I’m cripplingly afraid to dream. I don’t like to write down my goals, although a lot of people I know and respect do, because I’m afraid I’ll find them at the end of the year or whatever time period it might be and find that they haven’t come true. I have been disappointed too many times to mention and I confess I now avoid putting myself in situations where I might be disappointed again.

How scaredy-cat is that thinking?

I make jokes about a man being outnumbered in a room with one woman because of her multiple personalities, but it’s no joke in my case. I have one scaredy-cat personality that doesn’t want to take any risks, just do what’s safe and predictable and pays the bills. This womanis fed up with crying and disappointment and never getting what she wants, so her solution is not to want much.

I have another personality who wants to be allowed to dream big, think big, be big. This year (well, today at least) I’m letting that woman out and I’m going to make some goals public.

Okay, in no particular order:

1. I will have paid public speaking engagements.
2. I will acheive my Advanced Communicator Bronze and Advanced Leader Bronze awards in Toastmasters.
3. I will set up an advanced speakers club in the Guildford area.
4. I will develop my leadership skills.
5. Guildford Harmony will achieve an improved placing at the national competition in October.
6. I will lose 20kgs.
7. I will have 6 Smart Talkers groups running in Woking and a plan in place for expanding to Guildford and further afield in 2013.
8. I will visit my friend Josepha in Munich.
9. I will go to Australia in November.
10. I will feel in control of my finances.
11. I will appreciate more and be grateful for it all.

The funny thing about this is that most people reading this will probably think these goals aren’t particularly huge. That’s okay. It’s massive for me to put it out there at all.

I suppose I should have a way of measuring these goals and a timeline for achieving them. Well, the deadline is December 31st 2012 and the measurement will be simple. I will have done the things I’ve listed. I have no idea how I’m going to do any of these things, but I hope by putting it down I have opened myself to the possibility of it all happening.

If nothing else, I’ve created a load of blog topics

A question for my audience member: when you set yourself a goal, do you imagine yourself at the end of the time period (31st December 2o12 in my case) having achieved your goal?

I don’t do that but I would like to hear about your experiences.

Source: Vanessa King’s Personal website & Blog – explore more here!

Hi Vanessa,

Firstly, I can confirm that you’re not alone with being afraid – I believe that (if we are truly honest) we all are!

However, you have taken a MASSIVE step in writing down your goals.

To answer your question with regards to ‘do you imagine yourself at the end of the time period,’ well, I will take my lessons from NLP expert Fiona Campbell here.

Fiona has given me advice in several areas with regards to this, so hopefully I pass on just a couple . . .

Firstly, it is essential that you consider your goals in the ‘present’ and not the ‘future’ – Fiona has summed this up by explaining to me that if you think of your goals as something you’ll achieve in the future, that is exactly where they remain, in the future. It makes sense, doessn’t it.

Secondly, I definitely visualise how it already feels to achieve my goals – I can clearly see myself running different parts of my ultra and know how it feels to complete it.

Hope this helps and I know Fiona will add far more than I can possibly do!

Great to have you on-board!

Kevin

If this article has inspired you to write down your goals for 2012 and share them, then please connect with the Maximise Potential site here and send them over!

Although it is only one day and a training session or two closer to the Games, something feels slightly mystical about the change in the year.

I know it sounds a bit dramatic, but I remember so clearly the feeling of entering a Paralympic year and, in each of my five Games, at that point you know as an athlete there is no turning back.

Even the most rational mind accepts that not being able to talk about the Games as being “next year” makes it feel different.

New Year’s Day will be another training day for many, but the festive period is probably also the last time athletes will have any real chance to spend some quality time with their families before the hectic period ahead.

A couple of weeks ago I was out at Olympic Park with some Paralympic and Olympic athletes from Team 2012 who are hoping to make it to the London Games, and to see it all through their eyes was incredibly exciting.

It is also the closest time in the five years since I retired that I have had those nerves right in the pit of my stomach. There is no doubt that while the exterior and interior of the venues are stunning, it is the finishing touches – things like the trees and plants as well the Games branding, flags and signposting – that will bring it alive.

London 2012 Paralympics

• Opening ceremony: 29 August
• Closing ceremony: 9 September
• 20 sports
• 4,300 athletes from 162 countries, including 300 on Team GB
• 500 gold medals up for grabs

It is important for the British team, which will number around 300, to be impressed with the facilities, but not blown away by them. They have to concentrate on performing – and winning the medals expected from them

Athletes like wheelchair racers David Weir and Shelly Woods, cyclists Jody Cundy and Sarah Storey, rower Tom Aggar, swimmers Ellie Simmonds, Sascha Kindred and Susie Rodgers and so many others will be targeting glory in front of their home crowd and hoping to impress the nation with their skill, power, athleticism and determination to win.

A home Games is going to bring some different challenges for all athletes.

For seasoned campaigners, the constant “good luck” from strangers needs to avoid becoming overpowering. For those first-timers, ParalympicGB is working hard to demystify the whole experience, but walking into the village for the first time, even for the most experienced athlete, can bring you to a stop.

I have always said the Games are going to be the best Paralympics we will have seen, and there is nothing that has moved me from that view.

Much is expected of the GB team in London but I am confident they will deliver and we will see some great performances and lots of medals.

One massive success already has been in ticketing for the Games, where there has been unprecedented demand. I applied for the maximum number of 10 sessions and only got tickets for two of them. This is great.

There has never been a Games that has sold tickets this early. We can still do with more spectators but I think that will come.

Although there are many positives, there are still some issues that should not be forgotten when the Games are over.

I’m sure the debate around legacy will continue and, while it can be planned for, not much more can be done until the Games is over.

For me, a better measure of change is the amount of access for the disabled as well as improving attitudes towards disabled people. Accessibility in the built environment still needs much improvement, but I also hope the Games can help ensure the public sees disabled people as included in society.

In the Games arena there will be the ongoing challenges around athlete reclassification. Classification is nowhere near as clear cut as you might assume and there is the potential for negativity in the press if an athlete is moved, especially if they are British.

Yes, there may be athletes who try to push the boundaries, but there are also ones who are genuine borderline cases, and it is a tough call for the authorities to make.

I can understand why a lot work is going on to stop reclassification at Games time, but I think there needs to be some form of sanction to ratchet up the importance of this issue and concentrate each country’s mind on getting it right in the first place.

We also need to keep the pressure on regarding funding beyond the Games. It is important to remember the London Games is not the end of the cycle. It is the a step along the way and it is important to ensure funding is maintained to ensure success in Rio in 2016 and beyond.

Source: news.bbc.co.uk

FURTHER ARTICLES AND RESOURCES:

• INSPIRING INTERVIEW: Click here to listen to an inspiring interview with David Weir, most successful wheelchair racer in marathon history
• ARTICLES AND RESOURCES: Click here to view more articles and resources on London 2012 Paralympics

What started off as an exchange of ideas can then turn into a one-way street where someone goes from being interesting and helpful, for example, to dull and droning on.

Maybe they don’t value their time; they certainly don’t value yours.  It’s an interesting conundrum.  If you know you’re ready to move on and it’s time to get going, how do you politely, assertively and intentionally wind up that conversation and move on to your next one?

Firstly I put to you, there’s the ‘mind’ piece.  If you know your intention is to meet people, to find out how people are doing, to contribute where you can and to show up in a way that means people remember you were there, well then that’s the first thing to keep in mind.  You can also assume other people will have a positive intention similar to that.  No-one’s ever going to say to you “Oh no, I only came here to bang on about myself, to tell people how great I think I am and then to leave having met as few people as possible” – they just won’t ever say that, even if it is their intention.  Unfortunately for us, some people, unconsciously or otherwise, do have that very intention and when you find yourself stuck it can be really tricky to move on without being rude or finding yourself apologizing.

To respectfully and assertively steer yourself away – and this works just as well socially as it does professionally -  you need to be able to say a couple of things really clearly and I’ve chosen, from my extensive ‘treasure chest’ of ways and words, a simple example you can use straight away.  Plus of course, the behind-the-curtain thinking in saying it.

It goes like this:

“Well, it’s been great chatting with you Jane/John and I particularly enjoyed hearing about XYZ.  I know you’ll be wanting to chat with other people too so I won’t monopolise you any more and ABC etc.”

Behind-the-curtain thinking:

1. The word ‘Well’ immediately implies a change in rhythm or tempo is about to occur.  ‘Well’ is a summing up word and it tells the other person that you’re about to change direction or round up.  My trusty Mac says: ‘Well – used to introduce the resumption of a narrative or a change of subject’.
2. “It’s been great chatting with you” – you’re putting it in the past tense.  The subtle reference that the chatting is over is still easy to say and comfortable because it has been – it’s just that now you’re ready to move on.
3. “I particularly enjoyed hearing about XYZ” – you’re summarizing what you found useful or interesting which shows you’ve listened and engaged with the conversation.  ‘Enjoyed’ is in the past tense too.
4. “I know you’ll be wanting” tells the other person what you assume to be true and you’re presuming that their intention is to “chat with other people too” ie mine is, so I’m assuming yours is too.
5. “I won’t monopolise you anymore” – this is where you take the responsibility for what could be happening but in reality, you’re ready to disengage and so it’s both assertive and self-deprecating at the same time.  A powerful combination.
6. ‘and ABC’ is where you can say what happens next – if anything.  “and I’ll call you next week” or “and thanks for your advice” or “and enjoy the rest of your evening too”.

Well, now you can just move on.

How do I learn more about Kay?

To have the opportunity to discuss any blind spots you know you have or things that are slowing you down or holding you back as you connect, persuade and compel people at work; click here to apply for a complimentary conversation with Kay.

Article reproduced with permission of Kay White, Communication Specialist and Mentor at www.wayforwardsolutions.com. Kay shows professionals how to be understood. Get quicker, faster and better results by becoming a more effective, influential and savvy communicator – everywhere in your life.

In addition, you can listen to an exclusive interview with Kay where she shares several exclusive tips on how to immediately make your communication more powerful and persuasive: http://www.maximisepotential.co.uk/how-to-develop-effective-powerful-communication/

One of the most often overlooked aspects of leadership is the need for pursuit. Great leaders are never satisfied with traditional practice, static thinking, conventional wisdom, or common performance. In fact, the best leaders are simply uncomfortable with anything that embraces the status quo. Leadership is pursuit – pursuit of excellence, of elegance, of truth, of what’s next, of what if, of change, of value, of results, of relationships, of service, of knowledge, and of something bigger than themselves. In the text that follows I’ll examine the value of being a pursuer…

Here’s the thing – pursuit leads to attainment. What you pursue will determine the paths you travel, the people you associate with, the character you develop, and ultimately, what you do or don’t achieve. Having a mindset focused on pursuit is so critical to leadership that lacking this one quality can sentence you to mediocrity or even obsolescence. The manner, method, and motivation behind any pursuit is what sets truly great leaders apart from the masses. If you want to become a great leader, become a great pursuer.

A failure to embrace pursuit is to cede opportunity to others. A leader’s failure to pursue clarity leaves them amidst the fog. Their failure to pursue creativity relegates them to the routine and mundane. Their failure to pursue talent sentences them to a world of isolation.  Their failure to pursue change approves apathy. Their failure to pursue wisdom and discernment subjects them to distraction and folly. Their failure to pursue character leaves a question mark on their integrity. Let me put this as simply as I can – you cannot attain what you do not pursue.

Smart leaders understand it’s not just enough to pursue, but pursuit must be intentional, focused, consistent, aggressive, and unyielding. You must pursue the right things, for the right reasons, and at the right times. Perhaps most of all, the best forms of pursuit enlist others in the chase. Pursuit in its purest form is highly collaborative, very inclusive and easily transferable. Pursuit operates at greatest strength when it leverages velocity and scale.

I also want to caution you against trivial pursuits – don’t confuse pursuit with simple goal setting. Outcomes are clearly important, but as a leader, it’s what happens after the outcome that you need to be in pursuit of. Pursue discovery, seek dissenting opinions, develop your ability unlearn by embracing how much you don’t know, and find the kind of vision that truly does see around corners. Don’t use your pursuits to shift paradigms, pursue breaking them. Knowing what not to pursue is just as important as knowing what to pursue.

It’s important to keep in mind that nothing tells the world more about a leader than what or who they pursue – that which you pursue is that which you value. If you message to your organization you value talent, but don’t treat people well and don’t spend time developing the talent around you, then I would suggest you value rhetoric more than talent. Put simply, you can wax eloquent all you like, but your actions will ultimately reveal what you truly value.

Lastly, the best leaders pursue being better leaders. They know to fail in this pursuit is nothing short of a guarantee they’ll be replaced by those who don’t. All leaders would be well served to go back to school on what I refer to as the science of pursuitology.

Article source: forbes.com

FURTHER ARTICLES AND RESOURCES

• MOTIVATING INTERVIEW: Tony Dobbyn – How I Motivate a Team to achieve Amazing Results (Max#17)
• INSPIRING ARTICLES AND RESOURCES: Click here to view a range of inspiring articles and Resources

Having had a few days back in the UK i’ve finally had some time to digest what has been an incredible expedition to Ama Dabla, which was kindly sponsored and supported by Karrimor and Tag Heuer, and a trip that has never made me feel so alive and so grateful to be a mountaineer.

Ama Dablam is truly the most beautiful mountain I have ever seen, and being face to face with it- climbing that perfect Granite, was just WOW.

The trip didn’t really start off this way however!

After long delays in Kathmandu nerves were building, by the time myself and my team (emma, rosamond and tim) had made it into the Khumbu and were spying Ama we were absolutely terrified- looking at it, you’d think it was almost impossible to climb.

I said to myself again and again: “this will be the last, no more expeditions, just finish this and then get a normal job which has a higher chance of survival”

It made me feel better to think that I would never have to endure the suffering that was about to unfold again. I KNEW what was coming, i think that was the problem.

We finally made it to base camp and Ama loomed over us- at night it’s white flanks were illuminated in the moon light and the stars shone about it. It was always there. Even lying in my tent at night i was aware of its presence and was thinking: “will this be the one where my luck runs out?”

The route takes a never ending rocky ridge line up the the summit fields- where the angle is steep to the point of needing to front point on your crampons. The hanging glacier (dablam) sits precariously to the left, and the final top out is a straight push up steep ice and snow. The summit is crevassed and will one day collapse. The entire route is fixed with anchors which in the UK i wouldn’t dream of using as protection- the mushroom ridge for instance, boasting stakes wobbling like jelly in loose, sugary snow.

The day before the summit push i had a wash at basecamp, I emptied out the bowl of dirty water, turned around and saw a familiar face: “lakpa?” it was lakpa Wongchu! The climbing sherpa who had been with me on Everest summit day, without his help would i be here today? Not sure. I owe him and others my life. We hugged, and then i duly burst into sobs of tears. Nice.

This trip had made me realise just how much that day still haunts me- more than anything i wanted to climb this mountain to prove to Lakpa and to the people who helped me that day that i was capable of descending without getting injured. It’s a vulgar word but this mountain for me was about ‘closure’… putting an end to the demons that have haunted me ever since the 17th May 2010.

The real climbing on the mountain starts after camp 1. When it comes to expeditions i am very anal- if we say we’re leaving at 8am i am walking out of camp at one second past 8. Luckily, Lakpa Wongchu was also ready and thus we had a great head start on the way up to camp 3- nobody in front of us for the entire route, no waiting around at anchors. Just the two of us climbing in unison and moving quickly over the terrain that Lakpa new so well.

I said to Lakpa that if he took lots of photos he could have my cannon 500D, which he happily agreed to- so all these photos are his, and he did an awesome job.

The climbing from camp 1 to 3 is great fun- lots of rock, the most perfect granite i have ever seen and if this mountain was at sea level it would have some fantastic climbing routes on it in the VS to HVS range.

The route follows the jagged ridge line up to the bottom of the summit pyramid. Theres lots of traversing, short pitches of climbing and also the infamous yellow tower (HVS rock climb) and grey tower (scottish grade III gulley)both were exhilirating- especially the top of the yellow tower where you are presented with an overhang- i threw my hand over the top, found a hold and just hauled my body over onto the platform, thousands of feet of air and cloud beneath me- just wow.

The grey tower was more exhausting- by this point we had put on crampons and whilst this had its benefits it also made my intuition when trying to climb a little confused- anyway, i scratched my way up and used the jumar to ascend when i had the energy- though generally wherever possible on the mountain i tried to use my hands and feet to get higher- jumaring reguires far too much brute strength and i find that after 2 or 3 (sometimes 1) pull on it and i am gasping for breath- plus it aggravates my back, so i climbed as much as possible, using the jumar as a safety and anchor for resting on route- which is nice!

Throughout the trip i was using a karrimor X-Lite rucsac which was perfect for this terrain- the lightest pack i have ever used and very slim so that it didn’t get in the way of the climbing. I was also wearing a Karrimor baselayer (pink) which is quite a novel colour in the hills!

Finally made camp 3 and the morning dawned on summit day- we decided to leave at 8, and so we were- bang on. Lakpa and I moving at our steady pace, soon we were ahead and had nobody infront of us all the way to the summit- looking up, the mountain was all ours.

The climbing in the early hours was tough, the altitude (now above 6000m) was beginning to bite, and the blinding exhaustion as lactic acid builds up in your body after a few moments of effort started to become the norm. it was also very cold- but i had my headphones on (playing chase and status, naturally) and could see the halo of the sun up above me, I could also see the golden tint to the snow up ahead which signalled warmth- it drove me on, and i climbed as fast as i could until i was bathed in that beautiful sunlight.

At around 10am i got a call over the radio, Lakpa passed it to me. it was Henry from BC, he said: “Bonita, you’re about to pass a dead body. Please remember that there’s nothing you can do- the soul has gone. Stay calm and go past it, just stay calm. I’m here if you need me.”

I could see him up ahead, on the route, tied into the fixed lines. He had died 48 hours previously. All i could think was: his family. And then: ‘i want to speak to my dad. I can’t do this until i’ve spoken to him.’

Lakpa, patted my back and signalled for us to carry on. When we got above him at an anchor we both said a prayer and poured water into the snow as an offering. Then we carried onto the summit, i couldn’t stop crying.

Finally, we made it- Lakpa and I stook on the top of Ama Dablam at 11.45 on the 17th November 2011. We had made it 3.45minutes out of camp 3- a great effort, but in the back of my mind i was already thinking about the descent- we were halfway.

First of all we sat and ate chocolate, then stood up on the big, flat plateau that is the summit and took photos of each other. I put on my karrimor down jacket to keep warm whilst we weren’t moving so much.

When we sat down again we were looking at Everest. I said to Lakpa: “you saved my life over there, i know that” He didn’t look me in the eye, but nodded. It was closure, finally- exactly 18 months to the day since it had happened.

We descended back to camp by abseiling and arm wrapping in around 2 hours, and the next day back to base camp.

I came into base camp ahead of the others for no other reason than that i wanted to walk alone. When i arrived in the evening twilight Pasang Tempa grabbed me by the bum and lifted me in the air! Henry said to me: “Bonita, you’ve done a 360- the difference between this and Everest is a 360, well done”

That night i got into my tent and laid down on (wait for it) a thin tent mattress, karrimat and a thermarest- it was THE most comfortable bed i have ever lain on and as i sunk into it all the stresses and worries and doubts that you take with you on the mountain melted away. I was blissfully happy. it was a perfect ascent and i had Lakpa and Henry to thank for it. I thought about the man we had passed, said a prayer and then thanked God that i was still alive.

As we flew back to Kathmandu a few days later from Lukla I surveyed the Khumbu from above- this little known part of the world has become by chance the most important of places in my little life. I know i will visit again, many, many times.

I thought as we flew away from the Himalayas and back to the city- this trip, this mountain, this country- taking the risk, knowing that i could fail utterly- but getting to climb with Lakpa and thank him for what he did as we looked across at Everest from the summit of Ama Dablam- the whole experience has simply bought me back to life.

I’m ready and psyched for the future, my love affair with the hills has been re-ignited and I can’t wait to take on more challenges in the mountains in the years ahead.

Taking the risk on Ama bought me from the dark back into the light. Never give up on what you love. There will be good times as well as bad- and both are needed to truly live.

It begins again in the spring! Lhotse is calling.

Article Source: bonita norris blogspot.com

FURTHER ARTCILES AND RESOURCES:

• Inspiring Interview: Bonita Norris – How I became the youngest british woman to climb Mount Everest (Max#18)
• Inspiring Interview: Bonita Norris – How I set goals (Max#33)
• Articles and Resources: Click here to view more articles and resources about Bonita Norris

Here is an article we found recently regarding how she and other female  explorers are setting a good example to young girls today:

The arrival of Amelia Hempleman-Adams, 16, at the South Pole last week was an arresting sight. Since Roald Amundsen’s conquering of the bottom of the Earth exactly 100 years ago, polar adventuring has largely been the preserve of rugged, bearded men.

But since the female polar pioneers of the 1980s, more and more women have trekked to the poles. The latest group to take up the challenge are noticeable by their youth – not to mention their good looks.

Taking on the ice caps is by no means a young woman’s game just yet but the new female explorers have told the Standard they are proud of the example they are setting to girls growing up.

Bonita Norris, 24

On her blog Bonita Norris, left, describes herself as “an average girl” but the stories of daring the 24-year-old already has to tell suggest otherwise.

In May last year she became the youngest British woman ever to climb Everest, having previously become the youngest woman to scale Nepal’s Mount Manaslu, the world’s eighth-highest mountain.

Her triumph on Everest brought fame and lucrative contracts for the telegenic Norris, but it almost ended in disaster. On the way down from the summit she slipped badly, hurting her back; her legs quickly froze until she couldn’t feel her feet, leaving her in danger of frostbite. Kenton Cool, the professional mountaineer who helped her reach the summit, described her state as “a shocking situation”.

After extra sherpas were sent up the mountain with oxygen and medical equipment she was bound up with her legs tied together and lowered down by her climbing harness. Cool described it as “one of the most harrowing things I’ve experienced” and Norris told the Standard the experience was “like nothing on Earth”.

Norris survived to tell her tale to a receptive media and to garner the rewards of an expedition that had raised thousands for children’s charity Global Angels. Within months she had signed up to front an advertising campaign for car manufacturer Nissan and was speaking in schools about her dramatic fall in Everest’s “dead zone”.

In May this year she reached the North Pole with Alan Chambers and is now planning for her next big adventure, the one that would complete “the trilogy” of exploring – a trip to the South Pole with the Karrimor team next winter.

The not-so-average Norris – whose father works in the roofing business and who went to school at The Holt, a girls’ comprehensive in Wokingham – told the Standard the previous lack of female participation in extreme exploration was due more to lack of interest than physical aptitude.

“I don’t think many women have wanted to take on challenges like this. I went to a girls’ school and we were encouraged to go and achieve things as an individual. Maybe that had an effect on me.”

Article Source: London evening standard.co.uk

FURTHER ARTICLES AND RESOURCES:

• Inspiring Interview: Bonita Norris – How I became the youngest british woman to climb Mount Everest (Max#18)
• Inspiring Interview: Bonita Norris – How I set goals (Max#33)
• Articles and Resources: Click here to view more articles and resources about Bonita Norris

Kevin: Welcome to Maximise Potential the podcast to educate and motivate through a range of original interviews designed to help you maximise your potential.  Brought to you in association with the award winning recruitment group Jenrick.

Okay welcome back to episode 36 of the Maximise Potential Podcast and the second instalment of our interview with Richard Hume.  The first question that most of you will be asking is how on earth Richard can top an event which was as extreme as the triple Ironman.  Well Richard is also one of a very select group of people to have completed the Atlantic Ocean rowing race.  This gruelling 3000 mile event which can take over 80 days to complete challenges competitors in ways not comparable to most other endurance events.  Dealing with the isolation, the monotony, the sickness in addition to the extreme elements of the Atlantic Ocean can all prove too much for so many people who attempt this incredible event.  Yet as Richard will describe in his interview competing in a race of this magnitude is only one of the many challenges that an amateur athlete has to overcome.

Here is Richard once again to take us on another of his incredible journeys.

Music

Okay Richard I am going to carry on with this very interesting interview now after you have just left me well quite stunned as to how long that triple Ironman event actually took but equally I was also left with how well you performed in it which I just find phenomenal.  I mean you are still sitting here just saying well I am an average guy and I look up to these other people and I am sitting here right now going this is pretty incredible.  But we are now going to talk about another incredible event that you have done which is the transatlantic row.  Two people in a rowing boat you start off from I believe just off Tenerife and you just row right across the Atlantic.

Richard: Yeah through to Antigua.

Kevin: And this is exactly the same row that I know was very publicised when it was James Cracknel and Ben Fogel did it.

Richard: Yeah the same organisation, the same race. They took 50 days and had, it is very weather dependable, they had 50 days of beautiful weather and we had 72 days of different weather. But yeah it was three years in the making or three years in the process of planning and raising the money and getting to the start line.  Yeah the race itself was an interesting experience.

Kevin: Well before we get on to that lets talk about the three years in the making.  I think most people struggle to commit themselves to goals that are anything beyond a month so let’s talk a bit about.

Richard: When I came upon the race and saw it in an article it was about two New Zealanders who were about to do the first race in ’97 decided there and then that that was going to be one of the races I wanted to do.

Kevin: That was on your original list.

Richard: That was on my list yeah.  And I made a few enquiries about it because I just wanted to see what was going on and actually on one of my enquiries with the company that did it they sent me a poster that then sat on my bedroom wall at either school or university or wherever it went it just sat there.  Weirdly I met the guy who was on the boat in the photo the other day which was kind of cool, he thought I was weird.  Anyway the preparation for that was that I had a few false starts in terms I was telling everybody I was going to row the Atlantic and then they, I got told ‘that’s stupid you are 17/18/19’ whenever I was saying it and then I also had a lot of people who wanted to do it with me because I was actively trying to find a partner.  But when you then, people say ‘yeah I want to do it, I want to do it’ and then say well right okay lets go to the pub and sit down and talk about finance and stuff ‘oh I don’t think I can do it’ you know all that kind of stuff.  And it was in December 2005 I think it was that I went through all my email addresses and just wrote them the final, final email.  And I wrote a few and had no responses back nothing, no replied whatsoever.

So I was like oh okay this is not going too well I am actually going to have to do this on my own.  I also then got a phone call in early January from my then, from a guy who was four years above me at university who for some reason I had his email address and just said ‘hi Rich you have completely ruined my Christmas’ and I was like ‘oh hi Tom how are you what have you been up to why have I ruined your Christmas?’ ‘I can’t stop thinking about rowing the Atlantic’ and that was when the process then began.

Kevin: Incredible.  I still find it stunning that this was something that you completed pretty much a year ago but you started sending those emails in 2005.  It just really again confirms to me the way your, if we want to call it, your mind works in terms of the way you have set these goals for yourself or you have set targets going back all those years coming off the issue with your back and it really ever since then has acted almost like a barometer for the rest of your life.

Richard: Yeah rowing the Atlantic was a very abnormal event to try and pass through people.  It took a while to just get people round the idea that you were thinking about doing it.  You then go through a stage of not even asking people whether you can do it, it is telling them that you are going to go and do it.  You know mum and dad if I said ‘I am thinking about rowing the Atlantic’ it would be a firm ‘No’.  If I just turn round and say ‘I am rowing the Atlantic’ they haven’t got much ground to stand on, on either side.

It is also a very expensive project to do.  The provisional budget for it is about £60,000 and we saw it as a sort of building project.  So we thought it was going to be about an £80,000 project.  I had just come out of university I had very few contacts in the business world; I had very little money behind me I knew that I had to start that early to do it.  And that is where you know coming back from the last interview it is about amateurs and professionals.  But the professionals will have that sponsorship behind them the amateurs don’t and we have to really graft in terms of trying to find the funds.  Just trying to get somebody to believe in you and even just to get to the number two of a company you have got to go through the secretary and if the secretary doesn’t believe in you, you are never going to get to the person you need to talk to.

Kevin: Can I ask you it is along this subject but do you actually find that this bit of the process is actually harder than actually doing the events themselves?

Richard: The rowing was the first event that I had ever asked anybody for sponsorship.  Some people had very kindly helped for the triple Ironman but they were more we are going to sponsor you I never asked them for it because I knew that at some point the rowing was going to happen and I knew that at some point I was going to have to badger every single one of my friends for ten quid or fifteen, twenty quid and I knew that if I had done that for a marathon or an Ironman or something like that I would be on quite touchy grounds. It is definitely the hardest part of the event; the event is always the cherry on top of the cake.  Getting to the start line is the hard part and if you ever turn up to an event and you don’t think that you are going to finish because you are under prepared there is no point even starting.  So that really is the hardest part.  The rowing is slightly different because it is so long to be out at sea but if you haven’t got the food on board you are not going to last very long.

Kevin: No.

Richard: If you haven’t got the safety equipment on board you are not going to last very long.

Kevin: So where did that sponsorship money I mean you are saying friends but it must, I mean there is no way friends can come up with all of that so?

Richard: Our biggest donation was £5,000 and that was through a friend of mine who had been put in charge of his grandfathers trust fund to be used for charitable causes and we were very fortunate that we were raising money for a charity called Ataxia UK and anything that was given on Just Giving they very kindly gave half back to us to help us cover our costs which is very unusual for a charity to do but a really great way for them to pull in these bigger events for lesser charities.  So we raised a bit of money from that.  The key one for us was that Tom works for a big company that has a big turnover of mobile phones and they let us have all their second hand mobile phones for a period of time and we sold them on to these companies that buy mobile phones and I think we made about £15,000 and it is staggering the amount, I think it is like £120 for a Blackberry and how many businesses use Blackberrys – hundreds.  So it is a really creative way of doing it.

From personal sponsorship we knew we didn’t have anything more than £1,500.  Our biggest company on its own was £3,000.  So it was lots of little ones. But no we were lucky and we have still got to sell the boat now and if we sell the boat we would have, myself and Tom would have put in about £2,500 so we are still going to be short but we were away from home for five months and you know we raised £20,000 for charity.

Kevin: Exactly.

Richard: So you know it does, we did run an expensive project but it was well worth it.  You know only 500 odd people have ever rowed an ocean before but this is something that I have done and not many other people have.

Kevin: So let’s talk about that.  How did it happen? How did you train for this?

Richard: The training side of it I was always quite fit and of course the preparation for the rowing took place whilst I was doing the triple Ironman.  So the core foundation of fitness was definitely there.  Not that you have to be very fit to do the rowing because it is much more of a mental game but I did spend a lot of time putting a lot of weight on. I put a lot of effort into trying to make myself stronger because doing things like the triple Ironman you get weaker and weaker and weaker.  And I spent a lot of time in the rowing machine.  That was my main principal.  I decided it would be quite a good thing to perhaps learn how to row so I had ten one hour lessons so that was a key to it.

Kevin: How much did that help you? Did it open your eyes up to the technicalities of rowing?

Richard: Well rowing an ocean rowing boat is very different.  So an ocean rowing boat is a ton once it is fully laden and also little things like on a boat that you would have on a river your hands cross over one another.  They never do on an ocean rowing boat because if a wave hits the oar it will smash up into the second oar and you will end up with a broken hand after the first 30 seconds.  So there is very different things in terms of technique to it.  I also used it as a way to get over my sea sickness because I get horrifically sea sick.  And in fact when you go to La Gomera which is where we started and you fly to Tenerife and then you get the ferry across, I was on that ferry with my ‘I am rowing the Atlantic’ t-shirt on and I came off the boat to be greeted by an ITN crew who were filming for another team who were out there holding two sick bags.  I had spent the last half hour just being chronically ill.  And when I came home I took a friend from Waterloo to Greenwich on the ferry and I got sea sick on that.  So I am horrific when it comes to sea sickness.

Kevin: Maybe you have got a unique place in history.

Richard: Even the triple Ironman the last half an hour of the swim when all the pleasure boats came out I started to get sea sick. I mean I am awful absolutely awful.  So that was another thing I had to try and get over but didn’t.  And then the rest of it was we just had meeting after meeting after meeting.  There is so much stuff that has to go on.  We had to find a boat to begin with.  We then had to refit it, respray it, get all the food, get all the safety gear, get all the medical gear, get all the sun cream, get all the electrics done.  I mean the list is endless, absolutely endless.  And we were very lucky that my rowing partners father who was semi retired was a similar mindset to me in terms of he likes to get his teeth set into things, he didn’t want to row the Atlantic but he was happy to be our sort of team manager which meant that it took the work load of myself and Tom massively.  You know we could literally send him an email saying we need to sort this out off you go and he was worth a million dollars.

Kevin: Incredible you’ve touched on I would say time and time again about the importance of and I think you used the expression how lucky you have been to have people around you to actually shoulder some of this burden, to support you, support crews and what not.  Can I ask why you think that they have been so dedicated.

Richard: Because I am an outstandingly nice guy.  No, um, I don’t really know I don’t want to tempt fate because they might all disappear but I think people like living with the idea that they have done something.  And if they can’t do it they like the idea of knowing they have been heavily involved in it.  I mean Julian who helped me with the triple Ironman he’s so clean and so organised it just irritates the crap out of me. But when you are doing a triple Ironman you need somebody there sharp the whole time.  You know if I sort of say I would like a ham and cheese sandwich it is made 30 seconds later absolutely perfectly how I like it.  That is worth a million dollars.  Like I say I don’t want to tempt fate and say that they are all going to be here forever because they won’t.

Kevin: Yeah definitely and I am sure that a lot of it comes back to the effort that they can see you putting in, the dedication that they see you and they know that you are not in, that you are in for this in for a penny in for a pound.  You are in this 100% committed and they obviously see that and they say well I am not wasting my time here.

Richard: But most people can’t relate to say rowing the Atlantic until I say I can’t row and I get seasick.  And all of a sudden they start thinking oh okay this is obviously a little bit more normal than perhaps it was before I met this guy.  And I think then people then want to get involved.  We were amazed at the amount of people who you know the guy who did our electrics on the boat he had spent 50 years putting electrical systems in people’s houses he had never done an ocean rowing boat before.  He was so intrigued it wasn’t a big job he was just happy to spend hours on our rowing boat just fascinated by the whole process.  So yeah the more unique the event gets the better.

