400 Episodes: The Conversations That Changed Us

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0:33So keep your own phone and number, activate with eSIM in minutes, and start saving immediately. No long-term contracts, no hassle. If you like your money, Mint Mobile is for you. Shop plans at mintmobile.com slash HPP. That's mintmobile.com slash HPP. Upfront payment of$45 for three months. Five gigabyte plan required, equivalent to$15 a month. New customer offer for the first three months only. then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. Hi there, welcome along to another episode of High Performance. And it kind of passed without fanfare just a couple of weeks ago.

1:11But we have now released our 400th episode of this show. Since we began recording in late 2019, since we began releasing episodes in early 2020, just before COVID struck. We have kept going year after year, month after month, week after week, episode after episode. And so I thought that today I would do something a little bit different for you. I would just join you from a hotel room in Madrid. I'll explain more about that in a moment and just talk about the journey we've been on. I get asked so often, how did high performance first begin? So I'm going to tell you that story, but I'm not on my own for this episode.

1:47I have not my usual co-host with me today because while I'm in Madrid, Damien's in Japan, I have our producer, Will, who's also been with us every step of the way since episode one. Hey, Will. Hey, Jake. Sorry you got me today. But you know what? In some ways, no, I think this is perfect because people ask me what I'm most proud of when it comes to high performance, right? I'll always say the impact that we have on people, right? When people stop us in the street and tell us that it's either changed their life or saved their life, that's what really matters. But you know, the other thing that I'm super impressed and super proud of, Will, is that we've shown incredible consistency.

2:24We've just kept going, regardless of pandemics, regardless of illness, regardless of issues with guests, issues with diaries, issues with location. So right now, Damien's traveling around Japan with his family and fair play to him. He very much deserves that break. I'm in Madrid. I'm working. I've got my family here as well. I've packed them into another room in the hotel and told them to be quiet. and you're in Manchester in your house because this is still a week where we have to keep on releasing high performance because consistency is the thing that our guests have told us matters more than anything else, right?

2:57Consistency is the thing. It is a, you know, the one thing I'm probably most proud of is exactly that, is that we have done over 400 of these if you add in special episodes, special series, other episodes we've done outside of new guests. But, you know, that's 400 times we're doing it every single week or every single series when we did it and getting it out there and getting a new episode out to people and you know can you believe it's been 400 no i mean it feels like you know it feels like 20 years at the same time as it feels like two minutes i'll tell you what you won't remember this because it was just like a moment in time but obviously when it first began damien was still busy lecturing working at a university i was still busy hosting football programs and being a sports presenter.

3:43And I'll be honest with all of you listening to this now, at the very beginning, it was never going to be everything for me or for Damien or for anyone that worked on it. I mean, it was a side project. It was a bit of fun. It was something I'd always wanted to do. I'll tell you the story of how it happened in a moment. But I certainly would never envisage not presenting live sports because I was going to host a podcast because it still felt back in 2019, early 2020, like it could never be a real thing. Like podcasting wasn't big enough to sustain even one person's life, let alone as high performance is now sustaining 30 people's paychecks every month.

4:19But I remember when I spoke to you about it, Will, and I said to you, like, could we ever actually make money out of creating high performance? And I remember you said, oh, I've spoken to a couple of people in the podcast space. And they've said, if we keep going, we could make like 60 grand a year out of this. Do you remember? Do you remember that conversation? And I went 60 grand. I couldn't believe that we could actually make money from hosting a podcast. Have you been doing this longer than you've been doing anything else? Yeah. So, you know, it's really interesting, right? Because I would say the most impactful thing that ever happened to me in my career was landing Formula One, right?

5:01and hosting Formula One. By the way, got some big Formula One news coming. Exciting moment. News coming soon. Which we can't talk about yet. No, I spoke about it. But watch this space. So I did Formula One for only four years, but you know what? And I left in 2012. It's now 2026. So 14 years ago was my last season on F1. People still say to me, all right, Jake, are you off to the race this weekend? And I'm like, no, I've been literally left over a decade. so I did Formula 1 for only four years I did live football for BT Sport for a decade I did kids TV from 2001 to 2009 so eight years so and this has now been almost seven years since we recorded the first episode so I did kids TV a touch longer I did football a bit longer I didn't do F1 as long as this but it's certainly the thing I think now that defines me and I was thinking the other day actually because I do get asked a lot the two most popular questions, Will, is either what's the one thing that binds together all the guests on High Performance, or it's how did it begin?

