Brighter Days Are Coming | Alfie Watts on Extraordinary Life Stories

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0:42Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a$75 sponsored job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast. That's Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. I think that we're talking about banning social media for under-16s. I don't think that's helpful. It would be exactly the same as flat out making it illegal for anyone under the age of consent to own condoms and then being surprised if there was a teenage pregnancy spike. Who is Alfie Watts?

1:14Many things, but I'm best known for winning race across the world on BBC One. And I'm driving a tuk-tuk from London to Norway to raise money for young people's mental health. At 16, I developed really bad eating habits and things like that and I wrote myself a suicide note. If you'd have told me in seven years you'll be okay, my response would have been, yeah, but what about today? What about tomorrow? What am I going to do now? And that's why this is so difficult. A lot of people ask me, why North Cape? And the reason that it's North Cape is because we want to arrive into North Cape on summer solstice.

1:46That is the brightest day in the world, the longest day in the world. And our project is called Brighter Days Are Coming.

1:51Alfie Watts:You made yourself visible, built a community. And when did that start? But I knew that I wasn't ever going to be able to earn the big money or get on to that sort of career ladder without a manager. I sent out 325 messages and got 323 rejections. The art of resilience is a really nuanced one.

2:24Hello, hello. Looking forward to this. I can't wait. I feel really lucky to be talking to you just before a pretty serious challenge coming up. Yes, it is a pretty serious challenge. I mean, I also love what you've done with the place. Do you? I do. It's really nice. I do too. The lighting, a few people say, why think? It just sets everything off. It does, doesn't it? Yeah. Yeah. Beautiful colours. Who is Alfie Watts? Many things, but I'm best known for winning race across the world on BBC One. I'm a travel content creator. um i do have many sort of side quests that i do i'm a football referee i yeah genuinely yeah um and i'm driving a tuk-tuk from london to norway to raise money for young people's mental health

3:05Alfie Watts:that plane that's a 24th we're filming now early may 24th of may three and a half thousand miles yeah so departing from the o2 uh got a big launch event at the o2 and then we drive the tuk-tuk onto the main road out of north greenwich and then yeah it's game this feels to me like it combines your passion for traveling the growth element that goes with that that you clearly just turned 23 yeah so that sort of that kind of not being able to travel a lot as a youngster to have fallen in love with it and also to have a proper why behind what you're doing that's bigger than you yeah i mean the why the why has taken a kind of a long time to kind of properly get to grips with because the main reason that the main reason that we're doing this ultimately is I'm a Young Minds ambassador I have been since I came off the I came off Race Across the World and I love the work that I do with them I think it's so important we wanted to we wanted to put it in a way where it constantly had a purpose around it so instead of just driving a tuk-tuk from x to x we wanted a lot of people ask me why North Cape and the reason that it's North Cape is because we want to arrive into North Cape on summer solstice because at that point that is when that is the brightest day in the uk it's the longest sorry the brightest day in the world the longest day in the world um and our project is called brighter days are coming so we kind of want that all the time to be able to say that whatever happens in this really really difficult journey there is going to be a brighter day at the end of it and then we're going to arrive and it's going to be that whole 360 moment three well it'd be 180 moment and that kind of just describes my own personal journey that I've been on and it feels like I'm really wrapping up that chapter.

