Humphrey Ker: Bringing Ryan & Rob to Wrexham and Building a £100M Powerhouse (E349)

0:28Watch it early on the High Performance app. like a sort of Viking berserker where he charges the line of shield men in front, like makes a hole. And then the idea is everybody else pours through that hole and sort of does things. That is the voice of Humphrey Carr, the man responsible for one of the most captivating stories in recent football history. He inspired the takeover of Wrexham by Hollywood megastars Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds. And today he opens up about the inside story of how Wrexham became the world's most unlikely football sensation from their initial idea to their takeover in 2021 to this season's promotion to the championship.

1:04This was a fascinating conversation I mean the answered questions just like how involved are Ryan and Rob? What system did the three of them use to finally decide to buy Wrexham and how does Rob create an environment where people can thrive? Actually you know Damien I loved the way that he described the type of leader that Rob is. I think in many ways Ryan probably demands most of the headlines, right? But I think this conversation will help you at home realise just how vital Rob actually is. Plus, Humphrey shares how some people at the club just couldn't handle the new culture and they had to leave.

1:37This is an exclusive look into the transformation of a beloved football club from a man who was at the heart of it all and who actually knows the biggest challenges may still lie ahead. Before we dive in, please follow our show on Apple or Spotify. That way, you're the first to know when a new episode goes live, but it also helps us to grow and bring you even more value. As we welcome to High Performance, Humphrey Carr.

2:04Humphrey, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me, James. Very good of you. How do you get people to buy into a dream that you've got or come on a journey that you're excited to go on as you did with Rob and Ryan. Yeah. I mean, I think that what I've discovered over the last kind of four years is the power of passion, to a certain extent, the power of enthusiasm, the power of being unwilling to kind of take no for an answer, which if you'd spoken to me five years ago, I was the king of taking no for an answer. I was like, no, great. Okay, I'll go over here. Just have a face on the wall. And thanks very much.

2:37For anybody who doesn't know sort of our story with Wrexham, start a lockdown. I was working on a TV show called Mythic Quest on Apple TV, which Rob co-created with my wife, as it happens. Huge dollop of nepotism in there, the start of this, like all posh boys that wind up anywhere in the world. And we were all sent home for two weeks. You know, LA was like, go home, it's gonna be two weeks, we'll sort this out. And then, you know, you'll come back to work in two weeks. So we all thought we had two weeks paid holiday and everybody was doing, we had a big group chat for all the writers and everyone was like, oh, you should watch this.

3:09I'm watching this show. I just saw this movie or play this video game because the show that we were working on was about video games. And I told Rob, watch Sunderland Until I Die, this documentary on Netflix because he had been sort of razzing me about the fact that I like football and was very American. Like, it's boring. All they do is die. There's not enough points. Yeah. You know, blah, blah, blah. And he watched it and fell in love with it. He's like, I watched 14 hours of this in one day, basically. But this is crazy. it's amazing we should do this to which was like uh what do you mean we should do this like how do you mean he's like well if a team can go from the premier league down to league one or whatever can they can go the other way right so well yes he's like well so we should buy a football team and then we should make a documentary about it and again my natural instinct was like well yeah i mean that sounds awesome but like why like how who's going to sell their football club to us who's going to make a documentary about us doing this who's going to do this and the other but you know as a lily-livered company man I was like yes boss sounds brilliant you know what a great idea and you know turned and sort of rolled my eyes at my wife and then the next day he was like right I found a broker firm in New York that does this kind of thing Inner Circle Sports they helped sell Liverpool to Fenway Sports Group they helped sell Bordeaux to whoever so he had speed of action at this point the next day oh yes Rob hates sitting still I mean one of our great sort of culture clashes between us is that I am a very contented person and he's a very discontented person.

4:35And actually, where I think that has helped us is to find a sort of equilibrium in the middle, whereby he's the sort of person that will be like, I'm not content to take no for an answer when it comes to buying a soccer club in North Wales. And I'm the sort of person like, well, I think you should be content with the fact that we need planning permission for the building we're building. And it creates a kind of path through the middle. And that, you know, that relationship has also evolved over time with the introduction of Ryan and the introduction of Sean Harvey and the various different elements that go into kind of the operation of the football club.

5:07It's been a good sort of mixing of cultures, really, that's got us to quite a good middle ground, I think. And can you tell us how that influence has rubbed off on you personally? Yeah. Well, I think it's made me... I have seen the value in not just accepting what I'm handed. I mean, as I said, one of the things that I pride in myself or I'm grateful for in myself is I have a level of contentment with my life. I love my wife. I love my dog. I love my house. I love working for the football club. I like still getting to work in television, kind of on the side as well. I'm not driven by a desperate need for anything or a want or a desire, which is probably unlike a lot of the people that you have on the podcast that have reached this point.

5:51I'm contented by that. But what has rubbed off on me is a sort of a willingness to challenge. and to question and to go like, so why are we doing this? Like, why do we, just because this is how it has always been done, that doesn't mean it's not, it's sacrosanct and we shouldn't revisit it and decide, well, actually, there's a better way of doing it now. You know, time, technology, people, something has changed and actually maybe we could do it this way that might be overall produce better results for everybody.

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8:04And if you ever said to Rob, where does this come from inside you? This need for more, this constant pushing, this, I mean, the great phrase, this why not us approach to life that he has. I know 100 % what it is. And he would forgive me, it's going to sound like I'm making fun of him, but I'm not. he was a very small slight guy he says himself he's like i don't think i went through puberty properly until i was about 1920 he was desperate to be on every sports team at school but like could not you know he was he was five foot when he was sort of uh 18 yeah um he could so he couldn't play in the sports he couldn't do the things he couldn't join he couldn't achieve any of the things that he wanted to achieve and i think in that like crucible of like a philadelphia area Catholic, like all boys school, it's a rough, tough environment.

8:52It forged him into somebody who was like, he is someone who is constantly, I need what's next. I need to go beyond where I am now. And it has brought him this extraordinary success, you know, both as a creative person, but also now as a businessman, as a football club owner, as a producer of television, as you know, He has, you know, very similarly to the model that Ryan has now. He has an ever-expanding business around him. And, you know, that is driven by the fuel, the nuclear core at the center of him is like, I've got to do slightly better than... Has it also given him happiness though? Because one of the things, one of the recurring messages that we get on this podcast is from high-achieving people going, don't be like me because it's exhausting to constantly need more in your life and never feel that the cup is full.

9:42I come back to my thing about contentment, right? So one of the reasons why I bring that up and sort of identify that in myself is because he and I have talked about it so much. Because at times he's like, I can't understand why you're so happy all the time. And I'm like, well, I think he is someone who is driven by more. And then he gets to that hill and he's like, goddammit, there's another... I mean, I often talk about the freeze frame moment in life that I chased for a very long time, which is, you know, the end of a movie or a sitcom where everyone's like, we did it. And they freeze. And then you stand there for like eight seconds.

10:16You're like, oh God, I've got to go to work tomorrow. I've got to do, I've still got to do whatever. I've got to pay my tax bill. I've got to do this and the other. And what I have learned in my life is that, you know, it's the journey, not the destination, which is, again, a well-worn observation. But in those moments in my life, and I have been incredibly fortunate to have achieved lots of things that I dreamt of at one stage and then have managed to make happen or has happened to me, depending on your philosophy of it. But I've realized in those instances, like I, years ago, I won the best newcomer at the Edinburgh Comedy Festival in 2011.

10:54I did like a one-man show and that was something that for 10 years I've been going up to the Edinburgh Festival. Ironic that I was best newcomer 10 years in, but that's the way the rules worked at that stage. And it had been a thing I had wanted for 10 years, which at that stage was a third of my life or something like that. And I remember, you know, they called my name and I went up and I felt great. And I celebrated with my producer and my director and we all had a drink. It was great. And then I had to literally go and do that show that night. And this is a phenomenon that comedians at the festival get all the time.

11:24That show always sucks. It's always horrible because everybody in the audience is like, oh, he won the award. He won, like, it's, he's the top new guy. We did well to book this ticket two weeks ago, you know, whatever it is. and then they sit there and like oh I didn't think it was that wasn't that funny was it was all right I guess I guess they give these out to anyone these days and you and I had that immediate come down again of like well this doesn't really change the fact that I've still got to go out and perform and then I've got to go back to London and try and sell a script to someone at the BBC and get paid a pittance for it and work my ass off and then be like no we're not we're not gonna make this you know they're like okay back to the drawing board and over time that reached that that sort of, I think forged me in someone who was like, take pleasure in where you are now and what you're doing.

12:09I mean, my route into this, like a lot of comedians and performing type people is desperation for affirmation, right? It was growing up in a household where a very happy childhood, but just not a lot of good job, well done, I love you. That just wasn't part of the sort of lexicon. and I think you become, you know, I became very reliant on outside sources of affirmation and that remains a challenge for me. It remains a challenge for me because I am sort of, I'm quite an emotionally stunted person. I often talk about this. I exist. This is part of the gift and the curse of the contentment is that I live in an emotional zone between about a three and a seven.

