Transforming mental health in the workplace

Hey there, career changers! Ready for some inspiring and relatable insights? Well, you're in for a treat! Welcome to "Leading the Field" with Simon Phillips, the podcast where we dive into the lives of trailblazers who are redefining success. And today, we have a guest who embodies the spirit of pushing boundaries and making a positive impact.

Allow me to introduce Charlie Winton, the mastermind behind OK Positive, a groundbreaking app revolutionising well-being in the workplace. Charlie is not just a brilliant entrepreneur, but someone who has personally experienced the struggles of mental health in the professional realm. Talk about turning adversity into a catalyst for change!

Charlie's journey began with his own battles, grappling with panic, OCD, and anxiety in the workplace. But instead of simply weathering the storm, he took a proactive approach. He wanted to create something that would prevent such challenges rather than just react to them. And that's where OK Positive comes in, offering a platform that's akin to a mental health Fitbit. It's all about self-awareness, personal growth, and building a brighter future.

With a focus on organisations, charities, and even schools, Charlie is on a mission to transform countless lives. And boy, is he excited about it! So buckle up and get ready for an insightful conversation that might just spark the change you've been craving.

But before we dig deeper into the inner workings of OK Positive, let's take a quick peek into Charlie's career journey. From university to a labour-intensive scaffolding job in Australia, he realised there was more to life than simply checking off boxes. The world was waiting to be explored, and that's precisely what he did. Returning to Edinburgh, he stumbled upon recruitment, a job he surprisingly enjoyed despite its misalignment with his work philosophy.

However, life had other plans, and Charlie's mental health struggles demanded attention. The toll it took on him was undeniable, affecting both his professional and personal life. But sometimes, it takes a wake-up call from a loved one to set things straight. Thanks to the support of his partner, he mustered the courage to make a life-altering decision—a career change.

Starting OK Positive wasn't an easy feat, though. Charlie had to balance building his passion project while working to pay the bills. But it was during this time that he discovered the value of flexible working and pursuing passions outside the confines of a traditional job. Eventually, his dedication paid off, and he made the leap to devote himself fully to OK Positive.

Now, imagine you're in a job that drains you, feeling like you've lost touch with your true passions. Well, Charlie has some wisdom to share. He emphasises the importance of recognising the signs and understanding oneself. It's okay to struggle, but identifying the triggers and trends that are robbing you of energy and joy is key. Once you have that awareness, you can take action—just like Charlie did.

Here's Charlie's secret: surround yourself with people who are doing things differently. Challenge the notion that work has to be soul-sucking. And remember, your support network plays a crucial role in your journey to fulfilment.

So, career changers, if you're yearning for something more, if you feel stuck in a monotonous cycle, it's time to take control. Get ready to explore the fascinating world of OK Positive and discover how Charlie's creative spark ignited a revolution. From humble beginnings to a life-changing venture, this conversation will leave you inspired and ready to embrace your own career change.

Alright, folks, let's dive in and uncover the secrets of Charlie Winton and his quest to reshape the workplace for the better!

Episode Transcript

Simon Phillips
Welcome, everybody. This is Simon Phillips and this is Leading the field, the podcast where I'm interviewing people who are leading in their areas, the people who are out there pushing the boundaries, trying new things and seeing if they can do something that will help the rest of us. And my guest today is really, I think, a brilliant example of that.

Simon Phillips
His name is Charlie Winton. He's the founder of OK Positive, which is an app that's Transforming Well-Being in the workplace. So, Charlie, that's my very high level introduction for you. But do you want to say hi and let the people here know a little bit more about you?

Charlie Winton
Yeah. Thank you. So, yeah, so I'm the founder of OK positive. I started it through lived experience and my own struggles with mental health, particularly within the workplace surrounding panic, OCD, anxiety. And I wanted to create a platform that was preventative rather than reactive to people's problems. And look at it in the same way Fitbit looks at physical health, where we all take an interest in ourselves, we become more self-aware, we learn about ourselves, and we we work to a better future for ourselves.

Charlie Winton
So if we can do that for mental health will be helping a large problem. So we do that within organizations, charities, and we're moving into schools. So I'm quite excited about where we can, where we can take it and how many people we can help. So yeah, it's great to be here. It's great to chat to you and I'm excited for this.

