SIMON DENT INTERVIEW

Simon Dent is a football agent and entrepreneur. In the last twenty years, Simon has launched and sold a talent management business and most recently, built a creative agency called Dark Horses. In 2019, Adweek voted Dark Horses the 5th fastest growing agency in the world. Prior to working in the world of talent management and advertising Simon owned a sports memorabilia gallery in Covent Garden which he sold to The British Sports Museum. He also founded a publishing company called Libros International that had two Sunday Times Best Sellers.

DG

People are really interested in the  space that we're in and I will always be that person to respond to people when they say, “how do I become a football agent, or a sports lawyer, or, how do I become a marketing agent inside the music business, or fashion, or film or TV?”

Just when lockdown started I did a YouTube course on a Career in Sport and the response was really great, people were  engaged in some of the things, which I thought were basic but weren't necessarily basic to others. This isn’t demeaning anyone else's understanding of what was going on.  So, I thought… well, why not just use those videos as the basis for larger or longer essays about stuff that either I learned along the way, or things that happenedwhich weren't that pleasant at the time but made me understand myself and circumstances better.

People ask “well what's the magic formula?” or “what's the silver bullet?”, all those type of things, and there was no easy answer because  there's a very straightforward answer.

Maybe that's my first question to you , which is: how did you go about getting into the industry? In my perspective we started out as lawyers together, at slightly different times. I’m still there but obviously doing these types of things as side hustles.

SD

I would have ended up doing what you're doing if I had a different experience at the start of my career. I’ve said to Andrew (Nixon), that I think that if I had  been at the right firm, at the right time, I may have stayed in the legal profession, but anyway that’s a different book.

DG

Well it's a great place to start, because actually, the thing that I really like about the autonomy that I’m given, or the autonomy that I create for myself is, I don't want to just be a nine to five lawyer drafting legal documents.

I want to see myself as someone a little bit more rounded than that, in terms of my relationships with the guys in the office, with my clients, with the stuff that I want to do; and law gives me my grounding, but it also gives me opportunity to be able to do lots of other things and to network and speak to people.

For example, you went from law to the more creative aspects of your world and your job. What was your thinking at the time? What was your thought process of going to do something so different? Three years undergrad, then law school with years’ worth of ridiculously hard work, and then to leave that behind.

SD

I think that for me it was that realization that youoften hear bandied about:I wanted to work in something that I enjoyed and because I’d had the privilege of being able to have six or seven years of education and practice, I was acutely aware that bolting that on to a passion would be quite useful. From the moment I left law, it was about finding my way into sport.

I think the other thing, which is really relevant, is that I was blessed at the time with a bit of patience. People talk about the long game, and I don't know where it came from because I’m not a particularly patient person but I appreciated from the age of 25, 26, 27 working until we’re 65. So the moment I took away that rush, I could start making correct decisions. I wasn't chasing being the big sports agent, or the owner of a creative agency. I actually looked at it and thought, right okay, this year, this is what I’m gonna do, and that's how I approached it. I approached it incrementally early on and I really appreciated just getting the incremental wins over a long period of time that would build up to something significant.

DG

I think one of my favourite podcasts was the one with you and Mark Whittle, the Take Flight podcast, where you're talking about your experiences towards the end of your law job, which, , I think, if I was being brutally honest and a lot of lawyers were being brutally honest, they would probably say that they have had those types of experiences at different times but maybe weren't brave enough as you to actually decide that the law wasn't for them at certain times. Obviously everyone's on a type of spectrum. Could you just spend a couple of minutes taking us back to that change and how that transition happened because it’s incredibly powerful, I think.

SD

I really enjoyed studying law. I want to add that this is very much my personal experience, and everyone has very different experiences. I found that very shortly after going into practice that when it came to billable hours, it started to add a whole layer of anxiety on top of an already anxious young man living in London.

I think that it’s really important to stress that when I was 16 and choosing to become a lawyer, I didn’t know that I was at the beginning of a very long path. I always had this misconception, probably from watching too much LA Law, that being a lawyer was incredibly well paid and incredibly cool, and we'd have a load of time in the evenings to go to fancy bars and it started to dawn, soon after I qualified, that this is not the end, this is just the beginning.