12:55everything that happens to me in my life takes place in that zone if somebody dies that's close to me I'm like that's really sad but I never go below a three in terms of my emotional response to it if I win best newcomer or Wrexham get promoted or any of these great moments when I got married like any of these things I can't get beyond my wife knows all this by the way so she's not going to be like what? important caveat yes important caveat so I've lived in this three to seven zone sort of gray zone in many respects. And I would say I spend more time at a six or a seven than I do anywhere else on that spectrum.

13:31But it comes with the challenge of you have these great moments. They don't last. You know, I get a spike. You know, maybe I get up to an eight or something like that. And it's a great armor. It's a great shell. Protects you from the lows and the lows, but it also inures you from the highs. And it's something that has in many ways stood me in very good stead. I've had therapy about it. I've been trying to break that thing. I'd like to get out the top and get out the bottom. That zone that you described between the three and the seven sounds to me like it's a survival strategy. At some stage, you've learned it.

14:06Yeah. So what has therapy uncovered on why you adopted that as an armor? Well, so as I say, my family life growing up was very, it was very good in so many ways, but it was very traditional. again, very sort of, you know, my dad was the child of kind of very Edwardian grandparents. You know, they were old-fashioned for their generation. Their parents were old-fashioned for their generation. My parents were old-fashioned for their generation. And I think they were just, in a sense, I was like, you don't tell each other you love each other. Like, that's embarrassing. That's un-English, sort of sinister in some way.

14:45And you don't tell people, you don't tell each other we're proud of each other or anything like that. Like, all that is a bit sort of, it's not the done thing. It was a real stiff upper lip factory. And like I say, very happy, very spoiled, unbelievable privilege in comparison to most people in society. They sent me to a very good school, very nice school. The cares and concerns that affect so many people growing up, I was protected from. But what I found was, what was our kind of familial interpersonal language was mockery and jokes and fun and making fun of people. and that's what made me just draw in and create a shell and like you know i can think back to instances as a child where i put myself out there as the kids say and i i made myself very vulnerable in a moment like look i've done this thing isn't it brilliant and getting like no it's rubbish back and being like oh okay well i'll pull that in because that was very painful don't want that to happen again yeah i mean you're exactly right i mean it's it's a it's a defense mechanism and what it does is as I say it allows me to coast through life and avoid a lot of the challenges and difficulties that come with life or at least to compartmentalize them and sort of dispose of them into a sort of mental garbage disposal but I recognize I'm like this isn't great it's not good I want to feel the feelings that I see reflected back to me by other people you know I mean a case in point was the night we got promoted for the National League with Wrexham, spoiler alert for anyone who's not watched the documentary, but it was three, four years ago now.

16:23You know, it was a huge outpouring of emotion. I mean, it was an extraordinary thing to experience because we'd had 15 years in non-league and the sort of psychological trauma that that had imbued so many of our fans for whom the football club was a, you know, kind of a rare source of pride in the town but it had been non-league and meanwhile you know shrewsbury and tram mere and all these our local rivals had all been having a great time in league football that kind of explosion of joy afterwards i was like i i'm not very good at processing this like i turn around my wife in floods of tears and she kind of looked at me she kissed me like you know you did it well done i was like thanks and sort of shook her hand virtually and she gets it she understands and And I mean, as it happens, I was able to process, like a few weeks later, we did an open-top bus tour around the town.

17:10I did burst into tears, which for me was like, was the first time I've cried in five, six years, you know. And what was the reaction to people seeing that? Well, everyone's lovely about it, of course. I mean, it's that crazy thing where our concerns and our, you know, these neuroses, which is what this is, aren't logical. Like I can't, and I can look at them and I can see them and I can identify them and put them on a plate in front of myself. But then as soon as I get up from that table, I'm like, oh, let's pop that back in deep in the heart and back into being weird about it. You know, of all the things you've done at Wrexham, and we'll go into the details of those because it's deeply impressive.

17:46I think finding your own authenticity is probably the most important one of the lot, isn't it? Yes, for me personally. It's been huge for me in terms of my sense of self. And actually that contentment that I talk about, I think has only been enhanced in the last four years because I think a big part of that desire to have an outside approval, it was a very ephemeral thing you would do as a performer you do your show people would hopefully really enjoy it and then yeah you go back to your hotel you go back to your house and you're like alright well that's dissipated again and being part of a long term ongoing thing that is so beloved and but that also that we know improves people's lives in Wrexham and North Wales to such a huge degree I talked about that kind of nuclear rod at the centre of Rob like that is something that I've been able to put into myself and be like Yes, I'm doing it.

18:34I understand now why you were so drawn to Rob. Can we move on to what happened when you decided to buy a football club? Because I think the process of choosing Wrexham is fascinating. Yeah. You had this scoring system, didn't you? Yes, yeah, yeah. So I created a kind of matrix. I mean, again, at this stage, I am still in the mindset of like, well, this is a bit of fun. This is a fun thing to do. I don't know if this is ever going to come to fruition, but sure, I'll spend two days digging through statistics on lower league football clubs and trying to put them into a sort of ranking system. And, you know, the process, though I say to myself, was wildly successful in a way that I didn't necessarily, you know, previously I've been like, well, you know, how do you choose between, you know, Carlisle United or Hartlepool United or Aldershot or Wrexham or Northampton Town or any of these, like all these football clubs have wonderful histories and tapestries and communities built around them?

19:32How do you pick them out? And with the help of Wikipedia and Football Manager, that was as sophisticated as it got. I love Wikipedia and Football Manager. I know. Got you to buy Rexham Football. That's the Venn diagram. Where they agreed, I was like, right in the middle. Yeah, but it was, I mean, that game series has an incredible database of information about places, about their training grounds, about their average attendances, all those sorts of things. that Wikipedia, you know, doesn't necessarily have. And there must be somewhere a more sophisticated database that you can access, but I've not discovered it in four years of working in professional football.

20:09So yeah, I think there were five categories. It was sort of fan base, geography, history, and then narrative was a big one. And that's kind of the biggest one. Go on, say more about that. So narrative, we knew we were going to do a documentary from the jump. That was the idea. That was how we were going to make this work, was, you know, running a football club is expensive and it's challenging and we wanted to have a safety net as much as possible. So Rob, you know, the day after he told me he'd spoken to Inner Circle Sports in New York, he was like, I went for a walk with John Langrath, who's the head of FX, which is a kind of Fox subsidiary in the States.

20:44And I sold him two seasons of this documentary, which team were we buying? It's like, oh, well, okay. You know, that means we know that, you know, the scale of American television is so bananas that, you know I work on this show Mythic Quest I work on I think our production budget per episode is like five million dollars you know Welcome to Rexim is not that because it's not narrative television so it's much cheaper but you understand I mean that's what it would cost to make two series of a BBC One sitcom you know so the scale there is so vast that suddenly I was like well actually we're going to have a war chest that's going to be unlike anything anyone in the lower leagues could possibly command and you know there's a debate around the sort of morality and philosophy of that of like are you you know one of the things we talked about a lot initially rob wants to go to league of ireland because he's he's irish in tradition i was like look if you drop you guys into the league of ireland it's like throwing a brick into a puddle like it would just be so big with all the due respect league of ireland you would swamp you know whoever we took over would beat everybody hands down every single game it wouldn't be fun it wouldn't be interesting wouldn't be compelling we briefly talked about scotland but similarly it It was like, well, I think we would go so far.

21:54If we took over Arbroath or something like that, you would go up so quickly. The journey would be short and not that interesting. So we were very, very cognizant of the narrative and the storyline and how is this relevant. And the fact that Wrexham is a Welsh team, every single game is like a cross-border derby. You know, our fans hate everybody we play. Everybody we play hates us. It adds a bit of spice. It adds a little bit of something and a sense of identity and a sense of difference. And, you know, that was where Wrexham scored really, really highly. And the fact that it was the oldest, you know, third oldest professional team in the world, oldest continuous use international stadium, and that it had been kept alive by some unbelievably heroic actions of the fans who, you know, mortgaged houses, cars, all sorts of things just to keep the club afloat.

22:42But it was slowly dying. I mean, I think if we hadn't come in, I don't know if Wrexham, unless someone else had come in, I don't think Wrexham would still exist as a football club now. I mean, really, when we got into the weeds and started looking at the books and things, it was like, yeah, it's very hard. And COVID, of course, came along. Principal source of income for all those National League clubs is ticket sales. The government, you know, stepped in to help, but it was really hard. I mean, they were at this huge stadium. You know, most National League clubs, two, 3 ,000-seat stadium. We had a 10 ,000-seat stadium, but we could only get 2 ,000 or 3 ,000 people in there.

23:15So it just becomes this big millstone. Slowly, it's decaying. But yes, now, four years later, it's on the up and up. It's good to lean. So when you made the decision then, you've gone through your five-point criteria, you've decided that Wrexham's the team. Tell us about the conversations back in the States about taking this abstract concept to making it a reality. Yeah, well, I think, again, Rob's leadership style is, you know, he's like a kind of, he's like a sort of Viking berserker where he charges the line of shield men in front, like makes a hole. And then the idea is everybody else pours through that hole and sort of does things.

