In this episode, Charlie and Claire welcome Steve Parry, a former Olympic swimmer turned entrepreneur. The discussion traverses Steve's unconventional entry into swimming after a childhood incident, his experiences competing against Michael Phelps, and his humble beginnings which led to an Olympic medal win. Steve shares insights on the significance of goal setting, both in sports and in business, and reflects on the learning opportunities that come from embracing personal development. The conversation also delves into Steve's entrepreneurial ventures aimed at improving access to swimming lessons amidst a backdrop of public pool closures in the UK, emphasising the importance of swimming as a life skill. Moreover, Steve highlights his parenting goals, underscoring the importance of dedicating time and resources to being a good father. The episode concludes with Steve offering his perspective on setting comprehensive, meaningful goals that go beyond business and fitness, to include family and personal growth.
Highlights:
Contact Steve Parry: Website | LinkedIn
Steve Parry MBE is an Olympic medalist and entrepreneur who has transcended the world of competitive swimming to make a profound impact on the next generation. From the pressure of representing Great Britain on the global stage to the fulfilment found in teaching children to swim, Steve shares his journey of perseverance, resilience, and dedication. His story isn't just about the pursuit of Olympic glory; it's about leveraging passion to drive positive change. Join us as Steve reflects on the challenges and triumphs of his career, and how he's channelling his Olympic spirit into empowering thousands of children with the life-saving skill of swimming. Through Steve's narrative, we'll discover the true essence of endurance, not just in sports, but in every endeavour we undertake.
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ShoRunner is the leading podcast production and strategic content company for brands, organisations, institutions, individuals, and entrepreneurs. Our team sets you up with the right strategy, equipment, training, guidance and content to ensure you sound amazing while speaking to your niche audience and networking with your perfect clients. Get in touch jason@shorunner.com
This episode was sponsored by The Trusted Team and 4th Discipline
In this episode, Charlie and Claire welcome Steve Parry, a former Olympic swimmer turned entrepreneur. The discussion traverses Steve's unconventional entry into swimming after a childhood incident, his experiences competing against Michael Phelps, and his humble beginnings which led to an Olympic medal win. Steve shares insights on the significance of goal setting, both in sports and in business, and reflects on the learning opportunities that come from embracing personal development. The conversation also delves into Steve's entrepreneurial ventures aimed at improving access to swimming lessons amidst a backdrop of public pool closures in the UK, emphasising the importance of swimming as a life skill. Moreover, Steve highlights his parenting goals, underscoring the importance of dedicating time and resources to being a good father. The episode concludes with Steve offering his perspective on setting comprehensive, meaningful goals that go beyond business and fitness, to include family and personal growth.
Highlights:
Contact Steve Parry: Website | LinkedIn
Steve Parry MBE is an Olympic medalist and entrepreneur who has transcended the world of competitive swimming to make a profound impact on the next generation. From the pressure of representing Great Britain on the global stage to the fulfilment found in teaching children to swim, Steve shares his journey of perseverance, resilience, and dedication. His story isn't just about the pursuit of Olympic glory; it's about leveraging passion to drive positive change. Join us as Steve reflects on the challenges and triumphs of his career, and how he's channelling his Olympic spirit into empowering thousands of children with the life-saving skill of swimming. Through Steve's narrative, we'll discover the true essence of endurance, not just in sports, but in every endeavour we undertake.
Please Subscribe to Business of Endurance on Apple Podcasts, leave a comment, and give us a 5-Star review.
Sponsor Messages:
Sign up for the free Limitless Life Workshop from the Trusted Team here
Find out more about the 4th Discipline here
Launch Your Own Podcast:
ShoRunner is the leading podcast production and strategic content company for brands, organisations, institutions, individuals, and entrepreneurs. Our team sets you up with the right strategy, equipment, training, guidance and content to ensure you sound amazing while speaking to your niche audience and networking with your perfect clients. Get in touch jason@shorunner.com
This episode was sponsored by The Trusted Team and 4th Discipline
I'm Charlie Redding and I'm Claire.
Speaker 2:Fudge.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the business of endurance.
Speaker 3:Once you start to tell yourself this guy's unbeatable or this guy's really hard to beat, then guess what it makes it tougher. I spend a lot of time probably 50 hours a week trying to build the greatest lens of swim business in the country, but how many hours a week am I actually spending trying to be the greatest dad in the country?
Speaker 1:Steve Parry MBE is an Olympic medalist and entrepreneur who has transcended the world of competitive swimming to make a profound impact on the next generation. From the pressure of representing Team GB on the global stage to the fulfillment found in teaching children to swim, steve shares his journey of perseverance, resilience and dedication. His story isn't just about the pursuit of Olympic glory. It's about leveraging passion to drive positive change. Join us as Steve reflects on the challenges and triumphs of his career and how he's channeling his Olympic spirit into empowering thousands of children with the life-saving skill of swimming. Through Steve's narrative, we'll discover the true essence of endurance, not just in sport, but in every endeavor we undertake, and especially in business and life.
Speaker 1:So I know you're going to really love this interview with Steve Parry MBE. Now, one of the things I'm going to chat to Steve about is how he benefits from swim coaching in the world of business, and also how he benefits from business coaching in the world of business now. So if you hang around to the end of this episode, I've got an amazing tool that will help you work out whether you're winning at the game of business and also the game of life the game of life. So, steve, welcome to the Business of Endurance podcast. Obviously, we've met in person a few times, but really looking forward to chatting about your history that I didn't know anything about until recently. So really, really looking forward to this conversation. But I've always loved to start these interviews with story behind the story. So how did you get into swimming?
