Why Successful Leaders Still Sabotage Themselves | Dave Callan (Man Utd, Team Sky, INEOS)

0:09Brave Bold Brilliant Hosts:Welcome to Brave Bold Brilliant. I'm here today with Dave Callan, a fellow Mancunian, an elite athlete in his own right, a mentor, a coach, a former marketer, CMO. Dave, you've done a lot, haven't you, while you've been on this planet? I have, yeah. I like to think I have anyway. Plenty more people as well. And it's always nice to actually have a conversation with a fellow Mancunian, a fellow Northerner. So, yeah, we're going to get into it. But Dave, you and I met at Reset Summit, which with our wonderful friend Rick Moylan, it's his event and Reset all being about energy and taking time out to really sort of look after ourselves, really from our busy lives you know if you're running a business or you're an entrepreneur or you're in the corporate world or you're in the world of sports and I think that whole philosophy um is is so important but what did you what does reset mean to you Dave because you were doing a fantastic keynote speech all about you know for the conference but when you when you when you were asked by Rick to come and speak what was it about reset that you thought oh yeah that that makes sense I've got to I've got to be there well when I spoke to Rick initially I kind of knew Rick a little bit through a um a friend of ours and when I looked at reset and the the event it looked like something that I would actually quite enjoy attending myself I love the concept of taking time out to really spend time on yourself either from a physical or a mental standpoint and I've got my own kind of peer group that I work with and every every month um at least once a month we are completely um resetting you know which and what and that can mean different things to different people physically mentally um and for me the day was all about taking a step outside of my business away from my clients away from doing the stuff that I normally do spending time with some amazing people like yourself and helping myself reset as an individual and then hopefully providing some content to others to allow them to have a perspective on how they might reset their mindset in many ways, which was kind of the cornerstone of the talk or the keynote that I gave.

2:26Brave Bold Brilliant Hosts:Yeah, it was great, actually. And sitting in the audience listening to you speak, it was resonated. And it was quite ironic because I was running a workshop. And actually, some of the concepts that you were talking about in a lot more detail than I did, I had included in my workshops so it was like it was meant to be Dave it was meant to be yeah you cut about 10 minutes off my set so that was absolutely wonderful I'm grateful so so listen Dave I mean you know you've had a very interesting career and you've really reinvented yourself I think multiple times you know you went from CMO roles at god Manchester United's Team Sky, INEOS and then you've gone into your on-to coaching and we're going to talk about that quite a lot because I think the approach you take is is quite interesting and quite unique from other people but you know when you were making those transitions and you were deciding to sort of leave the corporate world if you like what was the what what was the moment that kind of made sense to you to make that leap and what did it cost you personally to do that and what did you gain personally because there's always two sides but it's not an easy transition out of corporate into being an entrepreneur and a business owner I've done it myself so I know but yeah tell us about the catalyst for the change what it costs you personally and what you actually gained from making that move that's an amazing opening question by the way you know and I think there's there's lots of different things racing around my head as you as you ask that and I think I was getting a lot of coaching myself during my career and I'm not saying there was a penny drop moment during my coaching but actually the coaching experience that I had helped me make a lot of changes to myself as an individual but equally make some of those objective changes to my life that you describe whether it's a career change, a different domain, moving a team from United to Sky was a big decision for me at the time, leaving sport was a huge decision for me I left sport after 15 years at the highest level and I worked in a travel business and I know you you've got a travel background as well Jeanette you'll know travel counselors I was there for very well three years before I started um onto coaching and I think that the commonality through my sort of transitions if you like is a little bit aligned to your podcast is having the having the bravery to do it I think was probably the common theme because none of them were easy and I think we're individuals who like a degree of certainty we get tied to specific ideas about ourselves identities and they feel kind of safe and familiar right and I think sometimes they might be safe and familiar but they're not always aligned to your own personal goals or the visions or the ambitions that you have as an individual.

5:19And I think the last big transition that I made kind of out of the corporate world and to set up coaching on my own, it was through a lot of self-reflection, you know, and I kind of had this limitation in me that was a false belief that I could never be a business owner that I could never do my own thing that I was always destined to keep on um climbing that career ladder and be involved in that world um and in many ways that was just a safety blanket because it was familiar to me and when actually I stripped that down and challenged that false belief and you know built the confidence in myself that I could do something and had a passion for coaching um I was able to then construct a better narrative which helped me make that transition outside of the corporate world to set up something on my own and it it cost me it one of your questions was what did it cost me it cost me a lot actually it cost me the stability that I'd had for many years it cost me an element of protection over my ego you know I was no longer working for household names I was no longer connected to a network of people that I could rely on um so it cost me a lot of stability and a lot of certainty and a lot of familiarity which which comes with an element of dealing with emotions and fear um which helps me lean into some of the things that you talk about about being kind of brave and bold so um i guess that that's kind of in a nutshell my my experiences when you think about transition it's fascinating actually

6:57Brave Bold Brilliant Hosts:As you were talking, Dave, the pennies just dropped. And I think we were in touch when you were at Travel Counselors because Steve Burns, the CEO, it's amazing what a small world it is. And I think at the time we might have even been talking about doing some marketing back in. This is quite a while ago now. Yes. It's so funny. I'd like the same name. I know it's you. And then it wasn't until you were talking. Then I was thinking, bloody hell, yes, of course. So we have been in touch in a previous life. But what was interesting to me as you were talking, Dave, was people look at you and they think you're a coach, right?