Going into a new law firm, from the one I actually qualified in, and being at the bottom was an incredibly anxious experience for me. But even to this day, one of my biggest skills has always been dealing with people. I think I’m a people person. I really enjoy socializing, I really enjoy networking, I really enjoy joining the dots and what I found was, as a young newly qualified solicitor, I was getting nowhere near that action. I was in the back of a room, at the back of the firm, working on documents, printing all night, binding documents and it wasn’t what I expected.

Then that slowly evolved into being brought into various pieces of work, very much a cog in a massive wheel, where I had no context as to what I was actually doing but I was doing a little thing in this big case or matter. I wasn't briefed at either end of what was happening, so that in itself was adding anxiety because I just didn't really know what I was doing.

I was working at a very good firm and unfortunately, I wasn't from Oxbridge, I wasn't from a top university. I was from a good university; Kent University, which was a great Uni, but it wasn't as respected for a law degree at the time. There were always anxieties just building up, which led to, what  was a trivial mistake and it started to really get me down. It was that sort of process and that slippery slope where it made me feel incredibly insecure being in that environment.

DG

If I may just pivot slightly… one of the things that you mentioned there, is your enjoyment for networking and interaction. One of the things I’m writing at the moment is all about explaining to people, the power of your invisible network. You’re only sometimes, as good as your network but a lot of the time, people mistake the power of your network, as the power of being able to ask for something, rather than to receive: What can you provide for someone else, instead of what they can provide for you?

Over the years, what are your insights as to how you went about, either ad hoc or very strategically, or habitually, developing that network; and how you joined those dots and made that process obviously quite an enjoyable one for you?

SD

After my legal profession, I actually had a couple of other businesses that were very entrepreneurial. So, one, I opened a sports memorabilia gallery in Covent Garden which was my first foray into sport. Obviously by its very nature it gave me a hell of a lot of experience in retail, in sales and meeting people. I was in the shop seven days a week, I’d open it from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. like it was frontline sales. That’s when I started to build a network with sport, both with professionals, clubs and sports retailers.

Alongside that, I was also working as a nightclub promoter, so again, my network was really turbocharged. We ran a promotions business that had twenty-two parties a week in London which were what you'd call the “high-end” nightclubs. We would have footballers coming down every single night and we got to know them, so that in itself was building a network.

By the age of 30, I had the legal qualifications and very good contacts with footballers who trusted me, because I was looking after them in the days where selling stories and phone tapping were at their peak. That really put me into the world of football as a professional sportsman. Obviously, the retail side of it was that I was meeting brands and rights holders through the memorabilia business, and the incessant nature of that. In the evenings I was in nightclubs, during the day I’m in a shop and this is seven days a week, this isn't a nine to five experience, this is seven days a week, every day of the year and it's just on and on.

People say, “how do you do this, how do you do that?”. It’s dedication and consistency of what you're doing. We're talking about years of doing this and that, and once people trust you in those environments, it builds a reputation and the older you get, the more people you meet, and the smarter you should become.

Other opportunities started to fall into place and that's where becoming an agent, aligned with my legal qualifications and the contacts I had made just clicked into place; and we're talking fifteen years ago now. This is where, even today, after having Dark Horses and working at BBH Sport before that, there was fifteen years of working in different facets of the sports business world.

To this day there's people I still work with who I’d have met in a VIP room in a West End nightclub and that's the great thing about sport is that it’s quite a small world and when you really start getting to the top, it’s the same faces and groups of people that make a lot of the decisions.

DG

I think that's exactly right. Very briefly on the networking stuff before I move into the next bit, which is habits and things that have been useful because I know you're fascinated with your 5 a.m. starts, which I’ll talk about in a second because I’m definitely not a 5 a.m. starter.

Do you have a way of tracking, identifying, or maintaining your core network of people? So the people that you will engage with on a less regular basis, but would still have those soft to medium links with and then your wider groups. Is there a way that you'll constantly be saying, right, I need to speak to this person in the next week or so, I need to do this next week or is it more ad hoc, depending on the types of projects going on, or is it in your mind-set that you do these things at a particular time?

