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i'm very very lucky that i get to help other people be the best version of themselves sir david browsford to many he's one of the greatest winners of our generation if you can get a little bit of insight why do i feel how i'm feeling why do i respond like i do and then you realize think wow a lot of my behavior a lot of my life was driven by emotion it wasn't driven by the real me the best thing ever if it happened and if it doesn't then you might be absolutely devastated but you've got to leave it as a dream then you've got to understand that actually worrying about the consequence of an event is detrimental to the process and the performance and the the chances of you achieving that event perfection perfection was so far away that there's no point because we're going to fail every day so i thought well let's have a little progression it's right then what could we do by next week that we're not doing this week what little things could we do there's a million things that could impact performance and it and it works it works 100 percent it works been 20 years quick one can you do me a favor if you're listening to this and hit the subscribe button the follow button wherever you're listening to this podcast thank you so much sir david brailsford i've tried since this podcast began to get sir david brasford to come here and have a conversation with me so having this conversation today and being able to share it with you is one of the highlights all time in this podcast history i don't think it's an understatement to say that he has worked miracles with teams taking teams in cycling that were under achieving and making them undeniably the greatest team in their world and maybe of a generation he's famous for this concept of marginal gains it's a concept which i speak to my team about every single day and maybe that's why i wanted to sit here with him today you will understand without a shadow of a doubt how to build a successful team that's what you'll come away with you'll understand how to be successful personally you'll understand how to inspire those around you to be successful
but the surprising thing which i think you'll also take away from this is the cost of success and we don't often take enough time to ask ourselves that very honest question is the climb worth the view but by the end of this podcast i think you'll be closer in your life to having an answer for that question so without further ado i'm stephen bartlett and this is the director ceo i hope nobody's listening but if you are then please keep this to yourself [Music] a conscious sense of outsiderness from a very early age um you said that once upon a time and it rang very um true to me as well and i found it to be a very relatable thing where did that come from where did your conscious sense of outsideness come from uh it's funny when you say that because it resonates it really does so i was very young just been born and my parents my dad really decided to move from derby where i was born to north wales and and buy a house in snowdonia very keen climber and he wanted to go to the proximity of the mountains so we moved over there and i grew up it was a very very welsh uh dominated welsh-speaking little village called daniellen i went to primary school there and grew up speaking first language well sure my friends are welch everybody was welcome pretty much apart from my parents and and i had this such a conundrum then i didn't probably realize it at a time but certainly on reflection you look back and you know i was very very much in this welsh community very very tight community and and i'd go home and my parents were obviously english parents and and i felt you know my dad didn't really conform he was there to climb he was there's one of these outsiders would come in there to you know get up into the mountains and um and i think that that left me challenged i think because i was so wanted to be the same as all my mates same as everybody else partly try part of the gang and yet somewhere inside i felt maybe i wasn't quite you know it wasn't i wasn't fully
immersed in it you know it wasn't quite there and don't get me wrong i i loved it and i still i go back then i love it you know my great friends there my mum still lives there but i never actually quite quite got that full sense of i belong there you know so i always felt that a little bit on the outside i guess you went on to be a great anomaly in what you've achieved in your life and success and i look i always i'm always i'm i guess i'm a bit noisy but and i did a little bit childhood psychology when i was in school so i try and look at like which what the parental dynamics were that might have made someone that little bit more relentless and that little bit more hard working and i sat here with eddie hearn and i go oh your dad i could tell the way his dad was that ruthless intensity clearly rubbed off on him at a young age and i was reading about how you described your dad and it seemed to be dare i say a little bit similar to yeah he was often very when he was very young so he lost his mum when he was five lost his dad when he was seven and uh of course for anybody that's gonna have a big big impact and i think he had a you know life-changing impact on him and um i think he he was then fostered and um you know he tells the story when he was he was growing up in a foster family foster family to eat together and they'd make him eat in another room and you know no it was tough enough i guess and i think that's had a profound effect on who he was and and he became somebody who was very much uh you know driven to to make his own way and i think you know that was um one of his core core sort of deep seated drives and values is that he he pushed hard and he was always about being professionals all about working hard make your own way you know don't rely on anybody else to do anything for you do it for yourself and um and he drilled that into us and i think we just lived it really and
cycling i you were very into cycling from a young age i had used to wait on thursdays for this sort of cycling newspaper to arrive yeah that's psychic weekly yeah yeah little magazine which is a bit of a cult magazine you know quite a niche magazine and i used to arrive get delivered on a thursday and i'd wait with great anticipation and and you know it was one of those when the the newspapers came round you get your cycling weekly and then you'd sit there and read about all the results and who done what and because there's nothing on internet there was no there's no there's no other way of getting the news you know and you know in the back there was all these little sections where all the results were all the race results and he looked to see who'd done what and study all his he was like a real you know it's a real part of the cycling culture and still is to be fair cycle weekly still going despite all of the changes in sort of media and everything else but so for me it's a real cornerstone of my growing up with the sport that's for sure you you then go to school you go to universe do you go to university did you no no i didn't enjoy school at all did an apprenticeship no no no well no i left school on 16. yeah first i could leave school i was out i was done yeah i didn't enjoy school why no i just i didn't like being confined i didn't like i'm just sitting chemistry lessons and no i just didn't it wasn't for me you know i just didn't enjoy it and it wasn't i couldn't do it so i don't think i just didn't enjoy the environment i enjoyed the the pe and i enjoyed being with my friends and all that kind of stuff but i didn't i don't know i just didn't enjoy that educational i felt trapped i felt enclosed and um and i don't know i didn't i wasn't really motivated to to learn at that time you know i was off doing other things really do you think because you had so much freedom in your in your childhood home you then struggled going to places where you
didn't have that same level of freedom yeah well i certainly like autonomy there's no doubt about that you know and i think he's probably there since childhood you know because i did i did i enjoyed quite a lot of freedom going up but i think it's quite interesting because somewhere in the back of my mind i knew at some point i was going to have to go and you know i'd have to get and learn or yeah i felt this kind of responsibility for an education somewhere but i just wasn't ready you know and um and so i thought there was the uh there's what i should do and what i wanted to do i think and there's a little bit what i should do kind of came along and then in the end i sort of thought well actually i i want some freedom i want to explore i want to go on an adventure or i want to do something different and so yeah so many of the guests that sit here including jimmy cars very reminded me of him have that moment usually in their early 20s where they as you've perfectly described it there's the thing they should do usually what their parents want them to do what society's told them to do and what they want to do and in jimmy's case it was like quit everything and go and be a comedian put getting paid no money because yeah yeah that's what he wanted to do and take all those unpaid gigs for you you set off on a bike yeah to france yeah yeah yeah breaking out of wales moment right yeah and i kind of got this um it didn't happen overnight but slowly but surely i started to really really get passionate about cycling like really the sport of cycling kind of it had the freedom maybe but it was a sport of suffering it was a sport of sacrifice it was it was a tough sport and i liked that and i liked the idea that you were it was only you you know this if you could you know it's like the head and heart really if you if you're intelligent and and and you could figure out how to train and then you had the heart and the commitment and the desire of passion to suffer a little bit and how deep could he go and you know that attracted me to cycling so if you were good you were good and if you
weren't good you weren't good and then uh you played a lot of football and in all the little all the junior teams and everything else you were growing up and there you could you could have a great game and lose or you could be you know terrible and win the team could win and i kind of like the you know this idea that if what you do really counted in terms of your own performance as it were that sort of chime to me anyway i kind of got this passion for the tour of france and this sort of thing that was kind of happening somewhere in the world and the more i looked at it it felt quite quite gladiatorial and the mountains and the you know it felt just epic a three-week race and all i wanted to do is go and see if i could watch this race and i got a chance to go and i stood there and i got this passion for it and in the end i thought right i want to go and try and win nothing and so i sort of said to my uh mum that right i'm gonna i'm just gonna jack everything in and i'm gonna go and go to france and and see if i can become a professional cyclist and uh she was most of all horrified actually i can't you know what you're thinking all this kind of stuff and i said to my dad i said listen i'm going to jack it all then i'm going to go anywhere yes i really loved it yeah that's all i needed to hear you know once i heard that then i was like right it's okay i'm going and so i got a single ticket to uh grenoble and got my bike in a cardboard box rucksack 700 quid and got a ticket going to banger station in north wales and off i went i don't think i'd ever really kind of that's across remember went across london on the tube with my bike in a box and looks like that was a real ordeal for me got down to dover crossed on a ferry got to calais and now sitting there and somebody came along said you know you want a coffee or whatever or drinking um you know on the train and it kind of dawned on me then so yes