7:34Brave Bold Brilliant Hosts:So you must have all this covered. You've had this big corporate career. You've done all these amazing roles. You're full of confidence. Where's the inner talk coming from? And everyone thinks that you've got it sussed, right? But actually, we're all work in progress. And I think it's talking about ego. and sometimes when we're in those big jobs you know we get the title we get the package we have the brand behind us you know and and all of that does give us a sense of identity sometimes but when you strip strip that away and you really say who am I yeah it can be quite um um confronting sometimes positively and sometimes negatively but did you go through that whole who am I now kind of question 100 yeah and I think I was able to you know I've done a lot of work on myself with regards to you know what what is ego what is mindset what is identity um who are we as people I've done a lot of the deep reflection work and I've had you know I've had support um as well with regards to that and done some experiences which have really helped me understand that and think the where i was able to land is obviously ego ego is neither good or bad you know it can be the the superpower to get you to where you want to be and it's the ideas and the stories that we tell ourselves right and i think um thanks to an element of ego i was able to build a very successful career work for some great organizations get very senior um build teams build brands and for that I'm really really grateful um but actually it's it doesn't necessarily define who you are it's the labels that you attach to yourself yeah and if you actually break down the I think the the origin word of identity is identitas which comes from latin and it actually means repeated beingness so the things that you do over and over again effectively become your identity which which means that it's malleable because you can change it so you can change your behaviors you can change the repeated behaviors that you have and you you can therefore build a a completely different identity it's quite it's it's as easy as that um but what i find quite useful is going kind of a layer deeper to that and thinking about okay well what are my what are the core values that i want to live by um and on board them as kind of my north star in terms of how I would like to behave and act and how I would like to live my life and therefore it's not it's no longer attached to an external label or a badge or a company or a brand it's actually coming from within me so therefore if you become a values-led individual you're able to navigate different scenarios different transitions challenges opportunities in a way which becomes a lot truer to who you are.

10:35And it helps you navigate, you know, failures as well. It helps you navigate challenging times because as long as you are in alignment with those values, you can sleep at night. And the anxieties and the stresses are a lot easier to manage because objectively something might not be as you wished it to be, but actually, you know, subjectively, as long as you're happy with how you've behaved, then it becomes a lot easier to manage that. So I think that inner work is really important for people specifically who are going through transition or changes or who are ambitious. And I find that a lot in my clients as well, a lot of them are senior leaders, executives, business owners, founders.

11:16And a lot of who they believe they are is attached to their roles of that business. And sometimes it's quite interesting to pull them apart a little bit and quite helpful as well.

11:28Brave Bold Brilliant Hosts:yeah no it's hugely important and actually you know you make us such a such an interesting and valid point because i think so many people they're not clear on their why and their purpose and that there are there are some big deep questions within all of that for all of us you know why do i exist and and i like you i've done a lot of kind of inner work self-reflection um especially i think as you get a little bit older or you know you're at a crossroads you're not quite sure which direction but you're right because actually what you do is not who you are and people do confuse the two and especially if you've been in a role or an industry for a very long time and then there can be you know what it's like in the corporate world you know the rules of engagement are pretty brutal and and I'm I'm good with that you know I'm kind of fine with that but at the end of the day, you can find people that have been so locked into a role or a position for so long, then all of a sudden, there's a restructure, there's a change of direction, whatever, and that their services are no longer required.

12:30Brave Bold Brilliant Hosts:And then they're lost. They're completely lost. And they these are people that have often been, you know, super successful, incredibly, you know, well off financially, whatever it might be. And then it's almost like throwing them back to being a child again to say, well oh my gosh who who the hell am I what do I do now why am I here and I think anyone that's listening and maybe thinking themselves oh gosh that sounds a bit like me what advice would you give Dave for someone to to even make a start on some of this pretty it can be quite intense bit of like self-exploration where do you start with people that you work with how do you get them going with it when maybe they're they're a little bit fearful of holding the mirror up to themselves yeah I think it's it comes with practice I think it's having the it's recognizing that the first phase really is is you don't have to really action anything you just have to educate yourself and elevate your own knowledge and awareness of how human beings operate and how we are constructed and when you start and it doesn't have to get too technical at all you don't have to go down the the real nuanced and technical route of being a neuroscientist it's not that complicated really if you can understand at a surface level how we are constructed as humans and why we behave in certain ways and how our belief systems are built over many years that's the starting point really because you can start to then understand not just yourself but you can understand other people as well and you can start to recognize patterns in other people so all of a sudden you become more aware of your own self who you are why you act in certain ways why you might have a certain ego where that might come from which parts of that are serving you which parts are potentially holding you back and once you've elevated that level of awareness you can then start to unpick rebuild navigate change and effectively you can design your own life the next phase with intention as opposed to being guided through based on you know projected beliefs or systems or corporate frameworks or cultures that get projected upon us so it doesn't have to be a scary process i think a lot of it is coming down to just education around how humans are built how we operate what does that mean in the modern world versus you know the millions of years previous to that when we were hunter gatherers and there's elements of our psychology which is still at play today which don't necessarily serve us and a lot of people are walking around this planet without even any knowledge of that and then when they come through a challenging period it becomes quite difficult for them to manage that because they've almost been operating on autopilot for their life um it doesn't mean to say they've not been successful many people have but i think the first thing is just having an open conversation around who who you are as a human why how you've been constructed what's serving you and what you know what's potentially holding you back in um in relationship to your goals or your ambitions but before we continue I want to speak directly to those of you who are listening and thinking I know I'm capable of more but I need structure I need some help because here's what I've actually learned after gosh more than three decades in business you know ambition without clarity creates frustration.

16:10Brave Bold Brilliant Hosts:And motivation without structure, it really does fade very, very fast. So that's exactly why we created Rise Academy. And Rise Academy, it's not theory. It isn't fluffy motivation, although you will be motivated. And it certainly isn't another online course that you never finish. It's actually a fully structured growth environment for ambitious entrepreneurs, leaders and founders who absolutely are ready to do all of these things, sharpen their strategy, elevate their leadership, increase revenue with intention and build businesses that actually support the life that they want. And inside Rise Academy, we focus on the foundations most people skip, leading yourself, leading your teams and leading the business.

17:00Brave Bold Brilliant Hosts:It's about clarity, standards, decision making, commercial intelligence and execution. Because scaling, it really isn't about doing more. It's actually about doing the right things and doing the things right consistently. So if you're serious about stepping up into your next level of your leadership, your business life, and not just consuming content, but actually implementing it, then Rise Academy was absolutely built for you. So you can find all the details on our website. Go to www.brave-bold-brilliant.com. And now let's get back to the show. Yeah, I mean, I think you're right. Sometimes it's almost the thought of starting this kind of work can be harder than naturally when you do make those baby steps.

