Michael Murray - #39

0:00Michael Murray, welcome to the podcast. Thank you for having me. For the people that may not know who you are, would you just be able to sum yourself up in a couple of words? So I'm Michael Murray. I'm the CEO of Fraser's Group. I'm also on the board of Hugo Boss. I'm obsessed with fitness. I'm a dad of two. I feel like you've done yourself like a disservice there. I feel like it's huge what you're doing and the amount of people you're inspiring and stuff. and I want to dig a little bit deeper into that but first I want to start off like where did your like athletic journey start? I've always been into fitness and sport so back when I was a kid I was obsessed with athletics, cross-country, not sure if actually I was obsessed well my dad was more obsessed than me but I got pushed into like athletics and cross-country at a very young age, um played rugby i've been boxing i've done skiing snowboarding i've i've pretty much touched every sport as long as it's not super skillful like a racket sport like or cricket and it's more endurance and more grit determination and a bit raw that's that's more my wheelhouse so uh started from very young age and and just when you start you don't stop yeah so as of now do you still continue that into that every day?

1:26Yeah, every day I train. I'd say six days a week, it's been fair. I train, get up early in the morning and try and just get the job done. Always setting goals, so always trying to focus on achieving something because I feel like if you don't know where you're going, you won't get there. So I always have a clear vision of what I'm trying to do in terms of training-wise, whether that's in high rocks or running or if I want to start a new sport or start a new extreme sport, mountain biking or something, I'll always have something I want to try and achieve. Otherwise, I find it difficult to get motivated to actually get up and keep churning it out.

2:05Yeah, and obviously, what inspires me more than anything, witnessing your journey, is how good of an athlete you are. I'm probably the worst one's ever been on this show. No, but the fact that you're such a good athlete, but then you seem like the busiest man alive obviously you're you're the ceo of a huge huge company um where where does your fitness actually kind of like fit in is it kind of like a priority or is it kind of like on the back burner and does it have to be on the back burner so fitness for me is just like a it's a therapy as much as it is a physical activity it gives me a chance to think it's my hour hour and a half a day depending on what i'm doing i can zone out I don't have to think it's I like I enjoy it so I think it's important to do things you enjoy when I started like 10 years ago everyone would be like in the pub every night drinking and I'm thinking this is not a sports industry and that's the brands as well you know it wasn't just sports direct it was more the industry was like that and so I thought well you got to be you got to practice what you preach and if we're all about sport we we should be encouraging more of the industry not just the the customers to do sport so that's really why um i'm quite vocal and quite um open about the sport i do and try and get people in the business to to follow and get the marathon tickets high rocks tickets we sponsored a few of the events um we're taking trips to verbiere where we can do like a more more extreme sport mountain biking or skiing so i'm very very proactive of trying to like practice what we preach in this industry i feel like you've always been like entrepreneurial should we say yeah where did that all kind of like start so when i was a a young 18 year old and when i went to university i i went to reading university and um the nightlife wasn't very good in reading uh i don't know if you've been i haven't actually no i know i've heard of obviously like reading festival yeah no that's that's giving it too much credibility uh red reading is is is it's not like a manchester night out so the nightlife was quite i would say a soft industry so i i was um quite proactive in approaching nightclubs when i got to university hosting events coming up with things a bit more creative than what was being done and um built a night a night life business effectively and when i left uni i had uh i was doing all the club nights festivals I had bars I had nightclubs all of which have sold since then but I left university with it with a great business I actually went to university and built a business rather than actually a degree I got a degree as well by the skin of my teeth what was you studying investment and finance in real estate so I can remember actually I was running events down in like Bristol and Southampton I actually hired one of the other students to drive me to Bristol one night so I could revise in the back of my golf so I was like I had a driver in the back of my golf and I was like revising all that for the exam the next day so I didn't miss the work but I could still find the time to to revise for the exam so yeah they were they were great times and taught me so so much you know selling space to students in a nightclub effectively is is as good as it gets for like any real life situation in terms of negotiating with the venue and negotiating with the DJs and selling the tickets, getting the pricing right, getting the negotiations with the bars right of how much percentage you get off the spend.

5:43And really, you can apply that to most businesses. It was a great degree for me in terms of building my own business whilst at university. That's so interesting. I never actually knew that, which is crazy to think. In them early years, was there any times where there was big mess-ups? Oh, loads, loads. I can remember we thought we'd turn Redding cool and it was a big mistake because redding's more of a like a commercial night out like top 40 songs you know or pop world pop world indie night you know that they're they're hip hop night so i thought actually what we're going to do is we're going to get a dj from ibiza and we're going to we're going to fly him in and we're going to get someone from uh i think it's paradiso project he's got a dj called lee fos super underground flew him from ibiza put him up hotels biggest dj we've ever got absolute flop i was going i cursed his name for like 10 years you know i was like why did we try and break the the one rule we knew which was keep it commercial keep it for the masses keep it um just keep it scalable and uh so yeah we veered off a few times and we had to veer ourselves back on on track no i love that and i assume that's kind of like set yourself up for what you do today which obviously you're the ceo of fraser's group how is life different now it's not actually that much different um it's just the numbers are a lot bigger and the responsibility and so many more people are impacted by the decision so it just and and the the flow of decisions that you can never ever get enough time or information to make the best possible decision so if you imagine you got five ten big things to do every single week you could you could literally wait months to get all the perfect information all the right analysis to make that decision whereas you haven't got that luxury you haven't got that time you haven't got usually that information and you need to be good at making decisions off of very not limited i would say but the right balance of information you don't want to be like kamikaze pilot but you want to be you want to be controlled in in and you want to have enough information where but you don't want to be too slow obviously like say you've got you've got huge kind of like retailers like your sports direct uh like your flannels within the phrases group that look at brands and you kind of like evaluate each brand i'd say how do you come across like these exceptional brands that you kind of like want to take a risk on and want to kind of have come into your business so we we have uh we we test we test first so we don't ever go crazy unless it's like an obvious a super obvious decision that we're actually late we couldn't get that brand in the business for whatever reason and i think we're actually launching hocker uh quite soon for for sports direct so that would be an example of that's huge it's a huge brand we've not currently got it so we don't need to we don't need to overthink how much we should order we should order as much as we possibly can what's responsible with the brand and send it to as many stores as we can because we know that that's obviously gonna going to work but when you've got smaller brands maybe more niche brands we then trial them in the flagship stores if it doesn't work in the flagship stores it's not going to work back in Doncaster where I'm from so we obviously it's just a bit of common sense in terms of making sure we test and we learn before we scale too fast yeah no it's super interesting and I've seen kind of like the the growth and the the scale of say like your sports direct yeah like how impressive the stores are yeah I'm not saying they weren't impressive before but like they They've come on so much.