SD

It's really interesting… I’m gonna show my age now… this was being done pre-social media. On my desktop, I’ve got databases of people I’ve met. You'll be pleased to know I no longer have business cards, they've all been transferred, but I did have a box of business cards. Do people even have business cards? I don't think they do anymore, do they?

I used to do a regular mail out to massive databases. It was a generic one but I was giving them updates on the business, like a newsletter. With regards to now or the last year, it just comes so naturally to me. It's not in any way engineered, I suppose I’ve actually adopted technology quite slowly in terms of social media, so the more and more I adopt it, the easier it will be. I’m going to be communicating with people and building my network which is amazing.

To answer your question, it is weirdly just quite natural to me but,I think, what I’m aware of is, I just enjoy reaching out to people. I enjoy offering my time to people. I really enjoy putting people together, not for any benefit.

I recently set up a group on WhatsApp that's now migrated onto Slack, which is called The Tribe of Mentors. It's a group of 80 people who I’ve met over the last 2 years, who I think can all benefit from each other's experiences. It's not just the business of sport, there are some very high profile people in there; CEO’s, CMO’s, there are recovering addicts; there's all sorts of people in there who all share the same one passion, which is learning. That has become a really valuable resource to me and every week the group gets bigger.

It's one of those things where it's almost a platform that I’ve created for personal development, for people that I know are on the same journey. This year's been quite tricky, during lockdowns especially. I have found it quite challenging with regards to keeping up the contact. I really enjoyed meetings and face to face so I have been going up to London quite a bit, meeting people and going for walks. I’m a big believer in talking to people, listening to people, and as you said earlier, just offering assistance. I actually put into the Tribe group on Friday, I said, look guys, I’m gonna just block out Wednesday morning, if anyone wants to have any time with me, let me know because if it's new business, or some advice, or this, or that just shout me and I’ve got time for you.  I’m not saying I’m some oracle that's going to help people but I just like helping people out.

I think you're right with what you said about networking and that it's not a selfish pursuit. You're not going out there thinking what's in it for me, you're going out there thinking, how can I help people? I think that's one of the biggest things I’ve learned in the last year or so, about giving and putting back. I’ve started doing quite a bit for charity, again not strategic, just sort of found myself running a few races here and there for charities and unexpectedly, what has come back from that, has been incredible, on a personal level and on a business level. I think the key point to add around networking is that you've got to go out there with the open mind that you're going out to offer your help and services, to help people, not vice versa.

DG

I’m going to put you on the spot slightly with something that has sprung to mind on the basis of what you've just said. One of the bits that I’ve written in the first draft is all about how, when people are approaching someone in an industry they want to work in, people are too focused on: please do me a favour, please give me work experience, please give me a job and offer advice, which I can completely understand. What I try to explain is, it's really important to almost flip the conversation. Flip the conversation to say, look at all this good experience I may or may not have, but I don't want you to do me a favour, I want to do you a favour and then asking, do you need me to do this or that?

I’m not necessarily projecting that you do something for free forever, far from it, but how do you solve the problem that the person that you're reaching out to may not even realize needs to be solved? The simple act of doing that and having a straightforward possibility of saying yes to it, rather than providing a problem to the person which is how am I going to get this person work experience, how am I going to go through the administration of doing all of these things, even if I do innately want to help this person? I think there's a real mind-set flip that could work quite well if more people are thinking along those lines sometimes.

SD

I completely agree. I think you've got to put yourself in the shoes of the person you're contacting, and I think that's where you have to do your research on who you're speaking to. I am an entrepreneur; I am not a guy who will ever be employed again. I am someone who creates things and I enjoy that. I really enjoy people reaching out to me and I’ll always give them a conversation, I’ll always try and help. I think it's the value-add.

I think it's trying to get into my mind to try and find out, right okay, what do you need? Does Simon need help at his talent business, or at Dark Horses, or his memorabilia business? Where are the gaps at the moment? Memorabilia business – right, it's Christmas, they must be doing something around Christmas. Can I help Dark Horses with the World Cup next year? Can I do some research around what brands are sponsoring the World Cup that year?

If you give it some thought and even if it's just the actual fact you've given it some thought, then I’m not expecting people to land on the answer. I mean that'd be nice but it's just taking it that extra step.

