On today’s Legally Speaking Podcast, I’m delighted to be joined by Darryl Cooke.

Darryl is the Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of Gunnercooke LLP, an award-winning international law firm. Darryl’s firm is known for redefining what it means to lead and innovate in professional services. A successful corporate lawyer, Darryl has built one of the UK’s most disruptive legal firms – and is on a mission to change the legal model, putting people and purpose at the core of business.

So why should you be listening in? 

You can hear Rob and Darryl discussing:

– Creating a Revolutionary Fee-Share Model

– How to Live Through Values, Not Just Words

– Methods of Empowering Leadership

– Making the Most of Community-Driven Impact

– Designing Your Life, Your Way

Connect with Darryl Cooke here – https://uk.linkedin.com/in/darryljcooke

Transcript

Rob Hanna (00:01)

So a very big warm welcome to the show, Darryl.

Darryl Cooke (00:05)

Thank you so much Rob, thank you for having me.

Rob Hanna (00:07)

it’s an absolute pleasure to have you on the show and really appreciate you taking the time to be with us today. And before we get into all the amazing things you have been doing in and around the world of law, we do have a customary icebreaker question here on the legally speaking podcast, which is on the scale of one to 10 with 10 being very real, what would you rate the hit TV series suits in terms of its reality of the law? If you’ve seen it.

Darryl Cooke (00:32)

Well, when I first saw that you asked that question Rob, thought, well that seems a bit daft. But then when I thought about it, I thought actually, and it is probably one the reasons that I go into law, was through watching programmes like that when I was very young. So it isn’t such a daft question after all. ⁓

So as you answer your question is, lot of, you know, there’s some great stuff in there. You see how hard lawyers work. You see some of the issues that they get involved with, et cetera, et cetera. But the reality is it does glamorize it. It does make it a lot more grammatical than it actually is. So I’d probably have to say it’s about five or six out of ten, I’m afraid.

Rob Hanna (01:11)

No, it’s a very justified answer says the man who sat in the south of France with a beautiful backdrop at the moment. It can’t be that bad. But no, I take your point. And with that, we’ll move swiftly on to talk all about your amazing career. So to begin with, Darryl, would you mind telling our listeners just a bit about your background and career journey?

Darryl Cooke (01:17)

Thank

Yes, well I had, as is obvious from the first answer, I have no…

family or friends in the law. I’d love Rob to say I wanted to change the world and fight for injustice, but that just wouldn’t be true. Though I think I did develop a strong sense of justice as time went by. But I realized the law was a good professional career, so I went to university, studied, and then I had no idea which discipline to go into, so I started off at the bar, initially by leaving.

commercial chambers in London and then I’m leaving criminal chambers because as I said didn’t really know what I wanted to do. And actually it was very interesting that during that time I got an opportunity to play semi-professional football in Australia while also working in business. And that I think began my interest in business which is just as strong as my interest in ball.

When I came home from that I went back to the bar, but I soon decided I wanted to leave and I joined what was a company called Hurx, which was the fourth largest company in the world at the time, so we had a couple of hundred thousand employees and a thousand companies. And I joined a legal team, but I got put onto a number of companies. That’s a kind of board level as a company secretary and I just loved

how these people used to think and challenge themselves and think about business and that got my interest in business. I think at the time they were trying to move me more into management and I was reluctant because I still felt I had wanted to be a lawyer and I moved back into private practice and then my journey in private practice really started.

Rob Hanna (03:17)

Yeah, absolutely. We’re going to dive into that and obviously your entrepreneurial pursuits, but just one to ask, semi-professional football in Australia, what was life like then? And did you ever have aspirations to go fully pro?

Darryl Cooke (03:28)

I would have loved it but it was at the time, I’m really honest, when it’s not like now, it was very, very different. And I remember my father used to say, you know, if you end up in professional football, you’ll end up in the sports shop or a fish and chip shop at the end of it. And that didn’t seem out of feeling. it did, yeah, I loved it but it didn’t seem like a career at the time.

Rob Hanna (03:50)

No. So let’s talk about what has

been a very successful career in your entrepreneurial journey, which of course was setting up gonna cook. So you set that up, I believe in 2010 to challenge the way professional services are delivered. So could you talk us through how you set up the firm and to where it is today?

