Find Your Why: How Adversity Shapes Success and Purpose from Kevin Sinfield

0:00People will laugh at this, but I don't like running. I don't like running I don't like running I'm a You started running and just kept running To be a champion You have to be a champion at home first And Basically Be a good person Through a tragedy I found out what my purpose was And was massively inspired It made me realise exactly Why I was supposed to be here Which is Trying to help and support The M &A community Sometimes we have to have a lot of challenges in our life That we don't necessarily want People want to say What's your definition of success? I think success in life is based around getting the best out of yourself.

0:34Whatever line of work you're in, whether it's sport, business, how do you keep improving, getting better, so that there comes a point where you reach, you max out your potential? Yeah, yeah. Was it always that way for you, or did it change over time? It probably changed, I think, in my early years, sort of formative years. I think certainly coming from sport, I think success is built around the trophies you win. Yeah, 100%. Well, you've got to win every weekend. That's a big part of it at that point. I think the challenge for a lot of people is they don't have a competitor every weekend. Life is just a continual thing.

1:17Let's go back to sporting days. What do you think sports taught you about life and about how to get to where you want to be and be your best? I feel like my playing career gave me a crash call saying the best and the worst that life can throw at you. And I felt like it was massively condensed into a period where I was playing professional sport and actually that period set me up for post-playing and whatever that looks like. So I've been through some really, really difficult moments which life thralls at you when you're in all sorts of different work and family and friends. I feel like I've experienced some huge lulls from losing finals, getting picked in games, being dropped for games, being injured and dealing with that.

2:06And then also the great fun side of it, which is winning trophies, those moments where you're in dressing rooms after a big win, when it's just the guys who have played a part, like the inner sanctum, and they're there together and everybody understands the journey you've been on, how hard it's been, but everybody's tipped in and done everything they can. And you find yourself with a special group of people who have been able to do something while their eyeballs have been on them and under immense pressure. So, yeah, I feel like rugby gave me a crash course into the best and the worst. And then what I've tried to do is harness those lessons and use them in what came next.

2:47Yeah. Yeah, I think, you know, one of the great things I notice is how much you draw on purpose and how well you help people understand what purpose is. So is that something that just evolved over time for you? Because I know as we grow as, you know, men, people, we sort of learn to lean on certain areas and purpose has become a really big thing for you because, I mean, in some ways, I mean, it was awful, but in some ways you got given a purpose that, you know and it just it was put there for you do you feel a little bit lucky from that i mean it was an awful but it's a little bit lucky in that way i guess yeah i i feel um rob taught me many things and he inspired me in so different so many different ways when you play professional sport and we all understand that it's for a very short period of time but you have a great deal of purpose and meaning in what every day looks like and the competition every other week every weekend and you know exactly what your structure is and your schedule and and it's all put together then you suddenly when he's playing and if you're lucky you get to mid-30s like iowa and then life starts again yeah so suddenly there's a void because there's a competition's not there every weekend um your identity changes and and now you get a new purpose and you're not quite sure what that it looks like or how it feels or what it should be.

4:13And I suppose you try and find your way through what the next few years look like. Through a tragedy, I found out what my purpose was massively inspired through Rob's fight and his courage, but it made me realise exactly why I was supposed to be here, which is to try and help and support the M &D community. And then also, I had a massive bearing on the career decisions I made. I wanted to take some risk and be uncomfortable and be vulnerable I felt that good things came through some of the decisions I made around supporting Rob when I took some risk and were vulnerable and I thought well I wonder if I can use this more in my day-to-day life and the work that I do and you know thankfully I find myself in a place where I feel like I've got a decent balance but also a great deal of purpose and challenge still in my life I don't want it easy Yeah, yeah.

