The Leadership Mindset Behind the London Marathon — with Events CEO Hugh Brasher

0:00A CNBC original podcast. We all have to make big decisions in our lives. Decisions that define and influence our professional and personal journeys. If you reflect on them, some are good and some I'm sure you'll definitely regret. In my nearly three decades as a financial journalist, I've interviewed literally thousands of CEOs, politicians and market voices, and they all had to make decisions to get to where they are today. In this podcast, I hear about those choices as well as the moments of doubt, risk and conviction that impacted our guests' journeys and the people they lead. This is Executive Decisions with me, Steve Sedgwick.

0:43In this episode, I speak to Hugh Brasher. Look to really where you want to go. Look to the person you want to be. Start reading the right books. Start connecting with the right people. You will end up in that place if you keep looking at it. Hugh is the CEO of London Marathon Events, which manages running, swimming and cycling events across London and the United Kingdom. His career in sport follows in the footsteps of his family's incredible sporting legacy. Sport has been an intrinsic part of my life. It runs through my blood, but not quite at the standard of my parents. But I just think sport is brilliant at teaching people life lessons.

1:18Early in his career, Hugh took over his family's running equipment store and transformed it into a nationwide chain with over 40 outlets. He eventually sold that business to the UK's largest sporting retailer, but not without facing some of the toughest choices of his professional life. The more that you lean into hard decisions and the more that you do them, then the easier eventually they become. But something like that is never going to be easy. These are Hugh Brasher's executive decisions.

1:53Sport is in your blood, or is that too much of an overstatement? No, it's definitely correct. My mother was a French tennis open champion, both singles, doubles and mixed doubles. And my father was an Olympic gold medalist in the steeplechase in Melbourne in 1956. And I think sport has been an intrinsic part of my life. having said that though I always say that if I was a horse as a yearling I'd probably have been sold for a huge amount of money because the stud value of my parents was probably quite high but quite soon I'd have been a banger and in the selling hurdle and I'd be glue now so yes it runs through my blood but not quite at the standard of my parents.

2:38But I hear you I come from a family of sportsmen as well my father played first class cricket my uncle played first cricket and football and I love sport. I love it but I'm pretty average at it to say the least. Is that dispiriting for you or was it a challenge as you were growing up? Your mother's a multiple French Open champion. Your father was with Hillary on Everest, was with Bannister at the breaking of the four-minute mile as well. Did it weigh on you at all? No, partly for lots of different reasons. Firstly, your parents are just your parents. You have no idea. I had no idea. People would be coming up to my dad and asking for his autograph or coming up and having this deep conversation.

3:19I go to my dad, who was it? No idea. Just being polite. So I think you're just in an environment where they are normal people and you don't realize their achievements at the time. And I think so many of my father's achievements actually only found out once his obituary was being written. It wasn't something that he was particularly vocal about. His gold medal was on the top of a bookcase in its little case and no one ever saw it. So that wasn't something that was shoved in front of us. You know, we all played sport. My elder sister was turned professional age 17. I did, you know, running. I motorbike raced later on to a fairly decent standard.

4:08So I but I just think sport is brilliant at teaching people life lessons. um i think that the more that we can encourage people to get active it's now been proven to improve people's physical health that's the obvious bit but the mental health and i really passionately believe that children should this is a united nations human right is that children have the right to be active and sadly in this country um activity has become a privilege and that is a privilege through kids that can go to where their parents pay for them to go to school in those schools sport activities taking place every day in so many state schools kids are lucky if they're getting one day a week with which activity is taken part and that is wrong and that is a right that every child should have and that's a passion that I have and definitely London Marathon Events as a company has.

5:07Tell me about your early business decisions um of course your dad amongst all these amazing things he was doing and of course your mom was a brilliant sportswoman as well he set up the sweatshop as well and then you took that on um what a fairly early age or was it his baby for a while then he handed it over to you how did that work um yeah it was my first job when i was 15 um uh on a saturday and school holidays selling trainers at um at this shop that um sold all sorts of sports equipment um i remember i got a liverpool football top when I was about nine. So it really did. It didn't make you a Liverpool fan.