Speaker 3:not many people believed them when I tell them this, but it was amazing how I got into swimming. My parents were dead tight. They never took us on a holiday abroad. We always went on caravan holidays to those fantastic places like Anglesey or the Lake District. I'm from Liverpool, if you can't tell from the accent, so we didn't go too far from Liverpool but we went to Anglesey in the Lake District and I actually didn't go abroad till I was 16. We went to Jersey on a holiday. But when I was seven years of age we had a special holiday. We went on a barge trip and we had one of those long barges down on the Thames. And we had one of those long barges down on the Thames and we went in from Windsor. It was a great trip but in a very northern fashion.
Speaker 3:My cousin Pete used to live up the road number 34 Melbrook with me, grammy, and we were number 102 down the road and as we were leaving my dad said this is a five-bed barge, why don't we get cousin Pete to go with us? And he packed her back and he came with us and we took the journey down to London. Dad was he was one for health and safety, if you like. And he was saying you guys need to have your life vests on all week. And it got to the last day There'd been no incidents, no accidents, and me and my brother Dave, we didn't wear our life vests.
Speaker 3:And he was chasing me around the boat on the last day and I fell over a mop which to this day he denies it, but to this day I think he left that mop strategically there to whip me up. But, uh, we were doing five miles an hour, as these barges do top speed, and I fell over the mop and I was holding on to the sides of the barge, onto one of those buoys to stop it scraping the paintwork or whatever, and and I couldn't swim I'd been in water but I wasn a very good swimmer at all and I was holding on to the sides of this barge and fished me out and that led to joining Walton Swimming Baths the following week because my mum and dad had this nasty scare around drowning. And then, 20 years later, there I am in Athens, captain of the Olympic swim team, winning the medal against Michael Phillips. But it wasn't ever me being motivated to get into swimming because I want to be olympic swimmer, it was actually a safety thing.
Speaker 1:That subject we're going to come back to time and again, I suspect, as we go through this conversation, but it is a brilliant story. I love the fact that you know, because we imagine that somebody that wins an olympic medal swimming that you imagine that you've been on swim school since you were sort of three and it's just, but that's. It is incredible. So I really want to. Obviously, we met as part of the strategic coach program, but it was only you're a very humble guy. It was in passing, at the very end of the conversation, that I got out a bit more about your swimming career and I mean, clearly is absolutely amazing, but you won the first swim medal, I think, for team GB in eight years.
Speaker 3:Tell us that story of you winning that Olympic medal, what went on and the buildup to it and at the time, yeah, it was fascinating really, because probably my best opportunity of winning the medal at the Olympics should have been when I was 23 years of age, four years earlier in Sydney, and we not only myself but the whole team we had an absolute disaster. We came home in shame really the British team swimming team from Sydney because we got no medals. That was the first time that had happened in a long time. So there was a lot of pain that came with that experience being part of that team. But then it was doubly so personally because I'd actually traveled to America earlier in the year because I knew that the favorite to win in Sydney was a guy called Tom Marchow. I actually targeted him. I went over to Minneapolis to race them in the in the US Open, and little did I know that a 15 year old Michael Phelps would be there just emerging. I actually spoke to him in this in the swim down pool. He had a teeth full of metal. He looked like he was. He just looked like the local school nerd. You know, that's what I would have called him back back in the day and he came up to us. But that was where I first met michael phelps. But anyway, the main story.
Speaker 3:The main protagonist of this story was this fellow, tom archer, who we knew was the favorite, and I absolutely spanked him. I beat him in his own turf and I thought I was going to win the Olympics. At that point I thought I'd beaten him in his home turf. I've travelled over one minute 56 seconds. I've got a taper to come. I'm going to be good to go. And he only managed sixth in the Sydney Olympics. I went a second and a half slower in the Olympics than I did when I'd gone over to race him. And we've all got excuses, haven't we in life? And my excuse was that I over-trained, but it felt shocking.
Speaker 1:Is that still what you think was the problem, in the sense that, like immediately after the race, you maybe concluded it was, but do you still think that's the problem now, when you look back?
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely. If I'd have just maintained what I was doing, I would have swung similar times. But I was absolutely smashing the weights. I was doing extra training sessions. I really had the bit between my teeth and you mess up, don't you? And you've got to take responsibility for it. But there's no reason that a guy should be a second and a half slower at the Olympics when he was four and a half months earlier at a previous event. So that was really painful and Michael Phelps was only maybe 16 at the time. Then he beat me, he came fifth and we just knew that he was going to be a wonder kid.
Speaker 3:The point is 23 is probably the best age to do middle distance swimming in terms of an Olympic cycle. 27 was getting a little bit old, a little bit longer than two, and I was one of these people that always just missed out coming forth at world championships multiple times, not winning commonwealth games, the home games in in manchester, never winning the european championships, long course, you know I'm serial failure. And then I get to the olympics in athens and I was probably the seventh best chance of a medal, you know, if you look to the rankings and all the rest of it. But then a familiar pattern started to emerge where we just didn't seem to be getting the medals our top guys when we're getting the medals. And I was up day four, semifinals, day four, final, day five in the 200 flight and just everything had gone right. I beat michael phelps in the semi-final, yeah, qualified fastest for the final the next day. It was a real turning point for the team because it was like hold on, we're not getting any medals and this fella's just beat Michael Phelps, who's now in his prime and he's qualified fastest for the Olympic final.
