GREG BARDEN

Greg’s notes

• Royal Marines – official website
• Special Boat Service – youtube link (short clip)
• ‘Why we all need to find the rebel within!’ Greg Barden’s TEDx Talk – youtube link

General notes

• ‘Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World’ by David Epstein – amazon link
• An introduction to ‘Range’ by the author David Epstein – youtube link (short clip)
• ‘Making sense of bitcoin, cryptocurrency and blockchain.’ – PwC article
• ‘How 1% Performance Improvements Led to Olympic Gold.’ – article link
• Jay Shetty’s Think Out Loud interview with Ben Ryan – youtube link
• Erwin Valencia’s podcast with Ben Ryan – podcast link

Rugby notes

• ‘From the French Foreign Legion to the Top 14, meet Tavite Veredamu.’ – article link in Rugby World
• Sevens Uncovered: England’s flyer Dan Norton – youtube link
• Mat Turner – Sevens Top try-scorer, 2011/12 – youtube link

GREG BARDEN

Greg Barden 00:00
It was ultimately the military that caught my eye as a 12,13 year old, having been given a book on the Royal Marines, which I became fascinated with and in particular two last pages, which was out of quite a large book, but it was just two pages at the very end with a dark illustration of two guys coming out of the water, and it was all talking about the SBS or you know, Special Forces and from there on I just became fixated on wanting to achieve that and become a) a Royal Marine, which was the path to become an operator in the SBS.

Ben Ryan 00:41
So were you pretty laser-focused then from a young age to do that?

Greg Barden 00:45
I spoke to my family about it just to…you see, through your own eyes maybe that wasn’t the case but my mum said that I took a paper round and instead of, you know, I used to get up a half four in the morning thinking that’s what you had to do. Oversimplifying it, but just in preparation, and she said, you broke it down that’s what you thought you had to do to ultimately prepare yourself for that journey as a… going from school, to then join the Marines at 16 which is what I inevitably did. But I felt, yeah, from that 12,13-year-old even though I loved sport in that time and football Actually, I didn’t play rugby, which I know we’ll come on to, in my childhood really apart from a brief spell in Wales when I went to school, but it was always football that caught my eye, I was a goalkeeper stroke striker sometimes.

Ben Ryan 01:35
Yeah, I can see that because you’re six foot three. Pretty agile.

Greg Barden 01:39
Yeah. Absolutely loved sport but I’ve always… the military was my drive, certainly in my young teens, all the way through to joining the Marines at 16 and school was a bit of a distraction for me actually, unfortunately, was never that academically focused, which I kind of regret a little bit in the business world now but I’m making up for lost time I think…

Ben Ryan 02:07
Yeah, it’s funny that, I’ve listened to and read a lot recently around education and actually how much of it is useful to what we’re doing now. You say that you regret that but is there anything that that you didn’t do there that you’re now missing out on having set up and run a successful business for a number of years?

Greg Barden 02:25
Maybe not? I think, you know, school has a spectrum that it can I think, you know, the curriculum and how it gets taught, maybe doesn’t fit every single individual. It is incredibly hard for them to set a curriculum and I think, a process that works for every individual, it just didn’t work for me, you know, I get bored incredibly quickly…

Ben Ryan 02:45
Were you naughty or…?

Greg Barden 02:46
Yes, that was one of the outcomes or outputs of being bored in class, but there were certain teachers that were very practical focused and that would always get the best out of out of me, where much more academic teachers, more textbook based and all that, you know, I’d instantly switch off, so, which then has an impact, I think later on in life but through business, now, I’ve got this appetite for reading and just consuming as much information, maybe relatively superficial level, because you’re trying to apply it in the context of what you’re doing. So by no means become an expert in any, in any particular area, and we can cover some of them off, you know, we were talking about crypto off air, you know, which, you know, you could probably spend the rest of your life just trying to understand not only the technical parts or elements of it, but also how it’s going to be applied from an economic point of view in the future, which has fascinated me and has caught our attention. But yeah, it’s certainly something that we’ve not gone down and we’ve pulled out of at the moment…

Ben Ryan 03:56
Yeah, there’s a… I wish, my memories in short term is terrible but there is a book I’ve read recently, that I’ll stick in the show notes that basically has the argument that it’s not about having that depth of knowledge in one particular subject. It’s about having that width across things, maybe not to a huge depth, but that modern, you know, modern living, modern society and being successful. A lot of those successful people have that trait, that they’ve got a knowledge across a number of things.

Greg Barden 04:24
Yeah. I think from my limited experience in the business world, I would say that that proves very beneficial. It allows you to make more formal decisions, even if you haven’t got, you know, the exact knowledge that you require. It adds something which, whether it’s a gut instinct but because you’ve got all these touch points that you can connect those dots in some form that allows you to make tough decisions often. It’s not foolproof, and I think I could probably talk a lot about the failures that we’ve already had as a business, which has nearly cost the business and it’s only through perhaps, perseverance, which I think again, I’d love to talk to you about, that can get you through some of those periods.

Ben Ryan 05:13
Well, I guess maybe perseverance might cover the next bit then if we reverse back to when you were at school then and how old are you allowed to be to go into the Marines?

Greg Barden 05:23
Think it’s changed now? I think it’s gone to 18 but you were allowed to be 16.

Ben Ryan 05:27
Okay, how old, how old were you?

Greg Barden 05:29
I was just turned 16.

Ben Ryan 05:31
Wow.

Greg Barden 05:31
So I was 16 and three months.

Ben Ryan 05:33
Yeah, I mean, that’s crazy to think. When I was 16 I was just going into the sixth form in a comprehensive in South London and I could just about getting myself on the bus to get to school and wear the right tie, and you were in the Royal Marines, which, can you talk to me a little bit about that, and perhaps how that… how easy it was to get into that and then the next stage?

Greg Barden 05:54
The Royal Marines, in particular, was a different challenge, because you’re making that jump from being a kid, with your parents doing a lot of stuff for you, a big support group around you, and teachers and friends to then literally getting on a train going down to Exmouth or Lympstone for the Royal Marines and getting your head shaved, getting put into a dormitory with 60 other blokes and then taking you back to the most basic level. I always remember one particular moment getting a demonstration of how to shower and as a 16-year-old watching a man in his 30s, like butt naked in front of you, showing you how to clean all your privates and you know, just looking around going wow. But there’s a process and what they are achieving is trying to strip everyone back to a baseline to then build you up so you’ve all got the same values, standards, etc. So, so yeah, so that… it was an interesting challenge, because you’re, as much as you want to be, I was there to be, you know, to qualify to become a Royal Marine, there’s a huge personal thing going on here as well where you’re trying to detach from your, your, your safety, you know, this, I think, you know, you talk about this a lot in creating this culture of safety around you and that, as a kid, is your parents and your immediate friends and family and you’ve got to literally sever that, and then somehow create these, this new environment around strangers and stuff…

Ben Ryan 07:28
Did you take to that quickly?

