Forging Resilience
Join us as we explore experiences and stories to help gain fresh insights into the art of resilience and the true meaning of success.
Whether you're seeking to overcome personal challenges, enhance your leadership skills, or simply navigate life's twists and turns, "Forging Resilience" offers a unique and inspiring perspective for you to apply in your own life.
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Forging Resilience
17 Liam Eves: "Hearing from our kids that we don't spend enough time with them, it's soul destroying."
Today our guest Liam Eves takes us through his extraordinary transformation from professional football player to the world of clinical trails.
In our latest episode, we unravel the layers of resilience and leadership with a man who's no stranger to life's hard tackles.
Liam's professional pivot sheds light on the internal battles that shape our personal and professional journeys, proving that the toughest opponents often lie within.
Join us as we confront the trials of tough times, discussing how personal standards and self-awareness pave the way for navigating life's challenges.
We're not just talking survival here; it's about thriving through adversity, armed with creative play and the wisdom to know when to recharge.
Balancing the scales of work and personal life, we explore how the finite nature of time influences our choices —perfect for anyone seeking to fortify their resilience and lead with purpose.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/liam-eves-7177b219/
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Hi guys and welcome to Forging Resilience, exploring for a different perspective on strength and leadership. Join me as we discuss experiences and stories with guests to help gain fresh insights around challenge, success and leadership.
Speaker 2:Welcome to another episode of Forging Resilience. Today I'm joined by Liam Liam's somebody. For me, that's really interesting because I came across Liam through my own expression of challenge and discomfort reaching out to people. Liam happened to see a presentation I did to a group and got in touch with me, and we've been staying in touch. He's been giving me his support and chatting on and off now for maybe about a year, and Liam is somebody that strongly encouraged me to get into podcasting, having done that himself. So, liam, welcome to the show. I'm looking forward to chatting with you and taking us on your journey and getting some of your learnings along the way, mate.
Speaker 3:Thanks, mate. It's a pleasure to be here and to share this stage with you.
Speaker 2:Thank you very much, mate. It's all three of us up here now. For people that don't know, you give us a bit of your background that's relevant for us, so you can understand what leads us to be having this conversation today.
Speaker 3:Yeah, sure, sure. So my name's Liam Eaves. I was born and raised in Blackpool, a nice part of the world, and I was quite fortunate at quite an early age that I was relatively okay, shall we say at football and had a career as a professional footballer for a number of years. I played at Liverpool as a schoolboy and then Burnley as a young professional. Unfortunately, that was cut short through a few different reasons and then I decided that, because I didn't have any education, I needed to go back to school. So I trained to become a psychologist initially, found out that I was quite enjoyed the business aspects and really for the last 17 years have been helping companies in the life sciences space grow their businesses. For the last five years I've been running my own consultancy group and been doing a lot of different things, putting myself out of my comfort zone by starting my podcast and trying to be quite active on LinkedIn and a few other bits and pieces. So that's me in a nutshell.
Speaker 2:Nice one, mate, I think when you suggested to me to start my own podcast. Have you seen that video? Another white boy with a podcast, Jim Bro, Crypto Hell, no oh.
Speaker 3:I sent it to you.
Speaker 2:That's what immediately came to my mind. You'll like it even more once.
Speaker 2:I send it to you. But yeah, those are little things we'd like to get in there, mate, but I'm starting to develop, and something that you've encouraged me to do is get the reps in, which is one of the reasons why we're here talking today, which I will when something that you said to me mentioned was on the high performance podcast, they were always asked people what does that mean to them? So, to throw that back at you, and obviously you know something that I speak about and is interesting to me as a resilience. So today, what does resilience mean to you?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's such a good question. It's, I think it's our ability to to bounce back or recover from difficulties. It's about staying strong and positive during the tough times, and I think that it really involves quite a lot of things. It's multifaceted, right. It's maintaining or gaining our mental health and well being in the face of challenges, and this can be things like personal loss, health problems or any issues at work. I I also think, and I believe quite strongly, that people often believe that it's something that's that just people are born with, rather than a muscle that can be trained, and I think, like anything worthwhile, it's very hard and takes time to build that particular muscle. I think that we see certain people in situations and they just seem to be able to overcome these massive challenges, but the fight is really on the inside of them and that's that's the struggle and it's the thing that we don't. I don't think we probably see, because we it's hard to talk about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely. I've gently turned you on that, mate. Is it always about staying positive?