Simon Phillips
Excellent. So we're going to come back to a bit later to sort of getting behind the scenes of OK positive, if that's all right. But tell me a little bit then about the origin story for Charlie Winton. Where did all start? How did you what sort of drove you through different parts of your career to get to where you are today?

Charlie Winton
Yeah, so I suppose I left university where I studied sports science to move into a scaffolding job out in Australia. I was like, you know, I haven't seen any of the world have gone straight from school to university. I was like, I need to go out and, you know, work hard and do something and scaffold laboring in Western Australia is, I can tell you, pretty tough for me, shifting.

Charlie Winton
At one point there were ten of us and there were ten tons of steel to move in the week. And so, yeah, it's it's quite fun. But I definitely learned a few things, but moved back from Australia to back to Edinburgh, where I was introduced into recruitment by a friend of mine who had just started working there three or four months previously.

Charlie Winton
And so yes, I started working in recruitment. I actually really enjoyed the job. Getting people jobs was quite fun. I felt that there were some things in that industry that weren't in tune with how I wanted to work, but as a first job, you kind of soak everything up. You think this is the way the world works. I got my suit on.

Charlie Winton
Well, there's some ready to go. But yes, when I struggled with my mental health there, I yeah, it was it was something that I couldn’t really handle myself, I didn’t really understand my mental health particularly. I found that I was struggling quite a lot to the point where I would have panic attacks and I'd hide away in the company toilets, which is always a good old fight or flight.

Charlie Winton
But it was there I realized I need to make a change. I was taking things home with me. I was becoming depressed and my partner was actually the one who snapped me out of it. I was cooking dinner one day and I wasn't myself. I was getting grumpy at absolutely nothing. And she said, You're not happy anymore. So I was like, okay, well, you're right.

Charlie Winton
I've been useless. Broke down, quit my job, moved to start OK positive while working. So I was doing that in my free time while working for a new company to keep the bills being paid. It was there. I kind of learned more skills around. Okay, well, flexible working and being able to have time for passions outside of work were new to me because I didn't experience that in recruitment.

Charlie Winton
It was so full on that you, you got home and you had a drink or you got home and were tired. So yeah, yeah. Moved into to the kind of world of financial payments that this on the side and eventually it just kind of the other one took over the other one and I left so I left to start this full time.

Simon Phillips
So Charlie for the listner if you like, who’s probably sitting there potentially in a job they don't like, in a job that's making them feel not so great. What, what was the sort of the first indicators of that for you and what would you sort of suggest that they do to start thinking about it differently?

Charlie Winton
So it's a great question. Really. This is one of the biggest areas I find for mental health, in particular for myself that people kind of skip over is understanding yourself and recognizing when you are struggling with something because there's nothing wrong with struggling with something. We all do on mental health is a big old spectrum of balancing being that you need to figure out what makes you feel good, what makes you feel less like yourself.

Charlie Winton
And so for me, there were really key signs. I love exercise. I love staying in shape or trying to stay in shape because I like it so much and I wasn't exercising at all. I had no motivation to. I had a lack of energy for anything outwith of work or going to the pub afterwards with friends and or colleagues.

Charlie Winton
I started realizing that my life became a bit more of a routine where I was doing the same things over and over again, living for the weekend and then praying that the weekend wouldn't finish. I'd have to go back. I call it people call it the Sunday Fear, right? I had that even more so. So I was working in temporary recruitment and 10:00 on a Sunday was often the time you get a load of messages saying that they're not going into that job tomorrow, which obviously meant I was going to be in trouble because I wasn't fulfilling the needs of the client.

Charlie Winton
So, yeah, things to look out for certainly are a lack of energy, a lack of focus, a lack of passion for the things that you've loved all your life. So I love things like rugby, watching films, going out camping. I didn't want to do any of those things. I basically shut myself off and became the recruiter who went to the pub afterwards.

Charlie Winton
So if you notice changes in your behavior like that, there's usually something behind it and so for me, I created a system of what I call now triggers trends and action. So I looked at what what my triggers like, what was causing me to feel. So if I started noticing those feelings, what was it that made it happen?

