The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - Lessons From 50 Of The Worlds Greatest Minds with Jake Humphrey

Episode Date: December 7, 2020

Imagine what you would learn if you spent a year talking to the world’s most successful people. This week I get to find out what insights Jake Humphrey has received by doing exactly that. Jake Humphrey - presenter and entrepreneur and podcaster co-presents the High Performance Podcast. "The High Performance Podcast brings you an intimate glimpse into the lives of high-achieving, world-class performers who have all excelled in their field with first-hand experiences and lessons to share". Listening to what he has learnt was truly fascinating! The insight he has received from some of the world’s elite performers by hosting his podcast has completely changed his life. He’s spotted his own insecurities, he’s spotted his own weaknesses and now he’s ready to share them with you. Follow me: https://beacons.ai/diaryofaceo

Quick one, just wanted to say a big thank you to three people very quickly. First people I want to say thank you to is all of you that listen to the show. Never in my wildest dreams is all I can say. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd start a podcast in my kitchen and that it would expand all over the world as it has done. And we've now opened our first studio in America, thanks to my very helpful team led by Jack on the production side of things. So thank you to Jack and the team for building out the new American studio.

And thirdly to Amazon Music who, when they heard that we were expanding to the United States, and I'd be recording a lot more over in the States, they put a massive billboard in Times Square for the show. So thank you so much, Amazon Music. Thank you to our team. And thank you to all of you that listened to this show. Let's continue. This week on the Diary of a CEO, we have a returning guest, Jake Humphries. He is an entrepreneur, he is a TV presenter, he's also now a podcaster. And Jake has spent the last year on his podcast sitting down with some of the most high performance people, some of the most accomplished people in their industries from acting to business to sports, you name it. And so because of that experience,

because of all the insights he's gained over the last year since we last spoke, I wanted to sit down with him and compare notes. We have a lot of high performance people on this podcast too. I wanted to understand the similarities. I wanted to pick into the minds of some of the guests and what he's learned from them. How are they the same? What makes them different? And that's what we're going to talk about today. So without further ado, I'm Stephen Bartlett, and this is The Diary of a CEO. I hope nobody's listening, but if you are, then please keep this to yourself. You've had, what, 30 people on your your podcast today you've got a lot more coming up

one of the key questions that i that i wanted to ask you because it's you know something that i ask myself is what are those like key lessons that you've learned you've you've interviewed you know high performance athletes actors authors um and really sort of high performance people people from all industries what are the key lessons and the themes? I think there was one key lesson that was summed up for me by Matthew McConaughey, the Oscar winning actor who came on my pod recently. And his phrase is, don't leave crumbs. And what he means by that is, like, when you're making a decision,

don't leave stuff behind. Don't make a bad decision now that later on you've got to go back and pick that crumb up and be regretful about it and that's brilliant because sometimes when we talk on the podcast we talk about really like big blue sky thinking you know like we talk to you about social change setting up social change sometimes to people that are listening and that can seem like unreal almost untouchable because it's this huge multi-million dollar business that you've created. But actually don't leave crumbs is about making the decisions for a big, big business like that and creating something amazing. But also like, make sure that you don't have an

extra drink in the evening in case it leaves you with a hangover tomorrow and you've got work to do, or make sure you simply choose your clothes the night before. So you're not doing it in a rush. And like, I still leave crumbs all the time like I tell you when we uh when we interviewed Matthew like he's the first Hollywood actor we've had on the pod so for me it was quite a big moment and I thought right I really want to be looking good for this so I thought I'll have a shower and a shave before we do the interview and I was having a shave in the bathroom my wife was in the bath and she was going to come down and like, listen in the corner in my study. Cause she was like, she loves Dallas buyers club.

She was excited. And, uh, she was having a shave and she goes, it's nine 54. I was like, and I thought it was like nine 30 or something. We'd put the kids to bed.

And then the next one I'm running downstairs. I haven't done my hair properly. I'm on, I've got two wifi's at home because our upload speed living in the countryside is horrendous. So I was then on the wrong wifi. I then looked for the script I'd written for the questions for Matthew couldn't find them.

And I was like, I was the last one in. I'm getting beaten to the interview on my own podcast by a Hollywood actor. And I left crumbs. And now that's a good lesson for me because I do it all the time. And I think that you only learn about the crumbs you leave by doing it. And I just, I just really want people,

I've had a few negative comments that have come my way about the podcast, direct messages from people saying, you're getting this all wrong. We're in a global pandemic. I'm having a really hard year. And here you are with a podcast that's just celebrating success all the time and showing up how, how we're all doing badly compared to your great guests. hard year and here you are with a podcast that's just celebrating success all the time and showing up how um how we're all doing badly compared to your great guests and for me the podcast is a that

hurts me to think that because i don't want anyone to come to the high performance podcast and leave in that way but it's the absolute total opposite of that because when we talk about what lessons can you learn from people on the podcast the other biggest one is they mess up all the time i think i genuinely believe successful people make more mistakes than anybody else because they're constantly challenging themselves to do stuff and you you're no stranger to making decisions that at the time you just simply don't know but you have to find a way of making that decision. And I'm sure there are times when you've made 10 or 15 life-changing decisions in a week. You know, the point about those crumbs and, you know, rushing down the stairs when you realized that you were late, what could you have done in hindsight to prevent those crumbs

being left behind per se? I just need to be really honest with myself that I have weaknesses and I need to address them rather than thinking that everything's fine and i am notoriously late i am always a few minutes late and always my new year's resolution is this is the year that i'm not going to be late but it just i'm surprised you know that you're late because um the industry you work in i know it's very and look at all the guests i've had on my podcast we We had Sir Clive Woodward who won the Rugby World Cup. And you think of all of the discipline and the rules and the mindsets you need to win a Rugby World Cup.

The number one thing that stands out for him is something called Lombardi time, which was created by the players. And Lombardi obviously is a famous name in American sports and they call it Lombardi time because it's a name that sort of resonates with winning. And it was 10 minutes early. So if you say to any former England rugby player, call it Lombardi time because it's a name that sort of resonates with winning and it was 10 minutes early so if you say to any former England rugby player what's Lombardi time they'll tell you 10 minutes early so listen I'm hearing this stuff Stephen on

a weekly basis and still not getting it right and I think it just goes to show that we are human we have we are fallible and I do think we have blind spots which there are some things some people find really hard I don't there are some things that is not an issue for other people and is a recurring problem for me to deal with but no one's perfect and how do you emotionally feel about the fact that you have blind spots in terms of like do you beat yourself up about it yeah yeah I think so yeah um I think it's a really common phrase isn't it to hear that you're your own biggest critic and i think i'm probably less my own biggest critic than i was previously like when i first started in my presenting career and i used to come off air on the formula one i would solely focus

on the bad stuff on the issues on the problems and that was instilled in me by David Coulthard because he'd stepped straight out of a Formula One car, straight into broadcasting. And TV is a friendly and lovely place to be most of the time. You know, we're really good at telling each other how great we are. And we had our first production meeting just after the first race. And I was just grateful to get through it. It was my first ever bit of live Formula One. So I was just glad to have survived. So I was ready for this lovely you were great you were great you were great this was great we started the meeting david cool third went whoa whoa sorry can we just stop and this is unheard of he goes i'm just not interested in this and the producer was like

sorry i don't understand he's like i'm not interested in sitting here and going through all the good stuff how does going through the good stuff make the boat go faster why are we not talking about the bad stuff and that was a revelation for me i was like yes the good stuff's already good so you focus on the good stuff now i have a different mindset and bearing in mind my first race was 2009 so this is 11 years ago and a long time, my focus was on the stuff that I was struggling with or the stuff I wasn't very good at or the times where I didn't feel life was very good. So I would look at a bad month or a bad year and go,

right, why was I not flowing? Why was I not really in a happy place? Why was this? Why don't we focus more on the good stuff and that is my mindset change that is the thing that i for 2021 that is going to be my focus let's focus on the good stuff so we realize what the good stuff is and just do more of it let's focus on the times when you were flowing and when you were feeling great when you were barreling around the place and when you were the guy and when everyone wanted to work with you, what was I doing? What was I eating?

How was I sleeping? Who was I spending my time with? What was feeding me? What was making me feel fantastic? That's probably a better place to focus on. Particularly after the sort of crap 2020 we've all had, I feel we've become a nation, maybe even a planet with this like obsession on failure to not fail anymore, to good and it's almost like a badge of honor isn't it like i'm sure if you said to me three or four months ago

how's your relationship with failure my love failure love faith bring failure on that's how i learn failure is where i grow i need to be on the absolute edge so i'm failing all the time i want to fail forwards and i want to fail often like I still do but when I fail when I leave crumbs when I'm late for an interview with Matthew McConaughey I'm not thinking why did that happen because then I'm focusing on the failure I will allow it to be there and I will do my best not to do it again but I'm going to try for 2021 to think about the good stuff man and just to see how that changes things for me. Super interesting. You know, do you focus on your failure? Um, I, I don't focus on the failure. I think I was just, I was actually asking myself that question when you were, you were talking, I was thinking, do I,

am I someone that dwells on failure? To be fair, I don't, I'm very, very good at being detached from it all. I think I talked earlier in this podcast about this like, um um video game mentality that i've taken on my life where i see my my worst days and to be honest a lot of i think it's just my worst days as if i'm playing a video game and that i am i am not what's happening and it's and i and i think that detachment from what's happening has allowed me in my most chaotic moments to remain calm. It's allowed me to form a sort of calm within my chaos. So if I have a big failure or I really, really fuck up and I'm disappointed with myself or whatever, I'm very good at detaching from that. I think the absolute ownership of what you're doing for me is powerful.

