Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 Hello, and welcome to give yourself the chat. I'm your host, Peter Lewis. And this is the show dedicated to discussing ideas and philosophies to help you live a life of high-performance. Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of give yourself the chats. I've got X professional football or drew brought in here with me today. A footballer coach, speaker leader, author podcast, host, and currently joining me from Bruge very sunny, Bruce there drew. How are you, man? Nice to see you.
Speaker 1 00:00:28 Thank you, Peter. Yeah, I'm really well. I don't know what I'll be like in a few hours, but right now I'm really well. You never know what the day brings. I think I'm really well. Cause you know, I've, I've had, I have a strict routine every morning. I'm not perfect with it, but probably four days a week, I get myself up before 6:00 AM and I spend an hour in meditation and prayer gratitude lists, uh, reading some spiritual texts and just trying to send to myself before the carnage begins. So at the moment I'm well,
Speaker 0 00:00:54 Oh fantastic. It's beautiful weather there. And I see the carnage begins. You have a, you've got a young, young kid having a toddler in the house
Speaker 1 00:01:01 I've got, yeah, I've got a daughter who's eight and a half. And so that's ticked up crazy. She's teaching me how to do that. And then yeah. And then the new boys 18 months.
Speaker 0 00:01:08 Fantastic. Oh, it's wonderful. But you do have to steal this time for yourself and it's interesting. I mean, will date stamp this podcast? We're still in sort of pandemic and I know you're probably going to have to go into quarantine when you fly back to UK from your work over there and bruised. But during this time I I've rediscovered journaling in the morning and, and time for myself. So, you know, getting up at five, five 30 or so going for a run, not in a, Hey look at me. I'm great is it's the only time I can get time for me before the madness of the day.
Speaker 1 00:01:38 I couldn't agree more. I couldn't agree more sometimes. I think my wife's like, did you have to get that early? Can you do that? Yeah, because I want to help with breakfast and then I've got my work and yeah, I don't have a choice, many mornings. You want to snooze it? I know November's coming and another clocks are going, so that has guys alive. But I mean, it's all right. In summary
Speaker 0 00:01:56 Talking about, I went, I went for a run the other day and it's head torch time now. And I was running through the woods and it was like something from the Blair witch project, the hell out of me, you know? But, but when you get back and you sit down with your journal, your gratitude and meditation, you've won the day by nine o'clock and they're actually, I've never regretted. I sometimes regret getting out of bed and it feels really hard, but I've never regretted going for a run or doing those things. There is something really enriching for the soul about it.
Speaker 1 00:02:25 Yeah. And, and, and you'll know, from your background in the military, PTB, discipline is discipline is everything. Isn't it hard to find? It's easier when you, when you're working. I guess when you were in the military, you're forced into discipline and as a football, it's almost, you're kind of not all of it. Cause you still have to find your own, but you're forced into that routine. But finding it outside of that is difficult. It's difficult.
Speaker 0 00:02:45 It is. And I think perhaps we'll unpack some of that a little bit on this episode, drew, if we made gushy, you had 22 clubs over 17 year period, and you know, we're not going to list all those clubs now, but how would you have described your career? There's a clip I've just sort of looked up it. So you, by your own admission, your career was dogged and undermined by soul searching and, and self doubt. And that, that paints quite a, quite a glum picture, but I'm guess there would have been tremendous highs as well as those lows
Speaker 1 00:03:14 Experienced. Yeah. I th I think, firstly, I look back today and think what a football do. I was what a good player, you know, what a top player I was. And I can own that today. And that's lovely. I touched it many times. You know, someone said to me, post-career that? Have you ever refrained? Because you're very much my God, I have 22 clubs in 17 years. That is horrendous. But 22 people have put a contract on the table, have made the owner back the contract and chanced on, can they get that bit out of you that they've seen? I said, yeah, surely by a year. Right? They thought, or club eight. They thought that this guy can't, you know, but no, it was dogged by searching, searching and searching. I said the other day, you know, I think between eight and 18, I took up football the age of eight.
Speaker 1 00:04:00 Like most kids, you know, you're playing at school and then all that stuff. And then between eight and 18, I averaged 25 to 30 goals a season every year. So when I left school at 16 and joined Norridge city on score 30 goals in the first season, they'd sold Chris Sutton for 5 million to three years before you know that you're the next Chris site and you'll be the next one. And I came through, I came through with Craig Bellamy. We were the front two all the way through, from 10 to 18 and made my debut at palace. Then Wolf scored at wolves was in England, under twenties with land pod and Ferdinand that all these guys added asked, gave me a three-year deal, which was really quite lucrative at the time. So you're looking back and that was all by 18. At 16 Norridge wanted me on the bench and the premier league against habits.
