Overcoming imposter syndrome and revolutionising Manchester's nightlife

Peter Jackson: Have you ever had a 3:00 AM conversation? You know the kind, conversations that keep you up in the early hours with your mind racing and your stomach churning? And if you’ve ever led a business or a team, then you’ll definitely know what I’m talking about. I’m Peter Jackson and in my time as the CEO of international law firm Hill Dickinson, I’ve had a fair few of those moments myself. And as a coach, I’ve guided many people through them. In this podcast, [00:00:30] you’re going to hear from high achievers about their own 3:00 AM conversations and you’ll be able to apply their insights to your old life.

Now in this episode, you’ll hear from a man who’s gone from selling leather jackets on a market stall in Liverpool to running some of the most successful club nights and festivals in the country. Sacha Lord started off at the Hacienda, then set up the Warehouse Project and Park Life, which is the largest [00:01:00] metropolitan music festival in the country. And he’s also the nighttime economy advisor for Greater Manchester’s mayor, Andy Burnham, and now a bestselling author.

Now, you’ll hear from Sacha very soon, but first let’s hear from my co-host, Joanne Radcliffe. Joanne is a partner in our Manchester office and a family law solicitor. Jo, in our previous episode, we spoke to Ellie Threlkeld, who’s captain of the women’s cricket team, Lancashire Thunder. [00:01:30] And one of the things we talked about after that interview was what a great insight she has into dealing with different personalities in her leadership style, which came in useful when she had to have those difficult conversations we’ve all had. Have you put any of her wisdom into practise since we spoke to Ellie?

Joanne Radcliff: I think I have. I’ve really been making an effort to be much more mindful of the people that I’m talking to and delivering messages in a way that is appropriate for them. [00:02:00] I definitely think, like a lot of people, I’ve fallen into the trap of delivering messages in the way that I would want to hear them. And I took away from Ellie the importance of really applying a bit of psychology and thinking about the personalities of the people I am having those difficult conversations with and thinking about how I can deliver a message in a way that is going to work best for them. And so that, for me, was the key takeaway from that discussion.

Peter Jackson: Excellent. [00:02:30] Right. Well let’s turn to Sacha now, and we’d both read his book before meeting Sacha. So, what were you looking forward to from this conversation before you met him?

Joanne Radcliff: Well, I’ve been living in Manchester now for close to 20 years, but I missed the heady days of the Hacienda and Manchester, so on a personal perspective, I was just really fascinated by that whole era and also the way in which Manchester has changed and developed since the 90s, it’s huge and I was really [00:03:00] interested in not just his take on those changes, but also the role that he played in shaping the Manchester that we have now.

Peter Jackson: Thanks, Joanne. I’m sure we’re going to hear about that in this conversation.

Time now for you to hear from Sacha Lord, promoter, advisor to Greater Manchester’s Mayor Andy Burnham, and best-selling author. Sacha’s book, Tales from the Dancefloor, hit number two in The Sunday Times bestseller [00:03:30] list on publication. And Sacha, I enjoyed reading the dedication to your mum at the start of it, which says, “I still haven’t got a proper job.”

Sacha Lord: True.

Peter Jackson: “But this seems to be working out okay.”

Sacha Lord: It has done.

Peter Jackson: What would the proper job have been?

Sacha Lord: Do you know what? I don’t know. Because I went to a very, very good school. I went to Manchester Grammar, but I left with two years and an E, didn’t go to university, didn’t go to any further education. My first job was in a clothes shop actually, which was for the original Flannels. [00:04:00] My first business venture was a market stall in Liverpool.

Peter Jackson: Stanley Market.

Sacha Lord: Stanley Market selling leather jackets every Sunday. This is not a dig at scousers, because I know you’re a scouser, but to this day, I don’t know how they used to do this, but my leather jackets were pinned up and it had a metal chain going through one arm into the other, so they were all connected and I still get one nicked every Sunday. And I have no idea how they do. It’s like they’re Houdini.

Peter Jackson: [00:04:30] Scousers, ingenuous to the end.

Sacha Lord: Yes.

Peter Jackson: But if you weren’t sure what the proper job would’ve been, did you ever think those years ago that you would be the top of the bestseller lists?

Sacha Lord: No, and actually I was second, which is really, really annoying. The book that beat me was about a dead dog called Max and it was a record high week of sales. So, any other week that’s been looking at since, I would’ve been number one. So that really, it [00:05:00] burns on me that second. Number one would’ve been better.

Peter Jackson: You’re going to have to do another one.

Sacha Lord: Well, maybe. Yeah, we’ll see.

Peter Jackson: Well, let’s come back to why you wrote that a bit later, but rewind again. And in the book, you talk quite a lot about your parents and the relationship with your dad clearly was troubled. Do you want to tell us a bit about that?