Charlie Winton
It was work for me. And then I looked at the trends. It was work over a long period of time. Then it started affecting my personal life and then I went, okay, well, what's the action? Well, in my case it was to quit my job and start something I'm passionate about and actually go and try and fix my own problem.

Charlie Winton
So, yeah, that's, that's what I'd look out for. Changes in behavior and predominantly a lack of energy or passion that you previously had.

Simon Phillips
Cheers, Charlie. I what's really interesting when you interview people who are sort of emerging in their careers and is that they take so much on board thinking it's normal. So like you said, there was a temptation there for you to just think, well, is this what the world of work is all about? That I have no life outside work that I do lose my passions and my interests and the things that I'm excited about normally, because I'm assuming that's what working life is all about.

Simon Phillips
And without any sort of exterior perspective on that, it can feel like, okay, I've just got to knuckle down and get on with it. So what was it for you if you like, that helped you realize that those things weren't necessarily what you should accept.

Charlie Winton
One or two things. I think really speaking to other people about their jobs and their work. I mean, for us, particularly for recruitment, you know, money, money, money is talked about. It's like what you want, what are your motivations, what you want to buy your family, what that what life you want to provide. And it's always that kind of next, next, next, there's going to be another job that's going to be another load of money you can make.

Charlie Winton
And when speaking to other people, I had one of my close friends from university was working as a zookeeper. And, you know, you kind of buck that trend completely. You know, it's not a massive £100,000 salary to be a zookeeper. And sometimes that financial side is tough. But he was the happiest of all of us, of all of our friends.

Charlie Winton
He was the happiest. And so that's where it kind of turned to me when I was speaking to people that I knew. Hang on, you don't work eight till six, okay? You are allowed to go on breaks for more than 15 minutes, you know... But it wasn't that bad in recruitment to that sense. But it was definitely KPIs were monitoring everything.

Charlie Winton
And so I was like, Is this normal? Is this what work is? Is this why everyone gets something to see? Looks miserable on the commute into work? And it is that the way my life is going to be and I've realized that it's not, but I've realized very much later than I should have. But I think if you if you surround yourself with people who are doing different things, this is the problem, right?

Charlie Winton
If when you go into a particular sector as recruitment is or it could be financial services, it could be legal, guess who you hang around with all the time because you're working as you're working around with all these different lawyers, with all these different financial services, and they're doing the same thing. So you don't have external perspective. So that and again, my partner, she, she very much showed me, held to mirror to me in terms of this is what your coming home as and this is, you know, who I remember you as.

Charlie Winton
And so it's it's quite hard hitting. And I think actually it's one I was lucky that I had her and have her around to tell me when I'm not myself. And some people don't have that right. And so if you had those 2 things, surround yourself by people basically then. Sure.

Simon Phillips
Yeah, absolutely. And we we often talk in networking terms about the different networks that we have in life. So we have our family networks and our work networks and university networks, whoever the different groups of people, if you like. But the one that's most important is your support network. Whoever is in that group of people that are there to support you, they're the ones that can quite often mean the difference between living on the streets literally and thriving.

Simon Phillips
And I remember once writing a report for a for a homeless charity that was trying to understand what it is that eventually leads to people being on the streets. And it's quite often it's just their support network as it's collapsed. So yeah, thanks for that Charlie. So, okay, so we got on, we've created OK Positive from those sort of lived experiences of yours.

Simon Phillips
And what was interesting for me, So we talked through your GC index didn't we, last week and you came out as this game changer polisher so very much on the obsessive side of the model. But top one there was game changer, that level of creativity. So what do you think was there so that the creative spark for OK Positive not the not the sort of the drivers that were maybe sort of lived experience.

Simon Phillips
What's the creative bit that really got it going?

Charlie Winton
Well, I suppose it was. It's I suppose I was kind of pushed towards it in terms of my motivations, my drives, but then the creative options, I guess I just wanted to start and get going, right? You know, you take a risk in life sometimes you need to just get on with it. And I remember just thinking to myself, I chatted to my brother actually.

Charlie Winton
I was like, This is a lot of money to spend on a prototype of a of an app that people might not even buy or how do I do this? And it just it was during it was just before the lockdown. We're moving into lockdown. We didn't know that was going to be like but basically said, you know, is this something you want to do?