23:54And so, you know, with, yeah, I was like, is he like Napoleon? No, he has a Napoleon complex. But Napoleon was very intricate about logistics and things. Rob, no interest in the intricacy. He's like, I'll go through the wall first. I'll jump, you know, I'll smash through the wall. I'll be the first guy off the deck of the ship onto the other ship, just like laying around me with a big hammer. And then everybody else get on and you do the more complicated stuff. And I didn't know what I was doing at all. But we were very fortunate because we had first Inner Circle Sports who had done a lot of these deals for different clubs for kind of American investors.

24:31And then we had Sean Harvey who came to join us who was the former, he'd been CEO at Bradford and Leeds and then he was chairman of the EFL for six years or something like that. And done 26 years in football. I'll be honest, he came with a bit of a reputation. I was a bit like, well, I know he's quite a controversial figure in UK football because of this, that, and the other. But then realized very quickly, I was like, this guy has forgotten more about football than I'll ever know. His instincts are incredible. And his understanding of what really matters to get you to where you need to be is very, very strong.

25:01And I realized that, you know, reputations, there's two sides to every story. And as I got to know, I was like, oh, I think this is somebody who's been slightly ill-used by the sort of the public in terms of their perception of him. And very quickly, we were like, this sort of seems to be working quite well. I mean, it took us a minute to get, I think it was November when Rob and Ryan were announced as the potential takeover guys. And because of COVID, you know, some of the regulatory stuff we had to do with the government just took such a long time because they were like, well, half the workforce has been furloughed and sent home.

25:35And so it wasn't until February the 9th, I think it was, 2021. I mean, we'd started this conversation in March of 2020. and then we took over in February 21. And what did Ryan bring to the table when he got involved? Because it sounds like Rob is an energy source, Rob's an optimist, Rob gets things done, you're then the man on the ground. What was the requirement for Ryan? Well, what Ryan proved to be was a massive sort of force multiplier. I'm using lots of military terms today. But he, you know, Rob had thought to himself, you know, again, a lot of football, all this was so new to him. And he was like, wait, so they've got these They've got like sponsors on their shirts.

26:12Because, you know, NFL, NBA, they don't have those yet. I mean, I think they now, weirdly in the NBA, they have like a little patch up here on the shoulder. But he's like, oh yeah, so we should get a sponsor. Like, who should we get to sponsor this? And then, again, went away. Two days later, they took a text message being like, hey, so I thought about this. You know, Ryan Reynolds has got this gin company, Aviation Gin. He's very into like interesting, quirky marketing. So I messaged him because they followed each other on Instagram. I didn't know each other. I assumed they were like best buddies.

26:38No, no, they didn't know each other. they'd exchanged one message. Ryan had sent Rob a message on Instagram. Hey, I saw this episode of It's Always Sunny. It was amazing. It's one of the best pieces of television I've ever seen. You know, great job. And Rob was like, oh, wow, thanks, man. I like your movies. And he's like, thanks. And that was two years previous or something. Yeah, Rob messaged Ryan. He said, you know, I'm doing this thing. It's kind of crazy. I'm going to take over this fifth tier soccer team in the UK. Would you like to be a sponsor? And Ryan, he sent that like late at night, went to bed.

27:06Ryan's on the East Coast. He's on the West Coast. So when he woke up, the text message back was just like, call me, here's my number. And so he rang him. And Ryan was basically like, I don't want to sponsor your team. I want to go in halves with you. This sounds amazing. You know, to be fair, Rob from the jump, what he connected with was watching Sunderland Till I Die, how much it meant to the people of Sunderland. And he says he saw a lot of himself and like Philadelphia and those people. He's like, this is... there's a connection here. And so I think when he messaged Ryan, he's like, look, I want to do this thing.

27:43It's kind of, it's like a philanthropic engine. It's not, I don't know that we'll make any money doing this necessarily, but we will do something really fun and really awesome. And the analogy that we've bandied around a few times is like, when you're a rich person, you can buy a yacht and keep it in Cannes and go on it, you know, twice a year for two weeks, two weeks in the winter and two weeks in the summer or something. But when you launch your yacht off the dock in Cannes, you don't get 10 ,000 people cheering, roaring, crying, experiencing this like collective ecstasy. And so I think that Rob kind of started to me was like, look, you know, we're in this situation, like we can do fun, weird projects.

28:26What about a fun, weird project? There's also a philanthropic engine that changes the fortunes of this town. So one of the things that was part of my narrative column on that thing was I would go in and look for like socioeconomic data on the areas. So one of the teams that we talked about briefly was Macclesfield Town, who were going through a very tough time. They've sort of been reborn under Robbie Savage recently, but they were going through a very tough time. And to be honest, I was like, well, Macclesfield is a very nice area just outside Manchester. It seems like it's a bit of a commuter belt for people that are working in Manchester.

29:02they've got lots of good things going for them in that town. This is a town that doesn't necessarily feel like it has that. So I think when Rob explained all this to Ryan, he was like, yeah, I want to do that. I mean, he is very, he does a lot of, he loves doing philanthropic-y things. Him and Blake, they're always, they do loads of things in Canada and this, that and the other. And it was just kind of an expansion of that part of his life, I think. So can I ask you about the dynamic of the three of you then? Because you're making it happen. I was like, Jake, I assumed there was a deeper, longer relationship there the three of them.

29:32How does it work then? And how have you worked on it to make sure you are effective together? Well, I think it's, you know, it's grown and evolved over three, four years, definitely. And, you know, the single biggest thing has been we've slowly expanded the operation. There are now more people kind of involved on a day-to-day basis, Rex, and both operationally in the building and then strategically at kind of board level as well. But I think the glue that got us going was, and I said at the beginning, was passion. It was enthusiasm. It was a real desire to, you know, have a goal that was something more than just like, oh, can we make a success of it, you know, financial success of this?

30:13And I think what they liked about me and my approach to it was that I really cared. I mean, I love football and I love football clubs. And I, you know, as you can tell when I think Toxteth accent, I'm a Liverpool fan by day, but it doesn't matter what the football team is. I kind of love them all. Like I love the, what they are, their communities, what the glue they are to where they're from, you know, and I take huge pleasure from going to all our away games, going and seeing like, oh, we're going to Exeter on Saturday. Like I haven't been there yet. I want to go and see their stadium and see their setup and see how it all works.

30:47And that was shared by them. Like they are sort of passionate people. They are both passionate and driven. You know, they want to do things. They're interested in things. They take, I mean, truly as much pleasure if we sign a big sponsorship deal or whatever, they're like, oh, that's great. That's going to set us up for the next season or whatever it may be. But then they're just as excited when we do things like, we signed a partnership with a social enterprise football club in the SUTU called Kick for Life. And we sent a bunch of coaches down there. We brought a bunch of their coaches up to us.

31:20And that kind of stuff, they're just like, this is great. I can't believe we're getting to affect these people's lives in this beneficial way across all these different areas. So, yeah. We spoke to an entrepreneur called Susie Ma who set up Tropic Skincare. And she had this lovely line where she said, lots of people have passion, but it's when you can align it with a sense of purpose. Yeah. It seems to be almost become rocket fuel. Yeah. And you've spoken about this purpose of the socioeconomic, the philanthropic elements of it. How have you kept that at the heart over the last four years? so that hasn't been diluted.

31:58It's been a challenge because actually in some way, you know, trying to trammel all this energy and enthusiasm, as you say, into like focused lanes can be quite difficult at times because there's so much we could do and can do, but there's only so many hours in the day. So like one of the areas that we, you know, a decision we made early on, which I think was the correct decision still, was we put a lot of our time and energy into the first team. Men's first team. It's like, right, we need to make sure that we've got the best coach, the best possible players, get promoted as quickly as possible.

32:32Because that really is the number one thing that people in Wrexham want. They want to see their team win on a Saturday and get promoted. But it meant that we, you know, our infrastructure behind the scenes was not as, still is not what it should be really for a League One club. And our community foundation and our CSR provision was not as good as it should be. And actually on the documentary, we talk a lot about being a community club and we are and we're very close and you know I was talking to Ben Foster the other day who was very briefly Wrexham goalkeeper and then came out of retirement to play for us again in our championship winning season in the National League and he was saying how special it is that at Wrexham still our players they drive in they park in the university car park and they walk through the club car park to go into the stadium every day for training and on match days and so our fans interface with them the whole time like they see they know they have relationships with our fans they have like friendships there are like strange rituals that some of our like we have the people that are always there and like Millie Tipping who's one of our fans who people might know from the documentary she always holds Jack Marriott's uh Starbucks cup while he signs everybody so it's like that's my role and that that proximity between fans and and players is so important that's something that I think we we really need to keep at the very heart of what we do because for anyone who's watched the documentary that's a huge part of the charm.

