Alan Clark: From Hong Kong to Holistic Education – An Entrepreneur's Journey Through Mental Health and Resilience

Discover the tumultuous yet rewarding path of entrepreneurship with our guest Alan Clark, a trailblazer in the training and development industry. From a life-altering stint in Hong Kong to co-founding a successful business after a spontaneous idea over drinks, Alan's journey is nothing short of inspiring. You’ll hear about his struggles transitioning from a stable job to the unpredictable world of startups and how leveraging his network helped him secure his first clients. Alan’s candid recounting of early missteps, like pricing and market research errors, and the eventual breakthrough of utilizing relatable, younger individuals for their brain breaks content, offers invaluable lessons for aspiring entrepreneurs.

Immerse yourself in Alan’s transformative experiences, from nearly securing a banking internship in Hong Kong to finding his passion in education and mental health back in Scotland. Learn about the fulfilling aspects of his career, where he inspires others to learn and facilitates meaningful conversations. Alan’s commitment to holistic wellbeing for children, combined with his background in sports coaching and a role with Scottish Rugby, adds a rich layer of depth to his story. This episode also tackles broader themes like the impact of mobile phone addiction on social connections and the critical importance of face-to-face interactions.

Gain insights into the complexities of men’s mental health as Alan discusses the emotional toll of career setbacks and the resilience needed to overcome them. Hear about the significant influences in his life, from his competitive upbringing to inspirational teachers who shaped his journey. Alan’s reflections on defining success beyond material achievements and the joy of disconnecting from technology to spend quality time with family provide a poignant conclusion to this captivating episode. Whether you're an entrepreneur, educator, or someone interested in mental health, Alan’s story offers valuable takeaways for everyone.

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Transcript

Entrepreneurship Journey

Speaker 1 0:21

Good evening . Everyone delighted to have Alan Clark on the podcast . Alan , I am very excited to work out some dots , how we know each other , mutual connections and what have you . But in order to get us going , maybe you can give us a quick introduction as to who you are and what you do , please .

Speaker 2 0:42

Yeah , no problem , so brilliant to be here . Delighted to be here . Guys , thanks for having me along . It's really nice to get the offer to speak to you guys . I would imagine lots in common , but a little bit from me . I , yeah , as you say , my name's Alan Clark . I have been running my own business now for about seven years . Kind of really enjoy doing that . A lot of the business is around training and development , but that's come laterally and there's various other stages we've been through up until that point . I'm a sport billy , so that's probably something to know about me . I am the guy who just wants to run about playing fields all the time , and I'm 49 now , so we should probably , um , actually stuff it . No , we should keep doing that , and that's the thing about me . So , yeah , that's probably the background um to get started with .

Speaker 1 1:38

I suppose nice , okay , so the business that you've been running for seven years , how ?

Speaker 2 1:43

why , when yeah , uh , good question . Um , I sometimes ask myself all those three um at the same time . So , uh , I kind of started the business , um , uh , I suppose , to 2017 . Um , we actually idea , had the idea for business with a , a mate of mine , um from university , so a best mate at uni . We shared a flat at uni , very similar type of people . We got very drunk one night and I can pinpoint the date .

Speaker 2 2:17

It was a day Scotland played Ireland in the Six Nations . He came up to visit me . We were very drunk . I said I'm a contractor at Aberdeen University . He's kind of coming to an end and he says well , I've got an idea for a business and that's kind of how it started . And initially it was brain breaks for primary school children to take them away from that kind of idea of just listening to a teacher or learning all the time . It was just putting in five minute brain breaks every 20 minutes or so . So that was the idea for the business and we came up with that in the pub . And then we woke up the next morning and thought that's not the worst idea we've ever had in a pub , so let's give it a crack . So that's how it came about originally .

Speaker 1 3:03

Nice . Best ideas often do materialise over a pilot .

Speaker 2 3:10

The worst as well , but this was actually not too bad Nice .

Speaker 1 3:16

So you had two friends from way back when , like how , I mean so , like immediately my contract's coming to an end . Was there a bit of sort of nervousness , trepidation as to like , do we need to start making money , money fast ? Um , if the sort of primary source of income is about to come to a hard finish ?

Speaker 2 3:36

yeah , there was a wee bit of that , I have to say . Um , particularly for me he was . He was okay , he's . He was a teacher at the time . It was a teacher that's what I studied when I was at university , but I'd never really gone into the teaching side of things , dabbled a little bit in it and then realised that probably wasn't for me , so I'd kind of moved in a different direction . He was kind of okay , so he had his job . It was ongoing .

Speaker 2 4:07

My contract was ending , probably in , I think , about about three months . There was going to be some redundancy wrapped up in that , but certainly not enough to see me over any kind of sustained period of time . So there was a bit of a what am I going to do ? I'd initially thought about running some sort of sports coaching type of thing , and then I thought that's a little bit too much like the teaching side of things that I tried to get out of . So when he came up with that idea , it was actually really quite a nice one . And , yeah , the pressure to make money was definitely a driver right at the start there . So we had to have something that got off the ground reasonably quickly as well , which was interesting . It was an interesting wee journey trying to make that happen . How did you get the first ?

Speaker 1 4:52

customers .

Speaker 2 4:55

I did what everybody does and kind of just sold to people that I knew . It sold to people that kind of liked me , which was great . You know I had a really good network around about schools . Sold to people that kind of liked me , which was great . You know I had a really good network around about schools , particularly in Dundee , but probably wider . I'd been an active schools manager in Dundee . I'd been a sports development manager in Perth and Kinross , so I'd worked quite closely with quite a lot of schools . And obviously the other good thing about being over 40 when you started that type of business was the people that I went to university with were now headteachers and deputes and in charge of budgets Awesome , that was pretty cool .

Speaker 2 5:34

So we used that as a bit of an opportunity and a lever to make our kind of first sales , I suppose , and it went really well . It was kind of an online resource resource . We'd recorded a whole heap of videos . Um , originally we'd wanted to be in the videos but kind of realized that two 40 odd year old men jumping about in a video wasn't really going to inspire primary school children . So we we got some frankly younger , better looking people in to do that for us . So we made a whole lot of videos , we put them online and teachers were then able to buy the resource , or schools were able to buy the resource for us or from us . Sorry , and that's how we got our first sales . Our pricing policy was in absolute shambles . Our market research was pretty much non-existent . Um , we really hadn't a clue what we were doing . I mean , to be totally honest , we were just flying by the seat of our pants well , yeah , jump out and build a parachute on the way down , right absolutely , and I think that's genuinely what we did .