6:06And at the time, Will, you were working for a company now called YMU. I think they were called probably James Grant back then, but they were my talent agents, right? They were my agents, my managers. They still are. And I kind of knew you through friends of friends. You'd done little bits and pieces with me, if you remember, but we didn't really work together. And there was a guy at the time called Neil, who was the boss of the business. And I went out for lunch with him one day because I was starting to get disillusioned with football. I was starting to feel like the conversations I was having as a football presenter was so like clickbait and so aggressive.

6:42And I'd always wanted to have much deeper conversations. Or I suppose in some ways, I kind of had this feeling that my career was all about celebrating the achievements of others and that I'd not really achieved anything myself. Like standing on the side of the pitch talking about other people's talents, other people's skills, other people's hard work, other people's efforts, other people's achievements. And in many ways, high performance still remains that. But I felt like I hadn't really built anything tangible for myself. Nothing that I could say to my kids, look what your dad did. Like standing on the side of a pitch talking about football was not something that I felt I could say to Flo and say, look what your dad did in his life.

7:19What a good use of a life that was. so there was two things i wanted to do and were you involved in the other project yes so i mean did you come filming with me for that so for my recollection was before we started high performance i was working at an agency that jake talked about a talent agency and part of that job that i would have would be to work alongside some brilliant people there to try and look at building opportunities uh brands and little almost like businesses i guess you would look at them now around people that had passion points and areas they really wanted to get into and that might be you know at the time social media youtube all the avenues where you can basically start broadcasting yourself you don't need commissioners you don't you go you had all these people had all these people to know followers following them and that was becoming more and more valuable and having worked on a few more podcasts we talked about how firm is instrumental in the idea of podcasting and having worked on that show and a few others you really saw actually podcasting could become more than podcasting and it was an early kind of you know that successfully clues and then you were tied into as a bt deal so you're tied to football which kind of restricts you from doing more tv really you're kind of like this is your gig yeah but podcasting is so new it was a great place for people to test out their ideas to test out passions i think we both had a a passion for content a conversation that wasn't diluted into two three minutes to get the most out of something and that's how i love podcasting let's really talk to somebody let's really get inside what they're thinking uh and you have this great idea about i've been around these successful people and how do they really get there i don't think people really know and i think actually they're the same as all of us but they just do certain things but we had a list of ideas right so i mean this show didn't i guess didn't almost happen because we could have made something completely different and we went and actually filmed something completely different which kind of was if you think about it part of there's so many parallels to a high performance is it was just done in a completely different way and almost was just impossible to do what will is talking about is a show that i've already said to you that i wanted to do something that went a bit deeper than just sound bites and click bait and reacting to the things that are happening today i wanted longevity conversations all of us right have a terminal diagnosis all of us don't know whether tomorrow is a guarantee all of us know that one day this is going to end and it is going to end quickly because life goes by really fast.

10:03So we came up with this show called One Last Thing Before I Go. And Will and I travelled, I think we recorded three episodes from memory, Will. We travelled to a couple of different hospices, recorded two episodes at one hospice and one at another. And I mean, it didn't happen because I mean, basically they were just too painful. I mean, I still remember the... Do you remember? Do you remember the conversations at all? Yeah, I do. I remember all three that we recorded um and all three of the people are no longer with us and and it was just it was basically just too much too raw too honest too real i think massively valuable and we made sure that the people who we spoke with um obviously they would have loved those conversations to be shared in a in a in a you know a public forum but we didn't ever create that show but we did give the recordings to the families of those people so that they forever have the legacy.

11:02But I also think that the kinds of questions I was asking, in all honesty, Will, are not dissimilar to the kind of questions that we ask on high performance about mindset, about the things that really matter, about non-negotiables, about seeing the world for what it really is, about not getting caught up thinking that everything is about achievement, about prioritizing joy over other stuff. And that podcast obviously didn't happen. and then when I went for lunch with this guy Neil who was the head of the agency I said like I'm not really sure I just don't think that I can have those conversations on one last thing before I go but I still am fascinated by the human mind and the human brain from my years in sport and he was the one that then said we'll do a podcast about that and I still thought it wasn't really going to go anywhere so I actually spoke to Fern you know and rang her and she really should take a lot of credit for high performance because I called her and I said like I'm really not sure about this.