Speaker 1 00:04:41 And when I was doing my GCSE, because I scored three in a game, yeah. The first team manager happened to see this game. And they're like, without a couple of injuries in their life, this guy just put him in the head of youth when he's not ready. And he was right. But so, you know, you look back and you think they can't be wrong. Your CV says 25 to 30 goals for 10 years added us England, first team experience football people going. He's got it. So then between 18 and 33, 15 years averaged eight goals a season. Now many I wouldn't call them wise people, many, many people that say to me, okay, do extra finishing work, practice technique. It must be technique. It must be this. It must be analysis. It might be psychologist must be. So I tried everything. I mean, I'm naturally hugely, hugely driven.
Speaker 1 00:05:27 That brings its own pressures cause nothing's ever enough driving all the time. But what that does is make me search and I searched everywhere. What it was. I was searching for that player, that play, where is that player? That not effortlessly, it's effortlessly with effort. If you see what I mean, of course you have to put in every bit of effort and sweat, but then, then as a trust that happens the zone or there's a trust that all of a sudden you, you finished the game, you sit in there, you've got two goals. The press wants to talk to you and you're, I don't really know what I've just done. Okay. Wow. What a performance. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. You know, so searching Peter.
Speaker 0 00:06:06 Yeah. And it's interesting. You talk about up until a certain point, you were banging them in and then having all these kind of people lying and queuing up at your door. And yet you hadn't changed physically. In fact, you probably were getting fitter and getting into that sort of peak state in your prime and yet something was, was different. And I wonder if it's the, that searching beyond yourself was actually part of the problem because it was always there. Cause you talk about reframe and I'm just wondering about if you could have reframed more at that point as to when nothing's physically changed necessarily. So what has, when you're looking a little bit too far beyond yourself, in retrospect with you all your kind of coaching experience now,
Speaker 1 00:06:48 Interesting, was I looking too far? Yes. What I've found and the only people that I worked with eight footballers, I work at three businesses. That is my client set at the moment. Every single one of them is like me in terms of two things, incredibly driven the alpha male, the lead natural leadership. If there's a cone to run to, they'll get to the cone and touch it. Even if the other 10 players a half going to the code, there's a level of accountability inside them, which is so high. Then there's a sensitivity, real sensitivity of the real. You know, I sit with my daughter cry at every movie. I mean, she looks at me, I'm sobbing at lion King. I cry and I own that. I'm a sensitive guy, emotional, that's a difficult mix to manage. It's a very difficult mix to manage. So I don't think I had an option.
Speaker 1 00:07:36 You know, I I'm trying to work out how to manage this beast inside this. I always knew where I could go. And you were eight. I was going to be a professional football. There was no doubt. I didn't know how to get there. That would come. But I knew, I knew I'd play for him in the premier league. That was the next stage after 18, which I couldn't, I then couldn't unlock because fear football is very different from any other industry. And I work in business now and I find it a lot easier than football. Sometimes the business owners, when they're ready, goes up a little bit will challenge me when we are having dinner. No, because when I built this and I carry and I carry all these staff's hopes and dreams. Now I understand that no one knows no one gives a shit like the greatest respect we play in a goldfish bowl.
Speaker 1 00:08:21 And I spoke to a player the other day, he's in Turkey at the moment. He said, I just love being out here. You said, you'd be away from the premier league. Just, you said, you know, the worst thing is your family. You said my family, after a game of family knew every single mistake I'd made that heard commentary. They looked online, but the press read the Twitter, read that he said just, yes, you can't get away from it. And then of course, what do people do? Who love you? That they're scared. So they then try and control and fix. So you just, in this, you just, you just it's fear. You walk into fear. The shift between 18, I always had had my own pressure. I always put huge pressure on myself. I can manage it today. What happens in football is the minute you turn professional, there's a shift. So when you eat, there's a shift because you're now it's on the line. The coach is not the under eighteens coach, developing players. That coach is going to be sacked in five games time. And he's got three kids. Yeah. And he might never get another job. So that's the energy in the dressing room. It's in the training ground. It's everywhere. You know? So is it
Speaker 0 00:09:28 In a sense up until a certain age, there's almost, there's an acceptance that there is room to grow and we can't expect too much of them now, but then you pass this threshold as a professional and it's like, well, there's no excuses now. And there's, there's plenty of people behind you cuing up to take your shirt type of thing. Is there, is there a sense of that?
Speaker 1 00:09:45 It's funny. Cause my brother, my older brother, very good at what he does. He's been Academy director at Luton talent for eight years and orange city for nine years. He's now in Norway, a big club out there. So he's, he's remit for 25 years. He's the head of the department that develops talent and we talk about it, but he he's very good at setting up the whole system and making sure it functions beautifully and everyone's in the right place. But then he'll say to me, you know, what, what do you think about? I said, it's fear, fear governs. And even the under 12 manager, deep down wants to be under thirteens manager and the 13th. They all want to be first team manager. All of those Academy coaches, if they, if they were honest, I want to be the first team manager. So even though they're developing there is that.
