The mindset behind a World Cup winner

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0:41We look forward to seeing you there. You think I'm wearing the number nine shirt for England and it's mine forever. It's really not. It's yours for 80 minutes. If you're lucky and you play all right, you're going to get it for another 80 minutes. then there are these little nuances of elite performance from sport that I absolutely live and die by. Maintaining that, whether it be through sport or through work, is in itself a very, very tough task. And that's why you will rarely see teams who consistently win. Hello and welcome to the Business Leader Podcast. I'm Josh Dornbrack. And I'm Lucy McPhee.

1:22And today we're happy to be joined by Matt Dawson. He is a former England and British and Irish Lions scrum half who was part of England's World Cup winning side in 2003. You may also know him as a former team captain on A Question of Sport and as a commentator for BBC Radio 5 Live. He also has an impressive history in business. Recently, Matt joined JLL's EMEA Work Dynamics Board in a key strategy role, bringing his extensive experience in leadership, team dynamics, and high-performance environments to advise clients on workplace strategy. His story is one of overcoming adversity, mastering strategy, the importance of mentorship, and much more.

2:03Please enjoy our conversation with Matt Dawson. Matt Dawson, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. I'm going to start with talking about this. You've kept that quiet, haven't you? We thought we'd bring it up. Is that where all your research is? This is where all my research has come from, very dated. But I want to just start with something that I really, really love. I'm just going to take you back to a very special day, the 22nd of November, 2003. And I'm just going to read a little excerpt from you. Your own words, you want to know them very well. It feels like Jack and Ori, then.

2:35You're too young to worry about Jack. A little bit, yeah. Sorry, carry on, Josh. I picked up the envelope, opened the door, and scanned the corridor in both directions. There was no one there, but I recognised the handwriting. It belonged to Paul Grayson, my best friend, my halfback partner at Northampton and the guy with whom I'd made my England debut eight years ago. It started off funny, making references to lines from Blackadder that only he and I laughed about. And then it got on to the reason both of us were in Australia. Today is your day, he wrote. All your growing has been done. Don't do it on the field.

3:05You're in control of the World Cup. This is where you belong. Enjoy it. The rest of the world can rejoice in Matthew Dawson, the finished article. Win the World Cup. It will happen. They'll be looking at you. And you'll go. You'll make the difference. So when you think about it all these years later, how does that memory feel for you? That's a strong start. That is a strong start. There are mixed emotions with that because of who wrote it. Paul has, I've always been taught, trained, coached to, as I do to my own kids or teams, about surrounding yourself with great people. And that's a really easy thing to say.

3:59it's increasingly more difficult the more successful you are to surround yourself with good people because you don't actually know their motivation some of the time and I've definitely made errors in judgement particularly post my career but then you have not very many but you just have a group that are your constant people and yeah it's mum it's dad and it's a handful of friends obviously elizabeth my other half so outside of family i've only really got a very very tight group maybe half a dozen and grace is right at the the top of that and you know to to even sort of listening and thinking about how he was tapping into me and tapping into how he could motivate me not by you know beating your chest and banging the walls and you know getting physically pumped up it was just that very cold calm and he understood me and um yeah I mean that's a long time since I've heard words from that letter but it rings true to me as a individual which I suppose reaffirms exactly what I'm saying why people like that are so important to have in your life and I want to stay with kind of mentors and people who have had quite an effect on your life and I want to again drawing from from the book someone you mention uh as someone that you used to play with at Northampton was Wayne Shelford and for those who don't necessarily know he's got a fantastic story I think you know where I'm going with this the All Blacks versus France in 1986 it was an absolutely brutal game he lost three teeth, had been knocked unconscious second half he got kicked in the groin he was rolling around on the turf for a little bit eventually grabbed a water bottle and chucked a little bit of water down the old knickers he said to numb the pain they went on to lose the game, spoiler alert he didn't get kicked, he got raked he actually ended up with a a torn scrotum and actually one of his testicles falling out which I mean, again, he's a hard man, but former All Blacks captain, Sean Fitzpatrick, said he's the kind of guy that you'd run through over glass because he was just such an inspirational figure.