Speaker 3:I think that it's. I think that you've, in order to get to a place like you've, in order to go through a difficult situation, I think that you you may not feel at the time that there's a positive outcome, like to do something and to be under a difficult situation and then just feel completely dark about it and to think there's no light at the end of the tunnel. I'd almost question why would you keep going if there is that and I think that just a glimmer of hope and maybe it's not, maybe it's not being positive, but maybe there's some hope that things will get better, because if they didn't, you probably quit whatever you was doing to then do do something else, right?
Speaker 3:And there's nothing. At the same time, there's nothing wrong with stopping doing a thing if it's not working, but I think that when you're trying to do hard things as you know it's you need something to keep you going through those dark times. Yeah, that's why I watch. What's your thoughts?
Speaker 2:You know, I just sometimes question for me positivity. You know, if it is shit, it's shit, but for me, I think what underlines it is acceptance and that that. That again, I know that it's a bit abstract for some people, but for the people that listen to me then they'll know that there's a lot of release there. So, rather than forcing positivity or regret through through labelling certain things, just accepting it it is what it is yeah, me personally helps me to move on or get back up, just like you said, maybe a little bit quicker.
Speaker 2:Like you said, maybe in time then I can look at it Through a different lens. And so it was obviously coming back from or not, in your case, coming back from injury with you injured much as a player, mate, and can you tell me, to your injury?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. So I did my busted, my ankle pretty good, and it was quite a recurring thing. I was pretty heavily Injury prone because of the type of player that I was, and what type of a player were you. So I was, I was a centre back. I was Quite quite tough, I guess in one way I was.
Speaker 3:I would always be heading the ball, tackling people and things like that, and I think that's that leads to nox and bumps and bruises and all sorts of things and it's very frustrating, and remember being extremely frustrated because just as I was about to break through to the first team and I was a call up to To them, I like damage my hamstring and then that put me out for about four to six weeks or something and it was like you know, you've just been working for God knows how many years to get to that stage and then to be sort of young to the last minute. So these, these things do do happen. I think that they used to bother me a lot as a youngster, because we're never necessarily taught right now. You know, even like resilient.
Speaker 3:I don't know about you, but it's only recently that I've really heard like resilience as a thing I'm glad I could look at this morning. It was a, it's one of those wild things. Where it was, it was just that bounce back ability and was never really, you know, as professional athletes in the early 90s, like you, was never taught around these sort of mental coping skills, you know, as high performers, it was just nothing that was done and I think that it would have been such a to be able to have people to talk to About some of those things and to do to build those, essentially those assets, those internal assets that you could then rely on. Super power, absolutely super power.
Speaker 2:In terms of your driver to keep coming back after injury. What was that and has it changed over the years? Now you get to reflect back on it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think it was funny because it was only the other day I was thinking about. This is like what someone actually asked me the question A meeting couple of weeks ago about late. What is football taught you about life? And at first I was a bit probably not much, but as I started to reflect on it, significant amounts, because you're obviously to your point. You get injured, usually frustrating. You can also lose your position. Someone plays well and then you're not in the team. So that's that's an interesting one is managing those emotions. I think that being part of a high performing team is super important, as well as a cell up, the self policing parts of that where you don't need a manager necessarily.
