MATT KLEINMAN INTERVIEW

21 Aug

Matt Kleinman is the Director at New Vision Football and an FA Licensed Intermediary. He also wrote the book Show Me The Mon£y!: An insider's guide to becoming a top level professional footballer.

Your network is your net worth

There's another famous quote by Jim Rohn, which stayed in my mind for many years, that ‘your network is your net worth’, so I firmly believe that it's about the more people you know especially decision makers, then the better chance you've got of making a success in your job.

Life is not a solo sport

Through times of adversity, you also find out who is on your team because I don't see life as being a solo sport, I think it's a team sport, you need good people around you, you need supportive people who get you and who love you and support you in order to help you through those times of adversity, failure, whatever you want to call them.

If I cant, I must!

To me, as a 43 year old man, the measure of a person's success is based on how often they can fail, learn from that failure and then bounce back from that disappointment and keep persevering until they achieve their goal because life is about perseverance, you're going to get knocked down, it's about how you react to that knockdown. Today, rather than avoid something in case I might fail, I try to adopt the attitude ‘if I can't, I must!’ and front it head-on so I’ve learned to get perfect later and not stop from trying something just because it might lead to failure.

Lots of times people will say to me, how did you combine your passion with your job, I’m sure it's the same type of thing with stuff you do and others in the passion industries, if it's sports, if it's music, if it's TV, if it's fashion, when people are growing up are like I wish I could do that for a living. What I’ve tried to do by putting this idea of a book together is to explain what I think it comes down to and that’s investing a lot of time in yourself, that is more than just, he's lucky because this happened, or he spoke to the right person at the right time and got in because of a connection, it was nothing to do with how good he was.

My idea is to bring all these things into one book, about developing yourself by learning and by doing, become a very good and well networked person. The wider your network, the more valuable you become to yourself and to others as a result. I’d just be really interested in ideally lots of different stories because usually what happens when I chat to agents or chat to other people generally, they're like yeah but I was quite lucky to do that because that fell into place but I think when most people say luck, what they mean is all the hard work that I put in, made an opportunity which I then took, which then helped me along my path.

Absolutely, isn't there a saying that luck is where opportunity meets preparation, or something like that? When you were talking there about networking, there's another famous quote by Jim Rohn, which stayed in my mind for many years, that your network is your net worth, so I firmly believe that it's about the more people you know especially decision makers, then the better chance you've got of making a success in your job.

Tell me then about all of that, I think networking is a cool place to start because I think a lot of people think about networking like I need to network and build relationships because I need to be able to get something from them, it's like the relationship is a one-way street sometimes.

Yeah, so that's an interesting point and I think you and I are very similar in this aspect when it comes to networking. I’ve personally never viewed networking like that. It is actually one of the aspects of my job that I love the most. I love meeting people and I like engaging with people. I’m interested in people, and I’m interested in getting to know them. I’m really interested in understanding what makes people tick. Everybody's got a different reason for why they do things, everyone's motivated by different things.

I’m fascinated by human psychology, especially sports psychology and I think where I say you and I are quite similar is that I believe you too like dealing with people. For me that's the aspect of my job that I love, marrying up working in an industry like football - something we're very passionate about – with, at the same time dealing regularly face to face with people. This ticks all the boxes for me. My philosophy in life, not just in business is in adding value. I believe that the more value you can add to somebody and the more you can contribute without actually wanting anything back, ironically the greater the rewards are that you reap. It's funny how it repays itself and so many of the relationships that I’ve nurtured have happened in this way.

I think that's the one thing that I am strong at: nurturing relationships. I’m still close with a lot of the people I was friends with at Primary school when I was five years old as well the ones from Secondary school when I was 11. This is because I value my relationships and work hard at them, and I’ve taken that into my work life. I really value the time and the people that I work for, and I work with, I think that's important. I just want to help people and I feel that if I can help somebody now, maybe I’ll get something back later, if I don't get something back later, no problem, but if people know that I’m there to help them then I’m a source of contact for them.

Can you provide any examples or hooks on things that you've either seen done very well or done yourself or vice versa on that type of value-add, two-way street on stuff because I’m totally in agreement, literally the biggest thing in the book that I’m trying to write and articulate is the idea of trying to be as selfless as possible. When you start thinking about the other person and when you start listening to the person intently usually it means you get a much better idea about what drives them psychologically but what you might be able to help them with, so in time, it might not be immediately, it might be further down the line but in the back of your mind you're always thinking right this person is like this, his psychological profile in that sense is a certain way, I can help him by doing this if I can, connecting and doing is that part of your psyche and the way that you think?