6:24What was it like learning from someone like him early on in your career?

6:31Having, yeah, very much along those same themes, having people around you that are aligned and they can be aligned you know in rugby terms you can be aligned physically mentally emotionally even through to to work you still have those characteristics you know you're not you're not mates with everybody that you play rugby with you're not mates with everybody that you go to work with meaning you're not necessarily going to be phoning them up at the weekend to you know go to the cinema or whatever you know when you cross the line when you cross the whitewash of a rugby pitch or you go into the dressing room that sort of breadth of camaraderie and friendship and um sort of teamship uh is really really important and you know Wayne Wayne will always be a very good friend of mine because he was he was at the end of his career I was beginning mine I was looking up to this all black great all black captain uh he was my first ever number eight in senior rugby I mean that's just insane to think that you know when you're talking in in amongst the rugby fraternity he was the the guy that used to look after me because he was such a such a great individual but the reason why I say all of that is I think those types of relationships have absolutely molded me to be the person I am I didn't realize at the time having those types of individuals that you can really look up to um but also that you're happy to receive criticism and receive the praise and receive everything from as well um sort of gives you that all-round understanding of yourself and how you should potentially uh portray yourself in amongst you know particularly with a rugby team you can get put down pretty damn quickly but you learn how to fit in in amongst all of those characters when you've got mentors and people like Buck Shelford and we'll we'll come back to the playing career but obviously you know you had a very successful career then you transitioned over obviously into the corporate world you're broadcasting you had many many hats that you were wearing how many times now in your day-to-day work life do you reflect on the effect that your playing career had on what you're doing now uh probably a lot more than i actually realize uh because it's it's me it's it's my dna it's my um my ethos my characteristics but i think because the rugby professional sport in general and then when you're involved in the elite part of the game, it's massively intense.

9:26There's so much repetition. There's so much training at the very, very highest level. It can't help but create your default and become part of your DNA because it's not. But it just becomes intrinsic into who you are. I will say things I'm sure in my day-to-day work life. I was just reminded by one of my colleagues there, Jamie, that we had a very significant conference last week for JLO in Amsterdam. Hundreds of staff, partners. It was a massive event for the business in EMEA. And they asked me to talk about the brand. And, you know, I've talked to the brand and comms team and we're, well, you know, we make sure that we've got to take it in this direction and it's all very corporate.

10:31I get it, no problem. Of course, I then ended up standing on stage and going down that line, but then I interacted a bit with the audience and I ended up going down a rugby analogy. You know, before you know it, I'm talking about the brand that we represent, we think it's the be-all and the end-all and we're top of the tree, middle of the tree, wherever we deem we think we are. But realistically, we're only in it for a very short time. In the rugby context, we would talk about borrowing the shirt. You think I'm wearing the number nine shirt for England and it's mine forever. It's really not. It's yours for 80 minutes.

11:16If you're lucky and you play all right, you're going to get it for another 80 minutes. So I was very fortunate. I had an extended England career, but it's now somebody else's jersey. So what do you want that jersey to represent? How do you want to stamp your characteristics, the blueprint of Matt Dawson, whether it be in a rugby jersey or whether it's working for JLL? How do I want people to remember the moment that I was involved in that and I think the the the psyche of of people people outside of sport will maybe look at sport and think that's easy to see because there is a shirt you know I'm not wearing a JLL branded you know what I mean it's it's or there isn't a world cup to go and lift and win and party over so in some ways it's not comparable but then there are these little nuances of elite performance from sport that I absolutely live and die by and I think they they make a difference to the way that teams that the dynamic of teams work and it makes a difference to the individuals and how you can sort of maximize your your performance and your capabilities at work yeah absolutely and you mentioned JLL there could you tell us a little bit more about the company and your role that you've recently started well i mean jll are a global real estate uh firm i i work specifically with their um rems their real estate management services uh group i've been in i've been in fm and real estate for the last 15 years not that i would expect anyone to necessarily know that because i was probably you know dancing around on a strictly come dancing dance floor or I'm on question of sport or doing the radio or previous to that you're playing rugby that's great but I was always wanting to see if I could test myself in the corporate arena and so I've yeah I've had this sort of career in in in the FM and real estate space but i've i've been longing to work for and partner a a global business a global brand that you know really sort of stands up up and above the rest again probably going back josh to the previous conversation of your i'm playing for northampton i'm playing for wasps and then you're playing for england and you're in front of 80 000 people and there's that adrenaline and drive and And I want to do it again.