Greg Barden 07:30
No, I found it really hard actually… as much as I said I was obsessed with the Royal Marines and wanting to join it but I found it really hard, actually, because you’re learning not only all these basic new skills and how to live, but you’re also trying to develop as well as a, you know, from a soldier point of view, in the context of a Royal Marine, so, it was a hard, it’s an eight-month course split, really over a year. It’s the longest infantry training in the world so it’s highly regarded for the right reasons, I think in terms of what it takes you through and what comes out the other end.

Ben Ryan 08:09
Yeah and then you were in the Royal Marines for a reasonably short period of time before you went to do special force selection. Was that a couple of years?

Greg Barden 08:19
It was yeah and it’s kind of unprecedented, actually, because you tend to need a lot more experience and, and maturity, actually and… but again, the reason why I wanted to join the Royal Marines was to go on that journey and to try and join the SBS. So it was a… managed to get a couple of tours. I went to South America went into the jungle in Belize for six weeks, did a humanitarian relief when Hurricane Mitch came through Central America and we went to Nicaragua and Honduras then went on r&r to Cancun and up the east coast of America as this like 17 or 18 year old experiencing the world, which was pretty phenomenal and then went to Kosovo as a Royal Marine from 4/5 Commando which is based up in Arbroath and spent seven months out there actually doing post-conflict, but doing some reconnaissance works, work for war crimes etc and stuff and in that time, I’ve got to apply to join the special boat service which is a process to get even selected…

Ben Ryan 09:36
Even selected to go on to the selection.

Greg Barden 09:39
Yeah, so Royal Marines, they you know, they’ve really, you know, they don’t let anyone just go on the course, you go and do an aptitude which is a two-week course down in Poole, which in itself was, it’s fairly brutal, I would say… it’s a week of… well it was a week of diving and I don’t mean diving where you go down with, you know and look at some fish and stuff. This is kind of combat diving where they show you how to put a LA 5, don’t want to get too technical here ok but it’s a rebreather. So basically it’s, there’s no bubbles come off it but it’s like breathing out of a crisp packet, a very small, crisp packet and if you’re not used to it, it’s, it’s a difficult and claustrophobic bit of kit and they would just chuck you in an old torpedo range down in Portsmouth and swimming up and down is this thing until you run out of air basically just to see if you had… see what your mentality was like, I suppose. The second week is all about canoeing and sleep deprivation and just being wet and salty and sandy down in Poole and they just see where they can take you mentally, I think but not just… when I was preparing my thoughts for this and I think people have got this pre-conception of the military and, and certainly with special forces, this isn’t the case where people are telling you what to do, people are shouting you and that is not what Special Forces are… it’s all about self-motivation. You are understanding yourself more, more than more than anything. So you don’t have someone to tell you to get up and do something. It’s like no… if you want to do that, that’s, that’s your choice but you’ve got to want to do it and that’s, that’s what… how the course is designed actually.

Ben Ryan 11:35
I guess that means for both the courses then when you go to special forces it’s a case of almost that you withdraw, rather than you’re told that selections done.

Greg Barden 11:46
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So that, I think, having spoken to a few friends about this as well of how we’ve all perceived it, and how it’s been designed the actual main course, so you pass that aptitude, then you get to go on what is called now ‘joint selection’ between the SBS and the SAS and that’s split into different components to test different areas of you as a human being but the overriding theme is that it’s very much self-motivating. If you want to be there, then there’s only a, I would say a couple of reasons that you would fail and that is, primarily you fail yourself and that’s the biggest reason for people not passing, that mentally you outthink yourself or whatever. And you end up withdrawing.. it’s fascinating.

Ben Ryan 12:43
It is fascinating and I’d love to talk a bit more about that. It just reminded me of a conversation I had with one of the French sevens boys Tavite Verandamu who is a Fijian but went across to France to join the French Foreign Legion. And if you, if you drop out there, you’ve got to go to the top of the hill and ring a bell in front of everyone and he said it’s that embarrassment that stops a lot of them wanting to do it because they just do not want to give up in front of everybody but that’s you know, you don’t get pulled out by anybody else. It’s your own choice, I guess.

Greg Barden 13:11
Yeah, well, there’s a, there’s another element to it, I found that when you start and this is a… I’ve never really explored this from a psychology point of view so it’ll be interesting to get your thoughts, where you actually in the process of going through selection when people withdraw it gives you more motivation in that moment it’s incredibly selfish but it’s true, like, if you think you see someone you think ‘God they are their shit hot, you know, they’re really good soldier at tough you know, nails’ and all sudden you see no I’ve had enough and you go ‘oh’ and it kind of makes you reflect in that moment….God if, if that person is withdrawn am I that little bit tougher or mentally stronger and it kind of gives you a little bit more wind in your sails….

Ben Ryan 13:57
Yeah, that’s really interesting. I don’t know, I’m sure a psychologist, Austin Swain who was on the pod recently, I’m sure he would be able to give us some theory around that but I kind of… I can see from an instinctive point of view that when people are dropping out around you, it somehow fuels your fire, gives you energy and gives you confidence in your competence maybe?

Greg Barden 14:18
Yeah, but it’s certainly from what… I think we’ll come on to this but from the team perspective it’s a very individualist way of thinking and you try and break it down. But I think that that comes out in the wash, actually, when you finish selection, and you kind of can draw a line and everyone’s above that and you kind of know who’s standing next to you, behind you and I think it’s something that I have, I failed to actually realise and to quantify in the right way when I came into the rugby world because there’s different pressures and attributes outside of military that get applied to you as an individual. So commercial pressures, for example, playing for country, your net contract, you know, for your livelihood, where in the military you don’t have any of that… you kind of certainly from Special Forces, you pass that selection, and everyone’s there kind of, for the same reasons and with the same mentality. So you don’t tend to think about other people and what is motivating them, what’s driving them and where they are on that mental curve, which I think when I reflect back now, from the business point of view, and then to rugby, and then to military, there is a slight disconnect and is something that I think it’d be quite interesting to explore.

Ben Ryan 15:41
Yeah, definitely. Just go back to the selection, then is it a two-part process still? Or is it this…

Greg Barden 15:48
It’s more or less a year long process and it’s broken down into key phases. So you have the hills phase, which is run up in the Brecon Beacons, then jungle, and you have continuation phases where you do escape and evasion, parachuting and some other specific skillsets…

Ben Ryan 16:07
And if you pass stage one, the hills phase, but then I’ve got a friend that passed stage one and his feet gave up on him basically, just got such bad blisters that he couldn’t do the next phase, you can’t then have that in the bank as credit. If you want to do selection, again, you got to go back to the start again?