Charlie Winton
Is this something that you have an idea around? Do you know how you go about doing it? I was like, not really, but I'm going to give it a go. This is the first step and once again, networked and met people, met tech partners. It met our clinical director through them and met and just kept meeting people and everyone kept giving me new ideas around it.

Charlie Winton
So creatively wise it was just, what do I want? What was going to solve my problem? I'm the guinea pig and and then facilitate that by meeting people who are smarter than me in different areas to advise where to go. And I had a rough idea to you start a business with £12 on companies house and that's a start, right?

Charlie Winton
You've done it. You can't turn back now. You're not to do your company accounts no matter how much money you have and that you're going to have to go and do something about it. So I kind of just kept each time doing the next thing. The next thing I tried to do list of, okay, set up company, right?

Charlie Winton
Talk about prototype, which areas that I need to focus on. Tech. Obviously that was what our product was going to be. Content, clinical evidence backing, finances, all the different areas of the business. I was terrified and had no clue about. then went and found out about it.

Simon Phillips
From a you know, from the GC index perspective, that's your polisher kicking in there. That's the element of, okay, let's get on a continuous improvement pathway here. What's the next thing? What's the next thing, What's the next thing that's just going to make it better and better? Charlie We're going to take a quick break and then we'll come back.

Simon Phillips
And I want to explore more about what OK Positive does for people and, you know, and what you're seeing and what your hopes are for the future of this great business. Welcome back. This is leading in the field with Simon Phillips and my special guest, Charlie Winton. We've been talking all about the amazing business that he's built called OK Positive, where that came from, the sort of the the lived experience that basically fed the thinking into the design of.

Simon Phillips
OK positive. So, Charlie, I want to get behind the scenes now and learn a little bit more. So tell us how the app works, what it what sort of things I can expect if I if I land there or, you know, tell me how this might help me in my business.

Charlie Winton
It I'm so there's two parts to it right. It's a two pronged approach. There's the individual side for a person using our platform and then there's the organization side or portal, as we call it. From an individual perspective, it's a mental health Fitbit. So you input your moods. It starts producing hyper personalized content, support resources and signposting based on how you're feeling your trends over time and how that reacts and changes.

Charlie Winton
We we use machine learning and AI, so it's as simple to use is as possible. We ask you questions without ever invading your privacy and we don't want to know who you are. We just care about your mental health profile. And what I mean by that is we create a profile for you based on your values. It triggers your emotions and what you do in the app, because what we're trying to do is find commonalities between other people similar to you that might not know that going for a run or an intervention that you've done has helped your mental health.

Charlie Winton
So we can suggest it to them. So by logging your mood for 15-30 seconds a day, you could potentially be helping someone else elsewhere by writing down how you're feeling and what you've done to help yourself. So that's what we want to do. We want to reduce the stigma. What you'll expect as an individual user is a host of comments.

Charlie Winton
If you're struggling with financial wellbeing and budgeting this month, it will be content on that and it will tell you stuff about you. So you manage that. It will form all of this data around you, telling you this is what we recommend, this is what our clinical board would recommend because they look over the profiles and the options and train the system and therefore, yeah, but we also provide that link to anonymously feedback to your company.

Charlie Winton
So as an organization, what you'll do is you get aggregated trends, data of everyone within your company and your organization, and so they can see what they can do to help you. So you have this option to have a voice in the company, as I call it, because if you can highlight the things that they can do to to support you better than they do, then that's incredibly powerful thing for culture psychology, like psychological safety.

Charlie Winton
So from an organizational perspective, you get to identify the issues and the successes in your business. You're able to intervene through our partner network or through free things that we've seen work in other businesses because we're learning all the time. Then you can communicate it with your staff through push notifications, telling them the things that you're doing, the ways you're supporting them, and then you can evaluate it.

Charlie Winton
Users within that company can say, Yes, this helped and it didn't. And therefore you get this full cycle of this holistic approach. Again, you know, you said we did, and the people in the businesses are being listened to their values, they're respected and they have a say in their future with it. And that's that's the answer for us.

Charlie Winton
You can do that effectively. You're creating a far more psychologically safe culture within a business, and it will only improve your bottom line if you're the managing director of business, wondering why people are leaving, wondering why people are going off sick, why they're absent. It's because they're not being listened to.