Is that the total opposite of what you're doing for me is powerful which is is that the total opposite of what you're saying because i think like whatever i do i have to absolutely believe it and own that decision because then if it goes wrong or people question it i can say listen i really thought it was the right thing it's like the emotional detachment it's it means that i'm not i don't think that i'm going to die although i am totally responsible for changing it so i can think of i'm thinking specifically about the day where I was driving to work, get the emails and the text messages saying that our whole server has been hacked and every client we have has been sent

really, really personal, specific abuse by them from our email server that's come from my business partner's email that looks like it was meant to be sent to my assistant, but the client was just accidentally CC'd in. And this happened? This happened about four years ago, five years ago. So i'm driving to work and i'm getting all these and in that moment one has a choice whether they want to fall into the problem and become the problem and become consumed by it

or if they want to hold it out in front of them and deal with it there if it consumes me i'll be crippled with anxiety crying in the corner but if i can hold it out in front of me and realize that this isn't going to kill me this isn't going to end me yeah this isn't you know but this is something that i have to deal with out in front of me then it becomes much more um possible to be rational and to think in terms of probabilities and i've come to learn especially over the last year or two that when you can um make your decisions based on probabilities of the outcome you can make really really good decisions yeah um you know i was thinking a good example of that is actually um a friend of mine yesterday text me and he said to me that it's interesting he said to me that at his marketing agency his client's passwords have maybe been exposed to one outside individual

so there's one guy at another company that might have seen all of his clients passwords and he said steve i'm going to call all my clients now and tell them that all of their passwords have been exposed so i said let's go through the probabilities here if you lined up 100 people like the guy that might have seen these passwords how many of them would do something malicious with that information? We both agreed it was probably less than 1% of like reputable people that would take a bunch of passwords and do something malicious. So I said, okay, so one person out of a hundred or less. So your probability of harm is less than 1%. What's the probability of harm if you call all of your clients and tell them that all of their passwords have been leaked, probably greater than 1%.

Yeah. So let's think about ways we can get that less than 1% down to like zero. So I said, email all your clients and tell them you've done a security review and that you highly recommend they all turn on two-factor authentication today. And that means the probability of harm goes from less than 1% to zero. But he was like, in the emotional mindset, he was just like, I gonna call them all yeah apologize because he probably felt a duty of care but if you do the two-step authentication i suppose you're still it's like zero yeah yeah it moves it to zero percent it's a duty you're balancing their duty of care and you know how do i remove

harm from my clients but also remove harm from my business but he was so emotional when he called me that he wasn't thinking rationally yeah and that's why holding it out in front of you allows you to think in terms of rational probability perspective that perspective is so important to have like i've always had like this irrational fear of imminent disaster so when i was a kid i used to come in from school my mom would go and walk the dog and she might be 15 or 20 minutes most kids would just watch cartoons i would be like out the window after 10 minutes thinking, where's my mum? Where's my mum? And then these little voices come in my head,

oh, maybe something really bad's happened to her. Maybe she slipped over and banged her head. Or maybe she's lying in a field, right? I might have to go and find where my mum is. And then she reappears. I'm like, oh, thank goodness. Even now with my kids, if I'm out somewhere and they go round a corner, I don't just think to myself, I'll walk round the corner and my kids will be there

until I can see my kids again. And there might be parents listening to this that relate the worst possible things that could happen to one's children is a is happening to my kids until i can see them so i find myself like speeding up or saying to my friends yeah hey let's go and sit over here so we can keep just literally so i can keep an eye on the kids and then i'm a little bit of a hypochondriac so i fear that And then when my phone goes and or someone sends me a message going, hey, Jake, can we have a chat later? Like it could be someone from Whisper or it could be someone from BT Sport

or someone about the pod. I don't go, yeah, yeah, cool. I'll call you later. I'm like, oh, what could that be? My brain goes to worst case scenario and I found myself really quickly going, sorry, I just got a really important call to make. My heart's racing 10 to the dozen.

And then as soon as I find out what it is, I'm like, oh, thank goodness. Where does this come from? I don't know. Because there is no skeleton in the closet. Like a friend rang me the other day and the message that he gave me was he's separated from his wife,

which is massively sad. But he rang me and said, listen, I'm really sorry to call you with this quite awkward news. I'm immediately thinking, oh my goodness, right? What on earth can this be? But in my head, it's going to end everything. It's immediately thinking, oh my goodness, right, what on earth can this be? But in my head, it's going to end everything. It's going to cost me my marriage, my kids,

my job, my house. Isn't that ridiculous? But I now have the perspective that I know this is how I am. I've had this since I was like 11 or 12 years old. I know this is how I'm made. So that is a really powerful thing for me because I then think when I feel this feeling beginning, like when my kids go around a corner, I now say to myself, listen, your kids are going to be fine playing the other side of a tree. You know yourself well enough to know that this is just irrational anxiety. It's your brain and it's just playing a trick on you. That's all this is.

You talk a lot about responsibility. There you just said, this is how I'm made. Yeah. That sounds like giving up responsibility yeah yeah so how then i think i'm taking i yes you're right you are totally right but then i feel like i'm taking the response i'm slowly still learning even at 42 i'm taking the responsibility back by saying right i'm not going to allow myself to get anxious about that because i know what i'm like if i'm the most chilled out person in the world and i find a reason to be anxious maybe i should be worried about that i'm going

to tell them about the lift jake so we're on the fourth floor here and uh jake jake came up uh knocked on the door looking pretty sweaty and said i just took breath he said i just took the stairs because i opened the lift and i didn't trust it this lift there's never been any problems with it if you look at the stats around deaths in lifts or things it's like zero zero but you've got more chance walking down the street mate i looked at that lift i'm like you and me are not hanging out today that seems somewhat connected to what you're saying yeah i think you're probably right yeah maybe i should have taken the lift because i know that everything will be fine in the lift and i should know that i'm a bit claustrophobic but I think it just goes to show that again and you've spoken about this so powerfully over the years on your podcast

is that from the outside world you'd look at someone like me and think wow couple of kids few businesses great house nice broadcasting career what a lovely carefree life he must live every day man is riddled with little anxieties and little worries um a few years ago probably almost to the point of derailing as we've discussed on your previous podcast with me but now knowing myself knowing yourself is so powerful because only then like can you love yourself you think that's also somewhat linked to that you said earlier on about that comment you read where people are like jake you know you shouldn't be doing a podcast happy podcast and sad times basically yeah the fact that you remembered that and you referred to it as hurting you seems also somewhat correlated to this yeah i think i don't know

i think it's a i think it's a it's a fair point i find that a harder thing to get i find external criticism is a harder thing for me to deal with. I find that a more, I find that a more difficult thing to own in my head. Why? I think because probably human beings just want people to like what we're doing. I mean, I find it confusing as well because I think if you're being offended by my

high performance podcast, like, wow, that, that shows the level of offense that some people can take because i really want i honestly want it to just be a wholly positive experience from the moment that someone clicks subscribe or starts listening to the pod till the minute they leave i just i just want people to be happier to get takeaways to live a more empowered life to go and be

successful i honestly believe it like it come you've got thousands and thousands and thousands of reviews on your podcast yeah it's rated five stars people pour their heart out telling you how much they love it how much value brings and we're talking about this one guy i'm a human i suppose aren't i i think you slightly over index a little bit in terms of caring about this stuff though and i actually you know when people asked you know what you're like after meeting you i said he's just such a nice guy such a good guy and you are such a good guy and it's maybe that is part of i don't know is that somewhat connected to your i think so don't you think that the don't you think the two are completely connected though

that if i wasn't the kind of guy that genuinely wanted people to you're right be in a better place i wouldn't give a shit whether someone said my podcast was useless because i'd be like well i don't care anymore i'm just doing it to make some money for me that podcast and i will openly say this i've not made a penny from creating and operating for an entire year and we talk all the time that this is about the outcome not the income and and i think the reason why it has been successful is that whether it's me or whether it's damien or whether it's the guys that help us to film and edit the podcast together all of us totally believe and buy into what we're doing like i genuinely think that it is what people need to hear because it is empowering people

and go and do great things who have been you know a lot of my friends messaged me after you had johnny wilkinson yeah i bet they said that was fucking weird it was deep wasn't it i had to listen to that back five times and i did the interview you know what was remarkable i haven't heard it what was the surprising so the the bravery really from from someone who won aby World Cup as a certain person and now is a completely different person. I mean, I can give you like a sort of salacious headline, like he told us that winning the Rugby World Cup is no more important than doing the washing up. And the way that he squares that off in his mind is he says, what are you doing if you're playing rugby?

