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Business of Endurance
Previously called Tribeathlon, The Business of Endurance is a podcast aimed at connecting endurance sport with personal and business advancement.
Hosted by Charlie Reading and Claire Fudge, the show provides a comprehensive approach to success, drawing inspiration from athletes, coaches, and motivational figures in the endurance sport domain.
With a diverse range of subjects being covered – from fitness strategies to business advice and life lessons – the discussions are designed to inspire not only athletes or entrepreneurs, but anyone pursuing growth in their personal or professional life. 40-minutes every Wednesday is all that's required to gain insights into how the tenets of endurance sport can shepherd success in business and personal development.
Business of Endurance
Breaking Free: From Lawyer to Endurance Entrepreneur with Simon Dent
What does it take to break free from the corporate grind, build multiple businesses with zero industry experience, and push your body to the absolute limit in some of the toughest endurance races on the planet?
Today’s guest, Simon Dent, has done it all. From working as a solicitor in the City to promoting celebrity-packed nightclubs, to building some of the most successful marketing and publishing agencies in sport - Simon’s journey is anything but conventional. He’s also completed the Marathon des Sables, one of the toughest races on Earth, and is now on a mission to reduce plastic waste in the sports industry.
In this episode, Simon shares the mindset shifts needed to leave a secure job, how endurance sport shapes elite entrepreneurs, and why most footballers go bankrupt - and how to avoid the same financial traps. If you want lessons in resilience, reinvention, and making your passion your business, this is one you can’t afford to miss.
Highlights:
- From City Lawyer to Mental Health Crisis
- Building Business: The Power of Surrounding Yourself With Experts
- How Ultra Running Became Therapy
- Business and Endurance: Lessons From Each World
- Marathon des Sables: Blood, Sweat and Friendship
- Save Our Souls: Creating Sustainable Sports Equipment
- Financial Education: Why Footballers Go Bankrupt
- The Brisbane to Sydney Run Challenge
Links:
Connect with Simon through Instagram: https://instagram.com/ultraentrepreneur
Connect with Simon through LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/simon-dent-9509b728/
The 2025 Dallaglio RugbyWorks & British and Irish Lions Ultra Endurance Challenge: https://justgiving.com/page/ultra-endurance-challenge
Please Subscribe to Business of Endurance on Apple Podcasts, leave a comment, and give us a 5-Star review.
This episode was sponsored by The Trusted Team and 4th Discipline
I've always been very aware of my limitations. I think the successes I've had with business, knowing my shortcomings which are plenty, but surrounding myself with people who know a lot more than me I refer to as standing on the shoulder of giants. And so any business I build, I'll make sure I'm not the smartest in the room I I don't want to be, in fact I want to be the least smartest in the room.
Speaker 2:What does it take to break free from the corporate grind, build multiple businesses with zero industry experience and push your body to the absolute limit in some of the toughest endurance races on the planet? Well, today's guest, simon Dent, has done it all From working as a solicitor in the city to promoting celebrity-packed nightclubs, to building some of the most successful marketing and publishing agencies in sport. Simon's journey is anything but conventional. He's also completed the Marathon des Sables, one of the toughest races on earth, and is now on a mission to reduce plastic waste in the sports industry. What a CV.
Speaker 2:So in this episode, simon shares the mindset shifts needed to leave a secure job, how endurance sport shapes elite entrepreneurs and why most footballers go bankrupt, and how to avoid the same financial traps. If you want lessons in resilience, reinvention and making your passion your business, this is the one that you can't afford to miss. So let's dive into this interview with the awesome Simon Dent. Do you know what? When we look at the back end of this podcast, then we see something really interesting. We see that 57% of the people that regularly listen to it haven't hit the subscribe button. So could I ask you a quick favor before we dive into today's episode. If you're enjoying Claire and I bringing you amazing guests, not asking you for patronage fees and not jamming the podcast full of adverts, then the best way you can help us continue to do that and make it even better is to hit that subscribe button. And here's my promise to you when you subscribe we'll make it our mission, along with the team that supports us, to continue to improve this podcast every week. To continue to improve this podcast every week. So thank you so much for your support and for being a part of the Business of Endurance community.
Speaker 2:Let's dive in. So, simon, welcome to the Business of Endurance podcast. I'm really looking forward to chatting to you, and I reckon I don't know that I've ever created as diverse range of questions for any guest as I have for you today. So we'll see where that leads us. But you started your career in the world of law, and it's a really interesting story how you battled to become a big city lawyer but then decided that that wasn't your chosen path. So how did you become a lawyer in the city and what was it about you that allowed you to get there?
Speaker 1:but also what was it about what you found when you got there after all of that struggle that it wasn't right for you yeah, good question and a big one to start with, but they're actually really a sort of foundation piece for me because I, you know, even though that was well, I'm 48 now, so that was 97. I graduated 2002, I qualified as a lawyer and it was like quite a long time ago, but I'm constantly reminded of lessons from then that helped me. Now, I think, like a lot of people, I ended up at uni doing law because it was seen to be a good degree. I loved it, I love studying law, and then when I got to London to do what was then the LPC, a few little warning signs that I didn't enjoy so much. There was less of the sort of why and sort of philosophy around the law and the criminal law and all that stuff. And it suddenly came about clients in billable time, and that's when the flag started being raised, really. But I was already on the conveyor belt by then. And then it took me a long time to get a training contract, which is obviously part of the process. And it's actually bizarre you think about this yesterday that over two years I received 250 rejection letters, which I've got all of them still, and I think, without being aware of at the time. That rejection was served me very well for later in life. But I finally got a training contract, I qualified and then, yeah, as you sort of highlighted, a couple of years into it sort of things started heading south, and I think that was.
Speaker 1:There's probably a few reasons for it. I was a sort of you know young man living in London burning the camera at both ends, but I think where I really tripped up was that I, I had to work incredibly hard at school and uni just to sort of get to par. I was never a sort of in the top set. I wasn't from an academic background. I, you know, my foundation of education, I think it's probably fair to say was pretty poor. I was in and this is no fault to my parents at all but my dad was in the army.
Speaker 1:So I, I spent my formative years army schools in Germany, hong Kong, which just weren't great, and then the boarding school I was sent to because we were away, so much wasn't great, and so it's sort of, you know, I don't think I had a really good foundational education and so from ages sort of 12 upwards I worked really, really hard. So, you know, school holidays, honestly, and even uni holidays I would do eight hours a day at my desk just understanding things, catching up. So I think what probably happened is that I cheated the system a bit in that I worked so hard that when I actually got to qualification and becoming a lawyer I was quite fatigued. And I was suddenly, you know, in this fancy law firm in a city surrounded by your Oxbridge, your Durham's, your Exeter's, who had swum through, drunk themselves through university, and there I was sort of head in hands already and they were just starting. And I think that's really where the problem started.
Speaker 2:And at what point did it become too much? At what point did you go enough, and what was it that created that tipping point?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was happening over a period of time and I started to experience feelings, emotions which are very familiar to me today and probably familiar to a lot of people today, because we talk about them more and understand them more. But back then I actually went to my GP and explained feelings that I now know are anxiety and depression. But I was told that it was an iron deficiency. So I was then put on iron tablets and so for three months I was starting to get clinically depressed and was being given iron supplements to counter it, and I was still going to work, I wasn't taking time off, I wasn't being given time off and it was getting worse and worse.
Speaker 1:And, yeah, one morning I basically just broke down and I just found myself in a bit of a heap in my front room in a very bad way and was immediately admitted to a private hospital, and that's where the process started. It was an amazing place called the Capio Nightingale Hospital in Marylebone and I was admitted with, basically, yeah, clinical depression, anxiety. I wasn't sectioned, I was pretty close to it, but they said I could need to go on a six-month intense program whereby I would do one-on-one sessions in the morning and then group therapy in the afternoons. So you know. Suddenly being plucked out of the city am I, you know, living in a one-bedroom flat to then being admitted to a psychiatric hospital, which is an amazing hospital. But yeah, life changed pretty quickly.