13:57And I want to be, ultimately, I wanted to be the best in the world. I'm not going to say I was the best in the world, but that was what my driver was. And I suppose maybe a couple of years ago, I started to reassess about, well, what are the types of businesses in this industry that I work in that are the version of playing for England, playing for the British and Irish Lions? And JLL was absolutely one of those, We're a leader in all facets of real estate and the opportunity to work in amongst some pretty outstanding people in such a fast-moving, very dynamic and increasingly more strategic part of our clients' agenda.

14:54is a really exciting proposition so now I've found myself in a in maybe I wouldn't say that my next iteration because rugby seems a long time ago it's nearly 20 years ago but I feel like I'm I'm getting a lot of those types of vibes about what I'm doing now than that I remember from 20 years ago no I love that and yeah it sounds like a really exciting role and and one that you are yeah you're perfect for um I want to just kind of come back you mentioned the Lions there it's obviously a massive part of your playing career um you know 97 we have the the past to jerry guskett for example so you know you're very intrinsic to that that lions history um what made your lions tours so special i will get into 2001 because i want to ask you a few questions about that but why is the lion so special to you uh i think first and foremost there is a a history and a tradition you know go back to that same conversation about the shirt about the lion what it the players that have worn that shirt the games that i've watched that my dad's watched that my mum's watched that my grandparents would watch yeah it would it's somewhat like fairy tale stuff that you know when you're when you're growing up maybe slightly different now because of the exposure that something like the Lions would get.

16:18But when I was growing up, it wasn't about ever playing for the Lions. It was probably wanting to play for England. But the Lions were a little bit like, where do they tour? You don't really watch it. You don't really see it. But then when I started playing first-class rugby at Northampton and every four years those tours were coming along, it very very quickly narrowed and again there's probably a theme if someone was sort of psychoanalyzing me there's a theme here of you know getting the bit between my teeth and focus on I would love to do that right what what do I have to do to prepare myself to go and be that individual and uh I remember in 93 the tours of New Zealand I was touring with uh uh england i think england a in canada um but i was on one of those you know daily mail lists of up-and-coming players who had an outside in fact i think it was buck shelford was saying you should be taking matt dawson down to new zealand which was fanciful it's never going to happen but i suddenly had this what we're talking about here this is absolutely so watch the 93 lions and that was it 97 was an absolute goal uh a goal for me but that yeah that was uh the i mean the absolute the best of the best if i i wish i wish that there was a there was a modern day sort of work equivalent where you know you could you could draw people from different industries and and and businesses and sort of create this super business in that industry where all the best players come to to me you know it and i know all a lot of companies will say that they're recruiting all the best in the world but this was absolutely the the chemistry that came on the back of having irish english scots welsh battling against each other to then put that all aside and say we have got one target down in South Africa where nobody else thinks that we can do it.