Darryl Cooke (04:08)

Yes, I think what was really interesting actually Rob was I suspect my kind of, I did move around through quite a few firms. I always thought that the grass was green and never probably quite understood what I thought was the real challenge or problem with it. But I think the traditional law firm as we all know is built on the model of profits, ⁓

think it was the American lawyer in 1985 that actually started that and every top 50 law firm just kind of competes on that particular metric. And I realized probably, you know, that drives a certain, that measuring you by the hour drives a certain mentality, particularly when you’re a corporate lawyer working very long, very overnight.

You can have a real toll on your family and your own lifestyle. And then I was on the board of a top 10 or so firm and I do remember…

the discussion being on improving profits per equity partner because that was what the managing partner did. That was all they were really interested about. And later on, I talked for accountants in practice who, I can remember to this day, they kind of stood up and said, well, if you get rid of 20 partners, your profits will go to here. And if you get rid of 40 partners, your profits will go to here. And remember sitting there, and everybody just went with it. I remember sitting there thinking, but there’s no discussion of service to clients.

there’s no discussion of business development, there’s no discussion of our people, it was just a very ⁓ kind of crass metric as to how we can increase that point of the balance. So I think I became pretty disillusioned at that point. But I had no idea what to do, Rob, and I went around talking to lots of people and asking them, you know, I remember asking lots of chief executives, you what would you do if you set up your own?

law firm and there very little answers. There wasn’t very much coming back. think it’s like Henry Ford said, he would ask the customer would it just have faster horses. So it took quite a long while for me to really latch on to kind of this particular model. And I think what really happened at the time actually Rob was my father

I think actually what was happening, starting to happen, was I realised that the barrister’s chambers and how they operate had something that was a little bit different. And that’s when I started to focus on that. But I remember talking to my father whose nickname was Gunner, ⁓ and he was in a hospice at the time with cancer. ⁓ And…

Rob Hanna (06:47)

Mm.

⁓

Darryl Cooke (07:02)

He said, and I’ve been saying to me, because I was getting greater solutions, he said, well, you’ve either got to leave completely and do something else, or you’ve got to change it. And I didn’t know what else to do, so I thought I would have to change it. And then my thought process started to change. What is it that Barrowster Chambers do, and why can’t we do it in the private practice?

Rob Hanna (07:26)

I love that. And it’s just the entrepreneur in you, you know, because so many people can identify problems and run away from them or, you know, find a problem or find an opportunity and lean into it. And you’ve absolutely lent into it. And I was going to ask you actually where the name got a cook comes from. You kind of answered that in the previous question. So thanks for that. But entrepreneurship also isn’t easy. And I, know, we always welcome people to share as vulnerable as they like in terms of challenges you faced whilst building your businesses. So maybe could you share one or two that have really been challenging moments?

for you and how you’ve been able to overcome them to the huge success that Conoco, as we all know it, is today.

Darryl Cooke (08:03)

yeah, it’s a good, it is a good question because I think at the time you start, once I started to develop the vision, I got incredibly excited by it and what could be achieved and, I kind of, developed myself 10 years forward and see what it would look like. But of course, no one’s with you at that point. ⁓ and I do remember having a discussion with a journalist in a hotel, ⁓ and I thought she was going to write this amazing story about.

change the world etc.

and she wrote this story which really didn’t like it was all about a virtual law firm and I really didn’t understand the concept of the virtual law firm and that was the kind of phrasing that used to get used and I thought it was really damaging I think at that time so it became a challenging moment because I suddenly realized actually I had to convince not just people joining us but I had to convince the world as well that there was a role for someone like us and so we came away I retracted from

doing any sort of things with journals, et cetera, and just really focused, really hard on what we were trying to achieve. And it was all about, I used to have in my head, once we get 10 partners in, then we’ve got to be there at momentum. And then we’ll get 25 partners in, and then we’ll get 50 partners in. And all the time I was working how we would build the practice by attracting people into the business.

Rob Hanna (09:31)

Yeah, and it’s been hugely successful, as I say, I mean, we have a range of listeners. So for those that might be less familiar with the fee share law firm model, because that’s unique to obviously gonna cook, could you tell us what that means to be a fee share law firm and how that perhaps is different from traditional law firms and how it impacts lawyers?