Sacha Lord: If you had to write a list of things that you didn’t want your dad to be, he pretty much ticked all of those. So, he was an alcoholic, [00:05:30] he was a gambler, he was a womaniser. And I just remember growing up, he was never really home. He’d probably come in at 10:00 or something, myself and my brother would be in bed at that point, never around, always screaming at my mom. It was never physical abuse, but I think mental abuse is on a par. And it was just very, very unpleasant to be around someone like that. Yeah, not very many good traits at all.

Peter Jackson: And clearly that had an effect on you as a [00:06:00] youngster. Do you think it impacted upon your career in any way?

Sacha Lord: Undoubtedly. So, everything that he did, I tried to do the opposite. And there have been moments in my life when I’ve actually thought, when I’ve been stuck and I’ve had to think, well, what would my dad do? And when I worked that out, I’ve done the opposite.

Peter Jackson: Exactly the opposite, right, yeah.

Sacha Lord: He used to be a member of men only clubs. He was a Freemason, and I tell this story in the book, he had this brown leather briefcase, a box [00:06:30] briefcase, and my brother and I were told, do not go into that briefcase, under no circumstances do you go in there. Anyway, when you’re told that as a kid, what’s the first thing you do? You want to go and have a look.

My mum had gone out, so we looked in there. It was full of all these really weird Masonic aprons and things, but we found these two little packets and we folded it all back up around but kept these two packets out. And when my mum came back, we took them to her and said, “What are these here?” I remember clear as day, she was stood in the kitchen and there were two packets of [00:07:00] condoms. Not another great day in the household.

Peter Jackson: No, I can imagine.

Sacha Lord: Waiting for him to come back. But yeah, I always tried to be very opposite what he was.

Peter Jackson: Right. No, I understand that you. Your mum, on the other hand, you speak lovingly of until you sacked her. Do you want to tell us that tale?

Sacha Lord: I did sack her. Well, I sacked her and I’d do the same thing again. So, it was first year of Parklife, 2010, and it was in Platt Fields, which was right on the edge of Moss Side. The [00:07:30] police were very concerned because we were going to have a large amount of cash on site, 20,000 people, all probably spending 25 quid each, all cash in those days, 2010. So, they were already extremely concerned and when the cash was taken off site by G4S, a helicopter used to follow it with armed police behind them.

And I’m not on Facebook, and one of the crew came up to me and said, “Have you seen what your mum’s put on Facebook?” I was like, “No, let me have a look.” And [00:08:00] obviously first year, I wanted people I could really trust working in the cash office. So I had my mum in the cash office. The cash would come in off the tills, it would get counted by hand, then it would go into a machine, counted, and the next person would put one of those little cardboard foils onto it and then it would go in a big container at the end where my mum would recount it and then G4S Security would take it away. I have no idea why she did this, but she decided to take her shoes off, put her feet in the box of [00:08:30] cash, take a picture of it, put it on Facebook that said, “Warming my feet in Sach’s cash.”

Obviously I had to sack her. She’s not happy that that’s in the book either.

Peter Jackson: I bet she’s not. And she didn’t get her job back?

Sacha Lord: Do you know what? She actually did second year, but she became quite bored of it and left. I took her off the cash, gave her something different.

Peter Jackson: Right, okay.

Joanne Radcliff: That makes me wonder, Sacha, about, you’ve been very open in your book about your family. How did your mom and other people take it? Was that something [00:09:00] that you had to speak with her in advance about? Were you worried about doing that?

Sacha Lord: I was slightly concerned, but I think on the whole, she enjoyed it. So she read it two weeks before anybody else did, my mum and wife actually. And my mum was like, “Why did you never tell me you were shot at?” Or, “Why did you never tell me there was a petrol bomb against you?” I’m like, “Oh really? So you thought when I was 23 and you honed me up and like, how was work last night? “Oh yeah, I was fine. I was shot at.” You thought I was going to say that?” [00:09:30] I wouldn’t exactly be working in this industry anymore, would I? So there were a few things in there that raised an eyebrow, but it was years ago. So she’s fine with that.

Peter Jackson: And she still doesn’t think you’ve got a proper job?

Sacha Lord: Still doesn’t think it’s a proper job.

Peter Jackson: You mentioned being shot at, you mentioned the petrol bomb attack. You also talk about the Quality Street gang and the Brown Ball crew and others. Would it be fair to say it was a bit of a dodgy time to be working in the sector?

Sacha Lord: Yeah. So, when [00:10:00] I was growing up, when I was in the sixth form, which is probably the reason why I failed all my A-levels, we were known as Mad-chester. So Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, New Ward, James, Factory records, and the Hacienda that I became obsessed with. That was Mad-chester, and the world were looking, very much like they are now actually, the world were looking at what we were doing back then. With the explosion of Acid House and the Hacienda came the explosion of ecstasy as well at exactly the same time.