18:35Only the squad and their immediate family thought that, and probably some of their family didn't think they had a chance. That was extremely unique. And again, I think set a lot of individuals up mentally to be able to overcome adversity, whether it be on the rugby field at work in their private lives everyone went off in different directions but we learn a lot about each other and and how far you could push yourselves on that tour and then you know four years after that you're going on the 2001 tour and it was a bit of a controversial one you described the bit of tension between the test side and the midweek squad and very publicized on that but again reading from your book I thought was really interesting as like a little time capsule into your mind then uh you kind of mentioned graham henry described your diary as a as an age-old story a betrayal of confidence and your mates for 30 pieces of sylvan claimed it's impossible to contribute to building to the building and bonding process and play the role of critic at the same time scientists will tell you that is a completely different set of brain waves it has to be one or the other and you were quite adamant pushing back on that and again when you reflect on the coaches that you've had how do you reflect on on these times you know obviously like you've mentioned it's 20 plus years later is there still a part of you that still has that little nagging feel of injustice sometimes you just gotta you gotta bite the bullet sometimes you gotta accept that you're wrong and you know i i'm more than happy and have publicly you know numerous times regret what went on there you know it was i was in the moment i was you know maybe ill-advised um maybe i didn't have at that time the people around me to just make me stop and question and give me a different view uh uh, you know, the, the, these, we, we all go through these, these moments.

20:49We all, you know, we, if you're, if you have that tendency to be successful or the perception of being successful, everybody is building you up. They're patting you on the back. They're saying how great you are probably because they want a piece of it in some way, shape or form. They want association, a bit of reflective glory. Uh, you know, they might want to hang in the coattails they might be earning off the back of you it's a very very lonely tricky place to be and i see i see people like that all the time i've got lots of friends who are who have been like that and i take it upon myself because of lessons like you've just mentioned to help them realize that there are other ways of and reasons as to why people are doing things around you and yeah I mean I absolutely should never have done that in a million years um and I'm not proud of of the consequences around that but yeah I mean what can you do you've made a mistake you're not telling me that anyone who's walking down the streets never made a mistake in their life it just so happened I did it on a very high uh sort of very sort of open forum um with lots of visibility for people to critique it okay but take it on the chin and move on yeah and you know again it's interesting talking about that same incident you you wrote let's get it straight the number one problem on the tour was communication um and you know when you think about leadership and business some especially our key audience say of medium-sized business leaders you know sometimes they are growing so quickly that they almost forget to communicate that vision of where they're looking to go and people you know may not be as bought in because they are just taking a day to day and they don't really see the bigger picture I guess you know maybe taking this incident aside when you're leading teams how much is that you know your difficulties with some coaches or you know things that you've learned in your playing career specifically about communication and vision how conscious are you of those things as I grew a little bit older in my rugby career i was maybe a little bit more understanding of the influence that you have um and whether that's at home whether that's at work you know there there is if you're if you're running or building your own business you've got drive you've got passion and there there there has to be incorporated into that there has to be a very a very narrow-minded moment or moments in your life where you've just got to absolutely focus on what needs to get done to then be successful to grow the business to employ the right people to market you know to compete there has to be a real laser like focus get that and i wouldn't i would never try and change people's uh sort of that mentality around it but what what i would try and get across to my teammates or i say individuals that i know have slightly struggled in that area is you know just just to have that that moment for me in 01 unfortunately the the consequence was huge and it lifted a box off me at the time away from just the the excerpt that you wrote that you read read there there was a real sort of moment of clarity as to with being too blind how much of a dick i was being and unfortunately i at that time i didn't have the people around me to gently just you know in a way for me to realize i was being a bit of a plum um i i actually had to do something really sort of catastrophic to realize that so being able to to guide and and educate and give examples to to people on how they can still be as passionate still be focused but you're actually bringing people with you opposed to repelling repelling some and taking others and there is no finished article here but that took me a long long a long long time um and it you know it could be as small as when you know you write even now i'll be super frustrated that something's not been done that i really would like to have been done but i'm going to start the email in a really positive way to not only engage the reader but engage me and make me like just you know take a breath calm down let's think of all the good things that are going on here and then let's balance it with something else whereas you know 15 20 years ago i was straight in from line one what do you think what why are we doing this what you know look at the car and so it part of that's growing up part of that's around having those really important people around you that are you know you're all doing it for the for the right reasons um and And that communication piece, I think within sport nowadays, it's a very, very different situation.