9:33I remember when I was a kid going back in and the big boxes stacked high with shoes, everything would be out on the shop floor. Whereas now you go in, it's super clean. It's super elevated. And every brand that you represent, I feel like you do such a great job at representing and elevating that brand. It's almost better in your stores than when going into some of the actual stores of the shops that you sell, if that makes sense. Yeah. So that was all part of the strategy like 10, 12 years ago is to take... Sports Dread was limited on what it could sell because of how it looked. So my role at the time was to change that and basically give brands no excuse and give them the best possibility to represent their brand in markets which I know that they're never going to have their own stores.

10:26so if you go to like Doncaster Ryan Farm or Manchester or Liverpool we've got amazing stores which is the best representation of of their brand now but beforehand it wasn't like that so we wouldn't get access to that more aspirational product and we don't want to alienate our old customers you know we understand there's people who've got spending constraints and they can't afford a pair of 250 pound running shoes but we want to be able to offer them their first pair of 60 pound running shoes all the way through to the race shoes you would wear and it's all about having that good better best within the stores and we didn't want to be restricted from what we could sell and that's been a huge huge project massive investment changing that whole positioning of what sports direct is and now like you say it's when you go in there you recognize the work what's been done and you can see the products what we've now got and i think it's a the team have done an amazing job getting to where we've got to.

11:24It's incredible to see. And you've not only done that with, like you said, the shop front, sorry about that. You've not only just done that with the shop front, but you've also done that with gyms. And you've recently, well, as of recent, you've been doing it for quite a number of years now with Everlast, creating exceptional gyms. Yeah. So in COVID, we bought a business called DW... David Whelan? David Whelan, yeah, we bought, they went into administration, and it was basically gyms with sports shops, so like half the store would be a sport, one floor would be a sports shop, one floor would be a gym.

12:02We bought like 30 or 35 of them back in 2020. And obviously I went round the gym, we wanted them for the sports shops, but went round the gyms and was like, well, this is like 30 years old, you know, we can't, this isn't going to be representative, what we're going to call them, we don't want to call them DW, we don't want to call them Sports Direct. We've got Everlast. Everlast is a big global fight sports brand. But when I went around the gyms, I was like, this is just not relevant anymore. I don't want to talk out of tune, but having Zumba classes and Les Mills, I just didn't feel like it was the direction we would want to put Everlast's brand on.