11:54I just think there's enough podcasts. I mean, how ironic considering there's about a hundred million more than there was then. And she was on it and said to me, this has changed my life. I've got purpose. I'm building something I believe in. I have control over my career. And I guess what I wasn't really prepared for, Will, was actually how impactful high performance would become and how quickly it would become impactful. And you were kind of seeing more than me, the reaction from people. So do you remember when you first thought, actually, this show has got legs, this show could become something?

12:23oh yeah it would have been i remember i remember starting it and like you it was it was one of many projects i was doing but you know when you have you know when you do something and you like it so much you spend all your spare time doing it so you just spent like all your extra time doing it you really wanted it to work you went the extra mile and you were just so like there's something it just had a feeling straight away from my side that this could this would work this was a podcast I always would want to listen to it's a podcast that I just felt like wasn't there for people like me and maybe like you and like Damien to be honest there was all gut instinct first who should we get on what should we talk about what's the most impactful and to be honest just getting that out there we were like a very small team doing everything filming it doing all the prep getting it all out there all the channels and just spreading it and then it was the community messages that come through you would have seen them way more on your personal personal instagram or something and it was then once you knew you're onto something and I start seeing the impact was probably probably about four to eight weeks in when you knew you had released a few it was you know we had some really good guests thanks probably to the connections of you and Damien at first to open up you know phone books uh but it probably really really hit home about I would say six months in seven months in when actually there was this like really unplanned catapult moment in the show and it's an episode we talk about so much on this show which you'll know i can see you nodding you'll know what it is it was it was an episode with johnny wilkinson uh and it just took a life of its own outside of anything that was planned i mean the whole episode wasn't planned to go that way and it just got shared between not just people listening to it but I think the most important thing when it really nailed and hit home was it was being shared by sport teams it was being shared by elite dressing rooms it was being listened to by coaches of Olympic athletes of leading football team rugby teams outside of the rugby everywhere going this is exactly how I feel this is what I this is I resonates so much that is when i was like then you start hearing teams in australia listening to it and then the power of podcasting comes alive because actually this isn't a uk thing this isn't a thing that we could just feel and it goes everywhere and not many things can do that not even in all the work we did before in telly or anything it just could travel you're totally right and that's the thing that was really exciting for me was that like i'm used to a world of television where if you're in the uk making tv for the uk it's watched by people in the uk but also once it's been on the telly it's kind of been on it's had its moment and what i did miss was that there isn't that i remember interviewing andy willman just recently and he said there isn't that moment where you gather around the tv and you go oh my goodness the grand tour is live and everyone's watching it he kind of was like he remembers speaking to jeremy clarks and going so is is it like is it out jeremy clarkson was like yeah i think it's out um let's turn on Amazon and see if it's there, which was such a different experience for them compared to BBC two at 8 PM on a Sunday night when the whole nation would stop and watch Top Gear.

16:01Now that was kind of similar for me. I was like, I missed that moment where I could say to my friends, my dad used to say to me, what, when's it on? And I'm like, well, it's kind of on whenever we release it, dad. And then it's there all the time. And so people today will be listening to Johnny Wilkinson, obviously not in the numbers that maybe they were three or four years ago, but it's available in any country at any time for anyone to watch it or to listen to it. That, for me, is the absolute power of this. And it's conversations that people are seeking, right? This is sought. It's not served.

16:32So, you know, you can put something on a mainstream TV channel on a Friday night at 7pm, and you'll get millions of people watching and you'll congratulate yourself. But would those people actually seek what they're being given? So the only way to cut through in podcasting is through quality and through depth. And Johnny Wilkinson gave us both of those. And my memories of that day are really interesting because I called a couple of people that worked on the rugby at BT Sport who knew him and said like, you know, what should I talk about? And they were like, oh, if you can get him to open up around his like mental health struggles towards the end of his time as a rugby player, then great.

17:07And if you can really get him to talk about his deep obsession with practice before games, then fantastic. And if you can really go inside the dressing room for the 2003 world cup final that would be incredible as well so i was in my head will it was like a rugby conversation and we arrived at pennyhill park which is where the england rugby team stay when they're playing games at twickenham and went into one of those lovely mahogany rooms and remember we we also interviewed stephen henry the same day the irony of interviewing stephen henry for whom selfishness was one of his non-negotiables which is equally you know like if That's him.

