody else can do it better. What a shocking

Linda Ness (23:35):
Part. No, no, no, no, no.That's not possible, Kiran. You're also a parish clerk for a parish. I was. That was why earlier on I asked you if politics interested you actually.

Kiran Kapur (23:52):
Oh, and I think I was ... I can't remember. I actually remember when I started, John Prescott was still in charge of local government. So we're under Tony Blair. I am a qualified clerk in the eyes of John Prescott. I had a very small family and I was fitting it around other things. It wasn't meant to be a long time thing. And I think I was Clark for about four years and then I did another short stint later on when they needed somebody. It's fun to do. I only live in a very small parish. I mean, there's 250 souls I think in the parish. It's not like it's a big commitment or a big thing to do, but it was fun.

Linda Ness (24:28):
I know in the parish council where I live at the moment, the big thing is should we have 20 mile an hour speed limit going through the village and there's big contention about that.

Kiran Kapur (24:38):
That's the other thing you learned, that you learn that actually every single parish has exactly the same discussions.

Linda Ness (24:42):
Yes.

Kiran Kapur (24:43):
Potholes, which they're not in charge of, but they have to go and talk to the relevant authorities about 20 miles an hour speeding through the village. Yes. And they're evergreen topics. They just come around again and again and again. On dog muck.

Linda Ness (24:56):
Yes, dog. Of course. Of course, the famous dogs. Yes. Looking back, is there anything that you would do differently in your life or your career?

Kiran Kapur (25:07):
My goodness, that makes me sound 80.

Linda Ness (25:09):
I know. Now that you're 85.

Kiran Kapur (25:12):
I haven't finished yet and I haven't retired yet and there are things I'm going to change still. What would I do differently? Oh, good grief. I should have learned earlier to just take it a little bit more steady. As you've probably gathered, I tend to throw myself into things headlong and I tend to get distracted by the new and the exciting and the shiny and I want to do it all. And I think I am learning slowly that actually your team functions better if instead of chopping and changing or ... And actually I didn't chop and change, but it's just they would be in the middle of doing A while I'm talking about, and the next exciting thing we're going to be doing is B and then they all go, "Finish A, right? We're on B and I'm on C." And I think if you're not careful you are there is a balance to find.

(26:01):
You need that relentlessness because you need to keep pushing the organisation forward. That's really important. That's part of being a leader, but you also have to find the balance of actually sometimes people need a chance to finish A and be proud of what they've done and have a little celebration and a pause before perhaps you introduce the idea of B as opposed to being halfway through deciding that's what we're going to do and perhaps writing all the policies or whatever it is that you, whatever

Linda Ness (26:25):
It was.

Kiran Kapur (26:25):
So I think sometimes learning to just slow down is possibly a good news.

Linda Ness (26:30):
And love the ideas, but maybe keep them on the shelf until you can. Oh, that's a good thought. Kiran Kapur, thank you very much for talking to me today on Women Making Waves. Thank you.

Kiran Kapur (26:45):
Thank you so much for having me. That was a blast.