12:41So we've completely reinvented the whole model. We've got Pilates Studios now. We've got High Rocks Performance Centers. we've got recovery with saunas, ice baths by Brass Monkey, you know, so we've got MyProtein involved to do a fuel bar, and we've been really just investing heavily, and we've had so much success and recognition in the fitness space with what we've done with them gyms. We've now got 60 of them. We're opening our first one in London. We just did one in Trafford Centre, and they're just going from strength to strength, and it's really the vision came from making something really relevant for the regional customers we take it so much for granted in london having like third space for instance but you go outside of london and it's old school like fitness clubs or it's a crossfit gym it's not something what pulls everything together with relevant classes relevant areas relevant food and a proper community as part of it i think it's um it's either boutique class-based gyms crossfit gyms or kind of the old school david lloyd styles and what we wanted to do is try and bring it all together under one roof yeah and when you walk into it i remember when your liverpool store opened and i had the luxury of going seeing it and i just thought this i wish this was on my doorstep we're from a little town called Bolton and I just wish that I would live closer because Middlebrook yeah Middlebrook yeah yeah so um yeah we'd love to do one on there but that park is so busy yeah apparently it's like one of Europe's biggest retail park crazy that park yeah I'd love to do a big gym and a big uh sports direct on that park but you just can never get the space yeah yeah but uh I I just think it's so premium and like you say everything's on the one roof and we've never seen it before like like you say outside of london yeah not really seen it and even in london like you could say third space is incredible which it is it's an amazing kind of gym setup but it hasn't got the shop it hasn't got the the recovery to the extent that you've done everything like you having the official hyrox equipment in there you getting the best from everything and like bringing it under one roof i think that's what you've done amazing at and it's 40 pounds a month which which is insane like how i i i find i i struggle to see how kind of like you kind of make it profitable like with it being like that you must um like say it's uh it's incredible the amount of value that you have so i don't just look at it from the p and l the the profitability of the um of the gym itself i look at it what it does for the everlasting brand yeah no it's interesting and i think a huge reason it's a success is because you're into your fitness and you know what a gym requires and i remember back in the day i'm actually from lee which had um a dw and then it was a fitness first or something like that and then it turned into everlasting gyms and that was like one of my first ever gyms that i trained at yeah and i remember like you say that being there and there was cycling classes going on and stuff like that and it's completely changed now yeah and it's incredible to see like how you've had an impact on like the fitness space in the uk i'd say like you you are one of the main contributors to improving and elevating gyms as a whole because if you think obviously you're improving everlasting gyms and they're being incredible but everyone's got to try and match that now otherwise they're just simply going to be out of business so that i think you're doing so much good and yes it it might not be all down to profit but it's like you're you're inspiring like a full generation and it's so cool to see uh i appreciate that and that's what part of the vision is to elevate the lives of the many with the world's best brands and experiences that's part that is that is our vision that's what we're trying to do is bring the best products the best brands to like locations like lee or whether it's bolton but also experiences through the gyms through paddle courts etc and really trying to raise the industry yeah no it's really cool i want to move on to kind of like your fitness journey because like you say i feel like if you put your mind to it and the time and effort i feel like you would be a professional athlete in something no i i i i couldn't i don't think i'd be a professional athlete i'd genuinely i i really i've seen kind of like your times from like cross country when you was younger all the way through to your high rock times and then your marathon times of recent and it's crazy i just want to touch on high rocks yeah how what was your first experience of high rocks first of all so i actually um i actually did a marathon in 2019 i'd not been doing fitness for this is really where it all started my my new fitness journey i went on a bit of a break for five years then did 2019 did a marathon um not very good time who inspired you to do that i got a new um fitness coach called lee and lee was i said look mate we just need to find something i can't come to the gym every day and do bodybuilding it's just not i i don't really care about the looks i care about performance i want to be able to be athletic i want to be able to be uh multifunctional i don't want to just be put in one box i want to be able to do anything um so we we we did a year of like rebuilding and then he found high rocks um and it was down in uh olympia so i got five six weeks notice perfect just enter me into that so we get into high rocks didn't know what to expect i knew george actually i saw george as i turned up there and he just um he just finished and he was i was talking to him i thought i quite like this it's like a buzz it's it's like a big arena you like feel like you're a pro athlete even though you're not um and i did it and i did the open weights and i think i got like one hour and two minutes or something like that and that's that's that's uh the rest is history from there it's like well one hour two minutes is is respectable at the time at very very respectable i'd say that you're you are the fittest guy within business would you would you would you put if that was a hat would you put that on your head i'm happy to race anyone who thinks they can beat me it depends what out though the high rocks yeah definitely marathon running there's probably a few because you can you can really um you can really continue to improve over time you don't peak until you're like mid 40s i think in in some in for a normal non-professional uh like amateur run over i would say yeah you're kind of like building your base up and for endurance sports yeah peaking is late 30s yeah your 40s there you are so yeah i started the high rocks in um in in i think it was 2022 or 23 and from there i've just been chipping away setting new goals every year um and got more into running because i realized if i'm going to get better at high rocks i need to be better at runner so i thought i'll do a marathon and then it just becomes a bit of a pyramid scheme doesn't it you like every it's like you want to just get better at everything yeah and with your harris journey you've come on so much so like you say the first time that you got was outstanding and you did that with josh right josh i've only ever done it with josh okay i like to keep things simple and consistent so yeah i'm like i don't want any new variables just keep it the same if we're going to measure ourselves it's got to be measuring ourselves together you know i don't want to swap and swap and change because for me it's about me it's a it's a journey about competing against myself constantly improving yeah if i've beat loads of people on the way fantastic but i want to measure myself and that's that's why i tend to stick with josh yeah and josh is a great guy like um we both had interactions with him where he's a fantastic runner, but he's also a machine when it comes to anything with weights.

20:51Like he's a big guy. But yeah, it's incredible. Do you find yourself as a pair? You're quite even? No, Josh, he carries me for sure. I don't think so. I've actually seen you race and it doesn't look like that when you're racing anyway. I make him finish on the stations, so it gives me a bit of time to... So I start the stations, he finishes them, and I'd say he probably does 55 % of the stations. I do 45 because he's a much better runner than me. So I really push him to the tank. But I genuinely think that if he didn't race with me, he would end up doing like four extra laps. I say, I'm the coach.

21:28You're the player. I'll do the tactics. You've got the brains. I'll do the strategy. So I'll tell you when to start, when to start. If I feel like you're flagging or I'm flagging, I'll make you do more or less. So I do all the strategic work and Josh is the engine. there's a bit of a a deeper partnership to uh our strategic planning as well not not just the the fitness component that's uh that's amazing so you've gone from uh like say i think a 103 or 102 for your first ever uh high rocks and that was an open doubles open doubles yeah then you decided to do the pro yeah because you could because you then couldn't qualify for the world i don't think you could qualify for the world or you had to the world was uh pro so i was like why am i messing around on open weights if i'm going to try and get to the the worlds i want to be able to i want to be able to perform when i get there so i was like right that's the last open weights we'll do we'll just stick on pros now after that and then what's your journey been like that because like looking at the data it's so so impressive i think your first one was a 58 minute pro yes so it took us two attempts to go sub one hour so i went i can remember i went to birmingham afterwards and woke to the typical me i just thought right i'm not going to get a hotel the before i'm going to set up at four in the morning or three in the morning and had no sleep and got the whole fueling strategy wrong and end up coming doing one hour and like 30 seconds or something then it was 58 minutes i think it was the time when i got 58 minutes was when you was doing you did like like 12 high rocks in a day or something i can remember you were doing it yeah 11 in 48 hours yeah that was it yeah that was it um for charity but uh yeah i remember that um and then you've just kind of like been improving since yeah so the first goal was get it sub an hour the goal every year is to qualify for the world for as long as i can so that was the that was the first goal so i did that went to nice did chicago last year i've raced once this year and qualified in the first time um for stockholm uh and every year just want to keep chipping away and getting better but obviously it becomes so difficult you want the sun the moon the stars all to align to start getting pbs every race now it's like getting to the point where it's it's quite difficult to uh to improve without actually something's got to give somewhere you know is it work is it family you know the balance starts to shift too much for my liking into into fitness direction.