17:43That's fine. Love that episode. We sort of sat and waited and in comes Johnny Wilkinson. Quiet, understated. Do you remember how he walked in the room though? Like, now you're talking about it. I remember him being very almost deliberate about how he walked in. He walked in and just kind of like, I mean, looking back, he was probably, he felt not uptight. he just felt quite wound and he just sat down purposefully walked in it happened the podcast started very quickly i remember it just naturally beginning it wasn't load of chat was it before we started recording no no it was just it just let's let's just go and let's just you know we're recording that's just and then literally i do remember actually saying something like you know how's it going what are you looking forward to this he said well let's just see there was it was like you know at the end when he said exploration is his superpower yeah and his secret of life i think that's like i don't think he wanted too much conversation beforehand did he he didn't he i mean we know having done another episode with him after this where we tried to get him to watch the old episode just to say how much he changed he was like i that is not my style i like to just not rehearse come into things and just see where it goes i mean i listened to that episode i was there and I was like, is this good?

19:09Then I listened to it. I am not joking. I've listened to the episode 15 to 20 times. I get something new from it every single time and I still didn't know after four listens whether it was amazing or not. My honest reaction to the Johnny Wilkinson episode was just kind of confusion really. I was trying to work out what the next question should be, trying to work out whether he's made the point to the level at which he wants to make it trying to make sure damien's also getting an opportunity to share what he thinks trying to keep an eye on the time to make sure it doesn't go on for too long trying to make sure that we also cover some of the things i think are important and trying to work out if it's good or not so there's so many things swimming around in my head i kind of left the johnny wilkinson episode exhausted um well let's why don't we why don't we all the time i listen i mean let's play a clip and understand yeah i think it demonstrates actually because there's a there's a moment in it where he he's talking and he's so in depth about something uh that i remember you guys like all of us in the room really trying to you really had to listen and grasp and ask very simple questions to get to explain but that's what you guys did perfectly for me is i got to a point where I was protecting this old identity this all this stuff that become me I use the the the um the kind of way of articulating it for me is that that old me was choosing how this now should be for this now me and this now me is capable of anything but I was being held back the way I was feeling was decided by the old me so yeah when I get a feeling in my stress or whatever I'm like well I don't want this so who the hell is choosing it for me right all my old beliefs and my old conclusions and my old ideas are deciding how this life has to be for me now so what I've decided was I'm going to think for myself I'm going to start deciding how I want to be on the inside and who I want to be now and it goes against the whole mentality of a lot of the values around sport that you are who you are and this resilience of fight and stand up and never give in it's kind of like but it creates this idea that there is something solid inside that you need to protect and you only get one choice in every moment are you going to control it or explore it and if you've got something to protect you're going to control it yeah and you look at anyone that's trying to control a situation they won't be fully engaged they'll live through the mind and not through the life so this was the choice i had is am I going to try and control the rest of my life on behalf of some old ideas I had when I was younger or am I going to drop those and start exploring it for what it is now and the child is exploring there's no other way of looking at it oh man you know what Will when I hear it I am back in that room at Pennyhill Park the mahogany room yes I'm back in the mahogany room do you remember Eddie Jones was also there at the same time he was outside having lunch yeah and good old Damien the king of networking was straight out going we'd love to have you on the podcast We should say at this point, right, that Damien Hughes entered this not as an interviewer.

22:16I'd spent 20 years in my career doing interviews, learning about interviews, studying interviewers, understanding content, making content, creating television. Damien came out of lecture theatres and academia and from minute one was an exceptionally good career. 100%. And he deserved a lot of credit for that. you know what let's get into some episodes that have really i think changed us but let's like change you because i think it's you know we can as i say we can talk about we don't really want to talk all about just the numbers and the things have been the biggest episodes really want to talk about the ones that have challenged you that surprised you that changed how you think and altered the trajectory of high performance alongside resonating with the listeners and the ones that might have been quite hard to make so yeah what if i'm gonna if i ask you what what has been an episode what is the one that has challenged you what is the one that has challenged you personally it was the conversation with dame stephanie shirley and i think about this an awful lot right um because for those of you that don't know and it's it remains i think one of the greatest episodes we ever recorded we sadly lost dame stephanie last year i'm very honored to have been asked to speak did you know i've been asked to speak at her memorial service will yeah i heard that mate that is such a privilege yeah yeah yeah that's special so dame stephanie came over on the kindertransport escaping nazi persecution during the second world war she was fostered in the uk went to university realized there was no women working in tech so decided to set up a tech business but set it up as a tech business run by a woman employing only women in the 1960s the only way to employ these women was to ask them to come for a job interview with their husband where they had to request the husband's permission to use the phone at home and permission to pay their salary into the husband's bank account.