Speaker 2 6:40

We didn't even know how to set up a bank account . What it turns out is you can set a company up pretty easily . It costs you about £13,000 . Last time I looked at Companies House and once we'd done that , we thought we were amazing because we were walking about saying , oh , I'm a company director , which meant nothing to us . Us , but it was about what's that ?

Speaker 1 7:08

six pounds , uh but you came inside people's passports applications absolutely that was the thing we were .

Speaker 2 7:16

We were like , oh , you know , we could ask kinds of industry , that type of thing , but not a clue about what we were doing . Um , and you know , I don't think that's uncommon , I think people just kind of jump into these , or certainly I jumped straight in , like what . I also thought we were going to make millions , which was Likewise , totally hasn't happened either . So , yeah , that was a kind of interesting start start for us . But we made , we made quite a lot of money quite quickly . You know , we , we made , um , we made sort of 18 sales in the first couple of months , which was brilliant . So we thought that would . We thought , well , this is easy . Um , actually , what we're doing is selling our friends , which is the kind that's the first bit . Isn't it ? Going wider than that proved more of a challenge , I have to say nice , okay , cool .

Speaker 1 8:11

I've got so many follow up questions . Before I pass over to Tristan , I'm going to have to have Catherine , my wife , listen to this episode .

Speaker 1 8:19

So Catherine is a she's a maths teacher and she's really , really good at creating on , like the smart board resources , the interactive smart board stuff . She's like no one else , no one else is doing it . I can do it so much better than everyone else . I'm like well , set yourself up , try and sell . She's like , oh , it's too hard to start the next thing selling at schools . I'm like no , no , no , I reckon there , where there's a well , there's a way . So , with that said , I'm excited to take the conversation , but I think it's only fair that I ask Tristan if he has any questions .

Speaker 3 9:07

Allow me in the conversation . Thank you , I appreciate that . What was the first kind of oh crap moment ? When you started the business ? You know you'd obviously got these 18 sales early on . At what point did you go crap ? Maybe this isn't as easy as we thought .

Speaker 2 9:32

Yeah , well , I think the old crap moment came . We kind of launched the business around about march . We've made the kind of sales through , I would say , april , may and june . The first old crap moment was actually we really kind of you can probably guess was summer holidays where we realised that we've then got a six-week hole in anything that we were going to do . And obviously that six-week hole , there's a time , a lead time , to make the sale after that six weeks . So actually we were carrying quite a big hole into the next term .

Speaker 2 10:05

I suppose we're talking in schools . So the biggest old cramp moment was literally oh yahoo , we've made all this money . We can start paying ourselves heaps of cash to . This 18 grand or whatever we've made in here is probably going to last us until halfway through September . And then we need more sales and I suppose , to your wife's point , the issue with schools is they tend not to pay very quickly because you're dealing with local authorities and all that sort of stuff . So the actual cash flow situation became a bit of an issue for us as well . Um , not that craig was too worried about it , because he was sitting where he's teaching waging . It was coming .

Speaker 1 10:51

I don't even don't even oh my goodness , yeah , my wife , she's on holiday right now . I'm like , yeah , yeah , today he came home . I was like I've , I've done 15 000 steps darling at work . I'm tired . She's like I am too , but I'm like , no , no , but you're on holiday spending time with our children . Yeah , spending time with our children .

Speaker 2 11:12

I'm sure she's delighted to be doing that .

Speaker 1 11:14

Yeah , I know exactly . You can see the smile on her face when I say that . Teachers on their holidays . It is a tough life for them .

Speaker 2 11:22

Oh , I tell you you you don't want to be making that argument . I would imagine with your wife I would not be a teacher for any .

Speaker 1 11:29

All the tea in china well , I'm saying this in the safety of my shed at the bottom of the garden .

Speaker 2 11:36

Yeah , well done you . Maybe don't . Maybe don't show her this part of the episode . Yeah , I'll clip this out what , um ?

Speaker 3 11:44

what prompted you to to want want to go down a different career path and start a business ? What was the kind of pivotal moment in your teaching career that you thought this is not for me anymore ?

Speaker 2 11:58

Yeah , probably a couple of them . So when I graduated in 1996 , when I graduated it was quite some time ago I'd been wondering about PE teaching when I was actually at university studying it . You know , is this something I really want to do ? Or actually was the driver for me just going to college or going to university and running about in a sports field for four years and having fun doing that ? So when I graduated it was kind of like there wasn't an awful lot going on , there weren't many teaching jobs kicking about and there also was a two-year probation period , which is slightly different now . It was two years and you had to do it part-time , with supply and all that sort of stuff . So it wasn't that appealing to me . You guys have been in classes , I'm sure , when you were younger , when a supply teacher came in and your response to having a supply teacher is probably typical , I would imagine , to everybody . Everybody just bullies supply teachers when they come in and it's not a very fun gig to be in .

Speaker 1 13:08

We're both sniggering , but I was that kid and I'm sorry . I'm so sorry .

Speaker 2 13:14

So was I . You know what ? I don't think we all were . It was like yahoo this is great , we're not going to have to do anything this period . So I kind of when I was leaving college , that was the situation or leaving university , that was the situation

Life in Hong Kong and Education

Speaker 2 13:30

that I found myself in .

Speaker 2 13:33

I was sitting in the flat with Craig way back then and the phone rang and it was actually Craig's ex-girlfriend . She was living in Hong Kong , and here's where the Bruce Aitchison link starts to come in a little bit . Was she was living in hong kong , and here's where the bruce agison link starts to come in um a little bit . She was living in hong kong and and working for a sports coaching company out there , um , and she said to craig , you want to come over ? Um ? And craig says well , actually I've got a new girlfriend . She's not going to be too happy if I shoot off across the world to to go and live with you . So . So I was watching Countdown at the time and I remember it vividly , watching Countdown and hearing half the conversation , and I just shouted well , I'll go . And that was pretty much it .

Speaker 2 14:16

That was me jumping out and heading off to Hong Kong . I got a one-way ticket and that was pretty much me there for the next four years . So the teaching side of things I never really kind of went down that route . I always kind of thought there's probably something else . So when I was out there I was coaching sport . I worked for a rugby club for a while . I sold insurance . I sold gym memberships . I actually tried to nearly got an internship . I was nearly the Pursuit of Happiness guy . I was nearly on that type of internship with a bank . At one point I was just doing anything frankly and then when I came home we ended up I ended up getting a job at Scottish Rugby then from that point . So the teaching side things never really happened . I kind of dotted around various other different things , I suppose .