i've got a clue what's going on here i was trying to find out i wanted to go to a place called argentia that was my destination and um i didn't know there was two and so there's two argentines turns out so i went i was trying to ask this guy and um to to buy a ticket to ajantia and he was he's just been awkward you know he could see i couldn't speak french and obviously he wasn't making much of an effort either and then these two quite young guys came along and they said oh can we help you you know we speak french and and english and yeah thanks so they helped out it turned out they were polish and they were two likes trying to defect from poland because we're still communist and they were trying to get into university in in grenoble and so the very first night i had in france we slept head to toe sleeping bags on this thing and these two poets like they were petrified so these any kind of steps or something coming footsteps they'd jump and bumps up rising like we're gonna get caught anyway so i jumped on the train six o'clock in the morning jumped on the train to where i thought i was going i actually ended up in switzerland yeah i was like whoa by which time the fun had worn off so i got to train the same time back to grenoble again spent my second night on the same platform the same bench and then eventually the next day got to where i wanted to go in uh john's yeah i was a bit of an ordeal but why were you why were you going there anyway what was that what was the aim of when you arrived at that destination what would you say i wanted to be a i wanted to be a professional cyclist you know i wanted to find a way of getting into a professional cycling team and you know i think there's no how do you do that you know i mean back in the day when cycling was very much a niche sport in in britain there wasn't any obvious kind of route so the club structure the amateur club structure um in france was very very strong and and they were like feeder teams sort of professional teams so if you get over there and get
yourself in an amateur team and if you any any good you'd work your way up you know so i thought right that's what i'm gonna do did you have a meeting arranged with an amateur team no no no so you just showed up so i just went yeah and then i um so i looked for the end of a i looked for went to the end of a race waited until everybody arrived and you know finished the race and they're all there's a car didn't have the buses back in those days so the cars were there and they came and so i looked around and chose the nicest kits as you would seem like a good start and uh i went up to them and asked if i could race and they kind of what they were like and um kind of chuckled and they thought it was a bit hard and then he sort of passed me on to the next team and then next team and the next team and eventually i spoke to one like a little group and a guy came over and he said oh look we're um he spoke english and he said we're from centetchien and if you can get yourself over to set you up and we train his whole team together on wednesday he wrote me down the address and said right coming at nine o'clock on a wednesday and come train with us so i started training with them and and that was it i lived there for three years then three years and eventually you know you admit that you realized at some point you weren't going to make it yeah you weren't going to win oh yeah yeah yeah that was a shame but then i look back on it now and i think if i don't know now what no you know people say what would you change you know if i could go back in time i think if i knew what i know now in terms of training and nutrition and everything else i'm you know i'm pretty sure i could have done a much better job but i decided for some bizarre reason i decided i didn't want to particularly didn't want to really reduce my fat intake and just just eat carbohydrate hardly any protein and so i stopped um i stopped eating meat i became you know vegetarian and then i realized now i just nailed
all the time so i never really optimized the chance that i had which kind of makes me think now when i get younger you know young talented or athletes or people want to try it out and you can't just leave them alone you know just talent alone not always going to get you there is it you know and they need you need to be in the right environment same as medication when i was young growing up i'm i'm you know i'm a bright enough guy i think um i just wasn't ready to learn i wasn't in the right environment to learn i could have learned but i didn't learn at the time and i i kind of reflect quite a lot on that really now in terms of creating the right environment but to people to be able to just progress you know what's it take for a human being to progress and you know i think my role is to try and create those environments and support people to do that really and i think i take a lot of learnings from that you know i want to want to get to some of those key learnings that you've had um to to take a step forward in your story you then often go to university which is actually quite surprising you do a sports science degree for a couple of years yeah it was early years of sport science it was kind of developing you know and the idea of sports nutrition was developing the idea of sports psychology was just developing and i started to read around this i thought god i love this stuff i absolutely i couldn't get enough i couldn't get enough so the idea of eventually when i realized i wasn't going to be good enough to you know make the make the top end of professional cycling i thought right well i'll go back now because i will really want to learn and so i went back to university and i was just absolutely wasn't interested in anything to do with like freshers week or going out i just wanted to learn and that was it so i met every every one of the lecturers asked if i could have a meeting and said i want to tell me how
you're going to teach me i want to make sure that i learn as much as possible how are you going to do that and of course i've gone back since and then yeah a bit full-on you're into when i first and um and so i came out of that and i i loved i absolutely loved every minute of being at university i loved it i loved meeting other people i love people that got the same passion it was a topic that i just couldn't get enough of i loved the psychology and the sports psychology and and i came out of all of that and really wanted to go and sort of pursue the sports psychology area but it just felt at the time it was too fluffy it was you know the top pro teams weren't really it's too like all too macho to talk about you know psychology and so he wasn't getting any traction at times i thought god i'm not sure if i could make a career out of this so i ended up like i worked a bit longer in um i went back in and worked um in the cycle industry and then i decided to go into an mba i thought i don't know anything about business i really don't know anything about business so i thought oh i'd like to know about that so i'm back to sheffield business school and did an mba and same there i just wanted to i wanted to learn so i think if you're motivated to learn and want to learn it changes something changes in your mind it's amazing to hear that yeah like absolutely something changed if you can i don't know if you unlock the desire you're not learning because it's uh you're not learning because you have to or you know it's not learning because it's a must-do kind of thing but you learn because you want to and then it the whole process life's learning isn't it life's all about learning really and um and so i think if you can unlock that then then you're on to something and luckily i think um i think i did and then eventually the first contact i had with the british olympic program it was back in 1997 with a guy called peter keane and atlanta britain won one gold medal i think in the entire olympic games which is
ridiculously bad i mean yeah it's so bad it's like i can't even imagine how that happened you know but they did anyway and at that point um john major brought in the national lottery with a view that half of the money half of the property was going to go into culture and the arts and um and the rest was going to go into sports and the real kind of goal of sport was to get the country up the olympic table which was unheard of you know it's like they were all amateur governing bodies it was like a dream scenario and um and cycling was very very fortunate that they had a guy at a time called peter king very very bright guy visionary guy and he wrote a beautiful plan amazing amazing plan then i kind of met him in in and around 1997 and i got my own little consultancy business at the time and we started i started to help out and i got more engaged and i thought god this is this is a combination of everything i've done sort of in my life really you know got the the sporting side the performance planning side you've got the psychology of it all it's new it's like could be a first time ever kind of scenario the ambition is amazing and there's a bit of business wrapped in there as well you know so it's i just saw it and i thought right i'm getting my elbows out and i'm not missing that chance you know it's like i thought right this is my calling and i'm going for it i love i so much of that i wanted to pick up on the the point you made first about learning it resonates so strongly with me again um i was kicked out of school but just exceptionally obsessed with learning as an adult and it goes to speaks to the fact that um the reason my attendance was 30 in school was i was being pushed to walk down an alley i didn't want to walk down yeah exactly exactly you know what i mean yeah absolutely and everyone's unmotivated when you try and get them to do something that they intrinsically don't want to do right and this is i think a lot of the problem with the schooling system but when i as you were talking i was reflecting all these messages i get from kids who like label themselves as unmotivated but in whose eyes right in the eyes of
their parents who want them to be a doctor or in the eyes of society that wants them to do a nine-to-five but i i reject the idea that they are unmotivated you know a million percent i couldn't agree more you know i've worked with a lot of people over the years and um i think you've got to find out what what's there what's an individual's intrinsic motivate what's driving somebody inside what they really want to do and you've got to unleash that in the end you know that's what life's about isn't it really there's nobody there shouldn't be any we shouldn't be pigeonholed and and there shouldn't be lines and lanes and i'm very very very lucky that i try and get to help other people be the best version of themselves basically and you think you know it when you when you no longer compete for yourself and you think right i'm going to be judged on somebody else's performance that's what people judge me and they go like well did somebody else win a race not me i can't you know i'm never going to win a race but that it's like did somebody else win a race and then you realize well if i'm going to be judged on on somebody else's performance i better get pretty good at understanding how to optimize and help somebody be the best they could possibly be and then you think well what what does that look like how do you that what where's this where's why is that you know and that's where you think well let's take the human being as a as a as a thing you think how do you help a human being be the best they could possibly be are there certain things that if you can generally get those things right it helps an individual in the main be the best version of themselves but the first thing you got to ask is like is that person what is that person's internal intrinsic drive because if it's not aligned if not really committed and really driven and excited to what you'd like them to be doesn't matter how much you'd like them to be if they're not they're not and there's nothing you can do about
that you know but if there's a little bit of a flicker of of of the light burning there you can turn that up i think you can turn it down you can very easily turn it off by mistake or deliberately if he isn't that way minded but i think you do the very essence of people achieving things is is they've got to be driven or they've got there's got to be a reward i mean avoiding you know avoidance is a very very strong motivator as well i think and you know maybe i had to argue that maybe in my life i was avoiding failure or you know that rather than being dragged towards the positive emotion of winning you know the positive emotion of winning for me isn't that great unfortunately i wish it was but avoiding failure is massive driver for me so um and so you know either way you figure out what somebody's drive is and then you help them then you think about what you need to do to create the environment around somebody to optimize what they're doing and then and then you've really got to put yourself into somebody else's shoes and forget yourself forget your preconcept really genuinely say right i'm going to stand in this person's person's shoes i'm going to try and see what life looks like for them and feel what life life looks like for them and really understand regardless of what any preconceptions i might have what what does that feel and look like and what do they need what would the best thing i could do what do they need to help or support the more you go through that the more you kind of recognize as we're all different but there are some common denominators deep down inside i think and and if you take the time to listen to people they might not want to tell you first and foremost but if you dig away at it you know eventually people will tell you what works for them what they like what they don't like and if you listen carefully you know people you get give them a bit of ownership and they'll tell you you know and and and that is probably one of the most powerful