Greg Barden 16:26
You do… at any point, if you withdraw or get withdrawn, then you have to go back and go through the whole process, again, which can take you know, one or two years and it’s… you can either be very lucky, you know, because ultimately, it’s in your own control but there are external factors like injuries, personality clashes, actually, you know, if you don’t have that kind of right values or ethos that the selection kind of pulls that out of people. It’s not foolproof and some people do get through that process even that you could question don’t have the right ethos or values but I would say, in general, it’s a, it’s a really good process to take people through in the context of what you’re asking people to do on the other side and who you get out of that whole process.

Ben Ryan 17:26
And you’ve gone through it, as I don’t know if you still are, but you certainly were at the time the youngest ever to go through special force selection. What would you say was the hardest part for you? Was it the physical or the mental?

Greg Barden 17:38
It was mentally, for sure. Physically, I was yeah, I think I was one of the strongest in the hills. Jungle you know, I love that stuff, the physical side. For me, I knew even before I went on, on selection, I remember saying to one of my good friends who was much senior to me and said, I want to go and do selection and he said like no chance, you’ve got no experience, you need to build up more, you know, and his reason was it was more about him because he had failed etc and stuff so he expressed his thoughts to me and kind of… didn’t actually create doubt in me actually drove me on but I was very conscious all the way through that because of my age, and that I was vulnerable and they were looking at me to, they were looking at me for any excuses that they could relate to an age thing or immaturity. I remember one time I was in Hereford and I got there on a Sunday and this was after the jungle so if you pass the jungle you tend to be able to get through the rest you’ve kind of passed that, is the big tick if you get through you know six to seven weeks of jungle training. I went out one night on the Sunday as I got back and got a little bit drunk and did a liaison that night and didn’t wake up in time to get back in and I remember one of the DS the you know the people taking you through the course, the head guy actually, pulled me aside as I got there you know not in the best condition thinking that’s it I’m done you know I’ve… this is the one thing that they were looking for but he said, like, you gonna get a bollocking take it on the chin but luckily didn’t get kicked off the course.

Ben Ryan 19:40
Yeah and things like sleep deprivation. Do you deal with that pretty well?

Greg Barden 19:47
Really interesting. I remember when we were going with England sevens you got the, I can’t remember the company you pulled in… Yeah, what to measure your, whether you’re kind of an early riser, late riser, it’s called a per two tests, a saliva test where I think Brett our physio had to get you guys up every hour didn’t they… like literally get you up every hour and I think we did it before we were maybe flying to New Zealand so if you were tired, it wasn’t too bad you could sleep on the flight and it was to collect saliva to then get… work out whether you were an owl or a lark, where, you know, I think the research back then was like, if you’re a normal riser, kind of you’re at your deepest sleep around 4am and if you’re a late riser 6am and if you’re early riser 2am roughly and so we were just trying to get that so we could maybe room people, understand a little bit when people were at their best, I don’t think, I was glad I wasn’t the one waking people up to do those saliva tests! So that’s why you put Dan Norts and Mat Turner together…

Ben Ryan 20:43
Exactly, I’ve got a pretty good so… Dan Norton, England and the leading try scorer in world sevens and Mat Turner who was also, I think maybe in that year, he might have been top try scorer…

Greg Barden 20:54
He was I think, yeah,

Ben Ryan 20:55
Yeah, they were, they liked a lie in I think would be a fair assessment.

Greg Barden 20:59
Maybe an understatement!

Ben Ryan 21:00
Yeah, so we’d put them together in a room so that at least, you know, we knew which room to bang on when they hadn’t turned up for training.

Greg Barden 21:08
Indeed and I was with Tom Powell actually

Ben Ryan 21:11
Okay and he was an early…

Greg Barden 21:14
He was and you know, we’re still good friends having slept in the same room for how many God knows how many nights? That was an interesting….

Ben Ryan 21:23
So are you an early riser back from, I mean, we could… this is another area, you know, genetically, you know, there’s research saying that if your parents, you know, did shift work, for example, a nurse or worked in the collieries back in the day that actually genetically you could be disposed to be an early riser or have or have unusual sleeping patterns. It’s fascinating, all of that. But you also at the same point, your sleep in the military can’t have been straightforward nice eight, nine hours a night, you would have had very distressed sleeping patterns.

Greg Barden 21:56
Yeah, I think I always remember, well interesting that test, I was really flatline so I never spiked or dipped below a certain level and I do it now, I have a watch that measures my sleep and I don’t actually get into a deep sleep. I’m not, I don’t need it…

Ben Ryan 22:17
Maybe you’re in that small, there’s again, stuff that I’ve read that there’s a small percentage of society, about 5% I think maybe even less, that require very little sleep to be working well. I’ve got, I’ve got a friend, I’ve got more than one friend hopefully, but I’ve got a friend that is definitely in that category… two or three hours, you know, he works in the city and he can have 16, 17 hours at his desk, no problem, and only needs a couple of hours. Are you in that category? Are you closer to that than needing 8 hours?

Greg Barden 22:49
I’m not in that category, I would say I’d need five, six hours but if I have five or six, I can get up and bounce out of bed and crack on for the day. But I do need sleep, you know, and you know, so I wouldn’t go to that extreme but I certainly don’t need to have like deep sleep and I’ve been monitoring it throughout the years but it’s interesting. I don’t know where that comes from, whether it is from hereditary or you know, through the military, but um, it was a funny… as part of selection, you do an escape and evasion phase and then you go on to an interrogation phase, which I can’t talk about specifically but it is about sleep deprivation and before you go in, you get into such… where they prepare you and say look, you know, certain points there will be, what you say like, this is a trigger. So it means that it’s no longer, you’re no longer under sort of in the exercise mode but you go through this whole phase and you become, go through these different interrogation techniques, etc and stuff which are fascinating in itself, how your mind deals with it and or in some cases, how it doesn’t and how it hallucinates through sleep deprivation and you so quickly doubt yourself, just because you can’t compute properly, your brains fatigued and it’s not thinking as it normally would. And I remember it would come to the end of it, I didn’t know and you’d been going through these stress positions and white noise being played to you for God knows how many hours… malnutrition you haven’t been eating properly for two weeks and the chief instructor took my blindfold off and he said like Greg, that’s it, end of exercise and I was in complete denial, complete denial, just in such that train of thought or in that process that I wouldn’t… I think it’s all games and it’s a something that once you get through and people talk about it and what people do and they literally have to kick you out and put us a sausage sandwich in your hand to try and bring you out of it but it’s fascinating from a psychological point of view where your mind goes and what you do for that self-preservation.