Kevin: So let’s talk about the event itself apart from the fact that you know seasick and everything else talk us through what it is like to actually row across the Atlantic.

Richard: Mentally I found it very, very hard.  Day four I rang home I wasn’t planning to the first week they said how are you getting on, I was absolutely fine and then I started crying and from that day onwards I realised that if I cried for half an hour a day I could get all that frustration, all the anxiety, all the stress out of my system in that one half hour period and then I would okay for the rest of the day.  So bar a very few days I cried every single day pretty much.  I learnt little tricks along the way so we took a lot of tinned fruit to begin with because I knew that seasickness was going to be a big problem for me but if I could take something that was easy to go down it was also easy to come back up again.  That makes the whole seasickness thing a little bit less daunting and because there is a lot of liquid in fruit you are still absorbing something.

A little claim to fame on the rowing is that we were the only crew that experienced seasickness that carried on rowing.  So a lot of other crews stopped waited for the seasickness to be normal again and then they started rowing. So that was a real bonus for us.  I got very horrific sort of stage fright with being so near Tom the whole time.  It took me 21 days to do a poo just because I just couldn’t, I had nowhere to go, I had no privacy.  It was just awful.  We took about I think it was about 6000 calories of food per day for 60 days and then 2000 for the remaining 30 days.  We took 90 days worth of food.  I got stuck on about 1000 I just couldn’t eat the dried sort of astronaut food that we were having.  So I ended up eating soup, noodles, haribo and hobnobs.  That was what we had onboard.

So you know little things like that just start to grind you down but I always made sure that I was clean.  So you know when you do eventually go to the loo or salt sores just make sure that you are clean the whole time.  That sort of takes the physical side out of it.  I cleaned my teeth every day.  You know little things that actually make a big difference.  You slowly get into a routine and that routine builds into each day and day in day out it just goes quite quickly.

Kevin: Is that really how it is?

Richard: That is how it is you just have to get a routine.  It then gets disrupted when the weather is very bad and you have to go and anchor and you can’t row because the weather is going too strong against you.  Then you need to use that period to rest.  Really interestingly my back for the first time in my life didn’t hurt once when I was actually rowing it was when I stopped rowing and I was stuck in a cabin for three or four days that it was just horrific it was so painful.  So we just did little things like that.  You know every day we would jump in the water.  Well Tom after day one but after sort of three weeks I built up the confidence to jump into the sea.  So after each day we would just jump into the water wash or freshen ourselves up, come back onboard then we would wash ourselves with fresh water because we had a water maker that changed salt water to fresh water and if we did that every single day we just felt a lot more sort of refreshed and reenergised and alive.
The wildlife was fantastic and that was something that really kept me going.

Kevin: Go on what did you see talk about it.

Richard: We saw whales, dolphins.  We had what I thought was a tuna fish and so we called it ‘Terry the Tuna’ hanging around us for just week after week and he arrived on about day three and he left us with about two days to go and so I mean that was just staggering.  Of course it could have been a different fish but it looked the same.  So we had all those fish, we had ‘Terrance the Turtle.  I went through a phase of naming everything and so we had ‘Willie and Wilma the Whales’, ‘Bertie the Bird’.  We had quite a few birds that we just could not work out where they went at night time because there was nothing around.  I mean there was one point where the nearest point of land was about 1500 miles away.  And we had ‘Nemo and Nema’ who were two little funny Nemo fish that used to hang around underneath the boat.  So that was a real eye opener for me.  That was really amazing and to see wild dolphins, to see a wild whale knowing that if the whale decides to swim into you he is probably going to break the boat up you know was amazing things to see.

The tankers we saw were huge, absolutely massive and to see them chugging along knowing that you are there but not being able to see you is again quite daunting.  The flat calms seas, the really big seas that we had, the massively hot days and then the horrible sort of dark skies at night time so you couldn’t see where the water started and where the sky finished sort of thing.  You know all those sorts of things were just amazing.

Kevin: How vulnerable did you feel?

Richard: Not at all, no we, you know if you go to a new country you go into the airport and you feel instantly comfortable or you don’t.  It is a little bit like that and when we went to have a look for the different rowing boats because we bought a second hand rowing boat. We had a look at a few of them and we were kind of like yeah this is good, this is not good, don’t feel very comfortable. We found one that we got in and I just turned around to Tom and said this is it; this is the boat we are going to do it in.  So I never felt vulnerable.  I felt unsure of myself at times you know we got hit by a really big wave on the third week I think it was and arguably that should have tipped us over even though the rowing boat was self right you still lose a lot of kit.  Had it done that and we were only three weeks in so we weren’t a million miles away from land it could have been a different story but the boat just rode the wave and we kept on going and that was a real confidence booster for me.  I mean I am not a sea person I have never really spent any time in the sea whatsoever so everything was a learning curve but because I am so strict on myself for preparation I knew how every system worked on that boat.  I knew how everything could be fixed if it would break.  The preparation was so key I never, ever felt unsure of what we were doing.

Kevin: This is, I mean preparation is something.

Richard: It is such a key because you are doing events that can ultimately kill you and I don’t like the idea of doing an event that is going to kill me.  I wanted to make sure that when I went across the Atlantic I felt completely at ease with what I was doing.  It doesn’t mean I found it easy but yeah that was.

Kevin: And hence that’s why you didn’t feel vulnerable because you felt prepared.  You felt.

Richard: Yeah the only time we felt slightly vulnerable I guess was when a massive great tanker was coming towards us and it didn’t pick us up on the radio or anything and it was just going straight for us.  And I was rowing at the time and I ended up turning the boat sort of side on and then just sort of rowing for my life and the boat missed us by about 400 meters.  Now 400 meters might seem like quite a lot but when you have got an 800 meter long tanker weight a gazillion tons that if they hit you and went through you would not even know they have hit anything you are not going to play chicken with it.  That was probably the only time that, vulnerable is probably not the right word but maybe a little bit scared, apprehensive is slightly better.  That was the only time and then we did, the weather was really poor and then when we did eventually hit Antiga it was weirdly an anticlimax but also amazing.

Kevin: Before you do talk about that lets talk about the fact that, that was the first goal pretty much that you wrote down on that list going right back when you were a teenager.  If you can remember how did you think that you were going to feel all those years later by doing it and how did the actual event live up to that?

Richard: I don’t think I ever believed I would actually do it.  I mean everybody has these goals and aspirations but how many of us actually achieve them.  Not very many.  So here I just don’t think I ever really believed until the day that we arrived that we were actually going to row the Atlantic.  And even when we were arriving we got told that we would see Antiga about 80 miles from land which is ridiculous because the horizon is only about seven miles away.  Well we saw it with only about nine miles to go and we were thinking for every single one of those miles between mile nine and mile 80 have we come to the right place, is our compass reading the right direction you know is it there, is it there.  And then of course you do see it and you have got a landmark to see how slowly you are going.  You know we saw it at six in the morning and we didn’t get there until eight at night, it was only nine miles just because we were fighting against the currents and everything else that was going.  So it was a real kind of catch 22.  It was fantastic we had seen Antiga but it was also a bit of a pain because we suddenly realised how slow we were going in those last couple of days because the current was so strong going against us.

Kevin: Yeah and when you are out at sea of course without that to influence.

Richard: Yeah we had no idea, we knew how far we were going but you lose concept on how far a mile is because all you see is horizon after horizon after horizon.  You get a bit of a reality check sometimes when you see a boat on the horizon and before you know it it’s on the horizon on the other side of the boat.  Yes that was a bit of an interesting experience.  And then when we actually crossed the finish line there was the boat which had the race organiser on to say we had crossed the finish line.  He honked his horn and there was nobody else there we were kind of like hooray there is nobody here what do we do.  And we were knackered by that point because we rowed two of us together.  Because during the actual race you just row one up the whole time but for the last three days we had rowed together pretty much nonstop because our friends and family were in Antiga we had been delayed so much that they were having to miss work and not get paid for missing work or whatever their situation was.  So we got offered a tow in from the finish line the port which was about a mile away and then we got in there and all hell broke loose and we hadn’t seen anybody for the best part of 80 days or 70 days and all of a sudden there was 50 or 60 people there all wanting to see us and cheer us in.  And Ben Fogle happened to be on holiday and he had never seen a rowing boat come in so he came down and saw us in.  You know my mum was there, all of Tom’s family was there.  You are jumping on to dry land and it is kind of like wow the land is firm under my feet which is you know, you then get seasick again from being land sick. Which is a whole different experience.

Yeah we had been radioed into the boat the night before saying what would we like when we crossed the finish line and we said crunchy nut cornflakes and a burger.  And we got there and there was a little romantic meal for two of us.  I mean me and my rowing partner we got on fine but the last thing I wanted to do was then sit and have a meal with him whilst I hit dry land sort of thing and there we were having a burger and crunchy nut cornflakes.  The food was fresh, we had a meal and only 48 hours beforehand we couldn’t see land.  All that we thought was in the world was ocean.

Kevin: Is that hence where the anticlimax came because all of a sudden.

Richard: Yes I think it was I mean it was three years of planning and 72 days of actual rowing but for me it was about 15 years of actual dreaming or kind of believing that wow one day I am going to row the Atlantic.  It was very emotional.  I got off the boat and I spoke to my dad on the telephone, he was back in London and I just started crying.  He was like ‘are you there, are you there?’ and I was like ‘yeah I am hear’ sort of thing and it was amazing.  And again I remember we had M People on our radio playing as we came in and I went and did a presentation at a school for their sports day about four months later and the choir completely unknown to them sang that song as three of their songs for motivating the kids and that kind of stuff.  And I was just sitting there with almost tears dripping down my eyes and I couldn’t let on why I was sort of getting quite emotional because you know I hadn’t been introduced or anything at that point.  And of course I got on stage and said ‘guys the song you sang was the song we had when we were coming into Antiga you just made everything flash back to me’.  Yeah it was crazy.  Just seeing people eating proper food again, toilet paper was just brilliant, diet coke with ice cubes was fantastic.  And yeah we finished on the Thursday back in the UK on Saturday and I was back to work on Monday morning.

Kevin: Wow.

Richard: Which was a big mistake I should have taken a lot longer off but I had to go, I mean you know I had bills to pay.

Kevin: Back to the reality.

Richard: Back to reality and I think that in itself was probably a mistake because it never really sunk in.  But what was also quite difficult was when you go to the pub and you talk to your friends they are really intrigued and they want to hear about it, that one time that you see them.  The following day when you go and see them again they’ve taken in what they wanted to take in, it’s got no relevance to them at all and quite rightly so I would be exactly the same.  But then you know I was having to deal with the reality off I have done this thing and nobody really cares.  I mean I don’t do it for other people I do it for myself but I would like somebody to at least step up to the plate and say ‘wow you’ve really inspired me to do this or do that’.  And that was quite difficult just getting my head around and it took me a long time to get over.  I still find going to a night club with lots of people in a small space very difficult.  The underground at rush hour I still find very difficult.  But I now feel very comfortable when I’ve got my gym kit on and I’m going to the gym which for five or six months at the back end of last year where mentally I was just very drained from everything I didn’t enjoy so that sort of fire in the belly is now coming back.

Kevin: It is interesting that it hung over for so long.

Richard: I think it’s we haven’t sold the boat yet and that is, until we sell the boat all my life savings are in that boat.  So once the boat is sold I think I will be able to let go of the whole thing.  But I did speak to Ben Fogle about two or three months ago and I just wanted to sort of say thank you for coming.  He asked me how I was getting on and I said you know what I have been really struggling mentally to get my head around this because nobody really cares and he said to me, I have never told anybody in the press or anything but I really struggled, really, really struggled and of course he had the advantage of being able to talk about it and writing a book and you know if he was struggling then what’s the random person going to do.  It does play havoc with your mind it really does.  But it was a great experience I wouldn’t change it for anything and you know when I next really, really, really push myself hopefully I will be able to draw on that experience.

Kevin: Now it’s a year on when you think back to you know how does it feel inside you?

Richard: I am very proud that I’ve done it.  There is definitely a little bit of unfinished business and I don’t know what it is.  I think it’s you know I rowed the Atlantic with my rowing partner with endless amount of food onboard and I got stuck on 1000 calories.  Had we not had all that food on board and actually had food that I found edible could we have done it four/five/six days faster.  You know we took endless amounts of sun cream we didn’t use half of it.  You know we set up the boat in order to get across the Atlantic and quite soon into it I wanted to do better than just cross it.  I felt so comfortable I thought we could do better.  And our boat wasn’t set up for doing that.  Not that I would change anything structurally about the boat or where we had things or anything like that.  There is just something a little bit about unfinished business but because I don’t want to do the same event twice if I were to do it again I would do it as a solo.  I think I am just better, I wouldn’t get stage fright.  And if I did I would then be really worried.

Kevin: Unfinished business you have said that a few times now.  Where is the unfinished business taking you now?

Richard: I want to go number five on the list is bad water ultra marathon which is 135 miles through Death Valley which is 140o heat in California and not only that.

Kevin: Can I ask why?

Richard: I see it as probably the hardest foot race out there.  There is lots of variations of what is hard and what is not hard but I think the heat will be a real challenge and to come from a south of England where it doesn’t really get much hotter than 90o to then go out in that sort of heat I think will be a real achievement.  But not only is it hot it starts at 280 ft below sea level, it returns to sea level on two other occasions and has three 500ft passes in between so it is a really hilly one as well.  But in order to do that I have got to do three 100 mile runs and I don’t have any.  So I have got three 100 milers to hopefully apply and then have the right to qualify.

Kevin: Incredible.

Richard: So that is the next one.

Kevin: I am going to wind this down now because I think we have touched on a load of amazing points.  What I would be intrigued to know and maybe you can share some of this is breaking events down seems to be a huge part of your mindset of enabling you to achieve these great feats and also having a clear game plan attached to it.  I think if there is anything that you can sum up to maybe help other people attack big events and big objectives in their lives maybe I think anything you can bottle up on that?

Richard: I think talking to people about what they’ve done is hugely important and if it’s in the same field even better.  But you have got to tackle these things on your terms.  You know it would be very easy for me to go and copy somebody’s training plan to go and do the same event that they’ve done but it might not work for me.  And I think to have that kind of confidence and boldness I guess to just feed off people who keep telling you, you can’t do it I think is the key.  It gets boring when people say ‘oh that’s ridiculous, that’s stupid’ and yet they are the first people to say ‘well done’ when you are finished.  But at the same time because they don’t believe in me it feeds me to try that bit harder.  That probably doesn’t answer your question at all but yeah I just go out and do it.  If you enjoy it and you like the look of it why not.

Kevin: Richard that is a great way to finish thank you for your time.

Richard: Okay you are welcome thank you.

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Kevin: So there we go our second and final instalment at least for the time being from Richard Hume.  When you consider that Richard and Tom raised over £80,000 for this event and yet the largest donation was £5,000 it really shows what can be accomplished by consistent and persistent activity.  If you would like to learn more about Richard please visit his website at www.challengechaser.com and I will put a link to that website on the show notes.

Thank you again Richard for joining us on Maximise Potential and again to Elliott Cole for putting us in touch.  So on to a few news updates. Firstly thank you all very much for voting for us in the European Podcast Awards.  The judging is currently under way and fingers crossed we will find out if we have been successful in the New Year.

Next up any regulars to the site will see we have added a new section titled ‘Your Stories’.  We have done this in response to an increasing number of tweets, emails and phone calls that we are receiving from you all explaining how the podcasts are inspiring you to take on bigger challenges in your lives.  So please if you have got a story to share with the audience about how the podcasts have helped you please send it in to us as we would love to add it to the site.

Thank you again to everyone in Jenrick Recruitment for their amazing support and I will be leaving you with another track from Xerxes to finish on and it’s called ‘Thank you’. Tune in soon and thanks again for downloading the Maximise Potential Podcast.

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Kevin: Welcome to Maximise Potential the podcast to educate and motivate through a range of original interviews designed to help you maximise your potential.  Brought to you in association with the award winning recruitment group Jenrick.

Welcome back to Episode 35 of the Maximise Potential podcast.  Being able to complete an ironman event is said to be one of the most extreme tests of mental and physical endurance on the planet.  Competing continuously for over 12 hours; swimming 2 ½ miles, then cycling for 112 miles before completing a 26 mile marathon, will push anyone to their absolute limits.
However, now try and imagine how you would feel if those figures were tripled.
Richard Hume, completed a gruelling 7.2-mile swim, 336-mile bike ride and 78.6-mile run, finishing in just over 52 hours and in the process becoming one of the fastest ever triple ironman finishers for his age group.

Here is Richard to tell you how he became a triple Ironman.

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Richard thank you very much for joining us on the podcast today.

Richard: Thank you for having me.

Kevin: Our pleasure.  Now we are very fortunate we are actually going to do two interviews with you because there are two particular events that you have achieved in your relatively short years of doing endurance events.  And we are going to start off with one that just blew my mind and that was a triple Ironman event.  What possessed you to want to do that?

Richard: The triple Ironman was a series of different events that accumulated in the triple Ironman.  When I was 13 I was diagnosed with a spinal problem called kyphosis and scoliosis one of which was a 93o curvature of the spine. So my lower part of my spine and my top part of my spine were at a 90 degree angle to each other.  If you imagine a lamppost is at 90o and then see how severe the curvature was.

Kevin: It’s incredible.

Richard: So that then meant that I had to wear a solid plastic back brace from the age of 13 to 17 whilst at school and was told that I wouldn’t play sport for the foreseeable future.  I got away with playing cricket and golf whilst wearing the back brace but rugby was a no go.  I then officially became ‘normal’ which is a between 20 – 50o curvature in your spine and so a University I started to play a bit more rugby, carried on my cricket and due to the whole Lawrence Armstrong effect I bought a bike with my last student loan check, which in the end was very well worth it, and slowly got cycling.

Then it was a matter of being in the gym back at home.

Kevin: Can I just ask you a question before we go on to that were you not worried to death about doing things like rugby after what you had actually gone through just so that you could have in essence a ‘normal’ life and a safe life I mean?

Richard: Naivety is not a great thing but it does help in certain situations.  I actually played, I ended up playing rugby league at University because in rugby union you have got a lot of scrummaging, ruck smalls and all that kind of stuff and that does put a lot of pressure on your back.  Rugby league is purely about tackling and running with the ball so actually there is not a huge among of pressure put on your back.  Whilst I was wearing my back brace I actually lost quite a lot of weight and then started to strengthen my back up a little bit.

Kevin: Right.

Richard: I was told I needed another year in my back brace but I sort of bargained with my doctors that if I did the hard work in the gym then perhaps I could get away with not wearing it.  It did result in a few days when I had to sleep on the floor on a hard surface rather than the bed to make sure my back was nice and flat.  Essentially the problem with a back brace is yes you grow taller but your muscles don’t develop so actually you get weaker and weaker and weaker.  But if you put the hard work in there it just straightens the whole thing out.  And it is by no means completely normal again now by about sort of midday onwards it feels like somebody sort of stabbing me in the back.

Kevin: That’s every day?

Richard: Pretty much every day especially if I have been on my feet the whole time.  But you just learn to manage it.  You learn to sort of manage the pain and you learn to, it is just another thing, it is just another thing that I do you know I am ginger so I get sunburnt very easily.  It is just another thing I have to cope with you know it is just one of those things.  See the back brace was the catalyst for everything in terms of I am not a great fan of being told I can’t do something.  And if I do get told I can’t do something and it is something that actually interests me then I am going to go off and give it my best shot and that was how the whole process started.

Kevin: It is interesting isn’t it several people that I have spoken to there always seems to be a trigger event and often the trigger event being that they were told ‘No’ in some degree and again you are someone else that is saying straight away you know it was like a rag to a bull if you tell me no then that is going to provide determination.

Richard: Yeah I think everybody has experienced it, they might just not realise it.  I was at a school called Cranleigh and we had a very steep slope on our cricket pitch and nobody would want to bowl up the hill because it was just so hard work but I absolutely loved it so obviously the core kind of endurance was obviously always there I just didn’t know that it was there until I started to get just a little bit more interested in cycling events or long distance running.  I wasn’t that interested that somebody had broken you know 10 seconds for 100m I was more interested in somebody almost breaking two hours for the marathon.

Kevin: Yeah.

Richard: Even though I had no idea that I wanted to go off and do these things it was just a matter that kind of what interested me.  So I think the seed is always there it is just whether you are willing to give it a go and I think for me it is not about how fast you can do things it is about how long you can carry on going for. And then once you get to that stage you can get your head around all the distances of all these events that I enjoy doing it is then just a matter of working to a process.  With the back brace for me in terms of the recovery really set in stone the idea that the preparation for everything is key.  And fortunately I have just been able to harness that and put it into a direction that I want to go in.

Kevin: Definitely and sorry I dragged you off because you were mid way through saying that Lawrence Armstrong really got you going on the bike and then.

Richard: Yeah it was the Lawrence Armstrong effect that bought me the bike and then I was in the gym at home and a guy who was 60 I think he was 68 and he still did Ironman and he was always going to Cona and Hawaii to do the World Championships there purely because he was the only person in his age group so he was always going to qualify as long as he finished.  He said I bet you can’t do an Ironman so off I went to do a marathon because I figured it would be a good, I should get a marathon under my belt before I did an Ironman.  And I went off and did the Isle of Wight marathon which is regarded as one of the hardest it is so hilly, got to mile 21 being arrogant and thinking I could do a sub 3 hour marathon because training was going so well.  I ended up sitting on a wall in front of somebody’s house couldn’t move at all.  So I turn up to my first Ironman having never done a triathlon ever before, having never finished a marathon.  I had only really taught myself to swim sort of two years beforehand, I could swim but I would do breast stroke kick with a front crawl arms, not particularly pretty.  From that Ironman I did which was August 2005 it has just gone from strength to strength.

Kevin: So let’s just stop here for a second because that has just absolutely blown my mind.  So you have gone in for your first Ironman because a 67 or 68 year old gentleman has just challenged you to it in the gym.  You haven’t completed a marathon, you’ve cycled a bit and your swimming is let’s say.

Richard: Average.

Kevin: Not desirable yeah in terms of its finesse and everything else.

Richard: I actually rang up the organisers of Ironman UK in March and told them my position and the guy said to me ‘do you know how hard a triathlon is?’ and I said no and he said ‘well that is the best place to be in to do an Ironman.’  If you do an Olympic or a sprint and you know how hard it is towards the end of one of those races you will never do an Ironman.  So naivety was fantastic.  I am not going to say I didn’t walk a lot of it but I got round in 12 hours 45 minutes which is perfectly reasonable.  I think I did a four hour 45 marathon on a relatively hilly course down near Sherbourne.  Yeah I mean I just got hooked from the day I even turned up.

Kevin: And what changed between you not being able to complete a marathon the first time and then you managing to complete an Ironman event? What changed?

Richard: I got my ass kicked in the Isle of Wight and I knew straight away that weirdly I kind of enjoyed it and I just knew that if I didn’t take it a bit more seriously I would have to step up basically otherwise I wouldn’t finish the Ironman.

Kevin: That’s interesting actually so you getting beaten in the Isle of Wight was the best thing that could have happened to you.

Richard: Was the best thing that could have happened.  And actually doing an Ironman you do do a lot of Olympic triathlons in your training.  So I am a massive believer if the race isn’t too long then about three weeks prior to the race I will do the race distance over the course of a weekend.  So I knew that in a 48 hour period I could do an Ironman.  And that was a fantastic experience.

Kevin: Incredible and so from that moment onwards that was it.

Richard: That was it yeah I sort of, so I then did the London Marathon that year and I then did Ironman France, no sorry I did the London Durathlon in September 2006 and then I went on and signed up for my next Ironman in 2007 which was France.  I then did the double Ironman that October and then it was 2008 that I did Ironman Switzerland and then the triple Ironman.

Kevin: And so let’s just talk a little bit about the, I suppose it is the preparation that you go through for this I mean first of all what do you get out of doing this?

Richard: I, where do I start, when I was about 19 or 20 just before I bought my bike I made up a list of what I sore as the seven biggest amateur endurance sports you can have.  So number one was a marathon, number two was an Ironman, number three was a triple Ironman, number four was rowing the Atlantic and bear in mind I didn’t really know that other events existed these were just the ones I sort of knew about.

Kevin: Sure yeah.

Richard: Then there was bad water which is 135 miles through Death Valley in America, then there was Ram which is a Race Across America on a bike so you start in San Diego I think it is and you officially finish in Boston somewhere.  And then the seventh one is a thing called the Arc to Arc now that is you run from Marble Arch to Dover, swim the channel and then you cycle from Calais to the Arc de Triumph.  Those for me are some of the biggest amateur sports you can do.  And the second you have a list like that everything else becomes a process.

Having done the Ironman and knowing that naivety was a good thing for that one I knew that I couldn’t jump to a triple I had to do a double beforehand.  So that is the initial process to get things going.

Kevin: So it was very much just putting down goals.

Richard: Yeah that’s what it is.  I gave myself a target and off I went and did it.  And this is before you start thinking about the actual physical logistics of doing it either a preparing to do the race or b actually getting yourself to the race.  You know once you get to the double Ironman fact you had to have a support crew there.  The triple Ironman you do and then you are having to you know fit in somebody’s or persuade somebody to take a holiday and pay for it to come and support you.  It is a hard bargain to try and do and fortunately I have got a few friends who are willing to do that.

Kevin: Well I think this is worth actually brining in at this point because as you said the events that you wrote down on your goal list were amateur events and the important thing to state here is that you work fulltime, you are not a paid athlete, you are not a professional athlete this is something you do out of the sheer love of it.

Richard: Yeah the people who, well I am like everybody you know when Roger Fedora wins Wimbledon I get quite emotional but the really inspirational people for me are the ones who have to work full time and do these very abnormal events, the top, top amateurs for me are the most inspirational people.

Kevin: They are the ones you really look at.

Richard: Yeah and I think the list that I have yes you will have some people who have got sponsorship, who are there to make a living, but it is what goes on further down the field which is the really, you know everybody has got their own story to be there they may have beaten cancer you know they may have lost a limb at war.  Whatever it is, it is those people that are kind of like really going against the norm.

Kevin: I think the funny thing is you wouldn’t probably class yourself as the person that others are probably looking up to and getting inspired by.

Richard: Oh not at all, not at all.  I get on with my job and you know my gym bag is packed every single night you know in the hope that I get some time the following day to go.  I do have a process in my head of where I want to be and you know I am training today I won’t train tomorrow because I am doing a 40 mile run on Sunday.  So I do have this process. It is not ideal running on Sunday but it is my girlfriend’s day off tomorrow so I am not going to train on that day.  The problem with running on Sunday is that I will probably finish about seven o’clock in the evening I have got to go on the 5:58 train Monday morning to get back to work; I am not going to be able to move.  But work for me comes first but I do bend my work a little bit in order to do my hobby because you have to.

Kevin: How do you keep yourself on track? How do you keep yourself motivated when as you say work is the most important thing?

Richard: It is very easy in some respects.  Once you have set yourself a target it has never been a problem.  Motivation is just not something that really affects me.  I obviously have days when you know it is raining outside I am like not going to happen today.  And then I have other days when it was really snowing back in February I went for a run in the snow knowing too well that if I run in the snow then the next time I am not feeling too motivated to run in the rain I can turn round and go ‘oh come on you’ve done it in the snow you can do it in the rain’. So when I want to do it I go and do it, when I don’t I am like everybody else I will go and get a pizza and sit at home in front of the telly but I think you have to have that down time.

Kevin: I was going to ask do you think that is the art to who much you have been able to enjoy it particularly with the endurance aspect of what you do?

Richard: Yeah I think that is probably right.  I also have this silly attitude that people always ask me who fit is being fit.  Now for some people it is if they can walk up the escalator at the underground station others it is about you know if their child wants to go and kick a football for an hour are they fit enough to go and do that. I want to be able to walk down the high street and somebody come up to me and say ‘right you are running a marathon in an hour’s time’ and I can wholeheartedly turn round and go ‘alright that is fine’. That is where I deem as being at a reasonable level of fitness. Obviously once I then start focussing on a specific event from about three or four months out you are then very specialised you can’t just do everything.  For the triple Ironman for instance I was actually quite strong when I started doing the training. By the time I had finished doing the training and you know a week before the actual race I couldn’t do more than two or three press-ups but I had no need to have that upper body strength because it was all going through my legs. Having said that one of the reasons hopefully it will continue that I don’t get injured so much is because I am doing a little bit of everything. If I want to do an endurance session but I am interested in how strong I am I might do three hours on the rowing machine because not only does that work your strength it also is a great cardio workout.  So I sort of twin it a little bit. But essentially there is just not a whole lot going on upstairs and I can just switch off.

Kevin: Well let’s talk about that.

Richard: Some days I will start running and like everybody else five minutes later I will have a stitch and throw a bit of a hissy fit and just decide enough is enough and other days I can just go on forever.

Kevin: Do you think the answer is just listening to your body in your case anyway?

Richard: Yes I think it is.  If you train and train and train and don’t actually rest you are running a slight gauntlet especially if you haven’t got a medical team behind you and all that kind of thing.  And that’s what comes back to the whole amateur professional thing.  Professionals and if anybody is a professional listening to this I don’t want to offend them but as far as I can work out they get out of bed and train, have breakfast, train again, have lunch, rest, train, sleep and then do it all over again. Don’t get me wrong it is a very hard lifestyle but they do generally have physios at their disposals, nutritionists you know all that kind of thing. For an amateur they are trying to fit it all around their day job so they do have their pros and cons. Motivation has never been a problem, preparation for me is key to all these events so I just try and structure my training to a way that I know that I can cope with. You know if I am going on holiday and I know I can’t cycle and I know I can’t swim you can always run. So I may not run for two weeks leading up to that holiday knowing that week is going to be purely going out for an hour’s run a day just to keep things ticking over so when I come home I don’t feel like I have lost a whole week.

I also in my training schedule whatever I am training for I always do six weeks on and one week off. So I always have one week where I can just do nothing and that is another way of me breaking it up into small little targets.  You know in six weeks time I want to be able to ride 100 miles and then I get a week off. That’s just the way that I do it.

Kevin: You’ve already said about the importance of writing down your list of goals. Do you also do the same when you are actually training?

Richard: I don’t have so many goals but I have targets, it’s slightly different.

Kevin: Okay.

Richard: For me goals are kind of like achievements whereas targets are kind of a way to achieve your achievements.

Kevin: Interesting.

Richard: I knew doing the triple Ironman that I couldn’t do the cycle ride unless I got to 180 miles in my training.  180 miles is my target finishing the bike leg of the triple Ironman was my goal. That’s how I kind of look at it. You know when you are on your bike for six/seven hours a day you have a lot of time to think about you know the following week what training are you going to do, how you are feeling.  You know some days you will go out and blitz a two/three hour bike ride other days half an hour into the wind will be a nightmare.  You probably know that if you have done that half hour into the wind you need a day off the following day just to freshen your mind up.  You know targets and goals are slightly different in my mind.  The thing about all this stuff is that everybody is going to have a slightly different variation and that’s why people get quite cagy about what they are training for or what their training schedule is.  Nutrition is very important but if you are working full time having to eat the calories then you have just got to stuff it however you want to.  You know if I can get 1000 calories from an Easter egg or 1000 calories from a massive bowl of pasta which takes 20 minutes to prepare I will probably go for the Easter egg.  Everything has to be considered into what is working for you.  Everybody thinks I am going to be very healthy and that kind of thing and I generally am but I know I don’t eat enough fruit and veg and I also drink quite a lot of diet coke.  You know those are two what you might think are quite fundamental things to either have or not have in your diet but I am an amateur.  I go to a petrol station I look at the sweets and think I am going to have a few of those.  Fortunately I can get away with the calories but yeah the sugars aren’t great.

Kevin: You said when we were preparing for the interview; you said what sort of calories you were taking in when you were actually full blown into that triple Ironman.

Richard: Yeah the triple Ironman was insane I was working about 35 – 40 hours a week, the race was in October and my biggest training months were July and august but I was training about 30 hours a week for that eight week period but I was also having to eat about 7000 calories a day and that was quite hard.  That was really hard just to get it in you.  Things like chocolate milkshakes, ice cream doesn’t sound great but chocolate bars.  Basically when you do a triple Ironman if you enjoy your food it’s the best thing to do in the world because you just get to eat yourself silly every single day.  It is like Christmas Day every day.  And yeah there are some very calorie rich foods that you can have.  You want to try and stay away from as much fat as possible.  Sugars are not ideal but at the same time if you are burning the sugars then they are not too bad it is if they then become fats then it gets harder.  But at the same time you do need some kind of reserves in your body.  You know your body has a certain amount of calories in store it won’t allow you to get below a certain level because they reserve the brain but your body does need fuel the whole time.  You never, ever go on your bike ride without taking ten pounds in your back pocket because you never know when you are going to pass that petrol station and you just need a flapjack, you just need a sandwich, you just need an orange juice whatever it is.  And those are things that you just pick up as you go along and you talk to a lot of people, you find out what works for them and you just take bits and bobs of it and then you come up with your own strategy.

Kevin: Yeah.  And let’s actually just talk about the event now itself.  So I thought, so I guess I naively thought that when we were going to sit down for this you were going to say that you do very intensive mental exercises to prepare your mind for competitions and blah, blah, blah but it actually sounds that you just sort of, well as you said earlier, you switch off.

Richard: Yeah the hard thing about the visualisation which say Johnny Wilkinson uses a lot is all about seeing what is going to happen before it actually happens.  It is very difficult to do that when you are doing an event for the first time and you are going to a location for a first time you can’t visualise the bike ride because you don’t know what the bike ride has in store.  So the visualisation of things doesn’t really happen that much for me.  I do think about what I am doing and I do imagine what it will be like but I can’t actually visualise exactly what it is going to be like.  I then have a plan and I actually break the races down.  So the triple Ironman was a 7.2 mile swim which was 18 laps of a lake so I broke that down into three lots of six.  I knew that if I could do that then I could put it in more manageable chunks that I could relate to.  The plan was to then have a two minutes drink break between each one and that worked very well.  I then, I think I came out the water in about three and a half hours which was second out of a field of about 18 – 19.  Then I jumped on the bike and the bike was a five mile loop that you just kept going round and around.  Now that might sound really boring for 336 miles but again it is a kind of three laps to go then I have some food, two laps to go then I get a sleep whatever, however you are going to break it down.  For me that works very, very well.