17:54Brave Bold Brilliant Hosts:And, you know, there are big questions that you can ask yourself. But I often say, you know, listen, if you're really, if you're struggling with, you know, why am I here? What legacy do I want to leave? All those kind of, what do I want written on my gravestone? All these big questions, you know, just start from the bottom up. Literally grab a piece of paper and write down everything you want. No matter how small, it might be some materialistic stuff. It might be some health stuff. It might be some business stuff. And just literally vomit on the page. Because when you do that, you're just getting it out of your head and down on paper.

18:25Brave Bold Brilliant Hosts:and then you'll start to form patterns little oh that's about health oh that's about finances oh that's about you know so and i think sometimes actually when people just make a start and don't overthink it don't worry if you don't get the clarity straight away it takes time and if you force it too much it won't come you've got a kind of like haven't you like just sort of relax chill out a bit about it you know one of the um one of the most difficult questions that i ask people when I coach them and it it can be quite awkward sometimes but if you ask most humans that are walking around what are your what are your personal values they will have no idea how to articulate that um but you might ask someone who's in the corporate world what are your company values and they will be able to list three or four of them immediately but from a personal standpoint they they haven't done that work on themselves and and that's a really good starting point you know to write write down what are your values how do you want to operate as an individual and then you can start to think about okay you're north star i don't know the people who are watching this on youtube will probably be able to see behind me i've got a vision board behind me and this is a this is a result of some of the work that i did on myself when i started my coaching practice what's the north star where do i want to be going and without any of the restrictions just start to as you say put put pen to paper and future cast where you want to be and almost like you would do in a business where you think about writing a strategic plan you know you would start with your vision and start thinking about okay well how does that translate into mission what are my strategies what are my objectives what are my tactics what's the culture that underpins that i.e the values and the behaviors and if you start to really think about that as from an individual standpoint it provides you that framework and that those guiding principles to help you through help you first of all understand who you are help you understand who you want to be and then it can guide you through some of those challenges that you might face in life we've all been in boardrooms whereby there's been a really challenging situation in the corporate world and then there might be conflicting opinions on how we move things forward and a lot of the time the leadership team will will use language like let's strip let's strip it back to first principles which effectively means let's allow the company values to guide us through this period right and it's exactly the same as a human being as an individual if you're going through challenge if you're going through change if you're going through a transition define your values and then And then let your values guide you through how you transition, how you change, how you want to behave.

21:18And it doesn't mean to say it's going to be easy because a lot of it can be difficult, but at least it enables you to hold yourself to account. So I think you're right. You know, getting things down on paper is a really good piece of advice, practical advice and tactical advice for anybody who wants to start doing this work on themselves.

21:37Brave Bold Brilliant Hosts:yeah no that's that's super helpful so dave just to give a real example then for people listening that might be thinking oh my god i'm not sure i even know what a definition of a value is what's the difference between a value and a behavior and all this kind of stuff going on but for you then dave what what are your values because obviously that stays with you it's also influences how you work with people and the coaching approach you take and i want to go into the onto philosophy that you've built and in a little bit more detail but yeah so your values maybe share that so give us a good example i'll be helpful but you'll you'll love one of my values because it completely aligns with your podcast in that so my first value is is courage yeah and and courage for me um is really really helpful when you are challenged with a difficult situation because you can simply ask yourself what's the what's the courageous thing to do here and you can only really be courageous in the presence of fear okay you can you can't you can't it might look courageous to do something but if you're not feeling fear it's not actually a courageous act you're just doing a thing if if your inner experience and your subjective experience is that you feel fearful then you have an opportunity to be courageous and there's no human on this planet that walks around without having those feelings of fear so when I as an individual have feelings of fear that's a an opportunity and it's a signal for me to lean into that value to help me behave in a certain way to help me push through and do the right thing so I think that's a really useful value that I have I don't I don't confess to have to use it every day um but you know certainly when I left the corporate space went into starting onto and when I've done some of my um ultra marathons and when I you know there's a difficult conversation to have everybody gets those feelings of fear or anxieties that show up but if a cornerstone of your value set is to be courageous or brave then that becomes the guiding principle in terms of what action or what behavior needs to happen and then you can hold yourself to account of it nobody gets it 100 % right all of the time right but at least it's a principle so that's one of my one of my values another one is um is temperance which basically means I have to temper myself if there's a if there's a plethora of options or there's specifically when it comes to you know the modern society when we've got so much abundance of stuff that we could do or from a from a health or a fitness standpoint there's just choices everywhere I have to lean into a value of temperance to temper myself to be disciplined and be structured don't say yes to everything hold a great boundary when needed um know when to say no and follow through so that's a really useful value as well for me as an individual and again specifically when you set up a business on your own you've got a blank piece of paper there's so many things that you could do yeah there are so many different clients that i could go after um but being having temperance and being disciplined around my approach is a value set which really helps me in terms of making decisions around that.

24:56So just a couple of examples there as to how I define my own values. But I think the most important thing is to understand that values should really be distilled into behaviors as well. So what behaviors actually matter when it comes to this value set? And, you know, I always remember the time that I had a Team Sky and Ineos, high performance elite sports team and the the program that was rolled out there um was a program called winning behaviors you know it was a winning team it was a big part of the culture was high performance yeah the goal was to be the best in the world to win the tour de france um so part of that is how do we instill winning behaviors across not just the athletes but everybody within the team and then it became the athletes and the staff's responsibility to define winning behaviors for themselves and then hold themselves to account and hold each other to account as well so when we talk about our own personal culture I think a value set is really really important but then understanding what sits below that what bit what behaviors are going to be displayed in order to deliver on that value

26:13Brave Bold Brilliant Hosts:I think that's a really important reflection yeah no I love that so two really great examples and And as you say, applying, you know, high performance in sport to business and life, et cetera, is a really good parallel to make. And I think, you know, for you, when you talk about being courageous, brave, you know, a behavior around that might be, well, I'm not going to procrastinate. I'm going to pick up the phone. I'm going to take an action. You know, if I've been thinking about something for more than, I don't know, 24 hours or a week or whatever it might be, I'm not going to sit on it. I'm actually going to take the first step, whatever that might be, you know, and that's a behavior.