And the gangs were just [00:10:30] fighting each other for control of the doors because when you had the doors, when you’re controlling the doors, you controlled what happened inside. And it was rough times. It was really rough. When I opened Sankeys in Ancoats in 2000, I mean you’ve seen Ancoats now, it’s incredible. It’s beautiful. Cutting room squares, a Michelin star restaurant. When I had it, there was no street lighting, taxis wouldn’t drop customers off down there, there were syringes on the floor. You had kids cycling around on BMXs wearing balaclavas. It was horrible. [00:11:00] And to see it now, it’s fantastic.

Peter Jackson: It never persuaded you to give up being on the edge of criminality, day in, day out?

Sacha Lord: Well, I wasn’t on the-

Peter Jackson: Well, no, but faced with it?

Sacha Lord: Faced with it? I had no other option. I was a good promoter and it was the only thing I was good at. I couldn’t, like other promoters who had had enough and they went back because they did qualify as an accountant at university or something like that, I didn’t have that luxury, so I had to stick with it.

Peter Jackson: Right. You mentioned the Hacienda a number of [00:11:30] times. There was an awakening, wasn’t it, that first night you walked into the Hacienda that you talked about?

Sacha Lord: Well, the first time I tried to get in, I actually didn’t get in.

Peter Jackson: You failed, yes.

Sacha Lord: Yes. And we did agree not to use the F-bomb on this, but the security did tell me to, because I’d heard all the cool kids at school talking about the Hacienda, the Hacienda, and I’d been going to all those chrome-carpeted nightclubs, like 21 Piccadilly and Discotheque Royale where you had to dress up. So I presumed Hacienda’s a different level of dressing up. So I just [00:12:00] went into my dad’s wardrobe and I took his shirts, his tie, his suit, queued for an hour and a half, not really paying much attention on what the other guys and girls are wearing in the queue. Got to the front and the security were like, “Do one,” because it was just jeans and T-shirts.

But the second time I walked in there, wow, I mean I get goosebumps thinking about it now. It didn’t matter because Manchester was pretty depressing, pretty grey in those [00:12:30] days. This was pre redesign, pre the IRA bomb. There weren’t many things to cheer about. And then you walk into somewhere where you can leave your worries on the outside. We used to call it the chapel, the church. And it didn’t matter whether you were a student, whether you were unemployed, whether you were a postman, whether you’re a nurse, whether you’re a doctor, a dentist, accountant, lawyer. You are all there to praise the DJ. And that DJ that night was Mike Pickering who went on to form M People.

Peter Jackson: [00:13:00] And the rest then becomes history, doesn’t it for you?

Sacha Lord: It does.

Peter Jackson: Indeed. Let’s talk then about the 3:00 AM conversations, because the purpose of these conversations is really to try and get under the skin of what you are thinking about in those dark hours that trouble you. They could be strategic, they could be tactical, could be anything. And you helpfully gave us three scenarios to talk about, although you didn’t exactly give too much background on each. [00:13:30] So, the first suggestion you made, which fascinated me, was you don’t really have to go to university. So, why did that cause you angst?

Sacha Lord: Well, I don’t like the idea of university. It serves a purpose for some people but not for everyone. And I think it’s ridiculous that at the age of 13, you’re asked to work out your GCSEs and then at the age of 15, I think it is, you’re told to work out your A-levels. That kind of puts you on the course to what university and what career you want.

[00:14:00] To sit three exams and that defines the rest of your life, to me is completely and utterly absurd. I just find it so wrong, so backward thinking. And it’s not in every sector. I couldn’t have left school and become a doctor, couldn’t have left school, become an accountant. But if you’d said to me when I was measuring the inside trousers of people in Goose Green, “Well, [00:14:30] you’re going to go on to co-found the biggest nightclub in the world, Warehouse Project, biggest metropolitan festival in the UK, Parklife. You’re going to be advisor to the mayor, Andy Burnham, mayor of Greater Manchester. You’re going to have a Sunday Times bestselling book.” Be like, “That is absolutely impossible.”

But it just shows that in my sector, in events, hospitality, there’s no barrier. You can just go on to achieve whatever set your mind is. [00:15:00] And by the way, I never set out to achieve all those things. It just happened organically. And when I think back, I sat the 11+ to go to Alton Grammar, I sat Manchester Grammar, William Hulme, North Cestrian, Cheadle Hulme, Stockport Grammar. Passed all of them, but the pressure from my mum and dad for me to get into Manchester Grammar was phenomenal and, not through any mal, they wanted me to have the best education possible, which was Manchester Grammar. [00:15:30] But I am not intelligent enough to go to Manchester Grammar. And I got taught how to pass the exam.

And one of the main things you have to write, you give them five topics, write about one of these topics, and one of them was a walk in the woods. You don’t know what’s going to come up in advance, but I learned, off by heart, 100 colourful phrases from a tutor. So at the age of 11, I had phrases in my head like, “The sun’s vast vermilion orb, the moon’s incandescent pearl, the tranquil translucent [00:16:00] water.” I mean it’s bonkers. And I just threw all these phrases in there and sailed through the exome. I realised on day one, I was not even in their league. So, maybe turned me into a promoter because to be a promoter you have to be a bit of a blagger. And for seven years, I blagged my way through it. My brother didn’t make it, he got kicked out after the fifth year, but I blagged it to the end.