Kevin: Interesting and each time breaking it down into measurable chunks.

Richard: Just breaking it down so I never looked at the bike as a 336 mile bike ride.  I just took that straight out of my mind and I think I broke it down into three hours or 50 miles whichever came first.  What I hadn’t anticipated was how hilly it was going to be.  It was quite a hilly five mile course which meant that I never did 50 miles in three hours I was always about 48 or 47 miles.  So every three hours I would stop and have some food, sit down, maybe get a slight massage on my legs and it was really important to have a game plan and stick to it from the beginning.  There is no point, and this is across the board in any sport, to go as far as you can and then start to slow down because eventually you will come to a standstill.  You have got to start slow and just keep on going at that race and you will increase your distance tenfold over quite happily.

So I had this sort of plan got to about midnight on the first night because we started at seven in the morning and it was over in Washington and I hadn’t given myself enough time for the time difference because I went with the attitude that if I didn’t get over the jetlag when it was three in the morning their time it was going to be as far as I was concerned eight in the morning my time and I would be ready to go.  Whereas when it was light there I would imagine it was dark at home at three o’clock in the morning at home.  So I figured that the jetlag might actually play to my advantage it didn’t.  So I really struggled about midnight I started to find myself falling asleep whilst peddling.  I took a 20 minute catnap round the start/finish area because I bought myself a tent and had a tent there.  I had two of those with 20 minutes cycling in between and that cycling in between I kept falling asleep.  After second catnap of 20 minutes I started peddling again and I think I managed half an hour – 40 minutes and just turned around to my crew and said I have got to sleep for an hour I was just dying, absolutely dying and I knew that if I tried to struggle through it would come back and kick me in the backside during the run.

So I took a sleep for an hour and I got back on the bike I was actually not too bad I just sort of stuck to my guns every three hours or 50 miles I would stop have some food, made sure that certainly through the night and the early part of the morning I had some hot food because it was getting quite cold at night time and early morning.  And I came off the bike in 27 hours and was back down at 13th or 14th position.  I was devastated I had done all the hard work in the swim.  I thought the bike I was quite strong at and I messed up completely I was way down the field and I was upset.  The leader at the time was a guy called Tom he had met me during the double Ironman the year before and he was running quite hard and I said to Tom why are you running you have got hours ahead of everybody, he was about three hours ahead.  And he said to me I know you are coming.  And I was like what do you mean by that and he said I know how fast you can run and I am worried that you are going to catch me.  That for me was worth a million dollars because no one had ever taken any notice of what I was trying to do.  I am just a regular person you know I run a four hour marathon it is nothing fast but to have the leader of an event like that be worried that I might catch him was a massive privilege.  I was like ‘alright something is a bit wrong in your head but come on let’s keep going’ and I stuck to my guns.  It was a two mile loop the run and there was quite a steep 400 meter hill to begin with.  So I decided to walk the hill every single lap on that walk I would take in all my calories, all my water and then I would run the rest.  And I did that for the first 50 odd miles having had a few people beginning to drop out because you know the sheer fatigue and not being able to finish.  I then had a slightly dodgy period when I got a horrific bleeding nose about two o’clock in the second night which is a sign in my mind that your blood is beginning to thin and your organs are beginning to say you know what I’ve kind of had enough here.  And I knew the doctor was around and I knew that if he saw me the chances are he was going to pull me out.  Well after 44 hours of going I wasn’t going to stop so I actually put a couple of bits of tissue up my nose ran into my little tent and told my crew to wake me up in half an hour.  Got up half an hour later which felt like just a second, I remember going in there and then all of a sudden Julian was pulling my legs saying right time to get up and I was like ‘l’ve only just got in here’ and he was like no you have been asleep for half an hour.  Took the tissue out my nose, fortunately it had stopped bleeding that was all I needed that half an hour, started running again and crossed the finish line in fourth position over all with a think, I think it was a 19 or 20 hour run split which was actually one of the fastest in the world that year for the triple Ironman event.  And when I did come home everybody said you are just walking differently you have just got your head held so much higher because I never really achieved anything that I felt was that much different to what the normal person does.  I know that sounds silly but that is just how it was.

The race was in Washington and you know you run down the final straights and the little kids would run up to you with a Union Jack flag and then the Americans would get the national anthem playing whilst you were going down so you know I was the first Brit home and God Save the Queen was on and I was holding my flag and stuff and it just made you feel like a million dollars and even when I go to somewhere like Twickenham now or any kind of sporting event and the National Anthem comes on I always get a little goose bumps at the back of my neck from doing the triple Ironman.  It was by far the hardest thing I have ever done and hopefully it won’t be the hardest thing that I will ever have done by the end but yeah that was a real eye opener.  And to be 25/26 you know certainly one of the top ten youngest people to ever have finished it.  Because endurance as well which probably should have said earlier is not about a 12 week training camp it is an accumulation over the years.  So the peak for triple Ironman, this is what’s kind of scary for me, is that it is probably about 42 – 48 something like that and to think that I am 28 now if I was to come back in ten years time just how much faster could I go.  Could I actually start becoming the fastest person ever.  It is a very strange concept to get your head around but then maybe when  I am 40 I will be like had enough I have done what I wanted to do and that was it so.

Kevin: Do you think that’s somehow deep inside you is that driving you right now the thought that you could be the best?

Richard: It’s the excuse I use why people say to me why you are training on a Saturday night.  I don’t know I would like to think that I would never do the same event twice just because there are so many amazing things out there.  Ideally I would like to do something that nobody has ever done before by the end.  If I do that I would like to think that I would just hang my boots up.

Kevin: Well the interesting thing is that we are about to come on to something else that is very interesting that you have done so Richard what I would like to do that was a lovely synopsis of your triple Ironman event and the events leading up to that so let’s take a break for a minute and then we will come back and do part two of this interview.

Richard: Sounds good.

Music

Kevin: Richard thank you very much for joining us on the Podcast and sharing your incredible story.  Yet again we have found an individual who consider themselves very normal yet a person who has consistently applied themselves to accomplish a very extraordinary feat. Time and time again Richard referred to the importance of creating a series of realistic targets in his training and in the events that would take him to his end goal.  And lets also not forget how Richard overcame a great personal challenge in the process in this case his back problem explaining how whenever he was told ‘no you can’t’ he channelled those negative messages into positive motivation.

I will keep this nice and short as I am sure you are all very keen to listen to part two of Richard’s interview which will be Episode 36 of the Podcast.  Thanks again to everyone at Jenrick Recruitment for their amazing support and to Elliot Cole for introducing us to Richard.  I will leave you with a great track from Xerxes to finish with today and it’s called ‘BA1’.

Music

As well as being  a triple ironman finisher, Richard Hume is also one a very select group of people to have completed the Atlantic Ocean Rowing Race.

This gruelling 3,000 mile event, which can take over 80 days to complete, challenges competitors in ways not comparible to most other endurance events.

Dealing with the isolation, the monotony, the sickness, in addition to the extreme elements of the Altantic Ocean, can all prove too much for so many people who attempt this incredible event.

Yet, as Richard will describe in his interview, competing in a race of this magnitude is only one of the many challenges that an amateur athlete has to overcome.

Key messages from Richard:

• Time and time again Richard referred to the importance of creating a series of realistic targets, in his training and in the events, that would take him to his end goal.
• Let’s not also forget how Richard overcame a great personal challenge in the process, in this case his back problem, explaining how, whenever he was told ‘no you can’t’, he channelled those negative messages into positive motivation.

Additional notes and resources (just click on the links for more information):

• Richard Hume’s website - CLICK HERE to visit the ‘Challenge Chaser’ website
• Wikipedia – CLICK HERE to visit wikipedia’s ultra-ironman page
  

Interview Transcription:

• Transcript: How I rowed the Atlantic – Richard Hume (Max#36)
  

Being able to complete an ironman event is said to be one of the most extreme tests of mental and physical endurance on the planet.

Competing continuously for over 12 hours; swimming 2 ½ miles, then cycling for 112 miles before completing a 26 mile marathon, will push anyone to their absolute limits.

However, now try and imagine how you would feel if those figures were tripled.

Richard Hume, completed a grueling 7.2-mile swim, 336-mile bike ride and 78.6-mile run, finishing in just over 52 hours and in the process became one of the fastest ever triple ironman finishers for his age group.

Key messages from Richard:

• Time and time again Richard referred to the importance of creating a series of realistic targets, in his training and in the events, that would take him to his end goal.
• Let’s not also forget how Richard overcame a great personal challenge in the process, in this case his back problem, explaining how, whenever he was told ‘no you can’t’, he channelled those negative messages into positive motivation.

Additional notes and resources (just click on the links for more information):

• Richard Hume’s website - CLICK HERE to visit the ‘Challenge Chaser’ website
• Wikipedia – CLICK HERE to visit wikipedia’s ultra-ironman page
  

Interview Transcription:

• Transcript: Becoming a Triple Ironman – Richard Hume (Max#35)
  

Photography is one of the most competitive industries in the world, it’s cut throat and can be very hard to acquire clients. In a way I have always viewed my favourite photographers in the same way that some people view celebrities. I feel they must possess something I that I could never have – an unobtainable talent that separates the pros from everyday folks like me.

To feel unworthy in an industry that’s inundated with amazing talent is not abnormal. However, to let your dreams be dragged down by what is a rather surface outlook is no way to approach your goals.

It’s important to believe in yourself, to believe that with hard work you can acquire whatever you want out of life (forgive the cliché), but it wasn’t until I had met some of the photographers that I admired so much that I began to change my outlook on my career as they too went through the same psychological battle that we all do when starting off in a new walk of life.

I recently came across a photographer I admired on one of the Maximise Potential Podcasts (Giles Christopher).

I think the inspiration and encouragement one can get from hearing from a professional, well, award-winning photographer talking about their own path and struggles is incredible.

It has really got me thinking that I can do it!

Why not me?

I’m currently working on a proposal for a commission that’s in the pipeline. It will consist of a series of portraits for an electronic record label, plus with the networking I’m doing at the moment along with the newly found confidence I have been given, I feel I can get to where I want to be. It’s surprising what you can do with a little guidance and believing in yourself.

Thank you Giles, and thank you to the Maximise Potential website for helping me approach my goals with the right attitude.

I hope others find the site to be as inspiring as I did.

If you would like to see how I’m doing then you can visit my website: www.samnobes.co.uk or follow me on twitter @samnobesphoto.

Hi Sam,

I’d just like to personally thank you for submitting your story and I’m so pleased Giles’ interview has had such a positive impact on your mindset.

It seems as though you can really visualise a career for yourself in photography now and from all of us at Maximise Potential, we wish you all the best!

Please keep us informed of your progress.

Kevin

FURTHER RESOURCES:

• Motivating interview: Click here to listen to a motivating interview with Matthew Syed
• Articles and Resources: Click here to view more articles on Matthew Syed
  

Bonita Norris, the youngest British woman to have climbed Mount Everest, has now also successfully climbed Ama Dablam (6,856m) in the Nepalese Himalaya.

Reaching the peak of Ama Dablam is a fantastic achievement for Bonita. She promised herself to take on the mountain, often named the world’s most beautiful, after admiring it on her Everest expedition last year.

Bonita said:

“I made a pact with myself last year that I would return to Khumbu to attempt Ama Dablam, looking at it from afar it is simply a beautiful mountain and a great route requiring a fair amount of skill to climb.”

Bonita was the first of her team to reach the summit at 11.45am on 17 November with her climbing Sherpa, Lakpa Onju, who also accompanied her on her record-breaking Everest expedition.

“Ama Dablam is the most beautiful mountain I have ever seen. I had my doubts whether I would be able to get to the top as it is a challenging climb but when we got onto the mountain things just felt right. I have been working hard on my climbing technique and fitness this year and the hard work paid off. I was with my climbing Sherpa from Everest, Lakpa, and together we stormed the summit and got back to camp safely and in quick time. The whole experience was brilliant and I felt very lucky to be there.”

“On the summit Lakpa and I were alone – we were the first to the top that day and felt like we had the whole mountain to ourselves. We sat down with Everest right behind us and I finally got to thank him properly for helping to save my life after exactly 18 months to the day when he helped me down Everest when I was injured. It was a moment I will never forget.”

Bonita and her Sherpa summated the mountain five days after leaving base camp, and returned to camp 3 two hours after reaching the top.

“There is nothing that makes me feel more alive than to be climbing towards a summit that has taken months of work and preparation. It is only when you stop to catch your breath that you can take in the incredible views and reflect on all the hard work that has got you to that moment. Feeling the warm sun on your face and watching the tiny shards of ice sparkle in the light is a reminder of how high up you are and that the top is not far off. It is definitely these moments that make all the suffering, cold and homesickness that accompany an expedition such as this worthwhile. It was just like on Ama Dablam – just incredible.”

“After sustaining an injury during the descent of Everest, I was determined to get down Ama Dablam without any problems. I felt like I had something to prove to myself and especially to Lakpa that I was capable of climbing big peaks without suffering from injuries. It was the fire that I needed to get up and down as fast and as safely as possible.”

Article Source: outdoorsmagic.com

FURTHER RESOURCES:

The 32-year-old wheelchair racer from Wallington had a 12 months to remember last season, with triple gold at the IPC World Championships in New Zealand over 800m, 1500m and 5000m added to by London Marathon and New York Marathon success.

But he opted to miss the race in the Big Apple earlier this month with his focus turning to winning gold at the Olympic Stadium in Stratford in September.

“A good block of winter training is something I have missed in the past, because I am either at a World Championships or I’ve been injured or ill,” he said.

“So I just wanted to get in there early this year to get me going towards next year.

“Last season was a long season and I started from September with the Great North Run and then New York and then the World Championships and a full track season and a full road season so it was very tough.

“But that is what we do every year so I was alright about it, but I did need that break around August time when our baby was born.

“New York was maybe in the plan for this year but realistically I didn’t want to push my shoulder too much and 2012 is the big one for me so I can’t really mess about and do other races, even though I love New York.

“Because I won it last year I really wanted to go back and defend my title but London 2012 is the big one and I have to make some sacrifices along the way.”

Having been the only member of the British team to claim track gold at the Beijing 2008 Paralympics, Weir is only too aware that the spotlight will be on him to deliver in the capital next year.

“I thrive on the pressure that is on me for London 2012 and I have got used to it now,” he added.

“It took me a long time to get to the top and once you are at the top it is hard to stay there so you learn to deal with it and I deal with it every year.”

The Aviva and Daily Telegraph School Sport Matters Awards recognise outstanding achievements in school sport across the country, and are part of Aviva’s wider commitment to support the next generation of British sporting talent. For more information go to aviva.co.uk/athletics

ARTICLE SOURCE:

• Wimbledon Guardian.co.uk
  

FURTHER ARTICLES AND RESOURCES

• Exclusive Interview: Click here to listen to an inspiring interview with David Weir

• Articles: Click here to read more articles on David Weir
  

You know the thing that happens when we hear those sorts of phrases?  Our brain immediately asks “uh, oh – what’s wrong?” or “oh dear, I need to brace myself for a problem” and so we’re automatically on the look out – or listening out – for a problem.

Ask yourself this.  “Is it useful for me and for what I want to say to have people listening out for a problem?”  No.  We both know it’s actually counter-productive.  When we start to scare people off or put them on the alert, we’re telling them that we’re thinking about something as a problem.  They may not.  They may actually decide it’s an opportunity or have a spin on the subject that you haven’t thought of and often you can come across as a worrier or a ‘scaremonger’ without actually meaning to.

The more savvy, effective way to draw someone’s attention to something tricky is to present it as a challenge or something to solve and introduce it that way.

Here are a few quick examples for you to introduce the thing you’re a bit concerned about or see as a ‘problem’ but without labeling it as one at the outset:

• Now, here’s something I know you’ll have some thoughts on…
• What ideas do you have about ….
• This could be a bit tricky, how will we get around this….
• I’ve been thinking about this and know that you’ll be able to help…
• How are we going to avoid ….

By presenting the information in the form of a challenge or by presuming that the other person will have ideas about it or a solution you do 3 savvy things, straight away:

• You come across as someone who is both open to a challenge and always looking for the solution

• You prime the other person to be ‘up’ for the challenge by presuming they’ll be able to help and posing them a helpful question rather than presenting them with a problem (What ideas do you have; How can we; What do we do about)

• You avoid that whole scaremonger, doom-and-gloom way “what I’m afraid of is” and “the worst thing is” by actually planting the suggestion of blocks or bumps in the road and scaring people off.

So, the next time you hear someone say “well, the trouble is”, presume that they really only need to flip it and think to yourself “well, the trick here is, how do we…” and then off you go and lead the hunt for the solution.

Here’s the chance to see a great, short 2 minute video from my friend in Montana, Scout Wilkins.  I’ve recommended this video to people for years to help them flip the problem and look for an easier solution and I know it works.  It’s had over 10,000 views and you’ll see my recommendation for it on Scout’s page and I hope it helps you in the same way too.

How do I learn more about Kay?

To have the opportunity to discuss any blind spots you know you have or things that are slowing you down or holding you back as you connect, persuade and compel people at work; click here to apply for a complimentary conversation with Kay.

Article reproduced with permission of Kay White, Communication Specialist and Mentor at www.wayforwardsolutions.com. Kay shows professionals how to be understood. Get quicker, faster and better results by becoming a more effective, influential and savvy communicator – everywhere in your life.

In addition, you can listen to an exclusive interview with Kay where she shares several exclusive tips on how to immediately make your communication more powerful and persuasive: http://www.maximisepotential.co.uk/how-to-develop-effective-powerful-communication/

Kevin: Welcome to Maximise Potential the podcast to educate and motivate through a range of original interviews designed to help you maximise your potential.  Brought to you in association with the award winning recruitment group Jenrick.

Welcome back to Episode 34 of the Maximise Potential podcast.  No matter if you are responsible for a business, or focussing on developing your career the current environment is arguably the most competitive, uncertain and challenging that anyone has ever known.  As a result we felt it was essential to invite an expert onto the podcast who can enable us to understand how we can operate and succeed within such restrictive parameters.

Gavin Ingham is widely regarded as one of the UK’s leading sales trainers, adding value to individuals and companies from all industries and sectors.  In today’s interview Gavin discusses a topic which is critical if we are to survive in today’s environment – ‘Sales’.  This interview will be incredibly helpful for everyone to understand what sales really is, and how you apply simple techniques to add substantial value to your products, your services and even to you as an individual.  Here is Gavin to help us all understand and embrace the new rules of selling.

Music

Gavin welcome to the Maximise Potential Podcast.

Gavin: Hi.

Kevin: We’re going to be dealing with well something that is relevant in everybody’s world right now.  We are in a very uncertain business time and it is going to be uncertain for the foreseeable future and you are a specialist at helping people improve sales. And that is very much in your opinion as well and not just your opinion but in what you communicate to other people sales has to be fundamentally the core driver of any business and yet it surprises you and continues to surprise you how many businesses that you end up speaking with where it doesn’t tend to be the underlying or the core strategy that they embrace.

Gavin: Yeah it is interesting when the recession started some years ago people looked at it and you had two choices really.  One was to sell more, and the other one was to cut costs and everybody did the cut costs thing but one of the areas a lot of people cut costs around was training, development, recruitment and support of sales staff.  So I saw sales teams who weren’t allowed to go on meetings, weren’t allowed to go to conferences, weren’t allowed to hold stands at conferences that they had previously always done.  And then people were surprised when they didn’t bring in as many sales or people didn’t invest in the training of sales staff and were surprised when they didn’t bring in as many sales.  And I think people sometimes tend to see things as either or and I get this in quite a lot of areas of what I do where there is something different happening and people make a decision that they think something but then because they are thinking something you can’t think something else.  And it is almost like people are either cutting costs or increasing sales but you can’t do both at the same time and I don’t see why you can’t build sales and reduce costs even if those costs don’t have anything to do with sales.

So I think in the current economy at the current time the important thing is to be getting out there and building more sales.  The important thing is to be getting out there and reaching new customers and the important thing is to be getting out there, getting your brand out there and getting people aware of yourself and that is selling.

And I think there is another element to this as well because I think in the current market everybody needs to be able to sell because they need to be able to sell their organisation to the people within the organisation because I think in the current market a lot of people just don’t believe in the organisations.  They don’t believe they have got security in their jobs so you have got to be able to sell on a whole variety of levels to run a successful company in today’s marketplace.

Kevin: Well let me ask you a bit about that.  There will be a good chunk of the audience who receive this podcast who I would say are directly within a sales environment but we also have a big audience who are probably internal or consider themselves internal within a company and only have internal relationships within the company and you just touched on that there to say well actually it is everybody’s responsibility and it sounds like a very much a mindset issue of changing a mindset and getting into that mode of actually you can all sell in your own environments.

Gavin: I think that’s right.  I mean the first thing is that very few people are truly internal so the only way I would accept that anybody is truly internal and doesn’t need to be aware of sales is if they never answer the phone.  Anybody who ever picks up the phone, anybody who ever talks to the organisation needs to have a sales mentality.  But even if somebody is truly internal, truly internal they still need to have a sales mentality because they need to be able to sell internally to sponsors within the business.  They need to be able to sell their ideas to other people within their teams and at the very least they need to be able to support the sales teams so they need to be able to support the sales efforts.

Kevin: I am going to ask you in a second what a sales mentality is.

Gavin: Yes.

Kevin: But before we even do that tell me what is sales?

Gavin: That is a good question and I certain think it is one that is badly misunderstood.  It is something that a lot of people would give you a lot of different answers to so this is my take on what selling is in the current environment to be successful right now.  But before I do that I will tell you what it is not because I think what a lot of people think selling is, is getting a product, getting a service deciding why it is good for people, going out there knocking down doors and persuading, convincing, coercing people to buy it. I don’t see it that way at all I see it as adding value for people.  I see it as understanding what people want or what they need whether that is an impulse purchase based on something they want, or whether in particularly business to business sales, it is something where they are solving an issue or a challenge that they want.  Finding out whether they really need t solve it and then adding something which adds value for them that they can make a decision and go yeah I want to do that.  And it is facilitating that process to help people make the right decisions.

And I think it is a great question because one of the challenges you know when we went into the recession was everybody said well that is it capitalism has failed.  It is not capitalism that has failed because capitalism like sales for me is about adding value and being paid commensurably with that value.  What failed was greed.  And I think greed is dead.  I think when you look at a lot of sales people, a lot of sales people were greedy it was about themselves, it was about can I make a sale at the expensive of other people.  And as we are going too probably talk about later on selling is about adding value and if you are not adding value then you need to go and find other customers or you need to change your product.  You don’t want to just convince people that they have buy it irrespective.  And I think there is a very few sales people for a variety of reasons who have that mentality but when you get that mentality right then there is some real value in what you do and you have got the ability to be able to actually kick start an economy, kick start a country and actually get people doing the right thing and people valuing that.  I think if people aren’t valuing what you do then you are not a real sales person in my mind.

Kevin: And I guess that comes back to where you said about the starting point for this which is it has to start off at the core of the business because I would assume that there is a huge chunk of companies and the ones that you have come across that are probably experiencing the largest amounts of problems, they probably don’t understand the value that they actually deliver. They probably don’t understand who they are as a business and what they stand for as a business.

Gavin: I think few companies understand the value that they truly deliver.  Some perhaps because they don’t deliver a value or because they just picked a price.  Others because they haven’t asked the right questions, they haven’t understood at the real level the real value that they deliver to businesses, to individuals and when you look at sales people a lot of sales people don’t truly understand that either.  They understand their product, they understand their customers, they understand what their product does and they probably understand some generic advantages or some generic benefits but they don’t truly understand individual companies, how individual companies loose out and what that means to them on the deepest level.  How does it impact not only sales figures but how does it impact the efficiency of the company, the moral of the company. And when you start getting in to it most sales people sell at the wrong level therefore they don’t truly understand that value.  And unless you can understand the value then you can’t deliver value and I think that is the critical thing.

To take a step back from it for a moment as well because most selling is something we do, it is something we tell sales people to do.  It is something we feel we have to do and it is almost like we are going out to do it to people.  So it is go out knock on doors and sell something.  We don’t say go out understand clients look for areas you can add value and then provide that value for them.  And if you can’t provide that value then you know what go and find somebody you can, tell that client you can’t add value and walk away because it is the only way to have integrity and to be honest and to really deliver true benefits in today’s marketplace.

Kevin: And I think you touched on a key thing there and you said it there asking the right questions.  And I think we have all been at the receiving end and if we switch seats here for a second and just you know put ourselves on the receiving end of all those sales calls that we all receive so few of them ask questions do they.

Gavin: No they don’t and I think it is one of the ironies that sales speakers and sales trainers who have been teaching questions since the year dot and yet despite all of that people don’t do it.  And the interesting thing here is that is because I don’t believe that is a skills issue.  Now what I am not saying is then don’t teach how to question because I do think there is a process behind questioning and I think you need to understand that process.  I also think you need to understand some basic skills of questioning.  And I think it actually links back to mindset because if all you want to do is persuade somebody to buy something then you either don’t ask any questions at all, or every question you ask is purely to try and back somebody into a corner so that they say what you wanted them to say in the first place so that you can say ah now we have got something that will solve that issue for you.  Whereas I would say the true mindset, the true best sales mindset is one of genuinely caring.  Genuinely wanting to understand somebody’s business, genuinely wanting to understand what is going on for them and whether you truly can add value or not.  And the only way you can do that is by showing genuine interest and I think most sales people mindsets, the level of interest is just enough to cursorily ask a few questions but it is not enough to be genuinely interested in somebody’s business.

And of course the interesting thing here is a lot of people talk about the barrier to the sale, the lack of honesty coming from clients well yeah of course they will be dishonest if they think all you are going to try and do is take whatever they say and manipulate it to try and sell them something.  But when people start to get gosh you know what this person is actually genuinely interested in me, genuinely interested in my business and is actually asking really inelegant questions then all of a sudden they start to open up and they start to talk to you.

Kevin: And I think there, I think what you are doing there is putting it in perspective and saying that it is not just asking the questions but it is actually conducting the research initially and it is coming up with a proposition for going back on quote on quote but where you can actually add value to their business operation.

Gavin: For sure.  The days of the bodge it, blag it and wing it natural charismatic sales person in all but smalls sales are probably gone because I think one of the big changes of the last five years, the last ten years of course is the internet and the amount of information that is available on the internet.  And I think once upon a time you were able to go along to a company and present them with something and they would go wow we had never heard of that or wow we didn’t know you could do that.  And whilst I am not saying that is impossible even if you do have that window of opportunity now it would be very, very small and it would be shut very, very quickly.  So people know so much more about you.  They know so much more about the products, they know so much more about the solutions and they expect you to as well.  There is no excuse to ask some of the ridiculous questions.  I mean I had a guy rang me up the other day he pitched me for some advertising for about ten minutes and I tend to take these calls and I tend to listen because I like to hear what people are doing and he pitched for about ten minutes and then I thought well enough is enough and I threw him a rejection.  And when I threw him the rejection he backed out of out which was probably the right thing to do and he asked a question which was probably also the right thing to do.  But it was the sheer stupidity of the question, and the question he asked was ‘so I am real interested tell me what exactly do you do anyway Gavin?’

Well he is not interested is he because if he had put Gavin Ingham into Google he would have thousands of entries that would have all said Sales Speaker, Sales Trainer, Sales Expert whatever and it would have been clearly obvious what I did.  So he had clearly not even done the most basic of five second research.  And I think what that research shows is not only does it allow you to ask those intelligent questions but it also it demonstrates integrity, it demonstrates credibility, it demonstrates that you care about your clients, it demonstrates that you are a serious business player.  And it is sad to say but so many sales people just don’t do that.  And I think that is this top down thing because clearly people above them are not stressing the importance of that, they are not training that, they are not making sure that those people actually care enough about their clients, that they care enough about their prospects to actually do that research to ask those questions.

Kevin: And I think as well what you have summed up there and I know you spend an awful lot of time on courses dealing with cold calling and techniques for cold calling confidence, and one of the biggest issues you come up against when people are making calls is actually having the confidence to make those calls.  But going back on what you were just saying or leading on from it should I say is if you do the preparation, you understand your value, you understand where you can actually add value to the organisation you are calling then surely that is when you suddenly see the confidence appearing because people actually feel as if they have got a genuine reason to call.

Gavin: Sure, totally.  There are many elements that lead to confidence of course but the preparation element is one.  And I think the knowing that you are adding value and that you are an expert in what you do is another.  If you are just ringing people and you are making 50 calls in a morning or you are going to an event or you are knocking on a door or whatever it is and you have done no research then actually your confidence really is misplaced.  I mean you are a bit like one of those people who can’t sing but all your mates told you you could going on to the X Factor.  I don’t want you to go onto the X Factor and say because people sometimes misconstrue this about me when they say oh well but you are all about the motivation and I am not all about the motivation, I am not all about the confidence in that I think people should have it where it is not justified.  I think it should be justified so I want you to be a great singer and then go on to X Factor.  I want you to be a great sales person and then make the call.  And part of being a great sales person is in doing that research, is in knowing that there is a good chance that you can add value. I mean taking cold calling as an example there is a lot of people saying that cold calling doesn’t work anymore.  They are thoroughly wrong.  What doesn’t work anymore is spam cold calling.  And I think it is the difference between spam cold calling and legitimate cold calling.  And what is legitimate? Legitimate is I have done the research; legitimate is I genuinely believe there is a reason for this call.  Legitimate is if everything is as everything appears to be I think I can add value and I think if this person is to engage with me they are going to be glad that they engaged with me.  That is legitimate, that is legitimate and that is okay.  But it comes back down to that research and of course that gives you the confidence if you know well yeah I am interrupting them but my goodness me are they going to be pleased they took this call.

Kevin: Is this what we are getting into when you said genuine sales mentality?

Gavin: Yes I think the importance of the sales mentality, there is various elements of sales mentality but I think the first one is that you need to have this attitude of curiosity.  You need to have this attitude of caring.  You need to genuinely care about your clients and I think that needs to extend through a whole company.  And I think you need to look at every process that you have going on within an organisation and go is that about us or is that about our customers.  Do we actually care about our customers?  Because I think in today’s market there are a lot of big companies in particular who if you look at what they do you could hardly come to the conclusion that they care about the customers.  Now the fact that they then say on the TV or they then say on the radio advertising ‘we care about our customers’ you know if they don’t answer their phones, if they bounce you through 15 people, if they make you put all sorts of numbers in to prove who you are and then you get through and they say who are you calling.  That is not who are you that is not caring about your customers, that is about them and everybody knows it is.  Now the fact that some of those companies, because I think sometimes we will look at those companies and go well we can do that to.  No you can’t because the thing is there are few huge industries where there is five or six players, they can get away with that because there is nowhere else to go.  Whether they will be able to do it sustainably forever I don’t know but if you are a smaller size company or a medium size company and you want to take more market share or you want to increase your market share or protect your market share and you want to build loyal fans then you need to look at every transaction, every conversation and go is that about us or is that about our customers.  You need to genuinely care.  And it’s that genuinely caring that gets people to connect with you, gets people to open up with you.

The second one, and I am not going to go through all of them, but the second one is this value thing.  You need to add huge value.  So I think there is two elements to that.  You need to add value first and I think that is a big difference between some of the old style selling, some of the old style marketing.  People have definitely seen in a lot of industries that advertising, marketing, it’s become a lot less effective.  It has become more expensive, less effective.  People would argue that that is because people have been bombarded.  And I think to an extent that’s true but I also think that there is an expectation from people that they want to see you add some value first.  So you need to be looking at how does our company add value before or during that initial transaction.

The second thing is you need to be adding more value than you charge when you actually get to the point of charging.  And I think this is a really important point because a lot of companies at the moment are having price issues.  They are having customers coming back to them and saying we’re getting it cheaper elsewhere.  And then the companies say to me but we are better and I say well clearly the customer doesn’t think that, clearly the customer isn’t getting the value because if the customer was getting the value they wouldn’t be giving you the grief and they wouldn’t be leaving.  So the fact that you think your service is better is not relevant you have got to genuinely understand your customers, understand what they want that is going to add value, that is going to be better, you can’t just charge more because you have been in the marketplace five years longer.  The customer has to see some value in that and if they don’t see value in it then guess what you can’t charge that money.  And that’s what people are finding.  I think they are finding that they are having their values questioned, they are finding that they are having the very core of their services questioned because a lot of companies people go oh this is my product and this is my service and this is what I do lets add a bell or a whistle here, people will like that.  But they are not actually thinking about the customers because I think this is the important point value is always determined by the customer, always, not you the customer.

Kevin: And even if, and even in the current market where we are faced with people dropping prices left, right and centre.

Gavin: Yeah.

Kevin: How do you approach that with your clients when you actually say you can hold your margins?

Gavin: It’s a really difficult question to answer that one because clearly it is very, very case specific.  I think there are some clients with some companies where for whatever reasons the charge rate or the investment does not really reflect the real value that they are adding.  Now maybe that was because the companies had a lot of money at the time they signed off and they weren’t that bothered so they didn’t negotiate that hard, maybe market rates have changed, perhaps the value was up front but as the contract is renewed they should have been discounted but they never were.  So I think there certainly are some that sit into there and I think that is very, very difficult but what do you do in that scenario?

Then I think there are some that look like they are in that situation but they are not really.  Because what’s happened is the company has relied on the fact that they have got a certain amount of business with somebody, it comes up for renewal and actually the sales person has been remiss, they have been lazy, they have not been in contact, they have not been asking questions, they have not been understanding what has been going on in the business, they have not been understanding the changes, so the value that they once had is no longer there.  The relationship that they once had is no longer there because they have lost that contact.  It is amazing how many companies do a deal with somebody and then really only start talking to them properly again when it is coming up to renewal and if you think customers don’t get that of course they do.  And as soon as they have a choice then they are going to maybe take that choice.