Speaker 3:And one thing to look back on is we should never limit our expectations, because the first time that I thought that I could be an Olympic champion in 27 years of being alive was the night before the Olympic final. I'd only ever thought of winning an Olympic medal and I think our goals can be a ceiling for stuff that we want to achieve. It's no surprise to me that I ended up with a bronze medal. But he showed his class the next day, michael Phelps, and he beat me and a Japanese fella beat me as well. But to have got that medal at that age, at a tricky time for the team, I was definitely proud on the day, but I'm prouder now, 20 years looking back. It's almost weird. Being an olympic medalist, you almost you almost realize how big of an achievement it is the older you get in life and the more distance you have from yourself on that occasion.
Speaker 1:I know it doesn't really make sense, but it's bizarre I think you make a really interesting point about goals, because goals can be. It's when we step outside that comfort zone that the magic happens, isn't it? And the bigger the goal you set, even if you don't actually hit the goals, purpose is partly about pulling you forward, isn't it? I know that you get good business coaching on this sort of stuff nowadays, so, but we'll come back to that. But what is it that you do based on that learning? What is it you do to set big enough goals? Because it's easy to set two smaller goals, isn't it?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's fascinating and I see it all the time with my kids and I think I had the best parents in the world. I know there's a lot of people that think that from around the world, but what my parents did was they let me try everything, and then they recognized the one thing that really inspired me and lit the passion, and it was swimming. But just to be clear, I didn't take regular swimming routes. I did basketball, cricket, tennis, football. I was even in a church choir for years and for five years I had various different coaches telling my parents he needs to do more swimming, he's got talent, he can be the best in the country.
Speaker 3:If, at age 10, they'd have taken the advice of the coach and they just slotted me into the swimming because that was the event that I had the best chance at, I guarantee I would have left the sport a few years later, whereas when I was the one that had the passion, when I was the one setting the alarm in the morning and was jumping out of bed with a burning desire to be successful, they didn't have to worry about it. I do not understand the parents that I see, whether it be on the football sidelines or at the swimming pool that are shouting at their kids as opposed to letting the kid find themselves in that sport. But you can change the word sport for anything music, academics, work. It's about passion. That's what it was about for me. So I was very fortunate and I owe them more than I ever thought I owed them was to have two parents that absolutely got it and weren't pushy.
Speaker 1:I think that was huge there's also an interesting point there, with that which we've talked about on the podcast a few times, where there's a book called range by david epstein I think it is the author and he talks about. Nowadays too many people specialize too early and actually there's a lot of wisdom in doing lots of different things before you niche down, because the experience that you get from those other things brings a different perspective to the one thing you end up doing.
Speaker 3:Correct, it is about that, and you often do get examples of people that were put into a niche early and and often they are your absolute superstars, whether it be be Andre Agassi or Tiger Woods, these people that had incredibly pushy parents, but what you find as well as you know if you read their biographies, they weren't necessarily happy children. They might be happy people now, they might be proud of what they achieved, but they definitely weren't happy children. But for every superstar that had a pushy parents, I guarantee there are 10,000 unhappy kids with similar pushy parents. I just don't believe that it's necessarily the way to go. So, but that's part of the parent thing.
Speaker 3:For a second, of course, in life you're better experiencing multiple things than one thing. What's important is that you find the one thing that you're good at, that you do enough things. So, for instance, my daughter, margot girl. She goes to gymnastics classes and she is never going to be a good gymnast. Her father's six, four, her mother's five, ten she's just not going to be a good gymnast, doesn't matter how much I encourage her. It doesn't matter if she does 10 000 hours, 20 000 hours. She's not going to be a worldie. But does she enjoy her gymnastics sessions? Yes, she does. Will it make her better at other sports? Yeah, it will, but is it right for me to put her into that seven days a week? No, it's not, it's really good advice.
Speaker 1:So what you mentioned you when you, when you won your bronze medal, you, michael phelps, won the gold medal, if he was just coming into his prime what was it like racing somebody that was a world-class athlete, as in the, possibly the best swimmer that's ever, probably the best swimmer that's ever been? How do you deal with that from a psychological perspective when you're racing, or was it too early in his career for that to be already decided?
Speaker 3:I definitely wasn't too early and in 2001 Michael Phelps went to the world championships and broke the world record in my event. So in afly, that was three years prior to prior to taking him on in Athens. The question at that point around Phelps was can he be good? Can he be as good as Mark Spitz? So he was definitely good on the fly events on a turn of fly. He was good on the medleys two foreign medley. He was good on the 200 meters freestyle. But the chatter around poolside was it will be beijing. That is michael phelps's olympics. That's the one where he's gonna get the chance to do a spit. But in terms of his best event, the 200 butterfly, he was the nail bomb favorite for athens and it is imposing.