Yes, I definitely believe that my thinking has evolved because I’ve done a lot of reading over the years and I endorse the claim that ‘readers are leaders’. I see that reading has helped open my mind and given me insights into people (successful people in all walks of life) and their philosophies, who know better than I. I have learned numerous skills from those people, I think that's enabled me to be able to understand people better and show a bit more empathy and have a bit more emotional intelligence.

I think one of the skills that I have improved on in my professional life and also personal life is trying to listen a lot more than speak and I think you get a lot more out of being able to listen to conversations and almost put the onus on the other person to hear what they're actually saying rather than it being a two-way thing. Someone said it to me the other day, it's better to be interested than interesting, rather than project your ego to others in a way.

Are there particular skills that you think you've learned along the way if it's listening better, if it's behaving in certain ways, if it's getting certain things out of relationships, you talked about reading and being able to read a person, having empathy in practice, what does it mean when you're having conversations and are thinking how to react and deal with particular things that are being said?

So, that's a great question and I agree with what that person said to you about being more interested and interesting. I’d love to be a better listener, I know certain people who are fantastic listeners and it's a great quality to have. I’m pretty impatient but recognise that's one of my flaws. I need to work at being more patient and tolerant of people. When I talk about empathy, I mean having to stop myself from talking even when I agree with somebody rather than going “yeah”. For me it's about listening to that person and allowing them to finish what they want to say and genuinely taking an interest in what they're communicating before you add to the conversation and finish their sentences for them. So, I think it's about listening to people, understanding them and where they're coming from and trying to put yourself in their shoes. There are many times where I will start a conversation by saying to the person I’m conversing with, “I can't imagine what you're feeling” because I can't! For example, someone who might have lost a parent. I’ve fortunately never experienced that myself and I wouldn't profess to be able to give advice on that but it doesn't mean I can't empathise with that person's position. It doesn't mean I can't say to them, “I’m here for you regardless, I can't begin to understand what you might be going through but please don't think that you can't speak to me about it if you feel like you want to.”

It's saying, “I don't know how to solve your problem but I’m here to listen and be a sounding board for you without judgment and without giving you advice” because maybe advice isn't what they want right now, they might just want to vent or possibly speak to somebody they trust - that to me is about emotional intelligence, that to me is about empathy.

Talking about emotional intelligence or creative ways to be able to do things, the one thing that I’ve been really fascinated with when I’ve asked people about their experiences and about how they got into the industry, but also how young people have approached trying to engage with them by asking for work experience.

I find those type of conversations can be quite frustrating when lots of young people will be like, please can I have work experience, please can I do this, please can I do that, which in the end, it's a difficult thing to say yes to. A lot of the time in my book what I’m trying to do is try and flip the conversation to make the yes answer very easy and straightforward. For example, for you it could be, dear Matt it's not that I want to get work experience with you as a football agent but can I give you a scouting report of five players that I think might be really good for you and then follow up with a five minute call with you to see if you think that actually my reports are any good, to build the relationship rather than to be like all or nothing.

Have you heard any stories, or do you have any stories about how people have gone around things in a very innovative or creative way that ultimately have led them down a good path or a path towards the thing that they want to do?

So that's a great idea and I don't think I’ve had any prospect come to me and offer some value, essentially what you're saying is a value-add before they come and speak to you. I don't think I’ve ever had anybody do that to me, albeit I’ve had lots of people approach and say I would love some work experience in this industry, what are the chances of coming and shadowing you, I’ll do anything for you, I’m happy to come in and do it completely unpaid for a while.

I’m just trying to think of anything I’ve heard that’s innovative, nothing that springs to mind. I’ve got to be honest, I can't think of anybody that's come to me with anything that's been creative or innovative to try and get some work experience and I haven't heard of anything in any other industries where I’ve heard of people being particularly innovative.

No problem, the reason why I say it is because usually the answer to that on the whole from people I’ve spoken to tends to be that exact answer you've given and the reason for the feedback being a bit tricky to answer is because I think that if the younger generation that want to get into these type of industries have the idea of flipping that conversation, so it's more about how can I add value to you rather than how can you do me a favour that becomes a lot more of an easier actionable thing to do something about, how do you grab someone's attention because at the moment with the amazing tech and communication tools it's so easy to potentially get in touch with everybody.