Moving your body to achieve a goal. What are you doing if you're doing the washing up? Moving your body to achieve a goal. And if I doing if you're doing the washing up? Moving your body to achieve a goal. And if I make winning the Rugby World Cup more important or to hold more value than doing the washing up and I'm no longer a rugby player, what am I less valuable? Because I'm no longer doing the thing that was more important. That is the sort of sentence that he was sharing with us,

which I think is brilliant and brave. And I can relate to it and i can understand it um but i think that for me the sort of the real the real revelation that came out of the johnny wilkinson episode and what i really want people to understand if they listen to it is that when you strip everything back he is someone who has totally changed from where he was when he was conquering the world because when he was conquering the world as a rugby player he thought he had to stress and struggle and sacrifice and fail and now he realizes that

stressing and struggling and sacrificing and failing leads to more stress and struggle and sacrifice and fail and actually one of the amazing things he said, he said, when I released a book after winning the rugby world cup, I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't a spike in mental health cases from people that read that book because the book was saying, you've got to struggle. You've got to struggle. You've got to, you've got to really struggle in life to be successful. And I think that that is something that I, when we first started the High Performance Podcast, I loved it when people spoke to me about the battle and the struggle and the strife and the sacrifice and the late nights and the early starts. Cause I wanted people at home to go, yeah, man, I'm going to work harder. I'm going

to commit more. I'm going to sacrifice more. i think that is so so so wrong that is the total antithesis of what i now the message i now want my podcast to give to people it's tough isn't it because it's hard to find someone who's been really successful at the very top of their game whether it's business or sport hasn't done that yeah so i've contended with this i've like contended mentally with this idea as well when again, again, when I started putting content out there, especially when I was really young, like 18, I was bragging about how late I was staying up. I was like, look at me at 4am and I'm still working. And I was doing that because I was trying to portray an image that I was, I don't know, a superhuman or something. And my content followed that theme. And then I got to

the point where i probably flipped the other way because of public pressure and people and the the world now thinks that if you go on the high performance podcast and say hard work really really matters you will take an out you are an asshole for saying that because you're going to make people depressed and anxious and you're a hustle porn star and then i got to another place which is if it's the truth it's the truth and i'm comfortable with the truth and so there's so many levels of nuance it's like the most successful people you'll encounter at the very top of their industries worked like hell to get there yeah it's you know will smith you know

sir clive woodward or um any anyone in it that's a very consistent theme elon musk right but but what i've come to do over the years is detach that from happiness first and foremost because it doesn't necessarily mean they're happier and then also redefine what success is because success can be being a great parent yeah what is it to you then it has to be happiness i feel like yeah that's my answer yeah that has to be because you can still have the hard work and you can still have the sacrifice but you don't have the struggle that's the that is the mistake i made i thought the struggle was part of the hard work and it was part of the early starts and the late finishes and it was part of sacrificing some things that's what i thought the high performance podcast was about but it isn't you're totally

right it's about happiness and you can still get up at five like i probably take too much on and i probably get up earlier than i need to and i go to bed later than i need to but i am so happy and that's what it has to be and it can't be happiness at the detriment of others happiness it has to be being happy it can't be happiness at the detriment of others' happiness. It has to be being happy, content with yourself, and spreading that happiness. And that, again, is something that Johnny Wilkinson spoke about, which for me has been one of the biggest revelations, being absolutely present, absolutely, totally present.

So when I'm here with you, my phone is down on the floor, and it's actually on silent, but it should be off, because I need to be totally present with you right now because what's happened is gone what's yet to happen which is me going off to do a game at bt sport is a story i can write that in my head if i like but i'm probably going to get it wrong because it hasn't happened yet exactly the way the day's going to go so i need to like look you in the eye right now and i can now promise you that on this podcast i am absolutely here with you. And it might be that in half an hour I leave,

but that's cool because then we're done and I'm then traveling. And then I'm totally present and I'm into that. And that is a really important thing that has, again, been a mindset change for me on the High Performance Podcast. And maybe, now I sit and talk to you, maybe this whole thing is like a totally selfish exercise for me

because I must have said four or five times that this podcast has rewritten the way that I see the world and the way that I operate. And I think maybe I want this podcast to be messages to my kids. Like I talk already about my anxiety. Probably another of my anxieties is how much longer am I going to be on the earth? You never know what's around the corner. I love the fact that if it all ended for me as I walk out onto Shoreditch High

Street today and a car comes along, what can my wife say to my kids? Oh, I don't know my dad very well. Listen to these 25 episodes. Listen to these 30 episodes of the High Performance Podcast. There's your dad. That's him.

You walk out of here today then. Yeah. Touch glass. And bus comes, boom. Yeah. Touch glass. And bus comes, boom. Yeah. It's over. What are the things you would regret not having done more of?

Travelling with the kids, probably, but they're only little, they're only young. It's such a hard question for me because I think probably maintaining relationships with people has always been an issue for me because I think I think probably um maintaining relationships with people has always been an issue for me because I failed my a-levels as you know at school so all my mates went off to uni so that was kind of lost because they went off having fun and I redid them and then I've always found that one of the issues with trying to really be present is that you're totally present in that part of your world at that moment and so I was then totally plugged into life on children's BBC and then I got this amazing opportunity at Formula One I was totally plugged into my life in Formula One and then I got you know a big opportunity at BT Sport and I had to make that work so then I was totally plugged into my new producers and my my new colleagues and you know I had a conversation with someone

the other day and they said you know like who you who are your real friends it's a hard question that for me once I moved beyond my wife because I've got four or five mates who I'm close with but they're I would probably name people that live on my street well I've only lived there for four years I might name a couple of parents on the school run, and my kids have only gone to that school for four years. I'd name a couple of people I've run my production company, Whisper, with, but that's only been going less than a decade. I'd now probably class Damien Hughes,

who I do the high-performance podcast with. Well, I've done that for less than a year, but I'm in this. And maybe that is possibly the only regret, I think. But maybe I don't need, I don't know. Maybe we don't need to hold onto people for too long. Maybe we have to accept that people come and go from our lives and that's okay. And do you think it's because you haven't sort of,

you said like you haven't prioritized investing in those relationships as much? I think it's because I'm always too invested in the thing that i'm doing at that moment like i am so absolutely committed to whisper coral eyewear a high performance podcast bt sport my kids my wife and my family there isn't an awful lot left, right? I guess the question, the better question to ask would be then, but are you happy? Because if that is the ultimate goal,

then, you know, society will tell you to live, have loads of friends and do this and have this car and whatever. But then the question, the most important is, are you happy? Happiest I've ever been. I am the happiest I've ever been. Yeah. So you've got to be doing something right right yeah i think yeah i mean i like i love what i do like i really

like work i like getting up early i like having five or six things on the burn all the time i like having a whole page of of jobs that i'm gonna do other people are not like that my wife is the opposite she's got four or five jobs she's like oh, oh man, I feel so stressed. I got, I don't want all this stuff. Whereas sometimes I sit there and I'm not making a list of big things on the horizon and I need to have a lot of them. And again, maybe I give a C to everything and I'd be better to have fewer things and give them all an A. Matthew McConaughey tells a great story about cutting off two of his big businesses because he was giving a B to five things and he wanted to be an A in three things.

The guests you've had on your podcast, all these wonderful people you've met, do you sometimes get the impression that some of them aren't that happy? Yes. Yeah. It's one of the things I've learned from doing this as well yeah it's really interesting and i totally get that everyone is everyone is in it for different reasons aren't they

like we spoke to sean wayne who and i would say you know sean wayne is not a household name he's one of the most successful rugby league managers in the uk but if someone wanted to get into the high performance podcast and they wanted like a first podcast to listen to, don't just go for the big names. I'm telling you now, Sean Wayne gave us the most moving and revelatory interview. And he, in his sort of broad Northern accent, he said, I'm not bothered about being happy.

He said, I'm not happy, I don't care about happy. And that was not, you know't i'm not bothered about being happy he said not not happy i don't care about happy and that was not you know happiness was not his thing he's con as soon as he achieved something within moments it's about the next thing and we sort of broke it down that he was very badly abused by his dad as a kid you know physically punched in the face by a big man often and that his entire life, his entire energy comes from wanting to redress the balance. And he's now a rugby league coach, the England rugby league coach,

because he has this deep-seated desire to make the lives of other people better. Now, he might personally never be happy after the story and the path that he's been through, but he's definitely making other people happy. And he is also totally comfortable with not being happy. Now, that's not everyone's story. That's his story.

But I certainly think that we, like in the past, we've thought that success and happiness are mutually exclusive. What do you want to be? You want to be successful? You want to be happy? we like in the past we've thought that success and happiness are mutually exclusive what do you want to be you want to be successful you'll be happy how wrong are we to think like that the very flame of success should be happiness that should be the absolute nub the crux of everything what's the point otherwise man what is the point i get that a lot with with guests that i've had on they seem to some guests seem to be very erotically obsessed with the next thing and the next thing and the next thing and the next thing and when you ask them to pause and reflect on a when this ends or um

or why they're doing it it always seems to flick back to their childhood eddie ham was the was the same um i know he's been on yours he was on mine last week and he, when I was talking to him about his aspirations for the future with Matchroom he says I want to sell for 5 billion and we'll do this and I said but why do you want to sell for 5 billion you're happy now, he goes we shouldn't be selling for 5 billion that's what I want to do, I go but why does that matter

and he goes back to his dad when he was younger he goes back to the fact that his dad used to criticise him and didn't give him praise and it's weird that those early moments have driven so and it's the same with me to be honest they drove this like obsessive desire to just keep climbing a never-ending mountain and that's the trend that i've seen in very successful guests and very successful people is often some kind of it's a strange thing to say but something that went not to plan yeah when they're younger seems to be the reason that we all adore them admire them

it's something that had hit them in their emotions or their wiring that sent them into an obsessive state in in that's never as good as you think it will be though you know when you get when you achieve those things that you want to achieve like the the biggest thrill i've ever had was when i spent 9 750 pounds on a green mgf it's my first ever car i can still remember the number plate p710 njn and i looked at that car i bought it from an elderly gentleman in colchester and i went to his house and i said i got a banker's draft and i was working on children's bbc and i remember he took me out to his house and i said i got a banker's draft and i was working on children's bbc and i remember he took me out to his garage and you know those old like um fluorescent light strips they flicker before they come on i remember it's still on my head as vivid as the day it

happened the light flicking and just lighting the car up for a second and then it goes down and i looked at it and i was like i cannot believe now fast forward to where i am now you know a successful tv presenter invested in coral eyewear run a podcast um have two beautiful children um have a production company the kids and my personal relationships are aside from this because that is that is on a deeper level than anything else. But in terms of material successes, nothing, and I mean nothing, man. Nothing has come close to spending less than 10 grand on a green MGF. So you've got to enjoy the journey.