Simon Phillips
Yeah, and what what is the user in your organization? What are they accessing? Is it by their phone or is it on the ....

Charlie Winton
Is it via we're on the App Store, we're on the Google Play store and we're also desktop so you can find us basically anywhere and you can find us on on those mediums. We always prefer the kind of phone element to it because it's easier its more discrete. you’re able to do it on the go. You can log your moods at any time of day as many times as you like, and it will paint a picture for you.

Charlie Winton
We present it back to you through for psychological models, so it's effectively having a small therapist in your pocket that's just going along with you, helping you become more self aware, not telling you this is what's wrong with you, this is what's right with you. It's just not not about that. It's about understanding what makes you feel the way that you are feeling and how to.

Charlie Winton
Because for me, it's like physical health, right? You get your sniffles, you know, you're getting a cold, so you have lemsip hot water bottle rest. So you’re not ill for longer. mental health, the exact same. You'll have your triggers which you need to understand what they are. You then can find out what your hot water bottle or rest is so that you know that crisis point like I did.

Charlie Winton
And if you do that, I've had a panic attack in five years using that platform of journaling. So it works. It's just how do we get that out there for everyone? And that's how we do it through an application.

Simon Phillips
So one of my favorite approaches to leadership is to and I can't remember whose original quote this is, but he talked about patch people doing the right thing. So in a leadership term that's looking at your people and when they do something great or they do something well, make sure you recognize that. And so that it also registers in their head.

Simon Phillips
So I need to do more of that. How does that translate into your app? So you've talked about the triggers and the things that you know can help us understand ourselves better so that we can show we can get better, if you like. And what are you finding? Is the data starting to reveal what the people who are quite robust and and feeling good in the workplace Are you finding are there any trends, any bits of information that you can feed back to organizations that helps them understand how they could be setting things up in the first place to be better?

Charlie Winton
Absolutely. So from the kind of data reports we have, we tend to do it based on that emotion. Trigger what causes anxiety, what causes gratitude and all those different things. And we found that managers are very crucial. So management, regular support. So if you have a team or a company where your management style is very hierarchical and they don't listen, there's no iterative feedback, there's no communication, you will find there are more issues and that leads to isolation, which was our highest negative and emotion over the last over the last 6 to 12 months, colleagues as well.

Charlie Winton
So what what we really focus around is it's funny because it's people right? And it's people so it's it's the management, the processes that you have, it's the support and communication. I honestly think if I was speaking to a business, I'd say, what? What's your communication like? Like is it is we're telling you you're doing this or this is happening because we said so, or is it this is what we've heard from all of you over the last three months.

Charlie Winton
This is what we're going to be doing in the future based on what you are saying. That second option creates a far more productive and listen to workforce. I'll tell you an example of that. Spoke to a business that had 2 mental health sick days a month per employee. So relatively high in terms of. Right. Okay. So they they surveyed them and understood it was because of the targets that they had.

Charlie Winton
So what they did was they repositioned it. They said, right, everyone, you're going to set your own targets next month with your manager. So that's communication there already. Secondly, we listened to you, so this is what we're going to do. You're only allowed to do a maximum of 75% of the original target. So you had a minimum 25% reduction in your targets.

Charlie Winton
It could be lower if you wanted it to. And once you hit them next month, you'll earn two wellbeing days off. So from a business hat on, they didn't miss any productivity or any time in work because they were already losing people for two days a month, and what they had was people hitting their original targets from the month earlier.

Charlie Winton
Happier, feeling valued, feeling respected, incentivized, and they came back to work wanting to come back to work. So that's the sort of thing listen, communication management is a massive part of it, right? We've traditionally seen that if you know what your role is and it doesn't change or they don't add more things to it, you're clearly paid a remunerated for what you do in line with how it is elsewhere and your manager supports you and doesn't project stress.

Charlie Winton
Those three things in place, you have a more chance of a successful business. So yeah, I hope that's useful. I think it's it's predominantly around communication if it boils down to one thing.

Simon Phillips
Yeah, no, that's hugely useful because there'll be plenty of people listening thinking, you know, they want to do the right thing and create a workplace where people want to come and feel valued and feel like they're able to build their own careers in a nice environments. And and as you say, what creates that environment is almost always the people that are in charge, the people that are your colleagues, the environment that's co-created by everyone.