Ben Ryan 25:14
Does that mean that you’ve kind of from those experiences, you’ve got confidence that you’re, you’re really resilient, that you know, you can deal with high levels of stress and would you be able to, like compartmentalize it? Or how would you deal with that, when that comes up when you face those stresses? Not those stresses, but you know, in general life?

Greg Barden 25:33
Yeah, I’ve, I think, especially in business, actually, businesses, I think, from a mental point of view, it has been one of the hardest things and it comes down to money, actually, which I think I felt more stress in throughout my time as a founder of a company and trying to make something come to life through the sins I’m making but it’s the stress that has come through different parts of the journey… I’ve always found that I deal with in a very specific way and it’s, it’s really, really simplistic in that, through the military I always think life is incredibly short but it’s also very simple and I only have to in a moment of stress drop tools, go out and go for a walk or run and that is my immediate trigger to just pull myself out of whatever hole I’m going down and go ‘what is the worst that can happen here’ and it’s just knowing that, as long as you’re doing something good, or trying to do something good, like, what’s the worst that can happen actually, you fail? Okay, I fail and I failed so many times in my life in on specific things and strategies within business, not getting selected for the Dubai World Cup with you as coach and dealing with those situations, maybe not, not stress related but certainly disappointment related. If you can go through a process that works for you. I think, like I said, mine’s incredibly simplistic, but it works for me.

Ben Ryan 27:13
Yeah, I mean, I, I have a similar outlook on things, I kind of look at it and go, what is the worst that can happen and twinned with often if I’m anxious before something, I’ve a mantra that I’ve heard a few times; the anticipation is always worse than the participation, you know and that’s really true and kind of have to just remind yourself that it’s also right to feel uncomfortable sometimes because often, I don’t know about you but I’ve certainly made some of my best choices from being uncomfortable and feeling unsure about whether this is the right thing to do but you come out the other end of it, and you feel like it was all, you know, that that was a good solid decision. So going on to… you passed SF and then you have to do a little bit of some specific stuff for the SBS and I guess the reason I mention that is that we were lucky enough as an England sevens group to, to have a few days training camp down in Poole and one of the things that we did for recovery or for training was going to the to the swimming pool in Poole. Can you tell us a little bit about why that pool is different and perhaps one of the tests that they do in there?

Greg Barden 28:23
Which was the bottle test?

Ben Ryan 28:24
The bottle test. Yeah, and just the, I guess, the blacked out, you know, because it’s all blacked out, right…It’s literally in the darkness, not a single glint of light.

Greg Barden 28:35
It’s a good theme to talk about, even from a rugby point of view and a business point of view that… so selection is all about kind of filtering out certain types of people. So you get this kind of small percentage. So you know who’s standing next to you when the shit hits the fan, basically and that’s a big thing. So it’s, it’s, it’s an interview process for attitude, ultimately and if you’ve got that right attitude or mentality, you know, you come out the other side. But then going on from that, that’s just literally the start. You then go into what I think, when I look back at it, a really intense environment, where the SF mentality is that you train hard, you train so hard so that when you fight, it becomes easy, and you take a lot of that stress out so you’re not stepping up when it becomes when lives depend on it in our case, so and the swimming pool is one of those areas. The SBS covers lots of areas from anti-terrorism to you know, they fight from Afghanistan, to Iraq to you know, all these places, different environments that you know they work in. So the swimming pool is there to try and prepare each individual for certain roles that you have to play and making it as difficult as you can in a training environment so when you do it in a real world, it becomes… it is a lot easier. But the one you’re talking about there… was it a second height diving board which …it’s to test courage, I suppose in its simplest form, again, where you’ve got to stand backwards on that second diving board and you know with the lights off just fall backwards into the water into the water, which we took forward didn’t we to New Zealand, I think was the first time we used it down in windy Welly, Wellington.

Ben Ryan 30:52
That’s right. So just to paint a picture, we had a hotel that was quite close to the to the harbour and in the mornings, Brett, who, again, we’ve mentioned him, is a fantastic physio, a South African, that found different ways to kind of engage us in the mornings, get us up, break our jetlag, all those sort of things and so we’d go down the pier, and often, you know, it was the winter in New Zealand, or certainly just finishing off that period, and there would be these English guys that would be jumping off the pier and then there was another higher board there were yeah, you guys would then do that… the bottle test.

Greg Barden 31:28
I always remember John Brake, he loved it and he had a certain personality…

Ben Ryan 31:34
No fear.

Greg Barden 31:34
He loved it but it was a great exercise because it did bring us together and we remember, all giggling like school children waiting for each of us to do it and see who would do it but it… as simple as it was, it was a great exercise to build out a bit of, you know, team spirit

Ben Ryan 31:53
Yeah and I think Brett probably knew that it was more than just immersing yourself in cold water to wake up, it was that togetherness and there’ll be the Dan Norton’s who took some persuasion, Christian Wade, who’s now playing in the NFL with the Buffalo Bills, it wasn’t his favourite morning when we when we had to do all of that sort of stuff. I guess that leads on a little bit to teamwork because you know, you took all the various skills and I guess you call them skills, from special forces into then your next period, which is then I guess when I first met you, but that be about right, I got an I don’t know if you remember. Do you remember how the connect happened to start with?

Greg Barden 32:43
It’s through a naval officer I think when you were at Newbury and I was in… I had come off the front line in the SBS then actually and I was in a kind of… still front line but it tended to be operating from the UK more so there was an opportunity to play more rugby which incidentally came about through an SF tournament down in Australia in 2003 I don’t know if you know this…

Ben Ryan 33:15
I’ve been lucky enough to coach the Paddy Mayne cup in Hereford where we play a match between 22 regiment and I was lucky enough to coach one of those teams and so I saw some of that stuff, but no, I haven’t heard of this.

Greg Barden 33:32
Okay, well, yeah. So Hereford had a rugby team called the pilgrims. Yeah. So that’s and then Poole didn’t kind of, didn’t have a rugby team at that time. This is leading up to 2003 Rugby World Cup and England had spent a lot of time down in Poole training under Clive Woodward and so all those, that era of players had strong connections with the SBS and so cut long story short, they said, well, England are going off to play their group games in Perth, which is where the Aussie…

Ben Ryan 34:06
Where you’re born right?