You've got to enjoy the travel because A, it's not as good when you get there as you think it will be. B, you spend an awful lot more time getting there than arriving. Like, you have to answer this totally honestly you have you've have you totally left social chain now yeah with money in the bank yeah that you wouldn't have had if you hadn't walked away from that business right yeah what is more thrilling to you to look at your bank account now and see the number in the bank account or to know the journey you went on with social chain oh yeah of course i mean the bank could be double triple quadruple ten times it wouldn't matter if i said to you if i came to you in manchester when you went to nab frozen pizza just to feed yourself and i said listen dude you can either absolutely work your nuts off for the

next 10 years might build a business hang out with people develop some good relationships or i'll just bang a hundred million your bank account today it's an hundred mil there you go yeah and now here you are you've got the hundred mil and the thrill came from the journey there's something like i'm always conscious of my own like hindsight bias because it seems to be the case that every broke person um goes on the journey to get rid you know that ends up being successful they get the money they go it doesn't matter but it's a wonderful thing to say when you have you right like part of the reason it doesn't matter is because there's so much of it now it really mattered when i was stealing those pizzas right and when i was like going behind the sofas in this pub looking for the pound coins and i found 13 pound coins so i went back the next day and like

it really really mattered it's in fact it was all that mattered you know in that moment so i'm super conscious of that bias that we have because um and you should be by the way and we we are the same on high performance when i say or you know you need to have the bad times to appreciate the good times and um the the the traumas and the difficult things will will equip you for the rest of your life i honestly know that there are people that would listen and go hold on a minute middle class white guy from a lovely village in norfolk yeah you've had a few issues with mental health and bullying and as you know the death of my grandma which was quite tragic and things like that you haven't really struggled yeah so then i think it's important that we uh we've done an interview that we haven't put

out yet for the podcast with seo colisi first ever black springbox captain and he tells us a story in the podcast about not being able to sleep at night because his stomach hurt so much because he was so hungry so his grandmother gave him sugar water just to get him to school so he could have a day at school and she died in his arms at eight years old when he sits on the podcast and says he will go through some really dark and difficult horrendous times you know he grew up in the most deepest poverty you could imagine in south africa when he sits there and goes and get through it and you can use it as a flame and a fire that is i think when you listen it's um i but i have to say i also completely agree that uh you know the things that have mattered most to me professionally especially as i reflect have been doing as you say doing work i love but then like doing it with people i love um and a mission that's worthwhile and

this has always been people talk about this topic of burnout a lot. And I tend to believe, and I'd like to get your opinion on this. I tend to believe that burnout is somewhat inevitable if you're doing things that you don't intrinsically love doing, especially if you're doing it with people you don't really, really love as well. And I feel like in any facet of your life,

if you're doing it too much, you don't enjoy it, the outcome is burnout. But is burnout a topic that's been sort of prevalent on your podcast? No, you know, I suppose partly the reason why burnout hasn't come up very often is because we're talking to people who are in the midst of their successes or who have been successful. And they love what they're doing.

And they love what they're doing. They're full of passion. Whereas people who have perhaps tried to do something that wasn't quite right and have suffered burnout and it hasn't worked, we don't know about them because the burnout ended the dream. It's so funny. That's such a good point.

That the fact that you haven't had that come up as a topic on a podcast that speaks to people who have clearly been intrinsically driven by their passion to the very top of their game. Passion is everything. You know, you say you spoke to Eddie Hearn. What's his podcast? No passion, no point.

I mean, he is a great advocate of finding something that you believe in. But I also get that, again, you had a real passion for what you do. Like, I honestly, like, I have such a deep love and a passion for all the things that I'm involved in. Because if I didn't, then I wouldn't do them or I'd try and find something else. But there are times in my life where I've done certain things like I don't,

as a TV presenter, you often get asked to do like corporates, you know, standing up at awards and things like that. And you need to welcome people up on stage and shake hands, have a photo. And I find them a real struggle. I don't know why, I just don't get a thrill out of doing those things.

So that's a good thing for me because I I've noticed that's something I don't like. And that for people that are listening to this thinking, yeah, but what, what's my passion? Like, what am I? One of the, one of the really good ways of finding you is to look at all the things that is not you. Who are the people that don't make you feel good? What are the days when you feel drained and exhausted? What are the, the trips or the phone calls or the conversations or the lunches where you leave thinking, every time I see that person, I feel like this. If you can see the stuff that isn't good for you and strip that stuff away, you will eventually, and it might take a while, be left with who you are.

And that's the time to really then think, right, what am I about? What am I as a person because i don't think you you can obviously get tired and you can be ill and you can have problems but i think with real passion i don't think you suffer burnout because every day i seem to get this like so you've not got kids yet right but when you do you have a you have a when my daughter was born i love her with every piece of my heart right i had this real fear that when my son was born where's the love gonna come from are you joking yeah no you do there's a fee that is a it's a quite a common thing for parents like my daughter had every single bit of love in my body so my wife obviously

we're we're really super close but love for your child is very different it feels very different from the moment that child is born and i could not have loved my daughter not one percent more so then my son is about to be born my daughter's gone off to the grandparents and i'm watching my wife in labor thinking i've got nothing left for for sebastian what's this about sebastian's born and within two seconds i love him equally so there's no diminishing of the love for my daughter not one bit but all this new love has just appeared out of nowhere and i could love my son exactly the same how is that possible and it is exactly the same when you have a real passion or a real love for

something like every day that i get up and i'm making phone calls or i'm having conversations or i'm you know brainstorming or blue sky thinking or thinking about guests or heading to do live television it's all filled it's filled up again i'm full i'm ready to go you know i don't feel like i'm like the cup is draining slowly because I love the stuff that I'm doing. And that's a great point because I think people tend to believe that passion is a singular thing. Yeah. And they're searching for it aimlessly

like it's an Easter egg hidden somewhere. And then you can drain it. You can't drain your passion. Yeah. You can have multiple passions. And yeah. And, you know, you've met a ton of, you know, high profile people on your,

you know, from your presenting career but also from your podcast i'm sure you've come across a bunch of assholes as well yes i'm not gonna ask you to i'm not gonna ask you to name them holly tucker on apple came out with it you know holly tucker she created not on the high street.com yeah she said i'd rather have a hole than an asshole in other words i would rather hang out with no one than hang out with someone that I don't like, which I thought was a good one. But then Matthew McConaughey said,

do you want an asshole or an idiot? Give me the asshole, because at least you know where you stand. Really? Yeah. Interesting. So he was like, at least, and I do relate to that somewhat.

The people that i really struggle with in my life are the people who one day you see them and they're like your best mate the next day it's like you've never met them before i do struggle with that i i like to know where i stand with people i'm cool if you want if you and me want to have like a distant professional relationship and you'll send me a text saying happy new year hope the podcast goes well maybe hook up sometime in 2021 and we never see each other socially and you come back on high performance i come back on here and we use to and fro a bit professionally that's absolutely that is cool what i don't want is hey let's have a coffee do you

want let's meet up in london yeah great oh man it's so nice to see you so how's things how's life you know we chat a bit more have you got a partner how's your dog how's your life and then you hear nothing for six months and you think whatever happened to that dude and then they reappear again i'm so sorry for not texting you back there's the truth i feel like you're shouting there's the there's the difficult thing for me not knowing where i stand with people i you know i don't want to be everyone's best friend but i do want meaningful relationships with people and they can be meaningful from a distance or super intense on that point of as well i think um what made you what made you ask that i just i just one of the things i could you know what it is i remembered one day

you meet a lot of people on when you do this podcasting thing and you you have an initial perception of how they're going to be and then you meet them and sometimes you know sometimes they're i actually don't think i've had them. And sometimes, you know, sometimes they're assholes. I actually don't think I've had anyone on the podcast that was an asshole, but I have had experiences. I remember this one day I got on this plane. I think it was Flying Emirates or Virgin or something. And in front of me, I saw that guy from, the food guy,

the guy that eats all the food on TV. Someone give me his name. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Everyone on the podcast is screaming. Man versus food guy. Yeah, man versus food. I met him on the show, but I don't know his name oh um yeah yeah yeah um everyone in the podcast is screaming man versus food guy yeah man versus food i'm in the show but i don't know his name yeah and i don't care about saying this um and we run this huge food channel at social chain so we have you know tens of millions of followers on a food channel so i text the food team i'm like oh my god he's on the plane they said i'll go up go up and ask him a question which is a question we always ask guests on our food

channel so i went over to ask him this question he which is a question we always ask guests on our food channel. So I went over to ask him this question. He was sat in business, I was sat in business as well. And he's just, he just, he looks at me and goes, listen, give me a second, okay? And I'm like, whoa. So I walked back to my chair and I have to tell the 500 people in this like company group. Oh, so I went up to him and this

person that you all absolutely love I've he's just cussed me out um and he will never know the impact he had on me all the 500 people that I then told and also the you know hundreds of thousand people that I'm telling right now um have you got to the point though where you're brave enough to call that sort of stuff out because I think that is the important thing. When he does it to his face. Yeah. For me, that would be like ego. What, ego from you?

Yeah. It would be like, do you know who the fuck I am? Or it'd be like, why are you saying that? For me, the piece was like no reaction. Yeah. Because there was no win. There was no win in me calling him out. I wasn't going to win.