5:41It didn't make me a Liverpool fan. I have no idea why I got that top, but anyway, I did. Um, and, um, uh, so I was working there, 15, going to school, selling people tennis rackets, selling them better quality tennis rackets, better quality football boots. Um, and, um, yeah, it really turned from a two week holiday job into, um, a chain of the largest specialist retailer, uh, retailers in, in the UK. We had 43 stores. I sold it to Mike Ashton Sports Direct in 2014. And it was founded on groundbreaking customer service. One of the values of the company was groundbreaking customer service. And I think in this country, we're not very good at customer service.

6:25So it's not difficult to be groundbreaking when you look at the benchmarks that we have. but really that the staff were there to understand the customer, listen to the customer, be experts, be able to simplify what they needed. Mo Farah used to work at the sweatshop in Teddington, used to work in the warehouse and he used to work on Saturdays. We had some great athletes in the history but it wasn't because they were great athletes they worked there, it's because actually they wanted to help people. The number one reason in interviewing people about why they wanted to work for the company is because they wanted to help people and the moment they said that, that was the moment that I knew that they were right to work in the company.

7:04Bobby, you talk about these great athletes coming through. We've talked about my background as well a little bit off camera. And it wasn't uncommon on a Saturday morning for, I don't know, Gordon Greenwich to be in there chatting to Bobby Moore, chatting to my dad and my uncle about sport. That has to brush off on you as a young man with these amazing people coming through. Yeah, but it's also, it's what you think is normal. You don't realize it's abnormal. I mean, John Walker, the first man to do 100 sub four-minute miles, used to come into the sweatshop in Tendleton and make us a cup of coffee and just come in for the chat.

7:37And some of the greatest athletes in the world, endurance athletes. I remember I was doing a track session at Kingston, and there were three Kenyans running around, and they asked us to time them. So we started to time them. We'd done our track session. They were knocking out these 400 meters in less than 60 seconds, and one of them was hanging back. and we would take three of us were slightly taking the mickey out of it looked looked a little bit later was having a chat with him it was um he was a gold medalist uh at the previous olympics and um they were just some of three of the best athletes in the world and that was the environment that was happening in teddington the environment that i i lived in and didn't realize how special it probably was.

8:24So the sweatshop went from one shop, 1971, to the 43 before you sold it to Mike Ashley. I'll come to the Mike Ashley situation or sale in a short while. But one of your toughest decisions of your career is you had to let go of a marketing director. And he wasn't just a marketing director. He was a friend. He'd been part of the business for a long time. You'd grown the business from four people to 100 people. But that must have been an incredibly tough decision. It was incredibly tough because he had become a friend. And thankfully, he still is a friend. But I would say there was some really rocky moments in probably another five or six years where also his friends that were my friends didn't bother to actually understand the situation or I couldn't talk about the situation.

9:11It really is when you're growing a company, it is individuals need to grow. Your team needs to grow in its standard. You need to grow in your standard. It's something I ask myself every day. Am I good enough to run the size of the company that we want to become? Not the size of the company we are, because clearly I am. Otherwise, I wouldn't be in that position. But we set five-year business plans, Vimosa, Vision, Mission, objective strategies, actions. And we were just talking through what we're doing up to 2030. And we want to both double our profit and double our impact. You need to have people of the caliber who can grow into that, who have the mindset of growth.

9:57And he had a mindset of growth up to the size of the company that we were at that stage, which was about 20 million. We wanted to be 50 million and probably had got to what maybe was his ceiling. He's absolutely brilliant. He's now running other companies, doing a brilliant job doing that. But they're of a certain size. So, yes, I found it hard. I do think the more that you lean into hard decisions and the more that you do them, then the easier eventually they become. But something like that is never going to be easy. Never easy getting rid of people, is it? No, it is their life. We spend half our waking life at work.

10:40If we're awake for 16 hours and asleep for eight and we work an eight hour day, that's half our waking time, let alone the time you've spent going to and from work. So not surprisingly, it becomes a lot of people's identity. So the moment that you change that situation, then you can potentially, what they feel is you're changing their identity. now i try and um uh sort of teach people and that they all have power they all have the ability to we all have the ability to get another job we are inventive human beings are incredibly inventive and if that's what you do in life and manifestation is something to a certain extent i believe in look to really where you want to go look to the person you want to be start reading the right book, start connecting with the right people.