Speaker 1 00:10:26 And I just don't think there's not the I've gone off on a tangent. I'm just trying to remember. The original thing was about, well, the original thing was about searching. I didn't have a choice. I was searching and you know, I spoke to play the other day, 28 seasoned international for his country, not English. He asked me, can we do some stuff? I'm like, look, you're all right. You're a multimillionaire. You play for your country. You're in the premier league. You don't need me to a lot of coffee. You don't, you don't need this. And he's I do. There's 15, 20% lapse. I said, really? He said, honestly, mate, I don't think, and I've said this to a few senior players. They all say the same. They think most premier league players are at 60% of their best match
Speaker 0 00:11:02 Every week. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:11:06 And actually I'm, if I'm honest with you, the more I speak to piling is true. I think it's true. Players are all the fear of making a mistake. It was interesting. Paul Pogba at United it's in the Merino thing on Netflix. When the Tottenham thing that's broken at the moment, there's a game against United. And Marineo says at half time to the players, if Paul Popa comes on, I'm telling you, now he will try the spectacular. He'll take a risk. You've got to be on your toes. That's why Paul Pogba's 90 million quid. And it's hard to walk in those shoes that he walks in because the judgment is off the scale and everyone's on him. But he he's got, the one thing is take a risk. He's got the courage to go. This is me. I'm great at hitting that ball by the way, if it gets cut out, I'm in the shit, but I'm still gonna hit it anyway. And that's why these players separate themselves. But even here you can see it, Wayne Rooney towards the end. It just, it's hard continuing to I'll just think fair governance, which is, I guess why I call myself the fear coaches.
Speaker 0 00:12:06 Yeah. And did I see somebody as it? Fuck fair. Wasn't it? I saw something.
Speaker 1 00:12:10 It's a guy. Yeah. It's a guy. Tell me my branding. He's a modern young guy in that tech space. He like, trust me drew. He said, shock value makes people go, boom. He said, I said, I don't really want to sweat. So we'll just put some stars there. He said, but it makes people go, wow, it's it's aggressive. I am aggressive. I mean, you beat fear and you sit in that dressing room or you, you know yourself to beat fear. You can, you can't go with a bow and arrow.
Speaker 0 00:12:34 No you can't. And, and I guess it sounds like the functional that I do with the executives you do with exact sand, you do with footballers is that sort of pattern, interrupt to break fear or to step into courage more. Can you talk, you used it two words there, courage using the poor popper experience and the fear piece there and the line between the two being in one or stepping into the other and you know, the football might have 30% to give and you're saying, well, what can I do? But is it a sense of, you know, I sense this with the exact, so I work with leaders of organizations. They've got nobody to share this concern with. They can't, they can't share it with their team because they don't want to scare their team. They can't share it with the board. Who do they turn to? So quite often it's just knowing they've got somebody to turn to, to talk about these deep seated fears and things. Just even just to talk out loud about it. I mean, I'm wonder how much of that you witness is that actually they can coach themselves. They just need the listening ear.
Speaker 1 00:13:30 One of the guys I coach in his business, he's in his forties and he said to me, one day he goes, you know, do you know what I've loved about having you here? He said, I've gone through a lot coach. He said, you've never advised me. You've never given me advice. I said, well, I just think advice can be quite sick. I said, if, if someone's not super emotionally aware and after hitting rock bottom 10 years ago and being bankrupt, homeless and divorce and the career finished, there came a point where I had to look in the mirror and really become so self-aware and you know, I'll never advise you because unless you're not, I could be projecting a load of stuff onto you, unless I'm super aware. All I'm going to do is ask you questions. You, you have the answers. Tell me how you started the business.
Speaker 1 00:14:08 Well, I was the best salesman in the city at 22 years ago. Okay. Well that's pretty good. You must have been pretty good. Did you have loads of training? No. I said, well, that's called talent. I said, then you start a business because you think, why am I, why am I doing it for someone else? I can grow my own business. You start a couple of directors who were friends, similar minded people. And here you are 20 years on. And you've forgotten that part because things build and now you've got pressure and any laugh. The, he said, there's this thing in the city. You're not an exec director. I said, well, what is that? I love. I'm a, five-year-old like, what is a non-exec director? Someone typically sold his company or, or been successful in the certain area they'll come in and they're not impressive guys.