So the win for me was saying, okay, no worries. And me me going back to my chair and also not letting it ruin my day um but i but i'm sure you the reason i asked you the question is because you have tons of guests in your presenting career but also your podcast when you encounter an arsehole um i guess how do you deal with it you just know that you're there for a stop not a stay i think and you um does it break your heart a little bit sometimes um when it's someone that you uh admired yeah i suppose so i suppose i don't worry too much about it because i just think do you know what you can you're just not for me and also like who am i to sort of judge whether their behavior is arseholery? If it's clearly rude and unfair and unkind, absolutely. I now feel like I'm 42 and I'm a parent and I want my kids to operate in a world where they can be themselves and they can't be bullied or pushed around.

I think I'm old enough now, and I definitely wasn't like this a few years ago where I can hold my chin up and say, that behaviour is really not acceptable. Would you call someone out? But I wouldn't do it in an arrogant look at me. I'm a sort of being a dick

where I just say, listen, I just think that behaviour isn't acceptable. And have you done that? Yeah. To someone? Someone I work with, yeah.

In your presenting career? Yeah. Name and address? I'm joking., yeah. In your presenting career? Yeah. Name and address? I'm joking. And actually, do you know what you find is that often, I've done it twice, and both times they've gone, yeah, I'm really sorry, that is actually unacceptable. I mean, we had an interesting experience

because my wife used to work in production. So she was a production secretary, which is not very high up the ladder of people in television so her she was a production secretary which is not very high up the ladder of people in television and i was a presenter so she would be looking after um security taxis tickets logistics clothing call times all the stuff that makes television happen but is not the glamorous side and the number of times i would say oh i met this person today aren't they great and she'd be like really and then we would meet those people and i'd be like oh yeah i think you know my wife harriet they were like oh right yeah hi you guys love to come around sometime for some food and harry's like that's not how they were really when they thought i was just sorting

out their travel and that is the definition of an arsehole yes i think it is because you just treat everyone the same man and they're treating you well because you can potentially benefit them in some way i don't know it's weird isn't it like why i've got a job on the television why treat me any differently because you're more connected and you can that is what really annoys me we see that in our and i saw that in my business over the years. And I came to believe that even with me leaving the business, it won't break the business. But I do believe that like,

so I believe one person leaving a business doesn't break it. And you can apply this to your relationships, your life, your friendship circle. But an asshole staying can. Me leaving the business, I don't actually think will be as detrimental to a couple of assholes staying in the business. Not that there are any, but.

I know what you mean. Yeah yeah don't you think though like this is like it sounds naive and churlish and a bit childish probably from a 42 year old bloke that has a decent career and runs a few businesses but like i honestly think that we do have the power to make the world positive and happy despite all the issues because all you have to do is worry about your immediate circle and that is why i get frustrated with people who spread negativity and criticism and i just i've just got no space in my life now for negativity from people because i just think if let's say that i know seven people and i just say do you know what i'm gonna really radiate a positive energy i'm going to lift them up i'm not going to be critical i'm going to do everything i can to make them feel like a million dollars the only agreement is that they have to do the same and you say that to those

people listen i'm going to do this thing i'm going to be really super positive and i'm going to do everything i can to help you and if you ever need something i'm going to be the person that comes and helps you out all i'm asking is that you do it for the people in your circle be the change thing how quick that would radiate yeah so my seven so if i go if each of them goes to seven do you know what i mean yeah no and it just feels stupid doesn't it that's that's what karma is yeah you know i don't believe in wishy-washy karma is in like oh if i help a lady then someone's going to help me in the future but i think from a logical perspective if i help everyone encounter, maybe they'll be more helpful. And that can make its way back round to maybe my niece, you know.

It's true. I just, I can't see any benefit, any benefit to criticism and negativity and like driving other people down. Someone that feels better for driving someone else further down is like, for for me the absolute epitome they are the worst of the worst you ever get jealous be completely honest uh yeah um i get

jealous but i only ever get jealous through comparison and that is ridiculous you know but it's the nasty is it the nasty jealous where you're like why have they gotten yeah probably yeah yeah but you got but i think that is innate i think that is almost there i am giving up responsibility again for someone that talks about 100 responsibility but i think that it's innate in human nature to to compare and to contrast and look at someone else so it's not a very long experience for me i will look at someone and i'll go but hey listen i'm so happy and i've got all this i'm gonna and actually sometimes i look at life as I'll go, but Hey, listen, I'm so happy. And I've got all this. I'm going to, and actually sometimes I look at life as a graph and you literally don't know where life is going

to take you. So let's say like the people that I now sit with in a TV studio, like, um, I sit with, let's say when I, when I had Robin Van Persie, Steven Gerrard and Rio Ferdinand were all the pundits on BT Sport. There was a time where all three of those were three of the most famous footballers in the country, earning phenomenal sums of money, competing on the world stage, representing their country. And I was a guy post A-level failure, trying to sort of find a job and earning £6,000 a year. And there was a time where they were there and i was there and our graphs over the time have done and whatever's happened look where i've ended up sitting next to them on a tv studio now it may well be that they go up there again and something happens to me and i go down here or it might be that i do that and

they do that but you never know where that graph is going to go and that is what i think is that for me is one of the most exciting things about this world that we live in like you are only one step away from a phone call where someone goes hey guess what and your graph goes so don't worry about where other people are on that graph because it might be in five years time you're right alongside them i guess that's where that that hate a lot of the hate comes from so if you take the jealousy feelings that even you have as you know one of the nicest people i know and you just you know times it by 10 but you know and that's the you know people feel a certain way about their lives and how their lives are going but that's because it's it's chucked in our faces all the time yeah what is instagram if it isn't at all for comparison

what is it why are you having a great day and we i and i we're jealous of that i'm not jealous but we're guilty of it making other people feel jealous, but we're guilty of it. Making other people feel jealous of what we do. We went out for a, we went for a couple of days away as a family to a lovely hotel called Clifton. And it was lovely, but the kids for some reason were just badly behaved. And it does happen sometimes.

And we had this meal, it was breakfast actually. And they were like, it took ages for the food to come. And the kids were like climbing the wall. And I was having to say to the waiter, I'm really sorry, but like, we've been waiting for 20 minutes, which is fine for me and my to come and the kids were like climbing the wall and i was having to say to the waiter because i'm really sorry but like we've been waiting for 20 minutes which is fine for me and my wife but the kids yeah they need they and it was a posh hotel where you're trying to say do you get to just stay at the table sit and sit nicely don't make too much noise

and then at the end of it i was stressful man and i said hey i'll tell you what the family will want to know where we are so i'll get my phone out and I go, kids, kids, just smile. And we take a photo and we put it, we have a family WhatsApp group with Harriet's mum and dad, my mum and dad, all the cousins, all the aunts and uncles, right? We're all smiling, everything looks great. Just had a lovely breakfast at the hotel, I said. And then we get loads of messages back, like from people like my sister going,

oh, your life always looks perfect. And my brother going, oh, another great day for you. And I and now I think actually yes like I've just given them an absolute falsification of what my Sunday morning at the Clifton house was like that was a stressful hour and I've taken the one thing that wasn't stressful why have I put that in the group why haven't I just gone hey guys hope you're having a good Sunday call we've just had a shit half an hour here having some breakfast but hey don't we all that's and that's what we all do all the time why else do all the people you follow on instagram put the things they put out there i i've you know i think the world has somewhat flipped is flipping back the other way in the sense that when we all started instagram it was this new

thing you had these filters and it was like show the best holiday you've ever had in your life to the world that was kind of the that's the thing you'd get the rewards for and that represents in terms of being able to relate to that or it's like 0.0 percent of the viewer's life like most of our lives the 99 of our lives as i've said in this podcast before it's like eating the pot noodle in bed and now i see that the win with personal branding and building um an instagram page is the antithesis of showing that is like i've just woken up with my face covered in spots in fact the last you know two two podcasts ago we had chrissy on here who's like a superstar influencer entrepreneur and i was trying to understand why her community are so engaged with her so engaged with her versus even like even

compared to mine or other people's and it's because she wakes up in the morning. She goes, my face is covered in spots. Oh my God, I'm not going to put the filter on today. And you see the spots on her face and stuff like that. And then she'll cry on her Instagram story because her best friend lost her mother. And you really can resonate with that. And also the amount of supply on social media

of that realness is low. Demand is super high because it represents the 99% of our lives. Supply is super low. And people, Joe Wicks is the same. He will tell you everything. I feel like shit today. And people just,

and that's the thing I think you can form a bond with, a real deep bond. So even as i reflect on my instagram now i said to my team earlier this week i'm like i need to like go on my instagram story more and do a lot of the stuff that i do on the podcast which is just like telling you the shit stuff too yeah um and so i i said this yeah if you want to build a personal brand i'm like you know you really need to get comfortable with that make you. Would that make you happy, though? Let's go back to where we began. Would it make me happy?

Yeah, because I know that it would not make me happy. My Instagram isn't a lie. It is real, but it's real with the things I choose to share, basically. Do you know what I mean? By the way, can I have my lunch? Can I indulge? It's actually, yeah, this one actually arrived this morning. What is it, this one?