drivers i think that that exists really you know you can put a gun in somebody's head ask them to jump up and down they'll jump up and down and you it and you cut the trigger and say jump higher they'll jump higher or they'll try to anyway and then you pull it away and you walk away and they're not gonna that that is not a pleasant experience it's used a lot and it's useless in sport actually and so less so now but certainly has been in the past and um but your performance is going to be inconsistent i think through that and it's certainly not going to be a very pleasurable experience and and i think by going down the route of trying to find people's carrots as it were i mean you'll have known i'm sure you've i think you've you've interviewed steve haven't you still yeah he's been an amazing guy and um and his work i think is just phenomenal and and something i buy into but i do believe that it's carrot not the stick on that point of um finding out what their true motivation is what they truly want and checking that it's aligned with yours as a coach or as a team if you ask somebody they'll typically give you the what they think you want to hear answer so if i was sat in front of you and you asked me and i was new to your team i'd say i want to be a world champion because i think that's what you want to hear how do you see past that i'm asking this because a lot of people have people in their lives whether it's a friend or a sibling or a son or a daughter who they're trying to motivate to be something and often failing because they want it more than that person wants it for themselves how do you see past that um is there a technique is it just intuitive well i think you've got to you know as soon as i sit down in some in front of somebody and they think okay this guy's got some kind of influence over what happens to me then it's biased immediately yeah and of course if you don't recognize that if i just take face value what people are telling me now then that's um it's naive i think really and i think
you've got to go beyond that like you're saying i think most people will have a network and you know and and you can identify if you watch the spheres of influence or the kind of who's influencing who and the who who has good relationships with who you know if i ask you now what your drivers are in this scenario in the scenario we're currently in you'll kind of think about what you're going to say really yeah yeah whereas i think if you took if i took give me a give me a couple of weeks i think i could piece together slowly but surely by chatting to you chatting to other people asking the right questions giving you some time you know different different kind of environments and some form or some informal slowly but surely you you could piece together a relatively good picture of where you think somebody's at is it a person who's driven by you know i like order and discipline and process or is it somebody who wants harmony is it somebody who wants to be life and soul of the party and out there and express themselves or is it equally somebody who you know wants to please others and if it is pleasing others and who is is the parents quite often i see that really and then you know you just piece it all together and once you have that then you're armed with information you're armed with something which is you should really then respond and and and think carefully about you know what is this person all about you know can you draw a map of somebody can you really map out some of these drivers who they are what do you think their their influences are what do they really want what's their you know what's pulling them and what's pushing them and i think when you get into that kind of realm of high performers and people who are really pushing themselves to extreme levels there's something pulling or pushing them pretty hard normally and trying to just understand that and dig a little bit around that at least like i say it gives you the you know i think it's an obligation for somebody in in our kind of roles as it were to make that effort to make sure you do
take the time to fully understand somebody have you encountered instances in your career where someone's got so much talent but they're just lacking in drive and no matter what you've done 100 yeah and what do you do in those situations well in our world you wouldn't work with them you know i wouldn't work with them i'd support them and be very very you know not not unpleasant or unkind or everything else but it's not going to work that's the you know you have to have you have to have that commitment and that drive and you know that's got to be there if that's not there then don't go past square one really you know and um when you're young you know you can perform and get to a very high standard on your talent but then when you get to the top of the top as it were and there's maybe five or six people who have this a similar level of talent and and some can get the best out of themselves and get that little bit you know it's like this you can get at a normal kind of high level of performance and then every now and again you get this like discretionary level of performance that little bit on top thinking wow that was absolutely me or you at your best and and and we're not in the business of that you know the high level performance we're in the business of trying to get that discretionary performance as as often as possible when it really matters and that's what you know that's what we really got to think about and it's unlikely that you'll get there on talent alone and even in the most sort of out there sort of talents who can be flamboyant or do the unexpected et cetera they've nearly all it it's they're all committed and very very very bought into and driven by what they're doing quick one i can't talk about huel enough in my life especially right now going into the end of the year i've got incredibly exceptionally busy and it's really interesting because what we tend to see at this time of year is the first thing that goes is our diet
quickly followed by our fitness and we see that in the data across multiple surveys however a really useful crutch during this period where the seasons have changed and we're starting to behave a little bit differently is making sure your fridge is stocked with things that are nutritionally complete healthy and that are going to be convenient for you to consume without compromising your health and that is where ladies and gentlemen huel comes in and they now have four brand new flavors they have the salted caramel flavor absolutely love they have the cinnamon swirl flavor the number one new flavor in my opinion which is really surprising iced coffee caramel and they have the strawberries and cream flavor if you're going to try any of the new flavors please do try the cinnamon swirl and let me know what you think it's an absolutely unexpected champion of the new flavors that word commitment is um the first letter in your acronym core which is part it's a philosophy you're known for what is this core philosophy what is the acronym acronym and uh what does it stand for to be fair to you know i just mentioned steve peters i think um you know one of the great things i think that i've been very very fortunate to to have happened in my life was that we i met steve back in i think it was 2002 something like you know around that i was always into you know i liked psychology obviously i studied psychology but i couldn't quite it wasn't quite input output enough it wasn't i don't know it didn't feel quite solid enough at times and then we had an athlete who had you know had a bit of an issue and somebody within our medical team had been a student of steve's at the uh school of medicine in uh in sheffield and they said well we could ask this guy to come across and he did and and he did this amazing piece of work with with his athletes i thought wow i really got to meet this guy and so i sat down uh with steve and his um psychiatrist not a psychologist obviously a forensic psychiatrist and he sat down and he said right well here's my mental kind of map as it were and this is how your brain works and this is the different parts of
your brain think differently and you know you you know you do realize that this different um your blood goes to different areas and and then so you'll be driven by emotion or logic or by past experiences etc and i was like okay this is really interesting and that what i liked about tim he was like if you do this then that's and you should do this not that and he's quite prescriptive um in a very neutral way but quite strong and i really like that really really like that so i thought wow this guy would be absolutely dynamite in sport and so steve was still working in um in the uh nhs and he was actually working at rampton at the time as well with you know the mass murders and the psychopaths and all that and so i tried to persuade and says come on you've got to come and work in sports and and eventually you know he did to be fair he came and worked full-time and it was just an amazing period really because we sat down and said right forget cycling for a minute let's think about the human brain the human being and how do we create the best possible environment for people to perform and um and that's where the core principle came from with steve in the first instance so he was like you know they see his commitment so let's let's screen these people for commitment and he'd do a commitment screen and then he'd ask people about their homework how they did their homework and what that what you know when people had to do something deliver on something he'd ask he'd interrogate them a little bit about that and then the o of the call was for ownership and uh the idea that we we were human will perform better and respond better with a little bit of ownership over what they're doing so you know sport was very much a dictate and control kind of coaching model really and management model and he was very much of the you know very very strong that as a human we like to have a little bit of control of what's happening to us we
like to negotiate or have a little say this works that works and and that's a very powerful kind of construct to work with um the r was for responsibility and accountability and of course we've all work in professional jobs in the end and we've all got accountability and responsibility in life and um and so people need to be held accountable and responsible and then the eu is for excellence but it's personal excellence and as he used to joke about he should have been personal excellence but it sounded a bit like corpse so we stuck with core and um and so we got all the coaches in and said i i i bought this 100 really really thought right we're going to do this and then we'll sort of use cycling as the kind of you know not well it was it was the opportunity to to do something different you know and i was absolutely sure really really sure it was the right thing to be doing of course he was there to sort of coach and help and support and um so we've got the coaches in he said right guys we're going to change the way we're we're working here um we're going to put the the time actually we termed it going to take the crown um off the heads of the coaches and put them onto the heads of the riders and they're going to be the come the kings and queens of their own world their own destiny and we're going to support them in that and it was just a slight change of emphasis which you know a lot of the coaches threw their hands in the air well you would that would be out of control they weren't training and you know it was kind of an emotional response really and of course you know chris hoy and vicki pendleton and all these other you know all of the athletes who were with us at the time they wanted to perform for themselves yeah they weren't performing for a coach they weren't you know they might have a brilliant relationship with a coach because they they were they were after their own performance or a team performance it wasn't it wasn't done for