Speaker 1 00:14:46 I said, he said, what do you think about that? I said, for me, all I want around me is someone who is super emotionally aware of themselves because there's many people. I don't know many footballers now retired mates of mine got no chance in the coaching world. Zero chance. Multi-millionaires 300 premier league games. 400, no chance coaching because they just got through it. Sometimes they use alcohol. Sometimes they use, you know, whatever they use to get through it. They got through it and they stayed there. Now you've got to explain how you do it. You've got no chance. They don't know. And so I said, that's all I'll share on that. You do what you want with us. And you know, that's my, you know, I want to be around people. No, no, you've got the answers. You just need to clear the noise.
Speaker 0 00:15:31 Yeah. We clear the noise, but also challenge them and just, or just play some of the bullshit back to them. It was like by myself like that, there's, there's a wonderful book. You may have come across it called the coaching habit by Michael Bungay Stanier. And he talks about, we've all gotten an advice. Monster. Our advice monster runs rampant sometimes. And we busy trying to fix people, whatever. And he says, you know, you've got to check yourself your advice. Isn't as good as you think it is. And, and you're absolutely right. So you've got to play and career and everything else like this. But who's to say that what did or didn't work for drew is going to work for X, Y, or Z it's
Speaker 1 00:16:06 Well, one thing I do know, and I'll take this to the grave. There is one thing that works above all else. And I said it to just being at James co-wrote legacy. And I, I was fascinated. You've been with the all blacks for three years now I read legacy. And I said to him, there's a spiritual sense. I have a huge spiritual life. It's the bedrock of everything I do, you know, from going and being on my knees nine years ago and having all the grace of God, the abundance I have today in all areas of my life, remarried kids, beautiful house, everything I have today that came from one thing. It came in 2011. When I surrendered, I surrendered, I gave up, which for people in high-performance is, is terrifying. I don't give up. I never give up Winston Churchill. Never, never, never surrender.
Speaker 1 00:16:52 You're missing the missing the point. Is it deeper than that? I surrendered to my powerlessness. I have no power over anything, zero, nothing other than the ability to get up every morning, brush my teeth, put my shoes on and walk out the door. And if I'm asked a question, answer it and follow my truth. And you go through that whole process that I went through 11 years ago. And of course I went through the 12 steps in and anyone who knows the fellowships of addiction or AA, or very, very, for me, the most powerful, powerful process I've ever seen in my life. And the literature says, you know, doctors way back in the thirties and forties were blown away by this phenomenon of the recovered alcoholic. But obviously now there's fellowships for cocaine anonymous, shopping, anonymous, sex, anonymous, tiger woods. There's all of these things.
Speaker 1 00:17:36 So that whole process led me on then. So I'd never gone to church. Wasn't brought up in that world. There was an ego there, there was a fear there, or that that's all the religious people who are weak, but you know, I went and investigated. That lasted about a year. The vicar was a good, a good guy. He's awesome fan. And we talked to my local church and, but there came a point where I went, I love the idea of this, but you know, for me, it's, it's greater. It's something even more so than it looked at Buddhism and did a year there. I did a silent treat with monks for 48 hours, which was recommended to anybody powerful process because Hey, if you want to sit with yourself, go and be silent for 48 hours, you know, tough. So, so you start to look all this stuff.
Speaker 1 00:18:13 And then I came out of that. I'm not affiliated to any, any particular sector of religion, but I absolutely, I look at mountain ranges. I look at the ocean, I look at nature. I just think there is something so powerful at play. And then I also, I look at the best in the world. I look at little messy. He asks for thanks before the game and the chapel on the under the stadium at Barcelona is always in there before the game asking for help. After the game, he says, thank you, you, same bowl asked for help says thank you at the best. And so what are they doing? Coby, Brian, you know, all of these guys, Phil Jackson from the Lakers and the bulls, the most successful NBA coach in history, you know, there's something they're doing. And I think people are scared to talk about spiritual because, and probably I was this before, because I thought spirituality and religion were the same thing.
Speaker 1 00:18:59 And I've realized now they're completely not a sense of ease, a sense of serenity, a sense of powerlessness. It's a beautiful thing. And, and I was completely identified with my ego and drive and I need to get there. And, and I look at the days as a short film, we made for nine minutes when I released my book and actually I've cut a couple of clips up and I'm going to post them in the next few days. It's timing on it. But we went and revisited a scene that I was 28 years of age, the season before been another one of those bit of a non events club had got relegated from the football league or the players weren't wanted by anybody, but somehow not six months when the club was on their knees and we were losing games. And every point every game was a six pointer.
Speaker 1 00:19:41 I managed through self-will and drive. And this thing inside me to keep going and score a few goals. And I happened to score three goals home in a way against Maxfield town in leaks to the manager at the time was Paul in his first job, Pauline then gets the MK. Pauline's gets the MK dons job. It's a step up. And I get a call two weeks before the season. I was training by myself, really with demons. When's the club coming, when's the contract coming. And then I get a call saying, you know, we're interested coming and pulling. He said, look, I'll watch you last year. Play for a terrible crap team on their knees. What you weren't getting paid? The club was administration and you buried us home in a way single. So there's something there. He said, look, I just want to see you in a couple of games and we'll sit and talk.