23:52Of course, but the fact that you've managed to qualify for Stockholm this year, especially when the level is so stacked, it's getting stronger and stronger every single year, but I think you ran a low 53, didn't it? Yeah, just over 53, yeah. Which is insane, that's close to Elite 15 level, and the fact that you can do that whilst well, whilst maintaining balance with, in obviously your business, relationships, family, things like that. Try. I want to move on to that. How important do you feel like being a role model is within the business side of things? So important. I think it's so important to set the tone, set the direction and get the snowball going.

24:44You have snowballs and dominoes. Dominoes, things are going wrong. Everything's collapsing. Snowballs, you try and build. momentum and um i like to put myself out there i like to put myself out there to say i'm going to do something and actually follow through and do it i would say i'm probably one of the busiest people in the business um in the industry travel around a lot i'm pretty much on a plane if it's not every other week if it's not every week it's every other week even if it's just a trip to europe i'll be going to the world cup twice i'm flying here there everywhere germany because I'm on the board of Hugo Boss.

25:18I'm literally everywhere. Yeah, it shows kind of like ultimate resilience, especially if you're putting your goals out there. Like you say, you miss them, but it's okay to keep going. If you hit every goal, they weren't big enough. I love that. I love that coming from you as well. Someone who is so knowledgeable within the space. And like you say, that health and fitness runs fully through your business now. Like you say, you can support events. you can uh kind of like sponsor events and like what's it like actually working like within one of the businesses like is it very like fitness orientated like well we employ 30 30 000 people so i mean there's a lot that's a lot of people so you've got pockets like any businesses there's pockets of people and there's communities what start to build so i wouldn't say it's like across the board everyone's like fitness fanatics now but what you're starting to see is like 40 50 people doing the manchester marathon together 30 people going over to dublin to do high rocks together people messaging in to our to katie and the team to get tickets for sports events so you starting to see like people build their own community it's hard to build a community out of 30 000 people we're in 50 different countries we've got over a thousand stores across the uk it's hard to to navigate and bring them people all together so we have an online platform it's called phrases fit the the gym team pull it all together uh regional area managers not managers in the business sense but people pulling the communities together asking for tickets for certain events and that's really what we've been trying to push like any fitness advice the need any programming just trying to give them not forcing it down people's necks but inviting them to be part of it if they want to be yeah that's incredible and like you say it might not be as prevalent but it's building it's building yeah and it's probably like a really cool thing to see um how how do you stay motivated or is it not a question of motivation is it more discipline in how do i stay motivated i just don't think i've ever not been motivated you know that's i don't i can't see myself ever being i can't do a bad job you know if someone said to go and do an average job over there or something i'm the wrong guy get someone else if you want someone to do a 50 effort it's probably best i we delegate that to someone else you know i'm a guy who's all in obsessed whatever I do so I have to be super disciplined and focused on the things what make the biggest difference so whether that's at home whether that's at um doing my fitness or at work I have to only focus on the biggest things because I'm I'm a I'm I'm an obsessive character I go all in I don't think about anything else until the job's done so that's um I stay I say long long word answer i stay focused i stay motivated by staying focused i think if i was trying to do too much inevitably you can't do a good job and then you start to fail a lot and then you start to lose motivation so i'm quite good at staying focused do you think that's down to soul age issue or do you think the people that you surround yourself with kind of have an impact on your outlook on on that yeah i think i'm so fortunate to have a good team around me that i don't need to do everything you know you've got great people in the leadership team who pick up certain areas of the business whether that's retail or whether that's digital or whether that's the some of the brand's divisions you know i don't need to do everything i can dip in like be part of the strategy and then get like a six-monthly or quarterly check-in and that's that's good enough you know and then the things what i focus in i'm all in yeah and then moving on to the the marathon stuff obviously you've had a recently a really good attempt um and marathon experience at the london marathon yeah how did that go so i i did my first london marathon in 2019 like i said and i i trained for it i did like six eight weeks i'd been a good runner as a kid um cross country athletics like i said so i thought all right i'll just train for the marathon six to eight weeks and actually my time my focus time was like two or three hours and 30 minutes and i was what 29 at the time so i got i got to three hours and 31 or 32 minutes i can't remember um and then this year i was like right i want to get a sub three hour marathon and when did you set that goal at Christmas.

30:12At Christmas, I said, all right, I'm going to go for a sub-three-hour marathon. And I was meant to actually go to Tokyo. And I went to Dubai beforehand, got heat stroke like an idiot, continued training because I was so paranoid of not getting the time and then made myself super real so I couldn't actually make it to Tokyo. So the block started, the training block started in January. I then got to like the top of the mountain, ready to race, would 100 % got the sub-3 hour marathon and then had to start the whole block again. So that was a struggle to keep motivated through that because I thought I was nearly there at the end of the block and ready to go.

30:49So I did the London Marathon in April, I think it was. Yeah, and I got two hours and 55 minutes, first attempt. Yeah, that's insane. And did Josh pace you for that? Josh did. Josh paced me. He didn't carry me, he paced me. how important is it to have someone like like you say throughout kind of like your fitness experience have someone potentially just a training partner or someone you you might look up to i think josh is probably that person for you yeah um do you think it keeps you kind of like accountable or do you keep each other accountable yeah i think it's just it's just good in general to have surround yourself with people who um want to do better in certain things so whether it's business or whether it's fitness and it's always good to be around people who are better than you you know josh is i know you say he isn't but he is better than me at fitness like at running at high rocks he is better and it's good to be with someone who's better because you you're constantly chasing them so i think it's just good because we're friends and we can travel around together we go on holiday we do like training weeks um so from that perspective it's just it's good to have someone who's interested in the same things wants to push themselves like we'll go on a family holiday josh and his wife will come and we'll get up at 6 30 go train do a high rock sim like last week before the wedding like it's difficult to find people who wanted who are on that same wavelength so i think it's good to be surround yourself with people who want to do better at whatever it is yeah no and like you say josh is an amazing guy he's such every time i've spoke to him like he's so uplifting and so positive as well it's like hard to have a bad session when you're around or even if you like competing together like it's always like we're competing hard to have an easy session yeah yeah maybe hard to have an easy and we all need them people um what's what's a typical day look like in the life of michael murray uh so i probably get up about 6 30 so i'm not like this like 5 a.m club guy um was you ever kind of like that guy No, never that guy.