26:48Brave Bold Brilliant Hosts:isn't it taking action behind the the bravery and etc so i love that and it's super simple right super simple it doesn't cost you any money it doesn't i think that you make a really good point around around procrastination because a lot of people tend to think that a process of procrastination is because they're either being lazy or they can't be bothered or they're getting distracted and i would i would actually argue that and say nine times out of ten procrastination is because you are fearful of something on the other side of that decision and when you go into a state of being fearful you have a threat response to that which means there's fight there's flight or there's freeze and quite often when we're procrastinating over a decision you're in that threat state yeah you are fearful of something on the other side of the decision which means that you get distracted you distract yourself you make a a really rational reason why you shouldn't make the decision and you convince yourself that it's it's logical when in actual fact all you're doing is hiding from the fear um so that's a really really good practical example as well when and a lot of people do procrastinate including myself you find yourself in those patterns of procrastinating ask yourself the question what are you fearful of and there's usually something you're fearful of making that decision on doing the thing and then really breaking it down from there is it an actual threat or is it a perceived threat are you going to act courageous or are you going to shy away from it and these are the little um tactics that really help people break through those little moments that keep on consistently holding people back or distractions or behaviors that are just not serving people can can quite easily come down to quite a simple thing yeah and and I think you know as you're talking what's going through my mind I'm thinking around And actually, a lot of it is around the habits and the repeated behavior.

28:47Brave Bold Brilliant Hosts:So, you know, if you have, it's like in training, right? I mean, you do all these crazy ultra marathons, and we'll talk about that as well. But, you know, there are times when you're not going to feel motivated. You're not going to want to do the training. You're not going to want to pick up the call and do a sales pitch. You're not going to feel like it all the time. In fact, probably a lot of the time you don't feel like it, quite the opposite. it. But if you back up those behaviors with repeated action, that's habit that just becomes part of who you are. So I'll give you a good example. If you're, you know, you need to get more clients.

29:21Brave Bold Brilliant Hosts:It's a numbers game, right? You're going to have, if you make 10 calls, you might get one client, right? It's a conversion. But if you're not making the 10 calls in the first place, you're not going to get the one client, right? So actually, if you block an hour a day in your diary and you say, right, I'm going to do 10 sales calls today or whatever it may be, you will get a result it's a numbers game but it's the activity the habit of actually doing that that's going to get you to where you want to get to small baby steps and I think sometimes we we it takes a while for us to get in our flow but once we do it becomes second nature then doesn't it it does and I think we it came up a little bit at reset this I think and there's if ever you start to think about changing your habits and your patterns of behavior and you're and you're challenged with that because you might give up or you might get distracted, then usually what's happening is something downstream is really stopping you.

30:16And it's maybe a belief that you're holding somewhere deep down, subconscious. In that example that you give there, Jeanette, it might be that inherently you don't believe that that repeated behavior is going to result in any success. You might not believe it, so therefore you give up easily. So what do you need to do? you need to shift your belief system well how do you do that well you look for evidence you look for evidence elsewhere you speak to people like yourself who can coach you to say actually you've not done enough reps here to change your belief around it and the more reps that you do the more likely you're going to get success and then as soon as you get the success and it starts to show all of a sudden your belief system can start to change and then it no longer feels like an effortful action it feels more automatic because your autopilot kicks in and then it becomes like we said earlier repeated action and behavior it's now part of my identity it's just what i do yeah it's just what i do i'm no longer having to force myself to do 10 sales calls 20 dms a day to go out running every day is no longer an effort it's just who I am because I believe that the results are going to come and I believe there's going to be some element of growth from this from this repeated behavior so if anybody listening to this is struggling with changing habits and you're not getting the results from doing the thing go back to what's what's downstream what do you believe to be true because what you believe to be true is usually the thing that's driving the behavior and if you start with the source of the problem the belief system you can shift things um dramatically so yeah that's that's a really

31:58Brave Bold Brilliant Hosts:good point yeah and and actually you gave us a great example earlier when we started the conversation Dave because you said when you were in corporate you never you never thought you were actually had what it took to be a business owner or to be an entrepreneur I used to be the same I used to say to myself I'm brilliant in the boardroom I'm fantastic as a corporate CEO put me in front to the analyst. I can stand up and present the annual results. I'm great in that world, but I'm not entrepreneurial. Oh, no, no. I'm not an entrepreneur. And I use that, you know, that inner voice, the stories we tell ourselves.

32:30Brave Bold Brilliant Hosts:And actually, of course, for you and for me as well, we've both jumped out of that corporate world. And here you are as a successful business owner, having, you know, started that whole period of your life from scratch with just you, your reputation, your laptop, your phone and your connections, and you've made a successful business so now you no longer say I'm not a business owner I'm not an entrepreneur because you've proven to yourself you've got the evidence didn't you that actually convinced you so you're a great example living and breathing right there of actually you know that whole approach and changing your behaviors and your actions in order to get what you want right so amazing yeah we're working with founders and business owners now as a coach as well quite often I there's repeated language that you pick up on and a lot of people who've transitioned out of the corporate world to be a founder or to be a business owner will say things like I could I could never go back to the corporate world I could never go back to that now I'm unemployable a lot of them say that I'm now I'm now unemployable which in fact is can be a really empowering belief for them to hold because it drives them forward in their business it drives them to hold the belief that they that's not an option for me anymore of course they could go back into the corporate world they've got the skill set they're probably even more um skilled now as a as a founder or a business owner to go back and add more value but because they on board this belief that i'm unemployable i could never go back it can serve them in a positive way so i think the point i'm making here is that not not to attach these identities as good or bad but to recognize them your old belief Jeanette around I'm only good in the boardroom I'm only good presenting to analysts I'm only good at doing presentations and leading teams would have served you to a degree in that in that phase of your life but having the recognition to be able to realize that it might not be serving you to transition out that's the skill um so these things are neither good or bad it's just a case of elevating our level of awareness as to that as to the fact that they are there quite often subconsciously ingrained within a program that's might have been there for years and the the skill is getting it out and surfacing it making it more um visible if you like within the thinking part of your brain yeah and and you know this leads us into really nicely the coaching work that you do dave and you work with individuals work with teams work with organizations you know with all that great corporate knowledge and experience that you bring as business and in sports as well.