Speaker 3:I think that from a resilient aspect, I started to like Now, think about strategies that I can employ. So I have, like this three step method that at least works for me, which is a framework I call a PTA and it's a perspective thinking time and then action. So first thing is I try and put these things into perspective. For example, I'll ask myself you know what this really matter to me on my deathbed and usually Is an overthinker. It doesn't, and this helps me shift and get out of the detail and I just try and recognize that it's just a bump in the road. And then with the thinking time I start to try and really not rushing to action to alleviate some of the anxiety that's caused by, you know, by the, the issue that hand. So like actually taking some thinking time to reflect into a paper and what are the strategies, how these different strategies? Can I come up with this particular problem? And then can I pick the best course of action and then go away and execute on that.
Speaker 3:So I think that's an unbeknownst to me is that I've been sort of using that model since playing playing football. Because injury happens, nothing you can do about it. You just got to put the effort into recovering. You know, getting your treatments, making you do sure that you still keep it. Everywhere else, you know, can you, can you jump on the bike, you may not be able to run but can you jump on the bike and so on and so forth, and then just taking those be very disciplined. So I think that I've actually taken a lot more away from playing professional sports. I think more the discipline than anything else away and has helped me tremendously in my in my journey into business, for sure.
Speaker 2:And I guess that comes through both experience of the age we're at the big, being fathers, but also, like you alluded to, there being part of a high performance group which I know you're part of, gas methods coaching program in the right. This project switches, which is an awesome setup and there's no doubt in my mind that helps draw these sorts of things out of.
Speaker 3:I want to send me, I think, as well as just like being being around, is. I think it's a lot of perspective. Like you know, when you and I talk, or you know, when the group, the greatest group, gets together, there's, like, there's always a different Perspective and I think that that just adds so much value. To call it beach ball thinking, I think we get quite myopic with our view and we were so close to the beach ball. You can only see the yellow panel and actually the rest of the team can sort of stand back and say to you do you realize, lee? And there's like a blue and a red panel over here and and before long you can then take that. You know, you take a few steps back and go.
Speaker 3:Actually it doesn't really matter what the colors are, this beach ball, and you know, now I can sort of move forward and you know, I think that that's hugely, hugely helpful. Like you do. You do you have any like in terms of like how you deal with difficult times, like what? What's your sort of mantra? What do you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I personally don't have a mantra, but I know what I need to do to show up for myself as a parent and as a coach, and so it's making sure I get those things done. And, as you know, since Christmas I've been, I've been fighting what feels like an uphill battle. I mean, a lot of that is related to my story stepping away from, from the narrative that goes on in my head and having the courage to speak, speak my truth and, like you, I have people to hold me to the standards. They don't set the standard. I set that for myself, but on good days it's easier to hold and on the days that we're struggling it's very easy to fall short of that. There's nothing wrong with that, but I know I'm capable of more. So, yeah, it's all of the above, those sorts of things, yeah, yeah. I think the awareness is so important massive.
Speaker 3:That's, for me, is a foundation. Yeah, I agree it's, it's acknowledging, it's, it's understanding where you sit on the that sort of threshold of form. And also like today is a good example is I've had a. You know, last four days has been, it's been tough. There's been, you know, been been away doing some like mountaineering and stuff and driven for like 20 plus hours and I was like, okay, I really need to get my head back in the game and start grinding away.
Speaker 3:Woke up this morning it was absolutely and thought, right, and I do need some like forced recovery in order to sort of progress this thing through, because I think that we do get to a time where, when we're trying to perform all the time, it can be quite detrimental, yeah, you know, when we don't step back and we don't take the time to rest and recover. And that's that's been. A big learning for me actually is that I've Only recently started to take my foot off the gas when I can feel myself flagging, and that in itself is a is usually valuable for like a lot of the resilience, because you know you, I don't know about you, but I'm always more likely to Do I say snap when I'm tired and I, just, I just want to rest.
Speaker 2:Yeah, still got a day ahead of me yeah, yeah, I call myself doing that last weekend or this weekend. You know, it's like with kids and I Rick and recognize that snap. It's not them, that's me, that's a A projection of something's gone for me to look at and work through.
Speaker 2:and so, yeah, massive and no doubt I think we're not aware this thing comes in, like you're saying is the body will be sending a sign that we need to take a foot off the gas long before we wreck one, potentially long before we recognize that. Is that something you can identify with me?