the coach and it was a it was a real i mean it sounds a bit obvious now i guess but at the time it felt like a quite a big deal to be to be really empowering a group of athletes and um yeah enough we went with that really and um it was an exciting time one of the things that i've taken from that many things but one of the things that i've taken from that which is again feels really consistent throughout lots of things i've read about you is this idea of going back to first principles to make to create better solutions and i'll tell you the three touch points where i've kind of i've i've seen that in your philosophy the first is you basically went down to the first principles of the human brain there and said how does the human brain work and let's treat the human brain in a better way outside of the conventional way of treating the human brain to get a better outcome that's like again with first principles it's a lot of work no one wants to do it conventions but much easier the second thing is just generally your attitude to breaking down what you were trying to achieve as a team into small sections that's where i see the first principles thing and the third thing was i read that you hired younger coaches into your team that weren't tainted with convention and again they're much easier to train in in new ways is that yes i think in the making that's i think i do like to break things down into you know as small as component bars or first principles anyway it's not copy and paste yeah you know i read a lot and and i'm constantly kind of reading and listening to podcasts and i'm constantly taking information in but and i'll use some of the information but i won't just copy and paste it i won't just apply it it's contextual i'd like to understand what's going on behind it like to understand the theory and the thinking it drives people mad actually because i can talk about methods and whatnot and models all day long you know but fundamentally it's how it's how i like to work and um i think it's like the the true tickets
down to its kind of deepest sort of simplest level of understanding and then construct it relative to the context or the situation how it could best apply to what you're doing and take the time you know take the time and effort and the energy and the you know i'd like to think about it and i'll draw it i'll draw non-stop so i don't write so much i draw and then i cover my office wall in like sticky plastic stuff on the wall and draw over the walls looks like a mud man's in there i must admit but it's how it's what i like to do and it's how i work so it drives a couple of people a little bit crazy but um i think they used to buy now but but i do like to do that and then and then if you get a real understanding for something then you can you can see whether you really agree with the with the fundamental principles and either go with what go with that or question it and develop your own ideas and like development if you're going to develop your own ideas do it sort of um with originally as it were rather than necessarily just kind of um taking something as well and just applying it you know i'm not don't be a bit uncomfortable with i think one of the things that definitely felt very original when i was reading about um your philosophy is this idea of forgetting about the results because thinking about the results or the outcome of your performance can reduce the chances of success in that performance that's very unusual because in in teams in competition in business we think about the result we think about closing the deal or you know what and what that will mean and we kind of imagine ourselves in that moment of getting the medal around our neck or that business deal one why is that not a good idea well if if an event happens or something happens the first thing that's going to happen to you without you even knowing is you're going to have an unconscious emotional reaction to it and it's emotion it's not you're not thinking it through it's just purely emotion and that that that's going to be you know either it's sort of a fight flight freeze response really and um but that that emotional
response will happen quicker than you know it before you can go in and get any logic or get any rationale enter into it and of course in um in any kind of situation like uh you know what could be perceived as a threat state where you're putting yourself in in some kind of threatening scenario a bit of damage my pride or you know what people what happens to people they start thinking well what happens if i win ones have to lose ones i've looked ridiculous i don't look ridiculous i'm under threats and that then becomes you know very easy to get emotionally hijacked by that so then you're purely ringing on an emotion which is inconsistent it's illogical you know it's not a it's not a good way for you to be basing it's not a good place for you to be basing your behavior but if you understand that and you think okay well look i understand that it's normal that i'm going to put myself in a threatening scenario so if i worry about let my emotion take over and i worry about what happens if i succeed what happens if i fail what happens if this what happens if that's then it's actually a pointless exercise and if you can train slowly recognize and train your mind to go okay i know what's happening here this is just emotion i'm going to put it to one side now then let me separate this whatever i'm doing out into two things we can have a a dream i want to win the tour de france it's a dream my ability to win it or our ability or anybody else is to win it is i'm going to do my absolute best to try and win it but other people are going to try and stop me and other people are going to try to do something it's stuff beyond our control that could impact on that so if you set your goal as i'm going to win you're going to agitate non-stop because it actually is out of your control whereas if you set your dream and saying this is what i'd really really like to happen i'll go all in i'll do everything i can i'm fully committed to that but let me break it down into targets which is well it'd be i i could get to the ideal weight i could do the proper training i could do the you know follow a nutritional plan that's going to give me the optimal energy and
you know i can train my tactics i can be really work hard to get a fantastic team around me build good rapport build confidence in my teammates these are all things that you can do and so if you say okay let's leave the dream over there for a while but i'm going to go after the things i can do and you base your plan around the things that you can actually control and do you'll be on fire you'll be on fire you'll be absolutely on fire and the dream might happen and it might not then you'll be absolutely oh you know delighted and the best thing ever if it happens and if it doesn't then you might be absolutely devastated but you've got to leave as a dream then you've got to understand that actually worrying about the consequence of an event it's detrimental to the process and the performance and the the chances of you achieving that event so you park that go after your targets and go right i'm going process my outcome and we talked a lot about process and outcome and when you catch yourselves you know it's emotion in the end so of course we do get hijacked and of course we do get fearful or you know a bit panicked and you gotta you gotta have a system whereby you can talk with yourself a little bit you can bring yourself back around and focus on the now and the process of now rather than worrying about the future and then you can come back and concentrate on the process get back into the now and you know some of the athletes would would have a routine where they'd tie the undo and tie the shoelaces again or they do they'd have a little you know a little process that they'd tap into and they'd go into that in internet and bring their mind back into the present and stop worrying about the future and of course the penalty kick's the best example yeah that's what i was thinking about now this did their yeah i'm sure they they bag 100 in training yeah exactly in the euros final exactly you know and if you take the crowd out and take a penalty those guys are so accurate and the you know signal from the brain down into the muscle to contract in a certain way that happens and the accuracy and the
repeatability of that is is absolutely massive put a crowd in there and what changes nothing changes physically it's all between your ears and so how can you train that you know and mental skills can be trained just as much as you you know we all know that but we want to get fit and strong and you go to the gym and you know that you're going to overload your body you're going to give it time to adapt and it's adaptation it's going to make a little bit stronger and it's the same with a mind you know you can train your mind and and i think that's what certainly working with steve was was an eye opener as well as i think probably the biggest item for most people is it gives you a once you realize you've got like an emotional brain and a logical brain and you know a bit of a memory computer side going on then then it gives you insight into yourself and why you are behaving and feeling like you are and some of the assumptions you're making about other people then you got to start with yourself first if you can get a little bit of insight why do i feel how i'm feeling why do i respond like i do what triggers me what's my best self look like and what's my sort of you know not the best self i've got why why am i different why sometimes am i behaving in this kind of you know the second or the shadow version of myself and what are some of someone's in my best self what's happening there why can't it just be my best self all the time surely that must be doable so take a bit of time to understand it and pick it and some people just maybe haven't been educated i certainly wasn't until really i still sort of stopped and started to look at this stuff and then you realize think wow a lot of my behavior a lot of my life was driven by emotion it wasn't driven by the real me who could be calm and logical and think things through and quite you know a lot of passion and feelings and caring and and yet at times i could be something else you know and i think understanding that's fundamental i think i don't think there's any excuse for that no okay um both points sounded very similar in fact
because on one hand you're saying with your goals only go after things you can control like really focus on those things and in the same way when we're talking about personal responsibility of self you're saying you can't control other people so yeah but the thing that you know maybe you do have control over in your life is your behavior how you act how you conduct yourself and then kind of leave the rest uh well i think you understand how the people are responding and how they're feeling so you can accept that if somebody's um you know somebody's in a very there's two things really i think first and foremost ambition is a big thing not to forget you know what's your level um you can be incredibly ambitious why can't we be the best in the world or something why can't be the first to do something what's stopping us doing something that nobody ever in the human race has ever done before nothing as far as i can see you know so i think there's a it's um you know you've got to have that ambition enthusiasm the belief we can do whatever we want to do you know and really stretch that and then i think the next bit really the targets it's more like the the how to get there yeah it's more like the boring stuff to get there you know so it's like head and heart really um and i think that if you understand yourself then you should be able to put yourself in somebody else's shoes and if they're having a tough time or if somebody else is angry or there's something else going on with them you know rather than just dive in and and respond to the behavior you see in a face value why not stop and think about a little bit and is this person in trouble what's causing this where are they coming from what's going on you know trying to understand it and if they're just responding emotionally to something and you allow yourself to immediately respond emotionally back it doesn't really get anywhere you know so so you better hold back and wait and find out and and try anyway not always easy but not always easy no no i struggle with that