This is very... I've not had one I was buzzing for you though when I saw that you got Huel to speak to it's just great I was panicking I'd undone it and I was going to flip

Huel all over your lovely rug in here doesn't matter that'll be a cool piece of promo nutritionally complete drink yeah yeah yeah

I think it's great man so I've eaten nothing today what's the time it's vegan 20 past one so this is perfect for me now this is my lunch and my breakfast try it let me know what you think this is my favorite flavor of all that's good and if you have this all day um which i don't know if that's

to be recommended but all of your sort of essential minerals are in there vitamins high in protein so it's 20 grams of protein at the same time. Slow-releasing carbs. Spilt a bit on your really lovely glass table. It's fine, don't mind. Low sugar, gluten-free. Yeah, it's great. That's nice.

It's lovely, yeah. And I drink it because I skip meals. That's how I first came across you. Well, I'm trying to intermittently fast because I've seen other people's six-packs on social media and they make me feel at me okay they make me feel like i just need to you know right why do you feel the need to share more of yourself on instagram like so yeah so what's the benefit the benefit is if i share more of my truth all the the tough stuff which is pretty much why i started the podcast in the first place i feel that i'm helping a lot of people and do i enjoy helping people and getting um

and helping them overcome their problems yes yeah i mean but you do that already on this podcast yeah but i don't do it on instagram and i think that do i want to have a deeper connection with my audience on instagram yes what am i doing on instagram predominantly just posting quotes to be honest so if i want to have a deeper connection with my audience on Instagram? Yes. What am I doing on Instagram? Predominantly just posting quotes, to be honest. So if I want to have a deeper connection with my audience on Instagram, then I should go deeper with them as I do on this podcast, because the podcast audience are like a cult, you know, they're super engaged because of the depth and the realness. So I think it would make me happy in the long run. There's a must be a reason I don't do it. That's a good point. I mean, it's been a huge revelation for me doing a podcast because when you're a

football presenter, you don't get nice messages on Instagram. You don't get like an engaged core saying this resonated with me. That resonated with me partly because you're not the story you're there to facilitate former pros to be the superstars. I mean, I liken my job on the football to like being a referee. If I'm not seen, that's probably a good thing. I make them look good. I make them feel good. And people, let's be totally frank, tune in to watch a game. More people will tune

in for Man United than will tune in for Norwich City. More people won't tune in for me because I'm just the facilitator. Whereas with the podcast, the nicest thing has been this genuine conversation connection, like creation of a proper community. And that's, that's been a totally new thing to me. Like I thought I knew everything there was to know about broadcasting and, you know, with a million followers on Twitter and an Instagram account and running a tv production company and being a tv presenter like i knew what it was about i knew how to connect to people never known anything like it never seen feedback like it never had fulfillment like it it's amazing

it is something crazy about podcasting though versus all other channels i think it's that depth the messages you get if i post something on Instagram, I'll get a, I can totally relate. The podcast, you get a like essay about, you know, they return with their story. Yeah.

And it's like depth begets depth. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I totally see what you're saying. And I, and it's, it stops it from like,

cause when I first started the High Performance Podcast, I wanted it just to be me opening up amazing people to benefit other people. And I will now admit part of the thrill of that podcast is seeing the response and seeing the reaction. And I'm not foolish enough to think that isn't my ego at work. It absolutely is my ego that likes it.

But it is amazing when you see hi i listened to your podcast and i changed jobs after wanting to do it for 20 years hi i listened to your podcast and i've quit doing something that's been bad for me for my whole life i've reached out to create relationships with people that are allowed to die from listening to our podcast bloody hell what's the most emotional moment you've had with a guest that you can recall on on the podcast is there a particular moment that you know yeah there's quite a few times that i've kind of um that i've sort of edged towards tears and i think you know someone i've already mentioned Sean Wayne you know when

when someone talks to you about that sort of the devastation of being physically abused by a parent and I suppose what was emotional for me was the was the learning during the interview with Sean and I knew very little about him before we spoke the learning that all of the good stuff he's done you know he talks about if he's got an issue with one of his players he doesn't just have a chat with them after training he turns up at their house in the evening he says what's the deal man how can I help how can I solve this um and he is now a parent himself and a really loving and caring parent to have the start in life that Sean had and to for your whole life to be about helping other people that was like that was a that was a hugely moving conversation with

him yeah I think all of all of the guests I've had that have um moved me in the same way it's almost identical it's nice isn't it I don't know whether you're like this with podcasts but I love that we have footballers on and don't know whether you're like this with podcasts but i love that we have footballers on and don't talk about football we have rugby players on and don't really talk about rugby um we just talk about it my podcast is a podcast about life exactly like this one is and we were talking before we started recording today about the the desire to try and avoid the typical talking points with guests and i think this is maybe just a general a general point for people that are trying to start a podcast you know um there are

so many podcasts out there yeah and in order to what would your tips be then for someone who's considering starting a podcast from what you've learned in your 30 or you know you've you've recorded i think total of 50 so far but yeah we started that live what tips would you give to someone who's thinking of starting their own first of all go for it because i honestly what i honestly was this close to not doing it the great thing about podcasts that you that i didn't have in my life was ownership so i'd spent my career working for children's bbc working for formula one and the bbc working for the premier league on bt sport and i sat down with someone they said oh like how's your career and working for Formula One and the BBC, working for the Premier League on BT Sport. And I sat down with someone and they said,

like, how's your career? And I said, yeah, it's great. Like, I'm really happy. I love doing the football. I love being with the players and everything. And they said, well, if you've got a phone call tomorrow to say that that had ended, what would you be left with?

And I was like, hmm, I don't know. I have to go and find another job. And they said, so what do you own of all these years of graft and hard work, like what's yours? And the answer was nothing. And then their next question, they, you know, they obviously knew what they were talking about. They said, what do you really want to do?

And I said, well, I don't really care if Liverpool beat Man United or Norwich City beat Ipswich, not really. But I love like the effort and the grafts. And I love sitting with the pundits. I love the way that Rio Ferdinand and Steven Gerrard watch a game of football. I love how they turn up looking smart. Or they bring their own food in little plastic containers still. Or the day that I first met Lewis Hamilton.

And he walked in the room. And he, like, took off his watch. And he didn't just chuck his watch on the side. He got it. And he closed up the clasp. And he put it down. it down and he moved it and he got his little bracelet off and he went and he took his but i just looked at i thought ah that desire for perfection that elite mindset mentality i said to them that's what i want i want to speak to elite performers and elite thinkers because i think that everyone can benefit from that.

Everyone can think and operate and perform better because there's no tricks. There's no secrets. Like you just need to have the passion and go out and do it. And I said, well, then that's what you should do. Do a podcast. So that was it.

Right. Great. I'm doing a podcast. And then I mentioned it to a couple of people and they went, why you can't do a podcast. I was like, why? Because everyone does podcasts.

Like there's literally so many podcasts. You can't, you're not going to make a splash. There's thousands of podcasts. And then I rang an old friend of mine from children's BBC and she is, I don't have really even ever told her this, but she's the reason I do the podcast. Fern Cotton, who does happy place. I said, Hey, I think I'm doing a podcast. Now she is such a nice person. She is not the sort of person to go, Oh does Happy Place. I said, hey, I'm thinking of doing a podcast. Now, she is such a nice person.

She is not the sort of person to go, oh, hold on. A rival podcast. She'd never even consider it. She went, oh my God, you'd be great at doing a podcast. She spoke about what it was about. And I said, but my issue is I just think that there's loads of them out there. And then she was the one that said, look, we worked together at Children's BBC. Television had been invented for 50 years.

There must have been hundreds of channels, thousands of programs. Did you think I'm not going to work in telly because there's already loads of TV programs? No, of course you didn't. You just thought, well, I'm going to work in telly and make my mark. She said, you need to do exactly the same thing

with your podcast. So the first thing is you have to do your podcast. You have to go out and do it but the second that's the biggest challenge though isn't it starting it's just in every facet of life yeah entrepreneurs contact me and i'm like the biggest risk you face of all the things that might yeah but i think you can do a podcast risk-free though you know you can spend a very minimal sum of money if any money at all on on the equipment 100 but then you can you can so cheap yeah no you can, you can. So cheap.

Yeah. No, you can start, you could do a great podcast in terms of sound quality with less than a hundred pounds. Yeah. The risk though is overthinking it to the point of procrastination, to the point of like paralyzing yourself.

I think in all facets of life, business, my DMs are full of people that are like, Steve, I want to start a business. I have an idea. I want to start a of life, business, my DMs are full of people that are like, Steve, I want to start a business. I have an idea. I want to start a podcast or this project, but there's just this one problem, which is preventing me starting. And I always say the biggest risk of the success of your business, the number one thing that's going to stop you becoming a billionaire, honestly, is the probability that you'll just never start. And also that you'll think you need all of the answers

to all of the questions you have before you start yeah well i don't know this i don't have the funding i don't like when i started my business i was 18 didn't know the word entrepreneur no money went on google and typed in like how to build a website spent three months googling it but that was me starting you know um and i think it's the same with podcasting i'm like my first episode was dog shit i was downstairs in some cars we tell you we say the first is the worst you know that's the way it is that's the way it has to be but the point is you got going you started and i think you need to begin and then you need to be consistent and you need to keep going and don't expect instant success and instant gratification but i think the other thing for it like i get a lot of i get a lot of people sending me letters

saying i want to be on the television and i always reply in the positive because i always say well someone has to be doing my job in 20 years time when i'm 62 i will not be presenting the premier league on bt sport i just won't be. Someone has to be. Could be you. Why not make it you? Make the decision now that it's going to be you that's the next well-known sports TV broadcaster. And then I'll remind them that when I started out in 1998, 99, to be on the telly, to be a broadcaster,

you actually needed a job. That was not very easy to go and get. Now you can pick up your phone and you're a broadcaster. You can have a YouTube channel. You can have an Instagram handle. You can have a Twitter page. You can have a podcast as long as you've got a passion because you then funnel everything into that passion and everything feeds everything else. So the Instagram handle points people towards the podcast. The podcast is fantastic. So people go and watch the podcast that you've recorded on YouTube. And then you start to build an audience there and you make a little bit of

money and it slowly starts to build be consistent but have the passion have the thing that's different like i will get maybe 10 times a week hi jake um i just wonder whether you would come and be on our podcast we just want to talk about you know your journey and how you got to where you are now it'd be really great to have a chat. And you roll your eyes. And it's like, man, you've got to be better than that. Everyone can go and have a conversation

about your journey and the highs and the lows and the struggles. What's the niche? What's the thing? Yeah, so tell me, tell me what someone would have to say to you

that has basically no listeners or is starting out that would make you go on their podcast. Because I can't be absolutely absolutely definitely about their passion. And I have done plenty of podcast interviews in the last year where there hasn't been a big audience, but I've really loved the fact that the person has come to me and known a lot about me and said,