I think that maybe then there is the third type of company, and the third type of companies are the ones that you do add value for.  And I also think there is an overall challenge that we can’t all be in the top tier of the marketplace.  There is an interesting question I ask of people on one of my negotiation courses and I say well look if you looked at your product, your industry, your service and you measured it from like the cheapest in the market to like the most expensive and you split it into quartiles so like the top 25% most expensive, the 25% just above half, the 25% that were below average and the 25% who are really cheap where would you see your company and your product being?  Now the interesting here is out of thousands of people I have asked this question nobody, I think I had one guy who put himself in the cheapest.  Very few people put themselves in the second one and the vast majority of people put themselves in the top two tiers.  Now mathematically that cannot be correct can it.  Everybody cannot be the most expensive.  So I think there is a misconception here to start with and I think you have to draw the line between negotiation practices from clients and reality.  But assuming that we have done that we also have to accept that different clients want different things so there are some clients who do want to buy the cheapest they don’t care about the extra value for whatever reasons and as a sales person, as an organisation you need to decide do we work with those people at all or do we need to go out and find new business.  Because I think every sales person will have had the experience of a nightmare client who is a nightmare through the whole process, a nightmare when they did the deal, they give them a great big discount and then they are a nightmare after that never coming off the phone constantly wanting support and they wished they had never taken them on.  On the other hand they have had clients that they spoke to, they immediately added value and everything has been great.  And you ask which is more profitable and it is the second one.  You ask which they prefer and it is the second one.  So you need to ask the question why are you doing business with the first one.  And if it is that you need to do business with the first one and the second one then you need to kind of red circle them as separate products or separate services.  I think a lot of time this coming back and negotiating business is about a lack of understanding of the business, a lack of understanding of the clients and a lack of understanding of where you add value and where you don’t add value.

Kevin: So this comes back to the very original point which you said which is go out and find more relevant clients that are right for your business.

Gavin: Yeah that is the crux of it isn’t it.  The crux of it is who are you targeting, who are your clients, what are the challenges and issues that they have got, why do they need to solve them, how much do they need to solve them, how compelling are those issues right now, how much value can you add in solving those.  And that boils down to what they are prepared to pay and what that investment is likely to be and how much they are going to actually respect that investment.  And the less it is the less they are going to pay, so the more transactional it is the more likely you are to get into a transactional issue with someone else.  But it is recognising is this transactional, is it value based and even if it is kind of sitting between both have we asked the questions, have we shown the interest, have we done the stuff to find the real value.

Kevin: And is this predominantly the difference between the companies that continue to do well regardless of market conditions and the ones that then when the market conditions get a bit tougher they are the ones that begin to fall by the wayside?

Gavin: Yes.

Kevin: It is that simple isn’t it.

Gavin: I think we need to be adding value.  And I think if you look at anybody or anything or any business or any sales person who is successful long term they understand that there is a direct link between the value they add and the amount that you get paid.  I mean as a general rule even the whole of the UK economy how do we need to export more stuff.  I guess we need to be competitively priced but we need to add more value that is the bottom line.  We don’t have to be the cheapest in the world, we don’t have to compete with the cheapest people but we have to add value that people are prepared to pay for.  It is not good enough going ‘British made’.  You know that is not good enough, it might get you an extra little bit but people actually have to see a value in that.  People have to understand the value and that’s about you understanding your clients.  It is about you understanding who is buying and it is about adding real value.  And another big one is more value than that which you are being paid.  Provided you are in that bucket, the more you are in that bucket the better it is.

Kevin: So where do we start with that, how do we? I mean I know you have touched on various things but how do we start by getting more firms to look inwardly at themselves and start getting people really looking both from a personal perspective at the value they are adding but also then from the value that they can really add to their client base?

Gavin: Wow well I suppose you are quite right.  Let’s extend the podcast to three weeks shall we, we can discuss it in detail.  I think it starts with individuals and I think we need to help individuals to realise the link between helping others, the link between caring about others and their own success in life because there is an intrinsic link and I think that link to a large extent has been lost by a lot of people.  And I think the way all these things need to start is from the top down.  So you need CEO’s, you need Sales Directors; you need Managing Directors who actually care about the people in the organisation.  People who actually go I know that if I add value for my staff then my staff will feel loyalty towards me and surely you should be continuing to believe in your staff and invest in your staff.  So I think you need to look at your staff, you need to value your staff and to do that you have got to ask yourself what do my staff value?  And that is really, really important.  So I think it starts there.

I think the second thing is to look at creating a sales culture.  And by a sales culture I mean a culture that cares about clients.  Now yes they need to understand sales processes but sales process can only happen after you care about clients and we have got to find a way of getting every member of staff to feel that way, genuinely that way.  And for me it is the difference between doing something and actually being something.

Kevin: Go on explain that a bit more.

Gavin: Well I think a lot of people do questions or they do a process but they don’t, they don’t actually necessarily believe it.  They don’t necessarily believe so they ask a few cursory questions but they are not really interested.  They say something they don’t really mean it they are just saying it because somebody told them that that’s how you sell.  And people see that these days, people understand that.  Whether they get it at a mental level or whether they get it, they just feel it, people get it.  So here is the thing I often say in courses don’t care about the deal.  I think a lot of people get very confused by that initially.

Kevin: I was going to say I am looking at your face now.

Gavin: You are a little bit confused.  Because I think typically however we manage sales people and I am not saying don’t manage them like this, this is the dichotomy, we have gone this month you have got to do this number of deals, this week you have to do so many deals.  But you know what I can’t actually control a deal, I can’t make you buy.  I can only control the process.  Why do deals happen?  Deals happen because I care about you.  Deals happen because I show an interest in you.  Deals happen because I do my research and I approach you with something that is of interest.  Deals happen because I ask you the right questions to find out whether it adds value or not.  Deals happen because I ask you the right questions and I explore your business with you enough to understand it adds enough value that you are going to buy it.  Deals happen because I then use a process that helps you to effectively get to a place where you feel that you can buy it and I hold your hand through that buying process.  That’s why deals happen and I care about all of that.  Whether the actual deal happens at the end yes of course there is a little bit of me that always wants the deal to go in but if you worry about that too much you end up putting all your energy into that and you miss steps earlier on.  And if you miss steps earlier on then it is going to feel pressurised at best but a lot of the time it is just going to fall out.  And I think one of the issues there as well of course is that a lot of sales people whether they like it or not are quite transactional even in some of the solution based sectors and that is again because they are not interested enough.  And I think as you get more interested you start looking at how you add value on a deeper level than just that particular sale.  You start looking at how I add value to the business as a whole.  How do I look at adding value to where the business is going.  How do I look at adding value for the key decision makers and the key people within the business and at that point you start to get into much bigger solutions.  You start to get into partnership relationships and you start to be able to become much more of an advisor to the business rather than somebody who just supplied a certain box or a certain truck or a certain service on a certain occasion.

Kevin: And that is all because you have stopped focussing on the deal.

Gavin: And started caring about the client.

Kevin: Yeah incredible and I imagine that the pressure just lifts from people.  You can physically see that pressure.  They probably just go ‘oh thank God for that’ they used to get wound up considerably thinking that all the pressure is on them being good at closing rather than actually realising that if they load the front end the early part of the conversation, the getting to know you stage, loads of questions, understanding the business.

Gavin: Yeah you are right.  I used to be involved with recruitment companies and recruitment is a great example.  And one of the things they would often ask me for upfront was can you help us, exactly as you say, can you help us close more deals.  Because the assumption is we are not on target and therefore we are not closing enough therefore we need closing skills.  It kind of makes sense doesn’t it.  But what you don’t think about is well maybe it is the process that is not right.  What you don’t think about is well maybe we didn’t add enough value therefore closing was never going to happen anyway.  So people train closing skills.  So what people try and do of course then is they try and close harder which actually just alienates clients and pushes them away further.

Anyway recruitment the interesting thing is one of the areas that it turns up of course is after you have got the CV and after you have given the CV to the client and the client has looked at the CV or even maybe after the client has interviewed the person and the client comes back and says ‘yeah I don’t think they are right’.  And recruitment used to typically train rebuttals to that.  Now I am not saying there is never a time when you could ask some questions and rebut it and put them in but I would suggest it is very rare because by the time the client has actually seen somebody and actually had a conversation across the table with them they have kind of made their mind up because they are missing the point the sale happened miles before that.  The sale has happened at the point the client said ‘I would like you to work with me on this piece of recruitment’.  It is at that moment, that’s the moment when you get to be consultative, that is the moment when you get to care about their business.  Rather than just going ‘oh okay thanks very much I will go and look for that person for you’ that’s the moment when you get to look at well how does this person fit into the business and why are they important to the business and ask all those questions, that is the moment because it is at that moment that you have the opportunity to present a solution. Alright you have then got to go away and fulfil it with the right person but that is the real moment where the real sale happens.  That is where you really add value, that’s where you get to be consultative over everybody who is not.  That is where you get to prove look this isn’t just transactional for me this is about caring about this business.  And people just miss it.  As you say it is upfront but people have missed it and by the time they realise they have missed it the only thing they can do is try and shut doors.  I think you have got to get this because if you don’t get this you are going to be struggling and more importantly you are going to be chasing business that is declining and you are going to be fighting with everybody else on price.  And one of the issues of course with a lot of business’s, it’s not all businesses but with a lot of businesses with remote working, with the internet, with the ability to work from home there are a lot of industries, there are a lot of companies where some people have struggled and maybe have gone to work from cheaper premises, they have reduced the number of staff that are working from the garage particularly for the small to midsized companies.  You cannot compete with these people on prices it is suicide, you have to add more value.

Kevin: Gavin on a final note if there was one thing that we want to leave everybody with today that either it is something that you constantly apply and have probably found most beneficial within building your own business and your own career or for people within their businesses and their careers.  What would that one nugget be that we just want to leave them with as the closing point for this interview?

Gavin: I think for me it is looking at the activities that you do and asking yourself is this helping me to get to where I want to go.  Because I think with everything else that is going on today and all of the interruptions that we have you can have incredibly busy days and you can work incredibly long hours and yet not do anything or do very little that takes you in the direction that you want to go and you end up frazzled, you end up fire fighting, you end up incredibly busy but you are still running around in circles.  And if people are wanting to increase sales within their business they have got to sit down and they have got to work out what are the activities within the business, what are the behaviours within the business, what are the items within the business that are going to move us forward and help us get more sales.  And they need to find a way of making those happen because in the current market and indeed prior to the current market a lot of companies were not doing enough of those activities.  I work with sales teams, huge sales teams sometimes and very, very few people on a day are spending very much time on truly proactively the activities that are moving the business forward and it’s that sort of stuff.

You asked me to equate it for myself.  For myself there are various things that go on in a day but there is other things which drive the business forward, there are other things that take me where I want to go and it is very easy to get distracted from those and you need to make sure that you make the time for them.  I think that for me is by far the most important.

Kevin: Gavin thank you very much for coming on the Maximise Potential Podcast today.

Gavin: It has been a pleasure thank you.

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Kevin: Thank you Gavin for joining us on the Maximise Potential Podcast today and for sharing so much of your experience with our audience.  Gavin’s messages were incredibly clear in terms of the responsibility that everyone plays within the selling process no matter how internal your role may be.  And also the necessity regarding orientating your entire approach around adding value and creating solutions.  Gavin has a superb newsletter and LinkedIn group which I would thoroughly recommend subscribing to.  You can find links to both of these via his website at www.gaviningham.com and also I have posted links to these on the show notes.

So a couple of bits of news to finish off with today.  Kay White has just recorded another podcast with us to follow up her highly popular interview regarding making your communication more powerful and influential.  We will be releasing it very soon however in the interim Kay is running a completely free training course where she shares some really simple, subtle and influential communication secrets.  The call is taking place on November 17 however don’t worry if you miss it as you can register to receive a recorded version of the call.  Just go to the weblink at www.theunderstoodnow.com/beheard which I have also included in our show notes page.

Thanks again for tuning in and please remember to visit our website at www.maximisepotential.co.uk for more articles and resources to help you maximise your potential.  I would also like to extend a big thanks as always to the Jenrick Recruitment Group who sponsor this podcast and specialise in developing careers in the engineering, commercial and IT sectors.

Thanks very much for tuning in and here’s a great track from Xerxes to finish on today which is called ‘when the dust settles’.

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Welcome back to episode 34 of the Maximise Potential Podcast.

No matter if you are responsible for a business or focusing on developing your career, the current environment is arguably the most competitive, uncertain and challenging that anyone has ever known.

As a result we felt it was essential to invite an expert onto the podcast who can enable us to understand how we can operate and succeed within such restrictive parameters.

Gavin Ingham is widely regarded as one the UK’s leading sales trainers, adding value to individuals and companies from all industries and sectors.

In today’s interview on Maximise Potential Gavin discusses a topic, which is critical, if we are to survive in today’s envrionment – sales.

This interview will be incredibly helpful for everyone to understand what sales really is, and how you apply simple techniques to add subtantial value, to your products, your services or even to you as an inidividual.

Here is Gavin to help us all understand and embrace the new rules of selling.

Additional notes and resources (just click on the links for more information):

• GAVIN INGHAM WEBSITE - Click here to view the Gavin Ingham website
• GAVIN INGHAM BLOG – Click here to subscribe to Gavin Ingham’s blog

For more information on Kay White’s free training call:

• FREE COMMUNICATION TRAINING - ‘Be Heard’ free training call
  

EUROPEAN PODCASTING AWARDS:

• VOTE for Maximise Potential by clicking HERE

Interview Transcription:

• Transcript: The New Rules of Selling – Gavin Ingham (Max#34)
  

According to my trusty dictionary, a greeting is “a polite word or sign of welcome or recognition.”  Simple, quick and powerful.

So many people struggle and feel as if they’re banging their head against a brick wall as they wait for people to get back to them or take action from sending out an email.  Sounds familiar?

OK, well first, a quick question for you.  You wouldn’t just burst the door open to someone’s office, blurt out what you want to say and then slam the door shut as you leave would you?  Well, if you would, then that’s a whole other story.   In the main, you’d walk in and say “Morning, how are you?” or “Hey John, have you got a minute?”  It constantly amazes me that people fire off emails and do it without a single “Hello” or “Morning” and then wonder why they get mixed – if any – responses.

It’s the quickest way to irritate, to unsettle and to invite the other person to simply make you wait or ignore you.  Never underestimate the power of giving people a sign of “welcome or recognition” to ease them – and you – into your message.

It takes about 5 seconds to type a few words of welcome or greeting and then to add a friendly, polite sign off at the end. I call it ‘topping and tailing’ things or ‘adding subtle accessories’ to your messages. Again, think about your emailing like going into someone’s office – you are, after all, appearing on his or her screen.  You’ve got nothing to lose by taking those few seconds and so much to gain.

It makes a real difference to the way your message lands and how it makes the reader feel – and crucially – what they do once they’ve read it, if you top and tail it.  If you want to engage people into action – whatever action that is – then a ‘polite word or sign of welcome or recognition’ is a quick and easy win.

Notice the difference in how you feel reading these two real-life examples:

• When can we get together to discuss XYZ?  The deadline’s coming up, let’s find a date.

Or,

• Morning Jane, hope all goes well with you.  When can we get together to discuss XYZ?  The deadline’s coming up, so let’s find a date. Best wishes, Your Name

What about this bald statement, again a real-life example:

• I need to understand more about this before I can agree it.  When can we speak?

Or,

• Hi there John, thanks for sending this across and I’ve read through it all.  I need to understand more about this before I can agree it.  When can we speak? Regards, Your Name

There’s a myriad of things you can do – and not do – to get people into action and to respond to you in a way that makes sense to both you and them.  One of them is to use an easy opener in your emails.

Think how many emails you send and receive every day and now notice which ones you find easier to respond to and why.  I bet you the easier ones are from people who take just a few seconds to give you a bit of recognition before they ask, or tell you, what it is they want.   Those few seconds can save you so much crucial time and energy.  Why wouldn’t you?

Oh, and if you standardise your sign off, so it appears automatically, make sure it’s in the same typeface as the rest of the email.  It’s better than no sign off at all, but if it comes out differently the reader knows you didn’t personalise it.  Subtle again, but it’s the subtleties that make the difference, isn’t it?

How do I learn more about Kay?

To have the opportunity to discuss any blind spots you know you have or things that are slowing you down or holding you back as you connect, persuade and compel people at work; click here to apply for a complimentary conversation with Kay.

Article reproduced with permission of Kay White, Communication Specialist and Mentor at www.wayforwardsolutions.com. Kay shows professionals how to be understood. Get quicker, faster and better results by becoming a more effective, influential and savvy communicator – everywhere in your life.

In addition, you can listen to an exclusive interview with Kay where she shares several exclusive tips on how to immediately make your communication more powerful and persuasive: http://www.maximisepotential.co.uk/how-to-develop-effective-powerful-communication/

After 4 unsuccessful general ballot entries I decided to apply for a charity place in the 2012 London Marathon through Back Up and today I found out that I have been successful.

If I could travel back in time and share this news with my younger, athletically challenged self he would never, ever believe it possible.

I challenged myself to run 10 miles in 2005 (the Great South Run). Then I ran it again, and again, and again, completing my 7th this year. Seeking a new challenge, I decided to take part in the Great Gorilla Run (8km) and recently signed up for the Santa Run (10km). Just for fun and to do something different for charity.

I wanted to run a marathon before I reached 40. While I reached that milestone in March this year the desire to test myself over such a distance remained. Can I really run 26.2 miles? Why not? I never thought I could run 10 miles but I did. I’ve read about so many people from all walks of life, of all shapes and sizes, who’ve run a marathon and the likes of Andy McMenemy (aka @AndyMcMenemy, 66 marathons in 66 days), Mark Allison (aka @rungeordierun) and Simon Buckden (aka @100mara100weeks, running a marathon every week for 100 weeks) provide inspiration that anything is possible with determination, dedication and self-belief.

Now it’s my turn to prove that I can join those who’ve completed a marathon. What better year to do it than when London hosts the 2012 Olympics.

I’d also like to say a big thanks to you guys over at Maximise Potential – your podcasts really helped my get through my training runs. I particularly enjoyed your interview with Matthew Syed and his book Bounce, which really helped me get my head around accomplishing big goals. Keep them coming!

If anyone wants to say hi or keep up with my running updates, please come and visit my blog at http://cifco.posterous.com/.

Hi Graham,

Thank you very much for sharing your story on the site – we hope it will be the first of many!

It’s great to hear how the podcast and website are helping people go after their goals and take on challenges that they previously thought were out of their reach. As you rightly say, a few years back you didn’t think you could even run 10 miles – now look at where you are.

It just shows how big goals happen if you are prepared to take small steps on a consistent basis.

Keep us posted and keep the feedback coming!

Kevin

This is going to be so obvious to you – it probably is already from the title above – the power of using people’s names; the power of hearing your own name when it’s used; the way it immediately engages and connects you; how it even wakes you up!

It’s also powerful to know that the fastest way to disconnect from someone – intentionally or otherwise – is to confuse their name, mispronounce their name and keep forgetting their name. It’s a real turn off.

We all know how easy it is to pontificate and chat away to people – in writing as well as face-to-face – and never mention their name? Well, the minute – or let’s say, the second – you decide to start using everyone’s name more, then you’ll notice immediately how much more engaged people are with you; how you have their attention – sometimes despite them not wanting to give it to you. It tells them, and you, that you’re thinking of them; it says that you actually know their name (so many people don’t take any notice of your name and it’s just that – your name, your identity). When you use people’s names more it tells them that you’re engaging with them, that you’re directing your message to them and for them and not generally throwing it out there.

It’s a subtle, secret and easy ingredient to add in to your conversations; your emails; your meetings; your networking; your cocktail parties – everything.

Here’s how to use people’s names with intention and still be comfortable:

If you’re running a meeting or have a group of people on the phone for example, sprinkle in people’s names – the effect is startling. The message the person’s brain hears is ‘oh, it’s us, we’re on. We’d better pay attention.’ It’s really powerful to know this.

Sometimes, when we’re first introduced to someone, we forget; we’re mid-flow and then realise we’ve forgotten their name. If you make it your new habit to immediately say back their name to them as you’re introduced ‘well, nice to meet you Jane’ or ‘Jane, it’s a pleasure meeting you’ two things happen.

Firstly, you tell Jane you heard her name and have remembered it; your greeting is more meaningful to her because her name is included in there. Secondly, it helps you to ‘engage brain’ and remember her name. You can start avoiding those ‘help, I’ve forgotten who I’m talking to’ moments, which are both excruciating and also a reflection of our lack of attention towards that person. Oops.

So, how do we start using someone’s name comfortably? The word comfortably is important here. It’s not about saying ‘Oh yes, Jane, I agree Jane – and Jane what do you think about that Jane?’ Of course it’s not. The way I find most comfortable and a great way to start, is to use a person’s name when asking them a question or when asking for a response. ‘So Jane, how long have you been working here?’ or ‘tell me a bit more about that, Jane, please.’

When you greet people today, use their name. ‘Hi there X’ and ‘Morning X, how’s it going?’ Notice yourself doing this and notice the response. Often it will be one of surprise. It really jolts the other person when they hear their name, especially when it’s unexpected. It’s so easy to just say ‘Hi there’ or ‘Morning’ without using the person’s name. Engage with them and grab their attention. Use their name.

If you don’t believe me, take it from that master of human relations Dale Carnegie who, in his famous book ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People’ said, “If you want to win friends, make it a point to remember them. If you remember my name, you pay me a subtle compliment; you indicate that I have made an impression on you. Remember my name and you add to my feeling of importance.” Thank you for writing your timeless book Mr Carnegie, enough said.

How do I learn more about Kay?

To have the opportunity to discuss any blind spots you know you have or things that are slowing you down or holding you back as you connect, persuade and compel people at work; click here to apply for a complimentary conversation with Kay.

Article reproduced with permission of Kay White, Communication Specialist and Mentor at www.wayforwardsolutions.com. Kay shows professionals how to be understood. Get quicker, faster and better results by becoming a more effective, influential and savvy communicator – everywhere in your life.

Kay’s first book, The A to Z of Being Understood is a Number 1 Amazon Bestseller for Customer Service.

In addition, you can listen to an exclusive interview with Kay where she shares several exclusive tips on how to immediately make your communication more powerful and persuasive: http://www.maximisepotential.co.uk/how-to-develop-effective-powerful-communication/

Maximise Your Potential Podcast is all about helping people be successful in life and this article reveals the key tips on how to be a successful leader.

Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “A good leader inspires people to have confidence in the leader, a great leader inspires people to have confidence in themselves.” But, becoming a great leader isn’t easy. Successfully maneuvering a team through the ups and downs of starting a new business can be one of the greatest challenges a small-business owner faces.

Leadership is one of the areas that many entrepreneurs tend to overlook, according leadership coach John C. Maxwell, whose books include The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership (Thomas Nelson, 1998) and Developing the Leader Within You (Thomas Nelson, 1993).

“You work hard to develop your product or service. You fight to solve your financial issues. You go out and promote your business and sell your product. But you don’t think enough about leading your own people and finding the best staff,” Maxwell says.

It turns out, the skills and talents necessary to guide your team in the right direction can be simple, and anyone with the determination can develop them. Here’s a list of 10 tips drawn from the secrets of successful leaders.

1. Assemble a dedicated team.
Your team needs to be committed to you and the business . Successful entrepreneurs have not only social and selling smarts, but also the know-how to hire effectively, says leadership trainer Harvey Mackay, who wrote Swim with the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive (Ivy Books, 1995). “A colossal business idea simply isn’t enough. You have to be able to identify, attract and retain talent who can turn your concept into a register-ringing success,” he says.

When putting your team together, look for people whose values are aligned with the purpose and mission of your company. Suzanne Bates, a Wellesley, Mass.-based leadership consultant and author of Speak Like a CEO (McGraw Hill, 2005), says her team members rallied around each other during the worst part of the recession because they all believed in what they were doing. “Having people on your team who have tenacity and a candid spirit is really important,” she says.

2. Overcommunicate.
This one’s a biggie. Even with a staff of only five or 10, it can be tough to know what’s going on with everyone. In an effort to overcommunicate, Bates compiles a weekly news update she calls a Friday Forecast, and emails it to her staff. “My team is always surprised at all the good news I send out each week,” Bates says. “It makes everyone feel like you really have a lot of momentum, even in difficult times.”

3. Don’t assume.
When you run a small business, you might assume your team understands your goals and mission — and they may. But, everybody needs to be reminded of where the company’s going and what things will look like when you get there. Your employees may ask, “What’s in it for me?” It’s important to paint that picture for your team. Take the time to really understand the people who are helping you build your business.

“Entrepreneurs have the vision, the energy, and they’re out there trying to make it happen. But, so often with their staff, they are assuming too much,” says Beverly Flaxington, founder of The Collaborative, a business-advising company in Medfield, Mass. “It’s almost like they think their enthusiasm by extension will be infectious — but it’s not. You have to bring people into your world and communicate really proactively.”

4. Be authentic.
Good leaders instill their personality and beliefs into the fabric of their organization, Flaxington says. If you be yourself, and not try to act like someone else, and surround yourself with people who are aligned with your values, your business is more likely to succeed, she says.

“Every business is different and every entrepreneur has her own personality,” Flaxington says. “If you’re authentic, you attract the right people to your organization – employees and customers.”

5. Know your obstacles.
Most entrepreneurs are optimistic and certain that they’re driving toward their goals. But, Flaxington says, it’s a short-sighted leader who doesn’t take the time to understand his obstacles.

“You need to know what you’re up against and be able to plan around those things,” she says. “It’s folly to think that just because you’ve got this energy and enthusiasm that you’re going to be able to conquer all. It’s much smarter to take a step back and figure out what your obstacles are, so the plan that you’re putting into place takes that into account.”

6. Create a ‘team charter.’
Too many new teams race down the road before they even figure out who they are, where they’re going, and what will guide their journey, says Ken Blanchard, co-author of The One-Minute Manager (William Morrow & Co., 1982) and founder of The Ken Blanchard Cos., a workplace- and leadership-training firm. Just calling together a team and giving them a clear charge does not mean the team will succeed.

“It’s important to create a set of agreements that clearly states what the team is to accomplish, why it is important and how the team will work together to achieve the desired results,” says Blanchard, who is based in Escondido, Calif. “The charter provides a record of common agreements and can be modified as the business grows and the team’s needs change.”

7. Believe in your people.
Entrepreneurial leaders must help their people develop confidence, especially during tough times. As Napoleon Bonaparte said, “Leaders are dealers in hope.” That confidence comes in part from believing in your team, says Maxwell, who is based in West Palm Beach, Fla. “I think of my people as 10s, I treat them like 10s, and as a result, they try to perform like 10s,” he says. “But believing in people alone isn’t enough. You have to help them win.”

8. Dole out credit.
Mackay says a good salesperson knows what the sweetest sound in the world is: The sound of their name on someone else’s lips. But too many entrepreneurs think it’s either the crinkle of freshly minted currency, or the dull thud of a competitor’s body hitting the pavement.

“Many entrepreneurs are too in love with their own ideas and don’t know how to distribute credit,” Mackay says. “A good quarterback always gives props to his offensive line.”

9. Keep your team engaged.
Great leaders give their teams challenges and get them excited about them, says leadership expert Stephen Covey, author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (Free Press, 1989). He pointed to the example of a small pizza shop in a moderate-sized town that was killing a big fast-food chain in sales. The big difference between the chain and the small pizza joint was the leader, he says.

Every week he gathered his teenage employees in a huddle and excitedly asked them: “What can we do this week that we’ve never done before?” The kids loved the challenge. They started texting all their friends whenever a pizza special was on. They took the credit-card machine to the curb so passing motorists could buy pizza right off the street. They loaded up a truck with hot pizzas and sold them at high-school games. The money poured in and the store owner never had problems with employee turnover, says Covey, who is based in Salt Lake City, Utah.

10. Stay calm.
An entrepreneur has to backstop the team from overreacting to short-term situations, says Mackay, who is based in Minneapolis. This is particularly important now, when news of the sour economic environment is everywhere.

“The media has been hanging black crepe paper since 2008,” he says. “But look at all the phenomenal companies and brands that were born in downturns, names like iPod, GE and Federal Express.”

ARTICLE SOURCE:

• Entrepreneur.com

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Music

Kevin: Welcome to Maximise Potential the podcast to educate and motivate through a range of original interviews designed to help you maximise your potential.  Brought to you in association with the award winning recruitment group Jenrick.

Welcome back to Episode 33 of the Maximise Potential podcast.  We are extremely fortunate to welcome back Everest Record Holder Bonita Norris.  As many of you are aware on May 17th 2010 Bonita Norris became the youngest ever British woman to climb Everest at the age of just 22.  On Episode 18 of the podcast Bonita gave us an incredible insight into her epic journey and today Bonita is coming back to focus on the motivational methods, mental approaches and goal setting techniques that she used to get her there so please enjoy.

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Bonita you’re on the podcast again.

Bonita: Kevin good to be back.

Kevin: Firstly I would like to feed back to you just regarding the positive impact that your first recording did.  I mean the amount of people that have come back to me and said how it has helped them really break down goals particularly.  That was an area that you really focussed on.  I mean let’s face it as you rightly said on the podcast it doesn’t get much bigger than Everest and yet you really broke it down into such little chunks it was that that people came back with and also the self belief.  They couldn’t believe how late in the process that the sponsorship came into play and yet you just followed everything to the letter right the way through, that inner belief that it was going to happen.  You know in your mind there was never any doubt was there.

Bonita: I think I have always been told by my parents and what not that if you work hard enough for something then it will come good in the end and you have just got to have faith.  And actually most successes happen in the eleventh hour and to never give up.  And actually the more the situation came to head the more determined I became I think.  My determination by then was really just to prove that these impossible challenges were actually possible and there was no way you know in the dying hours of trying to find £50,000 to go and climb Everest that I was going to give up after you know a year of training and trying to find that money.  It made me more determined than ever and it was in the eleventh hour that I got it.  So hopefully that has proved exactly what I set out to prove.

Kevin: I think it has and really I think that confirms the nature of what we are going to talk about today because we are not necessarily going to talk about any specific events and challenges and I know that there are zillions more on the horizon for you.  But we are going to focus in on what drives you internally and we are going to focus on how good you are at setting goals for yourself and how you go about setting goals for yourself and you really work through that because the more I have had the pleasure of learning about you the more I have realised that you are so meticulous at doing this and yet this is an area that most people don’t do and yet a lot of people want to do.  And I think it is going to really help people understand.  I think you would even say it is a relatively simple process that you go through but it seems to make a difference doesn’t it.

Bonita: A huge.

Kevin: So shall we go right back to when you were planning for Everest because I think that was when you first started setting goals and it would be lovely to explain how you went about setting goals on an event that has happened and maybe then discussing how it is going to impact how you move forward in your life to attack new goals and new challenges.

Bonita: Okay with regards to Everest it is quite an easy obvious end point you know reach the summit get back down alive.  So it is quite a straightforward goal to have, it is really visual you can see straight away that is exactly where you are going and I think some of the time actually working out what your goals are is half the issue.  And before I decided to do Everest it was a real problem for me I can remember thinking, I was at Uni and thinking I wanted a challenge, I wanted to do something, I wanted to test myself, learn about myself, push myself but I didn’t know what it was going to be.  I mean I have got this sheet here in front of me that I wrote down a big list that I have printed off.

Kevin: Just talk about that for a second because you know when we were just prepping before we started recording just let everybody know what happened here.

Bonita: Before I decided to climb Everest I actually sat down one evening and wrote down a big long list of all of my goals for the next ten years of my life.  I think I was about 19 when I wrote it and it went up to 28 and all sorts of things, it is funny reading back you know like certain marathons I wanted to run and certain work experience placements I wanted to do and just silly things but it ended with me writing the last thing I wanted to do was climb Everest.

Kevin: And you wrote this as a teenager.

Bonita: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kevin: Before you had even, we are talking before you had been to the talks that really inspired you, before you had interviewed Rob which really got you going on all of this.  What were you thinking at the time?  Why did you do this?

Bonita: I think for me being able to see things on paper makes a huge difference to actually being able to work towards them.  So if I have a plan I have to write it down, I am an obsessive list maker.  I have to write to do lists because as soon as it is out of my brain and it’s on the paper it is actually something visual that I can look for.  So I am always kind of compelled to write down things.

Kevin: Okay keeping talking more about that.

Bonita: Well it’s a sense of as soon as you have a goal as I said at the beginning it is really difficult to actually work out sometimes what the end point is, what you actually want to achieve.  But as soon as you start writing things down you find that you write down the things that you want and you don’t think about, you don’t write down the things you don’t want to do.  And I have always been like that in the sense that I have managed to, it clears your mind and you write things down, you put things on paper and then you can deconstruct them which is really difficult to do inside your head.  Well it is for me anyway I am not the best thinker so I have to align my thoughts, I have to put them onto paper and I think by writing this list when I was a teenager of just like the most bizarre things to do throughout my twenties I was setting myself targets knowing that probably I wasn’t going to achieve them all but even if I achieve 10% of these things it would still be really cool things to do.  So that was one of the reasons why I wanted to do it but secondly just because I was going through early stages of University not knowing where I wanted to end up when I left, not having any clear direction but actually writing down these goals gave me some kind of direction and some kind of structure to my future.  And I like having that structure, I like knowing what I am aiming for and from there I can work backwards and break it down into these small steps and then start working towards it again.  And it is a really simple process in that sense of just writing down what you want, deconstructing it and then beginning to work towards it.  And it has always just been kind of what I have done without really thinking about it.

Kevin: Yeah well that was the interesting thing when we chatted because I asked you well what prompted you to do it and you were like haven’t got a clue, I haven’t really thought about that it is just what I do.  But did it help just to declutter your mind, did it help almost crystallise what you wanted to stand for as a person, I mean?

Bonita: Yes it does, 100% I think your goals really do define who you are.  And I think the reason we live and we continue to strive to do things and get out of bed and earn money is because we want to achieve certain things in our lives whether that having children, a certain amount of money, certain holiday, you want to run a marathon.  We always set ourselves goals; it is what keeps your heart beating I think.  And for me that was always something, I always wanted to have a goal and when you are young they are quite simple, it was like run the Reading Half Marathon when I was 17 or something.  But as you sort of get older you want to make them more and more complex and the list that I wrote wasn’t just about climbing mountains or doing physical challenges they were also like I want to get a Masters, which now looking back on this I realise I haven’t done yet so I am kind of feeling that I haven’t achieved all that I have set out to do.