33:54I think it'll be suddenly, if you're watching a documentary and you see footage of the players getting into their bus at the training ground, they drive under the stadium and they all leave with their Beats by Dre headphones on, it's lost some of the magic of what makes it so special there. Can we talk about Ryan Reynolds' approach to working with you and doing business in this partnership? Because he's lauded now as this kind of master of PR and marketing and he's got all these amazing businesses. You've seen firsthand what he's done with Wrexham and I guess you now know what he does with his other businesses.

34:28What are the big things you've learned from Ryan? I would say he knows when to trust people. I think both him and Rob are very good at that. Like example on the football side with us is just that they have never once sought to interfere with signing of players or matchday tactics. And we know in football it is replete with people who come in and they're like, look, I made tens of millions of pounds making like rubber nipples for like baby bottles. and the same thing applies it's just another business you know and this person's underperforming so I'm going to dress them down and I'm going to do this I'm going to do that and I'm going to over you know I'm going to overrule my manager my line manager the head coach the manager whatever it is and be like I'm going to the dressing room and I'm telling them they've got to sort their shit out or whatever it may be and they have always been very good at going like right we're staying away but then knowing when to deploy themselves in a useful way so you know Ryan's other business that's been incredibly successful which is a marketing business, basically.

35:24Maxim Effort, which is his company there. You know, he has a string of trusted lieutenants there. But then at a key juncture, they sort of know, they're almost like press the Ryan button, you know, the signal goes up in the sky. And he comes in and will bring simultaneously both himself as an entity, which is very valuable. You know, he's a face and he's, you know, on Armani campaigns, he's this, that, and the other. That is, there is a monetary value to him, the person. but actually more importantly is that I think he comes in and just puts a little twist on the end of whatever it is they're doing and brings it up a notch so they do these match.com commercials or they do whatever it may be and he's very creative very versatile very able to he has a marketer's mind I think and I admire the trust they place both of them but Ryan in particular because that was the question it was about in the way that he trusts his lieutenants, but isn't like, I'm checked out, you guys do whatever you want, and we'll see what happens.

36:28And I am really fascinated by him because I just love the fact that you can exist in the world that he's existed in and had that career and then also go and do this amazing business stuff. Yeah. What are the questions that he asks to make things more creative, to have more of an impact, to come up with concepts that actually do translate right across the world? It sounds kind of asinine as an answer, but I think it's a thing you hear a lot in comedy writers' rooms. And, you know, he's a very creative person across a number of genres, but comedy is really his, you know, his wellspring of his success.

37:05And that is like, can we beat this? Like, it's not being satisfied. You know, we did a shot a commercial for Stoke Cold Brew Coffee at the stadium in time for the Super Bowl this year. So they're one of our sponsors. and we shot a little video with Channing Tatum there. And Ryan was around for that, I believe. And she wasn't in the building that day. I was in the US. But it's someone who just comes in and is willing to throw away what they have decided they're going to do for the sake of what's funniest in the here and now. And I think that flexibility and that willingness to kind of run and gun is a thing that's very common creatively in the States.

37:45you know again they have talked about those huge budgets you get on american tv shows that gives you the flexibility to be like well i know this is a script and this is what everyone's learned but i don't think the scene really works so we're gonna everybody just improvise a scene and we'll see what comes out of it and i think that has taught him and rob who's i mean it's about 80 improvised i mean they have a they write like 16 15 page scripts and then just make up the rest of the show as they go along. And I think that has helped them both to have that, yeah, that flexibility, that improvisational skill to be like, this isn't quite working.

38:19What did we try this? What did we try this? What did we try this? That's the one. It's so interesting because I have a production business called The Whisper Group and we make Formula One coverage for Channel 4 here in the UK. And a few years ago, we convinced Tom Cruise to do a Top Gear style opener for us, right? First of all, he was on the phone to the production team, Tom Cruise himself, discussing the ideas for an opener for a British TV show, which no one expected. Then on the day of the shoot at Silverstone, he turns up in his helicopter and the first thing he said is, don't tell anyone I flew my own helicopter.

38:49It's against my insurance policy because he was making a film at the time. They didn't want him. And then he sat in the room with our producer and our presenters and just went, let's just work out how to make this more fun. I did exactly what you're describing there. That kind of on the fly, improve it as we go, improvise and also but I think also looking for those little marginal gains those tiny gains yeah absolutely that that's I mean I think that is that sounds exactly familiar to my experience with Ryan when we've done these little kind of you know it's been an incredible resource for the club to have them and their kind of creative teams produce content around the little you know the video to announce who they were when they were trying to do the takeover or whatever it may be like these things have gone everywhere and got huge uh uh number of impressions and things like that that are it's massive for the for the success of the club there's a kind of delineation i'm very much on the club side of business and there are certain kind of boundaries i get up to and like right beyond that that's something to do with me that's all that's all you guys but there's obviously a huge crossover and we we see time and again that you know it's like okay this is a concept we're going to do this kind of video so all right that sounds funny and good and then the finished article you're like well that's way better and it's like yeah you know we we sort of messed around with it on the day and found something that just was magic.

40:05On the club side, we were talking beforehand about actually how involved are they in running Wrexham Football Club? Like, are they involved in having the final say on whether a manager buys a player? Do they have to green light a salary? Do they make a sort of a daily decision or when you have your catch-ups over video conferencing? How involved are they? So, I mean, what we've done is basically, as time has gone on, all four of us, and I would include Sean Harvey in this have have become we've moved sort of steadily more into like a corporate setting in a way I mean I one of my particular purview these days is community and community foundation so I work particularly closely with them but for Robin Ryan I mean yeah you know things will get kicked up to board level and the decision is like are we gonna you know are we gonna spend two million pounds on on Sam Smith's player we signed in January you know that final decision we need to get an okay off them because that was beyond the budget that we'd set at the beginning of the season a feeling was look we're we're really close to getting promoted out of league one should we should we break our budget a little bit just to get see if we can get someone in who can score he scores another seven goals between now and the end of the season he'll be worth three four times what we pay for him so it's a calculated gamble but they you know sometimes will come the other way where they're like, hey, we want to do this.

41:23We're like, oh, okay. Where's this come from? It's like, well, I read something and I want us to see if we can do something about that. Sure, of course, we can facilitate that. That's also valuable as well. It gets you to look at things you wouldn't normally think about. Of course, 100%. I mean, the biggest thing is that just, they both love it. They love coming to the games. They love being there. And I go back to my boat analogy. It's like, you don't get, like the pleasure that they get out of seeing what it does for everyone is so great that they, and like Ryan jokes sometimes being like oh I can't believe you like got me into this to Rob but it's he loves it they all love it because it's especially Ryan's been having a strange year with everything that's been going on around his like other other world and I think he likes coming to Wrexham because it's just like this is a place where everyone's like no I don't care about any of that we just care about whether you know we can score one more goal than you know Wigan Athletics it's probably good for him as well right to have some form of distraction and...

42:19I think it's an escape for both of them. You know, because it's a world where you know, it's just a nice break from Hollywood and Hollywooding. And I mean, I found that as well. And actually, as I've gone back the other way, I'm like, oh, it's quite nice to go back. It's nice to get a break from wherever you are. It's quite nice to go to where the grass is greener for now. And then you get the other side of the fence. And I love the idea of them bringing stuff from their world of Hollywood or from entertainment into Wrexham. what have they learned from Wrexham that they've taken back into Hollywood I think one of the biggest things they take away is that sort of I don't know, almost the seriousness and import of what we're doing I'll say I can answer for myself more easily obviously than I can for them, but I know that it was particularly for Rob I think this is the case, that I found I worked as a comedian I still work as a comedian and writer these days, but done that for 20 something years now and every now and then you would have a lovely thing where someone might come up to me and be like oh hey i i uh i was quite ill last year and i was in stuck in hospital and my and i would just listen to like this old radio 4 show that you and your friends made and they'd be like oh that's lovely what a lovely thing to hear you know thank you so much no thank you you know and you sort of shake hands and disappear with wrexham it is i'm constantly being reminded sort of costed by people in M &S in Wrexham being like, I met my wife at the race course in 1975.

43:51And when she died, I couldn't go anymore because it was too hard. And I was watching this team that I loved was like circling the drain. It all went away. And now I've got a season ticket again. I go with my grandchildren. It's like, it's completely reinvigorated a part of my life that I thought I'd lost forever. And that's unbelievably powerful and nourishing for the soul. And I know, you know, they both get that a lot. I think Ryan is someone who's, through his kind of philanthropic work previously, has had encounters of that ilk. You know, he does lots of stuff with like sick kids in Canada.

44:26And, you know, I think has seen the difference that he's made. But I think for Rob and for myself, and even for Sean, who's someone who, again, as I say, has had like a fractious relationship with football sometimes in the past. I see with him sometimes he's a bit like, ooh, sort of shocked because someone will come up and be in tears and be like, thank you so much, whatever. And he's like, well, he's sort of used to this, you know. And yeah, that is something that is, that's the single best thing to take out of it. I mean, I don't know what I would say in terms of a takeaway to doing your own business other than be nice to people.