Speaker 1 15:09

No , we lost you a wee bit at the end there , but you seem to have reappeared in the room .

Speaker 2 15:14

Sorry , yeah . I was just saying I dotted around quite a lot of different stuff and never really kind of got into the teaching side of things . It probably wasn't for me but weirdly I've always been working with education . It's kind of arm's length type of stuff and that's probably where I'm more comfortable . So a lot of the stuff that I still do is with schools , which is it's always been this anchor throughout my career . There's always been a kind of link to education throughout what I've done .

Speaker 1 15:45

Did you enjoy Hong Kong ?

Speaker 2 15:48

It was very hard not to . I mean , it was phenomenal when I arrived here . It was a colony , so there was no real kind of need for a visa . There was none of you know . You just turned up , I was 21 . It was none of you know , you just turned up . You , yeah , I was 21 . It was incredible , you know , to to be there , to to live that life , that expat life , at that age and probably the best thing I could have done I don't think I could have stayed there for longer than I did um , so four years was probably enough , um , and then it was kind of almost back home to reality .

Speaker 1 16:24

It was a weird existence .

Speaker 2 16:28

Yeah , it was good to come home and back and kind of start a career . That sounds weird . That's where I was .

Speaker 1 16:39

I always enjoy going to Hong Kong , but it's post-colony , post-decolonization . The first time I was there , it was the 10-year celebration of the handover . Enjoy going to Hong Kong , but it's post-colony , post-decolonisation . First time I was there , it was the 10-year celebration of the handover , so it was a bit of a lot of laughter . But Hong Kong , it's a nice place . I do enjoy it . Yeah , it's a bit quick , are you ?

Speaker 3 17:00

back in what you do now .

Speaker 2 17:05

Sorry , what was I doing out there ? No , I said are you happy in what you do now ? Sorry , what was that ? What was ?

Speaker 3 17:07

it doing out there . No , I said are you happy in what you do now ?

Speaker 2 17:11

oh yeah , absolutely happy um in in what I do now . You know the the stuff that I'm doing now is is kind of I suppose it's got that that education side of things . So I'm doing a lot of training , development work , um , there's quite a lot of work that I do in schools around about mental health , um , which is a kind of a wee bit of a passion of mine , um , and it's actually one of the things that that I suppose when we start the company right up at the start , we were really having a look at mental health and and holistic health for for children , and it's something that I've been interested in , that kind of health and wellbeing side of things , for forever I suppose . And that's , I suppose , the second anchor I suppose in what I'm doing is that health and wellbeing side of things . So , yeah , I love what I'm doing at the moment , absolutely love it .

Speaker 2 18:01

I'm delivering so I can show off and do all that sort of stuff and tell really bad dad jokes and all of that stuff , which is pretty cool when you're delivering stuff , but at the same time it's the inspiring other people to learn . That really kind of drives me . I love that side of things . It's the idea that if I say something to somebody , they go off and learn more about it , then I've done a fantastic job . Um , and I kind of see that as the role I suppose would you say that's the most fulfilling part of what you do .

Speaker 1 18:35

Oh , absolutely .

Speaker 2 18:37

You know well , there's probably two things you know I do . It's that , yes , that's really fulfilling and I love that . I love it when people go , as I say , go away , are inspired by what they've heard , or inspired the conversations that we've had , or inspired by somebody else in the room , and I've been able to facilitate that and I love that . When people go away , that's fantastic . The other thing that kind of fulfills me probably just as much is the giving back stuff that we do as a company . I've always been really keen that we give back . So after our first iteration of the primary school stuff , what we realized was everybody kind of needed those brain breaks , everybody needed that type of stuff . So we flipped the model a little bit and then looked at how do we develop this for corporates , and when a corporate bought into it , we were able to then give it to free , for free , to a cluster of primary schools , which was great , you know , for the schools . And then um recently , and and or sort of more recently , um , we made that whole resource available to all primary schools , so anybody can have it , anybody can use it . But our giving back then evolved into when I work on leadership with a client , for example . I'll then work with a local school to them with their third , fourth , fifth , sixth years on leadership and develop that side of things . And that's kind of pro bono work that I do and I also do quite a lot of work . I do work with MCR Pathways as well , so I mentor a young person through that .

Speaker 2 20:14

So that giving back side of things is huge and it's probably I jokingly say to people never be a millionaire in this kind of line of work . I don't want to be a millionaire . It's not , you know , millionaire actually . I don't want to be a billionaire . Millionaire might be quite nice , but it's that . That's kind of the cool stuff . You know , that's the bit that kind of fulfills you at the end of the day and that's , to me , is the really good stuff . You know it's the impact you have on other people fills you at the end of the day and that's , to me , is the really good stuff . You know it's the impact you have on other people as you kind of roll your way through life , and I think that's important , awesome the mental health piece for schools , for kids .

Speaker 1 21:01

How toxic is social media for children in school these days ?

Speaker 2 21:07

Well , that's a big question . That is a big question , and I think social media is not going anywhere . It's here to stay right . So it's probably it's how you look at social media and how it's used . Um , that is the important thing there . I think there's a huge education piece to be done , not for the kids . The education piece is to be done for those of us who don't really understand it , um , and the education piece is probably to be done for parents in terms of some of the stuff that goes on social media , but also the access that kids have got to this .

Speaker 2 21:48

Now I know I've got I've got two , two kids . They're 18 and 20 now and they've , since they've had phones , which was probably about the age 11 , 12 , they've had access to all this kind of social media type of stuff . I haven't had a clue what's been going on there . Really , I don't really know what's been going on because it's not my era , it's their era , it's the things that they're using . So it's possibly toxic .

Speaker 2 22:19

I'm not 100% sure . It can be really purposeful , it can be really good . It's how it's used . That's the important bit . But I think the challenge that we've got at the moment is we just have no idea what's happening out there , what's happening on social media . Personally , I think that's an education thing . I think that's something that we could educate ourselves on and educate our young people on , just much , much better than we do at the moment . But as far as mental health is concerned , it's probably got as big an impact on me as it has to a 14 , 15-year-old . Am I addicted to my phone ? Well , I don't know when the last time my phone was more than two metres away from me .

Speaker 1 23:09

Two metres Jeez , try two feet .

