At what point do you become a CEO etc?

I have come to the conclusion that it must be me that different from the rest, as to me the majority of it is a load of tosh.

A Walk in My Shoes: One Step at a Time

Monday 14th November 2022 6.30pm - 7.30pm 

This episode is a recording of a webinar from The Football Mental Health Alliance, delivered by Martin Roberts.

Martin Roberts is one of the UK's leading experts in the lived mental health experience.

A teenage survivor of the Hillsborough disaster, Martin shares his vulnerability by speaking openly about that fateful day and how unbeknown to him, it would be the catalyst of what would be another personal fight for survival some 28 years later.

His signature talk ‘A Walk in My Shoes’ truly shows people how important it is to prioritise your mental health and how leaders, players, staff, coaches and parents/carers within the football community can take some key steps to support themselves and those in their care.

Key Learnings will include:

•  Why Martin didn’t talk about poor mental health and reach out for help quickly.
• Suicidal Ideation and tendencies and why suicide appeared to be the best solution even though it really wasn't.
• Significance of taking two steps forward and saying three words ‘’I Need Help’’
• Establishing the important role in daring to be vulnerable and taking two steps forward.
• How you and your organisation/team can support its stakeholders to recover from poor mental health.
• Positively demonstrate how you and your organisation/team can use personal experience as a catalyst for change and become a beacon of light to other people.

The focus of the keynote presentation is not on the magnitude of the event. The focus is on the significant emotional, physical and behavioural impact it had on Martin's wellbeing, family, friendships, colleagues and employer and how the three words “I need help,” saved Martin's life.

Martin also shares the support mechanisms he put in place to aid his recovery plus the significant role everyone can contribute to when others are experiencing the same journey. 

For more information on The Football Mental Health Alliance, visit www.thefmha.com

For more information on Martin, visit www.keepin-mind.co.uk

Why then are a lot of professional sports clubs outsourcing their commercial activities?

Danny talks about what he has seen on the sports marketing industry and how outsourcing your sales process doesn't work.

At 53, he was diagnosed with ADHD, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

His initial reaction was that of concern and how this might negatively affect him, how others would view him, and how this might damage his professional career.

However, after further research, into the life-long condition that he has had since birth, he knew that this was something to turn into a positive.

To coincide with Neurodiversity Celebration Week, which kicks off on Monday 21st March, Graham talks to Danny about his diagnosis and what it has done for him.

You can find out more about Graham via the following links:

https://www.all-about-change.co.uk/

Graham on LinkedIn

Dr Sushie Dobbinson who gave Graham his diagnosis

Natasha Hickling, Graham's ADHD Coach

Book: Fast Minds - How to Thrive if you Have ADHD (Or Think You Might)

He's a registered Member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (MBACP) - this means he meets their standards of proficiency and abides by their code of ethics and practice.

Zorack holds a Post Graduate Diploma in Counselling and Psychotherapy (level 7) and has 20 years experience of working in education.

He has experience of bereavement counselling in a hospice as well as working with anxiety, depression, trauma, and PTSD.

During this episode of The Narrow Road, Zorack discusses with Danny how your problems don't define you.

He goes on to talk about how therapy should be humanised, building trust with your counsellor, the BAME Community's relationship with mental health and suggests that mental health should be like 'chicken tikka masala' (you'll get it when you listen!)

Zorack can be found at: https://www.chapelallertontherapy.uk/

In addition to her counselling work, Charlotte is a qualified Reiki Master and practitioner (a non-invasive gentle form of healing) holding a foundation qualification in spiritual healing.

In her years of counselling, Charlotte has witnessed many clients who experience somatic pain within their bodies, which she believes, can sometimes be linked to difficult emotional life experiences or trauma.

Therefore, Charlotte offers a holistic service to address the emotional, spiritual and physical needs of clients, offering healing alongside counselling for people who feel this is appropriate for them.