5:06And clearly, I don't want it too hard either. But we all know that you have to go through some difficult moments, some too hard moments to grow. So I'm also aware, I might not want it hard because human nature tells us why would we choose to put ourselves through pain and sacrifice and hurt. But actually, what I've found is the more I put myself there, the more fulfilling it is. I draw a lot of parallels. I've spoken with a lot of sports people over time, when they finish their career and go and find that second career. They're doing what most people have to do when they're in their 20s. You know, like when they're coming out of school and finding a career is almost like a lot of what a sports people have to do.

5:47You got to do that, though, more as a grown man. Like you'd already had experience and had some level of wealth and success and that sort of thing. What advice would you have for someone for trying to find their way and their purpose in the world? like trying to, because a lot of people are still, I don't know what my purpose is. And yeah, what's your answer? And that's why I feel very fortunate because a lot of people don't even know, even when they're on the deathbed and in the dying moments, don't know why they're here. Yeah. So it all comes from what you're passionate about. There must be something that grabs you.

6:22There's something that makes you want to get out of bed in the morning. There's got to be something that puts a smile on your face. What is it? Work out what that is and then can you, can you form a career out of it and I'll give you an example because this sounds all really simple and easy but I found I never wanted to coach right I wanted to be a sport administrator so I did two degrees and I thought I'm really prepared to do it I don't want to coach don't want to be on the grass but actually through Rob's journey I realised that I got so much back from trying to help and support now my experience was in rugby so how can I best use my experience in rugby to help and support and challenge and work with others the best way is to coach is to get on the grass so that's how i was able to go that's the direction i want to head in i didn't plan for this at all it found me however um i love working with young guys i think their enthusiasm and energy and in particular the guys i work with now just want to be better every single day and when you're getting into i mean i'm in mid 40s now but to still be around people who who are like that it rubs off on you it's massively inspiring yeah i i mean one of the great things of leadership is that you do get to help mold and um another great coach i uh i asked darren cahill tennis coach and he said you know my job is not to create a better tennis player my job is to create a better person and a better tennis player you know what i mean and i think that's one of the great things that you do is you mold those young men into great men you know well we try yeah we try this we try it's hard sometimes we try and i think we understand that actually we're all in the people business it's just the fact we have a rugby ball at the heart of what we do so a lot of the values and behaviors i learned as a rugby player i'm not on about technical tactical or skill-based stuff it's about how you deal with people yeah it's very real in the normal world.

8:22Yeah, rugby, and the great thing about professional sport is you have a lot of pressure and you put under that on a weekly basis. And so it brings out the best and the worst in people very fast. So how do you help people? Like, let's say a leader of a business is listening to us today. What are some of the key things we can do to bring out the best in our people? Listen, I always start with that. listen and care about the people you work with because if they trust you and they understand you care about them and that isn't words that's got to be you've got to walk the walk as well as talk it i think they understand um you care about them the loyalty you will get back the support you will get back would just be unbelievable just and and yeah i've been fortunate because i've been in dressing rooms all my life i think i'm really passionate about rugby and and that's both codes of rugby because I've seen the power of what the dressing room does and the beauty of the values and standards and behaviours and morals that come from a rugby dressing room and for our young people for men and women to have those experiences and I'm biased I know I am because I think rugby does things for people that a lot of other team sports don't because there's trust there's honesty and yeah you've got that in all sports You've got the physical nature of it, but there's something magical about rugby dressing room that says, when we finish playing, we all respect each other and the opposition, the referee.

9:58And when we finish playing, as in we retire or time's up, we still look after each other. And there's not many other team sports that do it quite like rugby does. So I feel particularly blessed. And when you think about that in a business sense, how can you create a business where there's care, there's support, there's course, there's challenge. There has to be an element of challenge. There has to be that right. If it's not challenging enough, it's warm and fluffy and you don't win, you don't succeed, you don't get the profit margins you should. But if it's too extreme, too challenging, then you burn people out.