Speaker 3:oh yeah, what's your?
Speaker 2:telltale signs, then, and what do you do about? Well, I think it's yeah, it's, it's really.
Speaker 3:It's a great question. I, my problem is and I don't know if you've experienced this, but when I, when I used to train as a kid and I'm talking, like you know, 13 years old is, if I didn't want to go for a run, I almost punished myself and made myself go for a run for further as a sign of you don't want to do it. Okay, I'm good body, I'm going to show you who's in charge. And I sort of took that mentality all the way through to adult hood. You know only really, if I'm brutally honest, only until recently. You know it's like you don't want to train or you don't want to do something right, you're going to do it harder because you said that you didn't want to.
Speaker 3:So it's kind of punishing myself and I've realized now that, you know, for the last year I've been forcing myself to take days off. I've been forcing myself to get more into in nature, forcing myself to, you know, just have a break, have vacations a little bit more or mini vacations, should I say, rather than like the longer ones and spending more time with friends and so on and so forth, and I'm better for it and I'm not as sick as much and so on and so forth. So my triggers are I've actually been just using, like the Garmin Body batteries and things like that, hrv levels and just how am I feeling on the on a date when I wake up on a day today. If I'm feeling sluggish, either mentally or physically, then I'll try and wind things down or try and get myself out into the into nature for a little bit more time To sort of recalibrate. But it's usually usually feeling first thing in the morning. It's that tiredness.
Speaker 2:Yeah, cool something you said, that which reminded me of something I wanted to touch on earlier as well. I'm just finishing up a book called rebel ideas by Matthew said. I struggled with most of it. But yeah, exactly exactly that. If we, if we it's like if we're in terms of the panels on the beach ball we're so close and it's very closely related for me have been so far into my work and laptop or computer, forget the other stuff. So when I'm, when I'm not spending that time in creative play be on the drums or writing or just relaxing or taking a walk then, yeah, things start to slow down. So then I do even more. So it's like, do you know, it's a vicious cycle, but often when we're in those states of play that it takes, that's when we get new perspectives, but the courage it takes to step away from the laptop.
Speaker 3:It was really interesting because one of the Been reading a book by clay things, clay Christian, and is a Harvard professor that looks at businesses and he's got a great book called how will you measure your life. I think it was really interesting point that he makes. In one of them he said that it's all too easy to get that dopamine hit in the thirty minutes. And you know, in a thirty minute like work spring, because you say, well, actually I can just bang out a couple more emails and get that hit. He says, and too often is the value that we have in place in our life is on the things that take a more long term, so the relationships we have with our children and our partners and our family members, and actually it's very hard to build deep meaning for connections in those thirty minutes and get those dopamine hips. So what is he says is that you know that we, we certain personality types, will Revert to smashing a few emails and actually the value is is not doing that and taking yourself away, spending time with family or just even on your own, to sort of like gear shift, because I think that it does for me.
Speaker 3:What super interesting, and what you mentioned there Is that when you is like having the great idea in the shower, right is that you? It's the, it's this like two sets of thinking. This is the very sort of like focus thinking, and then there's a more diffuse Thinking, in which that those thoughts are almost like bouncing around your brain a little bit more, enable to connect disparate dots that give you insight into things, and really that's where value is. It's the insights and then the application of those insights, rather than another email. You just moving the deck chairs.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I love that, mate. And then, yeah, I live for insights and there's a brilliant coach called rich living who whose whole work is around facilitating insights, because the world, like he says, one minute, the world can look one way, you have an insight and everything changes and it's the courage to follow it through. But I love that. So it's one of the things why I speak to people like self, that I write to hopefully provide those spaces and insight for others.
Speaker 3:And, yeah, so I mean it's. I think that writing is such a you know, and it's such a valuable tool, is such a valuable skillset to learn, to be able to articulate your thoughts. You know, as gas would say, banford would say is, you know, thinking in can, and there's a, there's a real value to that, because I think that a lot of times we are in our own heads and we don't necessarily put pens paper to try and construct our own thoughts in a cohesive way that we can communicate, and that's where that's where insight and action occurs.