Peter Jackson: I think that generation of teaching actually, your experience [00:16:30] there in Manchester Grammar mirrors very much what I, thinking back, encountered at St. Edwards in Liverpool. We were taught to pass exams. We were taught to pass the 11+. We were taught to get O-levels, we were taught to get A-levels. We were taught and we were expected to go to university. Did you get grief for not wanting to go to university?

Sacha Lord: I think the school didn’t give up on me, but they put me to the back of the queue. But I had one teacher [00:17:00] in there that I speak very highly of in the book.

Peter Jackson: This was the art teacher?

Sacha Lord: Art teacher, Mr. McGuinness, who was phenomenal. I always say that there’s two people who have really made me see life through a different lens. He was one of them and he pulled me to one side, he knew I had a really bad family background. They were getting divorced at this stage, my mum and dad, and he’s like, “Why are you dressing up like everybody else? Why are you conforming like everybody else? Everybody else is walking around like a penguin. Why have you got a box briefcase [00:17:30] with two gold combination locks on it? I’ve seen the way you paint. You like expressing yourself. Why don’t you express yourself on the outside?” And he gave me a tape for a band called The Man from Del Monte, which I went to see, and he told me to go to the Hacienda. It was him that said, “Do it.”

Peter Jackson: Did you get grief from your parents about not wanting to go to university? Did that trouble you at the time?

Sacha Lord: Not really. I think they knew. I think they probably felt that they’d wasted money on my education. [00:18:00] I think they were disappointed in me.

Peter Jackson: Did that trouble you though? Did that keep you awake at night?

Sacha Lord: That part didn’t trouble me, but what troubled me was, what am I going to do? I don’t want to be working in a clothes shop for 20 pound a day for the rest of my life. There’s things I want to do in my life.

Peter Jackson: Could you articulate what they were at that stage?

Sacha Lord: No, I just knew that I wanted to be able to have nice holidays, go for a meal without worrying, I’ve got to go for the cheapest main course on here because I can’t afford. [00:18:30] Those kind of things, I just wanted to get into a comfortable position.

Peter Jackson: So you could vision the lifestyle, but how you were going to achieve it-

Sacha Lord: Correct.

Peter Jackson: … was lacking. Okay.

Joanne Radcliff: Sacha, obviously you were pushed down an academic route that really didn’t suit you, you pushed down that academic route and you acknowledged the ways that that helped you in terms of being able to blag your way through things. But do you feel that it caused damage? Because I know in your book, you’re very open about the fact that you’ve suffered some imposter syndrome, which-

Sacha Lord: I still do.

Joanne Radcliff: [00:19:00] And do you think that originates from those days of feeling, I shouldn’t be here, I’m not good enough?

Sacha Lord: Do you know what? Possibly, yeah. And do you know? I find it weird now because the school never… I remember the leavers’ book and all the names in the back. Literally everyone was Joe Blogs, Oxford, William Smith, Cambridge, St. Andrew’s, all the mega universes, and then it was my name and there was just a blank next to it. They weren’t going to put a Flannels, were they?

Joanne Radcliff: They’ve [00:19:30] got a few things to put now though.

Sacha Lord: Well, they have and-

Peter Jackson: You’ve got your photograph up now, haven’t you?

Sacha Lord: Next to Ben Kingsley, who played Gandhi.

Joanne Radcliff: Wow.

Sacha Lord: Who won an Oscar for it. And it’s like, wow, that is just phenomenal. And one of the things at school that I was really upset about, I don’t know why, but I wanted to become a prefect in the sixth form. I was desperate to be a prefect. I quite liked the badge. I thought it was quite cool, to be honest. It’s like a little silver owl. So when they asked me a few years later to go [00:20:00] back to the school and give a talk to all the kids, I was originally going to say no. And I thought, well, hang on, here’s my opportunity. So I got back in contact with the school and I said, “Okay, I’ll do it if, before I give the talk on stage, the High Master comes out and he makes me a prefect and he gives me the prefect badge and the prefect tie, then I’ll do it.” And he did, and I’ve still got it in my office at home.

Peter Jackson: Brilliant. Let’s move on to your second 3:00 AM conversation. And [00:20:30] again, you left me sadly lacking in clues because all you said was Manchester’s nightlife. Why would that be a source of angst, a source of lying awake at night, 3:00 in the morning, if you were home indeed if you’re in the nightlife sector?

Sacha Lord: Well, depending on what time of year you get me, if it’s September to New Year’s Eve, Friday or Saturday at 3:00 AM, I’d be thinking, “Another two hours and I can go home.” But Greater Manchester’s nightlife, why do I think about it a lot? It’s because [00:21:00] we’re having such a huge moment at the moment. Sunday Times have called us UK’s capital of nightlife. You’ve seen it yourself, how busy the places are. They’re not necessarily making money because all the overheads that are coming with us at the moment, the increased overheads, but town is bouncing. I cannot remember another time which has been this busy, but we can’t rest on our laurels.