10:31So where's the sweet spot for your business? How do you care enough and have enough challenge and inspiration for it to keep growing and improving? Yeah. So I want to go back to the whole purpose idea of bringing the purpose back to business. In sport, you've got that every week. You know your purpose sort of thing. you've got to win every week. How do we get that? How would you advise a business owner to bring that to their business? How can we make it that it's like every week is a game almost? Yeah, it's funny. And this is the big difference between sport and business, I would say. So in sport, you need competition.

11:07Yeah. Because without competition, people aren't going to pay and come and watch. Watch one team run around. Broadcasting. It doesn't work. But in business, there's an argument to say, actually, you don't want any competition. you want to monopolise and smash it so I understand all that but yeah actually how a business goes about creating that competition and the best example I can give you is all my playing career I competed within a dressing room to improve myself but also every weekend against another team now that's gone for me I'm not in a dressing room anymore and I'm not playing against a team every weekend however I still compete I compete with myself.

11:49So how can we create that competition internally where we just want to keep getting better and improve every single day? And that starts from whoever's at the top. The person at the top sets a really high standard and is really driven on succeeding and winning. I say winning the right way, winning properly, which means integrity, looking after people, caring for people. if you have that i think you can create that competition in its most organic fun way yeah marathons people might say oh my god you're crazy i'm sure people have said that to you my wife says it to me a lot how is that like how did you choose that as the expression of of how you were going to show the world?

12:41Again, I found it. People will laugh at this, but I don't like running. I don't like running. I don't like running. But you started running and just kept running. I don't like running. I'm asthmatic. I hated cross-country running at school. But when I finished playing and talked about that void, I couldn't create the competition every weekend. I just couldn't. I couldn't find anything that. but running helped me deal with some of that because I found if I run hard enough and long enough on a weekend my urge to play rugby would go because I was tired and I found that quite therapeutic so although during I didn't I never realized that that it'd be a therapeutic thing that's a that's a really cool way to look at it actually and and during the runs when I'm out I don't enjoy it right like everybody else I've got the same battle going on in here which is why are you doing this just stop just walk go home put your feet up I have all that yeah but it's whether you choose to listen to it and thankfully I've finished playing and my knees are okay and some of my other joints work like they still should so I've found we probably got really fortunate with we got a really sweet spot of a window when we did our first challenge because Covid was around it was only signed off because we ran it like it was a professional sports team, there were very little charity sporting events going on fans weren't allowed in stadiums the vast majority of the country had been on furlough and had a load of spare money and suddenly BBC Breakfast supported us and then And suddenly we got a load of momentum from that first one.

14:38As a runner question, do you run with sound in your ears or do you run? So you are literally running just with your thoughts the whole time. Yes. Hardcore. Hardcore, totally. I mean, I know every training I would put music on or something, a book to listen to or a podcast to listen to. Because like, you're right, when it is just you and that. And then I now swim a lot, and the swimming is like running without sound. It's like you're just your thoughts, too. Can't you get some waterproof? There are now ones you put on the cheekbones, and you can listen to things and stuff, but I find that I do like the therapeutic nature of swimming because it is just me and my thoughts.

15:24and uh yeah but i like the fact that you turned running into your competition sort of thing i do like that you found a way to be competitive with your own time with your own self and and then also with others obviously do you know with that it's there's a real fine line between obsession and passion and and what i was concerned with when i started running was actually how does the competition play out now because if suddenly competition takes over and this becomes an obsession then I'm disappearing for hours on end when I need to have some family time so how do I keep it the competition harnessed up enough so that it can still be a real passion and I think I'm I've found a way of being able to do that whereas I can run a marathon I aim for a specific time and it'd be really easy to go no I'm going to push that I want to get quicker and quicker and quicker but i've i've found to be able to be comfortable comfortable enough because running marathon isn't comfortable but sort of a sweet spot where i can go about my work and my daily business and have enough family time without being an obsession and losing all that yeah yeah well others might argue with the fact seven in seven is possibly a little bit excessive

16:49Was that a decision, by the way? Because I know my wife once almost signed up for the seven marathons in seven days on seven continents. Yes. And she was very serious at one point about doing that. Then got a foot injury and it was like, dang it, that's not going to be a thing. But how did you make that decision of doing seven in seven? Well, the fact that Rob played number seven, it was all built around that. Now, with Robert have been number 38, I'd have been in a very difficult spot. And I thought, do you know, because how we measure time, I thought a week sounds, seven days is a good number, and so it was all based around that number.