44:59It's really nice. They're nice back. Actually, that sounds like a throwaway remark, but I actually think that lies at the heart of when we look at other clubs. I'm a Manchester United fan. We have American owners that have almost done it the polar opposite. They don't communicate. They're slashing community-funded projects. Why do you think so many other clubs get it wrong where you have got it so right? Listen, I think we have a bit of a cheat code, right? So I have to be, rather than lecturing other football clubs, I have to acknowledge that up front, which is that because of Rob and Ryan, because of the documentary and the interest around what we do, we command a level of sponsorship money that is unthinkable at our level.

45:44In our division, we have Birmingham, very, very rich. They have very, very rich owners. But I imagine we make more money than they do from sponsorship deals. They have more money than we do, no question. And they've spent it well and they're going to be promoted from League One, no problem. But we have the ability to go, well, actually, we will support our women's team really hard and we will put money into our community, our youth programs, because I think all football clubs would like to do that. I think Manchester United would like to do that. But the problem is they've spent an awful lot of money on a lot of very okay footballers for about 15 years.

46:17And I think even more difficult is their infrastructure set up behind the scenes where they're not creating a good sort of... By all means, people from Manchester United would be like, who's this jerk? He doesn't know anything. But when you look at the success, well, like Liverpool are having this season, you can see the behind-the-scenes structure there is pretty good because they've transitioned from one sort of generational coach who didn't win as much as he probably should have done or could have done, but completely revitalized and rebuilt the club sort of from the ground up. They've gone into another guy and it's just been a very smooth transition.

46:53This is totally off the top of what you asked me. But I mean, my point being, I'm sympathetic to football clubs that are struggling. Like I saw Huddersfield Town who in our division, they put their ticket prices up this at the end of the season they're like next season it's going to cost more money and they're going through a quite difficult time on the pitch that you know they're they're in and around the playoffs but they're not playing terribly well and fans are very upset because they're like oh you know who likes seeing prices go up but then you look at their tickets and like well their tickets are very cheap right now they're very very cheap so it's easy for us like we we have done a bit like we've frozen our ticket prices and we've done this we've done that and our fans are very grateful for it but we can we can offset that against United Airlines on the front of our shirts.

47:33We have HP on our sleeves. And so all to say that like, you know, we do have an advantage that other clubs don't and they've got to cut their cloth and football's getting more and more expensive. And, you know, I mean, again, in our division, League One this season, you had like Jay Stansfield went 15 million quid to Birmingham. We spent 2 million on Sam Smith. Huddersfield spent 2 million or something on Joe Taylor and another 2 million. You know, those are huge sums for League One. You know, normally it'd be like, whoa, someone spent 450 grand on a striker. Like, that's nuts. Well, it's trickling down and the numbers are crazy.

48:09And if you're at a club like Aldershot Town or even, you know, who's in our division, you know, Cambridge United, it's like, this is really hard for them to do all those things. And yet, so many of those clubs do amazing work in their communities and they won't sacrifice those things. And it's so important because you're creating the next generation of fans. your football club should be about more than just what happens from 3pm to 5pm on a Saturday. Can you understand the frustration of a team like Cambridge United? That you guys kind of roll in, the big numbers, the big sponsors, the big opportunity, the promotions come.

48:44It's hard for those teams, isn't it? That are there continuing to sort of scrap away and it isn't a level playing field. How do you respond to that? Well, I mean, you know, what I would say is I see often people in general have been very good about it I would say when I go away I remember I always pick Mansfield going away to Mansfield Town last season at that stage I was still nervously smoking a lot of cigarettes on a match day I've since given up like a real hero and going out at half time and being like oh my uh oh like 10 Mansfield fans just swarming towards me because they spotted me and they were so nice they were like you know oh great well done obviously one of you guys to lose today but like documentary is good I think a lot of people in the trenches in League 2, League 1 are like, look, I quite like it to have happened to our club, and grudgingly go like, well, they are spending money on, you know, they're not just, because the thing is, it's not like we aren't set up in a way that Rob and Ryan are just going like, right, bang, here's 10 million quid for this guy, here's 5 million quid for this guy.

49:43We're only spending what we make, and, you know, we're operating at a slight loss, because that's the way football is. They're also not doing what the Glazers are doing, which is taking huge sums of money out of a football club. No. And saddling the club with the big debt. With the big debt, yes. Yeah, yeah. Part of me, like that old four, five-year-old part of me that is a rules man and a rules follower and this, that, and the other is like, oh, I wish we'd done it by just finding all these lower league gems and building a team and doing this, that, and the other so as to not be accused of doing X, Y, and Z.

50:15But then I look at what it's done for Wrexham, I look at what it's done for North Wales, like for the town, for the economy of the town. and I'm like, yeah, our record over the last few years has been, we got promoted, we finished second, God willing, we'll finish second this season. We're not steamrolling every team. You know, this season we've lost seven games. We've won, I think we may be at or about to hit the record for 1-0 wins in League One. We're not like, yeah, we're not Manchester City where we're absolutely crushing everybody in our division. It's no fun. Like, we fight like dogs every single day.

50:46I mean, if you watch, anybody who's watched League One a lot this season, we're like, there's one thing about this Wrexham team. we fight tooth and nail for every single point. And actually, you know, some elements of our fan base are like, this is boring. And we want to stuff a few people and play some tiki-taka. But actually, I kind of have fallen in love with the fact that we're just a miserable, grinding pack of bastards. Let's talk then about how you've created that culture with those players. I remember seeing on day one, you were introduced to a bunch of lower league football players. and someone went, here's Humphrey Carr who's going to be running the club on behalf of Rob and Ryan.

51:25And the faces on those players, if no one's seen it, please go watch it. Arms folded, sitting back in the chair. And I kind of thought to myself, there would have been players thinking, hold on, this is my career. I have to pay my mortgage. I have to feed my children. This is a really serious shit for me. A hundred percent. Don't come in here with your Hollywood mega stars and your guy who's going to have this as like a play thing and have a bit of fun with my life. Yeah. Was there a sense of that? So I always got a very good welcome off the plate. I mean, that moment is, yes, you left out very kindly the fact that I lent on a light switch and switched off the lights in the room.

52:01It makes the scene. It's like a bit out of a sitcom. And I was like, truly, I mean, that's me like, oh, sorry. Oh, gosh, I'm so sorry. Sorry, everybody. I'm here. You know, they were, I mean, truly looking, the reverse shot of that was like, it was like a nightmare. It was like being back in school and being like, oh, I've got to stand in front of all the coolest kids in school and be like, hi, I'm in charge of you now, you know. But actually, they were very, very welcoming. That period was difficult because we knew that we were going to probably want to make a change. You know, Dean Keats, who was the manager at that stage, and those players, you know, they were, they did a fantastic job.

52:35They ended up finishing eighth in that first half season when we were in charge. But ultimately, I think there was a collective feeling of like, you know, amongst the fan base, amongst us, everyone was like, I think we need to sort of refresh and begin again and start over. and how did you work that was the right thing to do well truly our policy was like well if he gets in the playoffs with this team who have a tiny budget like we should keep him around but there were there were a couple of things that like you know over the course of those three or four months where you know you just start being like that's not an ideal it's not a great sign in terms of sort of what would happen with more resources or whatever going forward can you give us an example well I mean we had a thing on like we had this crazy transfer deadline day well this is actually before the takeover had gone through but Rob and Ryan said look we'll back you guys, we'll give the club money to spend this January transfer window and if we don't take over it's yours, don't worry we won't ask for it back, we'll give you like a chunk of change, if the takeover falls through we're not going to come, you know we signed a thing, this is a gift see who you can get and we just had this kind of nuts day where we were driving, the team was driving down to Eastleigh on the day and one of the our striker, the one striker who would sort of scored a few goals that season, got an offer from Chesterfield, I think it was, and got off the bus at Oxford Services, and we were like, no, we're not selling you, and he's like, no, I'm off the bus.

53:56And the manager was like, oh, let him go, it's fine, we'll get somebody else in. And we then were having these kind of back-and-forth phone calls and we'd been looking for a central midfielder, and we'd been looking at a player called Tom East from Reading, and then the manager called him and was like, oh, there's a player at Bolton called Tom West, and we're like, okay, it's funny, East-West, you know, go through to Bolton, like, there's not a player on here called Tom West, you know, they don't have a player called Tom West, is it Tom White? Like, is it Tom White he's talking about? Oh, yeah, yeah, Tom White, Tom White, and I was a bit like, this doesn't seem ideal to me, you don't really know the name of the player that you're looking to sign on deadline day, and I mean, I think, listen, in his defense, he'd be like, well, I gave a list of players and we had an outside scout who was looking at them who was like, I'm not sure about these.

54:42And it was just a world in which it felt as though, I mean, the fans had really taken again him sort of before we even came on the scene because the team was struggling. And again, not really his fault. I mean, I actually think he did a very good job as a manager under very difficult circumstances. But there was just like the tide of sort of history was slightly like, there's an enthusiasm, there's a desire, you know, and we went out and got Phil Parkinson. and the truth is you have to be ruthless right as well yes which is not philanthropic and encouraging so how did you deal with those moments personally were you in the room when you let that manager actually I think Sean was the person who you passed that job over he was he was like I've got it I was like okay but I think I don't think Dean has many happy memories of me unfortunately but I understand because I mean you put your finger on it earlier the club at that stage is like a subsistence football operation.