24:07People don't realize that the first black boxes for Concord were coded by housewives at their kitchen tables working for Dame Stephanie Shirley's business. She broke down doors that every woman listening to this podcast will have walked through that my daughter and my wife and my sister and my mum have all been lucky enough to walk through. I can't believe there isn't statues of Dame Stephanie at every railway station and every university in the country. She built the business to be worth billions. Before she sold the business, she gave the business to the staff, making hundreds of people multimillionaires in the process.

24:39She then had a son who was severely autistic and created autism charities to support him, which have changed the lives of millions of people. But the reason why it stays with me, and there was two things that she said. The first one is that risk is not as risky as it might seem. and I think that's a really important lesson for me and an important lesson for anyone listening to our conversation now is that so often the fear of the failure is the thing that stops us from taking the risk this understanding that embarrassment is the price of entry that failure is the price of ambition is almost the most important message to have come from high performance over the last six years I like to think that we've helped to change the narrative around failure and struggle and embarrassment and setbacks for people to understand what they really are and her line about risk is not as risky as it might seem she said if you don't take risks in your life you restrict yourself so much in fact let me this is dame stephanie saying those words have a listen risk is not as risky as it might look um there are so many opportunities to recover from poor decisions um you you you restrict yourself so much if you if you don't take any risks and just stay within your comfort zone um and if you want a full life if you want a um a meaningful life risk is probably a necessary ingredient okay so like that was a really important moment for me on a personal level um and i think i've taken more risks since then But it was when she said this that I actually changed what I thought about the entire concept of high performance.

26:27Today, I am interested in legacy. I am interested in, I think it's a matter of age, it's as simple as that. I'm interested in how I'm viewed by the next generation.

26:43has all the work and effort paid off? I would say resoundingly yes, but there's always a little bit more that one can do. I think that's the way to end before we move to our final quickfire questions. Thank you. Dame, Stephanie or Steve, what would you like people to say? To say? Yeah. She was worth saving. I think that's the, because I'm still stuck with that refugee. You know, once a refugee, always a refugee. So do you think that you were then? We talk often with people on the podcast about there is no yet, there's no end. It's all about a process. Have you come to terms with this in your own head, that absolutely you were worth saving?

27:30You have done more than you could have ever imagined? Or is it still a battle? It's not a battle anymore, but I don't fritter days away. I feel that I need to justify my own existence. So Dame Stephanie there asking herself that painful question every day, has mine been a life worth saving? And the reason why that's changed how I feel about high performance, right, is that when we first started this podcast, I wanted to have conversations that would be telling you at home to find your limits, find the edge, push, achieve, drive, strive, be successful. the minute you achieve something go on to the next thing um that your life was measured by the things that you achieved rather than the joy that you felt and it was only when dame stephanie said those words about have i made mine a life worth saving that i realized that as much as she's achieved so much in her life so much of what she achieved came from a point of pain and the reality is that so many of the high achievers who've been on our podcast have had a flame lit inside them by trauma.

28:35And I think a lot of the people that we put on a pedestal these days, certainly a lot of the influential Instagram influencers that I see talking about what achievement looks like in 2026, I think are people struggling with unresolved trauma. And I really want you to understand that you can achieve, achieve, achieve, push, push, push, strive, strive, strive. You can have the millions in the bank. You can have all of the success in the world but it's not going to make you happy unless you find happiness in your life aside from achieving great things um dame stephanie would have always carried that pain with her and i think i think that was something that was really important for me um there's a there's a really important um parable shall i share with you this the mexican fisherman parable will Yeah, I'd love to, mate.