Simon Phillips
And yeah, communication, right at the top there. Fantastic. Charlie, this sounds like an app everybody should. So normally it's right at the end of the conversation you say, So how can people find out more? But let's actually capitalize on this point the conversation. So how can people find out more and investigate either as an individual or as a company that might want to put this out there for their workforce?

Charlie Winton
So we're on all of the different social media channels that you're on today Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, all these things. LinkedIn, our website is www.okpositive.org. And yeah, there you can find the app, you can have access to a demo, you can reach out to us to speak again, we're very receptive. The team and I, we, we love speaking to people about mental health.

Charlie Winton
We love looking into businesses and and seeing how can we make a difference? How can the company themselves make a difference and look after themselves? Because it's, as you said, just doing the same things over and over again without trying new things. So, yeah, that's where you find us. I'm always open to chatting to people. Particularly on a human level as well.

Charlie Winton
If anyone resonates with the things I'm doing and need someone to listen to them, or if they want to learn more about how I've navigated my mental health over the last five years, I'm always happy to speak to so anyone around it.

Simon Phillips
Fantastic. Thanks, Charlie. Okay, let's take a half a step back. We were talking earlier about the GC Index, I think we've heard your proclivities coming through or the creativity or the desire to just improve things over and over and over and make it as good as it can possibly be. Is this a game changer polisher combination. Inside your organization,

Simon Phillips
How does that impact the rest of the team? Your desire to, you know, come up with another idea and see it come to being straight away? You know, what sort of what's the impact on the people around you?

Charlie Winton
I can imagine it would be quite exhausting.

Simon Phillips
Yeah.

Charlie Winton
I think from from a team perspective, they're very honest with me and that's one thing we're very good on communication and internally we very much focus on how to how do people work, how to get the best out of each other. I'm as you mentioned, I'm very much, yeah, let's do this, let's do this, let's do the next thing, next thing next.

Charlie Winton
Or rush and do it as quickly as possible. Whereas actually my CO for example, Barb is brilliant at know. This is a process of let's be realistic, this is how we've got to do it. This is our priorities. Then our clinical Director Helen will come in very much focused around how does this enable our clinical backing, how does this enable actually serving the communities and keeping that user, the focused staff from a tech perspective like, well, how does that fit into the technology?

Charlie Winton
And Meghan and Shona are like, Well, how do we then research this effectively to work those businesses and market it effectively? So it's like we all have different ways of working. And so we did a team meeting around, actually we did it solely focused on how the different situations make each other feel. How does me replying to emails within 15 seconds as opposed to 2 days make everyone feel. we found once you communicate that, right.

Charlie Winton
So from my perspective, once I communicates that the rest of the team fed off of it and said, Well, actually yeah, now we will understand how each other works, that some people reply within a day, some people will reply instantly. It's not setting a standard, it's everyone communicates and understood that, okay, this is how we get the best out of our work, this is how we each like to work and work around each other.

Charlie Winton
And it's been very successful from that perspective.

Simon Phillips
Yeah, No, that's, that's, that's brilliant because I think one of the things we find is, as you say, once people understand what really excites you about the way that you operate, they can then sort of understand, okay, as you say, it's not a negative thing that they're doing, they're just being the best thing that they can be. And actually that makes me feel more comfortable working with them because I'm not sensing pressure where there is none.

Simon Phillips
But as I was listening to it, as the those key people that are around you, they are the pragmatists in the business, They are the ones who, you know, are thinking strategically. Is this aligned with everything that we're trying to get done? Is this enabling us to move the business forward as effectively as we possibly can as opposed to just another great idea?

Simon Phillips
So but, you know, without those great ideas, Charlie, the you know, the whole thing will dry up. There will be no no future ideas. So, you know, we've got to keep pushing them in there haven’t we?

Charlie Winton
Everyone works in different ways, right? And I love I love that that people bring different magic. We're all the same. We all did the same things, have the same motivations, have been very, very dull world. So there's actually I love the fact that people work differently. I love the fact that because that's where you get collaboration, that's where new ideas come in and it's basically comes from that that chaos, so to speak, of, okay, we're not doing the same thing, doing the same process.

