Jake’s Notebook | with How High Performance Began & Why Depth Is the New Currency

0:00Hey friends, how are you doing? Welcome back to The Notebook. Once again, it's Jake here with my notebook, a cup of coffee. And for the next 20 or so minutes, I'm simply going to read out the things I've written in the notebook.

0:30from around the world are getting in touch and I will aim to deliver some more value to you this week. We're going to talk about quite a few things. I'm going to talk in detail about podcasting. I'll explain why in a bit. I'm going to challenge you to tell me whether you're a sprinter or a runner. I'm going to tell you something about one of the biggest leaps I ever made in my life and also a lesson from a guest who joined me on the room where it happened this week to record an episode. And then I'm going to ask, well, I suppose I'm going to finish by checking that you're spending your life hanging out with the right people.

1:00But if you're wondering what this podcast is about, it's that for the last 20 years or so, writing notes in the notebook has been a game changer for me. It's given me the opportunity to find clarity, to challenge myself. I need to write things down to be able to process the things that I've seen, heard or experienced. And as life has been kind to me, as life has been cruel to me, notemaking has been there every step of the way. And that's really the energy for this show. It's why I wanted to create my notebook. It's why for the first time in a very long time I've opened my notebook and this show is not edited it's not polished it's not produced I promise you I'm sitting in a small study in my house with no script and no plan and there's a small part of my brain thinking I don't know what I'm going to say next so don't mess it up hopefully I won't hopefully you'll enjoy it as this week once again I open up my notebook all right so at that point I actually need to get my notebook okay right let me talk to you then about uh about podcasting because i've made a bunch of notes here from a session that i did this week um an online session with um a cast who are the company who for a long time have been our commercial partner on high performance helping to find partners and ads and stuff like that and it was a session where we spoke about the future of podcasting and I thought that I've never really spoken to all of you on here about my motivation for doing the show um how we've grown high performance to the size that it is you know if I roll the clock back to 2019 I thought I was super happy being a tv presenter you know I now realize that so much of my self-worth was wrapped up in the fact that I was on the tv but it didn't matter because I was on the tv so therefore my self-worth was high and I was hosting Champions League finals, FA Cups, Premier League matches.

2:47I'd done Formula One, some of the biggest shows in UK sports, like the 2012 Olympic Games, Sports Personality of the Year. I was the youngest ever host of a show here in the UK called Match of the Day. So I felt like I'd done that stuff. But I also felt like so much of that job is about my ego. That so much of being a TV presenter for me was about self. And the average day for a TV presenter is going into makeup so you look nice. someone in the wardrobe making sure that you dress well a producer giving you a load of questions so that you come across as smart and clever that presenter sharing photos behind the scenes or them on set so the world know they've done the show telling the world how much they love doing the show sharing with the world how much they love doing their job and i realized at that point that like i that job and this might not be the case for every tv presenter but i think it is the case for a lot of them so much of that job was about ego it was about me serving a purpose for myself it was about doing something that was all about me how i spoke how i looked um what i shared on my socials was my makeup good enough you know did i manage to hold my own in the studio and i really wanted to do something that was not about me at all but about everybody else i wanted to be of service right for the first time in my life i wanted to feel like i was valuable because as much fun as it is hosting huge sporting events like full credit to people that do it for years and years and years because for me it just lost its thrill I was like all I'm doing here is you know trying to crowbar myself into someone else's success someone else's formula one world title or someone else's premier league victory or someone else's crowning of being a sports personality of the year I'm just kind of like trying to feel like I'm part of their world why not go and create my own world where I can actually be of service to other people be of value to other people and so I first of all thought about creating a tv show about high performance because I've always been obsessed with mindset my bookshows have always been full of like self-help books but I was never in a place where I could ever talk about this kind of stuff because I was on kids telly and I was young and didn't even know what I thought certainly the world wasn't ready to hear my thoughts and then I got a job doing formula one but when you're a children's tv presenter and you're employed to be a formula one presenter you need to make sure that job works I was given a one-year contract I was told that the audience would make their minds up within 10 minutes I wasn't given much of a pay rise from what I was doing on children's BBC it was um it was a period where I just had to get that job to work and then I obviously left the BBC took a big leap and joined a channel in the UK called BT Sport and they'd spent over a billion pounds on football rights and a week before I did my first show the producer or one of the senior people said to me we've gambled a billion pounds on this channel so don't you mess it up so you could imagine the pressure that was on me at that point you know when I was doing Formula One I remember watching Steve Ryder my predecessor and I was in China I went out just to see a race and I remember standing in the garage I'd met David Coulthard my co-host for the first time and I watched Steve Ryder presenting in the pit lane in the Chinese Grand Prix.