Greg Barden 34:07
Where I was born. Yeah, certainly. But that’s where the Aussie SAS are based as well. So I don’t know how the idea came about, they said, well, let’s put an SF tournament together and go over there, in between, you know, operations at that time, so I don’t know how they did it but Poole was much smaller than Hereford but they managed to get a group of players together of various standards, and just start training together down the bottom field, down in Poole with this idea that we’re all going to fly out and have a two week sort of jolly as it turned out over in Perth and Hereford were gonna go over, the Kiwi SAS were putting a team in and the Aussies and we’re gonna have a battle of the SAS group. Meanwhile, you know…

Ben Ryan 34:59
That would have been great on Sky Sports, I imagine not possible also…

Greg Barden 35:02
Not the most prettiest of rugby to be honest but yeah that’s where I picked up the rugby ball for the first time basically and I absolutely fell in love with the sport and yeah we went down to Perth and had this brilliant tournament and just went leather and tongs against each other and you know and went out for beers and yeah, pretended were part of England rugby and got into the front of the queues and all this stuff and then from that I came back and managed to start playing for Navy rugby’s and the Navy rugby game every year at Twickenham but through that process, might have been Geraint Ashton Jones actually or…

Ben Ryan 35:50
I think it might even have been somebody at one of the local clubs, an older guy that sent me some emails that said that you were playing and training down at a club in in Hampshire somewhere I don’t know if it was…

Greg Barden 36:02
Would have been Okehampton Medians.

Ben Ryan 36:06
Yeah. I don’t even know if you’re playing under your real name or whether it was an assumed name or… it was it was a bit cloak and dagger but then I think then we invited you to Newbury and one thing that sticks out in your early days in Newbury was, do you remember, one of your first games preseason against Wasps and what happened to you, an injury?

Greg Barden 36:30
Bit embarrassed about this… Danny Cipriani landed on me and cracked a rib and had a pneumothorax.

Ben Ryan 36:38
So can you explain that because I remember afterwards I think it was to me and maybe Andy Widdop, our physio, you spoke very coherently and simply about the injury and the repercussions if you didn’t go to hospital.

Greg Barden 36:51
Yeah, I can’t really remember that… so in the SPS, I was a paramedic, so you specialise as a four-man team. So one person specialise in demolitions. One will be a paramedic of reasonable standard that you can deal with trauma in most cases, so you need to keep your team members alive, I think I came on, was very excited running around like a headless chicken and I think I tried to charge down a Danny Cipriani kick or something and however it happened he landed on me and just caught my rib at the wrong angle and cracked it and yeah, I just thought I was winded or whatever, and tried to crack on because I was trying to impress you, get into the team and stuff but as it turned out, I had a pneumothorax basically where you have punctured your, the lining of your lung and there’s sort of an escape of air going into your external cavity, whatever but it was fine. It was very small, but it is quite…

Ben Ryan 37:59
Your breathing window would have got shallower and then you had to go, I guess, to get some medical help. Yeah. I have to drive home that night and come down to Poole and go to the A and E because I just yeah, I was struggling to breathe… Yeah, I just remember that because you know various players have different tolerances, really because you didn’t go off you carried on playing and this was at the end of the game that you told me that this was happening and you’d have to get some help. That was Newbury and then from Newbury you went to Bristol and into the Premiership there and then from there into the England sevens setup, where you travelled around the world for three years and captained the team as well and had some, we had some great victories in places like Dubai, which is probably still one of my favourite moments, you know, when the sun’s coming down in Dubai, and you probably didn’t enjoy wearing the tangerine or tequila sunrise shirts, which actually got globally sold out and the style, so the way that they knitted it and stuff, Nike use them for all the NFL teams so that’s been on the back still, I think that’s the same kind of knit design. And so where I think this is this is quite interesting to chat about because as coaches we all go through our journey, as do players and athletes and it’s not all sunshine, there’s plenty showers as we as we start our journey, you know you get better and you drop off and different things and for me personally, I was probably a decent version of myself in those Newbury days and I kind of, I talk about how my mode of transport as a coach when you start and it’s a bit like starting a business, you kind of, you start with the bare bones and I was like a rusty bicycle, you know, you have a couple of gears, doesn’t go very fast, but you’re in control and as you go into bigger organisations and the pressure comes on, there’s more people, there’s more resource, your mode of transport changes until you go into a slightly bigger, better looking bike, and then maybe a little car and you get to Twickenham to England and it’s a big juggernaut, and you don’t really feel you’re in control. And there’s different ways to deal with that when you go into that, and the pressure and I, you know, I’ve been pretty open about it, that I learned a lot of what I was bad at and you’ve travelled around the world with me and although I kind of, I guess I, you make your own opportunities, athletes, but I’d coached you in Newbury and selected you for England and then selected you as captain and we had a, we had a good relationship, you know, I’d consider your friend but it didn’t finish very well.

Greg Barden 40:55
It didn’t sadly no, it was a tough year in the end wasn’t it? I’ve looked back at that time and tried to look at it from your point of view, as well as mine because, you know, we had our… we were strong characters and I think the first time there was, I think, a conscious moment that I was aware of, when I think me and Rob Vickerman actually came into your room in Hong Kong and I think this was post an Argentinian game at Hong Kong, where you said to us to not compete at the breakdown. This is how I

Ben Ryan 41:41
Yeah, no, no, no, I’m 100% I’m sure this happened and this is in no way an excuse or my oversight but my memory sometimes is pretty shady but it’s coming back to me. I definitely remember you two coming into the…

Greg Barden 41:54
Yeah, this is the one moment that stuck to this two or three, actually. But this was the first one I think, and but I just want to quantify, I want to talk about where I think I got it incredibly wrong as well and how I applied my understanding from my military days, that you know, that line where everyone’s there for similar reasons, they’re similar mentality and attitude and very, very focused where I think in the professional world, and this is the first time I didn’t understand it fully at that point where there’s so many other different pressures coming on to you, as either a coach or players and it just, I think it creates misalignment and as a coach, I didn’t appreciate at the time how hard it must be to get those different personalities aligned. Or maybe not the personalities, but at least you know, that team aligned with specific, you know, a vision or goal or values or whatever. And I was coming in at a very blunt angle because that was what I was used to, and that’s what I thought you expected from me and so, I think it inevitably caused friction.

Ben Ryan 43:08
So if you go back to that, so what happened in that hotel room? That I questioned you basically, in the moment about why am I in the team and Rob as two examples, if you don’t want us to compete that was our, that was our kind of game and style and we had become very conscious in a game, is again how I remember it, so apologies. But um… that if you’re thinking as a rugby player, I think then you’re going to be off the beat, you’re not playing with your instincts and stuff and you will know much more about that than I but I remember being in the room prior to coming into yours with Rob and Tom actually, and talking about it and me saying I don’t understand it, I need to go and speak to Ben. And Russell was in the, Russell Earnshaw was in the room with you the assistant coach.