4:44Alfie Watts:It's brilliant I wish you best of luck with that again I feel really lucky to be talking to you before the fact that you say that sums up a key chapter for you can we can we go there because I know because you said to me off camera that right now you feel like you're the happiest you've ever been. Yeah 100%. That's not always been the case. No not at all. And so that that unraveling and that why the fact that actually you know no one should feel alone it's just such a big why behind you doing it I know any previous times in your life you felt really alone can we go there yeah absolutely and I think that everyone has a pain point at the end of the day right that's the everyone has a motivation everyone has a why and I came out very clearly on race across the world and said that I lost my mum when I was five she got diagnosed with a very very sort of rare form of stage four breast cancer and for a reason still kind of unknown to me my dad wasn't on my birth certificate so when she passed away she she was kind of a single mum and I was then kind of just left in kinship care with my nan but we've always had a really really difficult and kind of rocky relationship I think that trying to combat the feelings with the feelings of grief with having to having the pressure of sort of like raising raising another child that I guess you didn't really that you didn't really plan for I think it whilst processing grief of having lost her own parents her own daughter and I think everything just came at the wrong time and it takes a long time to to process that and some people are never able to process that when they have like a difficult childhood and like I said it to you off camera I hold nothing against her at all I don't actually think anyone could have done anything else I think that there was just too much natural emotion there but that kind of lay down and give in was I just I just decided at one point or another that it wasn't my style but to get there we went through quite the um quite the journey I think I felt right I felt quite lost in school I don't think there was a clear part there was never a clear pathway for what I wanted to do I was always trying to kind of I guess make waves and try and do my own thing and that whole thing of like being young and confident and then kind of just life kind of bouncing you back I was really really really in a bad place sort of at 16 I developed like really bad eating habits and things like that and I essentially in August of what was it 2019 I wrote myself a suicide note with well yeah I I wrote my friends and my family a suicide note and left it and went off to essentially attempt to end my own life.

7:26And one reason or another, the attempt, I basically failed the attempt because I just couldn't go through with it. And then it was a really, really tough few months after that. And then they just had to become a turning point where, and do you know what, the turning point was actually COVID. Because it felt like everyone for the first time was on the same level playing field. nobody could do anything and I was like right well this is my chance to catch up it kind of felt like everyone else had been slapped in the face by life in a way that I felt like I always had been and so at that point I just saw it and that that's what happens when you're in that because I'd never ever think like that now in this mindset that I have I'd never think oh I'm so glad that everyone else is now struggling but you you do get properly selfish when you're in that mental state and I was like spiraling mindset as well yeah absolutely and it's it's crazy how quickly things that you enjoyed become irritations I mean I've had my two of my well the two most important people in my life guy and Oliver I love them both to bits we've been friends since year seven we have seen the best and worst of each other countless times and they knew something was seriously wrong when I was when I was going through that and they were doing everything they could to try and alert virtually everyone to try and get me some help and I remember two days before I actually I actually attempted and wrote the note I put my Instagram story being like oh after all this time your friends betray you and all they were trying to do was make sure that I was going to stay alive and that is that that's the mindset that you get in you think everything and everyone's against you even when people are fighting your side.

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9:52Alfie Watts:Really powerful message that because there's countless people that are in a position of love and care around someone that they may well know is struggling and knowing how to help. It's not always obvious. And then the reciprocation of that help, in your case, you know, actually putting it out there publicly saying, you know, I'm being betrayed when completely opposite. Yeah. And that's what I say to people who say to me, like, you know, I feel helpless. You do, because ultimately the desire to and the ability to kind of overcome that has to come from within. And all I say to people is that all you can do is just do your best to show them that you love them, show them that you care about them.

10:33Just give them a reason. When we ask them, are you OK? just ignore the answer because because chances are the answer isn't going to be accurate anyway it's the fact that you've asked and shown exactly that's the thing so whenever i was asked are you okay it was always yeah i'm great because that's the that's what we're trained to do particularly as british humans it's like right let's move the conversation on stiff upper lip yeah and so you'll get you'll get a bog standard answer and if you get a true answer well then that's fantastic because they obviously they've obviously overcome the point where they're able to talk about it and usually that's great but I just I resonate so much with people who are like I just feel so helpless because I know that my friends felt completely helpless even though they knew

11:17Alfie Watts:something was happening yeah I appreciate you sharing that and I want to share with you that as a father to two teenage daughters I've been talking to countless people in my social and kind of professional network about this conversation because there's a role model piece that here for you that I think you really embrace you feel that and you embrace it and when I asked talking off camera before filming now almost like this this very large social following you've built up what's the demographic it's parents it's people my age because actually there's there's a cry for help from the people around uh if you like kids particularly struggling the manosphere is real you know the use of social media is is unrestricted so actually trying to find people putting out positive messages of good and inspiration and coming from a place of lived experience which of course you've got from being right down at the point where you wrote that note to sitting here now of a twinkle in your eye about to take on a challenge that's a challenge for you but to raise awareness for so many people.