55:39Everybody there is, this is their paycheck. They haven't got any savings. They're not coasting off like, oh, well, I had three seasons at Manchester City where I banked a load of cash and now I've fallen down the table. They were like, as soon as I finish playing, I'm going to go work at B &Q or become a plaster or become whatever these things may be. And so I totally would understand any amount of suspicion or reluctance on their part. But actually they were very welcoming and very friendly and i was struck by how sanguine almost all of them were in terms of being like look this is how it goes i'll go play for dover now i'll go i'll go do this yeah but people in the lower level you you stick a club for one two three seasons go somewhere else it really is a kind of you know people were pretty calm about it it's been a real challenge for us is as we've gone up the leagues you know people who have been absolutely central mainstays that are fan favorites and heroes and captains of the club and stuff.

56:39And it's like, the manager reaches the point where he's like, I actually think it's time for them to move on. We've got to bring someone in because you're just, the standard is getting higher and higher. And Phil has often had a policy for like, I want this player for right now. I'll sign this 33-year-old who is exactly what we need right now, but knowing we're going to put him on a one and a half year contract and at the end of it, some of them have, we've got these evergreen players like James McLean and Stephen Fletcher who just will not retire. They're like ancient men

57:11or Jurassic Mark Howard, as he's known, who's 38 or something like that. But they're brilliant. I mean, those guys, you immediately see the value of them. A, they're great players. I mean, Jimmy started almost all our games this season. Fletch comes off the bench and I think he's our top scorer this year. But they're, you know, ex-Internationals, ex-Premier League players. The standards they set and you see how it rubs off on the younger players is brilliant. If you're still overpaying for wireless, it's time to say yes to saying no. At Mint Mobile, their favourite word is no. No contracts, no monthly bills, no overages, no hidden fees, no BS.

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1:00:07Can we talk to you about Phil Parkinson? So you're only going to see what, the public's only going to see what we want to show them to a certain extent. And that's going to protect you from the worst vagaries of like, if something goes badly wrong, you're not going to get dragged through the mud or treated like garbage. You know, when it became apparent that Phil was available, we were all, I mean, I was excited because I was like, wait, how am Phil? Well, first of all, Phil played in the first professional game I ever went to see at Reading, Elm Park, Reading versus Watford, Reading 4, Watford 1.

1:00:35And Phil was in midfield for Reading, which I told him on the phone the first time we spoke and he's like, I feel really old now sorry, yes maybe that was a bad choice to tell you that but knowing his track record having promotions and avoiding relegations with Bradford and Bolton and Colchester and all these different places, I was like, really? Phil Parkinson's available? At the time I think they were inquiring about him for the West Bromwich Albion job and so we persuade him that was probably an area where again, the financial clout of being able to be like, look, we can offer you the kind of contract, nothing crazy, of course, but what we can do is give you a rolling contract.

1:01:18So you're always one year out from the end of your contract. And that gives him a degree of security that, you know, again, in lower league football and all football is hard to get, you know. And I mean, far and away, he's been the best decision we made. I mean, we've signed some great players. We've, you know, made some good decisions around the fan experience and all that kind of stuff. But Phil is the one who I think has created a culture at the club that we're all really proud of. How's he done that? I think, well, he has a no-plunkers test. So, I mean, him… I like this. Go on. I think his big thing is, like, strong teams beat strong individuals.

1:01:56We've had a few opportunities where we've been like, oh, this player's available. Like, that's crazy. He's amazing. like that guy's got 17 goals from midfield in league one last season and then phil comes back and is like no i've heard you know i've asked around i've got a big network and a few people like he's a dick you know he's not he's not a good guy to work with and time and again as we bring in more players you know i just i've been in the states for a while i just got back so i just met all our january signings who've been there for about five six weeks now and i'm always like how are you finding, how are you settling in?

1:02:28They're like, this is great. Everyone told me, they all know each other as well. That's the other thing is everyone's like, oh, I played with so-and-so here. But they're like, you know, I've been hearing from, you know, Andy, Ryan Longman, who signed for us from Hull, he played with Andy Cannon at Hull a few years ago and their friends are still in touch. And he'd be like, oh, I've been messaging Andy. And then out of the blue, my agent's like, oh, Wrexham are interested. So I messaged Andy and he was like, you know, drop everything. Like, don't take a pay cut,

1:02:57It's great. It's fun. It's nice. They get on incredibly well. And Phil, I think, has managed the personalities and the egos. And the anecdote that I've been trotting out a lot recently is at Christmas, my friend Phil Breen came to the game with me. And we drove up from London because it was right after Christmas. So we went up together. And I went in through the players' entrance to kind of cut through into the stadium and then cut up to where we were sitting. And saw a lot of the players who I hadn't seen in about three or four weeks. everyone's stopping hi Humphrey how are you know chat chat chat and every single one of them whether it was James McLean who's 38 103 cats for Ireland or like Harry Ashfield who's 20 who's just signed his first professional contract with us they like queued up after me to be like hello my name's James McLean hello my name's Harry Ashfield hello my name's Elliot Lee hello my name's um you know Arthur Oconquo like whatever it may be like sort of polite school boys and and I was like that That speaks so well to like the culture here that at some point Phil has been like, if you see someone you don't know in here, introduce yourself, look them in the eye, shake their hand.

1:04:02Like that's how we kind of conduct ourselves. And they, yeah, I think it speaks to like the culture in there is so good. And you know, there are challenges always, of course, because you have players who want to play, who can't play. And managing that is difficult. Do you get involved in that? I don't, I mean, I have, I get on very well with lots of the players and some, particularly the older ones, because we're, you know, around the same age and, you know, they will get my jokes about the original Gladiators series, which the new ones were like, Fury? I'm like, no, Wolf, idiots. But when it comes to kind of stuff like that, I'm very careful.

1:04:39Like, I won't go in the dressing room before a game, like on a Saturday. I'm like, that's not my place. Some, Rob and Ryan, they ask Phil's permission to go into the dressing room and they do very rarely when they come over. But afterwards, we'll go in and see everybody. But I, you know, I'm very careful not to get into a position where I'm like, they don't get what they want from dad, so they're coming to mum kind of thing. Oh, you know, I'm not playing or I'm not doing this. And I'm like, I do not pick the team. How have you also managed to create a culture that sounds warm and inclusive and positive and empathetic and maybe a bit vulnerable at times if everyone's sort of being open with each other?

1:05:21But at the same time, you've had to create a winning culture where every single one of the players at Wrexham has got a target on their back. Every team that plays Wrexham, it's their cup final. Right? How has that culture been created and what have you learned from that? I think it's helped that everywhere we go, everybody wants to beat us. We know that we cannot turn up and just, you know, time and again, as we went through the National League, you have those situations where we go 2-0 or 3-0 up and you'd see the opposition team running through brick walls trying to get one back, trying to get back into the game and trying to fight us to the death.

1:05:51and then the following week you watch them play one of one of our rivals and they go 2-0 down you see them just be like okay whatever like who cares and that's probably every team feels like that when they watch watch their team that everybody wants to beat them but i really do think there was a big thing i mean last season this season all our away games be like and it's the biggest attendance of the season thanks very much for coming out and it's like right because everybody's come hoping to see us get smashed and then they can see it on the documentary and be like i was there when you know ryan reynolds burst into tears or whatever it may be my take on it is he has forged a real kind of brotherhood.

1:06:23They fight for each other. They love each other. They, you know, there's no cliques. There's no like, oh, we sit on this table or like this group are always here. I mean, you have car schools and things where it's like, oh, the Manchester lads all drive down together or the guys in Liverpool all drive down together. You know, I really noticed it when we did some of our pre-season touring and when we were in LA and I was at the hotel with everybody and seeing the groups that were going off together like oh we're going to go and see the the walk of fame and i'd be like what a strange combination of guys that is you know again sort of stephen fletcher harry ashfield arthur aconquoit like just players that mix of ages and mix of ages experiences yes because you've got like the guys that played in the premier league or the guys that were came up through premier league academies you've got the guys who started out at wrexham you know who've never had that kind of academy experience.

1:07:19And they just all seem to muddle along very well. And they have their fines, and they have their penalties for being late for training and all that kind of stuff. But mostly, they just seem to have a good time. I think the other area where you've done really well is the loyalty you've shown to the manager as well. Admittedly, the results have been good, which has been helpful. But not far from you in Salford. You've got a similarly owned football club, owned by some very well-known people who seem to chop and change their manager every five minutes. I wonder whether there's a little rivalry between these two clubs.