5:54He was just standing there on his own with one guy holding a screen so he could see what was being shown on the TV at home and wearing earpieces so he could be connected to the TV gallery about a kilometer away from the pit lane in China. And I honestly thought, I can't do that. There's no way I can do that job. That is far beyond my capabilities. And that was such a demanding job. that there was no way I could think about anything else. So it was only around 2019 when I'd been a presenter at BT Sport for six or seven years that I finally felt like I really wanted to have these conversations that I'd found valuable to share the things that I'd learned in books.

6:31And someone said to me, look, don't worry about a TV show because they're hard to get commissioned. You'll do it for 10 weeks. It's going to be someone else deciding whether you do or don't have a TV show on the telly. You've got no control. Don't bother. create a podcast and you can you can then be in charge of your own destiny that's how high performance came to being and on the first episode it was me and damien it wasn't the first episode that we played but it was the first episode we ever recorded myself and damien got on a train well first of all i got invited right to go to norwich city because my friend stuart webber was the director of football there and actually stuart webber deserves a lot of credit for the fact that high performance even exists because he asked me if I'd go to Norwich and listen to a sports psychologist talk to the first team about mindset and resilience and things so I went along and I saw this guy I thought man this guy is brilliant like he obviously made an impact on me because a couple of months later I was driving to London with Harriet my wife and I said to her I said like I've been thinking more and more about doing this podcast but I'm just worried that I'm a former kids tv presenter like no one's going to take me seriously doing this podcast so I met this guy called Damien at Norwich City the other day do you think he would do it with me and she said of course he will why don't you call him and the imposter syndrome kicked in I said look Harriet he's a professor of organizational psychology and high performing teams at Manchester University this isn't he's a lecturer he's a professor he's not going to want to do a podcast with me um and it was Harriet who also deserves a lot of credit who encouraged me to ring Damien and straight away he went yeah let's do it and I can't tell you what that first record was like we got on the train down to Portsmouth with Finn who was the producer at the time and the only person that worked on the high performance went to the offices of Ben Ainsley, Ben Ainsley Racing he was the first guest that agreed to do the show and we interviewed him and at the end of this conversation about Ben Ainsley's mindset and resilience and behaviors and non-negotiables we said how was that for you and he said you know what no one has ever asked me those questions in my entire career.

8:36And we just suddenly thought, wow, we are onto something here. And then it became so interesting because I remember seeing Anthony Joshua, he was doing something on the internet with Thierry Henry at the time. And Anthony Joshua goes, Thierry, have you seen this show, this podcast called High Performance, where they like get football managers and footballers and sports people, and they just ask them stuff about their mindset. I've never seen anything like it. You can learn so much. And that's the other thing that I have to remind myself about is that when we started iPerformance, there was no, there were very few anyway, mindset resilience interviews happening on podcast platforms.

9:12I mean, there's a million of them now. And some people have even tried to exactly copy presenter and expert together and have a conversation about mindset and resilience. But there's no doubt about it that we were the first to have these kinds of conversations or to want to have these conversations. We were pioneering those kinds of chats. but obviously since then podcasting has changed massively you know five times as many people watch our content on YouTube as listen to it on an RSS feed which is just incredible we have our own purpose built studio on Regent Street in central London we've got over 20 staff we have partnership conversations we produce other people's podcasts and it's all grown organically we've never borrowed a penny we've never taken a loan from anyone in fact for the first three years of high performance I didn't earn a single penny there was a moment where I walked away from football and suddenly I had to think about earning some money but the reason why I'm sharing all this is because my notebook is full of some stuff that I've written down over the last few days because I did this web event about the power of podcasting and these are the things that I noted down depth is the new currency resonance and quality of impression so this is basically saying that the reason why podcasting is so interesting and probably the reason why you come back time and time again isn't because of the number of people that are listening.