12:16And I think that's the thing this is what this challenge is it's about us sitting down and having these conversations that's why I'm so happy to be here because this is a reflection of the conversations that I'm going to have with my team on the project because ultimately we cannot and it's been really really good because there has been suddenly a massive influx of people going public and talking about and talking about their issues which I think is great I still don't think we're doing enough in terms of showing people who are struggling the journey from being at that low point to then overcoming it and what what awaits yes I think that there's a lot happening at the start of that journey where people are sharing their difficulties and that relatability is great but I think we need more of a this is the journey that you can go on if you're feeling rubbish and that is what I think this journey encapsulates both about me but also just about the journey in general we've done everything we can to make sure that everything symbolizes what we're trying to represent we're starting in London which is unfortunately one of the unhappiest cities in Europe and northern Norway and northern Finland are constantly ranked amongst the happiest places in the world.

13:23So we've done everything we can to try and make sure that the people that we interact with along the way will give us some insight into why these societies are so polarisingly different.

13:33Alfie Watts:Some really lovely symbolic creativity there as well, which you could call yourself a creative. Very much so. Bringing together that love of travel and giving, you must have loved putting that together actually, where this, again, symbolic element is made real through an actual real life challenge. That journey part where you say that a lot's made it out of, in the context of people that are struggling. I want to just unravel some of your own journey because we've kind of missed that bit out where you hit the bottom. You then had those, you mentioned a few months of struggling before COVID hit.

14:05Alfie Watts:What was your journey then to build sort of the personal journey you've gone on to where you are now? so I think that what had essentially happened is because everything had shut down it was it was basically everyone was on a reset everyone was suddenly doing 5k's out of their bedroom and things like that and that's suddenly I found quite quickly that I could join in on things that I'd always missed out on nobody could travel nobody could go to concerts none of this could happen nobody could date all of these all of these things that I kind of always felt like I'd been missing out on and and it just it just gave me a chance to kind of get myself together and I started exercising more one thing that I think was really difficult for me was school full stop and I think actually working coming out of school basically forced me to grow up and like I found myself that I was actually a really really hard worker in environments where I was passionate so the first thing the first thing that I did was I became one of the youngest football scouts in Europe.

15:08I did an online scouting course during lockdown. I did it alongside my A-levels, which made me tank my A-levels and the school hated me for it. But I came out and I got a job with a Dutch football club and I worked there for a little while. I basically then decided that I thought football was a bit of a grotesque industry and I still do. Then all of a sudden I just had this taste for success and I then became a teacher. I also started a business, which didn't end very well lost 10 grand on it if you don't try exactly exactly so um and i just kind of i just shifted everything from like there's no hope to i'm going to create hope i'm going to i'm gonna basically and then even when i was teaching i was starting to realize that i i could be a role model to some of the kids who had like lost parents and things like that and then things started to kind of make sense that you know you can come out of the other side and then use it as as power and then the travel yes that's that's then just where I think I think that that's just what unlocked my potential was realizing that the that the world was there it was so cheaply accessible the fact that you didn't need to be a rich household to go on holidays and to go and explore and I basically bought one of my best mates at the time a holiday to Brazil for his birthday we went on that holiday and then bang instagram advert comes up applications for race across the world we'd never seen it didn't know what it was we read the description and we were like well we're here we might as well give it a go so we filmed our audition tape at the top of our brazil hotel watched watch series two episode one that night decided we'd never get on it shut the laptop and then six months later stood on the start line yeah and won it and won it i love that

16:59Alfie Watts:I want to just capture the creative element on this, specifically in terms of content creation that made you visible. Was that race where you became visible, where you're already starting to put content out? And the reason why I ask is so many kids now growing up are too afraid to post because of that peer pressure. Where if I can't be visible, you're sure as hell I'm not going to. So they're all sort of locking themselves away. Whereas you made yourself visible, built a community that then you had sort of interaction with validation from. Yeah. And when did that start? So, yeah, that did start after Race Across the World.