Speaker 3:And the mistake that you make is you believe the aura, the most powerful thing that we have, is our mind right. I don't think anyone disputes that. Once you start to tell yourself this guy's unbeatable or this guy's really hard to beat, then guess what? It makes it tougher and that's why I go back to what I said is I didn't believe I could beat Michael Phelps until I turned around after the semifinal and had beaten him. So we do create these glass ceilings for ourselves. But it's funny how the momentum shifted, because then I spent 24 hours being the fastest qualifier for the final, with Michael Phelps chasing you down, and that was a really interesting dynamic.
Speaker 3:Was that a mistake? I think it probably was a mistake. He definitely raised his awareness that I was capable of swimming low 155s. At that time he could swim a high 153 seconds. So you know he still had a lot in his locker to be able to do that, but I'd also stuck myself next to him. Now, I know a lot of people know this, but swimming is a flow event. It's one of those events where you know if you're next to people, you can gauge how much effort that you need to put in, and often when there's upsets it comes from someone in lane eight, or where they're not next to the main protagonist.
Speaker 1:I see, yeah, that's really interesting and obviously we I know you, you embrace business coaching because we've met through the strategic coach program. What similarities do you see in when you, with the business coaching, you get versus? Obviously you've had a lot of swim coaching over the years. What similarities do you see with the business coaching you get versus? Obviously you've had a lot of swim coaching over the years. What similarities do you see there?
Speaker 3:Do you know what? I think they're remarkably similar, and it's not necessarily business coaching or sports coaching that needs to be embraced. I think it's all personal development, whether it be spiritual, whether it be relationships, whether it be business or sport. There are definitely people that know more about a topic and we should embrace that. What I find amazing these days is if I tell my daughter something, she's 12 at the moment and if I tell her something, she went oh yeah, I knew that. And I'm like whoa, ava, hold up, like why are you trying to profess, like you already know that it's? Is it not a celebration when we don't know something and when we learn? Because I think we're in a society these days where no one wants to admit to ever being wrong. No one wants to admit to not knowing as much as the next person, but it's. I find that an incredibly dangerous place. It's like people are willing to sit in business meetings and this happens all day all over the country and people just nod, they are listening to stuff that they don't understand, but they aren't saying hold on. Can you explain that to me? That actually does it is. It holds us all back.
Speaker 3:I love to learn and but your question was around what are the similarities between the two? And I think the first one is can you see the future? So in about 12 years before I went to the Olympics, I saw myself on top of the Olympic roster. About 12 years before I went to the Olympics, I saw myself on top of the Olympic roster. About 12 years before selling half of my business to a PLC. I saw myself being successful in business and getting a partner with Deep Pockets to help me achieve what I wanted to achieve.
Speaker 3:So that's the first thing A business to sport. Have you got a vision? Can you plot your own future history? And then there's endless similarities. After that, are you prepared to fake individual responsibility when things don't go right? Are you a team player and do you surround yourself with people that are better than yourself in order to help you achieve what you want to achieve? Have you got the right resources in place to be able to do it, and are you prepared to turn up every day and be positive? It's almost the same game, sport and business.
Speaker 1:For me, they're very similar coming back to that goal setting, it's really, really interesting and I'm intrigued to know when you saw yourself on the Olympic podium, did you write that down, or was it just a vision that you created in your mind? And the same applies to the business deal when you were selling part of your business to the PLC, was that a written down goal or was it just, again, something that you'd thought up?
Speaker 3:so maybe slightly controversial, charlie, but I don't believe that a goal is a goal unless it's written down. It's just a dream. Otherwise it's just something that you think about often and I'll give you some examples. To the day to today, 20 years after going to the Olympic Games, my pin code on my credit cards and debit cards is the exact time that I wanted to go at the Olympics. I've had the same pin code for 25 years, five years prior to the Olympics, and then, cause I'm lazy, 20 years after, so the my pin code every time I would go get money out the cash point. We don't do that so much anymore, but over any time we buy something I would have in there and I've changed it, by the way, but I don't mind telling you the number. It was about five to two, 55 seconds, 2200 seconds. So I'm pre-programming my mind to the exact time that I want to be able to do. It was also written down in my frontal, my work logs, in the back of my work logs. It was written down in diaries, so I would probably see that time and it would say Steve Parry, olympic medalist, athens 2005,. One minute, 55 seconds, 2200s. And I will be continually reinforcing that and I know that you know this, charlie, because we have similar coaching methods when it comes to pocket coaches and all the rest of it.
Speaker 3:I've got life goals, I've got 10-year goals, I've got three-year goals, I've got one-years, I've got quarterlies. It's funny introducing people that don't usually do that to it, for instance, my wife and my, my children. Setting our family goals this year was a fascinating experience and it's clunky, right, because they've never done it before. But I believe in life that that there is no standing still right. You're either moving forward or you're moving backwards. I don't get people that just say I can't wait for 25 years for when I retire. It's me like what, what are you doing?
Speaker 2:it'll be your goal setting to get, to get to your Olympic dream. Let's say, was there anything that you did nutritionally to get you to like that place? So, in terms of optimization, and if you did, are there any of those principles that you still utilize now?
Speaker 3:yeah, I think that's a fascinating one. So the great thing about swimming was you had to fight to keep calories on the nutritional thing, it wasn't about balancing calorie intake, in fact, it was quite the opposite. You had to make sure that you got enough calories in, and that did involve eating some rubbish food. I wasn't adverse to the odd McDonald's or a pizza at the weekend. Of course we had nutritionists. The mates teach you the fundamentals of eating well, but actually what trumped that was getting enough calories in. Now, my problem was I carried on eating like that.