Darryl Cooke (09:52)

Yeah, sure. In one way, the only way that we’re different is how we remunerate. But the reality is it changes everything. It completely changes mindsets on how people live their lives. So what we do is you don’t get a regular monthly income, but in effect you’ll get a share of the revenues that you generate. And it completely changes the mindsets of the individual.

Rob Hanna (10:00)

Anyway.

Darryl Cooke (10:22)

in lots of positive ways of things. we always say that you don’t want to get to the end of your life and wish you designed it differently. So what this model does is allow you to design the life that you want to live. So if you want to take Friday off, take Friday off. If want to take six weeks off in the summer, take six weeks off in the summer. If you want to work till you’re 90, work till you’re 90.

So it gives that freedom for people to do that. But we also say to people, John, you’re not a lawyer anymore. You’re a lawyer and you’re a business person. So what we have to do is create a really good infrastructure to help people to grow as a business person. And our main purpose is to create an infrastructure that will help that lawyer to be happy.

And we know that everyone’s kind of happy if we read about all the things we do. If you’ve got a purpose, then you get happier. So building your own business gives you a purpose. And we help you to do that through our coaching programmes, through all the support we give, et cetera, et cetera. You’re also happy you’ve got good relationships. So we work very hard in helping people to build those relationships within the firm. Often business relationships, but they quite often move beyond that as well.

⁓ And you’re also happy you can give back. can encourage. So we try to encourage those that want to work in our extensive foundation now to give back and get involved in other things as well. I think as I’ve described it, we’ve got a value which we call nudge.

which basically means that we put fruit at high level but we don’t ban junk food. So it’s all about the infrastructure that we create to back up and support the lawyer who made a significant move when joining us so we have to put everything in place to help them to really grow and to develop.

Rob Hanna (12:16)

And you make such a good point about purpose because if people really find that purpose, they’ll bring in energy, they’ll bring in enthusiasm, they’ll find a way almost because they’re so bought into the purpose and they’re passionate about it, that it will work. And I love that you gave some examples of the freedom there and flexibility, because also lifestyles are changing. And, know, we do live in a world now where we’ve got, you know, the cloud and AI where you can literally plug up to a laptop. And if you want to be on a beach for a week, then you can go and do it you can do your work and so forth. Because I think we need to be alive to

you know, that we’re not just necessarily sat in one place forever for the next 50 years and we don’t move around or have other opportunities or things to fit family time and lifestyle. And this just gives you that level of freedom as you share. So thank you for that.

Darryl Cooke (12:58)

I think just to add to that, I think it is absolutely right because so many people talk about firms like us as being a platform firm. That is a phrase that’s often used and yes we have a really really good platform that people can collect and engage with but that’s not the success of the firm, that’s not the driver of the firm. It is what the things that you said, that culture, that culture of freedom and how we support people to have a

develop not just the businesses but the law because actually the reality is that 95 % of our lawyers will earn more than they’ve done previously. Clearly it’s financially very very helpful for them but far and away the most important thing is the freedom of the deacons. I’ve spoken to a lawyer the other day who was saying that he picks up his little girl every Thursday afternoon from school and takes her for afternoon tea. Just something he’s put into his life.

Rob Hanna (13:51)

Yep.

Yep.

Darryl Cooke (13:52)

where it

helps to do that in a firm other than a firm like ours.

Rob Hanna (13:56)

Yeah, and it wasn’t something that crossed my own mind before, you know, being in a role and starting a family, but a sort of stake in the ground that I had is I wanted to be as present as I can. So, you know, I take pride in the fact that I get to do 300 out of 365 bath times of the year, you know, and have, because that’s time you won’t ever get back. And so, you know, you can make a lot of dough, but if you don’t spend it along the way, then, you know, I think this option gives you the real chance to have a sustainable career with family or other interests you may have.

Darryl Cooke (14:11)

Thank you.

you

that we might be able to do something with

Rob Hanna (14:23)

or both. And

Darryl Cooke (14:23)

that.

Rob Hanna (14:24)

I think it’s brilliant and hence the success you’ve been having. I want to talk about leadership now, because it’s so important across all areas of business. How did you scale a global law firm by prioritizing basically loyal well-being?

Darryl Cooke (14:40)

it is right from the outset and I don’t know what it was in my background but I realise, think I’ve always been in teams, whether it’s in football or wherever.

thought that culture was the key. And I remember having a discussion very early on with one lawyer who was looking to join us and I was trying to values and she said don’t talk to me about values, don’t talk to me about values. And you know I could see the pain that she’d gone through in her phone where people talked about values and just stuck them up on the wall but didn’t really live them. But I knew if we were going to create something really substantial we had to create that culture.