17:36I have nothing but pure respect for people who can grow their accounts from genuinely nothing, who just start posting for the sake of it and people build from there. Because I had a launch pad of five and a half million people that watched a TV show every week. And I still found it incredibly difficult. yes so and you know I don't deny for a second that that wasn't that that that's my that's all of my career success has come from that show and listen you create your own luck and I appreciate all of that but I'm eternally grateful to that show because it gave me these opportunities but I then also noticed a gap in the market which was that actually I was getting this kind of parent aged audience following me to kind of keep to keep track of my life and things like that and I realized that there wasn't someone directly advising these people on how to travel cheaply and so I just essentially started doing little challenges little videos I started creating little narratives around how people could travel more for less money and I think that's that that then was always just going to be what I wanted to do when the numbers started coming in for that

18:44Alfie Watts:fair play there's there's so much test and learn here which I love it's a true entrepreneurial spirit and it's really interesting that you didn't get on at school because I didn't either yeah and then I got on to be a serial entrepreneur but I was I completely struggled with the academic side of things which I'm assuming you know I had no interest in algebra and I knew I wouldn't use a Bunsen burner again apart from burning my pencil case which got me detention yeah exactly but then you go into something that fulfills you and work but then you've lent into it's so early as well I may not feel like it to you but I can give you that perspective where you are a really good listener so you're you're looking at what people might want to learn from you and then you're not just educating but putting out really cool content as well that was always the aim and I think the the one that and you you will relate to this so much so much and it'll be something that I'm sure you hear from people so many times the art of resilience is a really nuanced one and the basically there was a there was a crossroads where I knew that I wanted to continue with my career I'd got about 85 ,000 followers but I knew that I wasn't ever going to be able to earn the big money or get on to that that sort of like career ladder without a manager so I got LinkedIn gold and I just inboxed basically every management agency in the country I got I sent out 325 messages and got 323 rejections and every single most of them were ghosted to be fair but I got a lot of rejections um not enough value not enough you know can't see this going anywhere don't want to don't want to be a cash grab because you've just come off a tv show and one was basically like a boutique agency that I wasn't particularly interested in and then one was my current manager Wow love that story and if you hadn't but if you hadn't written out to 320 of them which goes back to taking ownership and so much of this comes back to that with you actually I like that from from where you were at the lowest point to then like actually you know taking action yeah and then being relentless with it and I the other thing that I love about this particular story is that I know I've got I know I'm in the right place because my manager did exactly what I believe in which is take a gamble on young people see the vision understand that yeah they're probably it was probably a little bit of a risk you know like talent agents aren't cheap to employ and if that's if i'm taking up an eighth of their time and not making them any money then yeah that's bad business but she saw something and she was willing to take a chance on it and i think she'll say that i've quite repaid that and she is just the most incredible she is she is she's one of my inspirations because she's incredible.

21:26Alfie Watts:It's nice to be able to hear this as you're saying it on here. I love that. That taking a chance on young people makes you quite emotional because the Centre for Social Justice put together a report called the Lost Boys Report. And it's damning. Now, you've already described your journey from a family point of view growing up. The fatherless element of family is the lack of role model that effectively means the algorithm fills that space. and then you have the rise of Andrew Tate and, you know, this recent Louis Theroux Manosphere documentary is pretty scary, right? So one of the things that really intrigued me is you've got this perspective of being young yourself, young people all around you doing so much to try and help them.