Peter Jackson: What could Manchester do better then, if it’s keeping you awake at night still?

Sacha Lord: I do worry. I really like the landscape. I wasn’t sold [00:21:30] on the shiny high rise tower blocks to begin with, but now I get it now, the juxtaposition. But we must never ever lose that grittiness of Manchester. To me, that industrial, I like the industrial dirt and we should always respect that, acknowledge it. I don’t want us to become one of those soulless corporate city centres.

Joanne Radcliff: I got a sense actually, when reading your book, that if anything it was a bit of a [00:22:00] love letter to Manchester.

Sacha Lord: Well, I say that, don’t I?

Joanne Radcliff: Yeah, it’s a city you’ve really got a close affection for. Does that explain the work that you’ve done with Andy Burnham? Was that a conscious choice of wanting to contribute something back to the city?

Sacha Lord: That was my way of giving back. So the city allowed me to do what I wanted to do and allow me to succeed and now I have to give back. I’m at that point in life where it’s all about giving back, which is why I set the foundation up. So I want to give [00:22:30] kids who are in my position at school, who are anxious, don’t know what they’re going to do, give them the opportunity to do what I’ve done. So I’m in that process now of giving back and thanking people.

Joanne Radcliff: So, is there a particular scenario at 3:00 AM in the morning where you’ve had a real concern in terms of Manchester’s nightlife?

Sacha Lord: I’ll give you two examples of my own personal concern to do with nightlife. The first one was October, 2000, when I opened Sankeys. Sankeys had been opened before, ‘94 to ‘98. [00:23:00] It shut, well it went bust, but it had gang problems, shootings, drug issues, all sorts. The police wanted it shut. And the old door firm that had it was a sulphur door firm. So when they heard that I was reopening it again, they insisted they did the door and I was like, I’d been told by the police, the old door firm cannot under any circumstances do it. We weren’t allowed to open. So, I took a call the night before we were due to open, it must’ve been like 2:00 in the morning or something, from the fire officer to say, ” [00:23:30] You need to come down to the club, the club’s on fire.” We’d sold all the tickets, we’d sold 800 tickets, sold out. We had Sonique doing the opening night. Do you remember Sonique?

Joanne Radcliff: Yeah.

Sacha Lord: I forget her track actually, but she sang it on the microphone, do you know it?

Joanne Radcliff: I can visualise her doing it.

Sacha Lord: Go on, sing it then.

Joanne Radcliff: You don’t want to hear my voice.

Sacha Lord: So, anyway, I turned up and in the car park at the back, we had a substation that was protected by a steel fence. And the old door firm climbed over, put [00:24:00] a bed mattress entwined in the fence, poured petrol over it, set it alight, and obviously it blew up the substation. What they didn’t realise was, because Sankeys was in one of the original industrial mills, we had our own generator inside that we ran off. So, actually that weekend we were raving on the Friday and Saturday and the rest of Ancoats was in pitch black. So that was a scary moment.

Joanne Radcliff: Did you not think at times like this, “Why am I doing this? I need to go and do something else that’s safer?”

Sacha Lord: On that occasion, [00:24:30] I actually couldn’t stop laughing because I was that exhausted. I’d literally worked three days solid with hardly any sleep at all. The idea was to try and get some sleep before the opening night. We’d been painting the club and all. On the opening nights actually, some people left with green paint on the back of them because it was still touch and go whether we were going to open or not. But no, it didn’t faze me at all.

Joanne Radcliff: You weren’t worried about your own personal safety with those guy?

Sacha Lord: Well, it’s in the book. So for the first few months I did have a bodyguard who was security. He used to pick [00:25:00] me up from home, drop me off late at night as well because obviously, you don’t want to be followed. And so, yeah, I had to be very careful.

But the other incident that kept me up at 3:00 in the morning for quite a few nights was the first year at Store Street. So we’d run, this was an ex air raid shelter and we’d run three events at Easter and we’d sold 1,800 tickets and there was no issues with that at all. Fully licenced. All sign it off, above board. Anyway, when we announced that we wanted [00:25:30] to do September through to New Year’s Eve, a new fire officer came down. This was four nights before the opening night. We were live on Radio One with Pete Tong, completely sold out, and he turned around and said, “No, you need a fire exit over there. I’m going to restrict you to 1,200.”

We needed roughly about 1,500 to break even, so we would have lost our houses and there’s no way we could go through the wall he was pointing at because [00:26:00] it wasn’t even owned by our landlord, it was owned by a network rail. So I jumped in the car, went to meet the landlord. He’s like, “You can’t go through that wall. And anyway, it’s six foot thick, it’s an air raid shelter, you’re never going to get through that wall.” It’s like, “Okay, fine.” And I got to my car and I was driving back over the Mancunian Way and I was thinking to myself, this is it. This is the end of Warehouse Project. We only ever made a year and not only that, we’re about to lose our houses on [00:26:30] this.