29:25Hear it. So there was an American traveler, and he complimented a Mexican on the quality of his fish and said, how long did it take to catch them? And the Mexican replied, oh, only a little while. And the American then said, well, why don't you stay out longer and catch more fish? And the Mexican replied, oh, I've got enough. I can support my family. I can support my immediate needs. And the Mexican then said, well, what do you do with the rest of your time? And the fisherman said, well, I sleep late. I fish a bit, play with my children. take my siestas with my wife, stroll into the village, sip wine, play with my amigos, play guitar with my amigos, have a full and busy life.

30:02And the American said, I've got an MBA from Harvard, so I can help you spend more time fishing. And with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat, with the proceeds from the bigger boat, buy several boats. And eventually you'll have a whole fleet of fishing boats. Then instead of selling your cash to a middleman, sell directly to the processor, eventually open up your own cannery. You can control the product, the processing, the distribution. Of course, you'd need to leave your small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico and then Los Angeles and eventually New York where you can run your expanding empire.

30:31And the Mexican fisherman says, well, how long will all that take? And the American goes, 15 to 20 years, something like that. And the Mexican says, well, what happens then? And the American laughed and said, well, that's the best bit. When the time is right, you can announce an IPO. You can sell your company and all your stock to the public. You can become I'm so rich. You're going to make millions, millions, says the Mexican fisherman. Well, what then? The American said, well, this is the amazing moment. You can retire, move to a small coastal fishing village. You can sleep late. You can fish a bit.

31:05You can play with your kids. You can take siestas with your wife. You can stroll to the village in the evening where you can sit behind and play guitar with your amigos. Amazing. that is one of the big issues in this world at the moment is that we are delaying our happiness and our joy believing we have to chase the big shiny object that is going to bring us the happiness and the joy that we've already pushed aside to try and chase the thing that we think is going to bring us the happiness and the joy that's already there and i love dame stephanie i love what she achieved i love what she stands for but i also know that she like so many other the people that have been on high performance have been invited onto our show because they've achieved great things from a point of pain and if we can explain that you don't have to achieve great things to be a high performer then i think we're doing a better job amen it's it's one of those episodes actually that you know if we were going to write a list of you've never listened to the show what are the three episodes five episodes you should listen to that would be one of them it's episode 181 it will be a link below to listen to it the other one by the way very briefly Chris Van Tulleken, Dr.

32:16Chris Van Tulleken who wrote a book about ultra processed food it was an absolute mic drop moment for me when he said the reason why you're not told to eat more bananas and more apples and more onions and more leeks and more carrots is because no one owns the IP of an apple no one owns the product that is a leek He said people own the IP and the brand of products. So they take your beautiful apple, they turn it into some sliced frozen apple chips, or they take your potato and turn it into some potato chips. Then they own that product, and they can advertise the product, scale the product, sell the product.

32:54And much the same way as we've just spoken about the parable of the Mexican fisherman. Chris Van Tilikum was the first person really on High Performance that opened up to me that so many of the things that we do in the life that we live are controlled by the fact that we live in a society that rewards big business, right? And we are controlled by big tech, controlled by big pharma, controlled by big business. So much of that is going on all the time. And one thing that I think we all have to do more of is just try and work our way through this and realize that so many of the messages that we're given are not for our benefit but for the benefit of of the people who stand to make loads of money from us buying their product i thought that was a really important moment for me why don't we jump to one that is what has been the one that's resonated most with the audience i think the two that spring to mind the one that resonated most with the audience from the messages that came through uh from the impact it had i would say would be either kevin sinfield or claire williams claire williams yeah like claire williams just i love claire yeah she just she was just came she came on the show and is just so emotional in how she speaks she just brought you into every situation and really painted a picture again for what life was like for her i mean how did you fine episode because the audience I mean absolutely loved listening to that one yeah that was a really interesting one for me personally because I first met Claire when she was the head of marketing at Williams and then I was involved you know with the team through my work with Formula One and through the Whisper group all the way through to her becoming the the boss of the team and I didn't actually understand the true depth of the challenges that she was having to deal with the things that were happening behind the scenes um like everyone else i only was able to judge claire on what i'd been allowed to see or what i'd been told so if i had to come on the show and talk about you know sponsors that weren't paying their bills or challenges within her family or issues in the workplace or the growth of formula one and i still feel so sort of devastated for her that if she'd just been able to hang on formula one would have had this huge boom moment and she would have been able to keep hold of that team and Williams would have remained a family-owned Formula One team of which there aren't any anymore and I think the sport is is a is less for not having some family-owned teams and I would love Claire to have still been in that sport but um I think really COVID pretty much put pay to the fact that she just couldn't financially keep hold of that that team anymore and you're right the emotion was so raw and I'd never seen that from claire before i and we spoke quite a lot afterwards actually on the phone we were exchanging messages i remember getting the train back to norwich afterwards and she was you know as quite a lot of guests do this like was that okay i'm a bit worried about some of the stuff that we spoke about can i can i hear it back can i listen to that's not an uncommon request is it because i think that often people come on the show and open up a great deal i remember joe at the end of his episode saying, God, that was like a therapy session.