During this episode of The Narrow Road, Charlotte discusses how we can give ourselves more hope and how gratitude and being mindful can help us as individuals so much.

She covers the power of affirmations and the Law of Attraction, explaining how the universe is like a big mirror and what we give out, we get back.

Charlotte can be found at: https://www.headheartandsoulhealing.com/

Beth believes that your thoughts, behaviours and emotions are all interconnected.

Beth discusses Mindfulness and explains what she feels Mindfulness is and how it will work for you!

She covers techniques to practise Mindfulness and discusses the benefits of creating small habits and rewarding yourself for forming these and sticking to them.

Beth speaks about how undertaking the simple task of taking a few deep breaths can change your state and improve your neuroplasticity.

There’s loads covered in this Podcast - how sleep, exercise, nutrition and mindfulness all link together to give us a healthy life. Examples to help with all aspects are covered.

Beth breaks this seemingly complex subject into a series of simple tips and explanations that we all can understand and utilise.

It’s a great listen from a great person!

Beth is a truly positive person and a joy to be around. She oozes passion and enthusiasm and this comes through in droves during this conversation.

https://bethmadeleycounselling.com/

Books that Beth recommends:

Tiny Habits - BJ Fogg

How to Build a Healthy Brain- Kimberley Wilson

Why We Sleep - Matthew Walker

Mindsight - Daniel Seigel

A book Danny recommends

Atomic Habits - James Clear

His achievements in the business world would usually mean that he would appear on The Narrow Road, talking about his entrepreneurial journey, discussing how he has got to where he is now.

Where he is now in the business world includes being the author of three best-selling books on business networking, international keynote speaker, the founder of The Networking Retreat, business consultant, ex-Network Director of 4Networking and genuinely, all-round bloody good guy!

What actually brings Stef to The Narrow Road is a blunt, honest discussion about his mental health and the events that led to his 'breakdown' where he was detained under the Mental Health act and in his own words 'spent a week in a mental hospital'.

Upon being discharged, Stef was informed he would have to wait 14 months for an assessment.

This is an amazing episode where Stef shares what happened and how he manages his mental health by rebuilding his life in a way that suits him.

Click here for Stef's Books

Click here for the Networking Retreat

Season 2 of The Narrow Road focuses on the many aspects of Mental Health.

This episode is released in time with Neurodiversity Celebration Week (March 15-21, 2021) and Tasha talks about neurodiversity and how neurodiverse people are 'superheroes' and often responsible for some of the world's greatest achievements.

She speaks about how we need to understand better the strengths and needs of neurodiverse people and not to judge too quickly if we see someone who may seem to be acting away from the 'norm'.

It's a powerful, eye-opening episode with loads of learning points.

Tasha Walsh - Qualified. Experienced. Compassionate.

Tasha offers a range of therapies for adults, children and young people.

She has a passion for working with neurodiversity & with LAAC and their families. Tasha uses a range of methods depending on the individual needs and she operates a confidential service. She has experience of working with adults and working with children in a school setting.

She has a special interest in working with Neurodiverse people and has trained in a specialist play therapy called Autoplay Therapy devised specifically for Autism and other neurodivergent people.

https://seenandheardtherapy.co.uk/

https://embracingcomplexity.org.uk/

No introduction is needed for this guy.

The episode begins with Julian speaking about his days in the world of football hooliganism which translated into his understanding of the power of branding and led to him printing bootleg branded t-shirts to supplement his need for expensive, non-bootleg branded clothing.

The hooligan element of Julian's life got out of hand which led to him getting death threats down the phone as well as thirty plus rival hooligans waiting for him outside his grandparents' house - all at the age of 17.........

At age 19 he realised it was time to get out so he told his hooligan 'family' he was quitting to set up in business.

The rest (as the cliché goes) is history.........

"It is a mindset. When people think they're at the final door, there are 50 doors. When you're at the very end and you've run out of ideas, ring me. I'll come up with six more, don't worry."

David's closing words....