32:55Sleep's too important for me. I'd rather sleep than get up and train. So I'll sleep until 6.30, train at 7 most days, and then I don't have any meetings. You're an exception today. Until 10 a.m. So I don't have any meetings until 10. I'll finish my workout 8, shower change by 8.30. It takes a long time to do this. great by the way uh and then um and then i'll do my own emails i'll do my own work my own calls whatever i want to do for like an hour and a half and then i'm in the office first meetings at 10 o 'clock that's like the that's like the morning routine and then from there depending what day it is i'll have travel days planned out where i'm out the country and obviously that throws throws things off but a typical uk day would be organized meetings internally for the first half of the day and then external meetings planned in for the second half of the day nice do you have like specific kind of like travel days or anything like that where you kind of prefer to travel on their days or is it just as and when comes everything look i have like a guiding principles like tuesdays wednesday thursdays is is better because it's the middle of the week first monday in the week in retail it's all about what happened the week before what do we need to get done it's like organizational day tuesday wednesday thursday traveling around and friday is like like recapping where what tying up any loose ends at the end of the week um but what i will do is have like travel blocks in terms of times of the year depending if it's your funnels fashion week or whether it's july is a pretty much a write-off for the world cup i'll be back and forth to america now with all the different brands for the um for for uh the world cup or whether it's like wimbledon we sponsor Wimbledon with Slazinger so I'll be taking brands to to Wimbledon or certain other periods of the year I'll be over in America and I'll do like a American tour to go and see all the brands go down to Under Armour in Baltimore and New Balance in Boston and I'll fly down to New York see brands down there over to LA see Hocker and Sketchers and then over to portland to see nike and then maybe on the way back go to vancouver to see lululemon and then fly back and that'll be like a a two-week tour and i'll do the same in australia i'll go to australia next january for because we own a business that we own we're a large shareholder like a sports business over there and boss have just sponsored the australian open so i'll go in january and i'll make a full couple of like 10 days of that so that's how i try and prioritize the uh the travel yeah you're making me tired just talking about it yeah it's crazy with that Obviously, like you say, you like to be in person.

35:45You like to go and see these things. Like you say, you're going over to the World Cup twice with certain brands. How important is it to just, like you say, we talked about being a role model within the fitness side of stuff, but just showing up for your brands and meeting in person and being there for them physically? Look, the world's a relationship game. Everything's about relationships. And if you don't put that time into them relationships, you will get very little back from that relationship so it's all about give and take and not not everything in in life is easy you know it's there's a lot sometimes some difficult conversations what needs to be had there's different expectations from from each side of the partnership so the stronger you can make them relationships it makes it easier to have them difficult conversations like a like a relationship with your wife or your girlfriend you know if you the stronger that is the more honest you can be with each other to a certain extent and the more uh success you'll have together so i make a big effort of making sure that all of our brand partners feel that love and feel that uh i'm listening to what their feedback is and acting on their feedback and ultimately doing what i say i'm going to do not not only in sport but if we say we're going to do something we're going to open a new flagship store and they're going to get this position and they can help with the opening weekend they're going to get it or if it's world cup campaign or if it's they are really a product what they're launching is super important to them and they want to do a full store takeover and i think it's it's a good idea then i'll i'll commit and follow through and make sure that it happens the best possible standard so it's just about building them relationships and making sure that in the good and the bad you can you can ride through it yeah i love how much you like have a passion for it and genuinely care at all and i think that shows within the business like when i see fraser's group or whether it's sports direct funnels like your name and your face is the first person that i see and i think that's incredible how much how important is it to maybe have a face behind a brand do you think that is important because there's quite a lot of brands out there that you wouldn't know a single person that works for them yeah and you just think oh they're a big brand but you don't know anyone um but i think it's super inspiring that and it kind of have make decisions in my favor like i come to a store and buy because i know that you're a good person and you're like the the ceo of a brand if that makes sense i think it's it has its positives and its negatives yeah um do you feel pressure with it look i thrive through pressure so i'm not a guy who's going to moan about any pressure because i this this role isn't for isn't for someone who who cares about pressure you know so i i don't really yeah you're going to have good days and bad days and you just have to be able to learn to be resilient and deal with it and most of the time you're suffering you suffer more in your mind than you do in reality so you just have to get through the the mindset and the thought process and actually the reality of it's things pass and so i i've become quite good at dealing with things like that but i think from a from a business perspective it's it's got its pros and its cons because you've got you put someone on the pedestal then on that pedestal is that person is only ever human they can make mistakes they can they can have a great run but one bad decision brings the whole thing down so a lot of corporates try and keep it to not having a face behind the brand um because because of that very reason it's like risk management yeah no but i think you're doing an incredible job i like say there's very few people that i um truly looked up to in this world and like you're you're one of them like genuinely like there's there's not a single thing that you've put out of place and i don't i just don't know how you manage it how you do it you know good pr team how how do you manage your relationships you seem obviously you've got fitness in the morning you've got business all day but you've got your own life as well and like how how do you kind of structure that and time slot that and obviously you've got an amazing family yeah it's it's it's it's difficult um but i've got a very patient wife she's she's very supportive and she's uh she's amazing mom you know so i couldn't do it without her she's like she's the boss at home i would say uh she's she's the she's driving that ship and i'm a passenger for sure when i when when I get home.