Kevin: Because you haven’t actually looked at this list now for a few years have you.

Bonita: No I have not looked at this list since it was written in 2008 a long time ago but as I said when I wrote it down I genuinely can remember thinking even if I do just a few things on this list I will be so happy.  And you are right it declutters your mind, when you see these goals you do see the kind of person that you will end up being if you were to achieve them.

Kevin: Okay that’s interesting talk a bit about that you’ve straight away said that you can see the sort of person that you are going to end up being if you achieve them.  What do you mean by that?

Bonita: Well I think like your thoughts become your actions and your actions become you know the reasons why you make the decisions that you make and then the decisions that you make cause your destiny basically.  So I think you become who you want to be and those things, and you know who you are starts right in your mind and I feel like that by writing these things down my thoughts and stuff like that I can actually see where I am going because sometimes you don’t really get where you are going and what actually inspires me and I end up looking at this list and like wow if I do all these things that would be really cool.  But that is in the back of mind I would kind of.

Kevin: Gets a spark.

Bonita: Yeah gets me going so that is why I did it I guess.

Kevin: I want to ask you another question about this list.  You didn’t just write down this list and keep it to yourself did you?

Bonita: I emailed it to my mum and I have actually written here you know ‘I have had a long hard think tonight and I have come up with my plan this is an idealist money doesn’t matter plan but it is good to have a plan right’ That is what I wrote and then I sent her this list of what I wanted to do in my twenties.

Kevin: Why did you not keep the list to yourself, why did you choose to email it to your mother?

Bonita: Because I think once you have shared these ideas.  Once you have put them out in the open they become something and you have set the mark then, you know you have set the gauntlet down.  If people know about it you have almost set the challenge because you don’t want to let yourself down or let them people down.  You don’t want to be seen as someone who’s not gone and done what you said you were going to do.  And I am very much a person that if I commit to something and people know that I have committed that’s it from that point I will do whatever I can to make sure that I achieve that goal.  And I felt that by sending it out there it would become more real and it is silly but you know once people know about your dreams and goals then they know what kind of person you want to be and will look at you in that way and won’t be completely surprised when you turn around and say you want to go up Everest.

Kevin: Keep going with that I am liking where this is going go on.

Bonita: So you know well it is as simple as that really once it is out there you have put it down on paper and not only is it visualised in front of you people know about it and there is an expectation from that point that you will go through with what you say you are going to do.  And

Kevin: Is it like a contract, do you view it as a contract?

Bonita: I think you do view it as a contract with yourself yeah, I like the pressure of it is a risk because you have set yourself up to fail and I like that putting things out there and making outlandish statements and saying I am going to do this.  And then people going no you can’t and then I am going watch me.  So I think possibly that is one of the reasons but as I have sort of gone on to more I realise how difficult these things actually are.  I do keep a lot of things to myself now just in case they don’t come off.

Kevin: Now something that you have mentioned probably about four times if I am counting correctly in this very short interview so far is the term ‘to visualise’. First of all you said about with Everest the fact that you could visualise that.  You have said then with regards to the list that you are creating that it helps you visualise your goals.  What do you mean by that?

Bonita: I guess that I obviously like to see in my mind or I like to see in front of me how I am going to do things and I like to be able to see that in a logical sense.  I like to have it in front of me what do I have to do when and how am I going to do this.  That is just how I learn I guess.

Kevin: And what are you seeing?

Bonita: I’m just seeing like goal posts.  When I am seeing something like Everest I am not seeing the mountain I am seeing how it is broken down.  I am looking at my timeframe, how much time have I got, what have I got to do in that time, what have I got to have achieved to be ready to climb that mountain, how much money do I need.  My obsessive kind of deconstructing of goals is that sort of scene in my head.  But also I mean what really kept me going throughout Everest and I have never admitted this but I used to have like certain songs and certain music which I would put on which would be like my Everest music and help me visualise and get back to how I like felt at the beginning. Because when you first come up with an idea or a goal it is so exciting and it is so easy to get motivated by and then a year down the line you really forget how that feeling was.

Kevin: Yeah because you are in the middle of all this horrible slog.

Bonita: And it is not the rose tinted ideal that you thought it was but I would have certain songs and certain music in my mind, I would be playing kind of like this documentary style thing of like what it would be like to climb, what it would be like to see my family at Heathrow, what I would do at the summit, like what it would feel like to live at base camp all in my head.

Kevin: So are you actually viewing this as a movie in the future, you can actually see yourself in that situation, you can see yourself greeting people, you can see yourself crying.

Bonita: Yeah I had it all done, I had my whole documentary in my head of the whole expedition and when I thought about that or I heard that music it would just be like, the fire would just be reignited that little bit more.  You know the embers would sort of relit and it would help me go on.  And it was so important for me to do that because nothing else worked.  It was all about visualising it and imagining it and that would just give me enough to get back on the phone again and start asking for money or go on and do my training which was getting mundane and it just got me through I think really.

Kevin: So I am assuming then that would, those moments would particularly kick into play when you were facing adversity, facing those points where in your head you were beginning to hit the negative.

Bonita: Yeah I think there was never like points of its all gone wrong suddenly it was just a general, the general slog of day in day out and it beats you down slowly especially when time is ticking I have got to find £50,000.  I have got no leads because the sponsorship all happened very fast but you know in the back of my mind when I would take some time to just think this is what, this is how it’s going to be in my head it was just too tempting it was too insensilising I couldn’t let the dream die because in my mind still it was just so incredible.  And actually sometimes I confused my memories with my real memories and my false memories because they were so vivid these visualisations that I actually sometimes look back and I have to think did that actually happen or was that just what I imagined beforehand.

Kevin: See that is I mean you just said the word incredible and yet you were speaking about something that was actually in your mind so it wasn’t actually just seeing an image it was almost like you were experiencing it emotionally as well.  You managed to get the actual emotional feedback of going oh God this is what it is actually going to feel like when it happens.

Bonita: Yeah I think visualisation is such an important thing believing that you are going to summit Everest, believing that you are going to run a marathon in a certain time.  If you don’t believe that you are going to do it then the chances are you won’t.  It is as simple as that.  That kind of self motivation of just imagining and believing that that, it did blur the boundaries of what was reality and what was not real before I went so it kind of almost felt like it was happening when it wasn’t.  And I think that is just testament to a wild imagination which I am obviously to have inherited.

Kevin: Very grateful to have.  Whoever said daydreaming was bad hey.

Bonita: Well exactly that but at the other end of spectrum I think I get that daydreaming stuff from my dad, but from my mum I definitely have the logical list making side of things.  So that is the big dream but how are you actually going to achieve it well the action was also just as kind of I would feed off the fact that I was actually making progress even if it was very small.  Just by being able to put a little tick by something was just the best feeling, it was those small victories.  So it was the big dreams and visualisations but it was also putting stuff on paper that I could see and I could actually work towards that I think the combination of both was what made it successful.

Kevin: What I find quite interesting about this interview is when you think how much we spoke about your targets and where you broke down stuff, and you broke down events, the first time when we spoke and I think we covered a lot in that interview and yet here is an interesting thing that we didn’t even touch on any of this.  And it just shows how much more is going on behind the scenes.

Bonita: Yeah I mean like I said until I came in here today I had completely forgotten about that list you know and I have printed it off and it is like four years old now.  And as I said completely disappointed because I haven’t achieved half the things on it.  But Everest I did do and I did go to the North Pole so that’s good.  But it does remind me and now I am thinking yeah you know what I still want to do that so it is good that I have got it because actually seeing it here I am thinking yeah that is something I would love to do so.  Take this home now.

Kevin: Can you feel yourself getting passionate about those things again?

Bonita: Definitely I mean you know these are things that don’t just go away.  I mean I have got new goals now which I can add to them but I mean I said I wanted to do these all by the end of my twenties but some of these things I would just like to do in my lifetime really.  You know like I would like to run the Paris Marathon I put down which sounds quite nice.

Kevin: Let me ask you now that you are becoming more aware of the techniques that you have used to help you achieve and we have got a great big event as in Everest and you can actually see all of it and you can reflect on it retrospectively and you can actually now work backwards and actually see how it all slotted together.  Two questions first of all can you now think back to much earlier in your life when you probably thought you were just daydreaming and actually you can now look at that and go cricky you know what I was actually visualising other things and that now makes sense of why I achieved XYZ earlier in my life?  Equally then jumping forward how conscious are you now of these techniques when you are actually planning this audacious future goals that you have got planned?

Bonita: Obviously as you say it is easier now when you are conscious of certain techniques you can like utilise them better.  I think when I was younger I remember making the decision to train for my first half marathon when I was about 17.  I genuinely thought that running 13 miles was just the most incredible thing like as a teenager not being able to run for 30 seconds and my teacher in school she gave an assembly and she said ‘girls how about thinking outside of your comfort zone going outside of what you are comfortable with and doing something that you didn’t think you were capable of’ And those words I remember I never forgot them, doing something that I didn’t think I was capable of, and she said to me how about you will run the half marathon and I think I am just really easily swayed.  I was like okay then and that was it.  So from there on I can remember instantly thinking get a training plan together, start small and one thing I do have as a talent is to take small victories.  I am quite happy to start and be absolutely rubbish at something, I do not hold any kind of ideas about myself being able to go off and run 10 miles the first time I try something or.

Kevin: That is a wonderful virtue to have.

Bonita: But I think it is very important because people will just do it once and be so demoralised because they are rubbish.  Obviously you are going to be rubbish at anything you haven’t done before I think because, and I don’t think I have got any natural talent towards anything apart from the fact that I am quite happy to take really small steps and just build up very slowly in my own time in my own way knowing that I will eventually get to where I need to be.  So lots of people started the training and we all went running and blah, blah, blah and then only two of us in the whole year actually ended up doing the half marathon because people just got demoralised I think.  Like my friends and stuff by the fact that it was actually going to be hard work and they would have to train and I didn’t mind that I just knew that if I carried on I would actually get there.  But today it obviously holds more weight because it was what I want to carry on doing for the rest of my life is setting these challenges.  So I have noticed those things.

Kevin: I think what’s very interesting is and what you keep coming back to time and time again is it almost doesn’t matter to you how big the end goal is as long as you can see, as you keep saying, as long as  you can see that logical path and you can break it down into enough steps so that you can make these small victories.  You go that’s fine I can do this, I can see that route.

Bonita: Exactly that you can achieve anything you know.  It’s purely about taking one step and building on it and not wanting success over night.  I think that is a huge thing.  It is just being patient and not reaping the harvest every day but sowing the seeds for it you know.  Like it is just so incredibly important and not giving up.  I think it’s one of the, it sounds so easy to do, is just carry on.  Carry on trying don’t you know, come and bounce back from failures and keep trying because you will get there.  And I genuinely believe that I can do something as long as I just don’t stop.  As I said before there is not much grace or skill to how I do things or what I do I just plod on until I get there if I want it bad enough.  You know but equally if it is something that doesn’t motivate me it has got no hope.

Kevin: Again that is a lovely lesson I think there is too many people you know we pick jobs, careers.  Too many people stay in a career that they aren’t motivated by, that they are actually not enjoying, they consider it’s a slog, its mundane it is not what they want to do.  They don’t just say right okay well can I change my attitude within this or do I just need to come on find something that I really want to do.

Bonita: Yeah I think it is so important to keep motivated but it is such a personal thing that you have to maintain.  You have familiarity breeds content isn’t it.  So even if you are doing the most exciting job in the world you can get bored of it one day.  It is up to us to stay motivated and to find new ways to, well find different ways of looking at our lives and being motivated by them and setting ourselves goals.  I think that is just the most important thing.  Set targets, meet them because that is a great feeling obviously and then see how far you can push it because I think inevitably we always surprise ourselves.

Kevin: Definitely and I am going to ask you to actually throw a goal out here on this podcast.  I mean we have covered some wonderful advice on how people can break down, how people can visualise everything else.  So let’s now throw this into the future tell us what you can visualise now for Bonita Norris.

Bonita: Well it’s been a goal for a while ever since climbing Everest there is this beautiful mountain next door called Lhotse which is the fourth highest in the world, looks horrendously difficult near the summit, lots of rock and ice.  And I would really like that to be my next big challenge.  It does sound similar oh it is right next door to Everest is it not just the same you know.  It is the same in many ways but it is also completely different in the sense that it is going to be technically in a mountaineering sense a lot more difficult to climb.  All I want to do with my mountaineering career is just build on what I have already got ever so slightly each time.  So this is kind of the next step and then after that I would love to go and climb more of the 14 8000m peaks.  I have done two and this will be my third.  I would love to go around and climb these as and when I am ready.  You know I know I am not ready to climb some of them yet but by going climbing inevitably I will get there eventually.  So that is putting it out that the next big goal.  As I said it is all about taking small steps so this is up to Camp 3 within my comfort zone I have done it before and then Camp 4 to the summit a whole new world.  You know steep rock and ice, fourth highest mountain on the planet wearing oxygen, big space suits on and what not but not just going up Everest snow slopes but going up steep Lhotse rock and ice.  And that is completely different it is just a matter of building on what I have learnt already in my experiences and just advancing slowly.  I am not going to go and try K2 just because I have climbed Everest it is going to take years before I am ready to attempt a mountain like that.

Kevin: The interesting thing with how you just described that though and this will come across on the audio for the people who have just heard it is how accurately you have just described it.  You have just described what you were wearing the type of rock face you are going to be climbing.

Bonita: Right I don’t notice it.

Kevin: You were visualising it naturally.  Your eyes sort of just went off and you were just describing exactly how it all looked.

Bonita: I think for a lot of athletes and I don’t class myself as an athlete but visualisation is the most important thing for success I think.  I mean seeing yourself there.

Kevin: Absolutely I mean when I spoke with Dean Macey he said it was all about visualisation.  He used to spend, and he openly said particularly in the periods where he was trying to recover from injury and go through rehab he would spend more time meditating, spending time in fields alone thinking and visualising about how he was going to win his gold medals, how he was going to compete, how he was going to feel strong again.

Bonita: Yeah because then when you go for it, it is actually almost like autopilot you know.  And I mean there was really nothing on Everest that really surprised me because I felt so ready for it.  As I said my memories of reality and my thoughts are actually almost blurred as a result.  So yeah visualisation and as we were talking before the podcast for now my rock climbing is what I am trying to push and visualising every move on a rock climb you know how it is going to feel to touch that hold and imagining that you get your footing just right and things like that.  So actually when you do the rock climb itself and all the pressures on to perform in those 15 – 20 seconds that you are on that short wall you have got to get everything right.  And if you have visualised it in your mind that everything is going to go perfectly then you tend to just follow that through.  But if you are thinking beforehand oh God I might get that foothold wrong or what if I don’t get my hand right you probably are not going to because those thoughts are going to be in your mind.  So it is a huge part of performance and success I think is visualisation for me anyway.  I know that as you say other people are very different.

Kevin: This podcast is all about for you, you know we are not here to preach as to the right or wrong ways of doing things it is all about profiling people in our opinion who are wonderful examples of achievers in their various fields and it’s about understanding what makes you tick.  That is what is so important.

Lets finish off we’ve done roughly half an hour superb interview thoroughly enjoyed it.  What are we going to leave people with this time for someone who has never set a goal for themselves.

Bonita: Yeah I think challenge yourself to just sit there with pen and paper and ask yourself what kind of person you want to be in two or five years time.  That really is, you have to really look at your life and think what’s possible and what you are capable off and also what your dreams are and I suppose I did sit down and do that and actually it almost felt a bit cheeky and a bit naughty about writing down something as audacious as Everest on my to do list you know how ridiculous is that if you have never climbed a mountain.  But just by putting it down really sowed the seed for making my destiny what I wanted it to be and I think the simple act of writing down what you want to happen in your future is a huge step forward in actually being the future that you want it to be.  And so that for me will always be something I’ll do, I’ll always write down my goals and deconstruct them and then work towards them.  It is the only way I know so that is it.

Kevin: Bonita Norris British record holder for climbing Everest thank you very much again for your time.

Bonita: Thank you Kevin.

Music

Kevin: Bonita Norris thank you once again for coming on the Maximise Potential Podcast and for providing us with such a wonderful insight into the motivational approaches and techniques that you apply.  If you are a regular to the podcast and the website you will notice that Bonita’s approach is consistent with several of the others who have appeared on Maximise Potential all of them citing the importance of taking the time to think about your goals, committing them to paper and finally making that list public.

So here are a couple of quick updates before we finish off today.  Firstly we are at the final stages of the voting for the European Podcasting Awards so please, please, please come and vote for us.  It would mean a great deal.

Next piece of news is related to Fiona Campbell who gave us all a wonderful introduction to NLP on Episode 24 of the podcast.  Fiona has just launched a brand new website featuring a range of excellent YouTube videos and other superb resources to help you implement NLP within your life.  You can click on the show notes for details and the website is called www.theNLPedge.com.

And finally we have an amazing piece of news to announce Andy North who we featured on Episode 31 of the podcast has successfully completed his incredible journey from Yorkshire to Gibraltar covering 2000m in just six weeks using a combination of running and cycling.  Hats off to you Andy congratulations and well done for raising so much money for such worthy causes.

Thanks again for tuning in and please remember to visit our website at www.maximisepotential.co.uk for more excellent videos, articles and resources to help you maximise your potential. I would also like to extend a big thanks as always to the sponsors of our podcast the Jenrick Recruitment Group who specialise in developing careers in the engineering, commercial and IT sectors.  I have ensured that there are links on the show notes so if you would like to see the current job opportunities that are on offer with Jenrick or you would like to register your CV with them then please click on those links.

That is all for this time thanks very much for tuning in and here’s ‘Jules theme ‘from Xerxes to finish on please enjoy.

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This video has been recommended to us from leading NLP Business Coach, Fiona Campbell.

It shows you how a thought is actually created:

Congratulations to Andy North (featured on episode 31 of Maximise Potential), Mike Senior and Dave Edwards who have successfully COMPLETED their amazing test of endurance, raising over £50,000 for two Armed Forces Charities.

Here is was some news footage of them as they reached Gibraltar:

Also, here is an article from the Yorkshire Post:

Three amateur athletes have run, cycled and kayaked 2,000 miles from Yorkshire to Gibraltar in a challenge which has seen them run the equivalent of a marathon every day for six weeks for charity,

Andy North, Dave Edwards and Mike Senior arrived at the British Forces Headquarters in Gibraltar on Friday after the Yorkshire team completed the equivalent of 25 marathons, covered over 1,700 miles of cycling and kayaked 26 miles.

The trio set off from Catterick Garrison on August 19, running a marathon each morning, followed by a daily cycle ride each afternoon.

And to top the achievement they even kayaked across the Thames and the Channel as part of the epic effort.

The men, from Leeds and Harrogate, were met by a police escort and members of the Royal Gibraltar Regiment after completing the feat, which was dubbed the Sunshine Challenge.

Their efforts have so far raised over £50,000 for ABF The Soldiers’ Charity, as well as the Forces Children’s Trust, both causes dedicated to the support of those affected by the aftermath of war.

Mr North said:

“Neither Dave nor myself nor Mike are professional athletes but have always tried to maintain ourselves in super fit condition.

“Dave and I thought we had set ourselves a daunting challenge last year when we undertook 12 daily marathons but this was the biggest test ever. The most exhilarating part without a doubt was crossing the Channel and also cycling over Pyrenees.

“With the UK now being involved in multiple combat zones across the globe, the focus has been on the need to support those who in turn support those affected by war. To be with these guys and women and to run on their behalf has been incredibly humbling.”

The trio have completed a number of other gruelling challenges to raise money for military charities, including the Challenge 66 Ultra Marathon event.

You can donate by visiting: Andy North – Sunshine Challenge JUST GIVING PAGE

The lastest episode to be uploaded to the Maximise Potential Podcast is an incredibly inspiring interview with Bonita Norris, the youngest British woman ever to climb Mount Everest at the age of 22.

Bonita is returning to the Maximise Potential Podcast to share with us the mental techniques, approaches and goal-setting strategies that she used to get her there, talking in detail about the importance of visualisation and committing your goals to paper.

Additional notes and resources (just click on the links for more information):

• ANDY NORTH – listen to Andy’s inspiring interview here
• FIONA CAMPBELL – visit The NLP Edge website here

Careers with Jenrick:

• CONSIDERING A CAREER CHANGE? – click here to view the latest Jenrick Jobs
• REGISTER YOUR CV? – click here to register your CV with the Jenrick team

EUROPEAN PODCASTING AWARDS:

• VOTE for Maximise Potential by clicking HERE

Interview Transcription:

• Transcript: Bonita Norris – How I Set Goals (Max#33)
  

“It’s the angle your nose meets the wind” – that was the answer I was given by the US naval pilot, Curt, who answered my question ‘what does the word attitude really mean?’

The famous motivational speaker Zig Ziglar said “My altitude depends more on my attitude than my aptitude’ and that phrase has stuck with me since I first heard it about 10 years ago.  How far you go, how successful you are at something, how high you reach up whichever ladder you might be climbing, depends more on how you approach it than how skilled you are.  It’s your attitude that counts.

I’d always thought attitude was something that described a person and their general way of being, you’ve heard it so many times ‘Oh, he’s got a bad attitude’ and ‘You need to change your attitude’, ‘you’ve got the wrong attitude’ – you can hear it as an everyday phrase.  I hadn’t realized that there was a more powerful, useful meaning.  Words are like that, aren’t they, they’re often ‘just words’ until you get under them and into their meaning.

So it’s your angle of approach.  Think about it.  How you approach something; the angle your nose meets the wind as you approach it.

When you think about a tricky situation, a fun plan you have, an interview, a meeting, a match – whatever, your attitude is going to determine your success more than anything else.  More than that outfit you wear, the training you’ve done to prepare, the list of points you’ve made – more than all of those things.  Your attitude to getting ready will have already affected all the other things anyway.

You decide how you’ll approach something – the angle your nose is going to meet the wind – and that’s your attitude.

Let’s imagine 3 typical, everyday, scenarios:

• A meeting with a potential new client:  It could be scary and a lot of time-consuming preparation or it could be an opportunity to meet new people, share information and find out if what you offer is a fit.  Different angle of approach.  Different energy.

• A long plane journey:  It could be a pain with lots of time spent surrounded by strangers and in uncomfortable seats.  It could also be an opportunity to catch up on reading and writing with a break from your day-to-day routine.   Same thing happening, different experience.

• An interview:  Obviously, it could be an anxiety-inducing experience being in the firing line with people who want to catch you out.  It could, of course, be a two-way conversation with people who are interested in your skills and experience.  You too, are interested whether you’re a fit for their organisation, you might be, you might not.  That’s OK and that’s a different attitude and, again, a different energy you’ll have.

Simplistic examples I know.  What you can tell though is that depending on your attitude to each example, your result will be different.  Your language will be different, your preparation for each experience will be different and, ultimately, how you feel will be different.  “The orientation of a plane dependent on it’s direction of travel” is my Mac dictionary’s definition of attitude.

Francesca Riegler says it well:  “Happiness is an attitude.  We either make ourselves miserable, or happy and strong.  The amount of work is the same.”

I know it’s just a word, like so many words you’ll use today, but words have the power to change your thoughts – that’s where the power in your language really is.  Winston Churchill famously said “Attitude is a little word that makes a big difference.”  Enough said.

How do I learn more about Kay?

To have the opportunity to discuss any blind spots you know you have or things that are slowing you down or holding you back as you connect, persuade and compel people at work; click here to apply for a complimentary conversation with Kay.

Article reproduced with permission of Kay White, Communication Specialist and Mentor at www.wayforwardsolutions.com. Kay shows professionals how to be understood. Get quicker, faster and better results by becoming a more effective, influential and savvy communicator – everywhere in your life.

Kay’s first book, The A to Z of Being Understood is a Number 1 Amazon Bestseller for Customer Service.

In addition, you can listen to an exclusive interview with Kay where she shares several exclusive tips on how to immediately make your communication more powerful and persuasive: http://www.maximisepotential.co.uk/how-to-develop-effective-powerful-communication/

I just watched the replay of Dia Greene storming the victory in the IAAF Athletic World Championships, capturing Great Britain’s first Gold Medal of the Championships on his way to becoming the Men’s 400 metre hurdle champion.

Dia was probably the least known of all of GB’s medal hopefuls; yet, he turned in a performance, which has now elevated him to a special place in history.

I’ve followed athletics all my life, and have had the pleasure of meeting and interviewing some of our athletic greats, such as Dean Macey and David Weir, however, what blew me away with Dia’s performance was the strength of his finish.

On the final bend he was lying in 5th place, and even with 60 meters to go, he was third or forth. However, off the final hurdle he hit the accelerator and produced the most powerful finish I’ve ever witnessed, and in the process completely changing the colour of his medal.

Amazing!

I was reading up on Dia and found some wonderful extracts from Tom Fordyce’s Blog on BBC Sport, which I wanted to share with you.

In my mind, the extracts and statements below, confirm exactly why Dai was able to put in that Gold Medal performance, just when it was required, and why he is someone clearly dedicated to doing everything possible to maximise his potential:

Etched on the glass windows at the Bath University track where Greene trains is a three-line quotation: “Winning means you are willing to go longer, work harder and give more than anyone else.”

“We’re not gimmicky down here,” Greene told Fordyce, “A lot of our confidence comes from knowing that we put the hard work in.

“In my discipline, it’s the person who puts that hard work in who wins. All these months on this cold, wet hill in Bath pay off in the big championships.”

You are all well aware that Maximise Potential dedicates itself to bringing you real life success stories that confirm that reaching the pinnacle of your career or field of expertise and interest, is down to hard work, perseverance and strength of mind.

In Dai’s statements, he makes no reference to being ‘naturally-talented’ or having a ‘gift’ for running or even ‘inheriting my strengths from my parents.’

Not one bit – for Dai (and everyone else I interviewed for the Maximise Potential Podcast), it is about putting in the hours and hours of hard work and effort.

So, if you want to be the Dai Greene of your field, go find your own cold, wet hill and start climbing it again, again and again.

Now here is another great example of someone Maximising their Potential, and really testing themselves to see how far they can go . . .

Comedian David Walliams is set to swim about 140 miles of the River Thames in just eight days for Sport Relief.

Starting on 5 September, the Little Britain star will swim from Lechlade in Gloucestershire to Big Ben in London. The bid is part of the Big Splash campaign to get the nation swimming.

Swimming up to 8 hours everyday, Walliams, 40, will pass through several major towns en route, including Oxford, Reading, Henley, Maidenhead, Windsor, Kingston and Richmond.

In 2006, Walliams completed a swim across the English Channel, raising £1m for Sport Relief. He later received a special award at the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year for completing the 21-mile distance.

He swam the Strait of Gibraltar from Spain to Morocco for Sport Relief in 2008, and last year cycled from John O’Groats to Land’s End.

In his latest challenge the comedian is again raising money for the BBC-backed charity, which helps vulnerable people in the UK and in some of the world’s poorest countries.

“Most people in the UK know the Thames, and most people think the idea of swimming in it is horrifying,” Walliams said of the challenge.

“And it is. It’ll be relentless. It’s a huge distance so I’ll need all the support I can get.”

How can I pledge my support?

If you wish to support David, then please click on the following link: Sponsor David Walliams on his River Thames Challenge.

Walliams vs The Thames will be filmed for a documentary to be broadcast in the build up to Sport Relief in March next year.

Best of luck David, from everyone at The Maximise Potential Podcast – I’m going to cross my fingers and hope that you’ll be able to find some time in your diary in the near future to share the experience with us on the Podcast.

Steve Jobs has been most of the most remarkable Leaders in the Digital Age, however news today confirmed that Steve Jobs is stepping down from his role as CEO of Apple. As a Leader, a Businessman, a Visionary and Inventor, Steve Jobs is clearly an individual who tried his all to Maximise his Potential, and hopefully the brief article below will help to paint a picture about who he is and what he has contributed to society:

It is well known that Steve Jobs has been battling ill health in recent years, having undergone a liver transplant following pancreatic cancer, said he could no longer meet his chief executive’s duties and expectations.

In his brief resignation letter to the Board of Apple, he recommended that Tim Cook takes over as CEO, while he moves into a Chairman role.

Here are some of the highlights of Steve Jobs career (most of which is taken from his Wikipedia page):

• Steven Paul “Steve” Jobs (born February 24, 1955)
• In the late 1970s, Jobs, with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, Mike Markkula and others
• Resigned from Apple in the 80’s after a series of disputes with the Board
• Went on to become the Founder of NeXT – which Apple bought in 1996, returning Jobs to the role of CEO.
• In 1986, he acquired the computer graphics division of Lucasfilm Ltd which was spun off as Pixar Animation Studios, where he was CEO
• He became a member of the board of directors of The Walt Disney Company in 2006, following the acquisition of Pixar by Disney.
• He was credited in the 1995 movie Toy Story as an executive producer.
• Jobs is listed as either primary inventor or co-inventor in over 230 awarded patents or patent applications

Jobs has always aspired to position Apple and its products at the forefront of the information technology industry by foreseeing and setting trends, at least in innovation and style. He summed up that self-concept at the end of his keynote speech at the Macworld Conference and Expo in January 2007 by quoting ice hockey legend Wayne Gretzky:

There’s an old Wayne Gretzky quote that I love. ‘I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.’ And we’ve always tried to do that at Apple. Since the very very beginning. And we always will.

—Steve Jobs

There is an excellent video on You Tube of Steve Jobs, giving his Stanford commencement speech. If you have not seen it, please take a few moments to watch it:

Jobs is also a Beatles fan. He has referenced them on more than one occasion at Keynotes and also was interviewed on a showing of a Paul McCartney concert. When asked about his business model on 60 Minutes, he replied

My model for business is The Beatles: They were four guys that kept each other’s negative tendencies in check; they balanced each other. And the total was greater than the sum of the parts. Great things in business are not done by one person, they are done by a team of people.

I think that quote was the perfect end. Thank you for taking the time to stop by!

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Kevin: Welcome to Maximise Potential the podcast to educate and motivate through a range of original interviews designed to help you maximise your potential.  Brought to you in association with the award winning recruitment group Jenrick.

Welcome to episode 32 of the Maximise Potential podcast.  As you are all well aware the goal of Maximise Potential is to help you advance in your personal life, your business and your career by bringing you exclusive interviews from a range of experts and high achievers.  So with over 20 years recruitment experience Jenrick ITs Head of Business Development Miriam Lee is perfectly placed to offer some of the very best advice available when it comes to career advancement.  I recently had the pleasure of sitting down with Miriam to record this interview in which Miriam highlights and key activities and attributes that will enable candidates to truly set themselves apart from the competition.

So please sit back and enjoy the next twenty minutes of excellent tips and advice that you can instantly apply to improve your job hunting or apply within your existing role and I will be back at the end to provide you with some additional web links and resources to help you even further.

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Miriam thank you for taking the time today to sit down with us on the podcast.

Miriam: Thank you.  Thank you very much for inviting me.

Kevin: Well we are very fortunate to be having your 20 years and I hate to break that to you but you have been recruiting for over 20 years now.  But we are very fortunate to have that 20 years of experience on this podcast today to give some wonderful exclusive tips and advice for people regarding how they can maximise their career opportunities whether it is hunting for a new job or making themselves as visible as possible within their existing company.

It is probably worthwhile kicking off with just the need for this podcast.  Why are we here today, why is this so important?

Miriam: Absolutely.  Basically on average we have and receive 70, at least 70 applications for every single role that we place out in the market.

Kevin: Wow are people surprised actually when you do actually have conversations about the level of competition for a given role?

Miriam: Yeah clients literally just want three candidates to interview and with that great a number of CVs we are always striving for looking for different things within a CV when it actually comes to us.  Something that makes a candidate specific for that role and makes a candidate special and stand out amongst the rest.  The tips really that I want to discuss today are the types of things that will enable you to stand out from a crowd and gain the interviews that you really want plus make yourself more visible to any existing company.

Kevin: I have got a loose agenda down here today that you have given me and the very top tip that you have kicked off with is developing a strong and positive online personal brand.  Let’s kick off with that.

Miriam: Excellent let’s just set the scene here okay.  So one of the most, or one of the first thing that HR, Recruiting Managers do and even us as recruiters ourselves, as soon as a CV turns up on their desk they Google that person’s name literally just to see who that person is.  Which means anything that you have on other sites, on personal sites such as Twitter or Facebook or LinkedIn this will come up.  Statistics already confirm that these search results have a major impact onto whether candidates are going to be invited in for interview.

Kevin: That’s incredible so not only have you already said that you are going to get 70 applications right from the off but now all of a sudden before even you can get an interview agreed I mean just because you have sent across a CV it doesn’t even guarantee at all that this person is going to be interviewed because then HR or whoever the hiring manager is, is just going to go and Google their name and make a decision based on what they see.

Miriam: Absolutely.  So our advice there would literally be, be respectful of the internet treat it as you would any working environment.  Be aware that most things that you put on the internet are visible so just put stuff on social media that you want to be seen by the great outdoors.  You know the one thing that we highly recommend is really lock down your Facebook profile as much as possible to ensure that your personal life really stays your personal life.

Kevin: Yes I can understand the necessity as I am sure the audience does for that.

Miriam: The next step is actually then to go on to build your online branding.  LinkedIn is a tool that we would really highly recommend to all candidates to maximise the use of their online branding.

Kevin: Can I just ask you a question here because I would assume that most people who are probably freelancers, contractors, who run their own sort of consultancy type business would consider the need to build a personal brand but I can imagine that people coming from a permanent employee perspective would be probably slightly confused on this basis wouldn’t they.  I bet that is not something that has ever or that they have ever considered should be high on their priority list of having a personal brand.

Miriam: Absolutely it’s really, really up and coming now.  You need to be able to build a profile of who you are, what your services are about, what your capabilities are.  Everybody has a CV but I think in terms of building an online brand make sure it is consistent with your CV as well.  So have a CV of course but create a really strong profile which is consistent to your CV that is absolute key.  What we really like about LinkedIn is it has an ability to display a far more complete picture regarding who you are and it can share so much more information than just a CV can portray.

Kevin: So very much helping people see the true personality of who you are as a person I guess.