Greg Barden 44:08
I came in there and I challenged you and like said why are we, why are we doing this? It’s causing confusion, at least from my perspective and I can’t remember the words exactly, but it was like, Greg, this is my train set, shut up, you know, get out kind of thing and I’m paraphrasing a little bit there but that’s how I ultimately remembered it. And yeah I think it was the start of deterioration in our relationship as you as the head coach and me as the captain and I did not have the knowledge or skills to kind of repair that in our subsequent tournament’s. Yeah. Well,

Ben Ryan 44:58
I mean, it’s really interesting because that was a period of time for me as a coach that you talked about the skills that coaches need to get the right alignment in the group and, and also the other external stuff with up managing and things like that. And, you know, when you say that, like, I’m 100%… yeah, I know, that’s, that’s what went down, you know, I can understand that and that, at that point when the pressure came on, you turn in, into not a particularly good version of you, where your ego kind of gets front of house and makes decisions that are pretty shit and you don’t even physically probably take a breath to go, okay, I need to hear the other side of this and do what you’ve just done, which is, look at it from my side, look at it from the athletes side, that I’m creating grey, I think a lot of the a lot of the stuff that I’ve done in the future I’ve learned from some of the mistakes… and we all do that from coaches, I guess and I had created grey, and you had just actually given a practical example that if you, if you’re not quite sure… you’re doubting what you’re doing on the field, then you’re not going to be operating to the best of your ability. And I had done that and then not only I had done it, when I was questioned about it, and probably in the back of my head somewhere realised that yeah, you’re right. I had just pushed you away and yeah, that began, that must have begun the decline. I can’t remember in that tournament… we did all right? Did we get to the final in that one?

Greg Barden 46:28
Not that one. No, we did. Yeah, I think that was one where we went into the Plate. Yeah, don’t quote me on that. Yeah, I believe so. We had won Dubai that year and we didn’t do well in Australia, I remember that, but anyway but it was just that, I just remember that specific moment and again, trying to look at it from, you understand that you’re trying to push things forward as a coach, you know, you’re trying to find new ways that 1% that Dave Brailsford I think always talks about. And I found it in business, actually, where you, you have as a leader, you want to set a clear vision And I talked about crypto earlier, and where basically, we made a decision to go away from our first principles of driving value to our users, our users being individuals that we want them to use our app because I thought this, this bit of discrete, or this discrete opportunity that was kind of out and it was a bit of hysteria about it at the time, going back to 2017, here around crypto, and you know, Bitcoin, as it is now was going through the roof, and everyone’s saying this is the future and stuff and I went away from my first principles and made a gut decision and took the company, what turned out to be a very, very dark hole for us because I’d failed to keep to my first principles was and it could have worked out but I don’t think that is the rule when you go away. Certainly what I’ve learned with business around, you agree those first principles as a team, and to go outside of them, you have to go through a really hard questioning process to say, okay, why are we doing this? Because this is taking us away from what we know and when I try and think about rugby, I think rugby is an incredibly simple sport. In its essence, yes, you’ve got multiple components of it and all that but to play it well. You know, when you get those pieces and players performing to their best ability and not thinking I think, then it comes…. you quickly see the effects of that in a game and the way they’re playing and stuff. So I don’t know if again, if that’s oversimplifying it…

Ben Ryan 48:46
No, no, it’s not and I think when you… going back to what you mentioned about David Brailsford, who’s you know, one of the most successful or if not the most successful performance director in Olympic sport, multiple gold medals underneath him from the cycling programme over the last few cycles of the Olympics and Clive Woodward also talked about marginal gains as well, the one percenters and thinking back to that conversation where… I probably was trying to find those one percenters, but that’s the icing and if your cakes sinking, you know, that’s your foundations and I think as a coach, I certainly look back at some of the times there where I’m thinking, you’re looking at the shiny stuff and you’re not actually concentrating on your basics which were your foundations and a lot of that is being open, having the right relationships within the team and your fundamentals.

Greg Barden 49:36
I actually, when I when I look back at the rugby and different coaches I’ve had actually and you were always on the on top with a guy called Geraint Ashton Jones, coach of the Navy rugby and I think two very similar reasons and I won’t name another coach that was at Bristol at a time but it was certainly it was like painting by numbers and you had some most amazing players in that Bristol setup at the time when I was there and they were getting taught to not sort of play with their instincts. They were saying, if you’re here, you’re doing this and it was so compartmentalised and structured and if you have a spectrum it was so far to the right, you know where I just think there was no flexibility within that. I remember in my time with you, Newbury and then the first part of sevens that you bought the best out in the players, me in particular because you had this understanding that you want to play attacking rugby, I think that was one of the things I loved about playing underneath you but also the frameworks that you put in and around that and where you wanted to get gains, not only on the pitch, but off the pitch. So I think, yeah, when I look back and understand that and try and apply it to a business sense, you know, that’s like kind of first principles that you kind of coach like that to begin with. And if we want to talk about it again, but that very specific moment of like breakdowns or something where you’re then trying to find maybe that next 1%, but it can potentially compromise, you know, your first principles, what I talk about and your then… players all of a sudden become they are thinking, you know, they’re not doing what you want them to do, because they’re overthinking maybe…

Ben Ryan 51:30
Yeah, I mean, there’s so much that I’m pulling out of that conversation you’re taking… as well it wasn’t a conversation was it in the end, because I didn’t allow you to have a conversation back in that hotel room. But one of the things that also catches my thoughts at the moment is that as coaches, as leaders, in any anything you’re doing, really, if you’ve got a group of people that you’re working with, you can be 99% of the time having a great relationship with them and we talked about how we had a good relationship but you can do one thing and that whole thing implodes, you know, by, and it might be using a player as a butt of a joke at a training session, or being caught at the wrong time where you say something that you regret to them and it’s irreparable damage sometimes, certainly in that short term and I guess we’ve just given a good example of how that happened… from having a great relationship to a disintegrating one that eventually, you know, what, what, however many, seven, eight years later, we’re sitting down here, for the first time actually talking about it, it’s actually you know, I can feel my butterflies when I was talking about it, but I’m glad we’re having it because I guess hopefully the listeners, it will come across that you’re not always your best version. And at the time, I didn’t have the awareness to get myself back to becoming why I was in the position that I was. So thanks for bringing that up because hopefully there’ll be, it will resonate with other people as well, that those moments appear and to try to find ways of stopping those happening in the future.