And it was really interesting actually kind of looking at the barrister’s model because barristers don’t have a strong culture, don’t have a strong team culture. But I do remember, even the chambers I was in, every afternoon those barristers used to get together at three o’clock for a coffee, know, so they did it in their own way. So I always knew that we had to really focus on culture and I talk about culture all the time within the organization. And now, and culture…

You know, so when you talk to CEOs about culture, they kind of, it’s a little bit like smoke or something that floats around the office and that, but you isn’t, you know, you’re just a design.

Thing about culture. So there’s some really we have a culture book and there’s some really specific things that we do to kind of encourage our culture It’s different for everybody. So we do lots of different things in order to kind of support them and actually what we really do I mean I read all the time and I’m looking to learn from organizations with strong cultures, but we have a group at the top of the organization who get together regularly to think they have to be readers to go on that group and they have to be

And we talk very, very carefully about how we can just keep improving the culture as we go forward.

Rob Hanna (16:40)

I love that because most organizations just have words, you know, determined, motive, whatever it is. And you’re actually very intentional with what you’re doing and building your culture and actually putting actions in place. And you mentioned about specific. say it all the time on the show. Specific is terrific. The more focused you can be and really lean into that and value the people they will then bring their best selves. If there’s a safe space, they’ll bring their in.

and innovation to the organization. There’s so many great things when you actually really start doubling down on this and the culture. so again, congratulations to what you have been doing and being very intentional around that. I want to talk about trust-based leadership. Again, for folks who may be less familiar, what is trust-based leadership in your opinion?

Darryl Cooke (17:22)

Well, I kind of describe it as servant leadership, I suppose. My role, and our role in GC Trust that runs the organisation, is all the time we are there to serve the lawyers, to provide them the service we do. So our job is service-based. As we lead and properly lead, then the trust comes back.

When people see that we’re servicing them, that we’re helping them or challenging them, then they will start to trust us. So the Trust Bate leadership, I think, is a manifestation of what we try to do. What we try to do is to be service-based.

Rob Hanna (18:05)

Yeah. And again, doing very, very well with what you’re doing. And I wonder, do any of the skills that you’ve picked up from previous roles, have they helped you in building gonna cook? Cause you were head of private equity at Adif Shulghodar, DLA and head of corporate at Hill Dickinson. You know, these are huge successful firms. Did any of the skills that you picked up along the way help contribute to building gonna cook? And if so, any in particular?

Darryl Cooke (18:27)

Yeah, it is interesting. I’m sure my whole background has helped me Rob, think. I think when I moved back from Herbst, I went into an area of law, private equity, which combines law with business. And I do remember, I probably did, I think over 100.

but there were like five or six really strong CEOs ⁓ and I used to, they became quite close friends and so they became good mentors and things like that and they really helped me. I think it’s the later stage when I begin to become disillusioned with the law.

I began also to be a real avid reader of business books, you know, not reading a lot of business books. Before that stage, I then started to read really good business books. And there’s a few books that I kind of go to time and time again, and that really helped to form my thinking. But I think my belief is that leadership is everything in an organization. It does set the vision, it does set the values, it does set the culture, but you need followers.

If you don’t have followers you’re just going for a-

So you’ve got to somehow work out how you bring those followers and telling them what you want doesn’t work. So it has to be servant-based. It has to be very collaborative and you have to convince them of what you’re doing is good for them to follow you. So yeah, I think I’ve learned a little bit of that from, I think in particular when I was in Herbs, I say, sat, I used to, was young, 23, 24 year old or something and I sat on some of these

amazing boards because I was the company secretary. I used to just listen to these people, generally German leadership at the time, really great thinkers. know, someone asked you question and they would have a pipe and they just plopped under the pipe for about two minutes before they gave the answer and they were really good thinkers. And I began to understand.

Actually leadership is about thinking. A friend of mine talks about kicking leaves, always getting time away from the office and kick leaves and think about it. And I think that is absolutely right. You do need to do the thinking that other people aren’t doing, but you then have to bring people with you.