40:12So I think it's all about choosing the right partner and making sure that you're on the same journey together. If you're not on the same journey, you're in a whole world of pain. How important is communication with that? Communication is like key to everything. So not just relationships, business, like your fitness journey, you know, you've got a coach, feedback on how you're feeling that day. Like communication is so underrated. and people don't appreciate that more the more communication the better even if it's like micro communication just constantly checking in on everything is is so important things bottle up you then get the pressure valve too tight things start to simmer you know it's not a good space to be in it's better to talk frequently and often and not necessarily these waiting for these big moments to have these big deep meaningful conversations just keep chipping away with feedback is that what i would say yeah no i think uh that's super relevant like otherwise um you can build up resentment with relationships and stuff like that you just you suffer more in your mind in reality your mind starts to like play play games on you and half the time it's nowhere near as bad as the reality and but your mind just just festers and builds yeah have there ever been any kind of dark times and feel free not not to answer this but is there any been like any times where you've struggled mentally like throughout your career i wouldn't i wouldn't say so i think what one of the main things is is not having enough time to think and process things so that's one of the things reasons why i took up the fitness because again in like 2020 or whenever it was is just to have that break away because you can get caught up in just being like full fifth gear the whole time doing one thing and it's okay to be in fifth gear but you need to then drop it down to first gear every now and again and just take a breather take a step back and i didn't have anything else any other balance it was just work work work and the the fitness side of things just helps you process things because it just gives me that time to think i think thinking is is is is super important just to and to be able to process things uh in a more concerted way rather than a rational way yeah well that's really interesting do you take much downtime you can't you can't really take much downtime you can be you can be in a downtime place like i was in mallorca last week for half term with the kids but first thing i do in the morning is open my ipad and yeah you've got to kind of love it haven't you get back at it yeah yeah there's not there's not really i don't ever have an out of office email or anything like that you know it's it's just a work in a different location and i'll try and get three hours in the afternoon of quality time but sometimes you're not got the quality time because you're thinking about what you've done that morning so you don't really get any it i would probably better for taking proper holiday and doing nothing but different like yeah yeah different like different time and yeah no i love that and like you say i think you've just got to have a passion whatever you do if you have a passion for it then then you're going to be successful and you definitely have a passion for what you do in all aspects and it's kind of like bring it on rather than like shying away from you gotta you you got to eat it up yeah you got to get you got to attack it yeah um in regards to fitness what's next you've ticked off the sub three hour marathon you've obviously got world champs next week which we'll talk about yeah um obviously prep has been a bit up in the air with that just because you've been like doing the marathon and stuff and ibiza yeah and ibiza how are you feeling about next week um i'm look i'm feeling not much pressure because i've not really given it everything then i had the marathon in may then i thought i'd be at in april i got the two out of 55 so i was like happy with that body's never done that before so i took some recovering then thought you know what i can sneak in another pb here i entered the hackney half i'm thinking that i was going to do um try and go sub 120 the worst course you know the worst the worst course i mean them hills just kept on coming uh and my legs were just absolutely shot so i end up getting a pb but only by like five or six seconds um pb is a pb pb is a pb uh so that then ate up another couple of weeks i'm i'm gonna be i hope i can shock myself that's all i'm gonna say is i hope i can so i'm gonna do a sim tonight with josh yeah um try and get another one in so i've done three sims as the preparation and no other high rock since december so we'll see what this uh this old body can do no i love it so that's next week and then have you got any other like bucket list achievements that you want to achieve within fitness is there any kind of other sports you want to delve into yeah no i i love um i love all sports so a big one of our biggest one of my My favorite sport is boxing.

45:16So I've used to box when I was a kid. And now we own Everlast. So Everlast is the OG boxing brand. We are very good friends. And I was training actually with Connor Ben last week in Mallorca. And I think I should get more back into boxing. Just from a training perspective, pad work, sparring. Just because I'm so integrated with work. I think that would be a natural next move is then do I have another fight I'm not sure um I'm not sure I can I can cope with that but sparring pad work maybe a bit of uh Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu take that up um everyone seems to be playing paddle now uh we've got some paddle courts should I do a bit of paddle so have you tried it yet I have tried it yeah I've tried But I said to you at the start, anything which requires too much skill is not in my wheelhouse.

46:12So I think it'll be more of a social. I don't think you'll be seeing me go into any, like, hexagon cup championships or anything like that. It'll just be purely a social maybe once a week. But I think when you get to so, like, my High Rocks time now at 53 minutes, 18 or 15 or whatever it is, what can I really get to without the compromises now? Where can I really go from here? I think you'll have to take a sabbatical. Yeah, that's the problem. That's the problem. And so I'd love to be able to do 50. The ultimate goal is to get sub 53, right? And then you're in the 52s. Where am I going to go from there?