26:18I think that sort of mental health, the communication, the understanding, everyone singing from the same hymn sheet in quite a methodical, dare I say, happy place. and everyone seems to be very conscious of that, which is great. Whereas it wasn't that long ago where sometimes you were left to fight for yourself a little bit and therefore the elbows came out and you made a few errors. And again, comparing your playing days to now, one of the things, we recently did a podcast series called The Turnaround on Exeter Chiefs and their journey through the leagues. And something that Rob Baxter said about team dynamics was quite interesting.

27:09And it would be interesting to get your thoughts on it. He basically said momentum of the group is something that's massive. You know, when you think about what Chiefs are going through now, they're going through a little bit of a dip. You know what I mean? They're a little bit up and down. But he said when they were playing their best, the momentum of the group was going the right way. You kind of had your strong characters who would be going one way. And then this big group in the middle that kind of just goes with the momentum. if that sours then it kind of takes the whole group down with them and i guess was that your experience in your playing days and i guess you know have you kind of noticed that in in a in a corporate setting yeah but yeah definitely momentum is uh uh is really it it's very influential positively and negatively we can't get away from the fact that success or failure the margins are very very small and there could be the the smallest of of say nuance in a sports team that it might be a player a player may have moved on might not have been a world-class international player but they may well have just fitted in the way in the way that the team plays and the way that that individual bossed the line out was at club level was just it was done and dusted the coach you're Rob Baxter's of this world didn't necessarily have to worry about the line out because he knew Joe Bloggs was just on the line out and it was done and Joe Bloggs moves on and someone else comes in who's very capable but all of a sudden Rob Baxter's got to coach him or he's got to find someone to coach him and you educate him in it's not you know it's not mass strategy but it's taking time out of what Rob Baxter could be doing or what he was doing last year with the rest of the team so you're slowly eating away at what was making in this example Exeter be ruthless and very effective on the rugby field it only takes one or two of those little moments to lose that little bit of momentum and no one's noticing it no one's thinking oh it's because we now don't have someone bossing the line out that we're losing loads of games and finishing the bottom of the table that's nonsense but there are there'll be a few and it's exactly the same at work you'll be you know you'll go through passages of you know the the deals uh every single time you're going for a pitch you're just winning it it's like oh my god aren't we amazing this is awesome we've got all these deals coming in left right and center and then all of a sudden you don't get two you're like oh okay i mean it doesn't make you a bad you're not a bad team um there will no doubt be some tiny little difference that has maybe been overlooked and if you know given a business of jll that are 115 000 people if 5 000 people are not doing what they previously were doing that's making a massive difference and but the same could be said for a medium-sized business and probably even more effective in a in a smaller medium-sized business when people start making just little say shortcuts is a little bit too harsh but you know you get a little bit comfy you're say you're winning deals the expectation is slightly different you're not quite as prepared as maybe because you've won all those other deals so we'll you know we'll sort of rinse and repeat that because we know we're going to win oh we didn't well you didn't win it because you didn't prepare like you did when your backs were against the wall and you were underdogs and you needed to throw everything into it and you were drawing on resource left right and center and you had a big pitch to in fact the whole business were in on the pitch because you were so desperate because if you didn't get that business you were risking that the business was going to fall apart you that maintaining that that mentality uh whether it be through sport or through work is in itself a very very tough task and that's why you will rarely see teams who consistently win i mean you know we're we're in an unbelievable era in rugby where you've got south africa winning it back to back you had new zealand winning it um back to back in 11 and 15 um but then you know it's not like new zealand we're going to then just continue winning every year then they dipped away and south africa have come in very rarely do you get any kind of team that are going to win it for decades and decades and decades because there are so many variables.

32:07So I find that part of sort of teamwork and teamship absolutely fascinating. But within that, you can, to a degree, if you've got the individuals that are committed and disciplined and want to learn and are good within the group, I don't think you're ever really going to be too far away. You might not be winning every game or every bit of business, but that sort of cultural piece, who you represent, I mentioned to you earlier, the shirt that you are representing and what you wear will count for a lot, whether you win that business or not. You can walk away and someone say, you know, my case, JLL, or, you know, they've absolutely smashed it out of the park.