11:29You will end up in that place if you keep looking at it. If you keep looking behind you, you will stay behind you. You will stay in the negative. You will stay in where you've been. But what you should do is go to where you want to be. If you're skiing and you're skiing in trees, don't look at the tree. Don't look at the danger. Look in between the trees. Look to where you want to go because that's where you will go. That's fascinating on many levels. I want to come back to identity in a moment, but I want to talk about you as a CEO. Because I've had the privilege over the last quarter of a century meeting hundreds, possibly thousands of entrepreneurs, founders, and CEOs.

12:06And some unbelievably successful people at being a founder and some very good at being a CEO. But many aren't very good at both. How did you know that you could not only be a founder and an entrepreneur but also a CEO? I didn't. But I, A, wanted to try. and B, I tried to make sure that I was considered in what I was doing. And I'm sure my non-executive directors and possibly some of the trustees would say that I have learned quite a lot over the last 10 years and I am still learning. And learning, I think, is so important to everybody. The moment you think you know it all is the moment you're so arrogant it's ridiculous.

12:52If I'm given feedback, I want to take that feedback, lean into it and learn from it and try and improve from it. Any feedback should be positive. If it comes from the right intent, the right values, and I absolutely believe values are intrinsic, surround yourself with partners who share your values and people that share your values. And where you might have individual disagreements, you're always going to come back to fundamentally your values and that's what you agree on. So yeah, I didn't know, but what I tried to do was not change anything straight away. I wanted to learn what was going on to then make the changes and do it in a considered manner.

13:38Before I talk more about you taking that job at London Marathon events in 2012. I just want to go back and go forwards at the same time, i.e. to the sale of the sweatshop, which was your father's business, your business in 2014. Mike Ashley is clearly a very successful entrepreneur, but I've heard so many stories of Mike Ashley coming into a business, brilliant historic sports businesses, amazing historic sports brands, and scything through it. Did you worry about what you were doing to the legacy of selling this amazing sports business where you'd meet all these amazing people when you're growing up to Mike Ashley?

14:21So firstly, I think Mike gets some bad press, a lot of bad press, which I think personally, I don't agree with. I worked in his offices in Sharbrook, used to go up on a Tuesday morning and leave at about two o 'clock on Wednesday in the following morning. So, um, working long, long hours. Um, he would be working unbelievable hours. He would know what was going on in that business to an unbelievable degree. Um, and he would drive that business forward. Um, I think that anyone has a right if they're buying something to do what they want with it. Um, I think that, uh, you know, I put what I believe was a great management team in place um it didn't last um those individuals made whatever decisions that they wanted to make that they felt that was right for them and mike then made the business decisions that he thought was right for him um does the company exist anymore no it doesn't um should it exist anymore i don't know because society changes um the world changes and the world has changed more in the last five years than in my living history.

15:39And I think you just have to move on. So I think I learned an enormous amount from Mike in just his attention to detail, his ability to, you know, I will go into a meeting and I will have probably in that meeting, I'll have prepared for it. I'll probably have got six different scenarios worked out about which direction it might go. He, I think, is the only person I have never been able to second guess, ever. And I will only ever find out six months later, I'll be able to put the pieces of the jigsaw together and then go, that's why he did that. It makes sense. And he has, albeit with sports fashion as the main commodity, he's kept sports shops on the high street where, as you and I both know, over the last 10, 20, 30 years, the specialist shops have all gone online.

16:30He has kept sport on the high street. Yeah, and he's doing more to keep the high street going than you would probably argue any other person in retail at the moment. So, look, media, they want a story. It's about selling newspapers. It's about selling things. That's what everyone is there to do in that instance. As long as you understand that, then that's what the story is about. But the fact that you can buy accessible sports kit for your kids to start with, you know, actually getting kids to do activity. And that's the point that we came in on. Right. Getting young people to play sport if they can afford a full cricket kit or whatever it may well be because they buy it from Sports Direct.

17:11That's fantastic. Yes, exactly. Yeah. There's so much great literature out there talking about actually how much privilege plays a part in children's access to sport and thereafter becoming elite sportsmen and women as well. I think we underplay just how key your upbringing is and that privilege in early age. It is, but it shouldn't be. And that is something that needs to be done. And it is something I'd implore the government to do, which is stop recommending activity and start mandating it for children. and that's mandating. It doesn't mean this doesn't mean you punish people by activity. There are so many different places where you can make it fun.