Speaker 2 23:11

Exactly .

Speaker 1 23:12

Arms length .

Speaker 2 23:15

When was the last time I didn't pick it up the minute I came into the house ? When was the last time I didn't check a notification when it pinged ? You know what these types of things , the impact of phones in particular and social media , is right across society . I don't think it's necessarily just for young people . To an extent they're probably better at handling it than we are because it's their generation . That's there , they own it , we're rubbish with it and that kind of plays into it . I do a lot of work around about male mental health now and there's a real thing with guys , I I suppose

Men's Mental Health and Social Connection

Speaker 2 23:59

, at the moment , and having a look at um , how , uh how , we become addicted to things , um and and potentially shut off other other aspects of our lives and just by having use of a mobile phone and having that to to pick up all the time so where are the big risks for men around that kind of stuff ?

Speaker 1 24:22

What is the big challenge ?

Speaker 2 24:24

It's around about for me , probably the big ones around about sociability connection . Men aren't fantastic in terms of connection . We've got to connect around about something . Fantastic in terms of connection . We've got to connect around about something . Now , if that connection isn't a kind of face-to-face connection , it tends to be within kind of social media groups and all that sort of stuff . That's not as valuable . You know , it's not as good for men to be connecting around about social media groups as it is to be connecting around about groups .

Speaker 2 24:59

Then there's the whole thing about what do men do in those groups ? Well , actually we solve each other's problems , we rip into each other , we give each other a hard time and we've got humour that we fall back on and all of that type of stuff happens when men meet face-to-face . We go to stuff . We're emotional with each other . Go to a football game , go to stuff . We're emotional with each other . Go to a football game , go to a rugby game , go to a hockey game , go to a basketball game . Men are emotional .

Speaker 2 25:27

If you are stuck to your phone and not doing that , you're not connecting with people and you're not getting those opportunities .

Speaker 2 25:33

You don't feel part of a tribe necessarily if you're stuck to your phone all the time or you're in the house all the time and you're not with other people , um , there's some brilliant stuff . There's a book called lost connections by a guy called johan harry um , which talks about our need to connect in society , um , and the the way that connection can help with anxiety , depression and et cetera . So that side of things you know , for guys , we get stuck to our phone , we are losing out on all that other good stuff , and with that comes things like being outside , being part of a pack , being part of a gang . These are all things that men should have because it's good for our health . I could get really geeky and into it and talk about testosterone and et cetera , et cetera , but all these things are really good for us and the more we do them , the better our lives are . So connecting with other people , getting out in the fresh air , um , getting decent sleep . Many times we looked at our phone till three in the morning john .

Speaker 1 26:48

I'd literally said to tristan before I came on I was up way too late last night on my phone there we go , so testosterone creation .

Speaker 2 26:57

Testosterone is created in our sleep . When we sleep , that's when we create it , and it's a key hormone for men to have . If we're sticking on our phone until 3 o'clock in the morning , we're reducing our testosterone levels for the next day , which means you're not as effective , which means you're not as on the not as as on the ball . You're kind of um , all of these things and you're always . You're also laying yourself open to potential health , uh , health problems as well . All that sort of stuff tied up in interesting so certainly a follow-up with that .

Speaker 1 27:37

But sort of two questions like is there an ideal tribe size ? Like is there a minimum or maximum number of guys that we should be doing these activities with ? Um , I guess the other part is the , the exercise . So exercise is good for your head , right like releasing all these endorphins and whatnot so I guess , yeah , how does it all tie in , like ?

Speaker 1 27:59

I mean , so I was on holiday last week , wasn't doing my morning swim and I could feel it oh my goodness , I was cranky , I wasn't getting that buzz in the morning and yeah , how big , how big a group of pals guys should we have , and how much of this exercise put into we're kind of , um , we like to have a place in the world .

Speaker 2 28:20

That's the thing about men . If we feel like we've got a place in a group of people , if we've got a place in a group of guys , then we feel like we're contributing . And that's a big thing in terms of the male psyche , I suppose , is to be able to be contributing to something . So the group size doesn't really matter , as long as there's a value from you in that group . So as long as that group feels that you're of value to it and you feel that you're of value to that group , it's good for you . So there's a need to be part of it . When we start feeling like we're not valuable to a group or we're not valuable to society , that's when we start thinking , well , what's the point in me ? And that's where we get into anxiety and kind of dip into the kind of more dangerous sort of mental health levels . So , yeah , we want to be part of something , we want to be part of a group .

Speaker 2 29:28

Guys need four things , you know , in terms of terms of , I can go into why testosterone's really good for you . Um , it is . It's it's like the , the , the the best thing for guys , I suppose , and they so want to we want to increase sort of our production of testosterone . To do that , you need four things , and they're dead simple . I mean , they are dead simple and you'll know them yourself . You need a a reasonable level of exercise , um , so you need to be able to take exercise that increases testosterone production .

Speaker 2 29:58

You need to um have a decent diet , which means green vegetables , unfortunately for most of us , right ? So most of us are brought up in a scottish diet . Green vegetables are like some in your mum forced you to eat , um , but um , along with a kind of , or whatever , and the overboiled vegetables that you got when you were beat , certainly that home amongst all the list of this . But yeah , um , green vegetables , um , really help , uh , sleep is massive for us , um , so , again , enough sleep , um really helps us to produce testosterone , um , and the last one is fresh air , sunlight , and that's it .

Speaker 2 30:42

I guarantee , if you're not feeling yourself , or if you're not feeling great or whatever , if we looked at all of those four , one of them or two of them was off kilter and and I suppose the work that I look to do with guys is , I suppose , just looking into that and planning it and looking at what are the changes that we can make to better your life across those four areas . There's other stuff obviously that goes into it , which is really about our place in the world and masculinity and what that means to us and what we need from that . But those four things if once you've got them right , you tend to be doing pretty well nice .

Speaker 3 31:26

What were some of your , your early interests or influences , inspirations , and how or have they changed since , uh , since earlier days ?

Speaker 2 31:42

Whoa , probably , there's probably a couple , there's probably three . I would say there's my dad , obviously huge influence on me , actually my parents , um both , both my parents , um my mum , probably . First of all , she's a real kind of high flyer in the health service . She was the first diabetic liaison nurse in scotland , um , and she was . We were immensely proud of her for that and and she was really proud of of having that post and she basically built that service across the country . So she was brilliant . There's a kind of entrepreneurial spirit as much as you can have within the nhs there . Um , so

Family, Inspiration, and Resilience

Speaker 2 32:27

fantastic there really . Um , she had two sons . She had me and my brother .