10 years ago, 15 years ago or 20 years ago and I was thinking about wanting to be a football agent for example the only way that I could try and get in touch with football agents was to try and get their number or literally send them a letter or to do something like that, now every man is his dog on a variety of different networking tools so the question isn't necessarily how do you get in touch with people, it's how do you do something which elicits a response.

Absolutely right, 100%.

So one person said to me, they had a great example of when they took this person on and they said this person sent them a handwritten letter, writing two paragraphs about why and how they could add value to this person's social media feed and the person who took the person on said, can you explain to me why you sent the letter and the young person said the reason why I did was because you probably get two or three hundred emails on a variety of different things work, life, people asking for work, whatever else it might be. When I thought about it, I don't get a single letter a day from anyone now because everything is on email, the way to grab your attention was to do something that showed I spent my time thinking about how to grab your attention and find some value. I found that just an interesting way that if everybody is telling me the same thing which is the way not to do it, is to do what everyone else is not doing, the way to set yourself apart is to do the other and to find a way of finding that value and if you can do that then you grab a lot more attention.

Totally right I love that, that's brilliant and the fact that it was handwritten as well just adds to the fact that they're taking extra care and time and thoughtfulness, it's more personal isn't it?

Exactly right and you're a very driven guy, who is probably one of the fittest people I’ve ever met, I’m not saying a lot, I mean just in terms of on the football pitch, in terms of your demeanour, in terms of your routine and your regime generally it would appear that you are very routine and regimented with some of your behaviours and actions and stuff generally. I mean that in a real positive way, can you explain a little bit of either the psychology of that and how you go about firstly ensuring you stick to it and how you stick to it by tracking or by just being ingrained with habits or that type of thing?

I'm a firm believer in adopting good habits so I don't know if you ever read books like the ‘Slight Edge’ or ‘The Compound Effect’ but essentially the premise of both is really that good small habits adopted on a regular daily basis that compound over time to give us the outstanding results that we desire from our lives and the contrary to that, it's the bad habits that we adopt regularly that lead us down a path of disaster, so I couldn't agree more with that message, I’m a huge advocate for both mental and physical exercise.

I work out pretty much every day, I also read and listen to something every day that is either educational or motivational and likewise for the most part, I’m conscious about what I put into my body. While I believe that the food we eat is the fuel that drives our bodies, the things we read and listen to and the language we adopt are the fuel that drive our minds, and having both a healthy body and a healthy mind to me is imperative. I regularly check in with friends and family, I do have a lot of routines in my life, and I try to keep them as positive as possible.

Yeah I completely agree, there's a great book that I just finished called ‘Atomic Habits’ which goes into exactly that idea of compounding effects and there's another talk that I listened to by a guy called BJ Fogg and he's a Harvard professor, talking all about how one way to be able to ensure you start good habits and then can maintain them is you hook an existing behaviour onto a habit that you want to ingrain so he gave a quite extreme example which I found quite funny which was, every time he would go to the toilet, afterwards he would do two push-ups and he did that. So he said he did probably 20 push-ups a day depending on how strong his bladder was, but the point that he said is if you want to develop the habit, the actual way to develop it, is to hook it onto something that you do before or after, so for example the other one was when you get out of bed put your gym stuff on and go outside, make it as easy as possible to reflect on the thing that you do, to mix it with the thing that you want to do.

Going back to your point, you say you're quite regimented, could you give me an example, it doesn't need to be example of your day but what is it that is so ingrained now that you just do automatically because that is your identity it becomes the thing you do because you're so used to doing it, that it would become foreign to you by not doing it, if you didn't because it's not you anymore?

I'd go a step further to say that, it's the psychological pain of not staying within integrity that keeps me going. I hold myself as a person of integrity and that means I need to do certain things in my life if I am to ‘walk my talk’. This means I need to exercise to make myself feel like I’m being the best version of myself, I need to eat well to make sure I’m being the best version of myself and if I don't do these things on a daily basis I kind of feel the pain psychologically, which I guess is a bit of a warped mentality! I wouldn’t always want to exercise or eat well but, for me, the psychological pain of not sticking to my regime and the overwhelming feeling of guilty drives me to stay on track. Does that make sense?

It does. You need that negative fuel to drive you to do the positive.

Correct and once I’ve done the positive act, I feel great about myself, and one thing leads to another, it's kind of a snowball effect. I think I find that if I don't work out on a daily basis, it's easy to say I haven't worked out today, so I don't need to do my reading today, if I don't do my reading today I don't need to eat well today but if you've got all of them on point, you feel great about yourself. If you've got one of them that slips then others quite easily slip, so I don't ever want to let those things slip. I’ve been in places before where they have, and it doesn't feel good, so I just try like they say in ‘The Slight Edge’, which I highly recommend, unbelievable book, it's very basic but it's about getting those simple basic habits, good working habits done daily.