Speaker 3:And so you know, for me I don't know about you, but With linked in I've started writing on linked in now, you know, couple of times a week, and at first I was like God, I hate writing and I'm not very good at it and so on and so forth, and but just the value of being able to express my ideas as it's been like profound in just a two month period, and I can't wait to see what it's gonna look like next year.
Speaker 2:I love it, mate. Yeah, I've been watching that. You've encouraged me with my work as one of you spoken a few times about those sorts of things. So, going back a bit in terms of your, your injury, talk to us about the transition and how you managed to manage both yourself through that and yeah, sure, mate, and so I think that it was.
Speaker 3:If I'm being like brutally honest, I think that as I was going through this the period of like playing professional it was I became so obsessed with being as good as I possibly could, in that I shot everything else out of my life, and you need to do that. I wasn't blessed with amazing talent. I worked ridiculously hard to get where I was and I started to, I guess, fall out of love a little bit with it as well. So when I speak to people, people say I must have been so difficult to walk away from it and so on and so forth. And yes, it was in some respect, because it is all I've ever known and it was actually much scarier to go into a different world.
Speaker 3:But the reality was that I knew that if I carried on playing, I would continue to suffer a recurring injury. And I would also knew that if I then came out of the game as a, say, a Twenty, seven year old, I probably playing in the lower leagues, I probably would have a mortgage with kids and so on and so forth, and I would I would have to start my life again with a lot of pressures. So it was, it was, it was almost quite a rational decision in a lot of ways. To just pull the plug then, when I was in my early twenties so it wasn't.
Speaker 2:It wasn't black and white.
Speaker 3:You're injured, go no, I could still. I ruptured my. I ruptured one of the main ligaments, the whole. You left Art up in your foot and, as a result, my foot would always roll so towards as I was playing. And it got to the stage where I would only really play on a Saturday and I wouldn't really train that much at all. And then it just got progressively worse where I had to stop building my full effectively with like tape and what have you and it just so. It just got to the stage where it was. It just wasn't worth it, and so I made the conscious decision to then go back to college, because I had left school at sixteen with some GCSE's, but that was it.
Speaker 3:And I studied sports science, as most, most people in the sports area do, but really had no idea of what I wanted to do.
Speaker 3:And I had spoken to my uncle, actually, who had said listen, if you want to get a good job, you would need at least need to get a degree. And you know, no one in my real immediate family had gone to university. Couple of my uncles had, and, but you know, brothers weren't at age, and so on and so forth. It wasn't something that was typically done as far as, like my classmates, everyone sort of dropped out at sixteen and went in the building trade or and so on and so forth. So I decided to just start there and then sort of fell in love with the psychology aspects or sport psychology and then went into university is sport psychology and then flipped it to your psychology and neuroscience. But it was. It was quite simple to me, honest, aaron, it was I can either rebuild my life, a young age, or I can chase a dream and then be really screwed and be you know, be something that I probably wouldn't have enjoyed.
Speaker 2:You say it's simple, but I'm not sure it was. But I think most people that would have been making assumptions here obviously are in your or we're in your shoes, just like it's easy to make assumptions for people that are world could be. See a few TV programs that you'd been able to Just take a step back, even though it is everything you wanted. But where do you think you created that level of like reflection to have the insight what I could do something else. I could do something else.