17:32And it fit the first time, the first one we did, and we needed just over 70 grand. We were going to start on the 1st of December, finish on the 7th. We wanted to start at 7 in the morning every day. just the number seven fit and it's it's stuck with our team and and what we do because it makes sure rob is still front and center however long this this plays out rob will always be the reason why yeah so average person how do we convince them to go for it most dreams don't die through failure they die through never doing it never even writing it down sort of thing if someone listening here was going you know what i've got all these dreams can how do we help them get over that inertia and actually yeah write them down make a plan go do something with it what's what's your thoughts on that uh i i think uh every marathon starts with the first step so when we look at things in our lives at times, they seem massive, they seem big, they seem gigantic, that why would we undertake this massive thing that could take years and years and years, or loads and loads of pain?

18:48What I would say is, how do you break that down? How do you chunk it into much smaller sections? How do you make it so that you can get your head around the next three hours, the next day, the next week? And before you know it, by putting these bits together, suddenly you get closer and closer to this thing that's so big. And that's what I'd encourage. Break it down. Find ways of chunking sections of it. And I would also always say to people, find 30 minutes a day for you. Find 30 minutes a day to do some form of exercise, whether it's a walk, whatever it may be. it could be the gym, it could be the bike, it could be swimming, whatever but allow yourself 30 minutes and use that 30 minutes as your time and I think as running has done for me during that 30 minutes give yourself some perspective, understand that this is a big old thing you're undertaking but if we go I'm just going to worry about this next 3 hours it's far more easy to get your head around Yeah, I think it's easy to put yourself into overwhelm when you set a massive goal.

20:02Like if you said, okay, seven in seven, you could overwhelm your brain with that sort of thing. And I think a lot of people do get overwhelmed by dreams and massive things. They see what other people and they do a comparison sort and they're like, I couldn't do seven marathons in seven days and therefore they don't even do one. Well, they don't even do a 5K. you know i do love that it said chunk it down break it down and we had a bit of a mantra when we do something over seven days the mantra is just got to make the start line the next day yeah that's it because you get to the start the hardest bit for most things you're doing like it's turning up as soon as you get there and you start then everything else takes off yeah yeah There was a great story about a guy doing a massive trek, and no matter what, he did 20 miles a day.

20:55Great weather, feeling awful, 20 miles. Beautiful weather, feeling amazing, 20 miles. And I think that that consistency factor, and that's one thing I've noticed part of your career, is there is just a consistency that breeds that level of performance. Is that something you chose? is that something you learn through coaching? How did the consistency become a thing? Yeah, I think I would probably, I try to be as consistent as I can be. What I would say is the reality of that is probably it's not always what you see, but I try. I try, and I think there's lots of days where I don't want to do me 30 minutes or I think I've been on all day.

21:44It's 10 o 'clock at night. The last thing I want to do now is go and do 30 minutes on a treadmill or 30 minutes in the gym. I force myself. Yeah. Force. And it's not, it's for me that. It's me, it's my challenge to myself to be able to commit to it. But yes, consistency, habits, habits, because you do them over time and you build them up. And as soon as you get to that point where it's a habit, then the guilt of not doing it, You feel you've liked yourself there. But actually, Brad, I know if I don't do my 30 minutes, I'm not a great person. Or I'm not as good as I should be. Yeah, there was a great book called Streaking and not like running across a football field naked, but building streaks into your life.