Speaker 3:After I stopped swimming 12 kilometers a day and going to the gym and all the rest of it. I absolutely ballooned between 2005 and 2008. However and this is only recently in the last five years I was so tired of training hard and making the sacrifices that actually I like to go out, I like to socialize, and I probably wasn't taking care of my health as well as I should, and it was actually only. I unfortunately got testicular cancer in 2009. And that was a real jolt to me of like hold on a second, we're all. We're all mortal here. You've got to look after yourself.
Speaker 3:Well, that was when I started. I returned back to the gym. I started looking after my diet a little bit more and actually I tried to go to the gym most days before going to work, because you just feel more productive, those endorphins start flowing, you're much more creative. You have to keep moving. So, yes, only post. Only a few years after the Olympics did I carry some of those learnings over and what particular kind of things now do you do from a nutrition perspective?
Speaker 2:because I know you said you've gone back to the gym and it's interesting, isn't it? I can imagine how, doing sport for so many years, maybe stopping and not doing as much, and then going back into it, how you feel almost more energized by doing it before work. So is there anything you do nutritionally now that you feel that really helps you or optimizes you?
Speaker 3:Really basic stuff. So I go with the five and two rule. I think a lot of people maybe do that. Sunday to Thursday. You know I'm eating really well five fruit and veg a day, really stable meals. I'm really lucky because my wife she's a great cook and she's also extremely healthy, so I get to benefit from that in terms of the food that you're taking on and then just have some fun at the weekend. Just don't worry about stuff. I think you want to stay clear of fats. There's just no point in I'm on a diet, I'm off a diet. That just doesn't work. It's about having that balanced lifestyle. So everything in moderation. Really clear for me.
Speaker 2:No, absolutely. I can see how your routine as an athlete probably comes through in terms of routines with your eating now as well. Yeah, great.
Speaker 1:I think there's a I love the whole skinny weeks and weekend treats approach to to like eating healthily the vast majority of the time, but if you do it all the time you fall off the wagon. Then it all goes horribly wrong, aren't you? So I love that whole concept of eating healthily most of the time, but two cheat days a week where you basically the gloves are off, do whatever you like yeah, exactly, go and have some fun, charlie.
Speaker 3:We're just not here long enough to to be totally disciplined the whole time we've got to. We've got to enjoy life as well yeah, I know, I agree.
Speaker 1:I remember when I chatted to sharon davies we spent a bit of time talking about the loss of swimming pools to the uk. I live in the county of rutland and we do not have a public swimming pool in the whole county anymore. We're very lucky that we've got there's a couple of school pools that we can use, but of course we get to use those when the schools don't allow people to the public to get access to them. Talk to me a little bit about the importance of having public swimming pools and also maybe explain the backdrop of why we're seeing so many pools closing at the moment.
Speaker 3:There's a reason that our children, when they leave primary school, have to be able to do one thing. There's a statutory requirement in terms of PE and that's being able to swim 25 meters, being able to learn a little bit about safe rescue in water, and that's because it's a life-saving skill. But unfortunately, we're failing drastically at this. 250,000 kids left primary school last year unable to swim and the problem continues to get worse. And we're the sixth or seventh biggest economy in the world, I think. And our children should have access to swimming pools, in my opinion, and we should be teaching them this by a life-saving skill. And, of course, the biggest problem to teaching kids to swim is having access to water. We are on a steady decline. Over the last four years, we've had a net loss of 200 swimming pools, and that's because they are expensive things to run and they're not a high priority. But for me, it's not only the life-saving skill elements of the swimming pool, it's also the fact that anybody aged from zero to 80 years of age can get in a pool and become healthier when they're swimming up and down, and the net benefit economically in terms of health is absolutely huge. You build a swimming facility and you run it, you are going to get double the returns when it comes to health savings on on the nhs.
Speaker 3:So it's actually short-sighted for us to be closing our swimming pools.
Speaker 3:But the reason for that is they're very expensive and they're very expensive to build. So a lot of the pool building took place in the 70s and 80s and a lot of that stock is coming to the end of its natural life. So when it gets to the end of its natural life, councils are then left with the decision of do we carry on running this or do we invest in a new one? And quite often, unfortunately, due to cost of living and all the rest of it, the simple answer these days is we're going to close it. So I see it as a big challenge. I've put my own personal money, with my business partners, becky Ablington and Adrian Turner, into coming up with a solution. One of our businesses Recreation. We build leisure centres for local authorities and then on the other side of the business, we build our own private members' learning to swim centres for children, trying to tackle that problem. So we've put 15 years and more money than I care to mention into setting the business up that directly tackles this problem.
Speaker 1:And with those pools I remember chatting to you about this the pools that you're building are for children only, aren't they?
Speaker 3:They're not for adults. Is that right? Two sides of the business. We have a business called Recreation and my business partner, Adrian, runs that. We develop affordable leisure solutions for councils. So 10, 15, 20 million pound facilities. On our side of the business, with myself and Rebecca Adlington, what we do is we invest in our own money into private members learning to swim centres for children. So in the morning parents turn up with their babies and they'll have a swim. In the afternoon we subsidise school swimming lessons and then in the evenings and weekends we run a members learning to swim service for 1,500 to 2,000 children children. So we've just opened our 12 sites in kent, but we believe there's room for 100 of these facilities all over the country when I was doing some research, I heard you quoting that drowning was the third highest killer of children.