22:08Alfie Watts:Then the parents' perspective, their fears, their worries. And I feel this is quite a harsh question to ask you, but you're so mature for your years. What can you see should be changed? What would you do to change if you were the PM, if you were someone that could pull the levers that would change things as they are right now? I think we're really going down the wrong route. I think that we're talking about banning social media for under-16s. I don't think that's helpful. I think that psychology has shown that just blacklisting young people in general from things, it would be exactly the same as for example like um just flat out making it illegal for anyone under the age of consent to own condoms and then being surprised if there was a teenage pregnancy spike i just think that people find a way exactly young that's what that's what being young is you experiment with things you try and push the boundaries i think that there just needs to be so much tougher restrictions social media can be such an incredible place and also it's the only way that people under the age of sort of 18 can really advance themselves.

23:15You know, the traditional means of going to uni, you can't speed that process up. Social media gives young people an opportunity to unlock doors that most people can't unlock through the traditional means until they're 25. And you can do it from anywhere, from anywhere. It doesn't matter what your background is. It doesn't matter. You know, everyone has a smartphone. Anyone can do it. So I think that we need to move away from the let's ban it for under 16s. I think we need to move towards let's just start absolutely slamming the regulations and making sure that that we aren't plaguing our young people with with these really really negative kind of narratives let's make it let's make laws that mean that the algorithms can't be as targeted to force people to do because this is all science this is all science that the that the platforms have figured out how to keep people engaged it's a massive fight for attention right yeah absolutely and i just think that there's so i I think when there's a will, there's a way.

24:09And I think if we wanted to change it, we definitely could. And I think that we could have, we could turn social media into an overwhelmingly positive space. Having genuine punishment for people that post illegal things would be a really good start. Genuine punishment for people who encourage antisocial behavior, all of these things. Because then as much as the content won't then be in front of them, you've actually got an even stronger message, which is that can't get away with it so that's how i feel that's how i feel it should be dealt with i think that things like the manosphere you know louis through's documentary on the manosphere is fantastic for raising awareness um but i also think that there needs to be wider training opportunities available for parents to figure out okay so this is the information what the hell are they meant to do with it because they can watch the documentary but that's going to do is make them really scared and like what do you then do yeah so um and there are so many young people and so many people on social media in general that all they want to do is showcase the good stuff they want to do like amazing food reviews they want to show you the best places to go you know and that's what it's for how much of that those good people putting

25:24Alfie Watts:out good messages um how much of the kind of the negativity that goes with not getting likes not getting comments not getting reach because the algorithm doesn't promote it stops those people doing it because there's a validation there's oh well no one cares because I've I've had the pleasure of speaking to people that have built over time and relentless sort of belief and purpose in what they're doing to then start opening up what becomes a really big social following but to get through that period when no one's listening I got one like and one comment and they were both me or my mum. And I guess because of the platform you had with the TV side of things, you already had a platform, but there must still be an element, you personally, even with what you're doing, where, you know, how do I reach more people?

26:09Alfie Watts:How do I grow the awareness and keep going? What's the motivation there? Not the motivation, the advice there. I think that it ultimately needs to stem from people who have a platform and have that influence I think that's where we need to start I think that those are kind of the people that need to be pumping out the good stuff because there's already eyes there and you know the beauty the beauty and kind of the bad thing of the algorithm is that anyone can go viral at any given moment and it's just making sure that we're encouraging people to make sure that if they're putting content out there then it's content that's going to go viral for the right reasons the the biggest concern and I think this is the this is the biggest concern is that when you see a good video goes viral all the comments are it's so nice to see something nice on here for a change that's all anyone says and actually that there is the problem is that clearly far too much is being circulated that's negative because when people then see something positive they all love it but it stands out it's a really good point and they're like oh well there's not it's nice to actually see you know someone being friendly to a cat for a change like it's just that kind of thing it's that for me just shows that we have a massive problem but it's it's also up to the platforms because they dictate the algorithm and if they if they know that the way that they make money is by keeping people engaged with negative content that's going to get shared around that's going to then be boosted into the algorithm which is then going to increase their ad spend you're fighting a losing battle yeah yeah i'm interested with the challenge you've got coming up there's the physical challenge the actual element of the timing element you know starting in 02 London, finishing in Norway.

