He Was Told He Had 5 Years to Live. He Built a Movement Instead | Iain Ward

0:00Alex Chisnall:What stops founders from building something meaningful isn't the lack of ideas, it's the fear of getting started. I'm Alex Chisnall and this is Screw It Just Do It. A podcast for people who are ready to stop waiting, take action and make things happen. Cancer was the best thing that happened to me in my life. Yeah, that's why I consider myself to be the luckiest unlucky man in the world. I'm going to have to tell people I've got cancer. I don't want to make it like the inchpin of the whole thing. I then was like, you know, I wonder what the world record is for most money raised. And the first thing I went to was a marathon because I've run marathons before.

0:36I have seven marathons at the end of the year where it's seven different continents. And that's going to be like the finale point of raising the money this year. If I don't do something within a day, it's like itchy. Very, very itchy on my mind.

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1:28Alex Chisnall:You're undergoing a medical trial to raise some extra cash when they found brain cancer. And your prognosis was one to five years? I think they just went with a rough estimate of five years. Okay, went with a rough estimate of five years. Yeah. How long ago is that now? Nearly four years. So today's the 12th. so in one month's time is the fourth year anniversary of my um brain cancer oh my sorry my brain surgery brain surgery yeah um and what are your thoughts around that then coming up to an anniversary of something of that that magnitude uh not so much things to do with like uh i made it to four years more that it's just like what sort of stuff am i going to be doing on that social media day because it's a sort of a a day where i should be doing something uh significant because it's a you know kind of like a birthday almost yeah yeah and how old were you at the time when you had surgery 31 31 okay so coming up to 35 yeah okay um what was your initial reaction to that diagnosis and how did it change your outlook on life bollocks bollocks i love it Yeah, I mean, it was shocking, but my doctor was incredibly intelligent.

2:49A lot of doctors are very academically intelligent, and then social media, Jesus, I have to say that stuff so much. It just comes out of the vernacular so easy. Their social intelligence is often muck. Well, not often, but it's common enough that you'd have a doctor who is a terrible person when it comes to actual bedside manner. Yeah, I'm surprised. And Tim Jones was my brain surgeon and he's excellent when it comes to reading the audience, basically. And he picked up very quickly that I didn't want the pity party and he just got on to, okay, here are your options. Here's what should be done.

3:25This is the best way of doing things. This is the easier way of doing things. And he just talked to me very well. And by the end of it, I felt like I had a plan. it wasn't a particularly like fun plan but like we had i had something to sort of focus on as opposed to you might not be able to fucking talk after this so um yeah uh it was it was shocking but um i think quite quickly i went to solutions rather than um panic mode yeah and have you

3:55Alex Chisnall:have you maintained that attitude over the four years pretty much consistently or is it up and down yeah it's it's up and down but generally um i've had my sort of uh peaks and troughs i've had my troughs where uh i've been not motivated to do uh what i'm currently doing but like often there's something that then spikes it back up and yeah i'm getting out of bed with a lot more fury than uh than just sort of you know worming the way out yeah and can you remember the moment that you decided to to use that diagnosis as a catalyst for what you're now doing um it it kind of was building up a little bit anyway because over uh over covid uh we i was going to start with my own little youtube um video game thing i was never trying to think of it as a career i was like let's just do this make playing video games more of a productive thing and a kind of a fun habit and um through that if it does well then maybe think about like you know switching over but don't try and make a career out of it just do it for fun yeah and then over cover it was like oh this is actually great this gives me so much time to learn how to edit and to get this thing started and um coming up to when i had my second scan i had already sort of established um doing uh stuff on social media and then when i was told you're gonna have to deal with this so it's like right what are the things i'll have a scar on you know this side of my um my head uh the it's seeable if you really focus on it but it just looks like thinned hair uh you've got it worse and um through that i then was like uh i'm gonna have to address the elephant in the room people i like the camera that i use back in my house was at that angle so it's like i'm gonna have to tell people i've got cancer i don't want to make it the uh like the the linchpin of the whole thing so maybe I'll get them to do a little bit for uh for charity along the way where it's like hey I've just completed a level everybody donate a pound something very small very um uh not particularly meaningful but at the same time addressing the situation and then I think it was after I had my brain surgery and they gave me my prognosis uh for anyone who's listening the difference between a diagnosis and a prognosis is one is an estimate of what something is and one is having a more um scientific base so you're looking at the moon you're looking at jupiter you're able to make guesses by looking at it and then not that you can land on jupiter but you land on the moon allegedly and then they're able to pick up the um uh the soil the dust and they're able to make far more accurate scientific um uh research i don't know things from having the actual stuff and that's the difference between the surgery they actually have the tumor in a tube or whatever and they're able to do more accurate tests.

6:47And so I was asked of my prognosis that they said, yeah, this is what you have. It's not the worst thing that we were suspecting, but it's not the best. It's stage three. And then so from there, I was like, yeah, well, here, this is, you know, let's crank this up to 11. If the cancer is playing hardball, I'm going to play hardball as well. And so I then was like, you know, I wonder what the world record is for most money raised. And the first thing I went to was a marathon because I've run marathons before. And the second thing that I went after, I was like, that's very hard money. 2.3 million is not a small amount of money.

7:26But with that, I was like, that's achievable. I wonder what's the fastest that I could do it. And I started tinkering around with them fastest marathons for dressing as different things, which is like a world record that any normal person, like a relatively normal person who puts the work in can have a world record for something kind of goofy. it's not fastest marathon ever it's not elliot kipchoge stuff it's like you know fastest person dressed as the queen yeah sort of thing and um so i looked into that the first thing i looked into was fastest video game character because obviously my channel had been previously associated with video games not really so much anymore anymore i've got a twitch account but it's not the priority and uh so it was under three hours and then so i thought all right both of those things are very hard but both of those things are something that i could achieve in my lifetime yeah so i just went with the two world records that were like the first thing that i searched i was like right that'll do and that was so what what time did you do then oh after my um so my surgery was the 13th and then i think six days afterwards i had a meeting with them all in uh the uh my doctors when they gave me the good, bad news.

8:41And then I think that day I had decided that's what I was going to do. And then a week after the prognosis, I had my first video edited and uploaded. Which, if you look back now, is a dumpster fire. But then again, we've got to learn somewhere.

8:57Alex Chisnall:If this conversation resonated with you, don't just sit there, act on it. Make sure you follow or subscribe for more game-changing conversations. and remember the only thing standing between you and your business breakthrough is the decision to screw it and just do it.