Speaker 1:That astonished me. Yeah, I just couldn't get. I couldn't believe that, and so from a safety point of view, it just seems like an absolute no-brainer. And then from a health point of view, of course, swimming is such a fantastic way of keeping fit. It doesn't knack your knees like running wood. I think it just strikes me as such a ridiculous problem to be closing pools as opposed to gaming. Are there any other things that you think we should be doing as a society or in business that it sounds like you're doing as much as you you can, but is there anything else that we could be doing to try and alleviate this problem and create more swimming opportunities?
Speaker 3:Claire articulated it well before asking around nutrition, but if you think about the influences our young people have today, a lot of it revolves around the screen, whether it's playing games or being on a mobile phone. We seem to have lost the art of preparing good food and it's easier to whack a pizza or some chicken nuggets in the freezer. I think we all have to ask ourselves a question seriously as a society Do our youngsters eat better today, or were we eating better 30 years ago when we were growing up? Now I know that my parents prepare better food for me than I do for my children, and I think that's the same all over the country. So it's not just a simple question around.
Speaker 3:Are our kids able to have a life-saving skill around learning to swim? It's also, for me, general health. We have got the highest obesity rates that we've ever had in primary school. Children, by definition, go to primary school healthy and then they leave obese. The stats are absolutely massive and once you have a learned habit around health, it's really hard to unlearn. We know that about any skill set. So I am concerned not only around our kids learning to swim. I'm also concerned around some of the influences that they've got in their life, around their overall health and well-being and you can look at obesity rates or you can look at mental well-being. I think our children have got some big challenges. But then again, maybe all of our parents' generations, maybe every generation, thinks this about the next crop of kids I might just be getting an old fuddy-duddy, who knows?
Speaker 2:so one of the things that we are having a discussion with with steve is about his thoughts on nutrition and something that I would like to give all of you listeners. If you want to click on the link in the show notes, you can download the 10 top tips on being able to have consistency with your nutrition while still having fun foods.
Speaker 1:But I think you're right. I think we talked a lot about this with joe de sena, the the founder of spartan racing and tough mothers and the like, and he talks a lot about the fact that the best thing that we can do for children at the moment is build resilience, because life is a bit too easy. Perhaps if they were in a sort of growing up in a war-torn society, they needed parents that were soft on them because they had plenty of opportunity to build resilience elsewhere. Probably in today's society we need to be helping them build more resilience because actually life is relatively easy from a hardship point of view. I just think it's really difficult to find that balance.
Speaker 1:But you're right, from a mental health perspective, we've got the worst mental health that we've ever had as a country. We've got the worst health from an obesity point of view and swimming seems such a good opportunity to fix that. So the children's pools I absolutely get and I can see that adds huge amounts of value to youngsters, but obviously they're never going to become an Olympic swimmer in a 14 meter pool, are they? Do you see? What do you think the future of team gb as swimmers looks like with this changing landscape?
Speaker 3:so I think one thing that we've got to celebrate is and we do tend, I think, as brits we have this. I don't know why, but we have this ability to get really down on ourselves on a global level. I think we're very keen to put ourselves down and but we're an amazing country. We do so many fantastic things and let me give you an example of that. In 1996, when we decided we weren't happy finishing 34th on the medal table behind Slovenia and New Zealand and I think Sir Steve Redgrave just got one gold medal we said long before London 2012 was ever conceived. We said we're going to use some of the national lottery money, so gamble money for good causes, and the tens of millions of pounds that have been raised for arts and theatre and charities and sport is huge. Okay, so someone spends a quid in the aim to get rich, label it gambling, but we're saying actually, no, we're going to put that money into good causes. People have spent pounds on the national lottery, or two pound, I think. It is now and what we have built? The number one system for training and producing Olympic athletes better than anyone else in the globe ever.
Speaker 3:All you have to do is measure outcomes to assess whether I'm telling the truth or not. If you look at how we improved, I think we were sixth on the medal table 2004. I think we got top four 2008. And then, when we got to 2012, we went to top three behind America and China, and then I think we were the second best country in the world by the time we got to Rio. Now, that was post-Olympics and most countries usually go backwards and we just churned out Olympians at a rate that you can't even recognize. Torval and Dean they're still famous for winning a gold medal. 40 years ago. That's because they were the only ones. Now we produce 19 or 20 Olympic gold medalists every time. You can't. You'd be lucky if you could name six of them.
Speaker 3:Do you think that's set to continue? No, because, like all things in life, we get bored and we don't know how good we we've had it and um, people just move on to the next thing. They feel like they've done their bit and my fear is we in the next couple of Olympic cycles. And it's been very good. Don't get me wrong. It's been 25, nearly 30 years since we started investing in sports, but you can feel the mood changing. Do people see our heroes, our Olympic heroes, in the same regard that they Jess Ennis and Chris Hoy got got in 2008 and 2012, and I think people just accept it now that we're always going to be good at olympic sports. But unless we support them, unless we provide the resources, it's not going to happen and I would forecast probably in the next couple of olympic cycles we start going back down now, one of the things that we do on this podcast is we get the last guest to ask the next guest a question without knowing who that is going to be.