27:44Alfie Watts:Yeah. What's the bigger challenge for you? It feels like it's bigger than just Alfie. And I'm interested to know, if I make that a legacy question, what would you really like to achieve and enforce change? I think there's three pillars to it. The first one is entrepreneurial. It's an investment. It's a business investment. It's costing us£55 ,000 to run. And from a business perspective and from a profiling perspective, I need to see a return on that. so that's the that's the that's the first concern for us is obviously we're putting a lot of money into it and just like with anything else with any other job we ultimately need to see we need to see a return we need we need it to be successful we then need brands to want to come to me after the project and be like we love this like we want you to we want you to talk about our brand and things like that so that's that's one thing the second thing is we've obviously got then the mental challenge for me which is that there's this is going to be heavy you know these are going to be these are going to be conversations back to back in a very sort of tired in a very stressful kind of environment and I think for me there's going to be almost a case of in some of my hardest moments reliving some of my deepest kind of I guess traumas and that's going to be its own journey and then the third thing is the bigger picture it's then how do we bring those conversations that we're having around a fireplace in Finland and how do we put that on scale in the UK how do we make sure that the money that we raise for young minds we've got a very aggressive target it's a hundred thousand pounds we believe we can hit it but it's it's gonna be tough sure and it's how do we turn the message that we're giving out the messages that we're pumping out every single day into that wider conversation how do we then translate that to come back to the uk and try and get people talking about this yes ultimately at the end of the day if the project reaches one young person that's struggling and they can then see a way out from what we're doing then it's been a resounding success but we have i'm an ambitious person i don't want it to be one i want to be thousands that's why i can i can feel that in a really positive way i can feel your drive yeah off you right now your ambition so i wonder where you were trying to get to that because because and i guess there's an element of role model here which i will call you out as such a positive role model but empowering others is a key skill of yours you're doing it to me now you're lifting me up you're making me feel like I want to be part of your tribe how can I help you and so I guess I feel like you embrace that already you feel like okay there's only so much I can do there's the awareness that I can spread through my actions and so on but then there's almost like build this community up build up people that are all in any one way helping you achieve what you want to do yeah and there's also then the wider point of I need to be good at my job so I ultimately if my content isn't good and if what I'm feeding out there isn't a high standard and if I'm not saying the right things to attack the kind of sort of 16 to 25 young people that I'm really trying to hit with these messages well then I've failed so there's also that element as almost like a businessman as someone who has a job to do where I need to make sure that during this four weeks if I want to achieve what I want to achieve I need to also be performing at a really really high level in really difficult in a really difficult situation.

31:02You thrive off that

31:04Alfie Watts:accountability don't you I can tell like you're you're ready to go now yeah you you you I love it if you were just you're probably counting down the days right you just want to get going I can feel that you are just like chomping at the bit and you know it'll be a challenge but also you relish a challenge I believe that I've been at the lowest point already that I've ever been at so now for me it's just bring everything on and just hit me with what you've got because it's it there is i've just got to the point now where i want to leave no stone unturned there's not a single person that i want everyone to come out of i want everyone to take inspiration in one way or another from what we're doing and like i said it's it's it's a game of it's not just the idea that's going to bring this to millions of people it's about my performance and the execution which i'm sure you talk about so much in business and so much in kind of the wider thing because You can have great ideas.

31:58You can have great intentions. But if you don't execute them, then they won't. They'll fall on deaf ears. So that's my responsibility. And that's why we need to get going.

32:06Alfie Watts:Yeah, I'm looking forward to this. I just want to take you back to the lad that was still on the bridge, broken. And this unbelievably positive driven person that can't wait to take this challenge on that's doing so much to help others. What would you say to him? Starting a business can seem like a daunting task unless you have a partner like Shopify. They have the tools you need to start and grow your business. From designing a website, to marketing, to selling, and beyond, Shopify can help with everything you need. There's a reason millions of companies like Mattel, Heinz, and Allbirds continue to trust and use them.