Rob Hanna (20:46)

Yeah, really well said. you know, the more deep thinking you can do and focus, then obviously the better your outputs will be. A little throwaway question now, and you could take this in whichever direction you would like. Why are traditional law firm models broken? Or are they?

Darryl Cooke (21:04)

Wow. Look, I would say I think there is room for all of us. So I’m not here to put down Tristan Wolfen. And it’s been very, very successful. But we are moving into a different world where people are far more conscious of their lifestyles and their families. You know, they’re not driven in the same way that they used to be driven probably when I joined.

The pet model, as I said, which began to be, think it was a very good lawyer in 1985, began to bring that comparison. I think it’s been really, really damaging because the managing partner does not, that’s the biggest mess because he retains his lawyers, he gets a high pet, he goes and gets new lawyers coming from other firms and he gets a high pet, et cetera. So it completely drives the model.

and it’s really really damaging. So yeah, I think is it broken? It seems to be working, it seems to be holding together. ⁓ I think there are better ways of working.

Rob Hanna (22:09)

Well, as a mentor said to me before setting up businesses, Rob, nothing changes if nothing changes. And you know, we are in a world, like you say, to your point now, where people really are being intentional about trying to match a career with their lifestyle, with their family commitments, with whatever it might be. And if there are other choices available to them, then people are absolutely going to go in that direction. you know, in terms of, I guess, flexibility and client service, how is flexible, human-centered approach transforming

both client service, also employee happiness from what you’ve been saying.

Darryl Cooke (22:42)

Well yeah, I think like everything, it’s not just a stick a finger in the air and hope for the best. is, as I say, is well planned.

In both those, we do have specific measures which we really work on. So we do work on NPS as a measure. every month we measure what’s called net promoter score which can go from minus 100 to plus 100. I the industry average, sorry, the world class is leading to people of 80. I’ve known ours to be less than 90 for a couple of years now. So very, very high score.

⁓ So that’s kind of important and that drives how we service and how we think about our clients and responding to them. At the same time we measure our lawyers happiness every month. So we send a happiness survey, it’s a very simple question. How happy are you on a scale of one to ten? And we give them a box reply to us. We constantly run listening projects. So we’re very attentive, we spend a lot of time learning and then we have, then we spend a lot of time thinking and helping improve things.

Rob Hanna (23:49)

That’s what I love and what I saying before, you’re very intentional, you know, you’re not just putting words on the wall, you’re generally working at it day in, day out and giving people a voice as well. And actually if they do have constructive ideas, you’re only going to develop and nurture your culture. And so everyone stays happy and feels included, which is important. I want to switch now to talk about the Gonna Cook Foundation, because could you tell our listeners about it and how is the foundation tackling loneliness and grief through community bookshops?

Darryl Cooke (24:16)

Yeah.

I’m pleased you asked me that. Often gets ignored actually and it’s really really important. We don’t want to be known for pet. We want to know about culture and we want to be known also how we positively impact the world. We actually refer to it as being a deeply responsible business. That’s a phrase that we’ve come from a Harvard professor, Jeffrey Jones, and we do lots of different things to support that. So the first thing we did was to set up a charity called Inspire.

and Inspire actually has 175 small charities in it and we work in lots of different ways to what we call enhance the effectiveness of the CEOs to support their leadership and help them to grow. And there’s things that have been grown out of that. So for instance we have a

Rob Hanna (24:53)

Wow.

Darryl Cooke (25:04)

BFG program where we help some of those small charities through projects to create profits that they can then put back into their courses. one of the other things that we spoke, so one of the things that we also started to do was to really work on our own charity. It was born out of the pandemic and I was doing a lot of reading around loneliness and the issues around loneliness.

and social isolation and it kept coming back to me that he’s actually a bigger killer than obesity you know I don’t just mean depression or anything like that but if you’ve got a cancer if you’ve got a particular illness you’re more likely to die earlier if you’re socially isolated so we decided what could we do about that and we felt we needed to have a physical communication spot so we built this sorry we’ve bought this great bookshop

We started from scratch a great bookshop in Manchester, is a large bookshop with a coffee shop running through it We focus all the profits go to fighting social isolation We connect with and collaborate with lots of people and help them to do that and we’ve made a commitment and said I think we’ve got some like 16 offices around the world now