Yeah, it's funny I read a couple of books that I quote quite a bit from a book called ‘Grit’ by Angela Duckworth and ‘Mindset’ by Carol Dweck and in one of the books they talk about the idea of the mundanity of excellence. I know it's a weird one to say but in my mind that's a really important thing, it's the boring consistency of keeping on doing it and that to me sounds like your point, which is the constant consistency is what most people I see don't do and if there's one message that I’m trying to get across it's don't have this idea of passion for a month or so and do it and then fall away. It's actually the exact opposite, it's the 10 minutes of consistency that you could do every day compounding for the next three years, can you actually do that but let's start by a week, let's start by a month, let's see how you go and when you fall off the wagon a little bit as everyone does because they're human, how quickly you can get back on it.

Have you ever had times in your life where you felt like you're smashing your work, everything's going really well, you're performing brilliantly, you're signing up clients, things are going really well and actually you've become a little bit complacent and then as a result of that, take your foot off the pedal a little bit and you get into a cycle of complacency. You aren’t necessarily adopting bad habits but you aren’t firing on all cylinders? As a result of that I find that what tends to happen, is my performance dips off and I start lagging behind. I guess it's like a roller coaster - it builds up momentum and it goes high and it keeps building, it keeps growing, keeps going high and then all of a sudden because the momentum is gone it drops off. Unless you keep that momentum going, you're going to drop off. I think that is the key to good habits - keeping that momentum going and it should never be something that is so challenging that it's just not achievable because you will lose motivation. But as long as you can do the basic things every day and they're positive, it's incredible what results you can achieve.

I don't know whether you call it ‘The Law of Attraction’ or whatever you want to call it, but good, better things start coming your way, they really do. I found that in my life I don't know if you found that in your life?

I think it's that compounding effect, dots connecting, compounding things happen, learning more, knowing more, I always find the more I know, the less I know but that's the positive thing of the deeper you go, the more you realise there is out there which is quite humbling in quite an odd way.

I think you're exactly right so when things are going right and you're in that flow, usually that's the behaviours that have worked for you up until that point and that's the sign that's difficult to see, unless you keep on going with those behaviours it will drop. It's not believing your own hype really and finding that balance between keeping on going with the behaviours because look how well they're doing for you right now and if you believe your own hype and do all that type of stuff and you tail off then that's when the issues can start to happen. But I’m a firm believer that you control the controllables and there are things outside of that realm that you can't do.

Two more questions, the thing that I find interesting when people tell me I’m passionate about this or I’m passionate about that, I didn't realise until quite recently that the Latin translation for passion is to suffer. The reason why I say that just as way of background is because I have a whole chapter in the book on when things don't go to plan, failure, resilience and consistency of approach, when things don't go great it's easy to have that consistency, I’m going to learn more, I’m going to read more, I’m going to whatever it is. Whatever I’ve read and the people that I’ve spoken to, when they talk about things not going well what I realised is that everyone has the same feelings and underlying emotions a lot of the time when things don't go well, they feel pretty rubbish about it but it's not the feeling that is the differentiator, it's the reaction to the feeling which is the differentiator i.e. how quickly can you dust yourself off and actually get back on the horse.

The reason why I say that is because I think people have got a very strange relationship with the word passion and the word failure because if people actually realised that their passion actually means to suffer, I don't think they'd use the word or if they did, they would understand what they were doing to sacrifice for that passion. In the same way, failure somehow seems this idea that you've done bad and there's no way of recovering, where I think sometimes the best people that are happy to identify when things don't go right can build that resilience to get back on it as quickly as possible are better traits to look for than anything else. I haven't really asked a question there but if you have an idea on failing as a negative consequence without too much upside and those bumps along the roads and problems, is that something that you’ve come across, I guess that must have come across in your reading in your day-to-day job and everything else in between?

Absolutely, I’m a firm believer in you grow through adversity, that those are the times that you grow the most, through adversity. Through times of adversity, you also find out who is on your team because I don't see life as being a solo sport, I think it's a team sport, you need good people around you, you need supportive people who get you and who love you and support you in order to help you through those times of adversity, failure, whatever you want to call them.