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32:55I know that whatever I said to him wouldn't have mattered so

33:06I think I'd have I think it is it's one of those things where I know exactly how I was feeling and there are no words that you could have told me if you'd have told me in seven years you'll be okay my response would have been yeah but what about today what about tomorrow what am i going to do now so and that's why this this is that's why this is so difficult is because you know you can give the whole you can give the whole are you okay it's going to be okay but if they can't see that then what do you do so i just think i'd have said get through to tomorrow that's a great it must have been because tomorrow is a new day new opportunity and eventually it doesn't it will take you know it will always take a little while but eventually tomorrow will be better if you keep getting to tomorrow and keep getting to the end of the day then one of them will get better eventually so just take it hour by hour the the worst you feel you have to take it less and less when you're at your worst it's step by step literally step by step second by second when you start to feel better it's then okay I'll take it a day at a time and then now it's then it's like a week at a time and now all of a sudden I'm 23 thriving it's a year at a time I'm I'm 23 years old I can't believe how quickly the time has gone since thinking back to how slow time was moving

34:29Alfie Watts:when I was in that position but can I say to you um that the work you've clearly done on yourself and incremental habits that you've formed you mentioned putting the exercise in probably making conscious effort to eat better. I think it's really important because I can see that. And I've been through my own journey at different phases of my life where I've allowed myself to come off whatever the wagon is and then you've got to build it up. It takes time, but it is that next day. It's that next thing. And then the ambition can go into thinking about next year, 10 years and so on. But you've put the work in.

35:01Alfie Watts:That's such an important thing to say. You put the work into that. No one else can do it for you. and that ultimately is the message is that i am so i am the loudest activist for young people's mental health out ever but at some point there is an element of personal responsibility yeah you have to want to turn things around you have to be willing to you know have those difficult days to know that because you know and i'm sure you do i still have hard days um you know even even yesterday yesterday was a rubbish day i got some really really um bad news about like a kind of relationship i was looking forward to getting into and then literally 10 minutes after getting that message my tuk-tuk run out of fuel on the north circular so i had to push it down the north circular so that all of a sudden yesterday i was like oh my god this is the worst 10 minutes of my life and life will still batter you it will because that's what it does but then when you're in this position you just bounce back so much quicker and you've got so much more of a drive to just hit back that's what I love doing I love I love being beaten down and then get back up yeah there's nothing better yeah it's all part of your resilience piece now having this yeah 100 % how can we help you how can anyone watching listening um in any way be wind in your sails I think there's um still a few funding spots for the talk if anyone anyone wants um anyone I want some advertising.

36:28We're going to put this out before you go.

36:30Alfie Watts:We'll put this out within a week of you. Logo, main ability on our follow car and everything else. But I think the prime, listen, I don't care how much funding we get. If we hit our donation target of£100 ,000, that will be the proudest moment of my life. We spoke long and hard about whether it was actually a little bit silly to go so ambitious. And then we just said, do you know what? nobody's going to care if we don't hit it nobody's going to be laughing saying oh alfie only got 61 000 pounds lol it's not that conversation is never going to happen with anyone because then we can go we just raised 61 000 pounds for charity you can't fail can't that you cannot fail with what you're doing that's how i yeah so we thought aim for the stars and then if we hit that then that is a moment of real pride so i think that's the main thing is is ultimately like getting getting that donation to to that big mark that that's the thing for us and that will surpass any sort of and in a kind of really selfish way this is what i've said to people is that if we're on track to hit that donation then my motivation to be driving that very slow vehicle through finland is going to be at an all-time high yeah so push you every day yeah oh well i wish you the absolute best of luck with it.

37:48Alfie Watts:You're properly inspiring to talk with. I call you out as such a positive role model. Thank you. Thank you for making time to do this. No, not at all. This has been, this is actually a bit, I haven't done many podcasts. It's definitely been my favourite. Appreciate you saying that. It's just, it's, it's, you're such a good, you're such a good talker. I can just tell that this, this is, this is, this is, for long term for me, this is kind of the thing that I want to do. Like, I just love the fact that you've taken what you've done and, you know, it's kind of in a very different space to me. Yeah.