Miriam: Yes.  And equally as an adjacent to that you know building a portfolio of recommendations is key and joining industry related groups which will explain a little bit more about that later on during this podcast.  But yeah just take some time each week to participate in discussions related to your industry sector.  Again that is key.  It raises your profile network and it basically just gives you that leading edge in the marketplace.

Kevin: I see where you are coming from.

Miriam: So in summary make sure that when a hiring manager Google’s your name all the results are really positive.  I think from this section of the podcast that’s what I want to highlight.  Professional references and literally good online branding which can confirm and will confirm who you are as being an expert in your field.

Kevin: Okay that was a wonderful introduction there.  So second point that you have got on your list that you actually touched on in point number one is about the importance of building a portfolio of recommendations.

Miriam: Absolutely recommendations are key.  They are by far the most important tool in helping you gain a new job because it’s a third party speaking on your behalf.  They are independent and they demonstrate who you are and the value that add in a workplace.

Kevin: I mean that really must have changed over the last few years because I think everybody leads with their CV thinking that their skills and experience are pretty much the most important thing but again this goes back to that very first point you touched on which is about differentiation and about the fact that you are going to receive 20, 30, 40, 50 CVs that are all pretty similar and you are looking for something a bit different.

Miriam: Yes because in recommendations we are looking for a third party to speak on someone’s behalf.  And I think people fear asking for recommendations but really if you look on a positive side of that I would actually be quite humble if someone asked me to recommend them because it would mean that they care about my own opinion of them.  So try and do this on an ongoing basis for recommendations.  You know if you complete a big project or if you have been working in a specific team just use these opportunities to build and ask those team members to just give you a recommendation on the work that you have just carried out.  And that helps you to build your recommendation portfolio.  That really is key.

What we recommend to candidates is that they actually include a testimonial, a point of reference at the bottom of each role that they have carried out.  So.

Kevin: I was just going to ask you about that.  So that is different to most, well that is different to every piece of CV advice that is currently on the web.  I mean you have just added something completely different to how people structure their CVs.  And I think that is worth explaining a bit more.

Miriam: It adds clout basically.  If you add someone else’s testimonial or reference on the work that you carried out during that specific period of time it just emphasises your involvement your capabilities the fact that you actually delivered a good piece of work.  From a third party coming through to there that actually speaks volumes.

Kevin: That’s superb so to actually go and build those testimonials and incorporate them.

Miriam: On your CV, critical.

Kevin: Point three now this is where you sort of move away from the practical tips and you get more into the mindset type issues and you have referred to this one as making yourself available to opportunities.

Miriam: Absolutely.  This piece of advice is about adopting an open and positive mindset where you are going to continually seek ways of improving yourself to further your career. We refer to this as making yourself available for opportunities.  Over the years I have had the pleasure of working with so many high calibre candidates and I can honestly say that the ones who have progressed most successfully within their careers have displayed this wonderful open and positive mindset.  I have just noticed this in their approach from the very first meeting that I have had with them they have always been the type of people who just get stuck into projects, have this really strong attitude.  Not necessarily just for themselves but for the business.

Kevin: Interesting so they are far more aware of not just their job but it’s the impact that their job has and it inter-relates to others and this lateral awareness.

Miriam: Yes and the desire and want to actually get involved in a variety of different roles or different activities or different projects.  Just that whole open mindedness and keenness to progress.

Kevin: And can I ask as well I mean you said that you have had the pleasure of seeing these people literally through this last 20 years.  I am assuming then that when you actually first met these individuals that they were, a junior position is probably unfair but they could have been starting out their careers within the IT sector.

Miriam: Absolutely.

Kevin: And you have seen them actually progress now into senior management positions and such like.

Miriam: I won’t name any names but absolutely interviewed probably back 15 years ago an operator for a huge blue chip company and he is now head of global strategy an amazing man who has had this open minded focus to succeed and yes indeed I have had the pleasure of that.

Kevin: And you are saying that it is not a surprise that he is there because right from day one you saw he had a bit of a spark, a bit of something different about him.

Miriam: The potential was there absolutely yes the energy indeed.

Kevin: And that is all just attitude and mindset.

Miriam: Yes it is these individuals who stand out to management and never fail to gain promotion faster than their peers within the business.

Kevin: Superb.  Now point number four on your list is commitment to continuous learning.

Miriam: Okay so let’s just set the scene again.  Most people they make the mistake of thinking that learning studying days are over once they finish their education.  However it is these individuals who make a commitment to continuous personal and professional development that make the biggest strides in their career.  Why because they are constantly broadening their minds, exploring new ideas and being at the forefront of the latest developments within their career.  All of these enable them to be innovative within their role and to be taken as a pioneer or a leader or someone who is well ahead of their game.

Kevin: That’s interesting okay so pretty much what we are talking about here is this whole example of getting sucked into the bubble of being at work and you just then lose track of what’s going on around you.  And what you are saying is that you have got to try and keep one eye, you have got to try and keep a perspective on this broader picture and keep yourself learning, keep yourself developing so that you are going to keep abreast of all the latest developments within your industry.

Miriam: Absolutely, absolutely.  I think most people wrongly assume that continuous learning means professional qualifications.  I think that’s the issue but although it can be the case especially with technical consultants that we work with some of the best learning opportunities are really available for free.  You know this goes back to our earlier points where we spoke about the benefits of subscribing to blogs and joining online groups with LinkedIn etc.  Each of these enable you to engage in discussions and debates that challenge existing frameworks within their industry leaders.  So in addition YouTube and podcasts they are a wonderful method of digesting exclusive content.  So in summary really just keep your mindset fresh.  Join podcasts or listen to podcasts, join LinkedIn discussions.  Keep your mind constantly, constantly learning.

Kevin: Thank you and point number five was networking.

Miriam: I have left networking as my very final point.  I genuinely believe it is the most important way in which you can maximise your career.  In many ways it ties together all the other points we have spoken about in the podcast.  Firstly remember that everyone is nervous within a networking situation it just is normal to feel this way.  However they are often nervous because they are unsure of what to say or how to start a conversation.  Our advice is really just go and get yourself stuck into networking.  Networking is about participating within group discussions on LinkedIn.  It’s about taking the time to speak with colleagues within your organisation.  It is about sharing details with peers and training events.  It can even be you know as simple as just making polite conversation with someone you regularly speak to or commute with or you work with.

Kevin: So again it is just getting yourself out of the bubble of the everyday routine of your job again isn’t it.

Miriam: Indeed.  And the interesting thing is you never quite know where this will take you.  It all comes back to making yourself available for opportunities by engaging in conversation.  You just never know where this might lead.  What I will say is that people who really make the time to network raise their profile and become known as someone with energy, enthusiasm and the get up and go are the people who will succeed.  They are the type of person that everyone really wants to employ or promote within their business.

Kevin: And that really is a wonderful fitting end to finish this podcast.

Miriam: Indeed thank you very much. Thank you.

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Kevin: I would like to extend my thanks to Miriam and also to the IT Recruitment Division of the Jenrick Recruitment Group.  As Miriam rightly says these tips are equally applicable within your existing role to enhance your visibility and promotional opportunities as well as if you are considering searching for a new job.  If you are new to the podcast and found the content of this interview very helpful may I also recommend that you go back and listen to episode 27 with Jora Gill and also episode 17 with Tony Dobin both of whom discuss in detail the approaches they have taken to maximise their own careers.  Furthermore one additional episode I would like to highlight is episode 14 which featured leading communication expert Kay White.  Kay gives loads of excellent advice regarding how to instantly improve your communication at work.  Also congratulations are in order for Kay after the launch of her first book the A-Z of being understood which has gone straight to the number one slot on Amazon.  Well done Kate.

Thank you again to Miriam for providing such excellent advice and we will make sure we bring you more interviews from the highly experienced Recruitment Team at Jenrick to help you make the most of your career.

Before I wrap up today I would just like to say a quick thank you to everyone who has voted for us so far in the European Podcasting Awards. If you have not had a chance yet it only takes a moment just click on the show notes and look for the Euro Podcasting Awards link.  And importantly as this episode was about career change please remember that our sponsors Jenrick specialise in engineering, IT and commercial recruitment so come and visit their website and view their latest job vacancies.

Thanks again for tuning in and here is a track from Xerxes to finish on and it’s called ‘Siberia’.

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The goal of Maximise Potential is to help people develop in all areas of their life, and truly Maximise Their Potential. We do this by producing our own inspiring and educational podcasts and by also bringing together the best content from all over the Internet.

For quite a while now, we have been fans of Sam Parker and the Smile and Move concept that he has been developing. It’s fresh, lively and very inspiring.

Here is a two part video series that Sam recently recorded and launched on You Tube.

Within the videos, Sam describes his take on Leadership and poses some excellent questions that those in Leadership should be asking themselves:

Here is the second video . . . .

If you like these, check out the links below and go and explore more:

• Give More – the website where you can learn more about Sam Parker

The Maximise Potential Podcast, brought to you in association with the Award-winning Recruitment Group Jenrick, is pleased to release its latest interview with Miriam Lee, Head of Business Development for Jenrick IT.

Welcome to episode 32 of the Maximise Potential Podcast.

As you are all well aware, the goal of Maximise Potential to to help you advance in your personal life, your business and your career, by bringing you exclusive interviews from a range of experts and high achievers.

With over 20 years recruitment experience, Jenrick IT’s Head of Business Development, Miriam Lee, is perfectly placed to offer some of the very best advice available when it comes to career advancement.

I recently had the pleasure of sitting down with Miriam to record this interview, in which Miriam highlights the key activities and attributes that will enable Candidates to set themselves apart from the competition.

So please, sit back and enjoy the next 20 minutes of tips and advice that you can instantly apply to improve your job hunting or within your exisiting role and I’ll be back at the end to provide you with some weblinks and additional resources.

Please enjoy . . .

ADDITIONAL NOTES AND RESOURCES (just click on the links for more information):

• LISTEN TO: Jora Gill – episode 27
• LISTEN TO: Tony Dobbyn – episode 17
• LISTEN TO: Kay White – episode 14
• BOOK: Kay White – the A – Z of being Understood
  

EPISODE 32 ADDITIONAL NOTES:

• CLICK HERE: to read Miriam’s career advice article to accompany this podcast

EUROPEAN PODCASTING AWARDS:

• VOTE for Maximise Potential by clicking HERE

SEARCH FOR NEW JOBS WITH JENRICK:

• ENGINEERING JOBS
  
• COMMERCIAL JOBS
• IT JOBS

VISIT THE WEBPAGE AND SHOWNOTES FOR THIS EPISODE:

• http://www.maximisepotential.co.uk/maximise-your-career-miriam-lee-max32/

TRANSCRIPTION:

• Transcript: Exclusive Tips to Maximise your Career – Miriam Lee (Max#32)

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Kevin: Welcome to Maximise Potential the podcast to educate and motivate through a range of original interviews designed to help you maximise your potential.  Brought to you in association with the award winning recruitment group Jenrick.

Welcome to episode 31 of the Maximise Potential podcast.  In our last episode with Bremont Watches Andy English used an expression which I believe is the perfect introduction to our guest on today’s episode.  Nick was referring to the Bremont Ambassadors when he spoke of ordinary people achieving extraordinary things.  Andy North is a perfect example of this.  This fifty year old Yorkshire man is about to embark on one of the most intense endurance events I have ever heard off.  What I find particularly inspirational about Andy’s story is that he has managed to train for this incredible event whilst juggling family commitments, running a business and also attempting to reach his goal of raising £50,000 for two Armed Forces Charities.  As you can probably tell I am resisting revealing what Andy’s actual challenge is at this stage and also the challenges he has already completed however what I will say is that anyone who is interested in understanding how someone like Andy prepared mentally for taking on an event like this is in for a real treat with today’s interview.  Please enjoy.

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Andy North welcome to the Maximise Potential podcast.

Andy: Hi there Kevin.

Kevin: I’ve been introduced to you, I gave you a random phone call just because I was informed that you are undertaking pretty much the most incredible endurance event that I’ve heard of and it involves you leaving Yorkshire and ending up in Gibraltar and yet you are not using a plane or a boat or a car or anything.  Do you want to just introduce exactly what you are doing?

Andy: Yeah sure usually we fly from Yorkshire to Spain, in south of Spain and I am always looking out of the window and wondering you know wouldn’t it be amazing to do it in different means.  So what we decided to do this year is to run each morning and to cycle in an afternoon.  So we are going to run 20 miles each morning and we are going to cycle 45 miles in an afternoon from Catterick Garrison down to London.  We are going to do some kayaking on the Thames we are then going to continue with 20 miles in a morning 45 miles in an afternoon down to Dover.  We are going to then kayak over the English Channel and then continue through France running and cycling.  We are going to cycle two of the Tour de France peaks one of them is called d’Aubisque which is 6,000ft high and then we carry on through Spain cycling and running which is a total of 25 marathons and 1500 miles of cycling and the kayaking over the channel.

Kevin: How long is this going to take you?

Andy: About 42 days.  That’s actually allowing a few days leeway for the channel crossing because of the weather.

Kevin: That’s incredible and where the heck did this come from?

Andy: It’s built up basically over time I would say.  But you know over the years bringing your family up just going out jogging on a weekend or on an evening when you get back from work you know 1, 2, 3 miles over many, many years.  Going through busy periods in your life where it phases out and then you bring it back in.  You get a bit of a focus because somebody you know might be doing a 10k or a half marathon.  And then really what I have realised is there is a stack of books underneath my bed that I have read, people like Jim Fix who was in that late 1950s and he popularised a book called ‘The Complete Book of Running’ and somebody gave me his book to read.  And then reading Mark Beaumont who cycled round the world, broke the world record but actually cycled Lands End to John O’Groats when he was only 14 years old.  Stuart Mickleman the first guy to run across America, he ran two marathons each day.  You know reading all these books over time you don’t realise but there is a little pictures going in your mind and you are building these images up.  Bit by bit you begin to realise that some of these guys are not all international athletes.

Kevin: See this is the interesting bit where we are coming to now because I think just through talking it through all of a sudden it is not just something that has come from nowhere that you have just thought okay I will do this.  It sounds like something that has almost been a fire that has been stoked over years and years and now all of a sudden it is rising to the surface.

Andy: Yeah I guess it is really and you know I was flying out to Spain about three or four years ago now and I was reading a newspaper article and ironically I buys the paper and opens it up middle page is about this guy Ray Mountie, one of his children was ill and he started running in his late 40s realised he quite like it, had this old pair of shoes, smokes, drinks Guinness, doesn’t drink water, started running and decided to run round the middle east.  I think it was he ran 12 marathons one after the other.  Ran through Death Valley, did all these amazing things and he had never run before and he’s not an athlete.  So it just leaves you to believe can ordinary Joe do these things.

Kevin: And so when you started breaking it down did it just take away this fear, this myth, this impossibility do you think?

Andy: Yeah because you just think that running a long way or cycling or doing these amazing things is just meant for these elite athletes, the younger ones and people that are just getting into that at an early age.  And what you really realise is it doesn’t it just takes a little bit of planning and organisation and building up.  You know building up your knowledge understanding diet, food, nutrition and just writing bits down making it real.

Kevin: And just talk to me I am going to ask you to try and cast your mind back a bit actually.  At that moment where it went from being something that you thought other people did to something that you then realised that you could do.  And whether it was opening that paper, because it sounded to me that that was that moment where you are on the plane, you have got nowhere else to go, you are captive at that moment, your mind is switching off and you are reading this.  Something tipped over the edge from going someone else to me.

Andy: Absolutely I think that is a good point.  I think it was that newspaper article and I got, I have kept it and I have got photocopies of it now and when I talk to people and I show them I am not making this up.  That was inspirational for me and it was like a ping moment where you think yeah I can do something like that.

Kevin: That’s interesting because there is a book which you have heard me speak about which was ‘Bounce’ by a gentleman called Mathew Syed who we had the pleasure of interviewing and he spoke about trigger moments.  Trigger moments when all of a sudden something goes, clicks in, you go I can do this, I can do this.

Andy: Yeah I think my first point was probably about eight years ago.  There is a marathon called ‘The Yorkshire man off road Marathon’ which is run in September.  And I came back from holiday and thought I am going to do this and entered it and did quite well with it and really enjoyed it.  It was 4,000 ft of ascent if I remember rightly but it was just amazing countryside and I did that.

Kevin: How come you enjoyed it so much had you trained really hard for it or was it just a mindset of why you were entering it or what was it?

Andy: I think it was partly the mindset I think you are right.  I think the mindset was where it was at.  It was a nice day across the Yorkshire Moors you know there are a lot of hills involved.  I was at the back, I was not at the front at all but I actually completed it and finishing it was amazing.  And then followed by another one that follows on from that which was an Ultra marathon and this was stepping up to a 33m.  That again just sort of stepped it up to the next level.

Kevin: And how did you feel inside yourself when you were achieving each one of these?

Andy: It is just building that picture all the time.  Once your mind knows I can do a 10k, I can do a half marathon, I can do a marathon, I can do a ultra marathon or the smaller ultra marathon which is 30 odd miles.  If you carry that training on and use that level that you have now reached and you carry on at that level so you keep your training moving you can then nudge it up to the next level.  If you leave it two or three months and drop back and loose it you are starting again but if you can keep that level rising all the time you are able to stretch, your mind accepts it, you have got the muscle memory and you know you are able to move it on.

Kevin: So you are just building on what small foundations all the time?

Andy: Absolutely and I think the next one after that was the Dales Way which is 90m over three days.  And again this was just a chance meeting with a retired postman outside a pub in village nearby.  He explained that the next morning he was getting up at two or three in the morning and he was off to the Lake District.  And I said why are you getting up so early when it is only like two hours drive away.  And he says that’s because I’m walking.  And I said well what do you mean you are walking.  And he said well lucky enough our house is on the riverbank and there is a path from there, this is Ilkley in Yorkshire to Boness in the Lake District.  Right your walk how long is that going to take you.  He said a day or something, you know a day or a half or something and he enjoyed doing this.  So that set, I just can remember that setting my mind on fire really thinking right 90 miles, 30 miles a day, Dales Way, bed and breakfast two nights right summer I am going to do it on my own.

So about three weeks later I bought a map, booked a couple of B&Bs, bought a bum bag and then off we went.  So I took three days then running most of it and walking the last bit of it on each day but I was fantastic, it was amazing, it was out you are in the fresh air you know and you get there and that is the most amazing feeling.  To do it on your own as well and getting there and finished it and met my wife at the end and we had a couple of days in the Lakes then, that was brilliant you know.

Kevin: And talk to me about that feeling, you said it felt fantastic but break that down a bit if you can.

Andy: Well it’s just motivational.  It’s just to be outdoors and be doing these things, being free.  You know it is just that sense of being out there.

Kevin: There’s this expression you have used a couple of times I don’t know whether you have used it consciously or not but you have actually said about completing the picture.  What does that mean, what is that picture?

Andy: Well the picture is just the memory, I think it is just the memory of it, the event of what happened and the things where you go through and the pain barriers you go through on days where it is a challenge.  You know you have broken that barrier I think you have been through it, you have gone through that pain, you have gone through that barrier, you know your mind accepts it and then you are ready for another one or you are ready for the next challenge because life is full of challenges and once you have achieved one.  It is not the end is it, it is not a stop it is just a journey, it is part of the journey that you are going on.  But the Dales Way for me is the benchmark it is a beautiful route and you know.

Kevin: Like you said the fact that you did that by yourself that must have given an extra special twist to it mustn’t it in terms of what did you learn about yourself?

Andy: What did I learn about myself? You are just focused on the task, on what you are doing.  Your mind goes into wandering mode I think a lot and you create a lot in your mind.  And this might sound stupid but I can remember creating this song in my mind and then as I was getting tired later in the day singing this song.

Kevin: Just repeating it to yourself.

Andy: Just repeating it to myself this sort of song and it was berserk.  And I just remember I was walking a long and jogging a bit and it was quite sunny it was nice you know.  Your mind just wanders off a lot.  And the other interesting thing is when you are in that thought process for that period of time you feel no pain and you feel no aches or anything, you are not out of breath but as soon as you come out of it you start feeling the aches in your muscles and it starts, it is quite an amazing thing really.

Kevin: If I was to have spoken to a 30 year old Andy North do you think 30 year old Andy North would have thought that he was capable of doing any of these events that he has either done or is about to do in the near future?

Andy: Absolutely not, no way.

Kevin: Because the reason I ask that is you know there is a lot of people who probably think you know what if you have not already set something in motion by the age of 30 just forget about it, it’s too late.

Andy: No that is absolute not right that at all.  You just, well I am 50 now, I have just gone 50 this year and we are entering into this challenge.

Kevin: So what would you say to someone who is 30?

Andy: Well what I have learnt now and what I can see clearly now is that by giving yourself your own challenge outside.  There is three key elements in your life – your career, your work, your family who give a natural momentum, a natural routine, a natural pull, a natural demand.  They will pull all of your time, 100% of your time just naturally if you allow it.  But if you, as you do at work focus, and focus on yourself, give yourself a focus, give yourself a little challenge.  Give yourself something that you want to do.  Take the picture; get the image, read a book, little bit or research, start writing it down you can make it real.  I don’t regret not doing those when I am 30 but I think if I had know what I know now where could I be now, how far could I be going this time.

Kevin: Yeah and that is hopefully what we are trying to show on this podcast aren’t we.  That is hopefully what we are trying to do.  You said it again take the picture.  Are you taking a picture of where you are now or where you want to be, or where you see yourself?

Andy: You are taking a picture of your end product.

Kevin: Right that is what I wanted to get to.  So you are actually seeing yourself.  So if I say to you what’s this picture you have taken with regards to your Yorkshire to Gibraltar what is the picture?

Andy: Well I see myself setting off at Catterick Garrison in Yorkshire on 19 August when we set off with the Garrison Commander and about 200 – 300 soldiers because that’s what he has promised us when we set off.

Kevin: And you can see that?

Andy: I can see that.  And we have got two Landover lead vehicles.  We have got family and friends and anybody else who wants to join in whether it is people walking their dogs, roller-skates, cycling whilst we are running whatever.  I have seen that picture, I can see Gibraltar.  I have never been to France or Spain but I see it in my mind.  You have to see it; you have to make it real.  You know people say take a picture.

Kevin: why, why?

Andy: Because that gives you the image of where you are going to go.  It shows you your end product.  You can see yourself, visualising yourself achieving whatever it is you want to achieve.

Kevin: I know this and I am sorry if what I am asking almost sounds I don’t know like sucking eggs to you but this is what you have that enables you to achieve what you do.  And this is the little bit that I am trying to extract to just bottle into this interview because it is this bit that you have managed to develop over the years from starting off just reading those books, you have been able to plant these as you rightly say you plant pictures in your mind and somehow those pictures relate to something in you.  And then you manage to turn those pictures into somewhere where you are going to be.

Andy: I am a great believer in writing things down, cutting pictures out of magazines.  If you see something and think oh I love that, I’d love to do that, I’d love to be there, I want to be that.  If you cut the pictures out stick them in a book, stick them on your fridge you start to get the pictures in your mind, you begin to make it reality.

Kevin: Have you got scrapbooks and things like that, do you do this?

Andy: I have got boxes under my bed with magazines in and runner’s world and you know tear the pictures out if it’s like one that is awesome.  You know I will tear it out and put it on the fridge or I’ll just put it in my pile on the desk.

Kevin: So it just stays around you.

Andy: Yeah I’ll give you one example I bought a triathlon magazine.  There is two of these guys running they have obviously come off doing their other exercise they have gone through transition they are in the running and their figures, the bodies, I mean these guys are not young they look like they are 40ish something like that but the figures on them are physically fit.  I like the kit they are wearing you know the peak hats the shoes everything you know.  And I think actually when I am running in Spain I’d like to look like that, I want to feel like that and look like that.

Kevin: Interesting.

Andy: So I have actually cut that out and that is next to my PC on a little thing.

Kevin: So all of a sudden you are turning that into a picture.

Andy: So I am starting to see that now.

Kevin: Sorry I did interrupt you we were talking about finding that inner drive.

Andy: A few years ago now Dave Edwards, Dave and I, we call ourselves the Yorkshire Duo, we both met and decided about the running and about sort of getting things together with that.  And we had this idea of doing Lands End to John O’Groats.  Not that that’s unique and thousands of people haven’t done it but it was a good challenge.  And I remember thinking with him yeah let’s do it but we won’t be able to do it will we.  Will we be able to run from Lands End to John O’Groats?

Kevin: How far is that?

Andy: Well you can do it in the shortest route about 750m, or 760m.  We did it in 1000m because we wanted to come through Yorkshire and go through the North East.

Kevin: 1000m of just running.

Andy: That was the original thought and I am also a member of the Academy of Chief Executives which runs throughout the UK in groups which you have come out of your business and you meet other business owners and Chief Execs, CEOs and you have a retreat each year and in that retreat you do personal goals and business goals.  I plotted this with the team and you set your goals and then they are absolutely pulled to bits and analysed and regurgated into some realistic plan.  So my challenge was wanting to do Lands End to John O’Groats want to run it all.  But the challenge was I didn’t really have three or four weeks to take off to do it.  So the suggestion, well one of the guys was why don’t you cycle some of it.  To which I answered but I am now 47 and I have not been on a bike since I were 14 or something like that.

So I made that plan and that lived with me for a couple of years we reviewed it the year after and I put the same thing down again and the same challenges were there.  And in the end that became the plan that we would cycle.  We would run in the morning, we would do a marathon each morning and then we would cycle 60 odd miles, 65 miles in the afternoon to do the 1000m.

Kevin: Every day?

Andy: For 12 days consecutively yeah without a days’ rest.  And we did raise £31,000 last year.

Kevin: That’s phenomenal.

Andy: Yeah we just did various different things.  We got some sponsors.  The challenge with this as ever is because you are working and you have got a family.  You know you have just got to focus your time.  You have got your to do list for home, your to do list for work and your to do list for the charity and the challenge you know.

Kevin: And is that the art to it just really focussing, making sure that you are paying attention to each part of your life as it is and having those to do lists.  How does it work?

Andy: Well you need an understanding wife to start off with and family support on something like this.  And it’s just keeping focussed on these things.  You know I would say you have got the picture, you have got the dream, you have got the drive, you have got the feeling.  I mean what is this going to be like just being outdoors for two weeks, you know doing this in 12 days so that’s like two weeks outdoors getting down to Lands End preparing and then setting off running.  And being outdoors which is what you like doing.

Kevin: But you said

Andy: You have got a buzz haven’t you; it’s just like that feeling this is fantastic you know.  You are doing it for a fantastic cause, the hard work has been done and the one thing you can’t ever forget is you cannot kid your body you have got to do the training.  Whatever you are doing a 10k, half marathon, marathon whatever you can’t do it without the training.

Kevin: And so just before we leave that Lands End to John O’Groats when you were having the downers, not in the best mental place what do you use to try and get yourself back?

Andy: Food probably.  What you realise is your body is a machine and it needs to be fed with the right type of, you know you need energy that is important that you are getting the right food.  So coming off a big event like running a marathon in the morning and doing 60m in an afternoon on a bike that night it is vital that you get some good food inside you so you have got your protein, you have got chicken, salmon, fresh food vegetables.  Two or three different vegetables you know.

Kevin: That’s interesting so it really showed you that for you the relationship between what is going into your body and then how the body responds.

Andy: Fine tuned, absolutely fine tuned is your body on something like this.  So one night we are supposed to be in by sort of seven/eight o’clock max but I was getting in at nine/half nine some days when it was a tough day so then you didn’t eat much one particular day and we stayed in, we didn’t get much food out and then you are up again at six the next morning.  And within an hour I was shaking, sat on the side of the road thinking I don’t know what’s wrong with me here and we had taken a snack with us each day so we have got running with a bum bag with a scone in it.  With a buttered scone or wholemeal bread or something like that with some marmalade in it or something.

Kevin: Just something sweet and stodgy.

Andy: Just something there to keep you going if you need it.  And this was planned for another couple of hours so I absolutely devoured this food and straight away I was fine I was right as reign so I was up and off again.  I was okay within sort of 20 minutes.  So you just begin to realise that this, it is getting the right balance.  But you get the right balance and you get into your routine and you know its okay.

Kevin: And has this rubbed off on how you’ve maybe changed or evolved in business?

Andy: Yeah I mean it is very similar you know in business a lot of what I learn in business I use with this.  You know a lot of being focussed looking for sponsors, you know taking knocks.  It is almost like running a business you know you are having a plan, logging your progress, making sure you have got a focus where you need to be next week with your training.  It is very, very similar.

Kevin: We are going to start winding down now but talk to me about Yorkshire to Gibraltar.  How are you feeling about the intensity of this because I mean this takes what you have achieved so far in your life to a whole other level doesn’t it?

Andy: Absolutely.  Again you know it is an exciting prospect.  There is a lot planned in and it’s a big journey that we are going on and we have been on you know.  We have just done a big charity event this last weekend.  We have just done a series of backpacking with family and friends to help out.  We have just done three supermarket collections there with the backpacking and made about £2,000 over those three.  Within a week we have raised like £3,500 just with those backpacking the one charity evening that we have done.  You know and then in between that it is doing the training and making sure that you’ve, got a log on my computer that sits there all the time I leave it live and you know if I’ve done anything like this morning did a 30m run so that has gone on there you know.  And I’ve got it adding up as well so that I can see straight away so far this month look at last months. You know it’s not where it needs to be or it is I’m doing okay.  So you keep a check on your progress.

Another key thing with this is I think to have some benchmarks so that going to France next week and we are doing some training in the Alps.  And then we are benchmarking again I am going out to Spain in July which is about three weeks before we start the challenge just to get some training in the heat as well there so that will help.  And then obviously it is working with the charities now to get you know the strategic planned out through the UK.  We have got a meeting this weekend so we are planning the route so we can get collections going along there as well.

Kevin: I am just thinking how is it going to feel and how does already feel when you know that you are going to finish this challenge?  Because I know that you already know how it is going to feel don’t you.

Andy: I do but again just contradicting what I have said earlier actually it isn’t the finishing that is important with this it is actually the journey that you are going to go on and I have met other people who have said similar things who have done bigger things than this before who have said the same.  And it is you have got to enjoy the journey.  It has got to be important that that journey as challenging as it is going to be it has got to be enjoyable and you have got to capture that.  So it is not really the finishing the Lands End to John O’Groats – we got to John O’Groats and yeah we had a nice reception from some lovely people but the day before was the best day of the whole thing going through the mountains in Scotland you know and that was awesome.  It is the journey that you have got to enjoy and it’s the same with any running or racing that you do it’s that journey.  Yeah it’s nice to get over the finish line; yeah I’ve done that what a fantastic tick you know.

Kevin: Is there a certain element of it that is an anticlimax because you then know that that journey is over that there is a gap now?

Andy: Last year’s Lands End to John O’Groats it was yeah that was there but straight away my mind had clicked onto this challenge.  I hadn’t told anybody but this was planning in my mind then even though nobody knew it this was there ticking.  So I have got to try and temper the next one.

Kevin: Interesting.  Yeah I know it is going to be very interesting to hear what you say when you finish the next one.  I am going to wind this; this is the final thing I want to ask you.  I like to ask everybody how they maximise their own potential, what they do that they would like to try and share with others and help inspire them to take that next step in their development in their lives.

Andy: It’s a really hard one this one.  I would say think of something that excites you and will stretch you and start to look at it and think about it to make it real and it will become real.  If you want it to become real it will become real even as farfetched as it might seem whatever it is whether it is in work business life whatever you can do because there is absolutely no way that I thought I would have thought when I was younger that I would be doing something like this.  I know now I can do this even though it is a long way and there are big challenges there.

Kevin: And how do you feel now whenever you now think of something that could be considered a challenge?

Andy: What’s the plan to make it real.  And if it doesn’t excite me and doesn’t turn me on then let’s not start going down that road.

Kevin: But if you get excited about it then in your mind that is it it can be accomplished.

Andy: Yeah absolutely.

Kevin: Andy North thanks very much.

Andy: Thank you take care.

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Kevin: Andy North thank you very much for casting such an insight into how you successfully prepare, plan and complete these amazing feats of endurance.  The way Andy described how he uses visualisation is incredibly empowering and has actually led to an excellent discussion within the Maximise Potential group on LinkedIn.  It goes without saying that Andy is still actively seeking support to help him reach his target of £50,000 for the Children’s Forces Trust and the ABF the Soldiers Charity.  So if Andy’s story has inspired you then please just click through to the show notes and you will find a link to Andy’s just giving page.  The adventure starts on August 19th and on August 26th I have pledged my own support by joining Andy on one of his 20m running legs.  I also know that he is very keen to welcome other people to join him either running or cycling any or as many legs of the route as you may wish.  So I have added the route to the show notes with Andy’s contact details for anyone that is interested.  So there we go another excellent insight into the life of someone who is truly striving to maximise their potential.

Now a quick news update regarding the goings on at Maximise Potential.  Firstly the Maximise Potential podcast has just been nominated for the European Podcasting Awards for best business podcast.  The voting is taking place right now so if you would like to see our podcast scoop this highly coveted award please visit the show notes and click on the link to vote.  We would really appreciate your support.  We would also love to hear your feedback on this episode as well as your suggestions for future episodes.  So please come to the site leave a comment, connect with us on Facebook or LinkedIn or pop over to ITunes and leave a rating and a comment there.  And please remember if you are considering a career change then check out our sponsors Jenrick who specialise in engineering, IT and commercial recruitment.

Thanks again for tuning in and here is another mellow track from Xerxes to finish on and it’s called ‘Slide’ enjoy and we will be back very soon thank you.

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It’s the dilemma that’s so common now – when you’re  “Out of the Office”, how “Out” of the office are you?  Following on from Part1 and the importance of putting some helpful structure to your email ‘out of office’ bounceback, a simple-to-follow formula of Acknowledge/Inform/Guide is useful and hits the spot. It’s also the safest bet to show your clients, customers and colleagues how professional, helpful and thoughtful you are. You are, aren’t you?

Depending on how you’ve decided to handle being away by doing one of the following:

• Read your emails regularly whilst you’re away, twice per day for example
• Have someone read them and then sort out the ones you need to read when you return or
• Read them all but only when you return you can just slot your information in and then lean into enjoying your holiday.