yeah i struggle with that especially being in a environment where my my time is so feels so precious right it's always there's so many things i could be doing and i'm you're exactly you're exactly the same i know i've you know i know people that work with you i know you're a very very busy person so it's it's tough in the moment to stop and pause and to have patience when the rest of my life is run on like efficiency yeah yeah you know what i mean it's difficult yeah i guess in in my world you know i'm out to try and help people and i do push people and we've got high standards and you know you do want a level i don't like laziness for example i just can't that that that would really work that gets me you know but then i have to manage it and think okay well if they that's what they want and there's no problem this just this isn't the environment for them you know but in the main i think understanding challenges and and setting standards and boundaries and working to all of that is important um you built teams and developed teams that won over and over and over again in the same way that sir alex ferguson did our manchester united fan so i was lucky enough to be you know not going so well lately but in that era to watch our team win over and over again yeah yeah yeah and the thing that really um i find because i just thought that was normal growing up that my team wins all the time yeah the thing i find amazing now when i look back on it is how he managed to reinvent those teams but also to get the same team to win again and i this this idea of like where is your motivation after victory and how do you get a team that's just one and then they win again and i went again to win again yeah where do they find the motivation they've stolen the podium they've had the moment where does that come from yeah it's a great question that one and i think um and i think credit to sir alex and the work that he did i mean um you know i think now when looking back there there are those long-serving successful managers who like you say whilst it's happening it's an error or nobody really kind of thinks too much
it's just the norm but then when you realize it's not actually the norm at all you know it's it's something very very special going on and i think the i think success is interesting in in terms of what it does to people and you know i think in sport we're kind of more geared to failure really you lose more than you win normally and you know we kind of recalibrate the goals dust yourself down and redo your plan and off you go again but when you succeed all of a sudden not many people have a plan for success you know what i mean so you succeed nobody's gotta nobody wants to tempt i guess but not many people have a plan for success and it does it does impact on people massively in terms of the expectation of themselves on their in terms of their hunger going forward you know it does it does impact people in different ways and of course you get more you probably get financially better off you you your position society changes you know who you are legacy whatever whatever whatever and of course all that all that can change and impact on your drive and your hunger and i think fundamentally that's the bit that's incredible about the people who stay at the top for a long time it's not really the reward and you know what they what they're getting sort of financially you know you those are the kind of sort of trappings of success i don't think that's what driving them you know there's something else deeper down driving those people forward and they'll just keep going and going and going and i thought what um alex ferguson did ever so well was he there's always a challenge with teams when you've got a generation who grow together and they come together and you'll have a two three four years of amazing success with a group who've bonded and they're on a journey together and of course then you start to get towards the end of that and at what point you bring young talent in and let some of the more established talent go you know and there's a transition
and he did that ever so well he really did that ever so well and we met and chatted a couple of times about that just when when i was younger up in the velodrome in manchester he'd pop over to the velodrome and we'd sit there and chat and that was always one of the big things i wanted to ask him you know i was like okay what what are you watching what are you seeing uh why are you doing this what you know what have you seen there that makes you think that's the right time to change and you're bringing this youngster in here you know and he'd say you know he he quite often say that um you know people get a bigger voice they get a bigger standing in the dressing room they might start to second you know i'm not so sure about that cafe you know and they'd have an influence and you know there'd be the celebrity the media and other things going on et cetera et cetera and definitely sooner rather than later that would be right okay off we go we'd and he changed it listening to him talk about it he knew exactly what he's doing to be fair to him and he was a master at it you've got to have had moments like that in your career where you see that culture at threat or at risk because of an individual i've had them in my business too and in those moments very early in my career i would try and i guess look past when i was a bit more naive in business look past it or put things in place to try and mitigate the impact that one individual the negative impact that one individual was having on the overall culture and as i got older i realized that i just needed to address the situation asap before it becomes like a virus and spreads right yeah yeah what do you do in that situation where you see an individual in your company it's a tough one it really is i mean it's an easy one to talk about it's a very difficult one to do um particularly when you know that might be your best player your best rider your best performer
and all of a sudden you've got the hitting the numbers and and the behavior is not great and then you've got to ask yourself well we have to just win in and it doesn't really matter just win um and you kind of manage the impact of that across everybody or does behavior and conduct and culture matter and you want to make sure that you actually got some cultural values that you're going to stand by come come what may you know and of course those real moments when they do arrive and you've got to address it they're very very stressful i i kind of get very introspective and look myself in the mirror and think it through and think it through and everybody works for me and say it takes me time to make a decision and i think because i think of every permutation and i think it through so much emotionally i fully i don't think i can't actually i'm just so engaged with those things that i've really really got to think carefully about them and about to make a couple of pretty big decisions along along those lines and in the end i thought what do i believe in is a popular decision is it a performance decision in my world you know there's like we we're trying to win here or do we want to keep people happy or where where do we go and you need some kind of you need to establish your own right what do i believe in and without really figuring out what you believe in you're always going to be caught in a storm otherwise and it's always going to be mentally excruciating i think because you're never quite sure so i i like like to anchor myself and write what are my values what i believe in and how does that apply to this situation and then okay well that's it and if it goes wrong i always want to be able to look back and say okay well i made decisions based on my principles i didn't make decisions based on that particular moment doesn't matter how difficult it was and i'll stick to that now but i've had one quite recently
actually or two actually in the last two to three months which would pretty challenging decisions like that and on both occasions i've gone right back and i tend to i thought it was a good thing probably not a good thing for the people around me but i got a few you know people i really value their opinion you know and they're sort of like you know i'll chat away to them and i'll ask them questions and and i think sometimes i think okay you know i'm going to make that decision or he's asking me to make this decision what i'm trying to do is just kind of run through my thought processes and sound it out sounded out and sounded outstanding until i get really pretty anchored onto no i know what i really feel now and then i'll make the decision immediately i won't hesitate then but to get to that point takes me a bit of time i need to talk about it to somebody i need to i need to express it vocally i think to really make sure i understand what i'm thinking because if i can't explain it to somebody i'm maybe not quite there so just thinking about in my own head or even writing it down for myself on big stuff i like to try and be able to explain it to somebody to then understand fully that i really if i can explain it to somebody i think i pretty much got it whereas if i just in my head explain it to myself what the hell i'm talking about you know so yeah it's quite um it's a quite an agonizing process but you just need principles in the end you need the decision making framework framework yeah basically you do yeah so because everyone can relate to that even if they've not been in your position i mean we all have we'll face really tough moments but we kind of arrive at that that pass and we have to decide if we're going left or right and the worst possible thing is making often making no decision right making no decision or or making a decision that you thought was the right decision because you thought it was the right thing to do but it wasn't actually what you thought and i think we're always fearful of the consequences of our decision so i think
quite often and i say to our guys sometimes okay imagine let's let's imagine we've got a problem and take away you know we're going to have a group discussion about something and imagine that all of our riders didn't have emotions they were just robots and what would you do and they got simple well you just do this this and this okay so now put the emotions back in then that's that's what's that doing to you why is that changing your thinking and then of course you don't you know got people's feelings and you might have conflict you might somebody might not be happy and you know that that then impacts because we're trying to second-guess the emotional response of a group or he's trying to second-guess how somebody might feel or whether they're gonna come at you or it creates conflict or you know and and so i think it's every now and again i go right okay let's just up the robots like what would we do what was the best thing to do and they go simple we'll just do this and so that's that's one thing i think if you think that right the consequence of whatever decided about nothing bad happens nothing bad happens absolutely there is so you can make any decision you want and nothing happens nothing bad happens what would you do and people's mind freed up immediately they'll make a good decision probably but it's fear or is there it's the it's the consequence of this might happen or that might happen or it might go wrong or this or that or the other they might not be happy or they might not be you know and it impacts your decision-making really so you get all these biases these emotional biases all the time and don't get me wrong sometimes a gut gut feel is a good thing you know so but on the other hand i think if you strip out the consequence of like nothing bad would happen and also people's other people's emotions what would you do most people get pretty quickly to yeah where they'd want to be you know i just bit then in my head about some of the big decisions i have in my life i thought there was no if i was dealing