Speaker 3:I think it was just a, I think there was just, I think there's just reality that was really staring at me, to be quite honest, because I was always set on playing like as high a standard as I possibly could and I knew that when you started moving down the lower down the leagues, it was only one place you was gonna go and it was inevitably going lower and lower in those in those leagues. And I was trying to picture my life on a longer time horizon, I just say, is that, even if I would have played football until the most most guys are, you know, 3335 maybe when they retire and see, you still got 30 years worth of Work left in you, and I just didn't want to be if I couldn't essentially, you know, not necessarily retire, but if I couldn't have played at a decent level and then, you know, been sensible with financially and then have the option to maybe going to business and so on and so forth, that just became the probability was less and less likely and therefore it just seemed like a sensible decision and I think that because you know, maybe because of my love for the game had also dropped a bit, I wasn't quite as passionate, or maybe I wasn't quite, as you know, I was always dedicated, but maybe for the maybe, I just lost that little bit of appetite for it and the realization was that it wasn't really gonna happen and so it just it seemed seem like the right. It seemed like the right move. To be honest, it totally was, because Within the space of you know, I took two years to go to college and get the equivalent of my a levels, and then I did another three years at uni and I was obviously a mature student at the time.
Speaker 3:So I try to try and get a full, because if there was gonna be me applying for a job as a twenty you know, the twenty six, twenty seven year old against the twenty one year old Like it was gonna take the twenty six seven. So whilst I was at uni, I founded a like a small landscape gardening company. I didn't know anything about landscape garden by formed it, and then I also work to part time jobs in Mental health because I want to be a clinical psychologist, and then another one in a research unit. So I was, I was growing, I was grinding Pretty hard whilst it was a unit just to try and increase the likelihood that I was employable.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's obviously worked by giving you a yeah that for business and, yeah, entrepreneurship fun.
Speaker 3:It was definitely. It was an interesting. It's an interesting journey and I think that that was a time, you know, looking back, where there was a lot of resilience that was needed and you know, I was, I was, I was young, but I was, I was hungry and it was a case of right after I almost I think probably psychologically had to prove myself that to myself, that it coming out of playing football, because I think the hard thing psychologically was you almost, like you know, in some ways I remember being like chased down the road by a ton of people wanting my autograph and then, literally a couple of months later, I'm like starting from scratch and like I think the ego took a massive hit. So I had to try and prove to myself that I had still had some value to give and I think that that was a, that was obviously a big driver.
Speaker 2:Does that still creep in now, mate, in terms of your clothing business?
Speaker 3:100%. I think it's one of those things, isn't it, when we place weirdly value in things that probably don't matter huge amount, like no one, no one cares, no one cares, it's only ourselves, right and we project it on the world and that's. That's been something that's been really interesting for me to explore over the last certainly five years. To say, well, actually, where, why am I doing these things, and what are the stories that I've been telling myself and why am I driven to achieve? And like, what am I going after and why is that important? And I think that those, those, those type of explorate, internal explorations, are things that can really rock your world and, you know, it gives fresh perspective.
Speaker 3:But also, I think you also will question well, God, has this been, has this been like 10 years that I've just wasted trying to do these things? And also, you know I've, I've, like I'm, you know, most people will say you know I've, you know I've, I've achieved things that I've always wanted to achieve. And then you, you sort of get there to that stage and you go what was this?
Speaker 2:This really it, yeah, so yeah, I know from my experience, when I've experienced, that is because I've been looking for something external rather than internal. So if I get excited but we've talked about this when I seek validation through the courses that I've done in my old profession, it never came because I never gave myself permission to validate myself or value myself. Yeah, and it's a constant thing and, just like we said, we're going back to that work, getting stuck at the laptop. It's a different way.
Speaker 3:Absolutely Well. I mean, the massive realization that I had is that it's kind of like driving, and I think that when you're of a particular disposition, you're looking, your, you know, you're looking out the front of the window, in the windscreen, and you're looking at your next checkpoint and you're going right. I'm going to hit this in this time and it's going to be great when I get there. And the problem is is that we at least I realized I wasn't looking in my rear view, milbra, to say awesome, look at, look at what you've done, liam, so far, look at what you've overcome, look at the all the crap that you've had to deal with. And you're still going through it.
Speaker 3:And I think that what my realization was was that when you don't bank those things up, it's your, your strength almost, to then get through the next challenges. It becomes harder, whereas now I can reflect on, say, as I typically do on a weekly and a monthly and then a quarterly and a yearly basis, is saying, okay, what have I achieved, what are the things that I've overcome? And then to be able to reflect on those things and bank them internally and say, no, you know, granted, there was luck involved, there was loads of other people that supported, but I've had to make these things happen and therefore I am this type of person and therefore I can do these bigger things?