17:50You know, one of an early pieces of research about running that we did was what's the one word that you can use to describe running? And lots of people will answer boring. What is the one word you can describe to run the London Marathon? And the answer is fun. So we've turned something that is intrinsically boring for 26.2 miles into something that genuinely will be one of the most memorable days of your life. Damien Hall, I think he's in it for the long run, one of his books and well-known, brilliant runner. I think he's just won the Lakeland 100. He wrote in his book, and I was listening to it on the treadmill yesterday, funnily enough.

18:26He was saying, well, running could be the answer to all the world's problems as well. Now he's saying that slightly tongue in cheek, but I know what he means because people involved in the sporting community more generally, but especially for this case running, they just seem very nice and balanced and measured. And actually the act of that physical exercise gets a lot of the negative emotions out, doesn't it? It absolutely does. And I would use another word, which is welcoming. So running is going through the most amazing boom at the moment. And it is a boom, particularly in 18 to 29 year olds.

18:58So in the London Marathon ballot, over 1.1 million people applied to run for the 2026 TCS London Marathon. And over a third of them were aged 18 to 29. Now, you know, Formula One, Netflix, they spent a fortune to try and attract that audience. We have virtual parity between men and women applying. The difference is 0.32%. And I absolutely believe that what running does is it unites people and it welcomes them it's not a divisive sport it is a sport where you will struggle at times but together you will have fun whether it's having the cake and the coffee afterwards the shared experience whatever it is but there you can find your tribe whatever your tribe is in running and that's why i think it is um expanding that's why it is the most positive thing that I think people can do.

19:59I agree. And I've run the Hackney half a couple of times. I was probably the oldest guy there. And historically, it's skinny middle-aged blokes running was historically. It certainly was back in 1981 when your dad started the London Marathon, that's for sure. Before the London Marathon, the only people watching marathons were cows and horses that might be in a field as someone ran past. And it was absolutely white, male, 40 year olds my father and john disley went to the new york city marathon in in 1979 and my father memorably wrote an article in the observer recounting um that he'd won olympic gold medal that he'd been there and gordon richards with the derby had been there at the um a football world cup but he had never heard the roar of the crowd supporting the everyday human being that was taking part in this weird challenge.

20:54And he, um, the final words of his article were, he knew that London had the course. And that was John Disley who knew that London had the course, but he asked, did London have the heart and the soul to welcome the world? And I think that is what the marathon is, is about. I think that's what these major marathons around the world are about welcoming people, getting connected through your heart and through your soul. and in those days less than five percent of the runners were women women now it's pretty well 50 50. I have one problem with John Disney's route. Only one? Only one yeah you cross at 12 and a half the best the thousands of people at Tower Bridge you turn right and you've got all the elite guys turning running left past you at the same time you have to do this huge loop around East London Canary Wharf, Isle of Dogs for our viewers and listeners as well.

21:50That's pretty tough when you've just had the euphoria of 12 and a half miles and you've got to take another, off my reckoning, seven to eight miles to get back to where those elite runners are. Yeah. I mean, there is that, but I think it's also you see for the first time how fast they're going. And TV does not show, it doesn't show if you're skiing, it doesn't show how steep it is. It never shows the extremes of what's going on. And we were part of the team that put on Elia Kipchovi, the INEOS 159 challenge. And incredibly, what Elia did on that day, he ran 400 meters at 68 seconds, and he did it 105 times without a single recovery.

22:31Now, anyone listening to this, just go to the local track and try running around that track once in 68 seconds. A, that's hard. I would say probably less than 10 % of the people listening to this will achieve that. And then the fact he did it 105 times without any recovery, it just shows the speed of these incredible athletes that I don't think we realize until we actually are with them and next to them. What do you think these elite athletes have done for the sport? Because Kipchoge has moved beyond just being a sportsman, I think as well. I love listening to what he has said. I love his ethos about sport and what it can teach the world.

23:12So I think his ethos is amazing i think there's so many different statements he comes up with a couple that i repeat reasonably often it is um a hundred percent of me is less than one percent of the team um so it is the reality even if that you think that running or you think jokovic on the center court at wimbledon is there on his own no he isn't there's a team of nutritionists masseuses masseuses, coaches, psychologists. And it genuinely is a team of people that will help any of us achieve anything. And in business, it is about surrounding yourself with amazing team of people who are better than you at their individual skills and collectively you will achieve far more.