"I'm very, very present. That's how I feel and that's how I am."

"I'm just dying.... I'm confused, but I'm definitely dying..... I felt I had taken my last breath."

After the event, the other people in David's group explained to him that they did actually think he was dying and how they were screaming at the Shaymen to intervene and help him as they were that concerned.

It came out that David had experienced an actual 'spiritual death'.

We then move onto Day 2, where Mother Ayahuasca shows him his life from his wife Jacqui's perspective.

She reveals the sacrifices Jacqui had to make to ensure David had the support from her to make the business the success it came to be.

What comes after this though is mind-blowing, leaving both David and Danny in tears........

Mother Ayahuasca takes him back to his childhood home where she shows David his 7 year old self watching his dad crawling around the living room floor, suffering intense pain.

She then reveals the reason why he is in agony which leads David to make an unbelievable decision on the spot.....

David was the inaugural guest on The Narrow Road. We discussed his entrepreneurial journey but ended up hearing about some serious revelations when he took a trip to Costa Rica to undertake an Ayahuasca Ceremony.

Ayahuasca — also known as the tea, the vine, and la purga — is a brew made from the leaves of the Psychotria viridis shrub along with the stalks of the Banisteriopsis caapi vine.

When combined, these two plants form a powerful psychedelic brew that affects the central nervous system, leading to an altered state of consciousness that can include hallucinations, out-of-body experiences, and euphoria.

Not content with having done it once, David recently took another trip to Costa Rica to put himself through it again. Such has been the feedback and listener numbers from the first Podcast, we had to get David back to hear about what Mother Ayahuasca delivered this second time around.

Like the first Podcast, this is truly revelatory and just gets better as the story goes on further down the Podcast.

We cover what led to the breakdown of her marriage which left Nicky £250,000 in debt, resulting in her losing her home, her business and most of her inheritance.

"I was depressed, without any question. And in absolute terror....."

Nicky's story is one that I still struggle to comprehend how so many bad things can happen to one person at all, let alone in such a short period of time.

Nothing stays broken forever and Nicky explains how 'The Fixer' found her, transforming her life....

From here, we discuss her first speaking gig with the IoD, which opened the door to the stellar career she has now........

"When you're in a bad place, the best thing you can do is go out there and frickin' Be Someone."

Nicky Online: www.nickypattinson.com

Twitter: @hiyaitsnicky

Instagram: @hiyaitsnicky

She's a powerhouse of a woman who has experienced devastating loss and turned it into amazing success.

No words I write on here can express what has happened to her.

As well as being an internationally renowned business speaker, Nicky works with massive retail brands like Tesco, Halfords and Illamasqua as well as law firms, media companies and branding agencies to transform their internal sales cultures.

In Part One of of a Three Part 'Be Someone' we discuss Nicky's upbringing on a farm and how as a 5 year old, she knew even then what she was born to do.

A tumultuous relationship with her parents lead to a tumultuous marriage and Nicky never feeling she was good enough for anything or anyone.

Nicky found her place at a Biscuit Stall, within Huddersfield Market that she and her husband ran, taking it from a turnover of £1,000 per week to nearly £2 million a year within two years.

Things looked rosey from the outside, but devastation was in the post.......

It's a story of utter, utter desolation. I was in tears listening to what Nicky has overcome. This is a raw, unbelievably honest and open conversation.

"I used to put my hands over the gas ring and burn my hands because it wasn't as painful as the bloody pain in my heart...."

Nicky Online: www.nickypattinson.com

Twitter: @hiyaitsnicky

Instagram: @hiyaitsnicky

This led to Dixons wanting to cash in on Freeserve, selling the product for £1.5bn after it only being in existence for three years......

After the sale of Freeserve Ajaz left the company and sold his shares, which allowed him to live debt-free, pay off his mortgage and live a life of freedom.

Ajaz went from Retail Manager to freedom in five years.....

This led to Ajaz being invited to many of Apple's iconic product launches, including the actual original iPhone.