46:50You know, I train, I work, I travel. I've got a family. I'm not getting paid to do it. You know, at some point I have to say, right, that box is ticked. That's now maintenance mode. And we look for something else to get the gains from because if i'm not getting the gains i have to start thinking if i'm not moving forward what am i doing it for for the people out there that are kind of short on time i'd say that you're very efficient with your time what does a typical training week look like um so i i try and keep the sessions to one hour max so only one hour of training max um and for high rocks i would be training for mar are we talking marathon or let's go marathon and then we'll go hyrox okay so for marathon i'd do one long run and i'd do that on the weekend because that's the only time i'd have have the time and i'd do like a on a sunday 90 minutes building up to like two and a half hours was pretty much the the routine monday would be like a micro run within a weight session so maybe like 20 minute run and then a 40 minute weight session you know doing all preventative training nordics uh heel raises um copenhagen planks working on a bit of upper body strength still like weighted pull outs but low reps uh high and high weight tuesday would then be more of a 10 a 12 to 15k run um wednesday would then be back to weights uh and a micro run thursday would then go to um like more of an interval session so like maybe uh four times 3k or peaking at the end of the session at like four times 5k session where you do 5k and then like a couple of minutes float and then another 5k we're doing this outdoors or indoors outdoors outdoors outdoors uh then friday would be um more of a shorter interval session or a long run so i was i was running like i get the most out of the fewest sessions and the fewest the lowest mileage so my average mileage for the marathon training was 60k which is not very high no that's that's super impressive that like you say you can get the time that you you got with uh that amount of miles yeah 60k and i think my peak week was 70 wow yeah so i try and because i've got the time yeah no i i love it i love it and like are you capping it at an hour one because you've not got the time but two like you know that you can put in 60 60 minutes of hard work time time always time yeah always time okay yeah if i could i've got to be realistic in myself this is a hobby you know this is for me to to have i'm not this is not my job you know this is a hobby i've got to do the best i can do with an hour yeah right if i then start turning into two hours then it becomes questioning like is it a job or is it a hobby yeah so an hour is is the max unless it's a long session what requires the and i'll do that on a weekend yeah no i love that i love how like you say you've got your priorities lined up because at the end of the day you've got to be making big decisions all day long and you can't do that if you're so fatigued from your training yeah everything else um what one thing that i do love that i think that you brought across there was that you're training solely for the goal that you're training for that's it nothing else and you're not training for aesthetics aesthetics is just like a byproduct yeah like you look great because you're training for performance yeah you're not training for aesthetics first no no no no everything has to be functional so i don't really obviously that's byproduct if you if you get the functional first the results will come it's like work if you focus on the job in hand you'll get the results yeah you know you can't look at you can't let the tail wag the dog as i sometimes say yeah no no i love that um michael do you have any bad habits would you say i love sweets and food i'd say the diet is the worst thing i i feel because i train hard i just eat whatever i want and i i do have a balanced healthy diet but then i i will just go for like a chinese or i will just have like if there's haribo in the house you know the bag's getting finished yeah it's hard to to think about that as well because like haribo is just carbohydrates and then that's going to fuel your session for the next day so is it that bad like no he's not that bad but i think like some my weight can can fluctuate it can go from like 85 to 90 kg it's like like that like that you know it's like a proper pendulum so when i'm racing i try and get the weight down to like 85 86 max but when i did a half marathon the other it was the royal parks half marathon i looked like a i looked like a a rugby player like a like a i look like a second row you know i was i was big you know like i saw some photos like you are not getting pbs looking like that no i love that and i love like you say that that's your little vice you know having a pack of sweets yeah i love that and it just shows that you're human yeah um but uh no that's incredible um where do you see yourself in like 10 20 years time like do you ever think about that i never ever i get asked this question so much but i never actually think about that i think about everything's a moving goal and all your circumstances change always they know like you get more money you have more problems you know you've got bigger businesses it's more stressful at some point you go where does it start where does it stop and I've always got a goal and I don't look past that goal until that job is done so I don't really have a 10-year goal I have goals where I want to be this year and I don't really look past them until they're done so like last year I had if we just talk it to fitness because obviously it's relevant for the audience I had a sub 53 um high rocks failed uh I had sub one hour 20 half marathon failed i had a sub 36 10k failed i achieved nothing they all just rolled into this year you know so there's no time cap on anything you know just everything's just rolling and once they've been achieved like the two hours 55 marathon was one for this year's three hours that's now off the list something else comes on so it's always a moving feast and it's always changing you know sometimes it'll be fitness sometimes it'll be work life sometimes it'll be balance sometimes it'll be financial and i just try to keep it but the main thing is is that i i stay active i stay healthy and i'm always enjoying what i'm doing if i'm not enjoying what i'm doing i wouldn't i wouldn't do it i would i would just say look this isn't for me anymore because if i'm not enjoying it that motivation goes if that motivation goes it's not good for anyone i might as well do something else yeah you kind of checked out and then it doesn't help i'll tell you what the what some things when you when you go back to the point of saying um do what you say you're going to do or like practice what you preach you know about leading by example i've been in rooms where brands big global brands like multi multi-billion global brands have put me on stage with somebody and they're asking me like you're asking me about why why do you do fitness like why are you into high rocks and then the conversations and grown and they've said we really want to get into high rocks we want to own the high rock shoe they know high rocks for me comes across for the gyms it comes across for product i i understand every single running shoe every training shoe for every single different discipline where you train how you train the recovery what you need to train because that's my job i i sell them products or i sell that space to to athletes to training my job is to understand it there's no better way of understanding it than doing it yourself yeah and and a lot of people don't you've summed that up perfectly like how are you meant to sell a shoe if you don't know how it feels on the foot if you don't yeah and you don't know the difference between a zone two shoe a tempo shoe a race shoe how and the pros and the cons for each of them and why that shoe is going to be a bestseller and that shoe isn't even though they're meant to do the same job if you don't understand it and you're not training in it and if i'm in my position can't challenge the team i'll be like why have we not got more of them shoes why is that shoe not selling more than that is it price point is it quality you know you've got to be able to challenge the people doing the job and it's all right saying oh we want to be in hyrox well if no one's done one good luck yeah yeah for sure um how do you see hyrox is like a brand do you do you kind of like like the concept as like a brand and a business yeah i i um i love the business um i've christian and mo are fantastic guys i've known them since the very first session i did i got introduced to them and i said look if you ever look for investment i would have invested in hyrox he um that that's that goes hand in hand with what we're trying to do you know sports retail globally gyms train for and then perform mat high rocks and it works so for me i i think it's a fantastic concept i think it's amazing what they've done i think it's going to go from from strength to strength and they'll start to commercialize it more and more hopefully they get the tv and the viewerships building year on year as in the same trajectory as what the participation is but i think it's a fantastic model and it's got that massive first mover advantage that it's a credible organized professional um sporting event now yeah no it's it's insane and i think they're doing a great job but likewise with everything that you're doing i think i think fitness is just getting better and better more people are getting involved tell you what they're not doing a great job is them sleds at the world last year when i when i i was the guinea pig who tried like that was you on that heavy sled lane there was i think there was like one or two heavy sled lanes i was i was on the heavy the the super sled lane um i for the world last year i thought that's like a bit of a superman right i can do everything so i flew in because obviously worlds is coming up next week so it's a bit topical i flew to um to boston to see new balance then i flew down to new york to see some of the nike guys down there and some other brands like coach then flew up to baltimore to see uh under armor and then went to Chicago afterwards.