Speaker 2 32:32

We were a year apart , where I can't remember what you call irish twins or something like that . I think you call it Irish twins or something like that , I think you call it . We're like a year apart . He's a wee bit older than me and we fought each other forever like right the way through . I mean just proper fighting as brothers a year apart would do , but ultra competitive with each other , and then my dad as well . So there was three guys in the house and my mum . So there was a pretty strong influence from my mum in terms of she wasn't going to let this be a male-dominated household . She was making sure , I suppose , that we understood there was a whole other half of society there and so there was a real kind of an understanding about equality , I suppose in our household , because my mum made sure of that .

Speaker 2 33:31

My dad was also an entrepreneur , I suppose , although he would hate that word . He set up his own business and he sold off his equipment in the borders , which was great . Hate that word . He set up his own business and he sold off his equipment in the borders , which was great . He loved that and he got to go and do his own thing , which was brilliant . He didn't like working for other people , so there's an influence there . I suppose I can't imagine working for anybody else now . It's a weird sort of situation . I can't imagine that . So probably family , certainly my brother , the competitive instinct he's driven that Because I just wanted to beat him at everything . He was the same with me .

Speaker 2 34:10

And then there's probably two teachers at school , both of whom I've written to in the last two or three years explaining the impact that they'd kind of had on me . There was one who was a techie teacher His name was Benny Rafferty at Selkirk High School . Benny was hard as nails techie teacher-esque , if you like , absolutely hard as nails . But he took our rugby team from first year to fourth year at Selkirk High and we were garbage , absolute garbage . And then Benny took us on in first year and he knew what he was getting because he could see we were garbage . But he took us for four years and then we slowly became less garbage over four years until we were kind of half decent at the end of fourth year . And then he passed us on to another guy . But just that idea that everybody like Benny was brilliant because he just stuck with it . He just stuck at it , he didn't give up . He didn't give up on us and we weren't the mighty ducks , you know , we were just working our way through to fourth year , but he was brilliant , he was hard as nails and he never gave up on us . He was brilliant and I really appreciated that .

Speaker 2 35:31

And then the other guy was a guy called Graham Marshall who was my head of PE at school . And Marshall was fantastic . He turned up when I was starting second year . I was , as I said before , I was a sporty kid .

Speaker 2 35:46

This guy walked into the changing rooms in the start of second year . He was a Scottish international rugby player and he was six foot five and he walked in the changing rooms and I thought Jesus Christ , this man's massive . And then he kind of chatted about it a bit and then I thought I want to be like you . I was never going to get to 6'5" I mean 5'6" but not 6'5" . But he was a kind of inspirational character because he was at the top of his game and he was doing the job that I wanted to do and that kind of drove me down that path , I suppose . So , yeah , inspiration . They were probably the people that inspired me through and in the early days in my early life . Um , good people . I've written to benny and I wrote to marsh um as well , just to just through lockdown I think just to say thanks .

Speaker 3 36:44

And what would you say , your biggest challenge you've faced , either professionally or personally .

Speaker 2 36:53

I think without a shadow of a doubt , kind of both merge into the two . I had a bit of a think about this . I'd ever done it . Kind of both merged into the two . I had a bit of a think about this In 2005 , sorry , 2001, .

Speaker 2 36:59

I came back from Hong Kong and I got a job with Scottish Rugby and it was like the dream job . I was Development Officer for Scottish Rugby . I had the patch up in Grampian , so I was dealing with Aberdeen City , aberdeenshire just a huge area of Scotland when you get up there . And I was straight into that job . It was brilliant . Company car was knocking about with thistles in my car , I was all thistled up with all the gear and all that sort of stuff . I thought it was the bomb , honestly , and I loved that job . But in 2005 , they had a restructure at Scottish Rugby and I was made redundant . And I'll make that point that I was made redundant . Regardless of what HR people tell people , the job has been made redundant . You're not making the job redundant , you're making a person redundant and I always make that point to people . But that was an absolute killer because right at that point we were three months pregnant with a second child and it was like oh , mortgage , no job , three months pregnant . You know all of that sort of stuff going on and you take a real hit . Particularly and again coming back to men's health , you take a real hit as a guy because that questions your whole . You know reason for being there . You know I can no longer provide . I can no longer be part of this kind of clan . All of that type of stuff you don't want me , I can't provide , I can no longer provide , I can no longer be part of this clan . All of that type of stuff you don't want me , I can't provide , I can't bring the money in . So that was a huge hit .

Speaker 2 38:46

2005 , about August , and I left Scottish Rugby . I had to go back to teaching , which I didn't want to do , but it was the only option which I didn't want to do . But it was the only option , I suppose , and , to be fair , it was a decent option . I got to work with some pretty good people in the departments I was working in . I was on supply , but I was on longer term supply , so it's slightly different . You get to know people and that kind of lifted me out of that a little bit . But really , really difficult time because you don't know how you're going to pay the bills until you work out a plan , and Lynn was going to be going off on maternity leave , which wasn't going to help us financially . Um , at that point either , we already had . We already had a two-year-old uh there , um , so , yeah , really difficult time yeah , was the , the two-year-old , conscious of any of this ?

Speaker 3 39:51

and it might sound like a silly question , but but kids can pick up on not the specifics of the situation , but maybe the energy or the environment was that ? Is that ever something that's spoken about ? Now they're older or passed them by .

Speaker 2 40:05

I don't think so . I mean , I've kind of been through a few we'll call them interesting times . I've been made redundant three times , which is challenging . She's certainly been both . The kids have been aware of the second two times . The second time was fine because it was at Abertay University and it was we were starting the business up and actually I kind of knew what was happening . It wasn't a big kind of reg . We kind of almost knew that it was going to come to an end at some point and it was great to get a decent redundancy out there . Almost knew that it was going to come to an end at some point and it was great to get a decent redundancy out there . The third time was just a couple of years ago . I'd actually gone , I'd kept the company going in the background but had taken a job it was a chain of development job and then out of the blue they said we don't need you anymore . So I had to kind of take a company which had been kind of slightly mothballed and almost restarted at that point . Yeah , the kids are aware and my wife's aware , I suppose , at those times of the impact it has on me . But they're fantastic , they're great . I've got a couple of great kids and I've got a fantastic wife behind me , I suppose .