35:07Brave Bold Brilliant Hosts:So you bring a lot with you to your clients. So your philosophy, the onto philosophy, and everyone actually, Dave, everyone can check out your website. Where's the website if people want to go in and learn a bit more? What's the website address? Ontocoaching.com. Onto-coaching.com is the website. Great. Okay. So onto is in capital letters, people, for a very good reason, I am sure. And Dave's going to tell us all why that is. But it's built on this whole concept of presence meets progress. your onto coaching philosophy. But can you just kind of talk us through that a little bit more, sort of unpack it really?

35:43Brave Bold Brilliant Hosts:Because I think as a leader in the corporate or as a business owner, or as an entrepreneur, or whatever, an ambitious person, we're constantly being pulled towards what's next, aren't we? The next target, the next thing to go for. So to stay present is actually quite difficult when you are an ambitious person. So the ambition does serve you because it gives you the motivation to keep going and to strive and achieve more but the danger is that we can miss the moment as well right so being present in the moment I think a lot of people do struggle with so just talk us through a little bit around around that kind of um philosophy that you've got and how you can get both I suppose yeah it's an interesting one because I think it's it came from a lived experience you know the my coaching philosophies are a lot of it is through my lived experience in terms of how I um have viscerally viscerally felt things over the course of my life and my career and then speaking to a lot of people who've been in my world as well and who I've coached there's quite a lot of patterns of behavior and feelings that come up um often more and more and more and one of them was the fact that you know quite a lot of frustration builds up in senior leaders ambitious people because they get caught between the worlds of being present and wanting to progress so as an individual I'm constantly wanting to to do the next thing I'm ambitious I want to get the next promotion I want my business to to reach the next threshold of revenue or profit and that becomes about progress i'm constantly looking for progress and when you are constantly always looking for the next thing then you miss out on the feeling and the joy of being present yeah but on the flip side of that if you are constantly just in the moment and you are always thinking about the now and the here and and you know you're thinking about the day and that's it then quite often you can miss out on the vision side of things and you forget about the direction of travel that you're going in yeah all of a sudden five ten years has passed and you're still in the same role you're still doing the same things and you've not actually thought about okay where do I want to get to and I think the tension point which I I recognize in I recognized in myself first and foremost but I recognize in a lot of my clients is they get stuck between the two so they're either they're wrestling between the fact that i i'm when i'm at home i should be present but i'm always thinking about progress or when i'm at work and when i'm actually progressing i'm feeling guilty because i should be present at home and therefore they miss out on on on the two things that they should be focused on in in those scenarios so a lot of a lot of conversations that i have with my clients tend to be helping people um continue to be ambitious continue to work on your goals don't ever ever let up on that but at the same time recognize that actually the joy is that sounds cliche right but the joy is in the journey and being present is is really where everything should lie um you know unfortunately as humans we've got memories so quite often we live in either the past or the future and if we live in the past and the future all the time then we miss out on that moment we miss out on the current here and the now and it has to come through practice that in my experience and having visceral experiences and you know things like taking time away from your phone and removing yourself from the day-to-day and doing things like reset you know the conference we went to where we met would have been a great example of being present in the moment and you know enjoying the experience um so it's quite a difficult one to articulate in a sentence Jeanette but that's kind of the philosophy that I've um I really try and bring forward to the forefront of my coaching because it's a real insight and it's a lived experience which is not just mine but it's shared with a lot of people in senior positions yeah no I completely recognize that as you're talking I'm thinking I know that tension in myself all through my entire life I would say even as a kid right the way through to corporate life to being a business owner today and I think one thing that's helped me a little bit is is just putting a few simple ground rules in play so I'll give you an example right if we're having dinner at home my husband Chris goes absolutely bonkers because he'll do the cooking I'm very lucky and I love to eat and sit there and have a nice glass of wine or whatever but I'm always squeezing one more thing in so he'll be going Jeanette Jeanette dinner's ready dinner's ready and I'll be there a minute because my natural tendency is to squeeze one more job and I can just get this done or just send this quick email and of course that's incredibly frustrating right because he spent the time to cook a nice dinner for us so now we have a rule that you know I've got to be there ready five minutes before we're going to serve dinner because otherwise he gets pissed off you know just simple things where actually it's really important that we have quality time together to have a nice meal talk about our day not be on our phone so we've just put simple ground rules in play um and equally you know if i'm in the office with the team or something okay if there's an emergency and and you know it needs to speak to me then fine of course call but otherwise let's save it until i'm back and we can talk about things in person you know so it's just simple things like that but yeah i completely i honestly and i don't think i'll ever stop having this tension but i tell you one thing as well that happens and this is probably age this comes with age but when you when you start losing people around you and i don't want to be doom and gloom but when people start passing away and we're going to um a very close friend's funeral tomorrow very very young passed away and it makes you stop it makes you think what's really important in life and we don't know how long we've got and i don't want to be all like you know doom and gloom or deeper means i mean we're having quite a deep conversation to be fair dave but you know when things like that start happening it start happening you realize what's really important how much it how much is enough or i think there's a saying isn't there and this will resonate with you with your focus on health that you know you think you've got lots of problems until you have a health problem and then you've only got one problem and that is so true isn't it dave and you know yeah i mean your experience of of kind of you know health well-being i know you're really focused on this but you know we don't always put our own oxygen mask on and it's not until we have some an event something might happen that really triggers us and we might say oh yeah you know I do my I eat quite well and I do this but we know we don't look after ourselves as well as we should do even with the best intentions until something stops us in our tracks and it makes us go shit I'm not invincible so have you got any experiences of that Dave that you could maybe share because again I think it's something people struggle with a bit.

42:44There's a few, yeah. I mean, without going doom and gloom on it, there's a few, there has been a few moments in my life which I have reflect on quite a lot, actually. One of them, my dad passed away when he was relatively young. Not young, young, but early 60s. And we had a moment between us whereby he, I think, recognised that he only had less than 12 months to live. And I think he'd basically recognised that he'd spent all of his life in the progress state of mind, constantly working, constantly thinking about the next thing, constantly thinking about working not just nine to five, but probably five to seven most days and Saturdays of the weekend.