10:32It's about the depth. So it used to be about breadth. It used to be about scale. It used to be about size. It's now about depth. It's not about scale. Podcasting exists because attention alone is not enough. People also need trust. And once you can have an audience that trusts you, then that audience will take action. And if you can encourage an audience to take action, then you can change the way they think, change the way they behave you know i think i am not an influencer i think most podcasters would shudder at the use of the word influencer and i think the reason is because we are not looking to influence right but we have influence i mean the numbers are staggering of the amount of people that have i think it's i wrote it down actually here you go 73 percent of people aged between 18 and 34 have bought a product after listening to a podcast 80 percent of people that enjoy podcasts now watch them as well as listen to them.

11:26They have a longer focus time than any other media. Four out of five marketeers say that podcasts now carry impact. 62 % of people are still listening to post-roll adverts. So the adverts at the very end of episodes, which shows that people are sticking with them. And that's why podcasting is so powerful because voices with purpose are now leading conversations. You know, it used to be that you'd kind of be a gun for hire as a TV presenter, whatever anyone wanted to use you for to present their show, you would do it. But suddenly it's about having purpose. Suddenly it's about finding depth. Suddenly it's about resonating with the audience.

12:04It's not about trying to influence them, but you do carry influence. You know, podcasters are the highest rated media personalities when it comes to credibility with an audience and second are youtubers so as a podcast is also on youtube it gives you an idea of what you're producing and i was thinking that one other thing that really rings true for me at the moment with podcasts is the reason why you listen to this and you stick with this and you trust this is because this isn't served to you this is sought by you podcasts are sought podcasts and not served. And the growth has been incredible.

12:43I was looking at Taylor Swift a couple of weeks ago announcing her new album on a podcast. There's no way Taylor Swift a couple of years ago announces that new album anywhere other than Instagram. There's no way that Donald Trump goes on the Joe Rogan show and effectively determines the outcome of the US election because he went onto a podcast. That is the size and the scale of what we're talking about here. But that's why it then becomes something that is hugely important from my perspective, which is trust. Like as soon as I start having partnerships or advertising things that are not good for you, then we lose all our trust, right?

13:21As soon as I start inviting on here guests who are untrustworthy or whose credibility can be questioned, then I lose my trust. as soon as I start lying to you about my background or the things that I've achieved in my life to get to this point then we lose what I trust and I think as as the moment that trust is lost I think we're all in trouble um and I know that you probably weren't expecting to tune into this week's notebook and hear me talk about podcasting but I just think it's so exciting and it's so valuable and it's so powerful and that's not about me by the way that's about you you know look at the shows that we've created at high performance um untapped with spencer matthews helping people to find their inner strength on the mend with matt willis people who've struggled for years with some kind of an addiction are finally able to talk about things the energy equation with ollie patrick i absolutely love because energy is surely the root of all great things in life and he again is a trusted physiologist with years of amazing research behind him and jess ennis hill and gold mines like she's one of the greatest athletes this country's ever produced.

14:26So if she's going to sit and talk about someone's journey, then she's the perfect person to do it. And then, of course, the room where it happened. I was actually talking a few weeks ago to a good friend of mine, a guy called Mark Moffat. He's the CEO of IFS, and IFS are the people who make this podcast possible. They're an amazing AI business. And we did a deal with them for them to be the founding partners of the room where it happened. And I was talking to Mark about how he leads. And I think that Mark is a runner. And the reason why I'm now talking about Mark is because another note that I put in my notebook this week is, are you a sprinter or a runner?

15:06And I'm a sprinter, right? I have not got the concentration levels. I have not got the emotional maturity to focus on stuff for a long period of time. Like my brain and the way I work flits from thing to thing. and I get massively excited about something. And then a week later, I'm kind of not too bothered about it. In fact, this is not too different to how Larry Ellison used to operate. So you can argue, right, that to be a leader in business, you have to be 100%, 100 % of the time. But Larry Ellison, the great Larry Ellison, he was a sprinter. He would take long holidays. He would be all in on something for a period of time, then he would struggle with it.