And he phoned me up and he said, “Come back to see me.” So I went back, he must have realised how worried I was and he said, “Look, I’m not going to go to that car park for at least another week. So, that’s all I’m saying.” And the penny didn’t drop. I was like, “So, can we do what we want?” “I don’t know what you’re doing because I’m not going to go back there for another week.” I was like, “Right. Okay.” So he’d kind [00:27:00] of given us the green light to do it.

But the second problem was, how are we going to go through a six-foot thick wall with four days to go? And then get the fire officer back down to sign it off? And we managed to find this back street firm in Salford that had a diamond-tipped drill and we did it at nighttime so no one would see until 5:00 in the morning, got through it, banged in a fire exit door. The fire [00:27:30] officer couldn’t believe it, his head fell off, but we managed to pull it off. That did keep me awake.

Joanne Radcliff: That feels like there’s a lot of fly by your seat kind of moments in your career.

Sacha Lord: Huge.

Peter Jackson: How do you cope with flying by the seats of your pants regularly?

Sacha Lord: You get the adrenaline going through, so you don’t think about it at the time you fight, but when you’re through it and you look back, then it’s like, “How did we get through that?” But yeah, that was one of the major moments.

Peter Jackson: Do you think there’ll come a time [00:28:00] where that adrenaline, that taste in the mouth will just become too much?

Sacha Lord: I quite like a fight. I do. I quite like it.

Peter Jackson: Take that as a no then.

Sacha Lord: I can’t see it anytime soon.

Peter Jackson: Okay. So in those moments where you are lying awake at 3:00 in the morning wondering how you do something, why something’s going to happen, who do you talk to?

Sacha Lord: No one. Myself. I try to fathom it out myself and I try to keep things… If I’m under [00:28:30] pressure, I try to keep it away from Demi, my wife. Having said that, when she sees it, she’s brilliant. But no, I try to fathom it out myself, the answer.

Peter Jackson: Yeah. In my experience, when the shit hits the fan, the textbook goes out the window-

Sacha Lord: Completely.

Peter Jackson: … and it has to. But is there no one you would think of just picking the phone up to and saying, “Have you ever done this? How about that?”

Sacha Lord: No. I have friends that I talk to to try and lighten the moments, but never really try to bother other people with what’s going on in my head.

Peter Jackson: Right.

Sacha Lord: I’d love to be able to pick up the phone [00:29:00] and go, “I’ve got this issue, what would you do?” But there’s no one-

Joanne Radcliff: Do you do that for anybody else? Do people pick up the phone to you?

Sacha Lord: I love doing that. Yeah. Yeah. And again, that’s me giving back. I enjoy that. If I can help someone out, I will do it.

Peter Jackson: So the third and final conversation you highlighted was just simply the book. So, what was troubling about that? What was worrying?

Sacha Lord: I didn’t want to upset people and I just wanted it to be a proper [00:29:30] warts and all. And I was worried that when the lawyers got their hands on it, they’d completely tear it to bits. And actually, weirdly, there’s things in there that I was convinced they’d take out, and things that they did take out I didn’t see any problem with at all. I wanted to make sure my wife was happy with it. I wanted to make sure my mum was happy with it. I wanted certain people to get called out and thanked in there. The thank you section was the hardest actually. I was so [00:30:00] scared of missing someone who was absolutely key to me, missing them off. So I stared at that for quite a few days.

Peter Jackson: What was your process as a virgin author? How did you actually do it?

Sacha Lord: I had a co-author called Luke Bainbridge. Luke was brilliant. Luke’s a very well-respected author and journalist with The Observer. He set up City Life in Manchester. He’s written many books, one being Shaun Ryder’s autobiography. And he did say to me in the first meeting that [00:30:30] we had, I had a better memory than Shaun Ryder, which I didn’t really take as much of a compliment.

Peter Jackson: Not the biggest compliment you’ve ever had.

Sacha Lord: Not really. But he said to me that the first thing he said, “Look, okay, go away and bring out any old flyers you’ve got or photos.” Now, I’m a bit of a hoarder and I collected absolutely everything and catalogued it from 1994 up until present day. So, I met him again and we had all the flyers on the table. We started talking about it, and that’s how we started to extract the stories from me. And [00:31:00] it was bizarre seeing, we had hours and hours and days and days and days of conversations. And then, to see the conversations on paper, it’s like, wow, that is special.

Joanne Radcliff: Is it quite cathartic?