We move onto what Ajaz is doing now, what he has learned and where he believes the internet is heading in the future, including how AI will affect our lives.

"We are only limited by our imagination."

In this second part, we discuss how Freeserve became responsible for kicking off the Dot Com boom in the UK and how at launch, AOL dismissed them.

It took only three months for Freeserve to become the UK's largest ISP and Ajaz explains how nobody, including him, thought it would grow so big, so quickly.

Ajaz explains how they couldn't cope with the amount of calls received from companies wanting to do deals with Freeserve - this included the Daily Mirror inviting Ajaz down to Canary Wharf to make him an offer for 50% of the fledgling company.

Freeserve grew so rapidly that within 9 months, Dixons had floated it for £1.9bn...... at its peak Freeserve had a market cap of £9bn.

"Business people can only believe it once they have seen it, whereas an entrepreneur can vision before it happens."

In this first part of a two part Podcast, Danny speaks with Internet Pioneer Ajaz Ahmed.

Huddersfield based Ajaz is a company advisor, a business speaker and he writes a column for a national business magazine. He helps small and medium sized companies and is also an experienced Exec Officer, Non-Exec and Chairman of FTSE & AIM companies.

He's in the 'Yorkshire Business Power 100,’ and he sits on the Advisory Board at the University of Huddersfield Business School.

Ajaz is best known for being the founder of Freeserve which was once the UK's largest Internet Company.

It had a market cap of £9bn and eventually sold to France Telecom three years after launch for £1.6bn.

We discuss how he started working at Dixons and how fate led him to move to PC World in Leeds. Whilst managing the PC World store, he realised that none of his staff could tell him how to get on the internet. This led to his eureka moment and the genesis of Freeserve.

Ajaz explains how after months of work to get to launch, a press release from BT led him to think that Freeserve was dead in the water.

This resulted in a massive last-minute change of strategy, leading to the product changing its name and rewriting its offering to customers.

Eventually, Dixons launched Freeserve in September 1998, and it became the UK's largest ISP three months later.

An amazing story of vision and persistence from one of the UK's true internet pioneers - the person who pioneered internet access for the masses in the UK.

Part 2 covers the launch itself, the unbelievable growth of the company, how a national newspaper summoned Ajaz to London to ask him to sell them 50% of Freeserve and how the sale of the business led to Ajaz leaving Freeserve.

In this second part, we discuss how David learned to be humble, patient and value his time.

We cover the sale of Cooper's Coffee and how David describes the selling of a business being like a game of poker.

David explains how he felt 'bullied' by the buyers and why at the 11th hour, he told them to f**k off.

From here, we explore David's journey into spirituality and his unbelievable experience of venturing into the Amazon jungle to join Tribal Shaman in an Ayahuasca ceremony.

In South America Ayahuasca is an integral part of some tribal societies. It is a natural, plant based psychedelic drug and has been used for millennia within the Amazonian tribes.

What Ayahuasca unlocked for David is nothing short of remarkable....

In this first episode of The Narrow Road, Danny interviews David Cooper, who along with his wife Jacqui founded the eponymous Cooper's Coffee.

In its pomp, Cooper's Coffee was one the UK's premier trade suppliers of fine coffees and espresso machines with a national distribution to over 1300 clients.

Cooper's was subsequently sold for high seven figures and in this first part of a two part podcast, David discusses how he began selling 'genuine copy' Swatch Watches from a pub kitchen and how he got fired from selling coffee machines for selling his own brand coffee on the side, which led to the genesis of Cooper's Coffee.

He goes on to describe the setting up of Cooper's from a flat, how he got sued and how his ego became out of control.

It's a fascinating insight into a true entrepreneur.

Part 2 of 'The Universe Delivers' delves into the sale of Cooper's Coffee and David's spiritual awakening. An engrossing listen........

Straight talking and to the point, Danny explains what this Podcast is all about and why he has started it.