Speaker 3:I actually, from a background of working in mental health actually as well, I can understand how, or start to understand how difficult that must be from that kind of fast-paced lifestyle into this mental health hospital, actually reading and researching around you. Then you went into this career in terms of nightclubs, entertainment promoting. So how did you get from that place of where you were really struggling from a mental health perspective? What was the big change? So what happened after that event and how did you then slip into kind of another world of endurance actually, because I would say nightclubs there's, there's definitely an endurance there. So, yeah, how did that happen?
Speaker 1:yeah, it was interesting because again, I sort of whilst at the Caprio 90 girl, I turned to the books and so I treated it almost like a course or an MBA or a mini MBA and I studied the mind. I studied I was doing cognitive behavioral therapy and I immersed myself in it and I started to understand things I'd never even, you know, been aware of before how the mind works and and literally, I think I was five months into the six month program and I walked out my flat window and I should remember it so, so well that I saw colors again and I hadn't seen, been seeing colors for months and it was such a strange thing even sounds strange to talk about it now but my world was gray for probably 12 months and I walked out and I was just overwhelmed with all the colors I could see in London and I still yeah, it's hilarious. Actually, I ended up walking from Sheppard's Bush to Marriott at Burnworth, hostel Wars which I'd never done before and up Oxford Street. For some reason I walked into the old Top man on Oxford Circus and bought a pair of red trousers. I'd never owned a pair of red trousers, but they're the most overwhelming, exciting, fun thing because I could see red again, so. But there's an overwhelming exciting, fun thing because I could see red again. So, anyway, that's a bit of sidetrack, but so I almost was I wouldn't say I'd cracked it but suddenly I understood what was happening.
Speaker 1:I developed these coping mechanisms and ways that I could now tackle these negative thoughts that were coming to my head and so, yeah, off the back of that, things got exciting. You know, things got. I was always incredibly sociable. I'd always had a good network. I had a very good friend who had set up a nightclub promotions business and, yeah, he asked me to join him in that and so I had an incredible, yeah, as you've said, one of many pivots I've had in my life, but organizing. There was sort of 20 of us that we used to organize probably around 17 parties a week at London's High and Nightclub. So I did that for a few years and that again was another sort of foundation that then propelled me forward into a career of sport and business.
Speaker 2:That kind of leads me on to and I know there's multiple business steps that we're going to come back to. But how did you go from that to the world of endurance sport? Because what you've just described to me and I'm reading jog on by bella mackie at the moment, and it's actually it's the first book I've ever read or listened to that has has described the world of depression and anxiety in similar words to what you've just used in, like no color and suddenly the, the colour came back and it's really interesting. So the reason I find it really interesting is my eldest daughter has been struggling with her mental health and it's the first thing I've ever read where I've gone. She's talking like my daughter was talking and it's fascinating. So and Bella finds the world of running helps her a lot Was it linked to mental health that got you into running? Or what got you into endurance sports? And where did that endurance sport journey take you? For those that don't know much about you?
Speaker 1:Yeah, wow, okay and yeah. So, as you said, there were a few more sort of pivots along the way and it was in Price 2014. I hadn't really run before mean, I've obviously run, I've, you know, played five a side foot with my mates and but never done an organized running event. And I was what? 38 at the time and a charity place came up for london marathon and, for whatever ever reason, I said yes. Now, at the time I wasn't in a particularly bad spot with my mental health. As I said, I'd sort of. Obviously there were waves and peaks and troughs, like we all have, but I had a bit of a toolkit by then to sort of help when things were happening or certain warning signs were happening. So I got into.
Speaker 1:Yeah, london Marathon was my first event in 2014. I think I did it in four hours 30. I've got some brilliant photos of me doing it. I think that the finish line there's a post box ran past me, which is what I thought was a glorious finish line photo. Now I see if what it really was, but that was fun. And then, off the back of that, I then then entered again 2015, got a charity place and that, for me, really started I was probably, I was still drinking quite a bit, I was a bit overweight, but for me, you know, something happened and I'm sure you guys are aware. London Marathon is a very special day and the sort of the mixture of, I think, probably the goal setting and the, therefore the training towards something, again really reminded me of my, I think my way I used to sort of, you know, study for exams and then there'd be a moment at the end of it and that sort of being a very goal-orientated person. I was like, hold on a second, this is quite interesting. And then, yeah, off the back of that, did a couple of halves.
Speaker 1:It wasn't until 2018 that I did my first ultra, which was Race to the King, which I'm sure you both know, and then that was that. I mean, off the back of the Race to the King, I'd actually set up a creative agency called Dark Courses a year before, which we subsequently went on to have lots of success with. But again, that was when I was building a business. I was in pretty stressed, but actually I found ultra running, as you highlighted earlier, a really nice form of therapy and again, I think, taking things from the sort of the toolkit I developed post capi united, get a hospital and marrying it. What with what I was getting from ultra running. I found it quite a potent mix and that was that. That was the start of my sort of ultra journey and that sort of has pretty much snowballed since then.
Speaker 1:Really, I'd probably say the highlights being Marathon de Sable in 22. Sorry, in 2023. My first 100-miler in 22. I DNF'd the Dragons back last year. I finished the event as a hatchling. I didn't quite get to finish it with a dragon, but I still completed down to Cardiff. But yeah, it's been quite a sort of. I've immersed myself in it now, really.
Speaker 2:So retrospectively looking back. What made the Dragons back the highlight and what do you now know? What do you now see, from a mental health point of view, that running does for you?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it's really important to hire as well for me In the success I've had in businesses the limited success, obviously, with lots of failures as well. I think it's. I've always been very aware of my limitations. As I said earlier, my journey started with someone who worked really hard but wasn't particularly clever. I think the successes I've had with business, knowing my shortcomings, which are plenty, but surrounding myself with people who know a lot more than me, I refer to as standing on the shoulder of giants, and so any business I build, I'll make sure I'm not the smartest in the room. I don't want to be. In fact I want to be the least smartest in the room, and I think what I sort of stumbled into with running was that and I hope I don't defend any of your listeners, but I regard it as a bit of a talent in the sport and I've sort of when I got into running I suppose I was genetically blessed I had a slight frame. I mean, I was carrying a you know a few stone more than I should have been, but my frame lent itself quite well to it and also, I think, because I'd come to running quite late in life, age 38. There were no historical niggles or sort of knees or ankles or there was no sort of injuries that I was carrying which I hear a lot about now. My contemporaries who have been running for 30 years, they're all sort of just always injured. I mean touch wood. I really never injured some massive touching wood there. But yeah, going back to the mental health part, I just found that it was for me such an easy mechanism that I could.
Speaker 1:I know we always talk about and everyone talks about digital distraction and how we're always on our phones and we don't have any thinking time and we're always getting inputs.
Speaker 1:We moved down to Sussex in about five years ago this year and on my morning runs I admit to you that you know pretty much every day but I can go for a run here not see a person, any signs of human life at all. I'll certainly see no traffic, traffic lights, digital outdoor displays, marketing, advertising boards. So it's complete me time. It's no phone time, there's no input. So obviously I occasionally use the podcast but music. But I'm very lucky that I can go on a run with no interruptions for four hours and regularly access what everyone refers to as flow state and I think in London up until 2020, I never really accessed flow state because obviously there are so many inputs even when I run, whether it's traffic lights, beeping horns, you know whatever it was people. Now I can go out here and just just lose myself and I think that, as a form of therapy, or even just medicine, has been just game changing for me.