Coincidentally I’m reading a book by Matthew Syed, ‘Black Box Thinking’, which is all about failing and responsiveness to failure and being completely honest, I’ve always struggled with failing or dealing with failure personally, one of my greatest faults in life up until now is probably that I’m a bit of a perfectionist and I don't like to feel like I’ve ever failed, I guess no one does really, do they? No one wants to feel like a failure. I’m pretty honest with myself about myself so I’ve always struggled with the idea of failing. However, the more I’ve read over the years and the more I’ve listened to the most successful people in all walks of life, I’ve learned that failure is intrinsically linked to success. After all, nobody can succeed at anything all of the time. To me, as a 43 year old man, the measure of a person's success is based on how often they can fail, learn from that failure and then bounce back from that disappointment and keep persevering until they achieve their goal because life is about perseverance, you're going to get knocked down, it's about how you react to that knockdown. Today, rather than avoid something in case I might fail, I try to adopt the attitude ‘if I can't, I must!’ and front it head-on so I’ve learned to get perfect later and not stop from trying something just because it might lead to failure.

Also, in the book by Robert Kiyowsaki ‘Rich Dad, Poor Dad’ he said if you're going to fail, do it early and responsibly. That's about property investment, basically if you're going to fail at something make sure it's a cheap fail, make sure you learn from those mistakes so that next time it hasn't bled you dry and that you can do it next time but a better way.

The other bit that I found interesting from a chat I had with a CEO of a large company was that he actively looks for applicants who have had a dealing with difficult situations because of the need for his business to be populated by people that can deal with rubbish happening and that you're more likely within reason, within the bounds of the types of difficulties we're talking about to deal with more resilient people that don't fall apart at the seams for the first time when something doesn't quite go to plan. That resilient idea is slightly different to the one I thought which was oh you just either are built with resilience or you're not built with resilience, but I think resilience is mainly through experience and expertise I almost think you become an expert in resilience in a way by dealing with the stuff that happens.

I try and push myself physically because actually it's not about the physical challenge but more about the mental toughness when you get to a certain stage of physical exhaustion. It's like when you've worked so tirelessly hard at something physically and you think there's no more left in the tank, can you give that extra bit. In my personal life experience, that was best exemplified when I ran the Marathon De Sables in Morocco. It was a brutal challenge for me. While I was very well prepared physically (or to the best of my ability), I could never have imagined what it would have been like mentally. At many times during that race I really had to dig myself out of certain negative mental states to get myself through it. But I did so.

The best thing about these extreme challenges is that they act as a metaphor for life – that whatever comes your way, whatever hits you and it can hit you like a sledgehammer, you can deal with it, so I agree with you that, this mental toughness is very much a matter of nurture over nature. Resilience is nurtured through life experiences. Rubbish is going to be thrown at you. The only question is, how much rubbish can you take before you cave in and give up?

Yeah, practicing resilience I think is an interesting one that I think I still need to get a lot better at. Just very briefly on the marathon disabler point if you're able to articulate it, so we talked about the fuel thing before about being the negative in order for you to get through the daily positive, it's almost like you feel guilty about not so you do in a way.

Was that the same when you had particular moments when you were like I presume had not enough sleep, your feet were completely screwed, you didn't feel like you had the energy to be able to do the next day or at some point during those days when you're running marathons on consecutive days in ridiculously hot conditions but psychologically when you're at that point of I’m not going to do this anymore, as I’m sure your brain at some point would be telling you because why put yourself through it, what was either the resilience, the fuel, the logic or the lack of logic that was like just keep on going it doesn't matter?

So again, it's pain versus pleasure, it was the fear of failing that got me through it. The reason why I did it in the first place was because, to me it was the ultimate physical challenge. A friend of mine, a guy that I used to work with who is an outstanding individual and excelled at everything he did in his life, whatever challenge he took on did this challenge back in 2001. It would have been far tougher than when I did it in 2016 because obviously things move on – technology, better and lighter equipment, training programmes, etc. Also, you’ve got the benefit of people who’ve run the race before you to lean on. When he (David) told me what he was doing back in 2001 (I’d never heard of the Marathon Des Sables) I thought ‘that's the most crazy thing I’ve ever heard, it sounds ridiculously difficult’ and because of that, I’ve got to do it!! I’ve got to do it for my own sake to challenge myself and push myself to be the best I can be. If I say I’m going to do something, I’ll make sure I do it to the best of my ability and if I hadn't got through it I would have had to sign up again until I finally did. That's just how I’m wired I guess. who It doesn't make me special, it's just who I am, I don't like to fail for my own sake and for other people. Also, I’d raised a lot of money for charity, and I didn't want to let those people down. It’s not like they wouldn’t have still received the money that I’d raised but I would have felt a bit of a fraud if I hadn't completed it.