Here are a few simple samples to slot your words into:

Reading your emails regularly whilst you’re away

• Acknowledge:  Thanks for your message and I’m away from the office until August X.
• Inform:  I will be reading and responding to my emails in the meantime and will do this twice per day. 
• Guide:  If you message is urgent and you need immediate assistance, please email John Smith, Title, who will help you.  You can email him at — or call him on 123 456 7890.  Thanks again, Your Name.

Someone reads them, sorting out the ones you need to read on your return

• Acknowledge:  Thanks for your message and I’m away from the office until August X.
• Inform:  My colleague, Jim Smith, Title will be accessing my emails during my absence and will make sure any which need immediate attention are handled. 
• Guide:  If you want to speak to Jim Smith or call him direct whilst I’m away, he can be contacted at —– or you can call him on 123 456 7890

Read them all but only when you return

• Acknowledge:  Thanks for your message and I’m out-of-the-office at the moment.
• Inform:  I will return to the office again on August X and in the meantime I have no access to my emails
• Guide: If you require immediate assistance, please contact Jane Smith,  Title,  who will be happy to help you.  You can email Jane:  ——-       or call her direct on: 123 456 7890.  Thanks again, Your Name.

There’s always a balance to achieve and to weigh up how your emails impact on your time away is a decision you have to make yourself.  There’s always a rub.

If you decide to read them and respond to them whilst you’re away, agree you’ll read them and respond to them for a certain period of time, say an hour, every day at the same time.  Plans can then be made around that and you can tell people when you’ll get back to them.  Managing their and your holiday companions expectations too!

Helping yourself by discussing this first with everyone makes it easy for them to understand and let you get on with it.  Trying to do it between trips or between meals just becomes stressful.

You may, or may not agree but this quote sums up the point here:  “Time for work – yet take much holiday, for art’s and friendship’s sake”.  George de Wilde

Putting a bit of structure in place will set you free and anyway, everyone needs some down-time, some time to reboot, so lean into a successful holiday, a managed inbox and your art and friendships too.

How do I learn more about Kay?

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Article reproduced with permission of Kay White, Communication Specialist and Mentor at www.wayforwardsolutions.com. Kay shows professionals how to be understood. Get quicker, faster and better results by becoming a more effective, influential and savvy communicator – everywhere in your life.

Kay’s first book, The A to Z of Being Understood is a Number 1 Amazon Bestseller for Customer Service.

In addition, you can listen to an exclusive interview with Kay where she shares several exclusive tips on how to immediately make your communication more powerful and persuasive: http://www.maximisepotential.co.uk/how-to-develop-effective-powerful-communication/

As most of you are aware, at Maximise Potential we  are seeking to understand the mindset and approach of what drives people to success within their chosen discipline.

I recently interviewed Endurance Athelete, Andy North (Max#31), who is about to embark on the ’sunshine challenge’ where he will run a total of 25 marathons and cycle over 1,500 miles within the period of 42 days.

Within the interview Andy gave us an amazing insight into the mental techniques he applies to prepare (and complete) challenges like this.

After posing some discussions on Linked IN, regarding Andy approach, I received a very interesting reply from Greg Layton, High Performance Coach and Founder of InteViva:

“I thought I’d share a couple of things. I work with quite a few professional athletes including ultra marathoners in Melbourne, Australia and have done quite a bit of training and work directly with John Grinder. Together, with the likes of Chris Collingwood and Ian Snape in Aus we are exploring some of the key physiological triggers that allow athletes to stay in the zone (safely) for long periods.

Recently, I worked with Samantha Gash after meeting her when I was competing in The Atacama Crossing. (250km ultra in the desert in Chile). We were able to elicit some of the key attributes of her high performance state. Probably the most common component I have seen with ultra runners is that they tend to run in a slightly dissociated state, i.e. they are outside their own bodies (3rd position).

The main triggers for this have been a combination of the following with the athletes that I have worked with and in my own personal experience when battling 40 knot, 45 degree headwinds across salt flats. 1. Some part of the body goes completely slack as if disconnected from the body – hands, jaw most common, a particular rhythm that comes from their step cadence and a softening of the vision to more open.

I find that athletes in different sports require very different high performance states. We’ve been playing with rhythm in particular as a particlar trigger and I use it in sports and also in Exec Coaching as the trigger for my state in that context. Real powerful…an easy test is to play some different music and what how the rhythm of the music changes your state.

I’ve trained a number of athletes in how to access these states and maintain them for long periods. Often using the “Lifeline” pattern (setup unconscious signal system and get the unconscious to control maintaining the state unless there is something calls into question the athletes well being. )

Anyway, its interesting stuff.

Good luck with the ultra guys in the UK.”

Excellent insight Greg – thank you so much!

Mindset is a MUST READ in my opinion – and I cannot thank Matthew Syed, author of BOUNCE, for putting me onto the book and the amazing research that Carol Dweck has compiled over the years.

Here are some additional insights into the book:

“Mindset is one of those rare books that can help you make positive changes in your life and at the same time see the world in a new way.

A leading expert in motivation and personality psychology, Carol Dweck has discovered in more than twenty years of research that our mindset is not a minor personality quirk: it creates our whole mental world. It explains how we become optimistic or pessimistic. It shapes our goals, our attitude toward work and relationships, and how we raise our kids, ultimately predicting whether or not we will fulfill our potential. Dweck has found that everyone has one of two basic mindsets.

If you have the fixed mindset, you believe that your talents and abilities are set in stone–either you have them or you don’t. You must prove yourself over and over, trying to look smart and talented at all costs. This is the path of stagnation. If you have a growth mindset, however, you know that talents can be developed and that great abilities are built over time. This is the path of opportunity–and success.

Dweck demonstrates that mindset unfolds in childhood and adulthood and drives every aspect of our lives, from work to sports, from relationships to parenting. She reveals how creative geniuses in all fields–music, literature, science, sports, business–apply the growth mindset to achieve results. Perhaps even more important, she shows us how we can change our mindset at any stage of life to achieve true success and fulfillment. She looks across a broad range of applications and helps parents, teachers, coaches, and executives see how they can promote the growth mindset.

Highly engaging and very practical, Mindset breaks new ground as it leads you to change how you feel about yourself and your future.”

Here are actual reader reviews regarding the influence the book has played in their lives:

“This book was recommended to by a speaker on a course I attended. It is excellent and has given me a new insight in to behaviour patterns. It’s helped me alot. Well worth a read.”

“The book is based on the author’s years of research which boils down to the simple premise that a growth-mindset allows you to fulfil your potential and a fixed-mindset inhibits your potential. This is supported by evidence of effort being more important that ability and that praising effort builds motivation and esteem but praising ability inhibits the same.”

“A very simple message on how you approach things and the massive effect it has on you. The message is a great one. Have already passed it on to friends and colleagues.”

“Excellent book for all interested audiences. As a coach we learn about how the past affects the present and this provides clearly elucidated evidence that this is true. It helps me to better inform how I support and enable people in the future. So it is very important for me and I imagine for all REAL coaches and mentors.”

Summary and more information:

Personally, I’d really recommend reading this book if you are seeking to maximise your own potential in your business, career and life. In addition, as a parent, I have found Dweck’s methods invaluable – they have changed how we communicate with our children (for the better, in my opinion).

If you are interested in commited to on-going learning, with the goal of maximising your own potential, then please check out the Maximise Potential Podcast which contains a series of interviews with inspirational people – all of whom are excellent examples of people who are maximising their potential.

In addition, take a look at the other inspiring books that I have personally read and found great benefit from.

The Maximise Potential Podcast, brought to you in association with the Award-winning Recruitment Group Jenrick, is pleased to release its latest interview with Andy North as he approaches the Sunshine Challenge 2011 – Yorkshire to Gibraltar.

Welcome to episode 31 of the Maximise Potential Podcast.

In our last episode with Bremont Watches, Nick English used an expression which I believe is the perfect introduction to our guest on today’s episode. Nick was referring to the Bremont Ambassadors when he spoke of ‘ordinary people achieving extraordinary things.’

Andy North is a perfect example of this. This 50 year old Yorkshireman, is about to embark on one of the most intense endurance events I’ve ever heard. What I find particularly inspirational about Andy’s story is that he’s managed to train for this incredible event whilst juggling family commitments, running a business and also attempting to reach his goal of raising £50,000 for two Armed Forces Charities.

As you can probably tell, I’m resisting revealing what Andy’s actual challenge is at this stage, and also the challenges he has already completed. However, what I will say is that anyone who is interested in understanding how someone like Andy prepares mentally for taking on an event like this, is in for a real treat with this interview.

Please enjoy . . .

Additional notes and resources (just click on the links for more information):

• Visit the Sunshine Challenge website
• Donate via Andy’s Sunshine Challenge JUST GIVING PAGE
• View the inspiring story of Andy North
• View Andy’s Sunshine Challenge Daily ROUTE PLANNER
  
• Follow Andy North on TWITTER
• Visit Forces Children’s Trust website
• Visit The Soldiers Charity website

EUROPEAN PODCASTING AWARDS:

• VOTE for Maximise Potential by clicking HERE

TRANSCRIPTION:

• Transcript: Andy North – Endurance Athlete (Max#31)

Starting in August, Andy will be running a total of 25 marathons, cycling 1,300 miles and even kayaking 25 miles across the English Channel to achieve this amazing feat, with over 8hrs each day running in the mornings & cycling in the afternoons.

In total he will cover over 1,800 miles, from Catterick Garrison in Yorkshire to Gibraltar, within just 6 weeks.

Please see the map below showing Andy North’s Sunshine Challenge Daily Route Planner:

If you want to join Andy on any of the legs of his journey, just get in touch through his website: The Sunshine Challenge.

Also, did you know that we have just recorded an amazing interview with Andy? Come and listen to the Andy North Interview on Maximise Potential now.

Wishing you the very best of luck Andy!

I’ve just come across this motivating article on British Olympian, Derek Redmond, which ties in very nicely with the inspiring video about him already featured on the Maximise Potential website.

School children nationwide have voted Derek Redmond as the Ultimate Olympian.

Primary and secondary schools across the nation, including West Sussex and Derby, experienced a vast array of sports for this year’s National Sports Week.

The West Sussex West School Sport Partnership hosted a sensational event promoting both National School Sports Week and next year’s Olympics and Paralympics games. Many schools celebrated with their own sports day.

Schools were merged and students divided into groups to represent the competing countries of the Olympics.

Each group was sent to 5 different posts to take part in a variety of sports such as golf, hurdling, Judo, and Volleyball. The final post asked the children to each vote for their “Ultimate Olympian”. Derek Redmond came out on top as the children decided that his courage, determination, drive for excellence and inspirational story made him a role model and an icon of the Olympic values.

As London 2012 draws closer, the Olympics will continue to be used to inspire young people.

Bourne Community College Year 7 student Samuel Hoolihan said:

“I loved the hurdles, but enjoyed throwing my friend around in judo more!”

Phil Fowler, assistant director of learning for PE at Bourne, said:

“What a positive day! It was so great to see so many talented students get such a memorable experience of what the Olympics are all about.”

FURTHER RESOURCES & RELATED ARTICLES:

• Watch the inspiring video of Derek Redmond on Maximise Potential
• Listen to an exclusive interview with inspiring sports star, Dean Macey
• Listen to an exclusive interview with inspiring sports star, Greg Searle
• Listen to an exclusive interview with inspiring sports star, David Weir
• Read articles on inspiring sports stars

Article Source: Parliment Speakers.com

Hi everyone! As you know, we had the pleasure of interviewing former Olympic & World Champion Rower Greg Searle, on the podcast last year.

I just saw an article from him in the Wall Street Journal Blog and felt is was well worth posting on the site:

British rowing athlete Greg Searle first won gold at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics with his brother Jonny. In the 1996 Atlanta Olympics he finished third in the coxless four event. After a fourth-place finish in Sydney in 2000 he retired from top-level rowing to concentrate on his career as a practice director of performance development consultancy, Lane4.

Now at the age of 39 he is back in exhaustive training to qualify for London 2012 and the chance to once again compete for Olympic gold.

He describes how the strategies used by elite athletes are very much the same employed by business leaders to compete at the very top.

1.  Find a vision; set short term goals to achieve overall success.

I am in the midst of training for an Olympic comeback 20 years to the day after I won gold in 1992. Winning that medal is the compelling vision that sits above everything else. I was also inspired by London winning the games and I thought, “I want to be a part of that.”

I thought I still have the raw potential to be an athlete for the 2012 games so took the risk and started training again with that goal in mind. Another big part was imagining winning a gold medal 20 years after winning my first, which no one else has ever done.

However, the real work is to achieve smaller goals before that overall target is within reach, such as rowing 2,000 meters in six minutes on a rowing machine, performing well in trials, sticking painstakingly to my training program and getting enough rest. These day-to-day behaviors may sometimes be difficult—but because there is the compelling vision of competing at London 2012 Olympics, it provides the inspiration for the difficult things I need to do.

So many leaders talk about goals and talk about a vision but they don’t make it exciting, compelling or engaging enough for people to want to achieve it. The great leaders are the ones that can create that enthusiasm for long term success which drives everyday behaviors in their team.

Rowing on a machine is really tough, and in itself it isn’t exciting. What “is” exciting is knowing and seeing the benefit of the hard work once I get into the boat, or at the next training session.

2. Feedback is your best friend.

The difference now in British sport compared to when I first competed is astonishing. We have the chance to win several gold medals next year while in 1996 we only won just one.

The major difference is the amount of support we get from our coaching teams. This is an important point for businesses and their leaders as many companies don’t use the support function as well as they ought to.

I receive constant feedback measured against the goals that I set at the beginning of the year. Everything is meticulously measured: nutrition, psychology, and physiology, but it’s the personal feedback regarding my impact—how I behave around the team and influence them, as well as how I move the boat—that I receive from my coach and fellow athletes that is most valuable.

It’s not always the case that this has been done well. I remember on one occasion I received feedback that caused me to jump out of the boat, swim to the bank and say I would never row with that person again.

Now however, feedback is given in a much more sophisticated way and people are asked to comment on their own individual performance. The people who want to improve are ready to identify their weaknesses and ask others for constructive criticism.

In a corporate environment however, people can be reluctant to invite feedback because they are nervous about how they are going to be judged.

In sport, the higher the level you perform at, the greater the level of support. But in business the higher you are in an organization the less support you receive, or people will not offer feedback as they may be wary of you. You might employ someone outside the company who can give impartial feedback that might not otherwise be possible.

3. Unshakeable self-belief: Self-confidence versus self-esteem

When I came fourth in Sydney in 2000, I had the feeling that I had failed. I had to be helped to recognize that I hadn’t become a bad performer—or even a bad person—because I lost a race.

The respect you earn as a sportsman or in your career has been gained over the course of years. It’s important to remember that respect can’t be lost in the blink of an eye.

Many of you will have experienced the “school of hard knocks” and you must expect to lose as often as you win—maybe more. But you have to put those performances into context as steps toward the ultimate goal.

On an individual basis, self-esteem is deep lying and built upon successes and setbacks over the course of a lifetime. As such it will not be affected by things that happen day-to-day but will be swayed over longer periods of time.

Self-confidence however, is affected in the short-term by everyday events. Self confidence can afford to take a few knocks, but it’s vital to maintain self-esteem by reminding yourself of your successes in the past and that overall, your quality will shine through.

4. Controlling the controllable.

As a leader or a sportsman it’s important to be prepared by addressing the things that are within your control. There is so much out there that you think could be relevant to make you perform, but, the real trick is to recognize the things that will really make a difference and make them your focus.

After that, it is simply a case of controlling your reaction to everything else.

In my sport it is a case of moving the boat as fast as you can down your lane. What the other boats do in their lanes is their concern.

Any strategy needs to be based upon what we can do to make a difference to our performance to get the best result.

I must admit that in Sydney in 2000, I thought our boat was inferior to our competitors’ boats. I remember that I let my mind drift and think about other things that were beyond my control.

We came fourth. It was a lesson learned.

5. Recognizing pressure as a positive

I know that I can perform at my best when I am under pressure. I don’t necessarily like it. I still get racked with self-doubt and nerves—but I know when I am in that situation I have to accept that feeling as it produces the best from me.

It’s only halfway through the race that I realize I have found strength that I didn’t know was there.

In a business environment there are high pressure situations to be dealt with every day, but often that pressure can help you become focused, sharp and at your best. The key is to recognize the symptoms and embrace them. You have to reframe the situation so it ceases to be a threat and becomes an opportunity.

A vital coping strategy is to ensure you have other things in your life. I am a father with two kids. I can keep pressure in perspective. As I sit on the start line, I think about my daughter who was recently in her first swimming gala. When it comes to the Olympics, I will be in a boat with eight of my mates doing something that I have been doing for the last 20 years. I think that what I do isn’t tough compared to a 10 year-old facing the world and competing for the first time.

Greg Searle director of performance development at consultancy Lane4. He draws upon his commercial experience and elite sporting background to deliver programs in the fields of leadership and team development.

There are some excellent points in the article which nicely complement the Greg’s inspiring interview on Maximise Potential. Hope you found it useful and I’ll keep you updated with Greg’s progress as we work towards the London 2012 Olympics.

Article Source: Wall Street Journal Blog

Very interesting article for any aspiring entrepreneurs out there . . . .

A small business owner turned down for investment by banks has managed to raise £75,000 through a crowdfunding website.

Sue Acton, founder Bubble & Balm, sought growth finance through Crowdcube in return for 15% equity in the business. A total of 82 investors contributed between £10 and £7,500 to meet the funding target.

The Fairtrade bodycare business required investment to expand its award-winning product range, increase marketing activity and to meet increasing demand from retailers such as Waitrose, Oxfam, Planet Organic and a growing number of independents.

Instead of competing for limited business angel or venture capital funding, businesses can use Crowdcube as a platform to connect with small investors or ‘armchair dragons’, instead of one or two high net worth individuals.

“I am absolutely delighted we have achieved our target. Raising finance is incredibly tough for any small business – Bubble & Balm included – and I was really excited when I first heard about Crowdcube,” Acton said. “The idea of pitching our business to a wide range of people, ranging from armchair dragons looking to invest £10 through to more traditional investors with thousands to invest, was really appealing.

“Some of our new shareholders have already offered their skills as well as their cash to support our growth, and this is another huge benefit of crowdfunding – not only do we now have the investment we need to deliver against our plans, we also have a diverse team of supporters (and customers!) too.”

Darren Westlake, co-founder of Crowdcube, added:

“This is a significant moment in the history of small business finance in Britain. In the current climate with banks being risk averse, we are thrilled that Bubble & Balm has succeeded in getting vital growth investment.

“This is just the start. Many entrepreneurs on Crowdcube are on the verge of achieving their funding targets using our crowdfunding model. I firmly believe that Crowdcube is the future of business finance in Britain.”

Article Source: BusinessZone

Music

Kevin: Welcome to Maximise Potential the podcast to educate and motivate through a range of original interviews designed to help you maximise your potential.  Brought to you in association with the award winning recruitment group Jenrick.

Welcome to episode 30 of the Maximise Potential podcast.  Bremont Watches is rapidly becoming one of the premier luxury brands within the mechanical watch market.  A fact that has been further confirmed when they recently won watch brand of the year at the 2011 UK Jewellery Awards.  What makes their story especially interesting however is that they are making substantial inroads into a market dominated by two key factors the Swiss and history neither of which apply to Bremont. Today’s interview discusses exactly what Bremont is succeeding despite such barriers whilst also focussing on the inspirational and very personal story about how the company came into existence.  So please sit back and enjoy this interview with Nick English one of the joint founders of the 2008 emerging luxury brand of the year Bremont Watches.

Music

Okay Nick thank you very much for joining us today on the Maximise Potential Podcast.

Nick: Absolute pleasure really good to be here.

Kevin: It’s great to have you onboard and it’s great to have the opportunity to be able to meet one of the founders of Bremont Watches.  Shall we paint a bit of a picture about where Bremont has come from you know when it started, how long it took to develop and you know give people a picture, just a nice synopsis of where it all started.

Nick: You know I think we are very, very lucky as kids because we spent a lot of time with our father and he was just introducing us to new things all the time, tinkering in a workshop as a boy is a dream isn’t it.  And our father was very, very good at keeping that enthusiasm going and the smallest thing would bring huge smiles to our faces and whether it was restoring old aeroplanes as we said earlier or building boats which we spent a couple of years building his boat which we then sailed for a long time when we were young kids with our parents.  And cars we still drive around now which we helped restore.  And I think those sort of things they are all simple things but it’s that time you spend with the family that really, really made a huge difference to our lives.

Kevin: You were also being constantly challenged as well. That also sounds like part of your fathers plan with this that he was constantly getting you guys to think, to learn skills and to develop even if you thought it was playing.

Nick: We were very lucky because he was a very bright guy.  You know he was very, very bright you know Cambridge Aeronautics and the rest of it and I think Giles and I have got about a quarter of what he had and so that is why we have to work together otherwise we would never have managed to achieve anything compared to him you know.  It is quite special to have that and I think from Giles and I if we can give a tenth to our kids that he gave to us we would be doing a good job.

Kevin: Definitely and you spoke to me about one of those experiences and you actually said that your dad pulled you out of school and you sailed around the world.

Nick: I think he had spent quite a lot of time building this boat with us and Giles, I just remembered he used to hobble up the ladder of this boat with a huge keel which would be sitting in our front garden.  We spent a long time with him helping him or probably acting more of a distraction to him but he was very good at pretending.

Kevin: He tolerated.

Nick: Exactly being tolerated and he took us away from school for a few months we sailed you know from England down through the Mediterranean and down through North Africa and places like this.

Kevin: How old were you?

Nick: Giles must have been eight or nine and I was sort of ten or eleven so.  But it is one of those things that you just remember.

Kevin: You obviously had the opportunity to learn how to fly same as your brother and follow in your father’s footsteps and your father was a very successful air show pilot and did formation flying and all sorts of stuff and then all of a sudden both you and your father had a very unfortunate incident in the mid 90s if I am correct.

Nick: When we got to our teens he allowed us to sort of get into the formation flying side of thing and the air display and for each air display you do you have to do a lot of training behind there and make sure you are up to speed and so he had his RAF buddies in the back whipping us into shape to make sure that we could fly safely and we did do for many years.  And then I was practicing for an air display and hadn’t flown with my father for many, many months and he said come on Nick lets go for a fly this day and took off to do this practice air show and something went wrong with the aeroplane basically and my father had been in the back and we ended up ploughing into a field at quite a high rate of knots just near Chelmsford actually in 1995.  It sort of changed our lives quite substantially at that point.

Kevin: I mean that was unfortunately your father died in the incident and you were left with a horrendous amount of injuries and you know spent a long time in hospital recovering and what not so.

Nick: I was, again you kind of look at this in two ways and I think it goes for a lot of things in life but I was unlucky to be flying that day but also lucky in terms of the injuries.  I broke a lot of bones, I broke sort 20 – 30 bones but they were, very lucky in terms of no head injuries or major torso injuries.  Those are the things you sort of dread in those incidents.  I managed to avoid that but yeah a lot of breakages that’s for sure.

Kevin: That really was the end of one era but from what you have explained to me and what Giles has explained to me that was very much the beginning of a new era that was really the catalyst.

Nick: Yeah I think quite a few people experience this in their life and it can be when you are younger it can be when you are a lot older and for us it happened when we were mid way through our lives or a bit earlier on than that but it is definitely a tipping point.  And at that point we were working the City so for our sins I was a Chartered Accountant and Giles was in Corporate Finance.  We had been doing that for three or four years, we were both in Corporate Finance at the time but then this accident happened and just afterwards it got to the stage where we thought actually what are we doing we are not particularly enjoying this.  So we both left what we were doing and we got involved in the business restoring old historic aircraft.

Kevin: Well let’s just pause on that because I know you are about to get, I can see you itching to talk about the fact that you managed to get out of this City life and everything else but I would like to dwell on that moment because that is, that is a crucial stage.  I mean what conversations did you and Giles have, I mean how did this.  Was it when you were in hospital?  Was it the two of you just reassessing your values? I mean what did it teach you.

Nick: Our father was 49 years old when he died and as I said before not wanting to repeat myself he crammed an awful lot of stuff in or I thought he did you know.  He had built up companies taken them public. He had done lots of different things; he was an amazing guy with his hands.  Everything he did in life I think probably you are looking on someone with these amazingly rose tinted specs as your kid but you know we still remember it that way.

Kevin: That’s how sons look to their fathers.

Nick: Its brilliant isn’t it, it’s great I just hope my kids have a tenth of that with us.  But we felt he crammed quite a lot in and at that point we just thought what are we doing, is it the right thing to do to stay on or not and we just, in that instant we decided actually let’s leave.  I had been flying with my brother; he took me back up in the air a couple of months after the accident.  I still had metal, well actually about three months after I had metalwork everywhere and he just said come on I’ll get you back up in the air.  So we got straight back into this old 1930s aeroplane and mucking around.  And I said I want to do something I really enjoy in life I don’t want to go back to sitting behind a desk it is not me and Giles said it is not me either.  And literally we made this choice pretty much there and then.

Kevin: And yet that would have been, I know it seems like an easy decision and almost an instant decision that you guys made.

Nick: I don’t think it was relatively well thought out but that’s.

Kevin: Well that’s the point and you know you are both, you have both studied you have got your corporate profession.  You have gone into jobs in the City.  Most people would say right that’s it my path is now well and truly trodden I know which direction it is going in and yet bam you just made that decision.  That is, I know you are being just talking about it as if it was like deciding whether to buy a brand of coffee or something like that, that is actually quite a powerful moment in your life.

Nick: I think it is but then you also, it’s this whole thing and I will keep repeating myself but you felt that life was so damn short and you have got to cram so much in it and unless you are enjoying.  And I think what that accident did to both me and poor old Giles you know he was in his early 20s at the time, I was as well and he had to support the whole family when this happened.  You know I’ve got two sisters and my mother who was obviously going through a rough time.  One of our sisters was ten years old at the time when it happened so my brother was there supporting the family when I was smashed up in hospital.  I think it just changed, it changed both of us in different ways and we both said actually lets go off and do something we enjoy and it was that easy it really was.

Kevin: Do you think it just taught you the value of life, how precious it is, do you think that’s it?

Nick: I guess so, probably quite an annoying person to be around unless I feel like I am getting something out of each day now and I think Giles is the same.  We both want to be going at full blast at whatever we do so.

Kevin: I think that is a good lesson for others to learn.  I think a lot of people.

Nick: Well I don’t know if it is I think some people, I’m not saying everyone should do that, it works for some I guess.  It is not necessarily.

Kevin: Yes but I think it is very easy to become complacent with life when you haven’t had anything to force a value on to it.

Nick: And I think it is everybody and I am as well. I am not saying we are immune to it but I think everyone gets afraid of the unknown I think it’s scary you know.  We have all got bills to pay, we have all got families to support and the decisions as you get older get harder and we are very, very lucky because we were, we had very little responsibility back.  You know when you are mid 20s you can really afford to do these things and it made that decision much easier.  But now you know apart from being virtually unemployable because we haven’t had a profession for so long I still couldn’t do anything different to what we are doing now.  I guess things haven’t changed that much really.

Kevin: No I don’t think so.  So you started getting into sorry and I interrupted you when you started saying you started a business restoring old aircraft.

Neil: Yeah I mean.

Kevin: Talk about going back to your boyhood dreams I mean that is fascinating.

Neil: What happened was there was a business our father had been involved with it was a place where he had got involved in setting up about 20 years previous and it was a place where aircraft, old vintage aircraft were restored, hangerd, maintained.  We came in to sort it out financially and I guess it was for us it was almost like a bit of a sabbatical.  We did it for a few years, well a couple of years and we really, it allowed us to figure out what we wanted to do in life but also that was the airfield we took off from the day we had the accident and it was a bit of closure as well.  It was interesting it sort of helped us solve a few things in our life but it was fantastic being around all of these mechanical things and getting paid absolutely peanuts if anything really but it just allowed us really to go in and do something we really, really enjoyed.

Kevin: I bet you felt that was the best use of your accounting skills than you had ever had.

Neil: It was counting out widgets and the price of fuel and things.  But no it was good and I still don’t regret a second of it. It was the best.  It was almost a bit of therapy for us at the time.  I spent a lot of time with Giles.

Kevin: I was going to ask you about, what was it like working with your brother?

Neil: It was good, it was really good because we had always been pretty much best buddies but he had been at different schools just because there was a three year age gap.  So never been in classes with him or schools with him so this got to the stage after the accident we started working together and it was really nice.  And we are very, very smellier but very, very different.  I know it sounds.  We both know what we want in life, we both appreciate the same things but we look at things very differently and I think it has worked very well because of that.

Kevin: I was going to say it sounds like a good combination of skills.

Neil: We try and pretend it is.  We are pretty useless together but we muddle by.

Kevin: And so really I guess that was the start of the Bremont journey of you know Nick and Giles English working together and suddenly where did this brainchild come up that you were going to start your own business and?

Neil: Okay well we always had this absolute love of mechanical things and our father as a watch collector, you know amateur watch collector for fun would show us the watches.  And I still had the watch that our father had when he had his accident and I’ve got my grandfather’s watch and they all told a different story.  You know one was in the trenches; one was engineer in the First World War.  You know I had a watch from my grandfather who basically was on a hospital ship, he was a surgeon during the Second World War and I had that watch.  Giles had my father’s watch that he won in a flying competition in the 60s.  None of them are particularly special watches but the fact is that each one tells a story and they are all working and they are working as well as the day they were built.  And I think that really appealed to us and the fact that we did love clocks.  You know the fact that you have got a minor miracle happening on your wrist.  You have got something which there are 86,400 seconds in a day and you are making something which is within a couple of seconds of that and so the accuracy.  And it is something so small as well and yet it has to go through being bashed around.  And I think that’s what really appealed to us.  And the other thing that really appealed to us is the fact that there is an incredible history of British watch making.  You go back 100 years and we came up with most of the major inventions of watch making.

Kevin: I have to be honest that was what surprised me.  I was obviously fortunate enough to come to one of your evenings and it surprised me what you said about English watch making.

Neil: We should be proud.

Kevin: Yeah I know and that was the thing that threw me I think it is worth just explaining a bit about that because I very foolishly thought pretty much it was Swiss and only Swiss you know.

Neil: Well many people, I think the book everybody has to read is a book called ‘Longitude’ and it explains how in the 1730s there is a competition the British Government set up to help with navigation at sea.  Whilst you could measure latitude with the sun and stars and so forth longitude was very, very difficult you needed time to measure that.  And a few seconds out whilst standing at the equator was the equivalent for you know a few hundred meters a kilometre out and that was the difference between being on the rocks and not.  And so many, many ships were lost before the 1700s because they had no accurate way of telling the time at sea.  And so the British Government they put on, I think it was £10,000 at the time and cut a long story short a chap called Harrison won it with his H4, well he had a series of Harrison time pieces.  He was a carpenter from up north but a very good watch maker.  He came up with some amazing accurate timing device, a clock basically and it’s called a ship kilometre, that’s where it came from.  Rolex used to be based here in the early 1900s.  Many of the finest inventions in terms of watch mechanisms themselves came from the UK to the extent where up to the 1920s if you wanted a nice watch you came to, you know it was British made, it was made in England and it is seeing a bit of a resurgence which is great.

Kevin: And of course you guys are a major part of that.

Neil: Well we are hoping to be.  I think we are showing that there is still the resource and the [unclear 15:37] in the UK to be able to produce these watches.  And you know we are trying to do more and more in the UK ourselves to the extent that later this year we are going to bring a whole workshop over from Switzerland and start manufacturing and assembling the watches in England.

Kevin: That’s incredible.  And so just back track slightly.  What year did you and Giles start Bremont?

Neil: 2002.

Kevin: Yeah.

Neil: I guess that’s when the first bill was paid.  It is a bit like that isn’t it; there is a pile of invoices in a cupboard somewhere.  And then we launched our first watch in 2007.  But as I was saying we told our wives it would be a year and a half when we first started to produce our first watch and then five years later we are still trying to persuade them that it was the right thing to do.

Kevin: Why did it take so long and what kept you focussed throughout that entire time?

Neil: We wanted to make sure that we had the confidence ourselves that the watch we were producing was something beautifully, beautifully made and for us the whole brand is about over engineering, it is about precision engineering.  It is about testing these watches to quite a lot of extremes and I suppose we didn’t have the confidence in ourselves. You can test and produce a watch within a couple of years if you really put your mind to it but testing in a laboratory is one thing for us it was a lot about testing it in the field as well.  So we had watches strapped to various people for a couple of years two or three years before we were very, very happy that they could withstand going round the world on motorbikes and climbing up Everest and all this side.

Kevin: So is this where the whole Ambassador, the Bremont Ambassador.

Neil: That’s where it came from this is the whole thing about great understated people wearing our watches that were going off and doing some quite extraordinary things.

Kevin: And for people who are probably unfamiliar with where I am going with this but we are talking about people like Bear Grylls, Graham Bell, Charlie Boorman etc, etc.

Neil: Yeah and Kenton Cool these sort of people who are off doing some quite special things, Sara Campbell world champion free diver.  And for us you can bounce a watch up and down as many times in a workshop as you like but making sure it goes up to Everest and back a few times and I guess another thing about the brand was we wanted to produce a watch that is as beautifully made but can be worn in a Boardroom with pride but also something you would keep on your wrist at the weekends and go off and do some quite outdoorsy stuff but in a quite hardcore way which is why we started working with more and more Great British engineering companies that can really help us try and test these watches.

Kevin: Well that is the bit that you obviously have now led me into which was the approach that you have taken with the whole marketing side of Bremont and the association because you’ve got some incredible relationships with powerful nostalgia especially British nostalgia but also US nostalgia but you have also got this very exclusive side as well i.e. in only people who have achieved certain things can get hold of a Bremont Watch.  It is a great way of creating value.