Speaker 3:I think it's interesting what you say, actually, when you're in this space and we've talked to so many, so many amazing guests on this podcast that talk about this kind of headspace and this silence and actually coming from somewhere. That's, you know, in your multiple different businesses that you have that are very sort of full on to be able to have that space, multiple different businesses that you have that are very sort of full on to be able to have that space. I think is is really important and and on that theme, what do you think you've? You've got your, your agency. What is it? Wild, wild horses, no, a dark dark, dark horses.
Speaker 3:That's actually been sold, so I've stepped away from dark horses okay, so when, when you thinking, thinking about business and also about sport, what do you think, thinking from an endurance perspective, what do you think that the world of endurance so for you, that really that ultra side of running has given you in terms of business, and also vice versa? So what does business do you think sort of give to your ultra running endurance?
Speaker 1:That's something I think about a lot and I think there are there's a number of points. I think the. I think goal setting, as I touched on earlier, is really important. I think both you know obviously setting out on any training for any event, it's all about having that goal you're working towards. And obviously in business, whether that's daily, weekly, annual, you know goals for the business are really important. I think the ability to embrace failure again, that was something that I think I really got from my those formative years I told you about with the 250 rejection letters from law firms. That's when that sort of muscle was really sharpened. And I've not lost, and I think I'm.
Speaker 1:I'm very lucky that I can walk from failure to failure and I think you know when you're curled up in a fetal position you're flat in london crying and having to call an ambulance because you don't have happened to you after that. You're kind of okay with most failures, if not all failures, and I wouldn't sound bulletproof, but there's not much people can do to me now. Having experienced that in life and I think again for business, in all the business I've been involved with what to some people are catastrophic events that you know suddenly people find very distressing, I'm quite blessed as a leader that I can brush them off quite quickly and we can move on as a group. I think positivity, as you know, like for all. I mean again, I'm quite lucky. In fact, I'm regularly mocked for being too positive, but that's quite handy in business and in running, especially in ultra running, I think I'm always that annoying guy who's asking how your day is when I'm running alongside you and, yeah, I probably do upset a few people with that toxic positivity I think they call it, and then there's lots of others. But I think again and something that actually I'd love to highlight now, which is a real, it's been a real lesson for you this year.
Speaker 1:So in business, I've always, as I said earlier, surrounded myself with experts and whether that's meant diluting 100% of a business I own down to 15%. I'm always aware that it's better to have those smarter people around you and that is something I'll do in every business that I find I own. But interestingly enough, I sort of hadn't realized in running I'd never done that and, as I said, I had a bit of a spectacular fail last year with the Dragons back. It was the second race I've ever DNF'd, but on day two I basically missed the cutoff, the time cutoff. I mean I'd never finished anyway, but I'd trained so hard and I sort of realized afterwards that I'd never had a coach in running and it was a bit of a lot. I was actually a bit embarrassed.
Speaker 1:I suddenly thought, shit, I go on about this in life about obviously always educate yourself, surround yourself with experts standing on the shoulders of giants. I don't have a coach. So my big challenge for this year is I'm running 1,000 kilometers from Brisbane to Sydney and so I'm very excited to say that I've now got a coach, and my coach is the guy that holds the fastest known time from Brisbane to Sydney. So I found him in the deepest, darkest corner of the internet. He runs Manly Running Club in Sydney and, yeah, already only six weeks in, I'm like holy shit.
Speaker 1:Obviously my running's got better because I've got an expert telling me and it's exciting actually, because I was sort of thinking how I've got away with it anyway for the last seven years of running or making all on myself and he's even been through my Strava and he actually said to me he was like he just couldn't believe that I went into dragon's bat. He was like you were so fatigued like I could tell from your strava you were. No one knew that you were a mess. And then he also said in in 2022 I did a sub-3 marathon. He was like how on earth you do that? Because I looked your strava for like the months he'd captured. It's a complete mess. So my point there so something I haven't learned is absolutely surround yourself with experts, whether that's in business, or get yourself a running coach, because, my god, they make a difference that's brilliant and I love.
Speaker 2:I love the fact that you've got so far with your ultra running without the support of a coach, and I was going to. I was going to ask you for a specific sort of well, but I will. No, I will still ask you. So you've sort of answered it, but is there a specific thing that that running coach for somebody that's thinking, do I get a running coach, do I not? Is there a specific thing that he has changed or told you to do or to stop doing that has made that improvement so far?
Speaker 1:absolutely and in the world of ultras I ended up in this sort of school of thought, or certainly the literature and the content I was following was always about time on feet and whether that was for, as I said, you know, hundred milers marathon to solve, dragons back, whatever it was, and there was always in the back of my head time on feet.
Speaker 1:And so the way that manifested myself for me most weeks was three hour run on Tuesday, three hour on Thursday and then a sort of five hour on Sunday, and I was just smashing that out and and I'm I'm horribly consistent, so that I was doing that for years and in between I was trying to be a present father, business owner, husband, just you know, and actually it's a bit of a mess, whereas I'm now, as I said, well, I'm 20 weeks out from running a thousand kilometers and the coach I'm running every day now, but this morning was a 45 minute run, tomorrow is 35 minutes of strides, the longest run I've got this week is two hours and he's like yeah, no, worries, like wick, you're gonna run 44 miles a day and you will improve and get faster as each day goes and you'll sprint into sydney and the most you're ever going to run is two and a half hours, which just blow my mind.
Speaker 1:I I'm just sort of you know, I've, I and know I feel better. My wife loves it because I'm at home a lot more. It's a win-win everywhere really. But I'm sort of like I just followed the wrong thing for years and so yeah, in answer to your question, I'm running a lot less to run a lot further.
Speaker 2:Interesting. Are you missing the long runs on a Sunday?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I wish for my life's in. Oh, so much we'll do at home. Now I should take a paper and sit at the end of the drive for two hours. No, no, I don't mean that I do miss the downs. Actually I kind of. Yeah, I do miss the downs a lot because I because you know, on my sunday five hours I could go and see some amazing things and whereas now I'm sort of I've even actually bought a treadmill for home. So, yeah, it's, it's, it's faster, quicker, but I, I do miss the, the long stuff. But, to be brutally honest, I'd get it. You know, it's like you come back from a five-hour run on sunday. I'm no use to anyone, you know, I'm literally, whereas now I can come, you know, the 45 minute run, and your endorphins and dopamine are pinging around and I'm actually quite a useful human. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I completely get it, because I did exactly the same thing. I was doing long, long runs and then now I've got a much smarter training plan. I'm missing all of those, but I did quite like going exploring with just an ultra pack on and ending up in places that I'd never seen before. So, yeah, it's really difficult, just on this, sticking with this topic. Going back to business, how do you make sure you recruit people that are better than you in particular areas? Do you have a process that you think these are the types of people this is the culture I want to recruit around, or do I use any technology to help you identify the right people? You know how do you do that?
Speaker 1:yeah, good question. I'm. I've just started the role as a chairman of a really excited business called affirmative and we're a creative agency and we describe ourselves as being at the cutting edge of culture. We were we rooted in music production, but we're actually launching a 360 creative business now. As the chairman, my main role is recruitment, so I'm currently six or eight briefs out at the moment looking at people and it's really it's really hard. It's really hard to find really good people.
Speaker 1:I think the last time I was recruiting was seven years ago at the helm of dark horses, and that's a very different time. To recruit there, I see, a lot easier because the rules of engagement were a lot clearer. I'm actually meeting people now and seeing people now. One of the first questions and fair enough is is this you know, hybrid work from home, like all these questions, I've just like wow, chat, chibi, chibi. What does that mean? And it's interesting because it's interesting, because I'm always about building businesses that have a real culture, and what I mean by that is having a centralised mission that the team get behind, having a strong identity.