1:07:51A little bit. I mean, I remember them coming last season and being friendly enough. By and large, at the boardroom level, everyone's quite friendly. We had Stockport last weekend. I didn't see them, but I gather they were quite angry at the final whistle and left not in the best of moods. But that's understandable. It's a big game and it's a rivalry. and it's no, you know, I've certainly shuffled off pretty quickly from a few stadia where we've got beaten. Personally, I have a strong philosophy that like, you need to give people time, like in football. And it's something that's very rare commodity.

1:08:28And, you know, with Phil, we've been able to get him, you know, he's like, I want this centre back. And we've pretty much been able to get them, you know, not all of them. There have been lots of people who are like, no, it's got easier as time has gone on, because I think players initially are a bit like, is this all a bit of a joke? Is this sort of stupid thing? am I going to go there and it's going to be like a prank show or sort of wacky or somehow stupid and as we've gone on you know it's been easy players generally are like oh well yeah that's Wrexham's a real deal and like it's really happening but I think you know it's not I've already criticized Manchester United I've got to run the Manchester Marathon soon between the United fans and Salford fans and Stockport fans I'm going to get belted with fruit if you could wrap a fiver around your fruit you can throw anything at me thank you but But yeah, I think there is so much pressure and there's so much pressure to get results, so much pressure to get changed.

1:09:17Obviously, an obvious thing is change the manager. And you can do that at any time, whereas you can only change your playing squad and personnel twice a year. And even then, you're rolling the dice each time. I mean, I think we have been incredibly fortunate in terms of the players we've brought in. We've had so few that haven't improved the team. We've had a few who've been brought in as backup and then have not been required. And so they, you know, they perhaps for our fans are a bit like, ooh, what'd you sign on that guy? He didn't do anything. It's like, well, he would have done something if the player who plays in his position was injured.

1:09:48But I do think that, again, going back to my point about Liverpool and why I think they've been successful in this last however many years, it feels like there is a long-term vision there. People don't always agree with how FSG go about it, but I think they have a plan of sorts and they stick to it. And that actually is something that we're transitioning to more now. We were a little bit fly by the seat of our pants and like, this will do to get us out of here. Like this is, you know, we don't need to think five, 10 years in the future. We just got to get to May, you know, and see what happens.

1:10:18And we're starting to be like, oh God, we might go in the championship and that's going to be really expensive and really hard. And how do we protect ourselves from yo-yoing up and down and all the difficulties that come with that? And that was a question I wanted to explore with you, Humphrey, because you've spoken about almost the weather internally within the club. But the general climate in which you're going into now, the expectations are starting to rise. And how are you starting to protect yourself or prepare the club to deal with that high expectation? I think the biggest challenge is that like the fairy tale or honeymoon period is sort of over, I think.

1:10:55By which I mean, I do think that if we get in the championship next season and we get smashed like six games in a row for our first six games, people aren't going to be like, wow, but we're in the championship, you know, so this is an incredible achievement. that has changed enormously I mean even over the course of this season pre-season all our like fan podcasts and you know people on forums and people I spoke to in the supermarket were all like give me 10th give me 10th or 12th like that'd be incredible like that'd be our highest league finish for since 1974 be absolutely magical and then we've sat in sort of 1, 2, 3 for the whole season but then in January we got 5 points from a possible 16 or that can't make sense what would it be 15 and suddenly people are like, get him out, get him gone, get the manager gone, get a sack of players, sign all new players, he's not fit to wear the shirt.

1:11:47You know, people that have given their all for three, you know, people who will revert to being club legends in, you know, six months after they've been given the tin tack, the demand of the fans. Legend, legend, legend, get the statue built. But in the here and now, it is, we want to win. We want to win 3-0 every single game. And if we're not winning 3-0 every single game, something's wrong and that's it's funny I mean explain to Rob and Ryan and again some of the people you know at the channel in the States they're like oh you know how's this how's the documentary going to work with X, Y and Z I was like you're going to get a lot of drama if you don't get promoted like what how the documentary worked kind of thing it's like well it'll show the fact that suddenly the boot's on the other foot Do FX want to get promoted this season?

1:12:31They always in a very American way they're just like what promotion? every season even better and are Rob and Ryan the same they are but they are from a perspective we all want to get promoted this season because the momentum we've got is hard to beat right like we've got this core and we would get promoted with players probably four or five of our players who started the game that we got promoted from the National League and that's great like you've got those guys that have gone right the way through Max Cleworth Owen O 'Connell who else have we still got Paul Mullen Ollie Palmer those sorts of players that have been central to everything that we've done.

1:13:09But yeah, it will come with a big challenge because suddenly we would need to probably quadruple our playing budget easily just to have a shot at staying in the championship. And if you want to finish mid-table, upper mid-table, you're talking about 6x or something like that, what we're doing. And if you want to get in the Premier League, it's 10x pretty much. And have you spoken to Rob and Ryan about the possibility that people might turn on them as unimaginable as it seems at the moment. Yes, yes, yes. Actually, the very first thing I said to Ryan, not the first thing I said to him, but on that very first call, I said, just so you know, if we do this and we are successful with this, there will come a time when you are called a cunt in front of your kids in like Manchester Airport by a Wrexham fan because we will have lost four games in a row, you know, in the championship.

1:13:58We'll be teetering near relegation or we'll be doing something and someone will have a proper go at you in front of your kids. and he was like right right and I was like well I'll be I'll try and be your cunt sponge so anytime anyone hurls abuses I'll eat that happily but it is a thing though I'm a Norwich fan we have American owners and I remember talking to the wife of the Norwich owner and she was saying to me oh yeah we love sports on the first day of the MLB season they own a baseball team she goes we get picked up and we get put in an open top truck and we get driven to the stadium and all the crowds are on the streets waving at us and cheering us and then I throw the first pitch of the new season and I was like, it's not like that in football.

1:14:39As an owner, you either put your money in and you're successful or fuck off. And also when you are putting your money in, it's slightly different for your owners because they're celebrities but there's no credit for that. That's what's expected of the owner of a football club. Yes, yes, yes. To do less than that is a crime. Well, I often cite the example of, again, FSG as a Liverpool fan in a former life that in 2020, whenever Liverpool won the title after 30 years, I think it was 2020, in lockdown, that summer, the sort of, the Twittersphere was alive with the rumour that Liverpool were going to sign Timo Werner from wherever he was, Wolfsburg or Werder Bremen or somewhere.

1:15:20And he didn't. He went to Chelsea. And FSG Out was trending on Twitter for, you know, a week. And the vitriol on there, these fucking, these parasites, these... Now, I don't think a lot of those people are actually Liverpool fans. I think they are FIFA football fans. The fans that like transfers but don't really care about anything else because they want to be able to crow about how they signed someone, any kind of Brazilian. Like, oh, we signed, you know, we got, I got Vinicius Jr. on FIFA Ultimate teams. Can you imagine if City signed him in real life or whatever? That, to me, was just a stark reminder.

1:15:55I was like, sorry, they just ended 30 years without a title. We won a Champions League the season before. This team is playing scintillating football. They've expanded Anfield in a sympathetic way that means more people can get into the old stadium. They've not demolished it and built a solar stadium outside of town. They're about as good a set of owners as you can get, other than the fact that they don't have unlimited coffers and so they have to try and go about it in a fairly sensible way. People hate them. Hate them. and as you say John Henry of Femme Sports Group is not as charismatic and charming a person as Ryan Reynolds you know and I think we gain a huge amount from that and a huge amount from the fact that when they come to town they go into Rex and Miners Project they go into a cafe they go and talk to people they go face to face with people in a way that doesn't tend to get done by other owners I mean our players often talk about the fact they're like you know I was at Birmingham City someone was telling me I was at Birmingham City for four years and never met the owner.

1:16:56I mean, that was, I don't know what owner that was. That was a while ago. Or, you know, guys... Well, John Eustace just left Blackburn to go to Derby. Yes. Because the big thing is when he got on the phone to Derby, the actual owner spoke to him. Right. And he'd hardly spoken to the Venkis in years at Blackburn. Yes, yes, yes, yes. But in those interactions that Ryan and Rob and yourself have had when you go out into Wrexham, has there ever been an exchange that has surprised them? There must have been. I mean, I'm trying to think of... I mean I think well for Ryan in particular I think when he first arrived into Wrexham it completely changed his perspective on the whole thing because it had all been sort of at arm's length and they would watch games on you know no one in the stands no fans there you know they didn't make it to the club until October the 15th or something in the year they'd owned the club for sort of eight nine months at that stage but because of COVID and this they couldn't travel over and when they came I often cite actually not so much Wrexham but the very first game we were away at Maidenhead United at what's it called London Road or something like that the stadium there which is I think is the oldest continuous use or that's the I think they're just about to move oldest continuous use league ground in the country or something like that and it is properly rubbish in the loveliest way you know it's very peeling rusty barriers and you know leaky roof and terrace and a sort of a porter cabin with a bar in it.