32:56It was just a whisker that they did or they didn't win it. But the brand and the people that represent that team walk away with their sort of head held high and it's all very enhanced. It's interesting that you say that because Rob Baxter almost said that sport is very much like a roller coaster. You come back from an injury and you win men of the match and then you're up here and then you drop a few balls the next game and you're down here and you should be dropped. and he almost said his job is to level, flatten that curve and know what people need. I mean, Clive Woodward was very good at giving you a little bit of a stick when you needed one, for example.

33:36But how conscious are you with the coaches that you've had of who really is dialed into the team dynamic and maybe just you reflecting on yourself as an individual? Yeah, the coaches that got to know their own individuals I would that was definitely a common theme for me to comment on successful coaches so Wayne Smith from New Zealand Warren Gatlin from well Wayne Smith was a coach at Northampton Warren Gatlin New Zealand New Zealander was my coach at Wasps Ian McGeek was at Northampton the Lions Sir Clive Woodward for England Sean Edwards at Wasps as well those four or five names the the commonality that i would get from them is that they absolutely took time out to get to know their get to know me never mind everybody else i'm sure they did the same but from my perspective they and sometimes i didn't like it by the way i mean you know you you're getting some hard words that you feel at the time are either wrong or inappropriate um but over the course of my career i i then sort of i i learned to take on that criticism positively because they are trying to make me a better rugby player in fact you know they're probably trying to make me a better person i would i would wrap it up my mind that it was all to do with rugby, but actually there was a lot of personal development from the great coaches because they realised that if they tap into who you are, then it's going to reflect on the pitch.

35:26And importantly, when the pressure is on on the pitch, what are you going to revert to? What's your default? and um yeah i i reflect on that really positively from those coaches even you know i remember clive writing me letters telling me that you know i've got so much work to do i'd be lucky to be in the top five scrum halves in the country at the moment you know all that sort of stuff at the time i remember reading this christmas card i think it was and just thinking what on earth are you talking How do you think that makes me, you know, but of course he knew that I would go and stew on it and then do something about it myself to make sure that I wasn't fifth choice and that I was going to work my way up.

36:16Yeah. So, you know, there were lots of different ways that coaches would choose to get to know their individuals. But that for me is really important. That's certainly one sort of facet of my working life that you can't know everybody, but making as much effort as possible to get to know individuals and what makes them tick gives you more of an opportunity to be successful with teammates for sure. Yeah, absolutely. And no conversation with you, you know, it is complete without talking about 2003. But, you know, Johnny Wilkinson very famously came out and said that the happiest five seconds of his life was after he kicked that dropkick.

37:05And then afterwards, it was like, what's next? You know, that Johnny's very, very passionate and very, you know, disciplined player. And, you know, even all these years later, there's still a part of him that wishes that he'd enjoyed that a little bit more. You know, you guys obviously enjoyed it a lot. but 20 years later, how do you feel about that moment? Did you really savour it in a way that's slightly different to Johnny or how do you reflect on those days? I'm not sat here right now. If we haven't won the World Cup, I'm not sat here. Which is a fairly ridiculous statement actually because does that shape me any differently?

37:45If it's gone to the 100th minute and they kick a drop goal to win, By three points, am I a different person? Probably not. But because of being part of a winning side, the opportunity on top of that, if you wanted to grasp an opportunity to develop and learn and go in different directions, it was there on the back of success. And as I said to you before, it's a very fine line. but when you're winning on a global scale then the opportunities that are in front of you are just significantly more because you are associated with success and at work people sort of it lends itself to want to be successful whatever version of that that you or i or anybody has around success we either in our own minds we want to be successful so i can go home and i don't know whether i can talk to the kids or talk to elizabeth or even talk to myself about i've had a good day today or you know i was chuffed to bits to be a part of that that deal that we've that we've got over the line but then also there's I suppose because of my background there is this perception of all of us part of 03 you know they just they everybody sees us as world cup winners therefore you're amazing at everything you do and it's like well hold just just hold on a minute it was a it's a game of rugby and it's 20 years ago um so it's a lot to it's actually a lot to live up to and there is an ongoing pressure to be that person from 20 years ago but also there's a part of that I quite like maybe it's feeding the beast and maybe there will be a downside to it but I don't know, it has always given me energy It's given me purpose, you know, the idea of, um, it's not, it's not just about being successful.