43:31And I think when he reached the end of his life, he was able to reflect on the fact that he hadn't spent, he hadn't spent most most most of his life being present um and i you know i thank i thank him for being able to pass that wisdom on to me and i do reflect on that quite a lot it wasn't a personal experience of mine it was i felt quite bad for my dad that he'd had that realization when it was too late to do anything about it and there's a there's an amazing quote from a an american philosopher called David Theroux which says most men live a life of quiet desperation and basically what the what the interpretation of that is that most people live their lives with this sort of under the bonnet um desire if you like to be more present or to do more and it's it can be too late to do anything about it if they just don't act upon it and when my when my dad went through his health issues and when he finally passed that that moment stuck with me my interpretation of that moment was um was that i i won't fall i won't fall into the same trap as that so i will make more of an effort to do things that i want to do to be more present um to not constantly live in this world where you you're always looking at progress progress progress so that that was something which stuck with me and then when you think about health and well-being as well i was I was the typical all or nothing guy throughout the big period of my life I was training hard but I was partying hard at the weekends um as a result my you know my weight would be going up and it would be going down and I'd reached a period of my life probably in my mid-30s where it just wasn't serving me anymore and I wasn't able to operate at the level that I wanted

45:21Brave Bold Brilliant Hosts:to operate of because I just wasn't healthy enough um I was exercising a lot in fact I've done an iron I've done ironman events I've done marathons at that point but in between the events I was just not focused on on it and I was you know poor diet I was probably drinking too much um and I remember coming back from a it was a stag do actually in in Marbella and I'd been on maybe three stag do's over the course of maybe four months um it probably took me a good three or four days to recover from that stag do and that was a real moment of boundary setting around alcohol and I just completely cut it from my life and that was in 2017 um so it wasn't a moment really but it was a it was maybe a compound effect of a few years of just being inconsistent with stuff and that was really the moment where i was able to find a lot and my belief system completely shifted around alcohol i went from it's a social lubricant i need it for confidence um you can't have a good time without it i'm a much funnier open person with it that was my belief system and then within the course of only a few months it completely changed you know and i was on it i was able to remove it from my life completely which meant my training was more consistent my nutrition was more consistent i had better um clarity of thought i my career started to move at a pace that i wanted to it to move at i was becoming more a better husband a better father um and that that formed a really good platform for me then to to yeah to be a better individual and that's that that was really the start of when I started to work on myself and do the values piece and start to think about okay I've now got the headspace to actually reflect on myself as an individual who I want to be so maybe quite a long answer to your questions you know so maybe not two like real visceral like moments where things clicked but those two periods of my life always stand out to in my dad's passing and when I finally kind of removed um habits from my life which weren't serving me and ever since when I reflect back on those two periods that they've been quite empowering for me well yeah I mean what you're talking about there as well Dave you know and two fantastic examples where you know something shifted in you now it wasn't necessarily a light bulb moment but it would have been building and building and building and you know and I guess you were seeing your dad as well through you know go through his illness and various situations there and yeah it didn't happen to you but you were observing it was your dad you know and this is like you know the role model the strong person in your life that you've kind of looked up to all these years and then to see that vulnerability but then also to recognize in yourself this creeping sort of situation is not helping me actually and I think what's what's interesting there Dave is everything you're doing now it feels to me that you're exactly where you're meant you're meant to be right now in this this time of your life you know you can kind of as a talking about the journey and everything and um I think that comes through in the way you carry yourself in the way you talk in the way that you help people because it's it's embedded in you isn't it it's not just a false thing it's kind of deeply rooted in your values it's deeply rooted in your experience and and you know the observations that you've seen with other people and I think that's what makes the difference between a standout coach or mentor and someone that's sort of yes helping but not necessarily really deeply committed to what they do and I think that is the difference in what you're doing because you bring that lived experience and you bring your whole self to it oh amazing oh thank you for that um but yeah and yeah I think with coaching as well it's a it's a really interesting space to be in and I don't know what your experience is with your clients but i find that and the way that you're trained to be a coach and the way that coaching is projected in all the materials that you read about is quite often different to the real life experience of of coaching and what clients want so i the way that i am positioned as a coach is as an executive performance coach and a lot of you know i do go into mentorship and we do talk about specific advice giving and you know problem solving and solutions around um leadership is a bit is a big part of it um but actually it's it's it's a lot deeper than that you know and anyone who wants to get benefit from coaching um should see it as more than just advice giving and mentorship and tactics because most of most of people's problems are not really around that that side of things it's usually a mindset thing which comes down to a belief system what do you believe to be true about yourself where's your self-image currently at what's what's driving that um and when when you really get onto under the skin of that and when you can shift a belief then it becomes transformational it really does it's not about how to manage a really specific context of a meeting anymore which is important and it can be valuable and it can get a great result but it's actually how do I transform myself and elevate myself to the next phase of my leadership story or um to how do I become less dependent on this specific domain and transition into another business as an example it goes back to what we started about started off I guess at the beginning of this conversation it becomes about identity self-image self-concept self-worth value sets and that is really the the the the exciting stuff that I love getting into when it comes to coaching and I've got I've had a lot of mentorships and you know coaching myself over the years which has helped me get real clarity um not as to who not just who I am as an individual how to help people understand themselves as well yeah because I always think there are three elements really you know in whichever scenario you're in is leading yourself leading your teams leading in the business and everything we do at Brave Bob, well, it's built around those three pillars, you know, because, but we always start with self first, because if you're not in the best shape possible, how can you be a great leader?

51:47Brave Bold Brilliant Hosts:How can you be a great, you know, husband, wife, whatever, girlfriend, how can you be a great, you know, sort of, I don't know, lead it, get the results for the business that you need to have? How can you, how can you actually build a high performing team if you're not actually in the right place yourself? So I think it's always an inside job, always. And it's always work in progress. it's never finished it is never finished you're always going to the next level and actually you were talking about that day because of course when with your iron man and the ultra distance sort of events that you've done yourself you know you're always pushing up pushing on to the next one and you've just come off some of the toughest foot races in the world right but you're you're looking you're always still looking again you're in the progress the progress you're looking for what's next but when you've done those events what have those races and those sort of ultra athletic events taught you about leadership that actually being in the corporate world that you're in and in the boardroom that you could never have learned those things from being in the boardroom but you learned when you were doing those kind of crazy crazy ultra marathons and stuff yeah it's um you learn a lot from them Jeanette and just for context when you and I met um at the um at Rick's reset summit I was fresh off the back of um a multi-stage ultra marathon in the Amazon jungle so I'd been running 250 kilometers through the jungle for the five days which is notoriously known as one of the hardest races um on the planet and I don't profess to be you know podiuming in those those events and you know at the front of the pack but my goal is to just to go through the experience and to finish.