Speaker 1:I believe you recruit on personality and if that person's right, I believe you can end up teaching the job. I mean I'm in no position to judge anyone on the CV. When I've gone from lawyer to nightclub sports agent, to publishing company owner, advertising agency owner, now production business owner and a few other things in between. None of those things were on my CV before someone gave me the opportunity. So I think, with the right attitude, I think that's a massive thing. Massive thing I mean I've got actually.
Speaker 1:Can I say this? Yeah, I can say this. We're going through interview process at the moment and there are a couple of people who were earmuffs the role and we set a little task, a little presentation task, as the final stage and it was to be done on zoom, and one of the candidates insisted on coming to the office and doing it in person and she wasn't very well and the moment she just messaged to say I want to do this in person she's only young, I'm not very well, but I'm going to come in and do this and the others were just happy to do it on zoom, I kind of were like well, that's really interesting, like that for me is a really interesting attitude to have and so well, let's see what happens. But that sort of thing I think is as I said so, attitude first, and then I believe there is an element of being able to teach people a job on the go.
Speaker 3:I think what you were saying about opportunity there as well, how it just made me think actually, because, researching a little bit about, I mean, like I say, these multiple businesses that you've had and the history behind that, I think I'm right in saying that you didn't necessarily have a background or experience in some of those businesses that you went into, coming from that law background, but people obviously gave you this opportunity. What was it that made you kind of say yes to those opportunities? Or were you creating those opportunities? You were there at the right time, and did you ever kind of suffer from feeling that actually you didn't have the right experience to be in the right place, like is that where you started to surround yourself with these experts? So tell me a little bit about that.
Speaker 1:And again I go back to those formative years of reaching rock bottom after a legal profession and actually realizing that life's too short. And actually, you know, I regard that period of my life as the best thing that could have possibly happened to me, because off the back of it I no longer there was no such thing as fear of failure, that I had. No fear at all I also had. I wasn't worried about risk because I knew that, whatever happened, I was never going to be in that position again.
Speaker 1:So it sort of gave me I don't want to sound dramatic, but a bit of a superpower in that people are always saying oh, you're always pivoting, you know that, you know you never stay in your lane and you know you're always taking risks. And I'm sort of yeah, it's not really something to give me credit for, because it feels so natural to me, and so I think that obviously there's a responsibility if I have I've got a family and I've got children and I have employees. So I'm not sort of like some crazy loon running around just taking massive risks everywhere, but I do think that I'm open-minded to taking chances. And again, if you don't mind me just touching on Save Our Souls, which is the brand I've launched this year. I mean, that was born out of an idea that came running and you know, three months later I was in you know rural China, at factories and designing a product which I had no right to design with the factory, and here we are now selling it. So you kind of like I just yeah, I guess it's what you'd probably say is, yeah, fear of failure. Really, I'm not really that scared by anything really.
Speaker 2:Can I ask you a question? Are you? This is not a reflection on how you're acting, it's something I'm curious about. Do you think you're dyslexic?
Speaker 1:I'm not dyslexic, I'm definitely, I'm definitely, I'm definitely on the spectrum, I'm definitely. I would say I could definitely be diagnosed with autism Again. But I think that's something I've weaponized and, yeah, I kind of. It's a brilliant book. Here we go, and it is a what is a good psychopath and why it'll help you to think like one. I mean, this book is by Andy McN mcnabb, who you, I'm sure you remember, is oh yeah, that's it, and I read this and it's I'll just read it back and mcnabb is diagnosed as a psychopath, but he's a good psychopath. I'm like a bad psychopath. He's aiming to dial up or down qualities such as ruthlessness, fearlessness, decisiveness, consciousness and empathy to get the very best out of himself and others. And I feel like I read that book and was like, wow, I'm not going to see it from the rooftops. I'm a good psychopath, but I think I probably am.
Speaker 2:It's fascinating because I think the reason I ask about dyslexia was Possibly I might be dyslexic yeah, I don't know, could be that as well.
Speaker 1:Possibly I might be dyslexic?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't know, could be that as well. Well, I think so. The reason I asked was because people that are dyslexic usually have an advantage running their own businesses, because in school everyone's taught well to learn this thing. You go from A to B down this straight path, but somebody that struggles, that is dyslexic, typically has to go zigzagging all over the place. But they work out how to get there of their own right and that's, and that's why it's an advantage in business, because the entrepreneur no, and like you said, with the goal setting, it's about setting the clear goal and it's about going. I don't know how I'm getting there, but I know I'm going to work it out along the way and that's why it sort of rang true with me. I think the other thing, that being on the spectrum is a really interesting point. There's a book called Driven by, I think, douglas Brackman, and he describes it instead of ADHD, he describes it as the driven gene, which is just fascinating. But I think that the psychopath thing is We'll come back to that.
Speaker 1:I'll go with Driven, just on that. I think there's something else which I think could be related to these sort of again, I don't know the exact medical term which is the best, but for whatever reason again, I don't know how and where this came from I'm incredibly consistent and it's not hard for me to be consistent. I don't, again, I'm, you know, I'm in no way an elite athlete at all, but why, and I I can do is turn up every single day and it's sometimes strange, I listen to I was actually listening to a khalina jaune podcast yesterday and I've listened to loads and one of the questions is always you know, how do you? You know, is it easy for you to get up every day, even in the winter? And they all say no, sorry, it's, it's not easy and that, and I find it really easy, like I, I do find it easy.
Speaker 1:I don't, I don't, I don't want a medal for it and I don't. You know, I don't judge other people that don't find it easy, but I'm really lucky and I think that if, whatever you do, you just can keep turning up. And again, I joke with mates that I sort of I have a very positive outlook, as I said earlier and I've got a short memory, and so when you've got a positive outlook and a short memory and you're consistent, like you can do anything like really, because you sort of you just keep going and I kind of do, but yeah, I appreciate that, I'm just lucky to have that, that's nothing. I, that's not a skill.
Speaker 2:I think that it's the I think I'm right in quoting Robin Sharma that says it's not the big things you do occasionally that make the difference.
Speaker 2:It's the little things that you do often, and it is that ability to just show up and do it day after day and day.
Speaker 2:You know, and in the world of finance, which was my historical business, we always talked about it with compound growth it's just getting the growth year on year on year that makes makes the difference and that kind of segues into your world as a football agent. Because I heard you quote something which I remember hearing years ago and I think the statistic I heard you quote was that 70 of footballers go bankrupt. Yeah, and I mean that's frightening when we understand how much money the majority of them get paid. As, when you were acting as a football agent, what was your experience about how those people were educated about finance? And also, how do you think you know I was always passionate about why are schools not teaching finance? We all have a mortgage, we all have a credit card, we all have a whatever, but we don't get taught it at school. So talk to me a bit about that from a football agent point of view, but also from an education point of view.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's a really interesting subject and I think, yeah, so that was a sort of 2010 to 2014. I was, you know, so that was a sort of 2010 to 2014. I was looking after some quite well-known footballers you know this claim and none of those you know were experiencing bankruptcy issues. But I think that and, funny enough, at the moment I'm consulting, actually, the fascinating organisation based in the Cayman Islands who are looking to help with this issue. So it's time you mentioned this and it still is a problem.
Speaker 1:I think there are a number of factors thrown into this sort of pot as to why this is the case, but it's also worth stressing it's also the case in the NBA and in the NFL in America. So this isn't just a soccer UK problem. This is an elite sportsman issue and I think that I'd probably say three main factors stand out for me. Firstly is that the background that these professionals come from is often low-income households from less privileged backgrounds. So I think that that's a factor that they, from a young age, aren't experienced to money or any sort of positive, good money habits.