Speaker 2:Yeah, sort of like owning it, taking that evidence which will help you take those steps further forward. What would you say? Some of your biggest lessons are made in those early days when you were at uni. Oh, I'm sorry.
Speaker 3:That you continue to sort of like live by all guys, your business now I think that I think there's probably things that I've learned that I haven't changed, like the hard work and what have you, but I think that there's other things that the most there was things that I did that I shouldn't have done, in the sense that I worked so hard and I was strategic in some instances, but not always, and it was those strategic moves that gave me the most value and the most leverage.
Speaker 3:And so one of the practices that I do now really frequently actually, is I'll try and, as mentioned for around, like the reflection and thinking time is, I try and schedule thinking time for me so I can, like, if I'm trying to tackle a problem you know what is that problem that I'm trying to deal with or if I'm trying to get an idea, I'll carve out an hour or write the question or the issue or the problem on the top of the page and I'll just for an hour.
Speaker 3:I'll sit in a quiet room, no one around, white wall in front of me, and I'll just scribble all the ideas that I can. Possibly the first few that I get are like, really obvious. Then at the middle bit is absolutely garbage, and then towards the end, you know, hopefully it starts to flow a bit cleaner and I can get some to some like decent insights and then I can say, okay, now if I double down on these few things, that's going to have like a compounding impact, rather than doing all these like little bitty things that are really not going to move the needle. So I think that that's probably the biggest lesson that I have learned.
Speaker 2:So those last few things that are coming up on your list there, how much courage do they take because they're so far out of the park?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think and that's what it all boils down to, doesn't it that the first step is almost the courage to action them, because the confidence and competence only comes with the repetitions, and I think that sometimes they sometimes are harder than others from a courage perspective. I know that when, for instance, when I was doing the starting the podcast, that was one of the biggest issues that I had because I was like okay, I don't like my own voice, I don't, I'm not very quick at thinking in terms of in conversation, my brain to mouth speed is pretty slow and I was really worried about that. But I think that being okay with potentially looking a bit daft to a few people is the, for me, the mantra of the Theodore Roosevelt's the, the man in the arena, you know it's having the courage to be actually in the arena with your you know face, with blood and sweat and all the rest of it, rather than being just a watcher. Microphones and headphones.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly, exactly.
Speaker 2:Beanie hats or not.
Speaker 3:Beanie hats or not, yeah, so I I think it does take a big, because I think that actually the courage comes because you're feared of a thing, right, and I think that half of the well, probably 99% of the time, no one will actually even know to even think about it. It's just you, just, yeah, I'm fighting your mind.
Speaker 2:Exactly exactly that for me, and I see with so many people I speak to. Yes, what we make it mean it's not the podcast making me like the video obviously made for me another white boy with a podcast, not. So there's so much noise and story and I guess that's one of the awesome things that if you're sat with a blank piece of paper in front of a white wall, that you get through those and then you start to tap into intuition and yeah, I learned ideas to get exactly, and that's.
Speaker 3:I think that that is the real. The real value is that you you're effectively just like purging, and then you start to connect dots, you start to take idea one, five and yeah, 56 and merge them together and then it becomes something interesting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, so it's really interesting if, how do you define success for yourself these days? And I know it's really broad thing and different things, different people at different times. But I'm curious now as how, how you measure that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I. The honest answer is I don't know if I have an answer, because I something I'm working through at the minute. You know, previously my thinking was around okay, I need to, you know, be someone, I need to achieve any tab and I saw some and what have you? And then have a good job and being or building a good business myself and I think over the last 12 months I've come to realize that those things light me up. I love working, I love helping organizations, I love building businesses. I'm, but I'm also acutely aware that you know my daughter's 11 years old now and how do I Spend more time with her? Because there's a great article.