40:22I suppose it's about completion and, um,

40:31enjoyment. Um, yeah, I mean, I'm, I'm maybe getting a little bit more philosophical the older I am but having a smile on my face and making the most of these opportunities what it gives me and my family you know chances to do it's really important that i make the most of that yeah you're almost flattening your own curve aren't you yeah yeah yeah um got a couple of questions to finish um i know you've been so generous with your time thank you for this um if you were to host a dinner party featuring five leaders from the world of sport music business whatever fictional real dead alive who would you pick i mean muhammad ali would be there

41:17um um daly thompson was one of my sporting heroes growing up i don't know whether it was just because of that lucas aid advert when he was running up the stand but he he i think that whole idea the decathlon i mean i know the the perception of athletics is very very different to what it was sort of 30 years ago but yeah that all conquering uh athlete and the computer game where you had to go really quickly with your fingers to make him run daly's decathlon um so he would he would definitely make it three more I think you know leaders

42:10I take it Austin Healy doesn't get the nod then he might I mean he'd be great value he really would be great value and seeing you know maybe he would you know after dinner he would he would probably try and take on Muhammad Ali in a fight or something so that could be good uh that could be good entertainment um i am thinking about someone like you know like really not left field but something i know nothing like mother theresa or do you mean that's something i know nothing about pick a brain yeah And have that input into the conversation could be fascinating. I'm sure my mum will be listening to this thinking, God, I wish that you were as inquisitive at school.

43:09You would learn as well at school because I'm like a sponge now, but school was a bit too early for me. It was where I did all my sport. It wasn't where I was focused on my learning, whereas now I'm... Make up for lost time. Yeah, I probably am a little bit. How many have I got left? Two? Two more. Oh my God. What's the... Oh my goodness me. What's the guy's name? Tim... Is it Tim? The guy who created the internet. Oh, Berners-Lee. Was it Bernard-Lee? Berners-Lee. Berners-Lee? Yeah. Was it Tim Berners-Lee? Yeah. I'm going to fact check that quickly. Yeah, fact check it. Fact check it. Tim Berners-Lee.

43:50Tim Berners-Lee, yeah. Yeah, I mean, that would be just the thought of someone in a room like this, probably, and just having an idea to then blow the doors off. It would run away, effectively, from, I'm sure, what he was thinking. Yeah, yeah. and maybe having one of those moments of what the hell have I just what have I done there maybe he didn't even realise what he'd done but there's not going to be many of those those moments you know that sort of digital age yeah that's pretty damn cool and maybe what about someone like an astronaut can't go Tim Peake again there's a couple of Tims yeah there is a couple of Tims yeah maybe you know like well let's go Neil Armstrong because then because then we can we can get him drunk and find out whether it actually very true whether it happened yeah whether it was in the studio in Hollywood somewhere exactly I love that what a dinner party that's a really eclectic mix I like it final question for you what's one fact about Matt Dawson that we can't find online well okay then here's a here's a stat for you that I can still do I can still do 100 keepy uppies there we go once an athlete always an athlete right there you go that's what it is Matt thank you so much for your time um if people want to follow your journey and maybe find out a little bit more about JLL how would they do that I'm all over LinkedIn.

45:39Matt9Dawson on Instagram. And yeah, listen, if anyone wants to connect with me regarding JLL, then more than happy to discuss ideas and strategies around our clients and happy to help out. The Business Leader Summit 2026 is set to be bigger, bolder and more ambitious than ever. Don't just watch Britain's growth story unfold, be part of it. Secure your ticket today by visiting the events section of the Business Leader website and using the code BLPODCAST, all uppercase. It's your chance to join the leaders who are shaping the future of business.