Speaker 1 00:20:19 I said, no problem. Two games are very monomer league, two player. I never saw myself like that. The two games were against Chelsea and Western. Yeah. Thanks. What a trial. Can you give me some Amar level? So played against Chelsea for 45 minutes played. Well, the Westham game was three days later and I knew I'm not stupid, even though it's like, we want you, they're basically saying I need to see. I'm not sure. And you know what? Peter, I had 90 minutes and I knew that his Westham was full one, two 11 full of internationals stadium, MK, 15, 20,000 people there, 45 minutes. I was terrible. Gave away every ball. It was my fault. We were one nil down. It was my man from the corner ups. And it was a good mate of mine at the time as well. He ran off me and I got blocked.
Speaker 1 00:21:00 He scored, everyone looks at you in the, in the boat. He whose man is that is his. So I'm sitting there at half time and he just comes in volleys, all the water bottles everywhere. And you know you lot. And then turns to me, he said, you've not won a header. You've not kept the ball. What have you done? So you've got 10 minutes and you're done. And then he goes on to someone else. And I'm, I remember just, you feel drunk, like the fear because you feel drunk because your head spinning your family's in a stand one. Week's time. The season starts and I don't have a contract. I've just had my last paid six days, 10 minutes. And I remember just stumbling. We video this and I stumbled to the toilet. Cubicle opened the door in my kit, sat on the toilet seat, head in the hands.
Speaker 1 00:21:40 And all the voices were ramping. You're finished. You're done. You're a joker. You're you're, you're not good enough. And then this, this voice, this feeling deep down was really empathetic. And it, when, what are you doing? What are you doing? Coming here, trying to fit in with this nice stadium in Milton Keynes and the white kit and Westham and playing little passes and fitting in. That's not who you are. He saw you last year when you weren't getting paid. When you were in a dog fight and you were core and scrap and clash heads and do whatever it took to win, get up and go and do that. And I remember just getting up. I wouldn't say burst out the door. I got up and that's true. Put some water on my face, said to one of the players stopped playing little balls into my feet.
Speaker 1 00:22:26 I'm getting killed in that. That's not my skill. Hang it up. Let me go and bully the two center half. Let me put an elbow across someone. Let me see if they actually want to fight. He did it first had a bang straight across collins' face. He went down, it starts off a riot inches, Wolf whistle me and game on. And we won the game three, two made one score, one, get to your contract. And you know, I remember sitting at home, the tragedy is, I didn't know what I'd done. Didn't know what I'd done. So couldn't recreate. I knew I did that go, but I didn't know what I didn't know about. Talk about spirituality. I somehow something somewhere whispered to me, have courage be you be you. And that's all I know. I don't think much deeper than that. So actually the stuff I do with guys is try to take them to that place. Like, what is this saying? What's going on? I'm not good enough. We're going to lose the company. We'll have six accounts. Okay. Now tell me about you. What do you do? What are you great at?
Speaker 0 00:23:21 It's fascinating to me because over the course of the episodes on this podcast, I think this will be like episode 22 or 23. Gratitude comes up time and time again, and a form of mindfulness or spirituality called it. Love what you will. And yet, if we could just harness the result of that introspection and that going there to come back to self, if we could tap into that, wouldn't it be great. But we seem to have to go as a human condition. We have to go through that hardship. We have to be at that crucible event when you've got 10 minutes to go and everything is on the line to wake up to self. You know, if you and I could of kind of find a way of, to so bodily, you don't need to go through that. But then again, it is the process of going through that, that actually strengthens you and we become better for it. But it's, it's ironic that we have to reach the lowest low before we can actually then assess.
Speaker 1 00:24:15 Well, it's really interesting. And I think you're right. I saw a poster the day by Kevin Davis, the X Bolton center forward. Now he's an agent and they're very successful career play for England. And he did a post. It's very powerful on LinkedIn saying, I've just been told about one of my young players that he's too nice, too soft, and yet he's driven and he's hungry. And he said, I'm really interested by everyone out there. What are your thoughts? And I repost it. That was me. It was told me many times too nice. I went to private school was intelligent guy and two nights because I spoke well and didn't want to hurt anybody. And you know, I, but then five years later acting then internationals would be saying to me, I'm signing you. Cause you're a nasty bastard. Okay. Well, I didn't know, really, not really a nice guy, but what they're actually saying, not saying, but saying is that you just don't go under, I've seen you play.