Speaker 2:I think that's a huge factor, which I guess, is why you wouldn't see it as much in rugby as you would in football, because the background is all gold and it's, yeah, I think that's a big factor.
Speaker 1:I think, secondly, any child that is earmarked to become a professional. They are whipped out of education age 13, 14, pretty much and so, you know, miss out on what a lot of people would have. I mean, obviously not on most people, I doubt most people in this country go to university, but even their GCSEs it's never the priority, it's just about the tick box, because you're going to be a pro footballer. So that's a big thing. And then, unfortunately, probably one of the biggest factors is the once they do make it, the lack of advice was a combination of lack of good advice, but then also people surrounding these people actively trying to extract money off them, and so these four factors are pretty much the reason.
Speaker 1:And also it's it's such a small earning window. I mean, the average elite soccer player in this country will be on what we would, you know, describe was the big money for probably four years, five years max. So if you think you're I, you know I. I imagine that my earning, my, my life income, will be spread over probably 50 years. Maybe a bit more of work, hard work, whereas you think a footballer it's over five years and they took themselves out of education so they knew nothing else. They've got no infrastructure around them, dare I say. It's hardly surprising that that is a statistic.
Speaker 2:And going back to the schooling piece, do you think that schools do a good job of educating our children for today's society?
Speaker 1:oh, don't get me started on schools, if I'm not careful I'll sound like andrew toates, but I, yeah, no, I think the two biggest things well, arguably the biggest things in life the person decides to settle down with whether that's a man or woman and have children with, and also how you provide for your loved ones. And I think at school we talk nothing about personal relationships, we talk nothing about empathy, we talk nothing about the opposite sex or even the same sex in relationships and we talk nothing about how to look after a human. Like how on earth do we spend 16 years of education and we're not shown how to bring up a child? Like it blows my mind that that's the most important thing any of us ever do. So that pisses me off.
Speaker 1:But then also going back to the financial health, absolutely like there is and again I'm not going to go all conspiracy theory on you all, but I find it strange that there's not a module at compulsory schooling that is about how to look after money, what money is, what to do with money. And yeah, I don't want to go conspiracy theory, but it does sort of suit the system that 70% of this country come out of education and don't really know what to do with money, because I think that certainly suits the government.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think back to my education actually, and there isn't anything you're taught about money, and certainly not you know that's showing my age now but certainly not about looking after yourself at all. You talk about looking after a human. It's crazy when you think of it.
Speaker 1:It really is, isn't it? And it's so like crazy when, when you think of it, it really is, isn't it? And it's so like I, for whatever reason. I I again, I'm a bit, that's a bit of a bookworm, but I'm, I'm still like a four out of ten partner, dad, dad, because I'm just learning on the job and having to just read and educate myself, I just I, you know, for whatever reason, I kind of didn't really understand what any of it was and I thought you know, miraculously. So when you're in your 20s, you suddenly become an adult and this, you're blessed with this moment of all this knowledge. And like I don't get it. I mean thankfully, I well, I say thankfully I didn't get married till 38 and and even then I was like still a bit behind, well, massively behind the curve. But if I got married in my 20s it would have been an absolute disaster.
Speaker 2:They say the male brain doesn't mature until age 40. So it's probably about right. Actually, I'll get behind that.
Speaker 3:So, talking about charities and schooling, education, you were telling us a little bit before we started this conversation today about a really exciting charity event that you're about to do that's related to education, so tell us a little bit more about it. You dipped in a little bit about your running coach there, so what are you doing?
Speaker 1:Well, firstly, it's not say about to do, it's 20 weeks away About. I just had a little bluff through my chest when we had a band. Yeah, so 19th of July this year I'm running from Brisbane to Sydney. I'm running for an organisation, charity, called Delalio Rugby Works, which was an organisation set up by the ex-Ingland rugby captain, lawrence Delalio, and it is an organisation that helps children that have been excluded from mainstream education learn life skills, and so we are one of the official partners of the British Irish Lions Tour of Australia. So it's really exciting.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, I am very much on the journey of fundraising. We have a JustGiving page. So please, please, please, put that in the show notes. But yeah, myself and an Australian friend of mine are going to be running 44 miles a day for 14 days down the East Coast to Australia. So yeah, as I mentioned earlier, I've going to be running 44 miles a day for 14 days down the East Coast to Australia. So yeah, as I mentioned earlier, I've managed to find a coach who holds the fastest known time for that distance, that journey. So fingers crossed, I mean I'm in the best hands possible.
Speaker 3:It sounds absolutely awesome and what an amazing place to do that as well. Big question, because you talked a little bit about it before what are you going to do to look after your feet, because I know that's a big area of yours in terms of saving our souls?
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. So it's a good question and I think, just yeah, we're jumping around, but that you know, save Our Souls as a brand, we describe ourselves as being a sort of foot care brand for the everyday athlete. So it's by no means for elite athletes, but the sort of insight I got, which really started when I moved down to Sussex, was I went from road running to trail running and I started getting really mangled feet just being out on the trails all day, every day, in both summer and winter, and it really got me thinking about feet. And then I did the marathon which, as your listeners will know, it is an absolute foot care frenzy. I mean, we had 24 full-time foot doctors following us around the sahara, and so that experience again showed me, wow, okay, feet are really important. And so, yeah, save ourselves is born out of those experiences, really, and with our flagship and launch product is the Atacama, which is a shoe drive. So again, going back to my story here, I developed very bad chill blains on my feet never had that in London running and after a lot of investigation with various podiatrists and croppetists, we discovered that every morning I was putting on damp shoes to go out running in and the damp shoes were causing chafing and immediately making my feet cold and was causing chill blame.
Speaker 1:So the atacama shoe dryer was born and and yeah, we, we had it built last year. Really exciting, it's the first of many products we'll be launching to sort of health with foot care. But yeah, the atacama will dry most running shoes in 20 minutes. We'll put a discount code, if you want, in the show notes so your listeners can sort of tuck in. But it's been amazing. We've been going sort of on sale now for seven weeks and yeah, it's been a huge success.
Speaker 1:But back to your question. It's important to stress that the shoe dryer isn't just for wet shoes caused by rain or water. One of the biggest problems in foot health is obviously foot fungal issues caused by sweat, and I'm hoping the East Coast of Australia will be more sweat than rain, because that's sort of how I envisage it, though it could be raining the whole way, which would be a disaster. So yeah, very much, we will have an Atacama, a portable Atacama, with us and we will be drying our shoes every evening from the sweat. So when we put them on in the morning we'll be good to go Brilliant.
Speaker 2:And I think from listening to you talk about this product which I would definitely put the discount code in the show notes, we'd love to do that it's about making the shoes also last longer. Yeah, so talk to me about the, you know, 200 miles per pair of shoes principle, um, but also throw in. I'd just like to kind of counteract that because obviously, in a world where we've got some runners really preaching, you know, come on, use the shoes for longer than that, which I think is a great thing, if we're trying to reduce the amount of plastic in the world, how are you trying to do that with a plastic?
Speaker 1:yeah product yeah, so firstly, with the business primary, the brand primary is about foot health, but obviously, as you've highlighted, a by-product is the longevity of your footwear. And yeah, as you mentioned, this train is now being sold which tell you how many miles you get from them, which blows my mind, so might be prescriptive as to how much money you spend with a brand, which is crazy. And I think Kylian Jornet, who I mentioned earlier, has launched his own trainer brand and he proudly said at the UTMB last year the trainers he wore he'd been wearing for two and a half years and he is like running 200 miles a week in them. So it's absolute nonsense, to be honest. But yeah, what we're doing with the atacama as well is that we're we're fully aware that if you look after your trainers, they last longer. So whether that's from drying them from sweat or rain, but also once a week, just just wash them, just, you know, get the mud off them, put them in atacama for 20 minutes, dry them out and they're good to go. So absolutely will make them last longer. Obviously as well, a lot of people now will wash their shoes but stuff them down the radiators, but now that heat from the radiator isn't great for the glue on the shoes so they do degrade quickly. So we're confident we're helping your shoes last longer.