15:48And I was talking to Mark Moffat, who is one of the greatest leaders that I've ever met in business. Honestly, not just what he's done with IFS as a business, but what he's done as a leader in that business is so impressive. And he's a runner. His consistency is so, so impressive. And I would challenge you to ask yourself the question whether you're a sprinter or a runner. Are you always there as an 8 out of 10 every single day or are you sometimes a 10 and sometimes a 2? And don't beat yourself up, right, if you're a sprinter like me and if sometimes you just struggle to find the motivation and other times the motivation is grabbing you and putting you out of bed at four o 'clock in the morning like that is okay that is fine um and the reason why i love hanging out with mark is this isn't a note i wrote this week but something i wrote down years ago long-term game long-term people i would love you to think really carefully about the people that you hang out with um whether that's in business in friendship whether it's in podcasting please try and find people whose values match your own because what you find is the amount of the amount of time you spend with people who are aligned with you the trust will grow the effort you put in will compound like you wouldn't believe because when you both have a desire to get to a similar place you think that you're moving on your own relatively quickly as soon as someone else comes into the game with different thoughts to challenge you in a different way, to show you where you're actually not quite hitting the mark, to make you realise that what you thought was creativity actually isn't really creativity.

17:24But equally, you do the same to them. It's an absolute game changer. So just think about the people around you and make sure you're playing a long-term game with long-term people. And for me, Mark is absolutely a long-term person that I hope to play a long-term game with. And even if you surround yourself with those people, it doesn't mean life is going to make sense all the time. I was a bit nervous about something this week. I can't share it because it's confidential, but I wrote in my diary here, just remember, Jake, you've never been sure about anything. And it reminds me of the day that I walked through the door at BT Sport when I'd left the BBC, and I'd left the oldest, most famous broadcaster on the planet to join a new startup sports channel.

18:04And I walked through the door, and I promise you, there were five people sitting around a table. And I walked in, and that was BT Sport, five people, saying, well what sort of studio should we have what sort of music do we want to use what should the set look like um how are we going to come on air what other sports do we need to get to complement our football coverage the only thing bt sport had at that time was 38 premier league games can you believe and i'd left the bbc to join them but i never i'll never regret that decision i mean it certainly cost me the opportunity to do some things but it's also given me some incredible memories some incredible moments we built that channel to be um delivering sports content to a million people within just a few weeks and it's the most it's the greatest achievement of my career joining a channel that was at zero and taking it to something that actually had an impact on people and i have people now coming up to me because it's been renamed it's changed it's a bit different and they say oh man i miss those days of bt sport and i miss them too they were they were great special days but also life moves on all the time you know the other day I saw Joe Cole his episode is not out on high performance yet um but it will be soon and I sort of chatted to him about the fact that there's a part of me that definitely misses the fact that I'm not doing sports presenting anymore and he replied to me this is what he replied he said um hey Jake you should always be proud of what you did life is always moving life is always moving and I suddenly had this realization that what I'm what I'm missing when I used to love presenting football programs every week it doesn't even exist anymore like different people are there doing different jobs in a different way I'm kind of mourning something that doesn't even exist and if you're moving on from something or if you're missing something or if you think that something that you used to have was more valuable than what you've got now.

20:05Just remember that life is always moving, as Joe said. And I love this stoic phrase, no man ever stands in the same river twice because the river is constantly changing and so is the man. There you go. Everything is changing all the time. So don't mourn for the stuff that you had. Be excited about the stuff that you've got and be ambitious about the stuff that you want. And that's it. It's a slightly different notebook this week. I hope you enjoyed a little breakdown of how we got high performance to where it is. If you want more about how we grew it, by the way, we're now 250 million downloads, millions of people every month, big team, lots of shows.

20:42We exist around the world. We do live events. Our third book is going to come out in January. If you want to know about any specific stuff, about how we've grown any of those specifics, then please reach out and ask me the questions. I'd love to answer them for you. But that's it. I'm going to head back downstairs. I'm going to go and see the fam. I know you love me finishing these episodes with a quick quote from my favourite book, The Daily Stoic. So I'm going to give you one of those right now. I found one earlier, which I think you're going to, yeah, here it is. Have a listen to this. So Seneca in Moral Letters wrote, Nothing is noble if it's done unwillingly or under compulsion.

21:21Every noble deed is voluntary. And this is from Ryan Holiday's The Daily Stoic. and the explanation of that quote from Seneca is that you don't have to do the right thing okay you always have the option to be selfish you can be rude you can be awful short-sighted pedantic evil stupid in fact sometimes there are incentives to break bad certainly not every criminal gets caught right but how does that line of thinking usually work out for people what's what's that life actually like so remember you don't have to do the right thing just as you don't have to do your duty you get to do it you want to do it no one has a gun to your head so doing the right thing is entirely up to you i think you know the right decision to make have a good one i'll be back with my notebook in a week hey listen please hit follow or subscribe on the app send this episode to someone that you think might find it valuable sending big love speak soon