Speaker 1 00:25:02 You're relentless. That's what they're really saying. You know? And, and I didn't know if you fathom me. So my point is not. How do young players working with the Liverpool? And when you open clock first came in and he was out the team, you know, he wanted to impress and he was right on the cusp of it. And I said, look, go and speak to club. See, see what his views are. Find out. Can you still do that? Or at that level now, is it all you have to go through three PIs. And he said, no, no. I can still knock on the manager's door. He knocked on the manager's door cop said to him, you haven't had enough pain in your life and looked. And he said, the best players had with pain tackle with pain, run with pain, fight with pain, make love with pain.
Speaker 1 00:25:40 And he went his crop. You can imagine does. And he came in his car and he rang me straight away in the car. So what did he say to young enough pain? I said, he's right. I said, now, here it is. Cause I had this know I'm not paying. And I said, do you need to have come from the slums of when his areas, do you need to be a rape to the child? No. Do you need to be molested? No. Do you need to be from divorced parents? No. I said, but at some point in your journey from 10 to now, you're 18. You've been let down by the coaches. You will, you are half allowed to go to you allow to half, go to the code. You allow to pass the ball at 80% speed. You were allowed to. I said, now you've got a manager who will revolutionize this football club.
Speaker 1 00:26:20 Cause I've been watching them at Dortmund. I said, what's he likes, it's just relentless. He said like, if he said he's, he's good. He's a nice guy. He said, if it drops by a second in training and care, if you've played a hundred games, Raj and Tina, stop, go again, get, get to that Colac. It's going to blow up, go. And he said, all of a sudden we are just, boom, boom, boom. Everyone said, no. I said, well, you've been let down. No one's shown you the way they've shown you technically and tactically. And they haven't shown you how brutal this career is. And this life isn't, we never have a day off and all that stuff. So I think it can be done. I look at my children. I look at the young guys I work with my main objective is how quickly can I drag them to pain, their pain, their pain inside them? How much do you want to make it?
Speaker 0 00:27:07 No, I totally agree with this because you know, and we shouldn't mistake this with, we're not creating cultures of brutality and everything. That's the problem. People think that it's not. Yeah, no. They, they think that and that that's old school. It is gotta be no, it's not. And the parallel for me in my sort of military career and my sort of Ironman sort of pursuits is that you've got to learn what it's like to suffer. When you understand how much you can suffer, you begin to tap into that 30 or 40% that a lot of these professionals are telling you. I know I can go to, but if you've never been there, you'll never be able to access it. Or you'll never be able to step into courage from fear because your fear threshold or is too low, your suffering threshold is too low. So you have to learn how to suffer, where you have to learn how to do all these things that you're talking about.
Speaker 1 00:27:58 And you're so right, Peter, thank you. And then you take me back to the original thing, the depiction of Christ on the cross. Now, whether a guy called Jesus lived didn't live. Whatever is it as an image of suffering, the Buddha said life is suffering. So all the signposts are going the same way other people ignore them because I don't believe this guy did this and then was resurrected, believe whatever you want, but I'm not going to depict this image, which is the image of humanity. There's something going on. So suffering life is suffering. And I think that's really important. And I'm sure with my children, I want to take them. They're suffering. You know, I, I can't do the monkey bars. Daddy. There was when, when she was three, my daughter in a park and she too, and I used to support her along the monkey bars.
Speaker 1 00:28:41 You know, there's a lot of dads and then I'd let it go. I can do it self willing. And then she falls and stacks it into the wood chips. And I, it wasn't that, but I did this three or four times. And then this lady in a push chair came across the funniest, disgusting and four or five other mother mothers with their coffees. I said, what's disgusting. You're letting your daughter fall. Look, she's crying. I said, and she looked at me. I said, any blood honey? And she went, no blood daddy. I said, just pain. Then let's go again. And you know, now don't get me wrong. I would question myself. I'd be like, is this a bit extreme? But no, I'm not dropping her off the top of a building. You know what I mean? It's like wood chips and you know what? And I said to this woman, I said, it's pain and it's good. Cause someday a guy's going to break her heart someday. She's not going to be good enough at math someday. She's not gonna sit. And she would, she would lick her lips and go a suffering again. Let's, let's go.
Speaker 0 00:29:31 I mean, very much linked to so growth mindset and allowing, allowing our kids to fail and encourage them to put the effort in to experience what failure is like, because then that points the way as to what to do differently. Next time. Of course, you know, it's interesting. You talk about, you know, taking the young professionals to, to a point of pain and suffering in my military career, we had the outage of a train, hard fight, easy, you know? So in training we make it as hard as possible. You know, you finished a route March and there's the, there's the, the, the truck to take you back to barracks. And as you go to step on it, the driver just pulls away and say, Oh, by the way, we're going to March the next six miles back to barracks. And it was to test those that would just go, do you know what? Fuck it. And throw their toys out there. And then as soon as that happened, the truck was only parked around the corner and everyone got onto it, but it was like testing you are you prepared to go and do that six miles? Are you prepared to go to that other cone there if I tell you to, and it's the reaction and it's so much about character and everything like that is there.