DG

I think that setting yourself apart, that in itself provides an interesting mind-set approach to problem solving and those practical parts, which I completely agree with.

So, these couple of questions, I think whenever I wrote them in the first place, I probably had you in mind when I was thinking about them because I think that this is right in your sweet spot.

SD

It's really interesting and maybe this isn't the forum but it's again, something that I’ve been confronted with over the last few months, which has been really exciting for me is this whole thing around hustle porn. I don't know if you have come across Steven Bartlett, the founder of Social Chain?  He's the CEO and founder of Social Chain, which he sold for £200 million a couple of months ago. He's got a brilliant podcast where he mentions how for the last six years, he’s built this business and he speaks about how he was worshipped for working twelve hours a day, seven days a week, and now he’s looking back and thinking, ‘I think I got it wrong, I don’t know if I got it right’.

He's had a few guests on his podcast lately, mostly entrepreneurs. Yesterday he had Eddie Hearn on, who is brilliant. I’ve always loved Eddie. I’ve actually got his book here, ‘Relentless, 12 Rounds to Success’. It’s interesting because it really made me think how Eddie’s old school as well. Eddie’s talking on the podcast saying, “If I can fight on Christmas day or have Christmas with my family, I’m going to fight, she knows that, it's the way I’ve been brought up”.

He's quite extreme but it really made me confront how over the last few years people around me, and at the agency, have heroed my work ethic and my 5 a.m. starts. It really made me think about how, especially during this pandemic and lockdown, obviously there's this mental health pandemic definitely coming on the line and I think whether hustle porn has been acceptable this year because…

DG

I should say when you say “hustle porn” people might not quite understand the actual concept. You're effectively saying work as hard as you can constantly and keep grinding.

SD

Exactly, so just grind non-stop, hard work, seven days a week, work before everything. It’s really interesting how, now I’ve had a really nice period of time over the last few months, I’ve confronted my brand and myself, and I think I’ve had to really face up to the best way for me to carry on next year. I’ve made some tweaks, I gave up drinking alcohol. I was never burning the candle at both ends as such but I think what's been quite exciting is that we will be able to work from home more, commutes have gone and international travel will be reduced with work and I think actually, it lends itself to have a bit more time back and it's up to us how we use that time.

I think for me personally, I still get up at five but now I’ve got a really nice routine that involves my family more. It involves walking, not just running and hitting the gym but involves taking the new dog for a walk and there's things that have been introduced into my life, that will enable me to have a more fulfilled and rounded life.

If I compare  that to when I was living in Central London, every day it was on, bang, bang, bang and I think that everyone needs to have an honest conversation with themselves around this ‘cult of hustle’ as its quite an interesting one.  There’s some well-known people out there who talk about it a lot and I think people really need to. If you sign up to the cult of hustle, then you really need to incorporate some well-being practices into it or alongside it as I think it can end quite badly for some people.

DG

I had an epiphany a couple of months ago, just speaking with my tennis coach. I played a lot of tennis when I was younger which I loved but I gave it up. I was never going to be a pro, far from it; and I haven't really played that much apart from when I go on holiday. But since lockdown started, tennis was one of the first things that you could play!

So I thought… right, I’m just going to start playing tennis a couple of times a week or whenever I could because we're at home now and the tennis coach said to me about a month or so ago, ‘Dan, I know obviously you're a hard worker, you're in the office a lot, your routine has been so ingrained over a long period of time that who would have imagined that at 1.30pm on a Wednesday afternoon for the last two and a half months, you'd be playing tennis every week?’. That really struck a chord because my former life as a sports lawyer with the routine of being in the office every day, pretty non-stop; the routine was so ingrained, it wouldn't have even cognitively entered my brain to be like “oh, why can't I do this every week?”

SD

I think the journey probably started with both of us, assuming, hoping or expecting that would be the case. Coming out of University to become a Lawyer, thinking of lovely holidays each year, getting home for dinner with the family, nice car, nice house.  You have all these metrics and then you get to a certain age and you think: next year I’ll do this, and next year I’ll do that; and then suddenly you look around and you're like, wow okay I’m 44.