Speaker 1:So the last guest was nick kershaw, who runs impact marathons and claire, I think you've got.
Speaker 2:Uh, nick's question only I do, that's a good one. Okay, nick kershaw asks design your dream race. What's the distance, the location, the setting, the discipline? And to that can you add a little twist to it?
Speaker 3:wow, thanks, nick. They'd have to have a lot of disciplines in there, but they'd all have to have an aquatic theme. So, first off, I don't like competing unless the weather's nice and maybe I got that from 2004 with sunshine in the air and blue skies, open air swimming pool. But I would like, and I'm much better endurance than I am at sprint events, so I would like to see some aquatic events. So what are we going to have in there? Probably start off canoeing. That means when am I going to do this?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think I'm going to spice it up and I'd like to go somewhere in Africa in order to be able to do this. We're going to go with a bit of exotic chips. So I like start with a canoe, slightly risky because I think they might have some crocodiles, but we've definitely got to have a swim in there as well. Then we're going to have a sail, just to get a little bit technical, and then we're going to finish off with a row just to make sure that the upper body strength is coming into it and I can I can have a chance, what we're going to call that. It's like in a quantum triathlon or quadathlon. That's what I'd like to do. And the twist is you're not going to support this at all. But the twist is after each event you have to have a pint.
Speaker 1:This is like the equivalent of the Medoc marathon, isn't it? Where you have to drink wine on your wide ramp. I'm loving this. I'm signing up.
Speaker 2:Okay, very interesting.
Speaker 3:There needs to be some sort of leve leveling up there, and the leveling up I like is that you've got to be able to do a pint.
Speaker 1:For safety reasons. Can we put the swim first? I don't like the idea of necking a pint and then doing the swim.
Speaker 3:I think you might be right with that. We'll go with the swim first. It sounds fantastic to me.
Speaker 1:And one of the other things that we do on the podcast is ask for books that you found yourself recommending to others, books that you found that really helped you. Are there any particular books that you found that really helped you? Are there any particular books that stand out for you and found you found?
Speaker 3:really helpful, I one that I think should be required reading for all kids. I'll start with kids first. There's a few different ones. It's called rich dad, poor dad, dr robert kiyosaki and I. Just it's sort of a little bit old now. The markets aren't quite right. In the same stuff that he talks about. He talks a lot about real estate, so the times have changed, but the principles are absolutely correct that he talks about in rich dad, poor dad, and I'm like a lot of things that I'm passionate about.
Speaker 3:When it comes to kids education, I just don't think we teach our children about finances at all, and that's. I actually gave my kids the whole rich dad, poor dad series for christmas. I'm only 12 and 10 it's way too early for them to be but actually, if they can learn about what was happening in Egypt 3,000 years ago, why can't they learn about finance, which actually they do? Have some money of their own and they can invest some of it. Rich Dad, poor Dad would be up there For those entrepreneurs that are just getting into the journey, and it's lighthearted, but I think, required reading. That is inspirational as well. Sh about how nike started with phil knight I think the guy's name was to start the business. So shoe dog is is definitely up there as well. But yeah, I like to read a lot of books but they're a bit light-hearted. But those two one for kids and one for one for aspiring entrepreneurs.
Speaker 1:I think both are amazing. Reading, as a recovering financial advisor, you're singing to the choir on the Rich Dad, poor Dad, one but Shoe Dog, I just think is such a brilliant, brilliant story. Do you see any similarities between what you're doing in the swimming space and what Phil was doing in the shoe space?
Speaker 3:Well, what you learn about business is it's about scalability, right. If ever you're going to be, you're limited by how much your business can scale. And I think when what nike did was hit on what was probably a global trend and a global opportunity, rather but their product, everyone requires. Everyone wears shoes, right? Not everyone is going to want to take their kids swimming and also, with nike, they were selling to an already existing network, whereas what I do I'm having to build the infrastructure that requires millions of pounds in order to scale my business. So the scalability isn't there.
Speaker 3:But that doesn't mean that we still don't inspire to revolutionize swimming and change lives. We still think that opportunity is there in order to be as revolutionary in our space. We'll never be as successful as Nike are, certainly in this field, but we will have similar levels of impact with the people that we do deal with. By the way, have you seen the film Air? Yes, it's fantastic. I thought I was watching the Shoe Dog. Do you know what I mean? The story come to life. It was like Shoe Dog was the script.
Speaker 1:It is but, obviously it's only a part of Shoe Dog, isn't it? It's almost the last story of Shoe Dog, but what I love about it is that towards the end, where he's, yeah, sign the deal with Michael Jordan. The most we've ever sold of one shoe is like $3 million. And then it comes up with this stat saying Jordan sold $163 million in its first year. It's just incredible, isn't it?
Speaker 3:Charlie. I think that's a good point because a lot of people, when they're successful in business, might overstate what an impact they were and what that role was. And one thing I think we all have to recognize whether it be in sports or in business, the timing is absolutely key. And you can be on the fortunate side of timing or the unfortunate side. You know, it's like Bill Gates. Bill Gates was not going to be as successful with Microsoft 10 years earlier or three years later. He was in the right place at the right time, doing the right thing. Same thing with Bill Knight and all these other great guys. And that's one thing I'm asking myself continuously in my space Are we too early on this? You know, we're definitely not too late. We might be too early, and I think it's. I think it's really interesting they're both in sports and in business what a key effect timing has.