Speaker 1 00:30:29 I know, I realize I've got that ultimate character. And I think every manager who signed me would have said the same thing. Character is ridiculous. You know, work ethic, ridiculous. You know, Rinaldo works as hard as Rinaldo. No doubt about it. Anyone who played with him, he said, this guy's a lunatic. He gets in three hours before everyone else leaves four hours later. You know, it didn't have alcohol, didn't have sugar, didn't have, you know, obsessive narcissistic, all those things. What I didn't have that he has quite the talent aside. He has talents that I didn't have, but I had my own in my area. But what he has, which the gold dust, which gets missed time and time and time again on the Instagram culture of visual training, what he has is courage. It's easy now at 35, he's been there and done it.
Speaker 1 00:31:09 But 1920, 21, when he was at United, you know, trying all those fancy step overs in the corner. And he used to get smashed by a full back and you know, the fans were on him and you can imagine, you don't know, but Roy Keane, you can imagine barking at this young good-looking Portuguese kid with white boots doing, but, but you know, you had Ferguson there to nurture that, but also he went and got the ball again and again and again, you know, and that's, that's the courage, isn't it to go and say, this is me. I'm not. And you see a lot of players who are talented. You have as much flair and talent as Rinaldo. There's loads of them, but when they do their, their skill, whatever it is, and it messes up, they're going to get hammered by the coach players, fans, a lot of them then in Congo, I'm not going, I'm not going to do the same thing in two minutes later. And that's the difference I think, and a lot of them could do if you got inside them early enough and showed them that route because they've got the desire. You know, I don't know if that makes sense.
Speaker 0 00:32:04 No, it does. It does. And I think I'd just like to talk about your, your sort of the latest project that you're working on now, which is this helping them in that moment where they need help to tell us about this project. So I think what you're doing is fantastic, but you're harnessing modern technology and phone apps and all that kind of stuff. Give us a sense of what this project is all about. That you're renting.
Speaker 1 00:32:23 When it came to me probably about 18 months ago, because I'm probably a, might've been at my limit footballers for years now. And then you bring the businesses in which I do two days a week. It's relentless with the players' voice notes, WhatsApps. I watched their games back on it, on the technological, why scalp? And I'm all the games within 24 hours and, you know, voice hubs. So either on constant call, you couldn't do 15 a week, 12 a week. So it's the plastic one-to-one max and use it. And it just came to me that what the players need, what am I dealing with all day? You're dealing with that. You're showing them the way in the moment when all the noise around them is fear-based and you're clearing the noise. So I thought, how can I do that? Well, then it just came to me.
Speaker 1 00:33:00 If I can. I wrote down every single emotion that I remember from a training ground from matches from coaches, hotels, that then I looked at all the ones in real time, as players are talking to me, I'd scribble them down and I've got a two, 300 and it's like, okay, let me then create a video for each one. Let me then try and find someone famous or a top player talking about the same thing. And then let me, so imagining kid in America, wherever can open that phone out and go, Oh, drew say that. What, what does bang, you know, because I've just been told X, Y, and Z, I've just been told whatever you do to that. I don't want you doing that. Make sure you do this. Yeah. My instinct is he's going, I disagree with all of that. I want you to follow your instinct, you know?
Speaker 1 00:33:41 So if they can have an ability to pick up the smartphone, even under their towel in the dressing room and just quickly, because you can do all that in the dressing room, you know, Nick off to the toilet and quickly have a look. And so, yeah, if I can have that, and then obviously inside there, we're going to do all loads of stuff daily with me and some workshops, various bits and bytes, but that's really the heartbeat of it. You know, if guys can have that real time access to, if they trust what I say to cut through all the noise and go, I'm going that way. I'm going to go that way, because that feels right to me. Not that Drew's telling me that it's like what he says, echoes what my inner soul is saying. And my voice is saying inside, I'm going to go that way. So yeah,
Speaker 0 00:34:23 I guess it's like, this is normal that I'm not alone in this, even if it's a sense of, do you know what I'm not? Yeah. Other people have worried about this before that in itself is a massive relief. Right? I can kind of park that now. And if it does that, that would be great. You talked about the 12 step process with addiction previously, the 12th step. If my understanding is that not sort of paying it forward and helping somebody else on.