I think that having this pandemic, obviously it's been horrific for everyone but I do think it has shaken the system up for people to look at their behaviours, their routines, their daily practices and it shook a lot of people, including me.

I needed the foundation shaken because I didn't want to change things, because they'd worked for me and they'd given me everything I’ve ever wanted. However, if you're really honest with yourself, you are still caught up in that hamster wheel whereas I came out of the hamster wheel and stopped and as I said earlier, I’ve reassessed. I’m going to climb back into the hamster wheel but it’s going to be a different hamster wheel that I’m going to be controlling more.

DG

Tell me then, what productive habits or routines do you find useful? I was chatting to another interviewee; great sports writer Gab Marcotti, and Gab was explaining that he's really good creatively first thing in the morning and quite late at night.  There’s a writer named Daniel H. Pink who has written a book called “When” which talks about body clocks, general rhythms of creativity and all the different times of day which can benefit you. Obviously, that might just be one thing but I know you're a big proponent, or have been, of the 5 a.m. club and having that time especially in the mornings. It would great to hear about your routine and how that's evolved as well.

SD

I never was a late sleeper but around four years ago, I started getting up from 5 a.m. every morning and I’d occasionally lay in up to half-five. This year, it's been a bit up and down but I’m back to 5 a.m. now. Obviously, with having my three-year-old son in the house, he usually wakes at seven ,so it's even more important now to have that time to myself in the morning because I want to shape the day for me. I don't want the day to attack me and again, this is all personal preferences but I know that if I was in bed at seven, Ralph would come in and wake me up because then its Ralph time and I have to be there for him and look after everything and all his needs. What I need to do, to set me up for the day, isn't going to happen.

That routine has also changed because now we have a puppy and puppies cause all sorts of chaos. I have to think about the puppy at 5am, so we go downstairs and feed the puppy, which is great.

Then I’ve got a number of books on the go, usually two or three at a time. I usually sit down at this desk, I’ve got a lovely view of the South Downs. It's actually dark now but I get to watch the sunrise. I have a blank piece of paper and I put down my thoughts for the day. I’ll then write out a to-do list for the day. This sounds really neurotic but I’ve got a chart over here with all my goals and I just make sure I’m very clear about my monthly goals and my daily goals. I make sure they're aligned. I’ll clearly write out what time my calls are, what time I’m eating and that’s my day.

I’m very lucky in that I’ve got a gym out in the barn, at the back, so I’ll then go and work out for an hour. I’ll come back, eat and that's usually about five to seven.

I start to hear little feet and then the day starts and so I’ve had two hours of brain dump, goal setting, planning the day, physical exercise, meal and I’m now ready for the day.

What I don't do is put the news on. Occasionally I look at social media. I’ll occasionally look at my phone but I certainly don't put the news on, this year especially. I might put a bit of Kisstory on to get me in the mood but I try and limit the inputs at that time because again, it's just shaping how I feel about the day and I think, when I’ve done that, I feel ready for what comes at me throughout the day.

It's a nice way for me to start the day and it's funny because I know your next question would be: what time do you go to bed? I go to bed quite early and so my wife's like… nine o'clock, I’m on the sofa falling asleep so we are a bit like ships passing in the night but it works quite well. It's one of those things I’ve actually been looking at in the last couple of months and thinking, does this need to change? And where I’ve landed on is, it doesn't need to change because actually, I can finish work earlier now.  I tend to get everything done by five o'clock which means I can sit down with my son, have my supper, and I’ve still got then got three hours with my son and my wife, so  it works for me.

Obviously, when and if we come out of this way of the world and we are all back in the office every day, my routine will have to be reassessed because I now live out of London and I’ve got to factor in the commute but no, at the moment it works pretty well for me.

DG

Small side question, which is, when you are making  habits that you are looking to try and incorporate, do you think you being a certain type of character aids or hinders those adoption techniques, if that's the right way of saying it?

Part of my thinking from reading lots about habits and all the rest of it is, motivation can wane quite quickly in particular ways and then you sort of go in that vicious circle of, oh it's me that's rubbish and therefore I’m a failure, and I can't make these changes, and I can't do the right things, and you sort of go into a vicious circle.