22:33Like actually, you're saying, okay, I don't need to do 100 of these. I just need to do 10 push-ups per day, but I'm going to do it every single day. And like there was an interesting story in there where they talked about, and for them, they were runners as well. And they talked about there was day 700 and something and they were getting off a plane and they were doing this and everything happened. It was like, we can't, we can't lose it at day 700 and something type thing. So it's like, there is that pressure as well of doing it. But leadership, you lead a lot, obviously, both in the sport, the sport in the coaching that's at lead yourself what are some of the key attributes that you think make a great leader today and and how do you embody that i guess yeah i suppose there'd be there'd be three things and i'll talk about this um quite a bit but humility i think the best leaders i've worked with have a huge amount of humility they don't always know um or have the right answer they make mistakes and they're open to say I got this wrong please can you help me or I don't know the answer to this team can we come up with a solution for this can you help me and I think there's a leader involved like that I think it just garners support and loyalty and pulls teams together I think when you've got a leader who says he knows everything never gets anything wrong he's always right I think it puts people off so I I think that's really important to start with.

24:06Plus, I think we all understand whether we want to admit to it or not. We all have weaknesses, and surely part of your job as a leader is to surround yourself with people who have got strengths where you've got weaknesses, but also who enhance your day, who bring positivity, who help you through the day, and who support you. So that'd be really important. Next one would be you set high standards. The best things I've been around set high standards, Brad, and that doesn't mean they're the best at it. It means, but they try as hard as they can at everything. And it might be the worst in the team at it, but absolutely they are emptying the tank and going for it.

24:45And through that, you get respect. And it allows people to hold others accountable if you set high standards. And if you're going for it and you're given 100 % and committed to it every single step, then I think then you create an environment where people then want to get better and improve and set high standards for themselves. And then the last one would be around courage. I think certainly the last decade with the way social media's gone and how popular people want to be. People want to say what they think people want them to say rather than do and say what is right. And I don't think... I think the best leaders I've worked with do and say what is right most of the time.

25:28that means at times you're going to be unpopular it means you're going to get criticized it means you're going to get laughed at but if you know it's the right thing for the group or the team or the organization well sometimes we have to go through some tough moments sometimes we have to have a lot of challenge in our lives that we don't necessarily want but actually if we live our lives with integrity trying to do the right thing trying to look after people and a decision is deemed that it's unpopular or it's criticized well it doesn't mean it's wrong it can still be absolutely right and so the best thing is i bet we'd have the courage and at times sacrifice themselves because they know it's right for the as you're saying this i'm just thinking of like three situations in the last month where you know i had to make the call one was with the family and And the kids were just like, dad was not in the good books in that part of the world for quite some time.

26:25But two in business where one of them, my partners, were very unhappy with my decision. But I said, we have to do this for the long term. We just have to. It is what it is. Yeah, I know that feeling very well last month or so. Not all the time I have to do that. And it's tough, isn't it? It's lonely. It's lonely being a leader. It's lonely running a business and being at the top and all the eyeballs on you and everybody criticising, everybody saying, shouldn't have done this and should have done that. Well, if we always try and do what's right, then... I love the fact that I run a business coaching company.

27:02So, you know, I have more than a thousand partners in the world that are all the coaches and I get coached a lot. I don't always ask for it, but it does come. I always finish with a question. What was the best advice you ever got about success? And who did it come from? And why do you think that's the best advice you ever got? The best piece of advice I ever got was from a former coach, a New Zealander, a guy called Brian McClelland. Lovely man. Still keep in touch with him. And I suppose I was living this way but couldn't articulate it. I didn't have the words to be able to explain it. But he came up with a very simple phrase, which was, to be a champion, you have to be a champion at home first.

27:52And basically, be a good person. Because if you're a good person, you won't just win once, you'll keep winning. And it's stuck with me. It's always trying to live my life, trying to look after people, trying to do it the right way. And I get stuff wrong all the time. I make mistakes, like we all do. But my intent is always to try and do the right thing. so it stuck with me I want to win like everybody else but I have to do it in the right way otherwise it's empty on the Big Success Podcast hit the show notes click the links do the learning we'll be back next week with more of your success