Neil: I guess it wasn’t a real conscious decision to go back and establish yourself as an older brand.  I think it just came down to Giles and I loving these things so for example an EP120 is a very famous spitfire still flying today, has sort of battle wounds on it, just beautiful, beautiful and the chap that owns it very kindly, he was restoring part of the panel on the wing and he gave us this and allowed us to use the metal of this which is aluminium in the watch itself, so to integrate it into the mechanism and into the dial.  So we made 120 of them, literally we couldn’t have got the quantities any better.  So the aircraft was EP120, we made 120 of them and they are all built with parts of a very famous spitfire that was flying over Normandy in 1942.  So you are wearing this watch with its original parts and for us that is quite fun.  And that is limited for limited sake you know it is quite a fun thing to do.

Kevin: I want to flip slightly and just ask you a couple of questions about the difficulties that you have faced in launching this company and when you have come up against obstacles.  I am very keen to understand right from the development side of stuff, you know something that should have taken a year and a half took near on five.  How do you deal with obstacles I mean you must have come up against various different objections, various different areas that you know you could have very easily folded on?

Neil: Obviously you are right in that there have been many obstacles.  I think with any business it doesn’t matter what sector you get involved with what industry there is always going to be obstacles especially when you are starting from scratch.  Honestly trying to think about this when you asked me earlier I just don’t think, again it’s a conscious thing, there is no way we cannot get through that, past that obstacle we just have to find a way.  So we don’t sit down and sulk there just has to be a way around and you know.

Kevin: You just don’t accept it.

Neil: You can’t accept it, we would have stopped many, many months or years ago if we started, just look at us in our industry stock to make a watch, if I order a part now it can take up to two and a bit years to get that part and that is a huge obstacle in itself so you have to find ways round that.  And every single part of the business there is an obstacle but you just can’t accept it you have just got to find an alternative.  Not necessarily fight it you have just got to find a way around it and just.

Kevin: It is very interesting there is a lot of similarity with how you are talking and when I spoke with Steve Morris over at Morgan and I see a lot of similarity between your two businesses as well.  You have got these wonderful what I would say rationally handcrafted British businesses that are small in a very big market that have to find creative ways of making their competitive advantage and running through and making it commercially viable and it sounds like there is a lot of lateral thinking that has to go on, a lot of creativity and it is just finding solutions.

Neil: But that is when some of the best products are made I think.  Often with bigger organisations when everyone fits into a role and that’s what you have to do and they don’t have the pressure on them, they don’t necessarily have the passion there I think that’s where a lot of these bigger companies can become slightly laxidasical about it and I you know the analogy you’ve given is quite an interesting one because I am sure they are up against some.  In fact I had a Morgan in the past they are great cars and they up against big, big competitors and they still find a way of making themselves individual, different, appealing and a very dedicated following which is fantastic.

Kevin: And I think what you just said about Morgan could easily be said for Bremont for what you and Giles are creating.

Neil: Well we kind of hope so but again as I keep saying there is lots more to do but hopefully we will manage to evoke the same sort of passion and I think people hopefully can appreciate that all of the bits that we find exciting that go into the watches, they can appreciate the same.

Kevin: Definitely but as well as the nostalgia elements and the limited edition you have got these wonderful partnerships and I think, I am not going to expand anymore on that but I have read an awful lot about how unique these partnerships are and the value that the create in the brand and I think it would be wonderful to explain a bit more about that.

Neil: Again the British bit has always been quite important to us and almost to showcase what can be done.  Two or three of those partnerships we have been working with have certainly been along those lines and one of them who we with have been working with for probably three or four years now is Martin Baker.  The average household Martin Baker won’t be a sort of recognisable name but in the aviation world it is huge and they are the guys that make probably 75% of the world air force ejection seats.  And they have saved today over 7,200 lives and they have never had an ejection seat fail.  So they approached us and said look we want to produce a watch for our ejectees which I thought was a great name being called an ejectee but they are the guys who have survived an ejection, people who have survived are given ejectee number.  They came to us and said look we want to have a watch which we can give to these guys or allow them to buy but they had to go through the same testing as the seats themselves.  So they said to us look these watches have got to go through the same testing and Giles and I looked at each other yeah no problem, no problem then we realised actually what the testing was, as time progressed what the testing would involve and it was things like 40 years worth of vibration testing.  So you had to sit the watch in this special rig on this manikin and it is literally shaken to pieces for the equivalent of 40 years.  And they had this manikin and the shoes are worn down through the end of it, flying suits are just in tatters.  It is just amazing.  And then they had shock tests so slamming these things against various objects and climatic tests so the watches had to work at -50 to +100 or something ridiculous, humidity tests, to show what it would be like on an aircraft carrier.

Anyway it went on and on and we realised that our standard watches couldn’t cope with some of these.

Kevin: Yeah so this has gone from probably you guys thinking great all we have got to do is.

Neil: Change the dial put a bit of a logo on it.  And we said are you sure, I don’t think many other watch brands would be keen enough to go down this route but we absolutely loved every stage of it and I think what we ended up with was this new model the MB watch where we had to design a whole new way in which the movements inside the watch are suspended so it doesn’t touch the outside of the case so the shock can be absorbed.  The whole thing had to be completely antimagnetic and assembled in the UK.  So it is quite a special piece and the interesting thing was we made a number of different models but the model with the red barrel that our cases had, all of our cases are quite special they are all three piece and they have specially hardened steel.  But this middle barrel of this MB watch had to be red and you could only have one of those if you have ejected and if you see someone with a red barrel MB watch then you know they have ejected.

Kevin: Incredible then you have also then gone on to build similar relationships.

Neil: Well what we did is I think if you are a military pilot, military pilots tend to be into two or three things.  They love their cars or motorbikes, they love their ladies and they love their flying and their watches.  So it’s in no particular order, so these guys came to us and said look we fly at the US Navy Test Pilot School would you make a watch for our squadron we’re the U2 Spy Plane Squadron based in Sacramento.  And these are a very [unclear 25:57] bunch.  You know they are all kitted up to spacesuit technology.  They had to go up to 80,000ft, -50o outside.  You know it goes on and on.  So they wanted to test our watches to a certain, they wanted to make sure at 100,000ft the crystals wouldn’t pop out of the watches so we had to adapt our watches and make sure that was fine because you can’t have these watches exploding at high altitude.  And it is just fascinating working with these guys but as a sort of thank you we kept getting these great pictures being sent back to us of these guys you know 80,000ft over Iraq taking pictures with their iPhone of them wearing their watch when the probably shouldn’t have been.  But it was great it was really nice.

Kevin: And what did it teach you about your yourselves and about your brand and really I guess about where you could take your brand?

Neil: It sounds so corny me saying this but you have got to be fairly true to what you set out to do.  I think that’s what, it gave us a huge amount of confidence in terms of saying well look this is what Giles and I wanted to originally achieve.  I think what we are doing seems to be striking a chord with you know some of these guys we are wanting to appeal to.

Kevin: And I have held off asking this where did the name came from?

Neil: When Giles and I knew we wanted to set up a watch brand we knew also very, very adamantly that we didn’t want to go and just buy a watch brand.  And if you have been to Basil you will realise that there is 400 watch brands claiming to have huge illustrious histories of which when you dig a little deeper, and some of them do I am not disputing that some of them do, but many, many of them claim to have these long histories and you realise that actually many of them, in fact most of them have been dormant for many, many years.  And so there is no original founder there, there is no original equipment that they were using to make these watches and they are probably not in the same building.  You know there is nothing tying them to their past.  So what we wanted to do, any of us can go off and buy a watch brand and say look I have been trading for 100 years look at us it’s great.  First of all we wanted to be British.  Secondly we felt that because of that last argument we wanted to set something up from scratch and so the brand had to be us.  Giles and us our surname is English and so having a British watch brand with English on the dial would have been slightly corny to say the least and probably missed by a lot of people but also pretty bloody hard to trademark.  In fact for the first four years we were making watches with ‘Watch ‘written on the front.  As in you know while we are in the workshop we didn’t even think about names, let’s just not even thing about names let’s just get the watches to a stage we want.  And so for many they just didn’t have names on the dials.

Kevin: That’s interesting in itself though the dedication that you actually put to your product.  I think there is a lot of people who would have been very quick to think of their brand, think of the posters, think of the look, think of the logo

Neil: That was the easy bit the hard bit is getting the engineering how you want it and you know if you have got the right product the rest sort of falls into place.  Well that was our view anyway.  So it came down to a flight my brother made and this is a couple of years after my accident Giles and I were flying down through France in an old German biplane and we took off, probably realistically in weather that we probably shouldn’t of and it got worse and worse, we got lower and lower with less and less fuel.  It was also the worse combination of everything.  We were at the stage of flying 100ft down the River Some we are out there trying to help our friend who got stuck in an air control tower with no money he had been living there for four days living off powdered coffee and sugar and went down to help him out.  So we ended up force landing in this field, this was before GPS’s by the way.  So just to fill you guys out there who don’t understand how we got into this mess.  If you do this in England or America you know you take the farmer a bottle of whisky, his wife a flight it is very easy but in France whilst it is fine landing they get very bureaucratic about you taking off, you know is it safe for you to take off again, it is a lot of paperwork and invariably they say no it’s not safe enough to take off and you have to take the wings off the airplane and take it to another airfield.

So we landed and I am not kidding as we landed we saw blue flashing lights coming up the valley and just thought, because we had been circling for a bit trying to find a, we landed in this pea field and this old guy came out to help and he said look push your airplane into this barn of mine, he was an old farmer.  And we pushed the aeroplane into the barn and we stayed there for a couple of days, the weather was atrocious still.

Kevin: So he literally hid you up.

Neil: He basically hid us up and the reason he did it, he was actually a pilot during the Second World War but he also was, our father had died a couple of years beforehand this guy was 78 when he came out to help us so he just reminded us of our father 30 years later had our father been around that long.  He was just into his; he had old engines in his workshop it was just like going to our father’s workshop.  But because he was a pilot as well he was very interested in the aircraft and we just sat there for two days drinking nice wine which we couldn’t afford from his cellar and chatting just nonstop.  And his name was Anton Bremont and that’s where the Bremont name came from.  And for us it meant something to us, it was a name that looked lovely on a watch from our perspective but it was you know, it was a big part of our father in there as well as Anton himself was a great guy.  He was a very, very sweet, very, very lovely guy.

Kevin: Oh excellent.

Neil: One of these sort of rare encounters in life that you sort of never forget.

Kevin: Just snapped into place, just felt right.

Neil: Definitely.

Kevin: And what are the exciting things on the horizon for you and Giles and Bremont as a brand?

Neil: We have got some good partnerships.  We did a lot with Jaguar supercar which I gather they are bringing out 150, they are producing it now.  This whole concept 75th anniversary hybrid car which is just a beautiful thing.  So that, it will be interesting to see what happens there.  We have got this new limited edition the P51 coming out which is quite special. It follows on; we were talking before about the EP120.  This is one of our biggest markets now is America and the other is Asian and obviously the UK.  And America we have come up with a watch which again is just as sexy as the EP120 and it is called the P51 and it is built with original parts of a very lovely well very famous P51 Pacific War Veteran aircraft.  It is a very nice retro looking watch.  So there is a lot in store and there is a whole load of products for next year which we are working on right now.

Kevin: And moving away from the products I think the lovely thing is that you and Giles are finding time to pursue something a bit more I don’t know close to the pair of you, a bit more away from just raw products and that was the flight that you were talking to me about.

Neil: Yes I mean there is one chap who is quite an inspiration to us and he got us looking at all the different pioneering pilots and that was a chap called Sir Frances Chichester and you may all know him as the first guy who circumnavigated the world solo in a boat, incredible navigator, amazing guy.  Another good book to read – ‘Lonely Sea and the Sky’ and so 1967 is the first guy to sail around the world.  Well I think it was 67 one of those years.  But what he also did when he was 28 years old he basically flew from England to Australia in a Gypsy Moth and it is just a great, great story and he is an incredible navigator you know doing it with sextons and landing in some amazing places often unannounced and just you know full of risk and jeopardy and the rest of it.  So it made a great read.  And we used to always say god wouldn’t it be great to do this one day, it would be fantastic and finally it is coming to the stage now where it looks like next year we will be heading off Giles and I flying two separate aeroplanes but the same aeroplanes he flew down in from England to Australia.  So it is about 150 something hours flying.  And we have a very good friend who we have been working with who actually is an Ambassador of ours but because we so respect the work he has been doing and it is a chap called Marc Koska who has own charity called Safepoint.  And Marc is an amazing guy actually you should definitely get him on this show because he is an incredible guy who in his 20s designed a syringe that could only be used once and he has been attributed with saving literally millions of lives around the world.  Because I mean there is some horrific undercover footage of 40 kids being innoculated against something or other and they use the same syringe for all the kids in this orphanage, this is in Africa, and Asia and India and places like this.  And two of those kids got aids and so you are just passing this around.  There is loads of footage like this and he has basically worked very closely with governments and organisations to just get this syringe out there and for that to be part of the trip for some of those legs.  For the past 12 of the 16 countries we are going through are very relevant to the work he is doing so the Bremont bus as we call it which is an old French bomber which we fly quite a lot he will be going in there and working out where he is going to be going next and we will be flying these two other aircraft.

Kevin: Incredible.  Well how do you feel to be part of planning an event like this?

Neil: There is so much to do the more you think about it the worst it gets.  It was one of these trips where I’d like to think we are going to leave with a lot of planning behind us.  But I know what is going to happen we are going to jump in and just go and just hope we get there.  But no it is going to be quite special.

Kevin: That’s superb.  I am going to start winding down.  This is where I try and leave people with a few pearls of wisdom from yourself as a man who has been there and done it.

Neil: Not quite still loads to do.

Kevin: Still loads to do but someone all the same who has launched a very successful brand not by yourself but with a great team around you.  What would you pass on to others in terms of an approach that you have taken, that you found successful that is maybe you an attitude that has maybe helped you fulfil your goals and work towards achieving your goals?

Neil: You know it is funny you should say that I have got two little girls and a little boy and I often think what am I going to say to my son in 20 years time if he comes to me and says look Dad I have got this great idea I just want to go and do it and I go over in my head what would I say to him and I think one is don’t, and everyone says this but it is so, so true.  Just like us when we went down we saw the 400 brands of competition for us.  You know if you feel strongly about something you know unless it is a bloody daft idea go for it, really do go for it.  That’s the thing about the US and the UK that you try something in the US and you may fail.  You know you don’t all necessarily succeed first time but the Americans have a great attitude and they go oh well done for trying.  In the UK it is often seen as a stigma for not immediately succeeding.  I think that is absolutely daft because I think it takes more effort to go off and try these things than it does to sit in an office doing something you don’t enjoy.  So that is the first thing.

And then I would just try and involve someone who is a bit of grey hair perhaps who has done something similar.  I don’t mean necessarily get them on the Board or Exec but go out for a beer with them and get their advice.  Ask a few people and then you will realise that you will have picked up some things from them.  Others you will have discounted as not being of use but you would have certainly done a bit of research and I think that is the way I would do it.  The main thing is just go off and bloody well do it.  You know I really do think that quite strongly.

Kevin: Nick English I have had a thoroughly enjoyable interview here and thanks so much for your time.

Nick: Thank you very much indeed you have been very kind.

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Kevin: I would like to thank Nick for his honesty and openness throughout that extremely insightful interview into his life, his motivations and his future aspirations.  I think the Bremont story is a wonderful example of having the conviction and determination to pursue your passion in life.  It shows that you can develop your career around something that you truly care about and are proud to be a part of.  I think Nick also explained that regardless of what you do be prepared to meet numerous obstacles along your way it is just a natural part of the journey.  And finally please don’t forget Nick’s closing message of just go for it.  Life is far too short for you to be left with ifs and buts and maybes.

I have put links through to the Bremont website for you, their Facebook page as well as to Marc Koska’s Safepoint project and also the two books that Nick mentioned ‘Longitude’ and ‘Lonely Sea and the Sky’

Please remember that the charity photo competition run by our sponsors Jenrick who specialise in recruiting for the engineering, IT and commercial sectors is now in full swing so check out the show notes for details on how you can enter.

Thanks again for tuning in I’ll make sure I get the next podcast up very soon and here is Xerxes with his track called ‘Déjà Vu’ to finish off.  Thanks again bye bye.

Music

Hi everyone!

We have some amazing news to share – the Maximise Potential Podcast has been nominated for the European Podcast of the Year, in the business category.

Please can you show you support by voting (and rating) to give us the opportunity to win these prestigous awards:

If you are new to this website and have not yet listened to the podcast, please read on . . . .

The Podcast, contains a series of exclusive interviews from inspiring people, who all display exceptional self-belief, mental toughness and desire to achieve.

The objective of the interviews is to inspire and educate others by sharing successful management styles, mental skill development, NLP, learning techniques and self-motivation methods – everything people need to become successful in their own life, career and business.

What type of people have featured on the podcast so far:

• Sporting Achievements – Greg Searle (Olympic Gold Medalist Rower), David Weir (Champion Wheelchair Racer), Matthew Syed (Commonwealth Champion / Best-selling Author), Dean Macey (Commonwealth Champion Decathlete) & Sam Brown (World Taekwondo Champion)
• Extreme Achievements – Pen Hadow (record-breaking explorer) & Bonita Norris (British Everest Record Holder)
• Business Successes – Nick English (Bremont Watches), Steve Davies (Global Management Consultant), Steve Morris (Morgan Cars) & Abi Cockcroft (Startup Success Story)
• Life & Career Successes – Elliott Cole (Aspiring Triathlete), Tony Dobbyn (Global CTO), Neil McCarthy (SEO Expert), Giles Christopher (National Award Winning Photographer), Jora Gill (Leading Agile Speaker and Global Head of Technology), Kay White (Best selling Author), Fiona Campbell (Leading NLP Coach) & Kos Lesses (Workforce Planning Expert)

How to do I listen and learn more:

• If you want to listen to exclusive interviews from any of the individuals, named above, please click on the following link (and scroll down the list): Listen to the Maximise Potential Podcast
• Also, you can subscribe to the Maximise Potential Podcast on i-Tunes
• PLUS – Join the Maximise Potential Group on Linked IN
  

Thank you for your on-going support and we’ll keep you posted with the Awards – fingers crossed!!

We felt incredibly proud to see Kay White, featured on episode 14 of Maximise Potential, at the very Top of the Amazon best-seller lists, after the launch of her first book titled “The A – Z of being understood.”

Here is a brief synopsis of the book:

Are you an ambitious professional looking to make your next move? Do you want to build strong, profitable relationships with ease? Give me five minutes and I’ll tell you how to be an influential and savvy communicator.

Discover simple steps to dramatically increase the effectiveness of your communication so people are inspired to give you what you want. Find the ways and the words to engage and persuade people and make more lasting and profitable relationships, quickly and easily. Save time, money and energy as you go about your business.

In this book, you will discover:

·         The two most powerful words that inspire people to take action or instructions from you

·         What you’re saying that always puts people on the defensive and what to say instead

·         What you must do to make sure you’re understood – and not just nodded at

·         The one word you must avoid if you want to connect and persuade people with what you have to say

·         How to take the heat out of a hot-under-the-collar situation and immediately put yourself back in control Plus many more tips, tools and simple strategies.

The book is proving exceptionally popular and providing instant improvements to the communication style of so many people, as the reader comments below illustrate:

“This is an amazing book. I could have hardly believed that I was going to pick up so much from it. Why has it been so long for it to be written? Everyone should have a copy.”
Gina

“Some fantastic principles, tools and techniques for use both at work and home. The perfect guide to successful conversations, which result in successful outcomes. Easy to read and fun!”
Sarah

“Lots of excellent advice, written in a chatty, easily understood way. We can all benefit from Kay’s words of wisdom. Buy this book today!”
Jenny

Congratulations again Kay and we can’t wait to have you back on the podcast!

Whichever direction I turn right now, I keep bumping into one name in particular – John Wooden.

I have found him referenced in books such as Mindset (Carol Dweck), The Talent Code (Daniel Coyle) and Bounce (Matthew Syed).

Quite simply, as well as being known as probably the best basketball coach (if not sports coach) there has ever been – he is arguable the finest manager of people in general.

The motivational techniques that Wooden honed over years and years of practise and refinement, enabled individuals to perform at a level which was consistently beyond their expectations. Yet, Wooden also managed to transcend these techniques across entire teams – so that the collective group performed at an extremely high level.

He was renowned for his short, simple inspirational messages to his players, including his “Pyramid of Success.” These often were directed at how to be a success in life as well as in basketball.

Wooden’s approach, according to Carol Dweck, is a perfect example of someone who is commited to the growth mindset ideal and also complements Coyle’s research which states the value of deep / purposeful practise.

According to both of these highly respected authors, Wooden is an excellent example of someone to model yourself upon if you wish to develop highly effective coaching, leadership and motivational skills.

Before I explain more, allow me to share a few key facts about John Wooden to help create a picture of the man, his achievements and his values:

• John Robert Wooden (October 14, 1910 – June 4, 2010)
• Nicknamed the “Wizard of Westwood”
• He won 10 NCAA national championships in a 12-year period (7 in a row) — as head coach at UCLA
• He was named national coach of the year six times
• He coined the popular phrase “Failing to prepare is preparing to fail”
• The Sporting News “Greatest Coach of All Time” (2009)

However, it took 16 seasons of incredible hard work for Wooden and his team to win their first National Title – this is a fact that many try and overlook. The majority want to focus on his years of success and not take into consideration all the effort, losses, tears and lessons that it took to get there.

In fact, during the majority of the years that preceded this title, Wooden’s team did not have proper training facilities or even their own home court (they used local schools and gyms for their home matches).

John Wooden’s Seven Point Creed (given to him by his father upon his graduation from grammar school):

• Be true to yourself
• Make each day your masterpiece
• Help others
• Drink deeply from good books, especially the Bible
• Make friendship a fine art
• Build a shelter against a rainy day
• Pray for guidance and give thanks for your blessings every day

I think the following statement accurately sums up John Wooden’s approach to life and is a fitting way to finish this article:

At the top of the Pyramid of Success was “Competitive Greatness” which Wooden defined as “Perform at your best when your best is required. Your best is required each day.”

Additional Links to learn more about John Wooden:

• John Wooden Official Website
• John Wooden Wikipedia page

The Maximise Potential Podcast, brought to you in association with the Award-winning Recruitment Group Jenrick, is pleased to release its latest interview with Nick English, co-Founder of Bremont Watches.

Bremont Watches is rapidly becoming one of the premier luxury brands within the mechanical watch market, a fact that has been further confirmed when they recently won “Watch Brand of the Year at the 2011 UK Jewellery Awards.”

What makes their story especially interesting is that they are making sustantial in-roads into a market dominated by two key factors; the Swiss and History – neither of which apply to Bremont.

Today’s interview discusses exactly why Bremont is succeeding despite such barriers, whilst also focusing on the inspirational and very personal story behind how the company came into existence.

So, please enjoy this interview with Nick English, one of the joint founders of the 2008 emerging luxury brand of the year, Bremont Watches . . .

Additional notes and resources (just click on the links for more information):

• Visit the Bremont Watch website
• Follow Bremont on Facebook
• Marc Koska – Safepoint
• Book: Longitude
• Book: Lonely Sea in the Sky
  

CHARITY PHOTO COMPETITION:

• CLICK HERE to enter the Jenrick Charity Photo Competition

TRANSCRIPTION:

• Transcript: Nick English – Bremont Watches (Max#30)

We just received a very interesting short article from Philip Fanthom, Managing Director of the IT recruitment division of Jenrick.

Have a read . . . .

You don’t know everything.

You do know that, don’t you?

Continual learning is a basic necessity to professional improvement and in many cases it’s other people who will help you get there.

But only if you’re coachable.

Are you coachable?

To be coachable means to be…
•    Approachable
•    Attentive
•    Receptive
•    Curious
•    Objective
•    Trusting
•    Shapeable
•    Confident
It means you must listen with the intent to learn rather than to show what you know. (be no ego)

“Now, what you should do is…”  “Well, it’s obvious, you should do this, then you should do that and then you should tell them you’ve done it”.

Should do.  What you should do and what you want to and actually do are often very different things.  Even if the advice we’ve been given is spot on, the fact that we’ve been told we ‘should’ do it is often the very reason we don’t.  So if that’s the reaction we have, it’s the reaction that others will have when we ‘should’ all over them.  Hmmm.

There’s something innately irritating to be told we should be doing something.  It implies – this is the subtle, savvy part to understand – it implies that we’re not doing something and that the other person is wiser that we are.  It’s implicit that we’ve missed a trick and they haven’t.  That they know better exactly what will work for us.  Well, in reality, we know best – better than anyone – what works for us and as we all know, making a decision ourselves and then sticking to it is always more powerful than carrying out other people’s advice.  We own the outcome and, as such, are responsible for the result. (Or, in this case, response-able).

One of the big pieces of being an influential communicator as you work is putting across your ideas, suggestions, or advice (still need doing) and letting the other person decide for themselves how, and if, it will work for them.  It then becomes their decision, their action.  This principle applies just as effectively, if not more so, at home with our families and friends!

So, how do you get across your idea, suggestion, advice without saying “what you should do is” or “I think you should…”?

Here are 3 quick and easy ways which work, for you to try out:

1. Start with “I’ve got an idea for you..” – this way you’re putting out that it’s only an idea and it’s for you to contemplate and understand if and how it will work.  By saying “I’ve got” you’re telling the other person “OK, I’m ready with something that I think you’ll want but it’s up to you what you do with it”.
2. Say “Can I make a suggestion here?” – again, you’re putting across that you have something to offer and you want to get their buy-in before you just throw it at them.  9 times out of 10, if you’ve read the situation and your relationship correctly, the other person will say “yes please”. 
3. Think aloud – “hmmm, that’s tricky, now I wonder if…” – you can hear (and feel) that you’re firstly empathising that they have an issue or something tricky going on ie, they’re not an idiot – and saying “I wonder if” is a pensive, non-confrontational way of offering your thought or suggestion.

As with all of the 3 ideas above, avoiding the ‘should’ word once you start with these phrases is crucial.  Remember, by offering your thoughts in a less fixed way, you leave the other person open to taking on what you think but without your judgement (intentional or otherwise) behind it.

So, can I make a suggestion here?  Try these phrases on for size the next time you feel yourself about to say “well, you should” or “oh, it’s obvious, what you should do is…” You’ll notice the difference in how easily the other person/s take on what you think and if they ignore you then at least they know you contributed your thoughts.  As is always the case – they have two choices.  Take it.  Or leave it.  I bet they’ll take it more often than not!

How do I learn more about Kay?

To have the opportunity to discuss any blind spots you know you have or things that are slowing you down or holding you back as you connect, persuade and compel people at work; click here to apply for a complimentary conversation with Kay.

Article reproduced with permission of Kay White, Communication Specialist and Mentor at www.wayforwardsolutions.com. Kay shows professionals how to be understood. Get quicker, faster and better results by becoming a more effective, influential and savvy communicator – everywhere in your life.

In addition, you can listen to an exclusive interview with Kay where she shares several exclusive tips on how to immediately make your communication more powerful and persuasive: http://www.maximisepotential.co.uk/how-to-develop-effective-powerful-communication/

It’s important to be able to be direct.  There are times when it’s crucial to be direct.  There you are, I’m being direct with you.  It’s got your attention, you know what I’m saying and it’s a key piece to being a clear, confident communicator.

We’ll start with the ‘Why’ of being direct first.  I’ll be direct with you.  I promise – and before we start, being direct is very different from being rude.  That’s the key.

So many people struggle with saying what has to be said.  They ‘beat about the bush’ as we say, chatting about everything else but what they actually want to say.  We can feel they’re struggling, they can, and the longer it goes on the harder it is for them to say what has to be said.

If you think about it, more often than not, when someone’s direct with you, it’s actually a relief.  You know and understand what they’re saying, you’re able to decide whether to take the information or their opinion on board and you can keep moving.

I believe the struggle with being direct is two-fold.  Firstly it stems from, ultimately, fear.  It’s a primal fear of rejection at the root of being unable to be direct.  Putting an opinion or instruction out and either hurting someone’s feelings or being seen to be ‘wrong’ is scary.

The struggle is both about fear and it’s about thinking that you have to please everyone all the time.  The trick is to be able to respect the other person’s position or point of view and still be able to put across yours. (Oh and as we all know, we always fail if we try to please everyone.  It’s impossible.)

‘This is going off-track.  We have to get those expenses down otherwise all the budgets will be blown’.   This two-sentence, direct opinion has given us everything we need to understand that something’s going wrong, there’s a direct action and the consequence is laid out for us if we leave things.  We may not like the message, it may not be strictly true but at least we know what the other person is thinking.

You can imagine that these two, direct sentences could have gone like this and, in many meetings I’ve sat through, they have: ‘Well, we’ve got to be careful to understand how exactly the numbers are all adding up at the moment.  We’ve said it before and it’s time to say it again.  If we aren’t very strict with ourselves and what we’re spending then the whole project could be jeopardised and then we might all be at risk of being told the budgets have been blown and then who knows where we’ll be.’  Phew, we got there.  It was painful and ‘clunky’ or bumpy to get there and – if they held our attention on to the end of it – the importance of the message has been severely diluted.

Can you see in the second version that as well as diluting the message, there’s also a real danger of both confusing and, crucially, boring your audience.  Be it a listener, a reader, a crowd – your audience is the person or people you’re communicating with.  You want their attention not for them to start tuning you out.

Personally, I resent spending my precious time listening to or being made to read something that’s rambling, jumbled and woolly.  My brain has enough vying for attention and so does yours.  It’s a relief when someone tells you what’s what.

Most people will love you for it.  They actually want your opinion and they can then choose whether they take your opinion on, or not.   Just as you can choose whether you take someone else’s opinion too.

There’s a handy formula etc – and here it is for you – to make it easier (and more comfortable) for you to be direct.

Your opinion + Your reason + Offer a solution.

That colour is a bit drab on you. (opinion)
You look lovely in blue (solution).
It brings out the colour of your eyes (reason)’.

This is going off-track. (opinion)
We have to get those expenses down (solution)
otherwise all the budgets will be blown (reason)

It’s less about the order you express yourself and more about having these key components in there.  Opinion + Reason + Solution = Usefully Direct.

How do I learn more about Kay?

To have the opportunity to discuss any blind spots you know you have or things that are slowing you down or holding you back as you connect, persuade and compel people at work; click here to apply for a complimentary conversation with Kay.

Article reproduced with permission of Kay White, Communication Specialist and Mentor at www.wayforwardsolutions.com. Kay shows professionals how to be understood. Get quicker, faster and better results by becoming a more effective, influential and savvy communicator – everywhere in your life.

In addition, you can listen to an exclusive interview with Kay where she shares several exclusive tips on how to immediately make your communication more powerful and persuasive: http://www.maximisepotential.co.uk/how-to-develop-effective-powerful-communication/

Think about how you write? Think about how you think about other people as you write – if you think about other people as you write?

It’s one of the easiest things to do – just quickly type or write what you ‘think’ needs to be said and give a ‘tip of your fingertip’ response and assume that the other person/s will work it out. Well they may – and they may also get confused, upset, hurt or just ignore your message.

As successful business people, everyday we’re writing – emails / promotional material / website updates / reports / executive summaries / slides / letters.

I’ve noticed something that really jumps out and it’s something you can easily take notice of as you write. People think that because they’re writing something it has to be written in a more formal, often ‘wooden’ style just because it’s in writing. Well it does – and it doesn’t.

Context is everything – most of the things we send out day-to-day can be written in a style closer to how you speak. Now you may speak in a “To Whom It May Concern” and“Notwithstanding the aforementioned” kind-of way. Well good luck if you do. I also understand that we still need to be respectful and make sure all the ‘meaty’ information is in there.

Most of the time, if you write letters, emails, website and marketing documents in this style then you’ve lost the reader at ‘Hello – or, if that’s your style, then you’ve lost them at “To Whom It May Concern”.

Something happens when someone starts to write, that often sends them in to using ‘you are’ instead of ‘you’re” and ‘we’re’ becomes ‘we are’ – it becomes more formal and less compelling because of it. Also, the crucial connecting words of you, your, our, suddenly turn into me, my, I, us and ‘we’. The readers feel excluded or talked-down-to or bored (or all three!)

I put it to you, if you can hold a conversation, if you can get your point across as you speak, chat – then you can write in the same way, there’s a style you have that’s yours and that’s how you can write. It is far more compelling to your reader than all the ‘stuffy’ stuff.

How can you do this easily? Here’s how:Warren Buffet

The great investor Warren Buffet of Berkshire Hathaway is renowned (apart from his billions of dollars) for putting together Annual Reports for his company investors which are easy to read and easy to understand.

There has to be formal layout in certain sections but in the parts where he tells the reader about developments, he writes as if he’s speaking to his sisters. He says they’re intelligent but are no experts in finance or accounting – “I don’t need to be Shakespeare; I must, though, have a sincere desire to inform.”

• Who can you use in your head to speak to as you write? A client you know well, a friend of yours who’s interested in what you do, your partner or sibling? Just write it out as if you were chatting to them so you get it out of your head, then you can tweak and adjust to make sure you’ve got your point across. The key is to get it out of your head in a conversational way first

• Think about what you’d want to read and the way you’d like to read it as if you were on the receiving end – what’s the difference?

• Watch out for too many I, I, me, my – notice how you can flip them and make them your, you, you’re, our. It’s far more engaging to read and it helps you get into that crucial groove of thinking about the other person and what it is they want. Less about you, more about them.

Notice how you’re drawn in to certain people’s writing or companies’ websites and the effects they have on you; writing more like you speak and less like a competitor for the Formal Writing Trials, will mean more people read and connect with what you write and, the crucial bit, respond to you and what you write. Write on.

How do I learn more about Kay?

To have the opportunity to discuss any blind spots you know you have or things that are slowing you down or holding you back as you connect, persuade and compel people at work; click here to apply for a complimentary conversation with Kay.

Article reproduced with permission of Kay White, Communication Specialist and Mentor at www.wayforwardsolutions.com. Kay shows professionals how to be understood. Get quicker, faster and better results by becoming a more effective, influential and savvy communicator – everywhere in your life.

In addition, you can listen to an exclusive interview with Kay where she shares several exclusive tips on how to immediately make your communication more powerful and persuasive: http://www.maximisepotential.co.uk/how-to-develop-effective-powerful-communication/