Do you do you subscribe to the whole motivation itself can take you as far as it needs to go? Or do you actually sometimes sort of de-personalize it and say I just need to do small things that regardless if it's me, it's the thing that I want to change?

SD

I think it all just boils back to a few things. I think firstly, you've got to really ask yourself what you're trying to achieve and what your goals are. Where do you want to get to, what is the plan? The five o'clock in the morning; when we were back in the old world that would enable me to start work at 7.30a.m. and so I’d be working from 7:30 which would mean that by 10 a.m. when a lot of people start work, I’ve done two and a half hours work. If you compound that over a year, that is an extra five weeks work. You add that up over ten years and this is what it's about; compounding these small little changes.

I think you've got to really ask people how much they want something and that's a really hard question because once you really dig into that, you then have to explain and understand that you have to make sacrifices. From around the age of 25, running a shop seven days a week and then being a promoter on top of that four or five nights a week and then becoming an agent and doing all these things, a lot of sacrifices were made, it’s talking about what people don't see.

I know you read a lot of Matthew Syed’s books and people don't see a lot of stuff that goes on behind the scenes. At Uni I was certainly very social, but I was always in the library and if anyone wanted to find me I’d be in the library, and that was a running joke at my Uni. I think even when I was at Uni and I’d go back to my parents in the holidays, I’d be studying every day.

As I got into adult life and professional life, I made the commitment from my mid 20s that for the first four months of every year I would stop drinking alcohol and it was a test. I didn't have a problem with alcohol, it was like right okay, 1st Jan,  it's on, and I would do that until May and then I’d go on summer holiday with the lads and I just found that those first four months of the year, I would get so far ahead by just taking alcohol out. Bear in mind, in your 20s, you're probably going out three nights a week but instead I just got so much done.

Lo and behold I got to age 37, 38, and I thought, actually, let's take it out completely and so there are all these  small sacrifices that I made and people have to be really honest with themselves as to how much they want, what they want and again, this all goes back to goal setting.

You need goals. You cannot be motivated unless you have clear goals. I don't just mean life goals, I mean daily goals, weekly goals, monthly goals and I’ve got them all written out around me. Some days there might not be much on and it could be: Tesco, cut the grass, take the dog for a walk, hour in the gym, and they're my goals; and by ticking those off, I get a sense of satisfaction and I keep momentum up.

I think momentum is key. If you can get momentum in any aspect of your life, that's when progress happens and that's when the good stuff happens. When you start making progress, that momentum turns up and you know you're invincible.

DG

I found it fascinating when you were talking about making sacrifices. I think a lot of people say, I want to harness this passion for whatever reason and it’s in a book I’ve recently read called Grit, written by Angela Duckworth.

One of the parts I found really interesting, was that the Latin core of passion is actually to suffer. Everyone talks about how “I’m so passionate about this” or “I’m so passionate about that” and I think if they understood what passion was a bit more, or used the handle slightly differently, that actually in saying that they're passionate, they understand actually what is needed in order to embrace that passion; which is that invisible suffering, not in a terribly harsh masochistic way but in a very difficult enduring way.

SD

The 5 a.m. is a habit. I don't think I probably enjoyed it at the start. I enjoyed it because it's difficult. For example, today it was leg day in the gym and I was really excited about leg day because it's the hardest day. I’m just quite drawn to that challenge and I guess the adversity in those situations is that once you get through them, the rest is plain sailing.

I think you're aware that I had mental health problems when I left the legal profession and for six months I wasn't very well. I was in a private hospital as a day patient and that gave incredible resilience because after that, there was no lower point. I hit rock bottom. Even today things can happen, this summer, last summer, and they'll happen again in the future, but I have the resilience and I know what it's like to be at the bottom.

I think you've got to be careful, not artificially creating the pain around adversity but people jump in a cold shower first thing in the morning because they like to do something hard in the morning.

I think there's a really good commencement speech by the U.S. marine commander who talks about making your bed in the morning. Do the hardest things as soon as you wake up. Do things you don't want to do because the rest of the day is then just plain sailing. I’m a massive advocate of that but again, I completely appreciate that it's not for everyone.