36:11And then they walk out of the room back into the sort of cold light of day, if you like, and all the production team are sitting out there giving them a round of applause and they're signing the guest book and they just walk out onto the pavement. And I sometimes think, God, what is that actually like for them to sit in that dark room with me and Damien, open up their soul, tell us really what they have been through in their life. And then we go, thanks, bye. So everyone who comes on the show, as Jake mentioned, we have a guest book that um we just you know get them to write a little message for basically for us so we can keep a little memento of the day and sometimes we post them out to see what they say but mainly they're just kind of uh little messages that their immediate feelings of it uh which to be honest there's now been over 400 it's very hard to determine who's who so we got new to do a better job of that but i would say oh i would there's so many of them like Claire who have come out of it right in.

37:05It's felt like a therapy session for them. And, you know, in a good way, I hope. You know what, though, that guest book, I mean, I keep thinking, that's got 400 of the most amazing signatures in it. And we do need to know who's written in it. Otherwise, it's just a book with a load of scribbled Sharpie in there. Yeah, I know. Well, that's definitely a giveaway with that or something. We should do. We should make it into a proper little book or make it into something that people can digitally see or something so what's that one to put on the list i was going to actually mention as well gaza will because so much of what we've done has been in a studio one thing that was really interesting for me was leaving the studio and going to paul gascoigne and interviewing him in his agent's house where he was staying in one of her spare bedrooms i mean it was a logistical challenge because we were desperate for paul to come on and share what um what he's been through in his life and you know I think what I think I found it hard in some ways because like this is an England football legend who I put on a pedestal and was like this is Paul Gaskell and so to find him kind of you know not with his own property staying in someone's bedroom um it was kind of it was a challenge in that way but what I loved about it was that it also took me back to my kind of world of television as well.

38:23Like it was a whole crew traveling down to the south coast. It was somewhere in Dorset, I think, wasn't it? And, you know, filming Paul, seeing him on what I thought was like a really good day or at least a really good week for him where he felt in a good place. I was really pleased that he trusted us to tell that story. And I think there's been films obviously made about him and he's done the odd interview since. But I don't think anyone has quite shown the world the way that Paul Gascon is living and operating now quite in the way that we did. yeah and i think one thing that you guys did really well in the episode is was was to a lot of people just center in on certain parts of paul's life yeah uh with the genius the flair all the troubles whereas you know actually there's so much work that went into it as well so many of the things that you know all our other high performers and he he he also had an amazing like work ethic and self-belief and everything that again everyone else has he's just you know like we've seen from various times with sometimes with the good comes the bad and sometimes you know um as you said before with a lot of people that come on the show actually you know to have that much adulation and that many people and play in front of that and then that's not there that is whether you're a footballer or a musician or something that is that is a that is a dopamine been here to replace yeah man i've i can't believe it's been six years well i've absolutely loved this journey and you know what is also really interesting is i still feel like we're just getting started i still feel like we're learning about what our audience want we're adapting to the way the world the the way the industry's going you know like there's more stuff on youtube there's more video first content we've started doing other shows with other people it's so easy to get sucked in by the algorithm and start and i've seen other podcasts do it you do an episode that isn't very helpful for the world, but it gets big numbers.

40:14And because it gets big numbers, you lean into it and you do more of that stuff. And I think you lose the essence of what you are and how you started and what you wanted to do it and the fact you were doing it for the right reasons. I'm so pleased that we have never gone down that road and we remain the place of trusted content with real people telling us the most helpful and valuable stuff for the lives of our audience. What a journey it's been. What a journey it's been, mate. The last one I want to talk about, actually, is probably one a bit more, probably the one that's a bit more personal to you, potentially, is like the one where I've seen you the most emotional.