Speaker 1:The point you made about plastics it was something that was really at the forefront of our minds. So when we were speaking to potential manufacturers, we met them in Turkey, india, china. What I learned pretty quickly is if you're making an electrical drying product, you can't make it 100% from recycled plastic. So we ended up our manufacturer is using it's about 80% recyclable. But the commitment we've made is twofold. Firstly, we're confident this product will last for life. I mean it's got a three-year warranty.
Speaker 1:But, as I said, we were testing prototypes last year and we are very confident any Atacama you buy will last forever. It will never end up in landfill. So that's a commitment. But secondly, we've partnered with an organization called 4Ocean, who are a brilliant organization based in the States and they remove plastic. They remove plastic from the ocean. So it's huge organization and the commitment we've made there is that for every atacama sold we're donating a pound to 4ocean and so they are then removing the equivalent plastic from the ocean. So at the moment, from theacama sole we're on about 30 pounds of plastic we've removed from the ocean and our commitment is by 2026 we'll go plastic neutral, which means at the end of the year, for the total weight of Atacama sold, we'll have removed the equivalent weight of plastic from the ocean.
Speaker 3:So we feel that's a really nice commitment to make, even though we are on weight of a plastic product I think that's absolutely fantastic, not only the product, then, the way you describe it in terms of helping with foot care, but also the sustainability side of things. I think more and more athletes now certainly the younger generations are looking at how can we make things more sustainable? So and and actually you know, feeding that back into the full ocean and collecting plastic, I mean it's just such a massive, massive problem.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're satisfied and I think you know we're very passionate about it and I think it's it'll be interesting to see. I mean, obviously, you know we are a startup and you know we don't have big media budgets, so we can't really, you know we're not going to be upsetting any of the major trainer brands, I don't think. But I think what we do hope is that we can create a bit of a movement that just gets people to sort of change their behaviours a bit. I mean, as I said, everyone's got a story about, you know, wet trainers stinking out the house on the radiator and the airing cupboard, on the boiler and on the AGA, whatever, like they're everywhere, and that is so ingrained behavior.
Speaker 1:And I think we're starting to see now that we've got some great content going out on our instagram and on our youtube etc. And sort of. We are getting people now just messaging oh, you know, does this work with the football boots as well? And does this work the ski boots? And can I put my wet gloves on it? Because I haven't. And the answer is pretty much yes to all of that and I think it's really nice to see actually people realising that it's like anything. Isn't it Like when something comes along, that's new people are a bit like, but seven, eight weeks in, we're starting to see more and more sales and people are starting to understand what we're doing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and a product, obviously, that's going to be like multi-use as well.
Speaker 1:I was just thinking of a, you know, a glove drying thing, for I mean, funny enough, we were in the running show the nec a couple of weeks ago and we couldn't believe and obviously it's the biggest sport we couldn't believe how many people asked just is it gonna kind of dry my son's football boots? We're sort of like, oh, he's pivot to football, we're not gonna pick this football, but we yes, it can dry york into wood amazing yeah so you, you talked about marathon de saab there and something on both charlie and ours bucket list.
Speaker 3:I haven't, but I know. But actually I worked with a sports podiatrist who spent a lot of time out at those races, um, and some of the stories and pictures are unreal. So tell us a little bit about how do you look after your feet when you're out there, but what are the biggest problems? So, if you look over the course of the days of you running, do you start off and actually go kind of getting away with it and then it just gets worse and worse? So what happens over the course of those days? What do you have to be really aware of?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean. So I think it's the foot prep starts weeks or months in advance. So I sort of you're very aware, by the amount of content and books you can read about marathon star, that it's a big factor is about taking every feat, and so I started my foot prep in advance by using something called for dog's paws and so and this is a little secret and you can buy it at the vets and yeah, it's basically to to sort of toughen up your dog's paws. So my house, you can imagine, my wife's, you know, when I was doing this every night getting to bed, but yeah, I did that, and so that was quite odd, and Can we just clarify what was that called? I can't remember the name, but it's basically for dog's paws.
Speaker 3:I have a vision of you tapping around on the floor. Look what the dog does. Now that sound.
Speaker 1:Grey hair and good paws. No, but that was my sort of pre-event routine. And then when you get out there, it is all about keeping sand or debris out of your shoes. Now, obviously, you have gaiters which cover your your shoe and the idea is to keep out the dust, the sand and the stones, but I think the combination of the heat, so it was obviously getting 50 degrees the sweat. That therefore means your foot swell. So you're advised to go a size up with your footwear. But what that means is for the first half day of day one you've got this massive shoe on your foot is an idiot, so that in itself is causing problems. So then by the end of the day they've swollen and then at night, when it's really cold, your feet shrink again and you put them back on. Your feet's too big, and so there's a lot of that happening. But one of the keys I mean on the day one I lost three toenails, and that was day one I had good, I might, might feel in good shape and I was. There's some really good tutorials online.
Speaker 1:I had to take my feet. I'd never take my feet been running before, even doing ultras, never take my feet, but I always take my feet now and that basically what that would entail is, each morning and bear in mind, you're doing this in the desert and so you're sort of trying to. There's no running water or showers, so you're you're trying each morning, you have to take off all the bloody bandages and bloody toe toenails. Water is a premium, so you're trying to clean your feet without any running water. Then you've got to re-tape them, which, when it's windy, sandy, yeah, and so you're kind of doing that every morning, which takes about 20 minutes, and then, as each day goes by, your feet are getting worse and worse. And you know, it sort of culminated for me on the long day which is a our year we did. It was a 90k day, took me 22 hours that day, but by when I got in, so I left we'd serve a 6 am. I got in 4 am the next day and both my trainers were red, just covered in blood, and but you're so messed up and mashed up you don't really realize and you sort of you know they're sore, but yeah, it was carnage.
Speaker 1:And, as I said, they have a brilliant group of roving medics called Doc Trotters who are, it's unbelievable. I mean Google Doc Trotters Marathon and some of the images. It's like it's a basically it's a field hospital really, and the incentive to finish each day quickly is that you'll be close to the front of the queue, because what would usually happen is that if you're not at the front of the queue, you'd get in after however long you've been out for in the desert, and then you have to queue for an hour or two hours to see a doctor. It's very good that was the incentive to get back early, but they were great and they would for really bad feet. You'd go and see them, but most of the time you just sort them yourselves. So this, this, race.
Speaker 2:This race continually bounces from being almost the top of my bucket list to being almost the bottom of my bucket list, and it's stories like this. I remember that one of the very first guests I had on the podcast was a guy called luke taberski and I remember him showing me a photograph of his feet after mds. It is, yeah, I wish I'd never seen it. To be honest, it it is frightening. But and actually you describing that, I think I've become a little bit blase. I've heard quite a few people talk about mds on this podcast and obviously most of that is it's a pivot point for them in their endurance journey. It's the thing that starts their endurance journey quite often. But also I think I became a little bit blase about how it wasn't as difficult. You know it's not the toughest race on earth, etc. Yeah, and yet you describing that 22 hour day with bloodied feet, yeah, suddenly has me rethinking again.
Speaker 1:It's really interesting though, because, again, I, it's like anything though, isn't it? And outlook I sort of. I my wife tells me that when I got to the hotel after finishing I was weeping, saying I'm never running again and all this and sort of whatever. A month later I was like no, I wasn't, that's rubbish. Yeah, I kind of. It is obviously really really hard, but I think that the amazing thing about mds is the relationship reform form.