Sacha Lord: It was very, very therapeutic actually. Very therapeutic. There’s stuff that I’d completely forgotten about, so it’s nice to start talking about it again. But I’m proud of it. I’m really gutted it was a number two, gutted by that. I would love to have said it’s a number one [00:31:30] Sunday Times bestseller, but if you’re in the top 10, you get it. So when you see the book now in the shops, it says on the front of it, Sunday Times bestseller, which I’m kind of proud about that. But number two is not cool. If it was seven, that’s better. Or even six, five-

Joanne Radcliff: Coming so close and-

Sacha Lord: Coming so close, but not quite getting it. So annoying.

Peter Jackson: So as we sit here today and you’re looking back on those 3:00 AM conversations and all that went with them, is there one moment that really [00:32:00] troubled you and now that you’re through it, you sit here thinking, “How on earth did I get through that?”

Sacha Lord: 2013. October, 2013, we had a customer called Nick Bonnie who came to Warehouse Project and was taken very poorly to hospital and he didn’t make it and we knew immediately it was from drugs. The national media pressure on his family at the time was phenomenal. [00:32:30] They needed time to obviously grieve. How they went through that, I have no idea. The pressure I went through, my team went through, someone had been to one of our events and was taken poorly and died. That was it. So, if the event hadn’t been on, there’s a good chance he’d still be with us now, was my thought process at that time.

We started to talk it through. We nearly stopped the Warehouse Project at that point. We didn’t [00:33:00] because we thought, well, people are not going to stop raving if we’re not here. They’re just going to go somewhere else. And actually, our setup, in terms of paramedics, doctors, police, sniffer dogs, is far better than anybody else’s. So we then went on an education route and we’re still doing it to this day now. We do back of house drug testing and it’s all about education, education, education.

We have lost the war on drugs. You’re never going to beat that. So it’s now explaining to [00:33:30] people going out and taking them what can actually happen? And if you are going to do it, then the safest way to do it, and people be watching this saying, “Well, you’re condoning drugs.” I’m not condoning drugs. What I’m saying is, if you can’t stop drugs getting to a category prison like Strangeways Prison. What am I supposed to do with a field like Parklife, and another festival organisers. You can’t stop them. It’s going to happen. So you have to grab the bull by the horn and educate people. [00:34:00] But that was a very, very intense, rocky fortnight. It was awful.

Peter Jackson: You’re a high profile individual, certainly in this city, in the northwest generally. And if I may say so, you’re not frightened of speaking your mind. That, inevitably, will attract criticism, it will attract detractors, it will attract negativity from time to time. How do you deal with that?

Sacha Lord: Well, first it’s very easy just to close your laptop and not look at people’s opinions on social media. It doesn’t make any difference [00:34:30] to me, to be honest. I’ve had it for years. I think when you do put your head above the parapets, people are always going to take a potshot at you. And we had it at Parklife about three years ago. Was it two years ago? Two years ago, a couple… I wasn’t there at the time actually, but I heard about it. I was in event control. A couple got engaged on the main stage. I found out later they were called Indie and Miles, from Scotland, they were 18-year olds. And I got home on the Saturday night [00:35:00] and I was reading the reviews in the Manchester Evening News, and there was the big article about this couple getting engaged before the main act went on.

And I looked at the comments and the comments were like, “You’re fat. You’re ugly. Imagine getting engaged at Parklife.” And I didn’t sleep that night. I was thinking, these two kids are going to wake up the following morning all excited, they’re in Manchester Evening News, on one of the happiest days of their lives. And then see all these negative comments.

[00:35:30] So, I phone the Evening News straight away and it’s like, “Let’s find who this couple are.” And I got hold of them and they were driving back actually to Scotland. They’d stayed in a hotel that night, driving back to Scotland. They’d only come for the Saturday, which annoyed me really, they should have bought a ticket for the weekend. Anyway, they went back. They were really upset by it, especially Indie. She was really upset. So it’s like, “Okay, well I’ll tell you what we’re going to do so you can have the last laugh. I’m going to pay for your honeymoon. And when you’re on that honeymoon, I want you to take a picture of the two of you with cocktails and [00:36:00] just the V sign because you’ve beaten the trolls.” And it’s actually, it was so nice. The whole thing went viral. It was on ITN and everything. So, yeah, they beat the trolls that night.

Peter Jackson: What’s next? What’s next for Sacha?

Sacha Lord: So the foundation, that’s the next big thing for me, which we’re going to properly launch. And that is my wife and I have set it up, Sacha Lord Foundation. It’s got charitable status and that’s to help kids who are, as I said before, in the situation I was at school, really anxious, didn’t know what they wanted to do. And if I can, with my black book, get them into events [00:36:30] and hospitality, then that’s what the foundation’s going to do. I really enjoy working with, I’m the chair with Ensure Football Club as well. We’ve just had our second promotion on the trot, so I’m enjoying that. We were the first team to make the women’s team semi professional, so I’m proud about that. There’s lots of good things that we’re doing at the moment. I love talking and helping people in Greater Manchester. So, yeah, we’ll see where it goes, but I’m excited. I’m not slowing down.

Peter Jackson: [00:37:00] Well, Jo, he certainly had an interesting life and is still up for achieving much, much more. So, what did you make of what Sacha had to say?

