Why call it Rhotic?

Next week will be five years since I founded Rhotic.?(It’s pronounced “roh-tick” by the way.)

Prior to launch, I knew I wanted to start a company, though it certainly would have been easier to have worked as a lone wolf!?

But it would have limited my ability to do something that I’d wanted to do my entire working life – create a career pathway for junior talent (from ALL backgrounds) and a route into financial journalism and financial services.?

Today, I’ve become comfortable with the privilege I enjoy. I’m a middle-class, white, male, business owner and financial journalist. But none of this was handed to me.

Statistically, I shouldn’t be a financial journalist. State school educated, one parent was a supermarket shopworker “on the meat and fish” and the other was a jobbing musician who played gigs in a band, offering mobile music tuition without any formal training. I left technical college with modest grades and was the first person in my immediate family to get a degree.?

Proudly Bristol-born and bred, I sounded – obviously - like I was from the West Country until my early 20s. I had an undeniable Rhotic accent. But my ambition to work as a journalist was, apparently, at odds with how I spoke. At various points in my life, I’ve been told be conscious of how I speak.

·????“You need to adopt received pronunciation to be taken seriously.”?

·????“You won’t become a journalist if you sound like that.”

·????“Your accent reveals you’re working class.”

·????“Media employers don’t want people who sound like you.”?

The most amusing, looking back, was probably…… “We don’t want no ‘orrrrrses.”

Before I got my first journalism job, I’d already worked in media for several years. I sold advertising on the local paper for two years, I’d worked in multiple departments at one of the world’s best known financial newspapers… except in editorial (of course). I’d also worked in non-editorial departments for customer magazines and for national titles. I also worked for free, part-time, for six months for a FTSE 100 listed publisher, just to have a shot at even getting a journalism job.

And you know what? I started to change how I spoke.

In the years that followed, I worked hard to neutralise the Rs, I adopted phrases and idioms more suited to the home counties. My accent would swing wildly, depending on who I was speaking to. I was afraid that I didn’t belong.

I appreciate socio-economic background (where an accent can be a key identifier), is never going to make any list of the oppressed. But the shortcuts and assumptions that employers make because of how people sound, where they were educated, what colour they are, what gender they are, who they date, and so on, still exist.

We all know how atrocious the stats are. I’m not going to signpost the data here, but diversity and inclusion in financial services and journalism is still woeful, whichever metric you’re looking at. As an industry, we’ve talked a good game for a long time, but our progress has been glacial. And it’s hardly surprising.

If you are an employer, I urge you to think about the steps you can take to make real change. This means creating initiatives that widen the entry points in our wonderful industry and enabling people from every walk of life to get to the very top.?

Some of the people that take these opportunities will need nurturing. It may require an investment. Some of those to whom you offer the opportunity will move on and join other companies. That is ok. I’d rather that, than just stand on a stage bemoaning the lack of progress.?

So, why did I call the company Rhotic Media? It is a company that is proud of its people, like I should have been of my accent. My accent and my background didn’t limit my ability or my ambition, it's just that other people thought it should.?

As I look ahead to next five years, I hope to work with colleagues and clients that share this vision. A future where “levelling up” is more than just a slogan. Let’s make those statistics change and create careers for anyone with the potential… accent or no accent.

Who’s with me?