53:27And the reason I have that goal is because I take a lot of learning from it. There's so much that you can learn from it. And I think that running is a metaphor for life and for business. It really is. And it's a case of knowing that, you know, if you keep on going, if you just keep on putting one step in front of the other, regardless of what challenges are going to be in front of you, it sounds cliche, but you are going to get there eventually. and I onboarded this amazing belief which serves me not just in my ultra marathon running in life in business it's it can serve other people as well in their own businesses and in their own leadership and it's that humans are built to gain from an element of disorder in their lives so when you're going through randomness chaos disorder in business the easy thing is to start to blame the world and to shy away from it the easy thing is to think that it's a catastrophe and think that everything is failing um and maybe start to persecute yourself as well and the negative self-talk starts to kick in um but actually a human truth is that we we gain from all of this disorder and those elements of randomness and chaos and stress and uncertainty and anxiety they're all there because if you push through them there is a an element of growth and gain to be had at the end of it and it's the same with an ultra marathon the reason i do these events is because it's guaranteed to be at some point stressful hard painful emotionally and physically there's going to be randomness involved there's going to be moments where you're going to have um potentially hours and hours of negative self-talk to get through and when you get through it on the other side you can build your self-image you can build your self-confidence you can build your self-concept and if you go into these moments recognizing that it really helps you push through it really really helps you push through those moments where it doesn't feel like you want to go to work it doesn't feel like you want to attend that meeting it doesn't feel like I want to have that difficult conversation because it's not nice to do it but when you're on board the belief that at some point there's going to be some advantage to doing this I think it can really help and when I when I came out of the the corporate world so to speak I made a personal pledge to myself which was never to stop seeking out an element of disorder uncertainty and seeking out those things that are going to be challenging because as soon as you start to do that then you start to either stagnate as an individual or you or worse you will start to recess and everyone else is going to catch you up and everyone else is going to push past you so i think i think that the the message is that the learning that i have one of the main learnings that i had is is is this belief that you're going to gain from an element of stress in your life and so therefore embrace it um regardless of what context in and a lot of stress comes in the corporate world i'm not trying to um you know i get the fact that it's a different context being an ultramarathon in the corporate world but the feeling is the same it can be the same yeah yeah and it's all there absolutely and i think also you know a couple of things you know

56:54Brave Bold Brilliant Hosts:you're one you can't control everything where you there's most a lot of things we can't control in life business whatever life happens it's messy right um so when you put yourself into those extreme situations there's going to be a lot that's out of your control and you just have to deal with it right as you said but i guess also you know by pushing now you don't have not everyone has to go and do these kind of extreme events but by being courageous coming back to one of your core values by pushing out of your comfort zone whatever that may be for you or for anyone listening you're training your subconscious brain to do the hard stuff so that then when you do have tough things come along you're much more you've done the training you're much more able to deal with it aren't you it might be a different context it might be a different situation whereas if all you've ever used to is kind of happy clappy bumble along and you know average and you know a lot of people do that okay no judgment that's fine but actually when the tough things come along if you've had no experience of dealing with anything that's really difficult you're going to find it a lot harder whereas if over the years you're pushing yourself you put you're building resilience aren't you a thick skin and your subconscious brain goes oh hang on a minute i i recognize this feeling i know i can deal with this i know i can handle it and and i think that's what's really important in what you've just described there as well for people it is and anyone anyone listening to this who has ambition to do something different and to change and to elevate themselves either at work in business there has to be an acceptance there that there's going to be moments where it's going to be hard and there's going to be challenge and it's a feature of growing it just is it's a human truth and it's a feature of growing that things will not always be easy so you have to accept it you can't have the the thing that you want without experiencing the difficult moments so either don't want the thing and remove yourself of right release it from your desire if you don't want to do the hard thing and just accept where you are which is cool there's no right or wrong I think the challenge is when people want the they want the the job title they want the responsibility they want to be on in the boardroom they want the business but as soon as they're faced with the reality of the difficult thing to get them there then it becomes a shock to the system and they start to go into threat response mode and shy away from it yeah and i think that the learning is that you know be accepting of the fact that it's going to be thrown up and and have the tools to deal with those challenges that are going to get you there and try and embrace it try and embrace it as a positive and you know you landed on a really good frame now it's the term is used a lot in performance but it and it's used a lot because it's true control the controllables and the one thing that is within your control that a lot of people forget about is how you respond to these situations you know when we think about mindset it's our mental attitude which determines how we respond that's the definition of mindset all of which is within your control how you respond to situations is within your control so the empowered the empowered frame around that is mindset is one of the most powerful performance attributes and it's within your control i mean how empowering is that cool i love it yeah i love it it's when you start to think about these things like wow i can feel i can do anything now i really do and um so hopefully what i try to do my coaching is not just provide the frameworks but equally find provide some inspiration and you know project some belief into people that you know you can you can do these things it's a choice yeah anything is possible isn't it i think we we all underestimate actually what we're capable of and how far we can really really achieve i think we probably only use about 30 of our brains actually and our capacity um but the but if you believe in it and if you can see it and you visualize it you're true to your values you're prepared to take the massive action you bounce back from the knockbacks you learn from it you grow anything is genuinely possible and i believe that and i think you know when you own your own your life and take full accountability for it the good and the and the ugly then actually that's it's no one else's fault you are exactly where you are in life because of yourself yeah 100 and even though stuff goes on and things happen that are out of your control to your point, your response to that is in your control.

1:01:38Brave Bold Brilliant Hosts:So therefore, don't blame anyone else. It's nothing to do with the market. It's nothing to do with the whole victim thing. No, no, no. You're exactly where you are because of the decisions you've made, the actions you've taken, the standards you have accepted in your life. No one else to blame. No one. It's down to you 100%. Get over it. How cool is that? Because then you can achieve anything. Super cool. I love it. It is amazing. I love it. So Dave, if you think about through, I mean, you've shared some amazing insights and I've got to say, I've loved the conversation. I really have. We could go on for hours and hours.