Speaker 2 41:24

And do you know what ? The more times things happen to you , the less you're worried about it because it's happened before . Resilience is one of these things that you kind of teach resilience . That's one of the things that annoys me with people that say I'll do two days course on resilience and after that you'll be resilient . That's nonsense . It's impossible to have that . You've got to live something or you've got to fall back on values for resilience .

Speaker 2 41:53

And I suppose the first time I was being redundant it was oh , I don't know what I'm going to do here and from there . Once that's happened and you've kind of come back from that , there's not an awful lot . You know that's . That's going to phase you too much , because you understand that . You know well , one , it was employable , I had something to fall back on . And two , and the world didn't end , it was kind of okay . So therefore , when it happens a second time , it's kind of going to be okay again , as long as you can keep that mindset . So yeah , I think that's certainly and certainly . I mean running a business . You guys run businesses . You know , jeez , the amount of setbacks you got on a weekly basis , constant rejection .

Speaker 2 42:47

Yeah .

Speaker 3 42:49

Yeah .

Speaker 2 42:50

I mean I'm sorry . I mean I don't know what you guys are like , but for my business I am the tea boy as well as the head salesperson and the director , you know . So when you're doing business development , you're doing sales , you're writing proposals for people , you're getting knocked back all the time . If you don't walk into that with a level of resilience , you're going to really struggle . I think and you know it's one of the things for people setting up businesses you've probably got to fail a couple of times in life before you get to the point where you succeed .

Speaker 1 43:26

Um , and that's part of the process , I suppose great . How do you deal with the like challenging , mental uh load of being the owner and the T-boy and the guy who's doing the sales and being rejected nine times out of ten ?

Speaker 2 43:47

Yeah , yeah , this year it actually probably went nine and a half times out of ten . It's beautiful , I think it is just that . Do you know what ? It's going to be ? Okay .

Speaker 2 44:02

But the other thing I do know that things aren't always going to be rosy . So if you have that kind of mindset , it's not always going to be brilliant , I'm not always going to win , and sometimes social media kind of really doesn't help with that , because life's rosy all the time . On social media we're kind of sold this perfect life . Nobody's got that perfect life . So if you understand that it's not going to be perfect for you all the time , you can handle the hits , you can handle the knockbacks , because you're not , because you're expecting they're going to come , they're going to happen . So it's not a surprise when something comes along . You don't get a , you don't get a contract , you don't get this or or whatever , um , or your tea's got too many sugars in it or

Navigating Business Challenges and Seeking Support

Speaker 2 44:48

whatever it might be , um . But yeah , the the , you kind of just , you kind of just roll with it , but . But I think the other thing that I do is I use support networks as well and I'll go and I'll talk to my wife and I'll say , listen , this is what's happening , this is what's happened .

Speaker 2 45:13

There was a point in June that I was like , ah , stuff , it Just wrap it up and I won't get a job . And then I had a conversation with my wife and she says , well , that's ridiculous . And I says I know it's ridiculous . Right , let's just assume , let's move on , right . But you talk to people around about you and I think this is one of the other big things about guys .

Speaker 2 45:34

When guys are talking , we don't want to just talk it out . What we're looking for are solutions . We want to talk it out and then for somebody to say to us or for us to realise that do you know what I'll do that that is almost a fundamental difference between men and women , that women just can talk things through and be happy that they've been able to vent . Men don't want to vent , they want solutions . They can vent and then they need a solution to come on the other end , because we're a kind of action-driven type of people . So I talk to people and then I say , you know , I have conversations to say , well , so what am I going to do now ? What's my next steps ? And I put some action behind it and that's the kind of most important thing that I've got somewhere to go at the end of that conversation . I'm not sure . God , that was a great chat , but I've got nowhere . I need a plan and that's the kind of that's the big bit . That's the way that I do it .

Speaker 1 46:33

I don't know how you guys do it but that's certainly the way that I kind of try and do things Probably very similar , and one of the people that I go for the support for is here in the room , caleb Tristan . What's happening ?

Speaker 3 46:47

there's a variety of things , sometimes crying in the corner , but you know both be crying no , it's done , tristan , time to wrap it up .

Speaker 1 46:59

See those moments that you were describing where you know it's kind of going south . What's the last sort of big one you had so like in my head when you were describing that there I was , like that email that opened and initially a plug goes cold and the adrenaline shot goes through and you're like what was the last big one of those you reckon that you had ?

Speaker 2 47:20

I think probably . Yeah , there was a point in June this year , so we're not talking a long time ago . We're probably talking about , I don't know , six , seven weeks ago , probably the start of June . As I said , I'm 49 , so 50 this year , so we'd planned quite a lot around about this year .

Speaker 2 47:41

I went to the Euros for 12 days with Craig , my business partner from back in the day , and then three days after I went to the Euros , I was going on holiday with my wife to South America . So we went we're just back from Chile and Argentina so I was having a month off , which you guys will know a month off work means . A month for me is is a month not developing the business , not bringing any money in . I to go to the euros , I turned down a couple of days work , which which , ironically , would have paid for the euros . Um , so that side of things . So I saw I saw that month off coming and at the start of June I had two clients or potential clients who had proposals in for with . One came back and said we're going with somebody else , and that was a life-changing potential client . You know , it was going to be something that I could have scaled the business on quite easily . I could have gone from me to me plus three on that one . So I put an awful lot of work into it and they'd just gone with somebody else . It's just how it works sometimes . So that was the first one . The second one came back and they said we're going to hold , so we're going to put a hold on this until Q3 . So September sort of time , whereas I thought there was going to be work way before then . So then I was like , well , cashflow , you know there's , there's enough money in the business , but it's just not in the business yet . You know that kind of idea . And I thought , oh , stuff , this is too hard , it's too hard , I can't . I'm just , I'm clearly not cut out for this . Seven years in , you know , I'm clearly not cut out for this . So stuff it .

Speaker 2 49:43

And I spent a morning on LinkedIn applying for ridiculous jobs all over the world . I always say this to people If you're running a small company by yourself , for example , and you're not on LinkedIn applying for a job every couple of months , you're not a real entrepreneur , because that's reality . And and all your steven barclays and your , you know , your , all these guys , you know there's , that's not reality , that's just something . Okay right , reality is it's a grind and it's hard and it's just challenging , um , and people should be used to , people should be aware of that when they kind of go into it . But if you keep grinding and you can see um , you can see that there's an end goal , there's an end point and you're kind of still going to be alive . Just being alive is brilliant because the journey is super , like working for yourself is incredible because the because you're alive all the time , for good or bad .