40:52And so, and I have one in mind. And I wonder whether you've got the same one in mind. Is it Danny Gray? It is Danny Gray. Yeah. So I'll just, and this, you know, for context, we were shooting this at BT Studios. We were going back to your old work to do it. again because we were shooting multiple sometimes we shoot multiple episodes in a day, we once did six in a day we won't be doing that again but you know needs must but so I remember being being in the room, Danny coming in I remember I had to leave the room to go and check on who was coming next I think it was Barry Hearn and where he was up to and when I walked back in the room you um you were gone you were completely broken down and and it kind of felt like and when i watched it back it just came kind of out of nowhere uh uh and there was something in it that really kind of resonated with you or triggered with you so um it was the first time i've kind of seen you genuinely moved in an episode yeah so i mean danny gray is an amazing mental health campaigner as you know he's created jack which is the platform jaaq just ask a question um he also created something called war paint which was like makeup for men because one of his issues was body dysmorphia feeling like he didn't look right and he didn't look good and you know he's he obsessed over his looks and they robbed years of his life and i'd been through a period when i first started on kids tv where i was struggling with my mental health and didn't resolve it very quickly and lost a couple of years really of my life to it and they're like the lost years where you're not eating you're not really connecting to people your mind is cloudy you feel like you're five feet back from everyone in a room so like you're at the pub chatting with your mates but you're five feet further away they're all in this conversation and you're just there's just this constant noise in your head it's absolutely exhausting it stops you from sleeping you don't really live and he was talking about that and it totally brought back the memories of how i felt in that time and I've now reached the point where you know I'm 48 this year where as painfully as it was at the time I've now reached a point where I'm actually grateful I went through that because it reminded me or it gave me evidence of actually how strong I am that I can cope with these difficult things it gave me an insight into the fact that life can be difficult at times it can be tough it also meant I had to lean into resilience and still I was on kids tv at the time so every day I was having to get up going to work with a shiny colorful t-shirt on get my makeup put on smile at the camera and be like way in fact I remember loving going to work because it would mean I wouldn't think about the thoughts in my head for a few hours I hated going home to bed because it was like oh no here we go um and I just really wanted him to understand that he wasn't weak for having these problems he was strong for having them because the strongest person in any room is the person who's in that room despite the fact they have anxiety, despite the fact that they have serious imposter syndrome or mental health challenges or fear or doubt.

44:08They are the strongest people. When life is challenging, people think they must be weak because they're easily challenged by life. It's not true. They're super strong because they keep on going and keep on moving forwards. And I wanted him to understand that. And it just caught me off guard probably. And you're totally right, Will. That was a very emotional episode. I guess you can put that in the show notes as well so people could have a listen if they haven't heard it before i think it'd be helpful for a lot of people yeah it was it really would be mate uh uh and isn't it cool that you know i think that actually the privilege of actually you've got 600 maybe more 700 hours of sitting in front of some people when you can just almost without knowing it you're taking these little things that are going oh i might use that one day i might use that and i think that's the one of the coolest things about working on the show is that you can have these nuggets of little things that just might stay with you.

45:04Sometimes you don't know when they'll pop up in your head, but there's definitely episodes like that where you can just kind of have your own little personal toolkit. You know what? That is really well said. That is exactly what high performance is. It's everyone's own personal toolkit. And you don't have to take on board everything. You don't have to use everything but if an episode just gives you one small tool that you're going to add to that toolkit in this mad and confusing world in which we live then i think we've done our job um well i love that thank you buddy thank you mate well enjoy the rest of your time in madrid i will do the family with me do you know what i'm doing tonight my great friend steve mcmanerman has managed to get me a couple of tickets to go and see atletico madrid against barcelona so I am taking my son to see some of his heroes this evening so it's a special moment for him that'll be great thank you Macca thank you Macca big thanks to all of you listening to this as well I've said this before and I really mean it high performance doesn't exist without you it doesn't grow without you sharing the conversations without you telling your mate that you've listened to something special without you following us on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts you know you have created this you've grown this um and we are all eternally grateful for that so um please continue to follow us please subscribe please keep telling your friends about high performance because we are only just getting started cheers will cheers mate

46:49Thank you.