Joanne Radcliff: Well, it was fascinating, wasn’t it? I was really intrigued by the fact that he talked more than once about the events in his life having happened organically. And I think, to be honest, he does himself a bit of a disservice there. It seems really quite obvious that he’s made a lot of that happen. He’s got a huge amount of determination [00:37:30] and grit and he’s faced various obstacles and challenges at times. And I think a lot of people would’ve just walked away. But he has just kept going and he’s been a bit of a force of nature in that respect, whether it’s smashing through walls to create fire exits or going around with bodyguards to protect his own personal safety. There clearly is an awful lot of drive in that man.

Peter Jackson: Yeah, I couldn’t agree with you more. And he said on a number of occasions, didn’t he, that [00:38:00] things had happened organically. I think he used the expression, “They just happened,” on one or two occasions. They didn’t just happen. They happened because he saw an opportunity. They happened because he was prepared to take a risk. They happened because he had the drive, the passion, the enthusiasm to make things work. And he used both his own skillset and enthusiasm and the enthusiasm, energy, and skillset of those around [00:38:30] him to make things happen, to bring things to a boil. They didn’t happen organically at all. So, any experiences chime with you for what he said?

Joanne Radcliff: Well, he talked about his frustrations of coming second on the Times bestseller list. I cannot claim that I’ve ever had such a great experience as being on the Times bestseller list, but I definitely felt that that resonated with me in terms of the frustrations of not being absolutely perfect, [00:39:00] not achieving the very top you could ever achieve. And I think a lot of people will recognise that within themselves. On one hand, I think it’s a positive thing because it shows that you are ambitious and you’ve got drive, but on the other side of the coin, it does mean that you can really beat yourself up. I could really sense that from him, that disappointment that he’d not achieved that first top slot. And I think we all need to be a little bit kinder to ourselves when we don’t always achieve [00:39:30] absolutely everything that we could.

Peter Jackson: Yeah, I totally agree with that. I suppose if there were three top learning points that I would take away myself from this conversation, the first would be about, it’s not all about academic achievement. And he explained very transparently the difficult time he’d had at school, how he didn’t come away with a great academic CV, and yet, he went on to use his passion, his drive, his energy [00:40:00] and enthusiasm in very, very different ways and has been incredibly successful at a practical level in a number of spheres. And I just thought that was so obvious in terms of how he described his early life at school and the academic side of his career with the practical success he’d had in later life.

And then the second thing that occurred to me was he was very transparent in terms of how he described himself as something of an island [00:40:30] in respect of his decision making. And we asked him, didn’t we, who he relied on to take advice and counsel from when he had difficult decisions? And he said nobody, he didn’t think it was right, appropriate, or fair to trouble other people with his issues, his concerns, and he would decide things himself.

And I understand that, but it’s not necessarily something that I would recommend if I were coaching or mentoring [00:41:00] somebody. I would always urge them to take advice from their network, to build a network around them to give them counsel and support when they had difficult decisions to take and weren’t quite sure where to go. But I suppose the third thing that came over is the flip side of that. And that is just how far you can get when you are driven and you are passionate about your subject matters and you have that grit and determination to back yourself [00:41:30] at all costs and not listen to what other people are saying, not take advice, to back your gut instinct. And you’ve got to have incredible grit and, as I say, incredible determination to do that. But if you are prepared to back yourself in those situations, then look at Sacha and look what you can achieve with your life. It was very, very impressive.

The drive that came through when he described his frustration, as you say, Jo, about being only number two on The Sunday Times [00:42:00] bestseller list was absolutely phenomenal, wasn’t it? And it’s quite clear, he’s going to write another book simply so that he can achieve that success and get to top of that list. Great to see.

Joanne Radcliff: Yeah. And I’ve no doubt he’ll have plenty to say if he does do a second book. And that ties in with really my final takeaway, which was that I was really impressed by his desire to give back. And I think for anybody who’s found themselves in a successful position and [00:42:30] they’ve achieved a lot, the best thing that they can do is then give back to the community around them. And of course, he’s doing that with his foundation, but also with his work with the mayor, he’s really then benefiting all the people that helped him to get where he is today. And I think that that’s a very important thing to do when you find yourself in a very fortunate position where you have got the ability to give back.

Peter Jackson: Absolutely. And tied in, I think, with a really strong sense of civic responsibility [00:43:00] and his love for the city of Manchester, the people of Manchester shone through. And as you say, the desire there to give back to those people and to help them achieve their ambition was absolutely clear.

Thanks for that, Jo. And thank you for listening to this episode of 3:00 AM Conversations. And you’ll hear from us again in a month’s time. And in the meantime, please rate, review, and follow us on Apple or Spotify, and that way, you’ll be able to help us [00:43:30] spread the word. And if you want to learn more about Hill Dickinson, please come and find us on our website, or follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram, and X. Thanks again for listening and we’ll meet again soon.