Greg Barden 53:14
It is incredibly hard, because they will happen in all walks of life, you know, you try and prepare yourself as much as possible to understand but as with everything, you know, you need hugely the context of experience to apply the knowledge that you’ve either read or, or listened to somewhere else. It’s incredibly hard. I found that I can read all these business books and how to grow a company and how to create a culture and you go yeah, okay, that sounds really simple and then, in years to come, you look back and go, oh, God, yeah, I read that but I didn’t know how to apply it because I hadn’t experienced it in the real world. So it’s really hard to merge the two I found, maybe I’m not clever enough, I don’t know but it’s been such an interesting thing to understand that you can understand these things on paper but putting them into the real world is a completely different thing altogether.

Ben Ryan 54:14
Yeah and you’ve and you’ve talked about with Pixie said just to go into bit more detail about Pixie but you talked about how in Pixie you got close to it failing and you’ve learned from learn from that and so Pixie is a well, you can I’m sure explain it better but I used the Pixie app this morning, when we met, give a shout out to the coffee shop that we went to that looks like they got amazing cinnamon buns. I might have to have a crack of after this but we went in there and I used the app to pay for our coffees and can you explain a little bit about that because I’d love to tie that into something else that I know you’re passionate about which is community.

Greg Barden 54:56
Yeah, it’s we can get really deep here, it is a business and you know, there’s a whole commercial element to it, but who we’re representing are independent businesses and the people that they serve within their community and the big thing that going back to my military days actually and what pivotal moments actually that I kept going back to… I’ve never talked about this before, my whys and whatfors, why I joined the military and this is not to disrespect anything that the military does but I quickly realised that life isn’t black and white and what you could you know, when you look under the reasons for being in different countries, you can question but I go back to my time in, in the SBS when I was in Lashnagar guard in Helmand province, a four man team two hours away from any QRF, we were heavily exposed… Quick reaction force sorry, which were American A10 tank buster plane, so we didn’t even have troops on the ground anywhere near us. Again, can’t talk about what we were doing but we were very vulnerable, in the sense that we had no support and we were surrounded by the locals and the Taliban, which at that point, probably just changed the colour of their turbans to put it very simple. But in that time, I was a medic and so we’re doing some hearts and minds and I got to meet some locals treating some kids and I’m a bit of a foodie, was even back then, and the military ration packs aren’t the most nutrition, nice tasting things so I would always go out of my way to try and source local produce, and at this time there was a baker in a local bakery in Lashnagar and the reason why I mentioned is because I think, the desire to trade or to buy something, it pulls down barriers and in that sense, you know, where in a situation where you probably least expect it, I got to meet face to face and do this, like we’re doing today with a local who had no alternative motive apart from trying to make a living for his family and I got to see that and understand how we had so much in common outside of the nonsense that was happening and why we were there and why the Taliban were doing what they were doing and the alternative reasons you could say why, you know, the western forces were there and stuff. So when I broke it down into that, in the most simplest form, that common ground that was created by wanting to trade, pull down barriers, and open my eyes to a different world, which, you know, being a naive, I was 21, 22 then in the middle of a war zone has such understanding or seeing life slightly different to what I thought it was, which was the nucleus to Pixie basically… I came back, you know, having left the sevens sort of environment and I kept going back to that and saying, well what kind of world did I want to live in and I didn’t want to live in this homogenized world where these corporate giants-controlled parts of our life and, and we see each other or see ourselves as consumers. Again, this is where it could get really deep, but um, I just didn’t want to live in that world and I just thought, you know, I love local businesses. I love meeting, talking to people and I’m going to do something about it, if I can, and that was the start of Pixie. So didn’t have a clue what I was doing!

Ben Ryan 55:59
So QRF? But that’s, that’s no bad thing I remember. I remember when I was a teacher at a school in Oxford I taught Richard Branson’s kids and one of the things he would say like if there’s a job that you get offered, and you’re not quite sure if you if you’re any good at it, but it sounds alright, just say you can do it and you’ll fill in the gaps. And you know, you had your passion and then you’ve created now a successful brand based around community. And is there a reason why you’ve used that story? Is that really your… what’s fired everything around why you think community is so important?

Greg Barden 59:36
I think there must be something to do with its family, military and rugby. You know, the support that you get from people around you and I think this, you talk about this I know, as a coach and think I have created that environment and I think people when they feel safe when they feel secure, then people thrive, humanity thrives and you can break that down into all sorts of different areas, you know, sport in particular. And if you’ve got that, then yeah, humanity can thrive and if you think about, I think the last year, for example with COVID-19, and how we’ve all, our communities have been shut down, in that, you know, we haven’t been able to go in them and seek that human connection and then for me, there’s something about that which I know personally, that I thrive in those conditions, when I can go and meet people and talk in a serendipitous way or whatever. That’s when I get to, to be the best me and be happy and be engaged in stuff where as much as lockdown, I think, forced us to slow down and look, you know, I spent nearly two and a half months on my own in a house in a beautiful environment. I could go walking, you know, compared to you know, I imagine a lot of people in inner cities, who really struggled a lot more in that time. But, um, yeah, so I think that community and what it gives you allows people to excel.

Ben Ryan 1:01:17
Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, I think I lost a bit of sight of community living in London for a while, even though my mum who, we grew up in Brentford, she had a lovely community around her that people look out for each other and, you know, she knew everyone around there. When I went to Fiji I saw the value of the village, you know, being centre to everything, how the boys put everything in front, in front and centre to the, to the village and in lockdown, it’s been interesting because I was one of those, I was one of those people that, you know, you do everything online, you know, around where we are, you can get an Amazon delivery within a two hour slot of ordering it, you know, and it will come, we do our Ocado and, and I think it was at the start of that lockdown, where couldn’t get any online supermarket stuff so we went on a five, five minutes from ours into St. Margaret’s, and went to the local butchers for the first time. And from there, like the big shout out to Dean Darren and Bob, you know…firstly, their quality is amazing and I look forward to going and seeing them and having a little chat and whether it’s about how Brentford have done at the weekend or, or England have done or what Michelle has been up to is real value in that. And then so we so you know, gone is Ocado now, and the butchers and the fruit and veg, which is a few doors down. Plus, you know, the local coffee, independent coffee shops are the ones that we that we go to, and it’s completely flipped in a positive way that we’ve gone back to community and we’re not going to then now go back to going online and getting everything.

Greg Barden 1:02:49
It’s about a balance, isn’t it? I think and that’s such an amazing story, because I hear it from afar because I’m already doing that and you see the world through your lens so it’s great that that COVID and lockdowns have triggered that and I have heard a lot of stories like that, where the community and people going, Oh, God, they’re actively seeking it out and or serendipitously found it again, you know, just through, you know, not being able to get their Ocado delivery. So it’s fantastic and it’s not about going back to nostalgic times where you know, life has changed and you know, our lives have got a lot faster and you know, and hopefully COVID has taught us a bit that we can strike a balance more and people going to be working from their hometowns more rather than everyday commutes and stuff and that we can strike a better balance and, and that humanity can thrive within that, where we become less opinionated because it’s too easy and too disconnected to be able to comment on something online, which you would never do in person, you would literally never do in person and yet, through online, it gives us the confidence to be able to do that to the detriment I think of humanity.