Speaker 1 00:34:45 Absolutely. So step 12 is to give back. I've sponsored eight, nine guys over the years, and it's always a difficult one because you know a battle with this, you're paying it forward. You're giving back now take what you have and give back. But then also, you know, there's a lot of value in what I do. And actually you read into the, into the deeper literature and in no way is that don't monetize from this situation because I'm not, I'm not doing addiction recovery. There's no way I'm doing that with anybody. Not, not in the world. I work in not, you know, I do that separately. I still go to meetings, 12 step meetings, and I still sponsor one guy. And that's a different conversation, but yeah, this is, this is using all my, and I feel it was my calling to go through those 17 years to learn every single scenario in football to be so sensitive that I absorbed everything.
Speaker 1 00:35:31 I didn't just get to the end of my career and go, yeah, I'm here. Now. I had a good career. I get what you get a lot of ex players. It doesn't that I, to all those gains, it doesn't matter that I was a football. And what matters is that I can still remember how it all feels a client client this morning, just getting ready to go to the game. I, I was up and I just said to him about fear us. It's nine years, 10 years since I was in a dressing room. And yes, I can remember. I can close my eyes and remember how it feels 10 minutes into the game, 20 minutes. I can remember, but actually spending half an hour in silence this morning, I can really remember. And then we were just talking this morning about when you get to bed till three o'clock, when is on your week been good, but the fears on me that's course courses, because you want to get to the top.
Speaker 1 00:36:13 I said, there should be a bucket load of that stuff at your door guy, and you're not going to get there. That's how do you get through that? You have to accept it. You have to embrace the fact that it'll always be the same. Now, what can you do? Don't isolate yourself. Don't stick. M&M in your headphones angry, but the world I'm going to fight. They get all that psyching yourself up. Be part of the dressing room, sit with a couple of large talk to people, fight for something bigger than you fight for your team. The club don't make it about you and you'll get your rewards. You know? So
Speaker 0 00:36:40 As we kind of draw to, to UN how is all this helping you
Speaker 1 00:36:45 And your ongoing
Speaker 0 00:36:47 During recovery, if you like, or just making sense of life or how has this helped?
Speaker 1 00:36:53 I think he's exactly where I need to be. I feel that this is exactly what I mean. I remember someone very close to me during my football career when I'd had another Tuesday night game. It wasn't so big and I'd fallen out with the manager often again, came back home. And I remember saying, I'm done now falling out with this guy and this guy. And they said to me that you will be a far better coach than you ever will be a player. So it hurt. I had at the time, because I still thought I could get to the top of that time, 26, 27. But they were right. They were right. So I think I'm exactly where I need to be. I don't use this to fix me. Even if someone said, where's the book cathartic. I said, no. I said, because I'd just done seven years of therapy and rehab is that I'd worked through all my shit. That was just an account of, so I certainly, I certainly am not fixing people. I'm very super aware with all the work I've done on myself. I've referred two or three guys out to therapists. You know, I'm not a therapist, I'm just a guy sharing. What helps me is my, is my work in the morning still? It's not who I work with is my stuff. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 0 00:37:51 Totally. With you on that one too. It's been absolutely amazing talking to you. If people want to kind of find out more about you and the work you do, what's the best way of
Speaker 1 00:38:00 LinkedIn, I guess. But Instagram of got a guy helping me there now, and I'm now in the tick-tock space and it's, it's incredible, you know, you're around these digital thinkers and they're seeing the grind, no Tik TOK is a new thing because it's, you know, you start to look at so all of these spaces, I'm on all of them. And, you know, I will be talking about when I finished my platform, you know, I'll be on all my channels, talking about exactly what I use and extracts and all that stuff.
Speaker 0 00:38:28 Well, great. Thank you so much for being on the show today. It's been amazing. I feel like we could just continue talking, going some the depth says, so perhaps I'd really look forward to perhaps doing that again, sometime in the future with you mate, enjoy yourself out there and Bruce and that young family of yours. And I thank you so much for your time. Thanks,
Speaker 2 00:38:46 Please. Don't keep
Speaker 0 00:38:49 The things I love about being a podcast show host is you get to chat and meet so many fascinating people. And drew is no exception there, uh, really enjoyed his fundability, his brutal honesty and the courage to accept that having been tipped and destined for a great playing career as a young man, it never quite worked out for him, but equally it's brought him to this point through all the trials and tribulations in his life to a place of service and helping those who are currently in the sport, not only the young guys, but also those that are more seasoned professionals deal with the pressures that come with being an elite level sports, professional footballer, and, and also I'm really interested to see this platform that he is developing as a way of paying it forward and being of service in that moment when the player needs it most. So I hope you enjoyed that one. And as ever, if you'd like to get in touch, then please hop on over to Peter Lewis, coaching.com suggest which guests you'd like me to feature on the podcast and equally what subjects you'd like me to explore. But in the meantime, thank you so much for being a listener and I'll see you on the next one.