1:18:23It's the sort of hospitality thing. And they came in. They got brought in through like a side gate. And because of all the cameras and it was at night and there were like lights filming them, immediately the sort of 800 Maidenhead fans that were there were aware that they were there and just pelted them with abuse. And they loved it. Because of course, they spent their whole lives like, Ryan, Ryan, Ryan, I love you. Oh my God, I love you. Like, please sign this picture I have of you. And just all these Maidenhead fans were like, first we lost 3-2 and they were like you bought the wrong club you bought the wrong club which they loved what are they singing they're saying you bought the wrong club but then also just like people just being like again stick your Deadpool up your ass like you fucking who's the smart I've never fucking heard of him like you know all this kind of stuff and they sat in their chair and they're like that's the best thing I love that does that happen at every game I was like probably every away game you go to you're going to get that off fans and I think that surprised them they love like when we got beaten by Grimsby in the playoff semifinal, the Grimsby fans, when they went like 4-3 up or something like that, they started singing like, we stink of fish, we stink of fish, because they're the cod army or whatever they are.

1:19:34And again, they were like, what are they saying? What are they saying? They're singing, they're singing, they stink of fish. And they're like, why? Why would anyone do that? I don't know. That's their nickname. And they also sent us a load of, they sent us a load of herring or something like that. and an icebox for Rob and Ryan. The Grimsby directors have been like, there's some fish, you know. Welcome to English football, gentlemen. Do you think one day Wrexham, under this ownership model, will play in the Premier League? I think it's very possible. And the way it works is, you know, we've got a minority investor in this season, the Allen family from upstate New York, who used to own a very successful medical equipment company.

1:20:18they made like all the stethoscopes in America and they sold their company a long old time ago for a big chunk of change and they bought a stake in the club but a minority stake so they have impressive financial clout not, you know, again, not a petro state type clout but they got a good clout but I think that if, you know, we get into the championship and we stabilize and we build our training ground because we have a training ground and we build our stand and we renovate the stadium we get ourselves up to a like we've got a 20 ,000 seat modern-ish stadium that retains the charm and we can make that jump then I think what happens is that Rob and Ryan go into their Rolodex and call up one of the dozens and dozens of people who've got in touch over the last four years and been like hi I'm I am a multi-multi-multi-billionaire I want to join in on this with you and then they would sell another either another minority stake or you know a slight majority stake or whatever it may be where they would stay on remain in in their roles but we would have someone who could help bankroll because I mean basically getting out of the championship of the Premier League you're just lighting money I mean Rob and Ryan's without specific numbers their wealth is in the hundreds of millions or the tens of millions yeah hundreds I would think Rob and Ryan in the hundreds of millions combined yet once you're in the Premier League you're talking billionaire well the championship I mean a lot of teams are projected to lose about 60 million quid a year in the championship Rob and Ryan couldn't do that well maybe for a bit but you know again one of the things we want to be really careful about is being as sustainable as possible.

1:21:48The thing that remains a challenge, albeit we're working towards it in various different ways, is ensuring that if they get hit by a bus next week, we're not suddenly left up shit creek without a paddle. Because at the moment, as I say, they don't finance a huge amount of it, but they're the backstop that means that we can go, yeah, all right, we will spend a little bit extra on this. We will spend a little bit extra on that. Because if we don't recoup that, we can go to them and be like, can you cut us a check for the difference? And, you know, going into the Championship, going into the Premier League, the income is much larger, the opportunity is much larger, the TV money, this or that, the other.

1:22:23But again, the Championship, you're, you know, next season, say, touch wood, we get promoted. You know, I can't remember who the bottom three are at the moment in the Premier League, Southampton, Wolves and... Leicester. Yeah, Leicester. Imagine, we have to play them with all their many, many internationals, their parachute payments, their whatever. will get stomped by them realistically. And we know that. That's just the way it goes in that first season up for the championship. But the hope is that against the bottom half of the championship with the right additions, we can kind of hold our own and do whatever.

1:22:55And we can exist in there. But even existing in there, we would lose a big chunk of money. And we would need to find a way to offset that. Great. Time for some quickfire questions.

1:23:07What do you point as your greatest moment since the takeover of Wrexham? I think actually crying on the top of the bus stop, on the open top bus after that thing, because from a personal perspective, it's a good cathartic moment. Yes, I can still do it. I can still cry occasionally. But it was also, what it was, what had triggered it was that we were driving through the center of Wrexham and we'd been told to expect like 15 ,000 people, something like that. We had 45 ,000 people out on the streets of Wrexham. And as we drove up the high street, there was a DJ on the bus in front of me and she started playing Can't Help Falling in Love with You by Elvis, which is something that our fans sing on the stands.

1:23:45And it was on the high street that I had been cycling up every day during lockdown to go to the stadium that was like boarded up. And there was the only things that were on there were like, with all the love in the world, a Primark and a Ladbrokes and a sort of a hospice care charity shop and everything else was, and a Waterstones, but everything else was kind of gone. And as I was looking around, I was like, there are loads of these shops back open. There are all these people out on the street. it just felt like you know he does something amazing on the pitch but actually what it's done to the town is even better amazing what are the three non-negotiable behaviours that you feel have been central to Wrexham's success I mean without wanting to say boring answers I think honesty and hard work because that I think is exactly what Phil has driven into his players and actually we have taken inspiration I think in the C-suite as they say in America you know upstairs stairs, we've been a bit like, yeah, they really, they, they're very honest with each other.

1:24:43They call each other out when they're not working hard enough, but they rarely do that because they work really, really hard. So I'm going to say honesty, hard work, and compassion, I think is, is a big one. It's not a, we're not harsh corporate environment. We're, we're very understanding. And, and, and how that manifests itself, I think is, I go back to that point about everyone's pretty good at delegating and understanding. It's like, you're given the responsibility. I'm going to be compassionate towards you. If you're unable to do it, I will listen to why. It's not the end of your participation in this.

1:25:14It's we'll look to learn together and then do it better next time. Great. And the final question, your one golden rule for anyone who's listened to this fascinating conversation to live their own high-performance life. Mine is practice radical kindness, I think. Because that is the thing that sort of got me to where I am in my life. And if anybody wants to try and follow this weird pathway, into a strange job. My thing that I have always done is very forgiving of people. I suffer fools. I suffer wrongs relatively. I mean, it goes back to my equilibrium thing. And actually what that has allowed me to do is I've never wasted any energy on anything that is negative in my life.

1:25:57I don't think. I've never lost time staring out of a window trying to think of how I get back at people who've wronged me. I look into the room and I look at my wife and look at my dog and I go this is great I'm doing alright

1:26:16Damien Jake you know I loved this insight I think personally from Humphrey about exactly what Ryan and Rob have done at that football club I wasn't sure whether they were involved on a daily basis whether they just put some money in and then stepped away whether they only turn up for the moments when the cameras are there but I think this understanding that they are fully plugged in to what's happening but more than that you know Humphrey who for a long time has been one of the senior people in the football club has kind of taken the lessons that he's learned from Rob and Ryan and used those to drag Wrexham to where they are now and my favourite part of the whole thing really is this understanding of the kind of leader that Rob McElhenney is you know this idea that he kind of punches a hole in the wall and everyone follows through.

1:27:05This idea that he says, why are you worrying about planning permission? Let's just build a new stand. This concept that he has in his brain of why not us. All of these fantastic thoughts that I think allow someone like Humphrey to have a bit of freedom for the first time in his life and go, okay, then it seems a bit weird, but I'm just going to go for it. So why did that resonate with you? I think actually it reminded me of my late friend, Eddie Jordan. It was so interesting hearing that because it's exactly the way that he led and that he took people on and he just went, fuck it, just do it. And then other people kind of have to clear up the mess behind you.

1:27:39And I feel that's what Rob's done. Like he's kind of created a mess and then all these people like, you know, Humphrey and Sean Harvey, the chief exec and everyone else and Phil Parkinson, the manager, they have to kind of mop up behind him and make it all work. But I think without the Eddie Jordan or without the Rob McElhenney, you're never there in the first place. So you need to have that kind of person that just smashes a hole in the wall and then allows people to run through. Yeah, it was powerful. I think for me, the bit that really resonated was Humphrey's story about crying on top of that bus and given the context that he'd said about how he lives within that emotional range of three to seven.

1:28:15Because that to me is a great example of where somebody who spent their life trying to fit in suddenly feels that they belong, where they belong and they can be authentically themselves. They don't have to apologize for who they are. And I think there's something really powerful about a culture where people feel a sense of belonging because that means that you're tying into people's sense of purpose and why they do it. And I think that's a really underestimated but powerful source of rocket fuel for Wrexham's story. And I think Humphrey was a great example of somebody to share the resonance of that.

1:28:50I also think he's a realist. He knows that as they go up to the Premier League, things are going to get tighter, things are going to get tougher, the criticism's going to come. But as he told us, it looks like Rob and Ryan enjoy the criticism. So they'll be just fine. Thanks a lot, mate. Thank you, mate. Love that. Thanks so much to Humphrey for his time. If you haven't seen Welcome to Wrexham, check out the new season on Disney+. And please make sure you follow or subscribe to High Performance wherever you're listening to stay up to date with upcoming episodes. And if you want apps before anyone else, download the High Performance app from your app store for early access.

1:29:22Hit the follow button and thanks for listening.

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