Ben Ryan 1:04:04
Yeah, no, I agree. I agree. What advice would you give them to, to somebody to embrace community a bit more and why? What’s the value do you think for your mental health of the community, not even individual? Do you think that it helps that?

Greg Barden 1:04:23
I do, massively I really do and loneliness is one of the quickest and largest illnesses in the country now, across the world, actually, and as we go to a more consumer globalised based economy, that this has been one of the results of that and you can look at different parts of the world where, you know, they lack that sense of community. America, for example. This is quite a broad sweeping statement, but they don’t tend to have that community ideology that we have, you know, they have out of town malls, you know, very consumer, corporate based, local economies, again, broad sweeping statement, but you can see the disconnect that happens and, you know, gun crime and you know sort of outputs of where people don’t have that feeling of safety, and where that can lead to an individual. And you mentioned Fiji, and you’ve got some of the poorest countries in the world where you do have that. And yet, they’re some of the happiest people….

Ben Ryan 1:05:36
They are the happiest and I used to have, you know, moments when I’d go in… might drop a boy, one of the boys off in their village, or you’re picking people up from the village and I always used to get, because the general thing is that there might be a bus that’s going around the island, but people still hike and you know, stick their thumbs out. And they often do it regularly. So you know, you pull over, you get in the car, and they’ll give you $1, which is 30p they think, you know, that’s kind of the unofficial trade, you know, and then you get, you know, you put them two villages down or wherever they want to get to, but and I do it a lot and back in Fiji, I was pretty well known and that, you know, ginger hair, and the reaction when suddenly they’ve kind of put the dollar down or wherever, and then they see who it is and we’d be laughing them for the next 20 minutes and then probably more likely than not, they would make sure that then I walk into the village with them and meet their families and all those sort of things and you could end up spending a lot of time in there and then when you’re driving back, sometimes you might stop off and you know, share a Boo which is a young coconut with them and have a talanoa, a chat. I didn’t… you know, that reminded me of the value of those connections that we kind of, you know, I have to a small extent in southwest London and so it’s possible, definitely.

Greg Barden 1:06:56
So how did you just coming back from Fiji and having that around you and settling back in?

Ben Ryan 1:07:03
When I came back, I thought, I mean, I’ve got Velo Manu tattooed here and it was our one value that we had in Fiji and it means work together, love each other and it was a value that we drove everything. So, you know, one of the boys is, is doing anything, you know, he’s late for training, he’s eaten too many sausages in breakfast. You could you could have a conversation or the boys could have conversation saying like are we working together if you’re, you’ve been rude to him or you turned up late, it drove everything really and, and I went from Fiji….I went to work in New York for a while and I went back to being the shit version of me again, you know, where, like post Olympics to kind of starry eyed getting invited to lots of things, getting given lots of things and it kind of it, it didn’t, I wasn’t in, I wasn’t in that for long, a few weeks and lucky that I met a couple of people in New York, Jay Shetty, who, who’s doing very well in America now and Erwin Valencia, who’s at the New York Nicks and spent a bit of time with those two, and they’re very chilled out and recalibrated me very quickly. But it reminded me how easy it is to slip back into our ways if you’re not careful, you know and so I look at my tattoo a lot as a kind of cue to go if ever I’m starting to get a bit more material, or I’m feeling like I’m being a bit of a worse version of me, to try to recalibrate because it you know, it wasn’t as simple as Fiji…like suddenly I become my best version all the time, you come back into first world, it’s easy to get sucked into it and I think that perspectives is tough, like what have you done to, you know, you’ve been on a real journey on from, you know, that paper boy around at 4.30 in the morning to sitting here as a CEO of a company that you’ve got big ambition for over the next few years, with a mission that’s a pretty sizable one and one that you’re gonna have plenty of obstacles because you’re fighting against some pretty, some pretty big, big people in that area. How do you keep yourself sane and also gain… keep that perspective?

Greg Barden 1:09:12
I think creating your own business is incredibly humbling… I had an ego absolutely but you quickly realise how much you rely on other people and to get the best out of them or to get what you need out of them you’ve got to drop your ego and I think the military and rugby you’ve got to keep an element of that because even though it’s a team environment, certainly rugby, it’s ego driven as well in some degrees that you’ve got to get in front of your friend, you know, I mean Tom Powell we were roommates, but we were often competing for the same position and stuff. So you know, you have to maintain that but certainly from a business point of view, and it’s going to be really interesting because you can see how you talk about there… going back to basics with the Fijian rugby team, but then the highlights of winning an Olympic gold and that story and the output that comes out of that for you, as an individual, people demanding you etc, how quickly you can go from one extreme to the other by external factors, people coming to you and saying… I can see that with, you know, with, with business as well where, you know, we’re by no means a successful company yet and what I define as a successful company, we’re scrapping, we’re battling every day and I said that whole process from running out of money, going down the hot tar coals with crypto, and it’s incredibly humbling throughout that, and I think that, for me, has been one of the biggest lessons actually, and certainly, with business in general is that you, you can’t just do it by yourself, you have to create a team and bring them along with you and, inevitably, people don’t continue that journey with you, they fall off system, right in the early days of a start up anyways, you can’t pay them one month, or you know, you’re asking too much of them, basically. But as the company becomes more successful, I can see how your roles can change, your outlook can change and that’s going to be an interesting… I don’t know the answers to that yet and, you know, talked about first principles and I just hope that in that journey, that your triggers or whatever your processes are that you keep two feet firmly on the ground, and you can still keep making the right decisions based on those principles that you’ve learned and that you’re trying to apply and then you don’t get carried away.

Ben Ryan 1:11:50
It’s gonna be a, it’s gonna be a great, great next chapter for you, Greg. I think that’s a good point to close. This has been probably out of all the ones you’ve done so far… We’ve had some great guests but it’s been so honest and refreshing to hear that and cathartic certainly for me hearing all of that so really appreciate your time and just on the show notes. If that if you want to know more about Pixie, then you go to is it Pixie.com? Pixie app.co and you can find out more about that and anything else around Greg we will stick in the show notes as well. But thank you very much.

Greg Barden 1:12:28
Pleasure and great to see you again.

Ben Ryan 1:12:30
Likewise

---

You’ve been listening to the Ben Ryan podcast, part of the sports Podcast Network.