There’s a lot of people, and a lot of my friends at the moment who are adopting the cold shower in the morning and a lot of them are saying how it's changing their days just by doing that. Obviously, there's a chemical impact as well but by just doing that in the morning, nothing else phases them in the rest of the day.

DG

I do the cold shower thing but as a cold bath after exercise because I know how bad my hamstrings are, so that's usually in the evenings in the summer when you're usually quite warm, but when I’m starting to play the 11 aside football on a Sunday morning after it's minus three degrees outside and then going into a cold bath is not my optimal idea of fun.

SD

My good friend Jamie Peacock talks about how every night when he was playing, he'd have an ice bath and that was for a decade. He'd also do cold showers in the morning, have broccoli for breakfast and people will ask why? He did it because it's uncomfortable. He also started a ritual of going for a 15-mile run every Christmas day morning and funny enough, I do that as well. I’ll go for a run on Christmas morning because I know no one else will be doing it and Jamie said the same. Even though he’s an elite sportsman, I was doing the same as him and he would say “I know that my competition aren't doing this and that makes me feel good and that gives me confidence”.

I just wanted to come back to the sacrifice points for a second because something I’ve just remembered is that in the last 15 years, I haven't been out on New Year's Eve and that sounds really boring but for me I couldn’t think of anything worse than waking up hungover on New Year’s Day. I remember it now because, for the last 15 years, I’ve not been out New Year’s Eve, I’ve gone to bed at nine o'clock and I’ve woken up at five or six and absolutely savage myself with exercise, read something, written something down and that for me is sacrifice.

That is also setting up the year with how I want to carry on. I’m not saying it's bad, I’m saying for me personally that that's just not how I operate.

DG

It's interesting about the sacrifice stuff. I’ve more or less gone vegan inside the last year. I went vegetarian inside the last three years and I’ve now been vegan in the last year or so and I’ve sometimes found that a little bit of a challenge because I do love a bit of Dairy Milk. I had milk every now and then but yeah I understand the whole point of knowing what works for you and what energizes you to retain that positivity.

SD

I think that it’s stimulating adversity. As I said in life, we unfortunately will have lots of adversity come our way that we can do nothing about and by its very nature takes us by surprise but I think the more that you're actually artificially stimulated along the way, when those big sucker punches come, you're better steeled to deal with it and you'll react in a better way and be able to control it. Whether that's running up the hill behind the house with a weight pack on, or 5a.m. starts, or not drinking, or running 75 miles, or whatever it is.

I want to do that because I think that it's better equipping me for life. One of my old clients Martin Offiah; when he finished playing, he always spoke about retaining and being fit for life and I always used to think: what do you mean by being fit for life? His diet is incredible, his training is incredible and he still trains every morning. I used to think why is he still training? He’s training more now than ever and he used to just say “I need to be fit for life” and what he means by that is, you just don't know what life's going to throw at you. I think the more you are controlling your emotions, you're in physical health, you're in good shape, the better you are going to be able to combat what comes at you.

DG

I think you’ve probably answered my last question but I’m just going to say it anyway. I actually took this from Tim Ferriss, who I’m sure you've heard of. He asked a load of relatively influential people a number of questions. There's thirteen questions and one of the last questions is around the tribe of mentors. Some of the questions are diplomatically sourced from some of those questions itself but one of the questions that he posed, which I really enjoyed, was “if you had a massive billboard where you could say anything to inspire others, what would it say?” I’m not sure if that's actually Martin Offiah’s bit about attacking every day and being fit for life, or whether there's something a little bit more?

SD

It's funny I did think about this question a lot! Can I have two please?

DG

I will allow you two!

SD

Both on Sunset Boulevard. I think the first one will be that you need to make sacrifices. It's not going to just come to you without making regular change in your life

The second one is to work hard and amazing things will happen. I’m a big believer in the law of attraction and I’m a big believer in habits, repetition and compounding; and I think working hard consistently, you can't fail, it will happen.

But it's at what point do you stop? The answer is you don't stop. Going back to that point about how sometimes you have to stop because you might not be quite right… but what I believe in is, if you keep hammering away you will reach your goals.

DG

I really like actually that point, I’m going to start asking people about where the billboard should be.

SD

That's the most famous place for a billboard!