Speaker 2 50:42

But yeah , the last time that that happened probably started June . Before that it'd been a while . But there's been a real kind of stuff that I do . I would say there's a real kind of deflation in it over the last five or six months and that could be kind of global pressures , it could be elections , it could be various different things just hitting months , and that could be global pressures , it could be elections , it could be various different things just hitting .

Speaker 1 51:07

But we're still here , we're still alive and still breathing it's mostly B2B that you do , then you would describe it as yeah , mostly B2B .

Speaker 2 51:19

So there'll be quite a lot of work with organisations around about leadership , about team development . They're a kind of

Leadership Development and Mental Health

Speaker 2 51:26

core work . I suppose I do associate work for other companies as well , and that keeps the wheels turning , which is great . And then that B2B work might lead on to some one-to-one coaching , particularly around the men 35 to 55 type of age group that I'd be working with . So , yeah , b2b , and then I suppose that could lead on to whatever with individuals .

Speaker 1 51:58

What would you say , your best sales tactic for closing those B2B sales ? Where are you fishing ? Where do you find the biggest fish ?

Speaker 2 52:13

That's a good question . Recently it's been . I went to a really interesting chat . I thought I was going to networking meeting and I ended up I was at an rbs uh a lecture from their chief economist . I thought it was networking , which kind of shows how on top of my diary I am . So anyway , I'm sitting in the room and the rbs chief economist is talking and she put up a graph of all the um in , basically , industries and she said here's the industries that have experienced growth since covid and here's the industries that have experienced a sort of decline um , and it was really interesting . Professional services was right at the top growth of about 20 across the board um down to uh , mining and a kind of quarrying that type of which was about a 10 , 10 to 20 percent decrease um in profit um over the same period of time . So I took that as the first and only time I've listened to an economist and I took that and I went .

Speaker 1 53:27

From RBS of everywhere .

Speaker 2 53:29

Yeah , from RBS , exactly . Well , maybe that's not the greatest sort of view to take , but I was like , right , okay , that seems to be an area which is , you know , professional services , so accountancy , legal marketing , all of these types of things going through huge growth at the moment . So that's where I focus my business . That's the kind of finger in the air type of stuff that I tend to do in terms of looking at where the areas that can work . But actually that was quite useful as a kind of almost a whoops , I'm here , let's take something from it type of approach . So business there is actually looking like it's going to bear a little bit of fruit .

Speaker 2 54:21

The other area for me is looking like the kind of transition in oil and gas industry or the energy industry up towards Aberdeen , obviously based in Dundee you're reasonably close to that area , so there's a big push around about transition . Scottish Government have just set up quite a big transition project up in Aberdeen and the energy industry in particular and particularly offshore , when it comes to mental health for men is a huge area . So looking at leadership , team development et cetera , roundabout transition , but also and change management , I suppose , but also those that are working in high-pressure , high-stress , high-consequence environments and what the impact is on mental health . That's really interesting .

Speaker 1 55:24

Well , I pay as well . No , no , no , like I said at Summertime and apologies to cut you off , just in Summertime chic but I know that folk that went to do the offshore apprenticeships they make great money but then they come back and they've got three , four weeks to sort of sit by themselves and on a big , massive pile of cash and sometimes they maybe shouldn't be doing so well , I think I think if you look at that , you know that that kind of offshore rotation and that you see , you know you could be , you could be away for a couple of weeks , back for a couple of weeks , whatever it is .

Speaker 2 55:58

If we talk about , um , just the four things that we talked about exercise , sleep , nutrition and sunlight two of them you're missing offshore and two of them you're missing onshore sometimes . And then there's alcohol intake , which tends to go through the roof for guys that come onshore , particularly in the first couple of days , and that has a huge impact on mental health as well . So , yeah , it's not a life that lends itself to being particularly healthy , but there are things that we can do . There's quite a lot of good work being done for the guys offshore in terms of mental health already , and it's being able to kind of feed into that and help people as they come back onshore or potentially even getting offshore and helping over there .

Speaker 3 56:55

Apologies , Tristan , we cut you off there , that's all right . I was going to ask what is your greatest achievement and how do you define success ?

Defining Success and Parenthood

Speaker 2 57:05

Oh , uh , I had a brilliant one the other day , right and it's um . What was that it was ? It was a podcast to listen to , right , um , and a podcast listening to called the socially distant sports bar , uh , which is three guys from Wales that run this . I don't know if you've heard of it , but really funny podcast . But one of the guys had been speaking to somebody and he was a billionaire or something and he said he would measure his success not by the money he's made or anything like that , but the fact that his grown-up children still wanted to speak to him , still felt that it was a good time with their dad . And I've now got , as I say , I've got an 80-year-old , a 20-year-old . They're probably my greatest success because I think we've got them . We're certainly both at university next year and I think we've got them to a point where they're kind of nice people . I can go for a drink with both of them , which is quite nice , and they don't feel like they have to run away and they want to spend time with me .

Speaker 1 58:13

So I think that's all right , this does sound like the dream , goodness .

Speaker 2 58:19

Yeah , I buy the drinks . So let's be clear on that . There's an awful lot of well actually I went to , I went to Newcastle . My daughter , my daughter and me went to Newcastle for the weekend , went to . I says , oh , let's go away . And she says , yeah , let's go to Ireland . And then I was like , nah , let's , let's just cock a little bit and go to Newcastle . So and we went to see Newcastle Falcons play Bath because Finn Russell was playing for them . She's a big Finn Russell fan , so he was playing for Bath . It was his comeback game , so we went down there . First pub we went into on the Quayside in Newcastle was Witherspoon's and she bought a drink there . And the second pub we went into was a cocktail bar and I bought the drinks there . So you can imagine how well planned she had this whole weekend .

Speaker 2 59:07

Planned from the best . Yeah , yeah , nine pounds . I think her round was , mine was well over 20 . So she's clearly got her head screwed on when it comes to that . But yeah , like success is probably .