We’ve said we’re going to put one of these bookshops in every one of these cities. So that is a real driver for us. Other things that came out of that though, we also started to think about, you know, every law firm gets asked to take on interns. So the chief executive will say, you know, my son or daughter can they come and do an intern at your law firm? We always want to say yes. We’d always say yes, but we say it’s a matching program. So if we do that, we also go to an inner city school. We find someone who doesn’t have

the same opportunity, the same privilege, and we put them on the same programme. And that has developed over last three or four years, we’ve done quite a strong programme, and we’ve now developed it into the University of Opportunity, where we’re looking at and saying there’s lots of children, disadvantaged children.

who do all sorts of things, it may be through poverty, but it may be through some form of trauma or disability or parental addiction or something, doesn’t have that same opportunity. So we’re now collaborating with lots of companies, lots of other people to try and drive something that gives them that universal opportunity. ⁓

they leave schools. there’s lots of things around our foundation. It’s a very exciting part of the firm. We try and engage, I think we have a target of engaging 75 % of our people in the foundation. But it’s up to them whether they want to be involved in it.

Rob Hanna (27:41)

And thank you for the work that you’re doing. And, again, to the, to the point I made before around, know, you don’t just see, sit on a problem, loneliness, I mean, you’ve created things and I love that you’re always going to ask you about the University of opportunity. I think it’s magical what you’re doing because people and diversity are everywhere, but opportunity is not. I think organizations like you that are giving that chance to people, um, it’s wonderful. And, know, it really means, you know, it shows that you genuinely care. And like you said, every, every law firm,

Darryl Cooke (28:06)

No more questions.

Rob Hanna (28:08)

You know, yes, of course there are for profits, but it’s always how do you want to be remembered? You know, what’s that legacy and that attachment to it? So I can tell from this interview that everything that you do comes with real compassion and genuinely caring and wants people to have fulfilling careers. Okay. I want to talk a little bit now more about publications because your publications have included to innovate or not to innovate and private equity law and practice. So can you tell us a bit about your books and the inspiration behind them?

Darryl Cooke (28:32)

Bye!

Well, the private equity book was simply to build my career. It’s now in its eighth edition, so I can argue that it did do that. I think the eighth edition comes out in January, so that was the complete purpose behind it. To innovate was when we started off, and I think, you know, I am a great believer in reading and then putting it into your own thoughts. And it helped me as we started the firm to write that book, which is all about innovation and all about doing things differently.

leadership as well and other things and it helped me and my thinking as we were developing.

I think it’s actually I’m writing another book at the moment which is really about our individual lawyers and businesses building their own businesses, their own careers and the purpose behind what they’re trying to achieve. when I do them, they are me getting my thoughts down on paper. So they’re helping me as much as anything else. If people buy them, fantastic. But it’s about me getting my thoughts down.

Rob Hanna (29:36)

say to people like it’s it’s great that you do that because you’re sharing your thoughts. It’s almost I always say look at it the other way. It’s selfish not to share if you have these ideas and you can share them with people and they can get benefit for it, then I’m all for it. Okay, another thing you don’t sit still. Earlier this year, gonna cook launched gonna cook sport. So a specialist sport division, the division’s expertise includes football, NFL, tennis, cricket leaders who’ve built global football clubs. So what impact has gonna sport?

had since launch early this year.

Darryl Cooke (30:08)

these early days Rob, actually I think we have made it, is such an immense area, know it’s fun and exciting and lots of revenues in it and it’s great and we thought that it was somewhere we could really excel at. So what we wanted to do we brought in a business leader, a chief executive from a football club.

and we put support behind Intel to develop it. I just was noticing this morning that we’ve launched a new initiative with Crypto, because I think we’re one of the leading firms on Crypto, so we’re linking that into our sport division. I think there’s lots of innovative ways that we will look to develop sports. So the aim for it is, it is early days, but the aim is to be really high quality, but at the same time to be very innovative. And I think the opportunity within sports, know it’s interesting when you look at some industries,

I think, when I look at the legal industry, think sport is one of those industries that has so much potential and is still not in touch.

Rob Hanna (31:09)

Agreed. we’re

sport fans, myself a sport fan here as well. And I encourage our listeners to go back and listen to our episode with David Jones from Sky Sports, who does Monday night football and Super Sunday, fabulous episode, or go and check out Georgie Twigg, who was an Olympic gold medalist and hockey player and also top international lawyer. We’re all for sports. I think it’s an exciting, exciting space. Okay, let’s talk about the future now. And that could mean literally a minute after putting this.