I really want to explore this particular area with you. I think just the broad brushstroke of, can we just talk about your inspiration and talk about your upbringing and talk about how you first got into broadcasting yeah let's like I'm a bit like this now in everything I do

like even when I'm broadcasting I'm not interested in can Man United win the league I am much more interested in looking at one of the players Marcus Rashford for example and having a really proper

deep conversation with Paul Scholes and Rio Ferdinand, like explain to me how hard it is for him to concentrate on football when he's got so many people criticizing him on social media for doing the school dinners or how difficult is it for him to run out to Old Trafford and really perform at a high level when he hasn't got 80,000 people? How much of a difference does it really make to have the crowd at Old Trafford there inspiring you and driving you on? Like that is a much, much more of an interesting conversation

for me because it feels much more real than just the general stuff. So that would be my advice to people is make it really specific, make it really passion based. And there's that bit you said about like having, you want them to show evidence that they've done their research on you so because listen people send emails invite you onto a podcast or dms whatever but most of our lives um and the success of our lives as least as i can recount it in my journey has been predicated on me knowing how to ask someone for something that they really didn't have a huge clear incentive to give me, but asking in the right way.

So we're not just talking about inviting Jake onto podcasts here. We're talking about how you ask for something, how you knock on a door that, you know, maybe is a bit above you at that point. I think that often you get a lot of respect there just for asking the question. And I think the other thing is for people to remember when they're in our position, you've been in that position as well. Like you have been there.

And don't expect them to be perfect, by the way. Like everything that you now find easy about sitting here and recording this podcast, once you didn't find easy. Yeah. You found it a struggle. That's the really important point. And those people are often right at the beginning of their journey and they're finding their way.

And why can't you give them 10 minutes? Even if you can't go on their podcast, Stephen, why can't you just go, do you know what, just give me your number. I'll give you 10 minutes. 10 minutes of your day is nothing. Could change their entire life. So there's a lot of people asking for 10 minutes. This is the problem. And if you add it up, there's, then we don't have much time left for anything else. And I sometimes think to myself, if I gave all of these people 10 minutes, I wouldn't be the type of person that they'd be asking for 10 minutes. You can't do stuff you don't have time to do but you probably can do 10 minutes once in a while a couple of times a day yeah the thing that annoys me a couple of times with the dms that i get once in a while yeah once a couple times a

day yeah and i do anyway yeah do you know i'm doing it anyway for like i told you about my friend that called me with a problem like so i i give him 20 minutes to solve the problem with him i'm doing that all day every day and my employees all at Social Chain now that I've left contact me more than I think they did when I was there asking me how to solve problems with each other, with the company what should we be doing so I still feel like I'm mentoring a lot of people

Don't always look for the instant value in stuff No I know that's super important When someone rings you and goes Stephen I know I'm at Social Chain and I know I wasn't very high up the chain at Social Chain, but I know you've left. I fucking love what you did. Just a couple of quick questions, right?

Yeah. You might look at it and go, do you know what? I remember that person. I just haven't got the time. I've got to get in the gym. Right. Let's say you did.

Yeah. What you've done is you've seen the value to you in that moment of giving them 10 minutes of your time. What about if that person then goes on and thinks, wow, I've been so impressed by what i've done at social channel i'm going to set up my own business i'm going to do this and suddenly the snowball effect comes and then in a couple of years time you get the phone call steve and i'd love you to be on the advisory board of this business i set up because i actually set it up because you gave me a bit of inspiration a few years ago there's the value you never see it's invisible if you don't give them the few minutes

at that time i call it hand it out man invisible pr yeah you never see it in the value you'd never see. Yeah, it's invisible. If you don't give them the few minutes at that time. Just hand it out, man. Invisible PR. Yeah. You never see it in the moment. You never see the impact it's having. But when it matters the most, it will show up. So for example, the guy I told you about from Man Vs Food, we have a huge food channel

and we're looking for hosts for this food channel that would potentially get paid a ton of money. And in that one moment, he will never see- He saw the value giving you 10 seconds in that moment and there was no value yeah but now he's clearly going to be excluded from the process of deciding who hosts the food channel just because of that 10 second he'll never know because it's invisible pr um but i'll tell you what does make me annoyed is i'll get messages from someone and i'll say steve i swear to god i got this message iotted it and said it's my friends because it's synonymous of the wrong approach.

Steve, I'd love to know how you did what you did. I've produced thousands of videos, podcasts, interviews, blogs on how I did what I did. There's actually a video called like how I bought a 200 million pound company or whatever. And for me, when someone says that, i think you don't actually want to know because if you really wanted to know you would have put that into google yeah or you would have put more effort in you're being super lazy and then i said to the guy i saw i was you know fine got the video where i explained

how i did what i did what i did and i sent it to him he goes oh you know you should write a book have a book maybe he just doesn't yet know what he doesn't know and if you showed him these these little bits in 10 years time he'd be embarrassed and maybe if you looked at some of the early interactions you had with people you'd be embarrassed about what you I know I would some of the emails I sent I've I so I've a really old hotmail account that i've had literally since the beginning of time and i don't use it anymore but sometimes it's quite cathartic for me to go back into that hotmail account zoop back to the very beginning we're talking about emails i was sending in 2001 and i'm surprised man i get my tone wrong and i'm a bit bolshy and i'm a bit

pushy and i think this doesn't sound or seem like me. Maybe. I just think benefit of the doubt, man, always benefit of the doubt. And I'm not saying you need to bust your balls and spend two days giving this person a private seminar, but definitely do. I mean, I think it's great you replied and just reply and go, listen, here's all the stuff that I've done. But when he replies and says, you should write a book, A, he's giving you a compliment. B, he might be a bit nervous. Do you know what the problem is?

So there's thousands and thousands of people like this on a weekly basis. So my decision as to who to help or to who to engage with is based on the message they send. And if someone says, so people will message me, go, so what is Social Chain?

Come on. Like if you just Googled it, if you clicked on the people will message me, go, so, so what is social chain? Come on. Like if you just Googled it, if you, if you clicked on the word in my bio, there's a description of exactly what it is, but people will still do. And for me, that's laziness.

Because if I, like, I can't think of a point in my life where if I wanted to know whether I was 16 or 26, whether if I wanted a piece of information, I would have just my my attempt at getting it would have just been to message the person you know the public figure whatever to say so uh how did you uh win that uh formula one championship Lewis I would have at least tried to you know what I mean do you think there's an issue here with um like with a social media now

there's a complete lack of formality so like when you and i were growing up and we wanted to run a business that someone had set up and sold for hundreds of millions you literally could not get to that person unless it was a real graft to get there so by the time you did manage to get an email address for some ceo of some big business it'd been such a journey you weren't going to lose the opportunity or waste the opportunity because it'd taken you two or three months just to get to the point of being able to send something part of the issue now is that people who want information from you literally this is how long it takes steven bartlett direct message h-i-s-t-e-v-i steven um can i know about your business

right that's taken me 30 seconds. That's how long it is. So that's why. The quality of effort is so low because. Because they're just used to it. That's how we now communicate with each other. But then the other thing is 20 years ago, when you were trying to get hold of a CEO of a big business, there was quite a good filtration process. So that by the time you got the email address of that guy or that woman at the

top of that business, it was a journey. You would have had 20 knockbacks 10 or 15 setbacks blah blah blah blah so actually the person that got those email addresses were the grafters man and the ones that were finding the route and finding the path and it shows though that the most important thing one of the 2020 growth hacks for your career is knowing how to ask. Yeah. Because everyone has now got the email or the DM, but there's a real art in knowing what to say when you're in there.

I know that people like you are getting a lot of messages every day, all of the same quality, but that's great because it's easy to stand out. It's a good thing. If you send me a voice note that jumps up in the queue if if the voice note is um well researched as you say jumps up in the queue further if you're asking here's the thing for me it's like if you're asking me for something

and you're making some attempt to acknowledge the fact that um that you know i don't have a lot of time that also jumps you up in the queue because i think you this person's a little bit more you know savvy and yeah it's been more realistic um but yeah it makes a huge difference you know coral yeah i want to talk about this so i wear brand i received these lovely um sunglasses in the post and as i said to you before we got on air i usually look a little bit weird in sunglasses but this pair of sunglasses and i'm not just saying this and i actually said this behind your back as well so this is how you know it's legit right um i actually think i look quite cool you do look good yeah and i would never wear sunglasses like this normally because i couldn't find the

right shape yeah tell me all about coral and and what this is. This is your first sort of significant investment? Yeah, it's the first time I've ever invested in a business, really. Obviously, Whisper Group is different because I was a founder and we set that up together. But I've wanted for a long time to do what I can to help people who are perhaps in a position where I can have some influence on their lives. So about a year ago, I set up a scholarship with the UEA, the University of East Anglia in Norwich.