with robots and i could just shuffle things without consequence yeah what would i do exactly and that the answer you're seeing there is probably the right thing for the objective exactly but maybe well you could also say well there are emotion um there's emotional consequences which might hinder the objective so if i really annoy this person or if i upset the balance here then the objectives compromise so yeah exactly and yeah it just helps a little bit in the end you know it's like it's like taking out if you've got bad tooth you've got to take it out i might as well take it out quick exactly it's going to hurt just as much in a couple of months time you know so might as well take it out now yeah quick one as many of you know i've been trying to make my life a little bit more sustainable as it relates to energy ever since i sold my range over sport and bought an electric bicycle and my energy as a sponsor of this podcast one of the brands that make that transition much much easier they are at the forefront of british renewable ecosmart technology and their products are really really changing the game if you're on youtube you can see what i'm holding in my hand this is called the eddie right it's the uk's number one solar powered diverter so what is a solar diverter it's a device for people like you and me that means you can divert your excess energy back into your home rather than back into the grid which will save you power and money it's super user friendly and easy to install and you can control it using the my energy app on your phone to find out more about this product and more products like here that will help you make that sustainable transition head over to myenergy.com and um i highly recommend you check out the eddie it's um it's a real game changer for a product and one that i'm going to be installing in my home soon marginal gains i do you know what i have to say this podcast is doing very well uh i think it's maybe number one in europe now but i have to give you a lot of credit for that because i think my team are sick and tired i can see them laughing over there they're sick and tired of me saying this phrase we've got to find the one percent
and for us in what we do with this podcast i mean it's it's in my businesses as well but in this podcast it means like really giving a f about everything from the audio to these eight cameras that are on us nobody else does it like we do it with eight cameras and the robots and this and the thumbnail the title the way you were picked up today yeah how you leave to really make even when you walk in there we were a little bit slow on it today but the music to create the right atmosphere yeah the lighting we've installed these blinds here because we're trying to we want you looking at me because it's about all of these small things and i never heard that directly from you but i heard it indirectly by you as in my friends would tell me about this thing called marginal gains from this guy called david brailsford and i like adopted it as a personal philosophy maybe i adopted it as a personal philosophy or it made my existing philosophy make sense yeah okay yeah yeah probably either one you know sometimes so thank you for that but i guess my question because that has genuinely really helped me communicate um why small things are so important but as it relates to marginal gains how marginal huh good question and how marginal was smiles marginal three the smiles marginal yeah okay oh they're good i like people your best marginal gain ever smile at people more often cheapest and easier exactly and people like it people smile back i wonder what the trajectory how that impacts your trajectory through life if you just smiled more a lot yeah other thoughts so you know you'd be more approachable people think he's a friendly person you know just in the main you know smile at people smile each other say hello and walk past you know don't you're not so that you can't be all so consumed in your head that you're walking around with your head down and ignoring people you know which which was very easy to do you know somebody says hello that's a marginal gain right there people don't value the small stuff they
focus too much on the big stuff right well i think you've got to get the basics right you know i think i think the marginal gains concept came about originally is when we started out with the olympic program and the olympic kind of medals were so far away you know it seemed like such a mountain and they were so so in the distance and untouchable they think like wow how on earth what are we going to do to get from where we are now to get up there and as we kind of as we started working through you know what what are we how we're going to approach this it occurred to me that there was a couple of things really one was there's obviously the the fundamentals the basics of any kind of performance really when if you get the fundamentals right for a consistent period of time it's going to get you a long way there it really is so that that's there's no you know that that's important but the um the whole idea of marginal gains really starts to start to think right okay so we're we're pretty long way off up there but so what can we do what can we believe in how do we get some momentum how do we get some contagious enthusiasm of course people like a little bit of progression you know and if we just aim for perfection perfection is so far away that there's no point because we're gonna fail every day so i thought well let's have a little progression just a little little bit of progression and i made you feel good you know so it's like let's identify where we go and we're doing the basics right then what could we do by next week that we're not doing this week what little things could we do there's a million things that could impact a cycling performance could we could we i don't know change our diet to be slightly more optimal than it is this week and do that by next week and everybody goes yep we could do that okay what else could we do could we do more in the in the gym could we do could you change your attitude slightly could be really kind of think about just even engage with thinking about your attitude
once a day could you do that yeah we could do that okay so off we go and then you get to next week and did we do all that stuff yeah we did actually and we haven't moved a long way but i'll tell you what i felt pretty good what are you doing i did this what are you doing i did this and all of a sudden you kind of started getting this idea of you you make you you're on the move and the one of the things about marginal gains is you're on the move and we like progression we like to feel well quite good about myself today i did x probably means nothing to anybody else and probably probably you know very you know unique to me but it meant something to me you know and i feel quite good about that and so i can i can do that again tomorrow and small small steps stick well if you're trying to do something big you can go with something big for a little while we'll all go to the gym in january now in a couple of months a couple of weeks time we'll go full gas in the gym and then course by february or mid february we've all stopped again not you know generalization but you know what i mean and um and why is that you know whereas we're trying to make too big a change that's not sustainable and and it's it's it's quite rare that you can make major change and make it sustainable but it's quite easy to make small incremental change and make them stick and it's the stickability over time i think which makes the the big difference and it's as much psychological as is anything else and if there's a group who buy into right let's look at the little things you know let's look at the difference let's look at the you know your setup in here like the music and everything once you start doing that everybody's on the you know getting quite excited yeah that's what makes us different and then somebody's going to go well we could have that picture instead of that picture we could do this instead of that and it feels good and by virtue of the fact that you're all going you're on in you're enjoying it and there's a bit of energy about it then other ideas will come to the surface you'd be more open to to adopting them and people talk about it you know we're on the move
we're changing we're doing all these little things because we can be asked to do the little things that other people can't be asked to do and that makes a difference that makes you a winner in my opinion i might say that quite often in our team you know we'll be working late and i said all right guys let's just all get together for a minute the reason we've been good the reason we're good is we can be asked to do all these little things all these other teams are now locked up they've gone to bed they're in the hotel they can't be bothered to do this we can and it matters to us that's what we're all about now let's keep going and it and it works you know it works 100 percent it works been at 20 years and it's as much about that kind of enthusiasm and a positivity about embracing that change isn't a chore improving isn't a chore if it's a chore it's a bit like saying about education you know if if what you're trying to achieve is a chore then that's a that's a challenge how do you how do you make something how do you change somebody or reframe something into a little bit that's not a chore or something that actually has been over there anything i'm gonna reframe that into a positive and then you'll stick with it you know feel good about yourself in the end if we feel good about ourselves we're gonna be happier we're gonna be more engaged and be more willing to make more change if we feel good about ourselves and and that was where sort of marginal gains come from and i was lying on the floor i said when i really have to think i did this crazy thing where i used to do my homework lying on the floor as a kid and now when i really really want to think you sort of really think about something get big sheets of paper tend to lie on the floor and and write on that and um marginal gains came from um economics really with michael costling that's what sort of i was reading all about that and about little kind of inc you know incremental gains and i thought actually hmm if you aggregate all of these marginal gains maybe get a big gain yeah
but conceptually it sounded like yeah this is worth a go and off we went i always reference a compounding interest as well it's like exactly the same thing right exactly exactly you can get one percent yeah a year look what i say for example i often like whip out the compounding interest calculator on google and i'm like just change it by one percent and see what it looks like 20 years yeah and the graph is just in a completely different place yeah and that's another really good way to get people to believe in this invisible force that you know is compounding for or against you yeah these one percent yeah because you know getting 10 interest on a million for 30 years versus getting 11 exactly ridiculously different um at the end of that compounding cycle you sound like i mean you've described yourself as being obsessed you sound like you're pretty obsessed with what you do yeah i suppose i am yeah what's the cost of that obsession well i think you know i've pretty much kind of put everything i've got into what i do really and that means currently i'll spend 220 days a year you know at races and you know a long time on the road and um and that does come at a cost i guess you know and uh um it's hard to get out of it i think i don't know if it's obsessive or not i suppose you know i've obviously got uh millie my daughter who um i love absolutely adorable love to bits and um you know we we've spent i guess since she was born i've always been you know in involved in in sport and um at some point soon i'd like to think right i'm going to stop and really spend time more time together that would be nice and that and and yet i think if i was thinking why am i doing all of this i think a lot would be you know i'd like her to be happy i'd like her to have whatever whatever she can have really