This podcast, now given the rates of knots in the world of AI, which haven’t even mentioned yet, is happening. What are your thoughts on the future of the consultancy model?

Darryl Cooke (31:44)

⁓ Well, the consulting model is clearly here to stay now. I think it’s proven itself. I’d like to think we are at least one of the leading players in that model. But there are something like, think in the UK, something like AT &T and the Royal, elsewhere. It’s definitely here to stay. But I would say, as I say, there’s room for all of us. I don’t think we have to worry too much about each other. It just suits some people. ⁓

and it doesn’t suit others. I I kind of, I do look at it and think, if you’ve got confidence, you want to have more control over your life, then it’s almost a no-brainer and you’d be an idiot not to do it. The size of our firm means that you’ve got all the benefits of a major firm and more, but most of all, you’ve got the freedom with that to make you happy. So I think you definitely owe it to yourself to look into it.

Rob Hanna (32:42)

Yeah. And as I always say to people who are probably listening to this that are on that edge of maybe I should do it. The magic you’re looking for is in the work you’re avoiding. think going to a platform like this, having that freedom opportunity, you probably wouldn’t look backwards and probably thank yourself and all the things around your life for it. I touched on it briefly, but I want your words because it’s your legacy, Darryl. What legacy would you like to leave as the co-founder and CEO, I’m sorry, executive chairman of Gunnercooke?

Darryl Cooke (33:10)

I guess probably it is that really that I created an alternative, that I created something that’s, you know, if you look into it, can you do much better and a happier lifestyle? And not just you, I mean we’ve worked…

I think it’s family, it definitely isn’t just about you, it’s about your family, it’s raising something for your family. I get lots of lovely texts pretty much every week and emails saying that we’ve done that. So I think that’s kind of ⁓ rewarding itself and that’s all I’m looking for really.

Rob Hanna (33:41)

Yeah, well, it’s been tremendous what you’ve achieved and you absolutely have provided a wonderful alternative. I know lots of lawyers at a part of Gunnercooke that speak very, very positively as well. So congratulations on everything you’ve built. Before I let you go, what advice would you give to other founders who are looking to structure their firm similarly to the likes of a Gunnercooke’s model?

Darryl Cooke (34:04)

I think it’s not that I said earlier Rob, it’s don’t forget the culture, make sure you bring the culture with you and that is a lot from early stages, talking to everyone, collaborating with everyone and communicating your vision on a regular weekly basis. Variations of your vision will keep by bringing, if people start to believe in your vision then it makes it such a lot easier.

Rob Hanna (34:31)

Yeah, I love that. And I always say sort of mission led companies and people with a vision, people can actually see that direct contribution to that vision. If it’s communicated to them, gives that intrinsic value on top of obviously going out and making it, making a living. This has been an absolute masterclass that I really enjoyed and really appreciate you taking the time to talk to us today. If our listeners want to follow you or indeed learn more about gonna cook or grab some of your books, where’s the best place for them to go? Feel free to share any websites or any social media handles. We’ll also share them this episode for you too.

Darryl Cooke (35:01)

Well, that’s great. Well, I guess the easiest thing is to come to me directly, which is darrell. ⁓

So feel free to do that. I’ll find me on the website. ⁓ Actually, just before we came on, I already mentioned about the, I know you have podcast, which I hope you don’t mind me plugging, which is.

Rob Hanna (35:19)

Please, please do.

Yeah, it’s great. You have some incredible guests.

Darryl Cooke (35:22)

called the inspiring leadership podcast which is all about getting our message out to good leaders, good business leaders. We recently did one as we said with John Amici, the British basketball player who went over to the US to become a superstar over there then came back into psychology. We did it at Oxford University’s house symposium recently.

I think I said it is on YouTube, it’s on Spotify. I have never seen so many tears in an audience. was fascinating to watch. So I would encourage people if they want to watch them to and watch that. But yeah, please feel free to contact me directly.

Rob Hanna (35:59)

Well, yeah, absolutely encourage people to go and check out that podcast. Phenomenal and phenomenal discussion. just needs me to say thanks again, Darryl, for your time. been an absolute pleasure hosting you on the League of Speed podcast sponsored by Clio. But from all of us here wishing you lots of continued success with going to cook and indeed your future pursuits. But for now, over and out.