Speaker 3:I don't need to know what I'm by guy called Tim urban has got a highly, highly recommend it called website called wait, but why he talks about time and he says about you know you think you've got, say, you know if the average lifespan for parents is all people is 80 years and you know your parents are 75.
Speaker 3:You think you've got five more years with them If you only see them twice a year. You've actually only got 10 more visits with them. And you know if you love going to the beach and the likelihood is that you live to your 80 years old and you're 40 and you're to the beach on holiday once a year. You only got 40 more times doing that. I think that. So my perspective is changed massively, in which I'm trying to view time differently and, as a result, trying to be more balanced with it and trying to take and do the things that I want to do and have the adventures. So I think that my life now is more about how do I create a more balanced life, rather than over indexing in work, and how do you then, for you personally, make sure that it's?
Speaker 3:Really hard and I think it's again. It's. You know that this. One of solutions that I had is that you know my family, we've got a few horses and I've never been interested in horses but the girls like to do it, so I made myself going ride horses with them and I love it. Now we go once a week and I spend some quality time with them.
Speaker 3:I try and have a cut off time when I'm working, but under the same, you know, I'm also. It's not a line in the concrete, it's a line in the sand that if I do need to work later, then I'll work later, but I'll try and come back another day. So I try and balance time, my efforts over a longer horizon, so we're weak rather than a day. But it's more around the discipline to stop work early to try and say yes to my daughter or the wife when they want to do something rather than being tired, and energy management. So try and take a walk so I've got more energy at night to do some things with them. But it's that's the hardest of all the things we've discussed. For me that's the hardest is because I'm having to. I'm having to constantly manage myself to that which is difficult.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a process, and I think that's one of the valuable things of relationships and support is that they can call you out to you know, but it comes from a good place, rather than, yeah, the nag or a need, but it's hard right, is the.
Speaker 3:you know, you hear from me, kid, I don't spend enough time with me and it's like it's soul destroy just it breaks your heart and you're like well, actually they've got a point. How do I, how do I resolve that? And the reality is you can't. I think it's very difficult to have it all. Yeah, I think you've. You know you have got to be balanced at least my perspective, and that's important to me now.
Speaker 2:So yeah, yeah, that's great stuff, mate. So, in terms of work, mate, what have you got coming up and what projects are you working on? The excite you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I am so loads and we've got a. There's obviously a lot of interesting AI at the minute and really for the last two years we've been building an AI tool for clinical research. That's very, as we would say, deep technology, so that's been super interesting. We've got some results coming back from some initial pilots that we've been running with some organizations in the US, so that's that's super interesting for us. Looking forward to, in the next four weeks, getting some readouts from that. And we're starting what should I say? We're Converting one of our existing businesses into a more of a bespoke consultancy group dealing in clinical trials. So we're just going through a phase now of like branding and the early stuff that I just want to sink my teeth into selling it to you. It's again it's, I'm learning a bit of patience there.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, this, this tons. May I think that the hardest thing now is is that ability to say no to the opportunities that come around, and you know that that foam or that fear of missing out is very strong.
Speaker 2:but the two, the two big ones that we've got at the minute from a business perspective, awesome mate well, I'm going to start to wrap it up, because I know you're a busy man, so thank you for saying yes to us and given me some of your, your time to chat no problem, mate really enjoyed it.
Speaker 3:Thank you for asking.
Speaker 2:No worries, mate, I had. As soon as you use your idea, I thought well, I'll get you back, you'll come online. Yeah, no, I appreciate your support. For me personally, mate, and staying in touch, reaching out it means a lot, and I look forward to catching up again, I think. I think we should have a talk about AI next time. It keeps coming up. I don't want to go there because we could be there for hours Today.
Speaker 2:But, yeah, all the best. Thanks very much for your, for your conversation, mate, and where can we find your work, mate, if you're reaching out Best people.
Speaker 3:Best place to get me is on LinkedIn. It's Liam Eve's L I A M E V E S, just reach them. Thanks for taking the time to have me. It's been. It's been a real pleasure.
Speaker 2:No worries, all the best. Speak soon live cheers mate bye.