It's pretty simple. When people apply for the film and TV course, they're means tested. So they have to fill in a form so we can find out their family income. And if the family income is below a certain level, I will pay five grand a year every year that they're at university.

So 15 grand over the time of their course to make it affordable for them to go to uni so it's literally my way of finding people who wouldn't get a chance in the tv industry it's similar to the ethos we have at whisper like we want to lift up people that are underrepresented and i think there's amazing tv talent out there and they literally will never get the opportunity to have a tv career purely for financial means and that really makes me sad. So I set that up and then I had this great relationship with the UEA and they introduced me to a young guy called George Bailey. And he's a 19 year old student. He's 20 now at the UEA. And he

had this idea for recycled eyewear. And it is literally taking fishing nets out of the sea, taking plastic out of landfill and turning them into eyewear and i and i said you know what george like that's a really good idea i really like it but it will be everywhere already because it's so simple because when we sort of ran through the numbers there's something like nine million pairs of eyewear sold in the uk every year almost all of them virgin plastic covered in lacquer full of glue full of full of metal, bad for the environment, not doing any good for the planet at all. So I sort of heard what he said and thought, this will be happening already.

And I was actually in London for a meeting with my agent in West London. I thought the perfect place for recycled, sustainable eyewear brand is West London. So I went into all of the high street eyewear places that you could possibly imagine. You know, David Cluelo and Sunglasses Hut and all of these others on Oxford Street of the high street eyewear places that you could possibly imagine you know david clulo and um sunglasses hut and all of these others on oxford street and bond street i was in that area and i said the same thing every time i walked in hi can i see your range of recycled eyewear blank faces can i see your green range your sustainable range the same nothing response and i was straight on the phone to george i said listen we need to make this happen we really need to make this happen and we're not the only brand in the world making eyewear from recycled material but we're the only brand who have gone and got our own eyewear

designer so it's original designs handmade in a factory in italy we then offset all the carbons when that gets delivered to you there's not been a single hit on the planet from the carbon and the plastic has been taken out of the world to create those. The lenses are infinitely recycled and we have a system where you send the lenses or the whole eyewear back to us and we can recycle them so it all goes again. So the phrase I use is planet positive.

It's not just like not putting pollution into the planet. It's actively removing plastic and turning it into something that you would otherwise have gone and purchased. And look, we're a startup, we're small. It'll be a slog and it will be a battle, but I wouldn't have got involved like everything else I've been talking to you about

if I didn't passionately believe that those are the answer. None of us go shopping now without a plastic bag in our hand already or a reusable tote bag or whatever. But none of us think twice before we a plastic bag in our hand already or a reusable tote bag or whatever but none of us think twice before we go and buy a pair of sunglasses and coralli where i want to be the answer the case there that's made from plastic oh this case with this case that one yeah so that's recycled plastic the cloth inside

recycled plastic you'd never know would you no even i got one of the things that really struck me as well as how high quality it all feels like it feels super luxury like the the case and then well that's the thing we want we also didn't want people to think yeah i want to sort of help the environment but i'll have to look a bit rubbish we actually want people to think i can still buy a really nice high-end high quality bit of eyewear you got the little note there from george yeah what's the tip on this says hey there thank you so much for choosing coral and our vision to make the eyewear industry kinder to our planet smiley face george that's super nice there you go yeah no i i was you know i i was i was nervous because when friends send me things and then you probably sometimes i don't love it yeah and and i'm i'm known for being really honest with my friends

um and saying oh i don't really like this about it or whatever because i just think the truth sets you free and that's what people really value as you said earlier it's like the the critique is often um more valuable at certain stages than just total praise one word you said earlier that i has become incredibly important in my mindset these days is as a word consistency yeah um maybe from meeting exceptional guests maybe just from understanding the root cause of my own accomplishments. But I used to think that intensity was the answer. But if you look at all of the success that I've had,

whether it's getting a million followers on Instagram or social chain or whatever, it was that word. And I never really appreciated the importance of that word up until recently. I think it was when I was writing my book. What have you learned about consistency? I've learned exactly as you have that consistency is the root of all good stuff. Because if you find something that works for you,

you have to do it consistently. Like I used to say consistently relentless. I regret the use of the word relentless a little bit now. I do think you have to be relentless, but I now change it to, you have to be consistently, happily relentless. And if you can be consistently, happily relentless, I don't think you will go far wrong because you'll be doing a passion project, which is what makes you happy. You will be consistently doing things and consistency is absolutely key for people to understand what you're about. And let's be totally frank. We can sit here and be fluffy and friendly and say, oh, you know, let's not push people too hard in the modern world because it might cause issues and whatever. You do have to be relentless for success, but it's okay to be relentless if you're being relentless and you're happy being relentless so try in 2021 to be consistently

happily relentless and let's see where we all are in 12 months time i have one more question for you it's probably a question people don't really talk about in the podcasting game but um we have struggled at times to get women to come on the podcast yeah um for a variety of different reasons men seem much more willing than women have you found the same thing yeah we have yeah it's interesting you should say that yeah we have i don't think that we have found women not willing to come on the podcast i think it's only when you start doing a podcast about relentless high achievement that you realize how dominated by men the tops of our industries are yeah that's the problem and i you know we keep on saying right who should we get on as really great inspirational

female leaders and all the suggestions people keep making to us are in the sports space and i keep saying no not sports women because we are totally i am totally plugged into the fact people keep making to us are in the sports space. And I keep saying, no, not sports women, because we are totally, I am totally plugged into the fact that I want to celebrate brilliant, successful females. You know, I have a daughter and I want her to listen to this podcast in years to come when she's old enough and go, that's who I want to be, that's who I want to be inspired by. And I think that sometimes we like to trick ourselves into thinking, oh, no, we live in a really equal society now.

What are you talking about? There's loads of powerful females at the top of businesses. When you break it down, we are still in a male dominated society. And it is a good reminder that we need to keep on lifting up female role models and pushing them to the High Performance Podcast, we are totally aware of that. And we will continue to do what we can because actually when we get brilliant female leaders on there and we just recorded with Jo Malone, who set up the amazing Jo Malone branch and now runs Jo Loves. We've recorded with Holly Tucker, who was fantastic. Dame Kelly Holmes, who was really inspirational and moving. Steph Horton is going to be on the series

in the not too distant future. We've had brilliant female leaders on our pod, but it is still a challenge compared to the amount of male leaders lining up going, yeah, I'll definitely come on there and talk. And there is something else that maybe we need to address in the next 12 months. Black women at the top of business. Mate, where are they why what is happening that is not allowing them to shine as they should and that is one thing and i just say one thing that really is pissing me off massively at the

moment it's when people talk about the over representation of black and mixed race or female role models in society and they say oh everywhere you turn now yeah that's all this and i drive this home to them all the time i say listen you've got this completely wrong the reason why we now have to promote and push and celebrate and shout about black men and black women and women in general and underrepresented areas of society is that if you are a little kid growing up in Norwich or Manchester or Birmingham or Los Angeles, you have to see those people there to believe that you can get there as well. There's no good saying, oh yeah, they'll eventually make it through. We have to show them now that you can, no matter who you are, no matter what the colour of your skin, no matter

what your gender, no matter what your background, no matter how affluent you are, you can get there. And that's why we have to push them to the forefront now to inspire the next generation. Because once they're there, they'll stay there and it'll be a much better, more equal society for everyone. We've both got a big responsibility. Yeah. With our platforms. Yeah. And we should, we absolutely should. Listen, thank you for your time.

No worries, man. I'm incredibly busy with you. It's always nice to sit down and chat. To catch up, yeah. Thanks for lunch. It's always fascinating. And I,

you know, you're discovering incredible stories through your own podcast, High Performance. And it's, it's really powerful to kind of compare notes sometimes with, with people. Cause yeah, one of the things I've learned from doing the podcast,

which I'm sure you have as well, is that the themes that have made people successful and given them that high performance mindset are actually quite consistent yeah yeah yeah i think when i started my podcast i was expecting to find 50 different ways you know to to become successful but it all seems to be distillable down to these simple themes like you know consistency and discipline and passion and then for me anyway much of the root cause of that consistency or that obsession that passion has come from often in many circumstances something that might not have gone right yeah on the playground or some insecurity they had or something their dad or mum said to them um and that for me

is fascinating but yeah thank you again for your time it's a pleasure and um it just reminds me that we're all on a journey right and I said to Harriet when I was coming on here today I said oh I'm going back on Diary of a CEO with Stephen and she said again well what are you going to talk about because you only went on there a few months ago and you know when I now sit here and talk to you I'm a different person to the one that you spoke with before I began doing my podcast before I began doing my stuff with Coral Eyewear. Even in the last year, I feel like I'm sitting here as a different person. And I didn't realise that you could learn and change and develop and adapt quite so much, quite so late.

So, man, look, Joe Biden took him to 77 till he nailed it as the president. You know, sometimes you have to wait a long time in life for your dream job or your dream opportunity to come up. What has changed since we last spoke for you in terms of who you are? Just a much deeper understanding of how other people operate. I'd spent my life, hadn't I, on my own journey, me as a presenter, me learning, me setting up a business.

What am I going to do? The High Performance Podcast was the first time I'd ever sat down and just said, from the the outside this is what I think you're doing can you just explain it please what a growth period it's been for me personally absolutely unbelievable and therapy at the same time yeah it's therapeutic absolutely Thank you.