24:01So I love that as a statement. The other one I love is, a hungry man should never chase two rabbits, only chase one because you've effectively, if you're chasing two, you'll get nothing. Whereas just be focused on one thing. And once again, in business, I think that is great.

24:22Back in 2012, you took the job at London Marathon events and you had the name, Brasher, famous sporting name for all kinds of reasons as well. But you said they didn't know much about you apart from the name at London Marathon Events. You've cited this as the best decision you've ever made business-wise. I have. Whether it is or it isn't, it's definitely one of them because I never think it's about one decision you make. I think it's about a myriad of different things. But a big driver for that was the impact that I want to make, the impact in inspiring activity which is the singular purpose of London Marathon events and all our profit goes to our foundation who in turn then reinvest that money in improving sports facilities or helping sports clubs or in helping organizations so a recent the foundation gave 1.3 million to junior park run and that came from you know I was involved in park run at a very early stage so part of what London Marathon Foundation has done is help them invest in now a team of people and specifically taking junior park run into more underserved communities, more areas of the country where it wouldn't normally necessarily spring up by osmosis or the way that park run does spring up.

25:46So yeah, we're in this amazing virtuous circle of we make money, we give it to the foundation and they improve effectively organizations to enable them to get people more active you join this amazing brand which of course your father um and then john disley designed the course and then dave bedford took over and then you took over quite a history you had to take over from but i think you're quoted as saying it didn't necessarily have the uh identifiable values at london marathon events as well. Was that one of the early things you really wanted instilling the company and create as part of the ethos?

26:27Absolutely. It was a fairly memorable meeting where then it was 20 staff, it's now 150 staff, getting them together and narrowed it down to 20 key words and which five words most resonated with those. I would say the culture of the company wasn't particularly good at the time. What was wrong with it? For me, it wasn't about the staff. It wasn't about, I didn't have a vision of where it wanted to go. It was more protective rather than how good can we be? And I saw a company that I thought could be amazing. It had this unbelievable brand, London Marathon. Yet, was it a company that was really looking to be influential in a positive way?

27:20And I didn't see that. I saw that that could be something it did. When I went in in 2012, there were no values. So, we started to put in values. World class was one of them. We wanted to be absolutely at the top of the game, make sure that everything that we did was of the right standard. Integrity, and pretty well every five years, we've evolved them. There are some that come in and go out. Fun, which one I've talked about earlier, with how do you turn something that's potentially boring to something that's fun. We need to have fun at work. We need to have fun in what we do. It's only by having fun that we will come back and do things again.

28:06So that's what you could, if you can create that in work and you can create that in what we're doing, it is the most incredible place to be. Absolutely. And I'm a big fan of the product. I'm a big participant of the product, yours and many other people's as well. But I am worried and I'm worried about business and sport and I'm worried about big money and sport as well. And I see big international investors coming into into running into biathlon into triathlon into ultra um the term fell runners get booted out and it becomes ultra trail and it's all about ftk fastest not fkts and it all gets very serious and very big money and very big business are you worried about the influence of money and sport no is the is the short answer i think that um you have to be aware of it you have to be open to it You have to be – it will do some incredible good, but the market will determine what is right and wrong.

29:04So money doesn't always succeed. There are enough businesses that go bust. There are enough people that put money in. I mean, I think Grand Slam Track is a very interesting example. You know, they owe an awful lot of money to an awful lot of athletes, which is not a great place to be, and to a huge number of suppliers. So I think that, again, coming back to business, and we've taken over quite a few businesses over the last two or three years, I actually go back to the person running that business. And that's who I look to invest in. And again, that was something that Mike told me and taught me to a certain extent.

29:45because I said to him, look, I'm going to go and work at London Marathon events. And he told me he was really disappointed. And I said, why? My whole purpose was to build a company and put a management team in. He said, I didn't invest in the company for them. I invested for you. And by that stage, it was too late. And it was interesting. I didn't understand that. I didn't realize that in the companies that we have been partnering with, taking a share in, it has very much been looking at the CEO, looking at the team that are there. What do they want to do? How do they fit in with our values? That's what I'm investing in.