and uh yeah it's a tough battle that's balancing out that one that doesn't come easy to me i can i can tell i was just trying to visualize you sat on a beach with your cigar with no work no sports yeah i think i would i think i'd i i would like to just i think have a period where i just maybe just switch off you know i've had a holiday for a long time and i've had a few health issues obviously at a you know issue with my heart this year and i have a cancer and that kind of forced me to stop a little bit but then i got back to his accord and and carried on so i think i'd like yeah i would like to just at some point learn to maybe take time out [Music] and enjoy the color of life a little bit more and the various things in life but um yeah you mentioned that um getting getting news that i mean we all hope to never get up about ourselves or our loved ones which is that you had cancer now that's something you can't control no that was a shock i must say that was a that was a real shock i wasn't expecting at all you know i ride my bike you know i train hard and um i ride my bike a lot look after myself and i was very fit um and um and then i started to get these bouts of fatigue more than anything and it was a really weird kind of you know we you race every day you're moving every day and i think people see the sport on telly they don't see the rigor of all the travel and all the movement and the early mornings of late nights and you know you're on race for a month a three week race you go there a week early and you're nailed you know halfway through and of course then you've got to really dig into your tired a lot of time but then start getting these bouts of fatigue which just like somebody pulled literally taking my battery out and i'd well i could feel it coming on
and then that's i just couldn't function and then i went for a check and [Music] i did a blood test and then you know my psa had gone up and and so i said i better go for another check and said god you know i'll be all right and then didn't bother and then eventually i did and then they said yeah it's around and said right better come and see me straight away and and that was it i thought it was quite a big deal at a time but then i moved on i don't dwell on it i don't think about it much i i like the sort of tough times don't last last tough people do you know and i just thought right that's it done i'm not going to dwell on this i'm going to move on and that's what i did really as quick as i could but those moments give you a different type of perspective on what matters right well you have like kind of an existential moment of yeah you think about oh my god my the tectonic plate of my health is something that can yeah very much so yeah i don't you wouldn't even consider the thought of it no no 100 percent and absolutely you're spot on with that you know it you realize right okay we're not here forever a hundred percent you know which is true for everybody isn't it you know and they kind of when you're younger it's one of those things you hear older people say and whatever but but then you have the dawning of the realization right i'm not here forever so then you think okay what's important what what you know is it like to come back you know what time i've got left and all that kind of stuff and then he starts to think about that and so then you start to think even more you know a lot of people talk to you about you know living in the moment of course you've got a plan for the future you can't just ignore the future because we're all we're all preparing the future you know it's trying to get fitter or whatever whatever and that's of course today
thinking about doing something today for your current self but for your future self you're thinking of your future self when we diet or train or you know it's not going to happen now so you your mind is on your future self and to what extent you're worried about your future self and the consequences of things happening rather than enjoying the here and now and i think that really does bring it home in terms of to what extent am i enjoying the present and living in the present and what then i'm just going to keep on going and and sort of sacrificing for my future self when my future is never going to arrive you know and that's a bit of an odd question to say competent play for a while it's a reality check to spend any time in hospital isn't it you know but equally there's some amazing people working in there and it's just yeah i was blown away by that actually did steve peters speak to you through this period at all oh yeah i speak to you i think i mean i love steve i must say he's um i think he had fran miller on on as well and she'll say the same i'm sure and and a lot of people who we worked with with steve would say you know he's been he's a game changer for us and uh whenever i'm worried i'm not sure about something i'm kind of know what he's going to sell me but i still like to hear anyway you know so um so i chatted to him then and um about how to you know what what to deal with i was it upset um i didn't like it that it was set it's upset millie i think and i didn't like that you know i didn't like the idea that she was worried and and and so that was quite um i want i wanted to make sure that i dealt with that properly but but then equally lies for a living you know and you think okay well here i am i'm still here and i'm going to make the most of this you know and i'm going to enjoy a little bit more and stop you know worrying and and thinking and
you know constantly this this idea of chasing and doing something for the next events and and it's like boys chill out a little bit and and enjoy the things that you like doing and in the end like most people the things i like the most simple things i like around my bike i like like being out and beautiful roads on my bike i like i like socializing with people i'm not a big kind of big gathering person i'm a you know smaller group of people and i've got some amazing you know people and friends and i don't know i just like the simple things in life really but really really taken them in acceptance i i was when reading and hearing how you dealt with that situation i think the um the really powerful thing that i kind of got from that was getting to that point of accepting the situation as fast as you can yeah good point yeah and i know it's a bit cheesy as well but we talk about yeah it's a bit of a phrase but the whole idea of you know when you're under pressure and you're really in a moment of real you know okay that the heat's on here um you know the idea of instead of sort of trying to resist them being like a stick and and kind of bending bending and snapping just think yourself as bamboo and just bend and you know for well that once that once this moment's passed you're going to snap back up you're going to be okay and so we talk a lot about bending like bamboo not bending like a stick you know not snapping and just just bend like bamboo and we're in a bit when we're in difficult moments we go it's just bent we're just bending like a bamboo a pass he'll pass and and sure enough most times it does we worry about stuff that never happens don't we always we worry about massively about stuff that never actually happens and and there all sorts of it brings all of that kind of stuff home you know it resonates after and it's still so much joy from our present right when we're thinking about
all that all that could go wrong and then as you've highlighted with your theory of focusing on the controllables it hinders performance which is um which is incredibly detrimental too one of the things when i when i started reading about your future now looking forward you then also got the news a couple years later this year i believe yeah that you had but you had to have heart surgery that's a bit of a shock as well yeah so so i was um so after the pandemic i i was riding my bike a lot and my uh my dad actually was was was very ill so i went down to as soon as we could travel after the pandemic i went down to to france to the alps and i was there visiting the hospital rode my bike and as i was riding up hill i was getting this kind of i thought it was a pain in the throat or something to do with my breathing or the dry air maybe the altitude and as it was when i was trying pretty hard push myself pretty out it really started to hurt quite a lot and then if i slowed down it subsided off it went so i thought okay it was just going to pass as you do i went out for a ride with a friend of mine the guy called nikki craig and we were out riding and he um and i really were right i said bra blind i think i'm gonna have to stop here because he's you know his pain was getting really bad so i thought in the end i thought well i'm gonna have it i'll go to it i'm gonna check it out you know just in case i went for a ct scan of my heart and the guy came out and he was a german guy i said david you have a big problem and and my uh my left descending archery was totally blocked and i was literally kind of you know they wouldn't let me that was it they kept me there put me on the medication straight away and i pretty much operated on him you know to avoid a heart attack basically and that was a shock that was um that was pretty full-on really yeah that was more of a shock than a cancer
was i don't know why your heart feels worse than i don't know but it was a different it was a different sensation that one i must admit that i'd be worried and that's another set of uncomfortable conversations with millie and yeah yeah yeah yeah and then now to go in and um so the doctor again doctors brilliant went in and then i thought god i've done a typical bloke thing here where i ignored all these symptoms for you know eight months nine months just ignored it didn't go up it checked properly and then and in the end of course i could have done it sooner and then i went in and they went in with a wire and a camera let's have a look how badly it was blocked you know the afternoon they had a so open heart surgeon there and the guy puts a stent in like a plumber and they were going to decide whether they could get a stent in and open up the artery or they were going to go and do a hot you know bypass basically and take a bit of rain and stitch it in and then i came out and i felt like 10 men yeah really yeah yeah amazing amazing went out my bike it's like i gained 50 watts it was really yeah brilliant and then i haven't um i haven't had any paint since and i still i did six and a half hours day before yesterday with the lights over so yeah yeah yeah speaking of progress then one of the things that i we were kind of talking about before we um we started chatting but also i i really wanted to ask you about kind of the last point i was really curious about regarding the team was that your philosophy towards the team is evolving with time and how you get the best out of the people um people are typically quite rigid in their philosophy in the way they think but i read that you're now taking a individual first approach not a team first approach is that accurate and why well i think there's the individual kind of performer right you know and i think everybody's so i don't think he's individualized in terms you know the team still is still absolutely you know the fundamental kind of attendance of
what we do but there is an individual behind the performer and that's worth exploring and maybe being expressing more we've been tremendously successful and and with team sky we had a a brilliant run and and won you know also a lot of back to back uh tour fancies and other grand tours however over that time you know there's like you know you can you just when you become serial winners uh it becomes predictable and of course some people like that if you're a supporter some people don't like that it becomes predictable and you know the interest and the sort of the emotional response that it generates the performance generates is an interesting thing to contemplate you know we just seen the formula one at the weekend and everybody's gripped by it because it was just unpredictable nobody's gonna happen there was suspense there was an emotional you know roller coaster along with the actual performance and i think when you look at sports if you look at you know if you think you can perform on the on a vertical axis performance goes up and up and up and up and up until you become serial winners but then across the bottom you think actually what kind of emotional response what kind of feelings what kind of style what do you know what how are you making people feel and you can have a team like german let's say who's just serial winners and thinking people go yeah okay but the germans love it obviously but obviously yeah okay but a team like who achieved the same like brazil people love brazil everybody loves brazil why is that what what's the difference you know they're still performing they're still winning so the metric if you like the winning is still similar but the way that they're going about winning seems to be slightly different and senna let's say the motorizing scenario or schumacher maybe or you know some other and you think i don't know you saying bolt or maybe the all blacks or just united manchester united time yeah injury time yeah and there are certain