1:02:18Brave Bold Brilliant Hosts:We could do a mama's podcast for about five hours, I think, chatting, but we won't do that in the interest of time. But when you think about, it's two northerners, two gobby northerners, you see. When you think about your journey and you know the highs the lows all the stuff you've achieved all the things you've had to bounce back all things that have gone wrong and everything can you think of any standout advice that has really helped you that you know that it's a really interesting question the advice thing and it's that the real standout advice is actually about advice let me explain and I think they you know everybody um specifically in the coaching space sometimes it's very difficult to hold back giving practical advice through your own map of the world because again you construct this idea of your relationship with the world and you assume that your relationship with the world is the same as everyone else's relationship with the world therefore you should do x y and z because it's worked for me which i get it practical advice is really important the best piece of advice that I was ever given is try and put yourself in your own shoes in 12 months time or two years time and do the thing that that person would do so take advice from your future self I guess is probably the the phrase around that and start to think about who who do you want to be because who's better to give you advice than the person that you want to be in 12 months that's amazing i was i was listening to tony robbins thing actually the other day because i love tony robbins i'm a big fan and um he was talking about identity and one of the things that came up was actually who do i need to become what kind of person do i need to become to unlock the dreams that i have and that's similar to what you're saying is actually what would what would that person do what would that how would that person behave how would my future person you know act and that is so so powerful I love it and I loved I'm also a big fan of Tony Robbins and one of the you know we've spoken a little bit around thought patterns as well and one of his frames is you know your thought patterns should be biased towards three things is it future facing is it positive and is it within your control and if your if your thought patterns are biased towards that then you're in a really good space you're thinking about the future you're thinking about what's positive about the future and you're thinking about what's in your control and quite often when we go through these funks in our lives and you review your thought patterns quite often you're stuck in the past you're thinking about negative things that have happened in the past and by default it's in the past therefore it's completely out of your control and you waste so much energy and effort thinking about these things and it's just not serving us as humans and i think it's a really good frame that the future advice giving is a really helpful um question to ask people because it puts you in that mindset of what's future facing what's within my control and what's positive about it and if you can focus 90 % of your efforts on that you're going to start moving forward in a positive way but unfortunately as humans it's not it's not as easy as that because you have these memories come in thought patterns kick in other people start to project their beliefs upon you and if you're not disciplined around it you can quite easily find yourselves in these funky moments where you feel like the victim the world's happening to me such a body should have done that I should have done this instead and you and it becomes this negative space and it's difficult sometimes to snap out of it I'm not saying that I've completely mastered that in any way shape or form all I'm saying is that I'm aware of it so I can now act upon it yeah yeah and it is it's repetition repetition repetition isn't it leads to mastery you know think about you know people that are incredible at meditating for example you know when you first try to do any meditation i mean your brain's buzzing you know you're looking to do 30 seconds without having you know trying to clear your brain and be quiet you know but the more you do the more you do the practice practice practice you're right you catch yourself and you go hang on a minute i know what's going on here i need to stop let me just reframe this a little bit um so no that that's that is great advice and paying it forward uh dave so thank you very much and if you were to describe this year in one word what would it be and why the word would be disordered and I mean that in a positive way because going back to what I said earlier I do believe there's so much gain in disorder and I think about one of my big goals this year was to complete that big effort in the Amazon jungle before we met at reset summit and And the whole experience of that has been a big part of my year.

1:07:24And it was full of randomness. It was full of chaos. It was full of disorder. And I'm really thankful for it.

1:07:32Brave Bold Brilliant Hosts:Well, that's where you grow, isn't it? And here you are. You know? I'm embracing disorder at the moment. We have never had the word disorder from any of our 300 plus guests. So that is fabulous. A new addition, a new word for us to add to our brave, bold, brilliant word cloud. I love it. And Dave, you know, we love music, right? Well, I love music. I think most people sort of get quite emotional. It can take us back, can't it? It can bring a happy memory. It can make us sad. You know, music's very evocative. And we have a great playlist at Brave Bob Brilliant. So we always like to ask our guests, what's the song that we're going to add to the playlist from you, Dave?

1:08:10Brave Bold Brilliant Hosts:And who's it by? I'm a big, big music fan, actually. So this is a really hard one. But the one I'm going to add to your playlist is an old 90s dance track. and it was by Gala and it's called Freed From Desire. And you'll know it if you hear it. If you don't know it by name, you'll know it if you hear it. And the reason I'm adding it is because of the lyric and the lyric is freed from desire. The second part of that is mind and senses purified. And I love, I just love that phrase because if you've, and it goes back to the presence and progress thing. if you can free your mind from any future desire then you can purify it and you can live in the present moment and i just it's just such a misheard lyric um it's a great track as well and i i absolutely love it so i'm going to add that to your playlist i love that i thought that was by alternati so there you are maybe they maybe they did a version of it

1:09:13the reason why you did because no one ever knows no one ever knows that lyric and that lyric is the most important part of it it's mind and sense is purified mind and sense is purified you free yourself from any future desire you can purify your mind and i just think that's

1:09:31Brave Bold Brilliant Hosts:a beautiful line i really love it well that is cool we've not had that one so that's a fabulous this new edition as well Dave love it love it and um you know the last question I've got for you actually which is is quite easy for you because it's one of your values uh aligned with this so what does brave bold brilliant mean to you yeah I think I've already maybe covered this off Jeanette but it means it links to being courageous and for me it means embracing the presence of fear and using bravery, being bold to be brilliant in how you act in that space. So that's what it means to me. Wonderful.

1:10:12Brave Bold Brilliant Hosts:Well, Dave, thank you so much. I've really enjoyed our conversation, honestly. And I can't wait to see what's going to come next for you. The best is yet to come, I feel. Thank you. And thank you for having me. I'm such a big fan. And your energy is amazing, Janine. It really is. Aw, right back at you.

1:10:31Brave Bold Brilliant Hosts:I really hope you've enjoyed this episode of Brave Bold Brilliant. Remember, check out our new website, www.brave-bold-brilliant.com. You're going to find loads of resources on there that's going to help you with your leadership journey and with the businesses that you're trying to scale up and grow. So take care, everyone. And remember, there are no limits to your growth, but it is by being brave and bold that you're going to unlock your brilliant.