Speaker 1:So tent 137, which was my tent, two of us did Dragon's Back, three of us did Dragon's Back. Actually, we see each other three times a year. We do ultras together. Now we're in touch with each other. We have a Christmas dinner, I think, probably because of the terrain.
Speaker 1:I mean Dragon's Back was amazing and really really hard, but it was in Wales because of the terrain. And I mean dragon's back was amazing and really really hard, but it was in wales. So it was I love wales, but it wasn't as exotic, emotive and whereas when you're in the sahara and you're just surrounded by this epic scenery beautiful sunsets, beautiful sunrises, so you know magical moroccan mystery, the sort of the food, all of it, it's sort of that you just kind of the people you share that experience with. I mean I'll go. Oh yeah, I absolutely say definitely the best week of my life, obviously apart from marriages and children and all that sort of stuff, but it was just.
Speaker 1:It was incredible, it had everything and I probably can say that because I finished it like, obviously we had a particularly brutal year because we had this heat wave, but I'd absolutely do it. And also, I think, going back to what we were discussing at the beginning, it's like the real test case for everything you learn. I felt that on the start line there it was everything that had gone before for me in my ultra running, even though's sort of only, you know, not a long ultra running career, but that's five, six years. But I fear it's a brilliant place to sort of bring it all together. And, yeah, anyone that is into ultras it's a bit pricey, but I think, yeah, it's the one to do brilliant, brilliant.
Speaker 2:I'm sold and back. It's back on the top of my list again. Now, one of the questions we ask at the end of of this podcast and I mean we've already talked about a few books already but is what books have you found that helped you most on your journey, or you find yourself recommending to others? So what books really stand out on your journey? Because I can see you've got plenty in the backdrop. Yeah, for those that are funny enough listening.
Speaker 1:these are my.
Speaker 1:These are sort of not my running books, actually my running books all upstairs, but I think there's a, there's a, there's a and I'm gonna be terrible and forget the authors, but I think there's a brilliant book called do hard things, which and I should know the author and I don't, but absolutely a game change for me I think that there's a brilliant book on and we discussed it earlier with a business context, and again, I will have to I can't name it, but it is all about compounding, and I will have to by someone hardy, something like the compound effect, no compound effect, the compound effect, absolutely.
Speaker 1:And it's really interesting because, again, that book is about business. But I was reading that just thinking all the time about endurance, events and running. So I think that, yeah, darren hardy, the compound effect, and yeah, I think that those two for me have been brilliant. And then, obviously, the go-to anyone, the sort of gateway book for runners I would always say born to run, because for me as a, as a sort of a guide as to what can be done and what can be achieved, and manifestation of running culture and community, I think that that's an incredible work. So, those three absolutely brilliant, thank you.
Speaker 2:And, and to add that, the good psychopath as well, which is definitely also on my list. So yeah, because I suspect I'm going to resonate with that, given what you described. And then the last thing that we do is we get the last guest to ask the next guest a question, without knowing who that is, and our last guest was the legendary Iron man announcer, paul Kay, and I think Claire has got Paul's question for you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so this is a good one. So Paul asks what situation have you been in where someone said something quite critical to you, or maybe in jest, but it made you change your behaviour? Like there and then and for the future, oh, good question, it's growing.
Speaker 1:Just Do you know what? Something does spring to mind, actually, which is quite interesting and it's quite random, but I guess the answer to this has to be quite random. I'm good mates with Great Britain English rugby league legend, jamie Peacock, and Jamie and I we run lots of ultras together. Unfortunately, he's just had to pull out of the Australian event to get. Unfortunately, you just had to pull out of the australian event, but you know, we're great running buddies and I remember ages ago with I probably that that's the stage I mentioned quite a while ago when I was probably a bit tubby and drinking too much and probably eating too much and just being a sort of, you know, struggling to really get into running, the formative years of it.
Speaker 1:And I never forget and I, I it wasn't in jest at all, but we were having a meal and I remember that I I always used to have a bit of an issue of portion control and whether that was going into a restaurant and, you know, nailing all the bread before the starter comes, or even at home cooking for one, or even just then cleaning up all the food off my family's plate that I haven't eaten.
Speaker 1:And jamie said something to me which is brilliant and I still think about most neil's times, which will probably disturb him a lot, but he always said he said to me, just eat 70 of what's on your plate. And I did that and I still do that. And lo and behold, since he said that I've probably lost three stone, and in the best shape of my life, and it was the most simple, obvious bit of jest stroke criticism. But it was something that he said, he did and someone had told him once and now it's such an easy way to manage your food intake is if you just leave 30 percent of what you're on your. Just leave it there on your plate.
Speaker 2:Claire, as a nutritionist, I've got to ask what are your thoughts?
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, I think there's a number of things I was thinking about at that point, actually, but it's a really good answer and interesting in relation to food, because sometimes that puts people in a totally different place and they go don't tell me what to do. Actually, the fact it maybe was playing on your mind potentially was the fact you were able to maybe, to maybe change that as well. A portion is really difficult, isn't it? Because people have what I call like portion distortion, right, they're not sure what is normal anymore and suddenly big plates become normal and if you like food, you you tend to eat it so, and you were. You were talking before about this. You know being quite regimented, you're good at like being able to keep to something that you decide you're going to do.
Speaker 1:So probably now that 70 is is your routine but it's very visual as well and it's sort of really that I think is that is the, is the thing that's really interesting. You can and you also get the, the sort of win at the end of each meal you just like cool, and then that that definitely does something as well yeah, I use visualization quite a bit on a plate with athletes and with professionals.
Speaker 3:So using the visualization of quarters, halves of protein, carbohydrate and that's, it's super, super easy and essentially it does relate back to the science and the evidence so yeah, does it.
Speaker 2:Does it? Do your head in throwing away 30% of the food? Or have you got a dog? That's very happy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, my dog loves it. He's the size of my dog.
Speaker 2:Put on three stone, as he's lost it and do you just leave your veg and just focus on the meat and the potatoes?
Speaker 1:I did put loads on my plate.
Speaker 3:Got a bigger plate now.
Speaker 2:I think progress for me would be to only eat 100% of the food that's on my plate. Excellent, simon, this has been really interesting. We've covered some amazing ground and we've not even covered all the different businesses that you've done and really looking forward to following your progress and raising money for an amazing cause, which we'll try and help you do. When you go down to the Lions Tour, normally I do a little outro after this, telling people where to find, but you've got so much stuff going on. I'm going to ask you to do the job for me. Where is the best place for listeners to find out more about the different things that you've talked about today? And obviously we'll put the links in the show notes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would just go to probably Instagram, which is well. Unsurprisingly, my handle is at Ultra Entrepreneur and, yeah, most things on a link tree link at the top of that. But yeah, I kind of I probably use Instagram the most.
Speaker 2:Brilliant, simon, it's been absolutely fantastic. Really love talking to you. I could see we're on a similar sort of wavelength here I think all three of us. And yeah, best of luck, and continue the amazing work, brilliant.
Speaker 3:Thanks, very much talk. So what did you make of that conversation with simon dent? Well, we it went in many directions didn't it? There was so much to talk about and I think, to be honest, we probably covered maybe 50 of everything that he's done and all the stories that he has to tell. But one of the biggest things, I think, that straight away that I kind of came away with is this it's not failure at all, but was it 150 letters that he had?
Speaker 2:220.