teams or that i think i uh um don't really want that not feeling that but this one over there doing the same thing i love them and what is it about what is it about those teams and is that something you can is it just happens or is it something that you can actually work towards so for example when i when i first went left home to go to france to to be a professional cyclist there was something in that sport that chimed with me so much and got me so passionate that i left everything behind i left home i went to a foreign country i couldn't speak the language didn't know what i was going to do but i still did it i still went because something was pulling me so it's not and there was something about that sport at that time that i just adored and when i think now and think right when i was that age what kind of team if you'd have told me then at that age i could be running one of the world's biggest cycling teams and had the success that we've had and still be running one i think what kind of team would i have loved to have seen what kind of flair and what kind of you know how would they erase that would have been you know would have been very much part of the bus or would it been like you know just bulldoze your way through what would it be a bit of panache and flare and yeah yeah exactly exactly and so can you just where does style you know and that sort of emotion fit in terms of performance and you can go after performance clinically you know and can style ever be a performance attribute and if you think about that you know so so is that something you can go after or is it something that you just have is it just something that happens in the chemistry of a team or is is it the way that you are so for us we obviously race the bikes but what about off the bike and the way you speak and the way you do your social media and the way you are with people and the way you are with fans and who you are the colors and everything else that goes on is there something in there which actually can bring out the individual and you get to know the individual so they're not just kind of
guys with sunglasses on with helmets on and kind of like sort of faceless you know warriors as it were where's the person you know we've got guys from ecuador and you know come from you know unbelievable backgrounds in ecuador and their stories of how they found themselves in our team is just incredible and the guys from columbia and the guys from britain the guys from everywhere they've all got their journeys they've all got personalities they've all got the humans you know they're interesting the back stories are interesting and it's like where does that all kind of come together in a team and how does that get how do you how do you watch that performance and see all of that is it possible and i'm really interested in that in a minute this is such a this is such a conversation that someone who has won a lot would have they're now thinking about the way they want to win and it's interesting because when you were saying that i was thinking about different teams and jose mourinho and klopp and and then the one that i really stumbled on was boxing mm-hmm where you can have a vladimir klitschko yeah who holds the the throne for a decade but then everybody turns off the sport yeah and then you get an anthony joshua and a tyson fury that come again they're still champions but they're doing it in a way that's captivating the public so my my question in my mind then became well you have to ask yourself is the objective just to win or is it to win and make loads of money and inspire a generation because people are flooding into boxing now because of fury and aj and the money those guys are making is way more than klitschko was making yeah so i guess it's the case i think it's like the old is that we've been talking about it you know it's like if if you win a lot you could be respected you'll be respected but can it be respected and loved can it be respected for your victories but loved for a way that you achieve
them and that's where the that's the holy grail why is why is being loved why does that matter admired and love don't get passion from people and you know just generate emotion and that's what sports about you know that that's what really i think in the end you know it's there's something about sports which is inspiring it can move people you know and and i think the whole emotion of sport is something that's it's why we love it in the end you know you can take part in it i can watch it you know why was everybody watching the 41 on the weekend because it was so inspiring and emotional it's just wow you've got to see it and the same with klitschko or tyson fury you know when he's got that knockout punch and he's out and then he gets back up again that's insane it's just insane i can feel myself now it's just like that's those moments in sports are what sports all about and i think that's what you know if you're involved in sport and you like a you know been most of my life in baldness but of course you've got to try and win first and foremost and winning itself isn't easy you know and then of course that's got to be the the first kind of absolutely you're not going to you'd never go off to style if it wasn't intelligent but some people have got intelligence and style and the flair and the cantonas or the centers or there'll be race you know and i guess i guess for me i know this sounds maybe a bit bonkers but you know we're in the business of thoroughbreds really if you think about it the top of the top where i'm you know the guys that work with that they're all thoroughbreds but i want a thoroughbred racer somebody can race art sport isn't a team sport it's a race you know we're racing one another you're trying to outwit your opponents and trying to maneuver and it's not just a physical endeavor it's a race and there's something about you know there's something very very um cool
about the guy the great races and there's something about that which i just adore you know you saw the weekend with hamilton and the stop and what i mean unbelievable don't believe i could i admire those guys so much i really do and and i think um i think most people admire hamilton now maybe even a little bit more because we've seen a different dimension of his character a different kind of he was he was amazing after that in that in that short period after that you know when when verstappen won the way he managed himself and the way he handles himself was just unbelievable and i think everybody saw a different a different view or looked at lewis hamilton through a different lens and they saw a very different person than what they would normally maybe see and therein lies the magic of sports i think you know my last question for you again i asked this question from a very personal personally curious space because it's a problem i've not figured out for myself which is we talked a little bit about sacrifice there is about romantic relationships and the struggle of being a great and winning and sacrificing and doing 200 days a year at races while also trying to meet these goals of romantic relationships i've struggled with it pretty much my whole life um have you struggled with it do you have any answers for me no i don't know i'm not your money unfortunately no that's something that you know i wouldn't say that um i'm not good at if i'm honest if i'm really honest you know and i think i'd like to be you selfish do you think sort of selfish yeah probably or or um yeah sort of concerned really you know like so so like driven a god i can't i can't fail at this you know and that that sort of fear of and it is there's something that inside of me that that worries about failing so much that i i can't switch off from it in a
way you know in 2014 you struggled with that right when that was the you didn't win the tour de france big time yeah yeah yeah what do you mean by big time give me the specifics i don't know i just i just at the time i was embarrassed and not not about the the the team or anything i just for myself and i felt this think of what god i couldn't go out couldn't got a house couldn't leave the garden i remember speaking i i called steve peters from the garden and thought god i've let everybody down i've failed and it was it was a yeah quite quite winning for me doesn't actually that sounds terrible but i mean i get exhilaration from the moment that you win obviously it's great to win but the emotion the degree you know the depth or the amount of emotion it gives me to to win is is nowhere near the amount of motion i get from losing so the negative emotion from losing is massive for me whereas the positive of winning is he's okay yeah it's done the job part of the journey great fantastic let's keep on going and so i think this kind of the not avoidance but not wanting to lose and really trying to help people to win you know it's like do you know where that comes from because that does sound no i don't know intense yeah i don't know but i've always had it always been the same you know i get super excited by wanting to do some big bold ambitious things and then going out and saying right we're going to let's go and do x and then afterwards i think oh wow what have i done and then of course then i've got to make it happen and i get after making it happen and and i think that's where i've got this kind of dichotomy really of there's part of me which is my probably my heart which is the crazy ambition of wanting to do things that's never been done before and helping people go after stuff and all that kind of you know nothing's impossible nothing's impossible anybody says impossible we'll prove you wrong
and then you've got to get after it and i think the getting after is where i go back into more of this whole the detail of martial that's the doing of it and it's as if my head and my heart sort of sets these wild kind of ambitions and then i got and they've got to switch out of that into the right let's get after it and then not wanting to not succeed of whatever it was drives me then you know we have a tradition on this podcast which is the previous guest writes a question for the next guest and i don't actually get to see it until i open this book so okay you will also be writing a a question for my next guest if you could turn back the clock on one day this year and do it differently what would it be and why this year wow there's a lot going on for me this year that's for sure i think i'd like to go back so milly's just had her 17th birthday and um on the 29th of november driving car tests etc and i wouldn't go back and change it necessarily but i just go back and relive it because i love that then rather than something i'd change i'd just go back and do it again yeah it's like a big deal you know get your car and yeah so i'd like to come spend that whole day again that's what i'd like to do amazing well thank you so much for coming here because as i said to you you know it's so funny that i've i've never met you but you've had such a big influence on me and my philosophy and helping me articulate that and um you know sophie who's my assistant once upon a time worked with you and she yeah he's always spoken well about you which is actually really remarkable because people often don't leave a job and speak so highly of the person they worked with but even you know since we started doing this podcast she was telling me you've got to get you've got to get one you've got to get dave on um and she's she's always just sung your praises and
um your philosophy the way you articulate it i think it's helped more people than you'll probably ever realize but it's an i consider this to be a huge honor having you here today um as did my friends when i told them you were coming and that's for very very good reason because everybody thinks you're a bit of a legend so thank you so much for your honesty thank you thank you and thank you for what you guys do you know thank you i think you'll bring a lot of happiness and joy and inspiration to a lot of people people listen what you got to say you know which is which is remarkable and i think um and i think you've you know when you've got when you get that there's a sense of responsibility in a way isn't there by the time you know by the the level of the platform that you built for yourself and you do an amazing job with it so thank you oh thank you means a lot [Music] [Music] [Music]