I can tell you day one I smashed it, I did really well and I was probably in the top 20% of the field at the end of that day. That was the sand dunes stage so I did really well but I hadn't accounted for the fact that I’ve been messing around with my hydration and at the end of day one, I had diarrhoea, I was massively dehydrated and come day two when I started I was drained. I didn’t feel terrible initially but literally ten kilometres into the run and we're doing a marathon that day and I’m struggling, I’m blowing out my backside, I can't seem to get myself hydrated, I’m really struggling. So I called my wife from the desert and I said I’m going to have to stop and I ended up in a in a tent getting Dioralyte. After that I felt reborn, I really did. Prior to entering that medical tent I’d said to myself that I’m going to give up but I didn't and that's the point, it's having the attitude of never giving up, it's being relentless, it's just saying I will find a way, I’ll find a way to get through this and that to me again it's a metaphor for life, life's going to throw all sorts at you and it's how you deal with it that counts.

Very cool, last one for you so you've given me lots of sayings that when I manage to transcribe these I might use as the basis for this anyway, but if you had a billboard where you could print any saying either that someone else has said that's resonated or something that you feel quite strongly about, what would it say?

So, the one thing I try to live by is ‘don't wish it was easier, wish you were better’. Take responsibility for everything you do in your life because, as you said before, you can only control the controllables. I don't think enough people take responsibility for how their lives turn out, they're always looking to pass the buck or blame to somebody else.

If there was a billboard, I would say strive daily to be the best you can be and be an example to others, run your own race because life's a marathon not a sprint, you've probably heard that one before as well and as far as we know we only get one crack at life so make the most of it and live it with passion, that's what I would say.

Yeah, that whole don't wish whatever it is, is easier, wish you were better. I really like that especially because I think that's what happens with a lot of people, there's loads of external things that you can't control. I know I’ve been in a privileged position and sometimes it's difficult for me to try and not be too motivational to people that haven't been in as easy position as me to some degree but at the same time I think that's the competitive advantages and I think the competitive advantage is most people won't do it so, if you do it you set yourself apart.

Absolutely, no doubt about it. I think I know the type of person that you are Daniel. You work hard, you're an example to other people, you're an inspiration to people. Look at what you're doing with your charity work, look at what you're doing in terms of writing a book, you are a key person of authority within your industry. You're a leader and people follow leaders. You don't sing it from the rooftops you lead by example, you lead by your actions.

When I came back from traveling in 2007, I went to loads of seminars on property, I really wanted to invest in property and yeah you could say I was building up my knowledge, my knowledge was excellent on strategies for how to purchase property (and at a discounted price) but the best form of knowledge is taking action and I wasn’t doing that! I was a serial seminar attendee, building my knowledge but not walking my talk. There's no doubt that until you take action you can't be an expert in anything, you have to take action, you can't just be somebody that writes a book with no knowledge, you're writing a book based on the action that you've taken previously, on the experiences that you've had and expertise you’ve mustered. And that's the point: you take action, you lead by example and to me that's what I want to do. I don’t set out to inspire people but I do find a lot of people come to me and say to me “how are you so positive all the time, we'd love to be like that”. While it’s a really lovely thing to hear, I can assure you that I’m certainly not positive all of the time. Nobody is. We are all only human. However, I guess I’m more positive for other people than I am for myself as I see the potential in others and get excited by seeing them fulfil it. I feel like, if I can pass some positivity onto them in whatever shape or form, or give them a slightly different perspective on things, then that’s leading. Getting them to take action and you also taking action to make things happen for yourself is leadership. You don’t just talk, you actually do!

That's very nice of you to say, I think the bit that I’m trying to positively engage with people is just do it. I know I’m basically copying the Nike thing but that's exactly the point isn't it, you either are going to be the armchair critic that can just be shouting from the rooftops but not doing and berating the fact that something did or didn't happen or put yourself out there and give it a bloody good shot.

Yeah, absolutely and you'll make mistakes, but you learn from them and get perfect later.

I really like that, that's definitely one that I need to use in the book which is great it doesn't need to be perfect for it to be perfect.

Correct. It will become perfect the more you practice at it as long as you're practicing it properly.

Mate, really cool, thank you.

Daniel Geey

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