Speaker 3:220 letters. Don't know why I got 150. Which, you know, 220 letters of essentially rejection, when he was looking at his law career and how that maybe has helped set him up for actually just doing things and that not having necessarily that fear of failure, and that came out a number of times. You know across what he was saying to us. What did you? What did you get? What was your biggest biggest takeaway point from from that conversation? Well, I.
Speaker 2:I think there's a few big ones, but I actually want to focus in on what you've just said there, because I heard Arianna Huffington say recently that failure is not the opposite of success. Failure is the stepping stone towards success, and I think that he is a classic example of that being the case. I mean, I think that's right. I think he didn't see failure as, oh, I can't do that, I can't do it yet, but I'm moving towards learning how to do that, or being able to do that.
Speaker 2:I think there was a lot of takeaways. I think it was I really liked starting the conversation with actually like he really learned the mental health problem that he had at a time where it wasn't really being discussed by most people. Let's be honest, he got those tools that allowed him to and succeed much quicker and much earlier, because I think he applied that growth mindset to the mental well-being piece, didn't he? So I thought that was fascinating, how he basically threw himself into right. Well, I need to learn how to beat this particular problem and, and as far as I could see, it hadn't troubled him since but I also was going to use it as this learning opportunity.
Speaker 3:Actually, what can I learn in this time? Because, let's face it, you would. You would never ordinarily. What can I learn in this time? Because, let's face it, you would never ordinarily, in kind of your working career, necessarily have that space of time, and maybe in a place where you had I mean, he obviously had loads of other challenges at that time but where you didn't have lots of other things going on around you. You were away from everything else. So it's really interesting. I thought that he used that as learning as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I completely agree. And then I thought another big takeaway for me was how he was very much of the opinion like of henry ford, who was recruit people that are better than you because you then stand on their shoulders. You know you stand on the shoulders of giants. I think that's brilliant. There's a lot of businesses that, or business owners that don't want to recruit people that are better than them because they're worried that they'll show them up, whereas actually the best, best businesses are where business owners recruit people that are better than them in in areas that they don't have strengths in. And I thought it was interesting. The sign was very open. I mean, we didn't even talk. We didn't talk much about his marketing business, his marketing agency. We didn't talk at all about his publishing agency. And when I've heard him speak, by his own admission, he says like I was not an expert in either of those subjects, but I found people that were and I was kind of driving the business.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I loved what he said about you know surrounding yourself with experts, though I think that is so true. You know, when we apply that actually into the world of sport or business, actually being around people who are maybe in a different position to you or better than you at this point in time actually really helps to drive your own growth as well, and I think, certainly from a sporting, but also from a business perspective, that is so helpful to be around that group of people well, they say you become the average of the five people you hang out with, don't they?
Speaker 2:so the more you can hone that five people to be an average you want to be, as opposed to you know, we've we all know of situations where we're hanging out with people that actually are not taking our average in the wrong direction. So if you spend more time with the people that are taking our average in the right direction, that's really powerful. But it also reminds me of what Sabrina Pace Humphries talked about when we interviewed her ages and ages ago about Fab Five and having the person that's been there before, the person that's on the same journey, the person that is your sort of truth teller, the person that's your cheerleader and the tribe or community. You know, if you get those five groups of people right for each of your different kind of key areas, then that's really powerful.
Speaker 2:Another thing I loved what he'd done in terms of the business of Save Our Souls was I don't know if you're aware, but tom's shoes. I think I can't remember whether I mentioned it in the episode or or after he was speaking, but tom's shoes give away a pair of shoes to to an african child every time anyone buys a pair of tom's shoes and I thought what they were doing with their plastic offset or save Our Souls was really brilliant and I think that makes just businesses more talkable. People will remember that stuff. They'll tell more people about it. So you know we talk in marketing about making your business more talkable. That is a great example of that.
Speaker 3:I think there's just so I know I mentioned this, but, like, if you think about, you know, know the generations now coming into the, the workplace, people want to be more sustainable and so I just I think that's also from kind of that ethos behind sustainability, even if you're using a plastic product, which they I can't remember what the percentage you said he got it down to in terms of about 20. I think it's at 20. Yeah, no, I, I absolutely agree with it because it's it is a nice story behind it that you're, that you're offsetting for sure, and actually we had a really good conversation about horrendous feats in marathon de sable as well, didn't we? Off the back of that?
Speaker 2:yes, so has it put you off or are you super keen to go?
Speaker 3:no, I am absolutely super keen to go actually, but but I think you know, like everything learning, you can't hold back like throwing yourself in and doing something like the marathon to scott. Disability, you know, push you a little bit, but actually having knowledge and again having people that can, can support you and help you.
Speaker 2:And actually he gave some really good, good advice there about taping feet and things and yeah, and we, we, when we asked him the question from Paul K, we ended up down I only eat 70% of the food on my plate principle. I obviously asked you at the time what you thought, but now, without him here, what do you think about? Because the the thing that stood out to me was it was just a simple rule. It's like that's my rule, I stick to it. And it was just a simple rule. It was like that's my rule, I stick to it, and it's actually the simple rules that kind of often work the best. What are your thoughts around what he said and the simple rule concept?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think simple, absolutely 100%, I think when it comes to nutrition, people overcomplicate. So you can overcomplicate something, but actually knowing the science that sits behind it and simplifying it is actually where people can put things into place. So, actually having the knowledge, then simplifying. But actually I I use something slightly different to that. So I'll actually use a plate model where you, depending on the amount of training you're doing, you use different percentages, obviously not calculating, but a fraction of the plate, so half, three quarters, a third, and actually that does equate, like, especially if you're working carbohydrates, to more or less what you need and it doesn't have to be down the line.
Speaker 3:So I do really like that idea. I guess with that would you still eat 70%, but wouldn't eat any more, even if you're still hungry and did lots of training, and would you then eat 70% and essentially be slightly overeating if you didn't do as much training. But I like the concept, but I it got me thinking after the call. Actually, you know, do you just then just use a slightly smaller plate or a slightly bigger plate? Do you just then say, well, I'm only eating 70%, so I'll fill my plate less? Well, maybe it doesn't have the same, the same effect. But yeah, I liked, I like the idea.
Speaker 2:I don't like the idea. I'm just thinking back to being cycling in Lanzarote a couple of weeks ago, thinking we were having three course breakfast, lunch and dinner. So so if it was 70%, I mean like yeah, I also hate the concept of wasting food. Now I'm not sure that he was saying he was wasting food. Was he just filling the plate 70% as opposed to? But the idea of throwing away 30% of food, that just I'm too type-listed to think about it.
Speaker 3:I think and that's where using this idea of almost like dialing up and dialing down by using a percentage on a plate is is a much is a better way to do it if you're training, because otherwise you you you're going to be over fueling or under fueling, um, definitely when it comes to to carbohydrates. So I think the concept behind it is good, but for me it would be changing the dial of how much on the plate depending on what you're doing, and that's still super simple and if you're sitting here going yes, I need to do more of this.
Speaker 2:Have you got any sort of free downloads or any tools that you have available that they can? They can download yeah, absolutely so.
Speaker 3:We are just uploading a few things to the website, so I'll be sure to put something on around carbohydrates and plate planning. Um so, absolutely so. Watch this space as our new website's launched. There will be something there.
Speaker 2:And just because people just remind people that are listening in the car what the website is that they can get out from.
Speaker 3:So it's forthdisciplinecom, so forth, as in the number, thdisciplinecom, and you can download that. So within the next week it should be there for you to download.
Speaker 2:But we obviously put that on the show notes. Well, another fantastic interview, really insightful, and I'm going to be looking forward to following his. But I'm going to get one of those Well, definitely, with the discount code. One of the shoe dryers I think that sounds like money well spent if it makes your shoes last longer. Shoe boots, gloves yeah, definitely, definitely sold on that. So for everyone listening at home keep on training.