57:30So I did full week of like back to back traveling thinking that, yeah, I can do this, no problem. Got there. Everyone said, don't be like far back in the pack for the sleds because the further you get back, the sleds are like rock. They're like stuck to the ground. You won't be able to push them. So make sure that you're prioritizing the leaders like the first 20 lanes because they're going to be the ones who get the best time. So we'll make sure we protect them lanes. So I was like, right, okay, no problem. I was absolutely gone. I did the worst time I've ever done. I was way back in the field, hit them sleds, was like game over after that point.

58:15I was like, this is a bad, bad day to be a higher-rocks athlete. No, it was tough. And like I said, the uproar afterwards was pretty crazy online. but yeah I think this year they've had a huge improvement yeah he said they have to move forward and if you don't if you're not making mistakes you're not moving forward quick enough but now they have to professionalize the sport they have to take risks that I respect them for doing so it'd be so easy to say is this like small niche so easy for them they're making loads of money stay as a small niche but they have to push them boundaries they have to take more risks they know and no one really appreciates the risk but it's like now look no everyone's forgotten about last year numbers have gone up what 50 again this year last year is just old news didn't you move forward yeah it's crazy within the high rock space we all think that it's the be all and end all when it's race day but by monday comes it's a new week and i suppose this is essentially like in business as well it's a new week people are looking forward and they're not looking on the past and they're not bothered about what you did at the weekend um it's part of progress yeah um How important is it to fail?

59:24Like I said just then, if you're not failing, you're not actually doing enough because if you're hitting every goal and you're hitting all your achievements and you're exactly where you want to be all the time, you're clearly not pushing yourself enough. I said to you five minutes ago, like last year, I achieved nothing. No fitness goals, nothing. But I made progress. so if you're not failing you're not actually moving forward at all because you're not learning your goals aren't big enough and I would say you're stuck in this comfort zone Would you analyse something that you failed at a lot more than if you'd won?

1:00:06Yeah The winning's finished afterwards The 2 out of 55 marathon if we tie it back to that finished, gone, done How much time do you actually spend and relish in that moment not enough not enough yeah i don't think anyone does that does it it's like any any win you know it's short-lived the losses yeah yeah you're the losses you have sleepless nights you're stress over you think about the wins they come and go and you're on to the next and it's you need to celebrate them wins more everyone does but it's i think it's human nature that you just as soon as you've you've had that one win you're that you know you're then off chasing the next one yeah and is that what you do i feel like a lot of people they get like post-competition or post-race blues where they've had this intense training block they've done the competition and then that week they feel almost like a little bit lost is what's the importance of like always like setting goals and always having new goals do you think there is an importance in that yeah i do but i also think it's important to have like a couple of months a year where you've got you just you just chilling and you just you're actually not so i'm going to after this the world i'm going to take like july and august and just just do maintenance training i don't want to think about any goals or anything i think it's been a long first half of the year i just want to take a step back and i think that's important as well i think you can get caught on the hamster wheel of going from one to another to another and to another and eventually you just break.

1:01:39So you need to give yourself some breathing room. Yeah, yeah. And I think a lot of people will be guilty of breaking. Yeah. I know I've experienced that before. And it is interesting. You look at the top FOMs in the world and sometimes they take a full month off where they don't do anything to do with their sport and then they get back to it. But it's all for the bigger picture. Yeah. I'm around a lot of boxers being with Everlast and that's how they train. They go into super maintenance mode and then they go into camps. Yeah. And they have the camp and it's like eight weeks to 12 week block and they are like on it day and night but after that they probably don't do a month of training just a bit of jogging then when they know the fights come in they'll start getting a bit more like shaving a little bit of the uh the cobwebs off and then they're into camp mode again so they do this like spike and peak and trough peak and trough a lot better than most other uh athletes yeah no it's uh it's really interesting and uh i think we can take a lot away from that like you say in everything in life because you can burn out yeah but you have you you've not burnt out yet no i i'm not gonna lie after the i'm feeling a little bit at the moment i just can't wait just to have a bit of a yeah a break you know it's been it's been a heavy heavy year so far that feeling like you're ready to race and do the tokyo marathon and you've done every single session you know what it's like doing them four times 5k blocks they're just awful right and when you've done them and then you know you've got to do it all again for the London Marathon and you could have done the time that for me was like mentally this is just why am I here but I've got to get through it now I've just got to get the job done yeah thank you Michael I appreciate it today thank you for having me it's been amazing best of luck with World Champs next week I'm definitely going to need it and I'm excited for you too and I'll be watching you yeah they're watching you on the friday night i'm gonna be coming i'll be watching you yeah it's gonna be a good weekend it'll be good what time you on on the saturday i actually don't know it i know it's in the morning but i don't think it's too early i think it's like 10 11 o 'clock yeah so i'm gonna i'm gonna get there gonna get my sim done today see where i'm at and then hopefully send it on uh next saturday and see if i can see if i can get a pb if not the journey continues well we'll be watching from the sidelines perfect cheers mate thank you