Charlie Winton
How are we going to do it? And that brings new ideas. So yeah, I totally agree with you, but it's good to have people of different the different proclivities, all that kind of stuff, because otherwise it's a Yeah, that's a great idea. Charlie Yeah. Do you feel like you're the well, that once said it's a great idea. We all have the same mindset around it.

Simon Phillips
So Charlie, just between us, don't worry, there's no, none of your team are listening to this is okay, So what's next for ideas? Have you got now? Well.

Charlie Winton
So we're planning to launch our platform for free into schools with an added safeguarding process to it, not be transparent about. So from the adults, we really just don't know who anyone is and we're not interested in that. From a school perspective, If if there were safeguarding concerns for the duty of care for the person, they'd be identified on a one off basis to their safeguarding lead at the school.

Charlie Winton
So we're working on that kind of technology side, but also how do we position it? We've got partners that can get us into all these different schools in the UK. We can make it free for young people to learn more about mental health on their own time. So I'm really excited about that. We've got our new technology developments where you'll get your own data, insights, reports and we're creating ways that you can connect to your family and friends by creating circles where you can check in on each other.

Charlie Winton
We're just finding different ways to to engage people more, but also get them more interested in in mental health, but other people's mental health as well. Because if we can do that, then we can take people away from technology and start having conversations. But everyone needs to understand mental health. They need to learn about it. They need to you know, you don't just go and build a Lego set without looking at the at the manual.

Charlie Winton
First, you need to understand the basics of how it works. And so that's what we're looking to do. So yeah, those are the two kind of main projects we're working at the moment. Then we've got a couple of commercial things up our sleeve at the moment which are looking quite exciting. So lots going on, but it's all very, very busy actually.

Simon Phillips
Charlie, it's been an absolute delight to talk to you today and thank you for being so open about your particular circumstances and how that generated the ideas and the thinking behind. OK Positive. And I'm sure that will have been that will have helped a few people out there just through your own story today. So thanks for that. Umm, Charlie.

Simon Phillips
Nobody gets off the leading the field podcast without telling us what's their favorite record whats the record that really inspires them and gets them moving in the morning. If they're feeling a bit sluggish or helps them to power through that last hour of activity when they know it's going to get finished, what’s the inspirational song that you can add to the playlist.

Charlie Winton
So this I'm going to be cheeky here and say there are two, but I'll do my official one. So I suppose for to answer your first point, the the song Take Me Out by Franz Ferdinand is possibly one of the bounciest tunes in the world and that if I put that on in the morning I am ready to go.

Charlie Winton
Like that is good to work. This is good. Probably in a different tone. I guess the love will tear us apart by Joy Division is one of my favorite songs of all time. It's not really a pumping up song. It doesn't get you start over the day, but just the connotations of Ian Curtis and how he took his own life and mental health issues around that and the awareness of it, it's quite prudent for what we're doing and it kind of resets being reminds me that, you know, there are so many situations like that that are going on in the world that need to stop and change.

Charlie Winton
We need to be more open. And so it gives me probably motivates me more about it, but it makes me feel more sad rather than pumped up like take me out by Franz.

Simon Phillips
But we need both, don't we? We absolutely need both in life. We need the the elements of insight and reflection and poignancy like that record, which just remind us sometimes of the mission that we're on and why we do the things that we do. And then, as you say, you've got to kick back and have a party and and jump up and down.

Simon Phillips
In fact, when I was at university, I ran the disco there and I would call those last few songs the jump up and down songs, because that's that's the ones that, you know, people remember have a lot of fun, too. And then and then we play a, you know, a slow one just for those who wanted to get a little romantic at the end.

Charlie Winton
Yeah, I'd make the jump up or down

Simon Phillips
Yeah, exactly. Thanks for that. They will be added to the leading the field playlist on Spotify and every other place you can find them. Charlie, thank you so much for being a great guest on the show and I look forward to catching up again soon and hearing all the updates on OK positive. But until then, have a great week and we'll catch up again soon.

Charlie Winton
Thanks. I really enjoyed this.

Simon Phillips
There you go. That is leading the field with Simon Phillips and my guest Charlie Winton from OK Positive. Go and check out the app. It really is brilliant and I will see you again here next week until then, take care.