Speaker 2 59:21

For me , it's not work . You know , work pays for life and you can enjoy work and that's great , but work pays for life . Life is the rest of it . It's the good stuff . You know why am I doing this ? You know , we want to bring up good people , we want to create nice people in the world . We want them to kind of carry that legacy on for us , and that's brilliant and we want to enjoy it ourselves . So me and my wife spend money on holidays . We don't spend money on stuff , we go away , we do stuff , we enjoy life , and that probably is the greatest success that I've now got the freedom to be able to do that and the comfort to know that it's going to be able to do that and to comfort to know that it's going to be okay . My financial security for me is being able to buy around without worrying about whether I can afford it . That's cool . I quite like that . That's that's cool . I quite like that . And so that's the , that's .

Speaker 2 1:00:25

That's enough , I suppose brilliant , big fan well , you're a big fan of me buying around and you know I've been reflecting on it .

Speaker 1 1:00:42

So last year , covid , one of the outcomes was just in a lot of camping going to camping , I am , and just like reconnecting with nature , leaving the phone or going to places where there is like zero phone signals . So trying to get that like reconnection , and just this year haven't done it , we just haven't done it as much as we did last year . And if your uh comfort is being able to , uh , yeah , afford around and not be able to worry about it , I think me this year it's like the comfort last year was showing just be able to go camping and we just didn't do it . This year , you know , not as much .

Speaker 2 1:01:14

Anyway , summer's not over , but it's certainly almost over , um yeah yeah , I think , um , so we , we used to do , we used to do holidays with the kids . We took them cycling one year and they hated well , they hated the idea of it . So we cycled the Canal du Midi which goes from Bordeaux , basically down to Béziers in France . It's a good , it's a good old distance . We cycled half of it with them , which was a good sort of I don't know , maybe 150 , 175 miles , something like that , over five or six days , and my son was nine , my daughter was 11 when we did it and on the side of that it sounds like child abuse a little bit because , you know , going to lie by a pool or something .

Speaker 2 1:01:56

But what it did was you couldn't be on a phone . You were cycling along a canal towpath and nobody could be on a phone . You were cycling along a canal towpath and nobody could be on their phone . You had to be present , so you had to actually talk to each other , and it turned out to be one of the best holidays we've ever had because you got that interaction with each other . You kind of got to know each other . You spent a bit of time talking to each other , which was lovely , absolutely lovely . We actually did it twice . We did um , we did it kind of two years later as well , um , and the kids loved it and actually the brilliant thing is they now don't want to go and sit on a beach um I don't want to go and sit at a pool .

Speaker 2 1:02:38

You know my daughter's doing physio . She wants to go to australia for her third year placement . You know we've hopefully engendered a little bit of that .

Speaker 1 1:02:46

I don't think she'll come back . Anyone that I know from uni that went and did a year in Australia or went after graduation they never came back .

Speaker 2 1:02:55

Yeah , never come back , which does point to it might be quite good out there , doesn't it ? It does , yeah , yeah , there's too many things that kill you . Who was it that said that Australia's where the devil keeps his pets ? Oh , wow . That's a brilliant quote Scary , scary place , but yeah , that idea just connecting with people , I love that .

Speaker 1 1:03:25

Likewise , and before we get to buzzwords , I think that was the big , the big learning for my wife and I coming back for our summer holiday this year . So mine are seven and five and the learning was that the summer holidays at that age are not for mommy and daddy , they're definitely for the children . Oh god , I came back exhausted and even on an actual holiday , from the holiday absolutely .

Speaker 2 1:03:45

Yeah , yeah , we've got to . There was . One of my friends sent me a couple of pictures the other day and he says today we're playing a game called how many beers can daddy drink . Today and tomorrow we're playing a game called let's leave daddy alone because he's angry , which I thought that's a . He's obviously got his uh , his holiday priorities set . Yeah , that's awesome . Yeah , tough holidays for young children .

Speaker 1 1:04:11

Yeah , thanks , awesome um , well , with that , like the name of the podcast is , insert buzzword , and we like to ask our guests what is a buzzword from your industry , your profession , that you either love or hate ? And it can be a phrase as well .

Speaker 2 1:04:29

Yeah , one of the buzzwords that I think I detest is it's learning and development , because I don't think we do learning and development . I think we do tell and hope . So when I see kind of learning going on or some of the things I've been asked to deliver in the past , it's essentially right you go in for a day and you tell them about communication for a day and there's 75 slides to do that with um and it's called learning development and people are paying an absolute fortune for this type of stuff . Um , and it's not learning development because it's the circus came to town . It's essentially me coming to town , um , giving you an experience for a day and then sending you away with three action points at the end of the day .

Speaker 2 1:05:25

What are you going to start , what are you going to stop , what are you going to continue doing ? And we'll give you five minutes to think about that . At the end of the day , there's no learning . There's no development happens there . It's not learning and development , and that is the standard practice across our industry at the moment to do that , and it has been for the last 20 years and it doesn't bloody work . So that's the main one for me . It doesn't . None of that , none of it's learning , it's telling hope .

Speaker 1 1:05:53

Amen . And having started saying I need my wife to listen to this episode , I think she would be . She'd be applauding you , all , the CPDs and services , which is like but who is this person that I'm supposed to listen to ? I don't want to go . I know I'm going to get nothing from it , spot on .

Speaker 2 1:06:08

Spot on , unless that person's embedded in your organization for a reasonable period of time and action plans with you and sits on you to make sure that you've got your action plan , make sure that you've done the things that you said you were going to do , make sure there's accountability . It's not worth it . You're paying 1,500 quid a day for somebody from McKinsey to come in and tell you stuff you already know and unfortunately that seems to be the way the industry works . There are other learning development providers exist .

Speaker 1 1:06:41

Yes , absolutely , Tristan . Do you want to ask for some ? How do we find Alan and close us out ?

Speaker 3 1:06:50

You've kind of just done that , jeremy . It'd be a bit weird . It's like in the baking recipe , where there's a helping hand and you get to lick the spoon afterwards . You know , hi , where can our listeners ? Uh , get in touch with you , alan , if they want to know more , have further chats and see if they can .

Speaker 2 1:07:10

um , they can yeah , they can get in touch with me at uh inquiries , at takeyourmarkscouk , um . Or they can find me on LinkedIn at I think it's Alan Clark Consulting , or they can . They can just hunt me down . I'm just kind of kicking around , so any other way perfect .

Speaker 3 1:07:38

Well , thank you very much . It's been very enjoyable , very insightful , a lot of relatable stuff in terms of business ownership and trials and tribulations , and also lots of stuff that I had no clue about , which was was really interesting to hear . So thank you very much and we will be back next week with another episode thank you .

Speaker 2 1:08:00

Thank you really enjoyed it . Cheers , cheers .