Speaker 1:I completely agree, but Phil Knight was too early, but he had the resilience to stay the distance until the timing was right, and that's the other thing, isn't it? If you haven't got the timing right, you definitely can't go back in time, but you can hang around longer, and that's what I think Shiloh demonstrates really well. One last question for you we started or early on we started talking about how setting big goals is difficult. What's the single big goal that you're driving towards at the moment?
Speaker 3:Wow, that's a fascinating one. It would be so easy to say to give you a business, one or something I'm trying to improve myself on in health, but the one that takes the most of my thought is about my children. I'm lucky to be a dad of four people. I'm continuing asking myself the question am I giving my children enough time? Because I think there's three things you need in order to be a good dad you need time, you need energy and definitely some resources can help, and I just want to make sure that I'm not taking the time element away too much. I'd love to be I think I'm a good dad, but I'd love to be a better dad.
Speaker 3:What does spend a lot of time? Probably 50 hours a week trying to build the greatest lens of swim business in the country, but how many hours a week am I actually spending trying to be the greatest dad in the country? And that might sound cliche, but we all spend a lot of time trying to do something in business or in work when actually there's probably a greater goal at home. And that's something that I'm really really thinking about a lot at the moment, because my kids aren't going to want to know me. They might want to know me, but they're certainly not going to want to spend as much time with me in 15 years time when they're at university and all the rest of it. So, if I'm really being honest about it as I try to be, I think my goal at the moment is how can I be the best version of a dad that I can be? But all that looks like has a lot to do with the amount of time that I can spend with those kids.
Speaker 1:Brilliant and I think you hit on a really lovely point there, because the mistake that people often make with goal setting it's like, right, I need a business goal and maybe I need a fitness goal, but they miss so many other important areas of our life that they don't goal set around. And so to be really clear that actually that is the most important goal at the moment, I think is absolutely brilliant, and I have no doubt that being the focus of your goal will make you an even better dad than I'm sure you are at the moment. Steve, you're doing an amazing job. It's been brilliant chatting to you.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much, and I wish you every success on all of those different goals thank you thanks so if you want to find out more about steve, then the best place to go find him is swimcouk, and also on twitter. He is steve barry too. So what did you make of that interview with steve parry claire?
Speaker 2:it was fantastic. I love to hear an athlete's story as well, and I just think his story, I mean it was a bit of an eye-opener, wasn't it? Him falling in and kind of grabbing kind of the side of a boat and to where he got to in terms of his sport and then kind of you know how that feeds into his business today as well.
Speaker 1:Brilliant story and I think, like you say, to find swimming through at actually a relatively late age, but to get to where he got to is absolutely brilliant. I also love where he talked about how he underachieved at the prior Olympics and then he stepped up at the Olympics where he was potentially slightly past his peak. So I thought that was a brilliant story of resilience and determination and the right mindset. That was really good for me. The other thing I loved when he we started talking about how the similarities between sport and business, how he referred to goals and the importance of clearly defined goals in both business and sport, so that that to me was really interesting. Was there anything else around that business conversation that you picked up on? Really?
Speaker 2:Really early on. He talked about how passion is really important for business, and that really sort of struck a kind of a bell with me in terms of it is really important. If you want to do well in business, it's to be really passionate about what you're doing, and I think that kind of also feeds into from an athlete perspective. You've got to be really passionate and involved in your sport to actually get to where you want to be and also experience those failures you know in in sport and in business to be able to get to where you want to be as well.
Speaker 1:So yeah, I think that's that's really true about being passionate you're right, the two things link in really well in terms of the failure and the passion, because if you're not passionate about something, when you do have those failures, it's very easy to go. Do you know what? It wasn't for me Like Michael Jordan when he was not picked in the whatever it was the university basketball team? If he hadn't been as passionate as he was and determined as he was, he could have taken that as the point where he didn't progress further. So, yeah, I think it's a brilliant, brilliant story, and I said right at the start of this episode that if you hang around until the end, I've got something for you that would help you assess how well you're doing both in business and life.
Speaker 1:So one of the things that we created at the Trusted Team is the Entrepreneurial Happiness Scoreboard so you can go through, you can answer a series of questions. At the end of that, we'll give you some specific takeaways in a download that'll tell you which bits of your business and your life you need to be working on improving to make some amazing steps forward. So if you go to the link in the show notes or you find it on the trusted team website, then you can. You can go through the entrepreneurial happiness scoreboard. So that's it for this episode. Thanks again again, claire. Brilliant, brilliant episode.
Speaker 2:Absolutely no, it was a fantastic, fantastic listen.
Speaker 1:So good luck with your training and, for everyone else, keep on training If you want us to keep getting amazing guests onto the Business of Endurance podcast. We don't ask for you to pay for us. We don't ask for patronage. All we ask for is that you subscribe to the podcast, ideally on Apple. Give us a five-star rating because it shows us you care and, if you've got time, leave us a comment. One word is fine, something like inspiring or amazing or something like that, but we really do appreciate it and it will help us to continue to deliver amazing guests on what we hope you find to be an amazing podcast. Thanks, very much, thank you.