The Ben Price Experience

Jonny Wilkinson has said openly that he was both successful and miserable at the same time. Simon Hartley worked with him for many years, and he believes you do not have to trade one for the other.

In this episode of The Ben Price Experience, Simon shares what he has learned from studying the best in the world. That includes Olympians, F1 pit crews and a world barista champion. He explains why some of the greatest performers never loved what they did, and what happens to them once the rewards arrive.

We discuss:

• Agassi, Tiger Woods and success without passion
• Why Simon's parents believed work was not meant to be enjoyed
• Obsession versus passion as a long-term driver
• Being world class without losing yourself

Chapters
0:00 Who is Simon Hartley?
2:33 Everyone has the potential for greatness
3:47 Great at something you don't love
7:14 Successful and miserable at the same time
8:55 "Work's not there for you to enjoy it"
10:23 Feeling trapped by your own success
12:26 Prove the concept before you leap
14:14 You have more choices than you think
15:05 What the ego really is
19:13 The questions to ask when you feel stuck
20:35 Finding purpose in what you already do
24:44 What makes a great leader?
26:34 Should, need and want
28:42 World-class teams have world-class leaders
29:33 Align, empower, engage
32:42 Ask great questions, then give people space
34:42 Living your values, not just writing them down
38:58 A value always has a cost
41:21 Character is the tree, reputation is the shadow
42:01 How to find your values
44:31 Promoted to incompetence
48:20 What the military gets right about succession
50:39 Is leadership lonely?
57:05 The Atlantic rowing crew and the GPS
1:00:37 Celebrating progress along the way
1:02:25 Simon's new book on curiosity
1:04:54 What AI is doing to curiosity
1:08:41 Where to find Simon

About Simon
Simon Hartley is a performance psychologist who began his career in elite sport and Olympic programmes. He studies world-class performers and teams across sport, business, medicine and the military. He is the founder of Be World Class and the author of How to Develop Character.

Website: be-world-class.com
Free resources: worldclassresources.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/beworldclass-simon/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@SimonHartley

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"Your life demonstrates what it is that you really value."

Many capable men believe they have lost their sense of purpose. Seamus Fox, a coach to founders and business owners for over two decades, argues it never left. It shows up in where you spend your time, money and energy.

In this episode of The Ben Price Experience, Seamus explains how to spot your real values and why "should" and "have to" often point to someone else's. He also explains why the work you would do for free is usually where your business grows fastest.

We discuss:

• Your hierarchy of values and how it shapes your identity
• Imperative language and the values we absorb from others
• Following your joy without ignoring the work that pays
• Why people are drawn to a man doing what he loves

Chapters
0:00 Who is Seamus Fox?
1:00 Purpose and your highest value
4:07 The car crash that changed everything
6:34 From shy PT to gym owner
8:12 Why people quit the gym by February
10:47 Identity and your hierarchy of values
14:37 "Should" and "have to": spotting borrowed values
16:54 What your life shows you value
19:33 Follow your joy
23:22 The dark side of personal development
26:31 Never outsource your highest value
28:07 Go with the flow or change the flow
30:25 We see things as we are
33:05 Why your partner doesn't need to share your vision
34:07 Founders, guilt and family
37:49 People pleasing and fair exchange
39:39 Is investing in yourself selfish?
45:06 Accountability and being a man of your word
50:30 What your triggers are telling you
58:03 The unconscious handbrake
1:02:05 Growth beyond the business
1:04:09 Fatherhood and learning to let go
1:10:29 Where to find Seamus

About Seamus
Seamus Fox is a coach and mentor to men in business, from founders to CEOs. He spent over 20 years in the fitness industry before selling his business and moving into coaching full time. He runs [ACADEMY NAME: CHECK SPELLING], a community for male business owners with regular meetups in Derry.
Instagram: [LINK] | LinkedIn: [LINK] | YouTube: [LINK]

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James O'Keefe was arrested many times for fighting and stealing. Today he teaches men, and professional boxers, how to use the breath to stay in control.

In this episode, James breaks down what he does when he feels the old reaction rise. He takes a breath, questions whether the feeling is true, and asks what his part is in the situation. Ben shares the difference between anger and rage, and the moment a feelings wheel showed him where fear sat in his body.

Inside:

• Why your nervous system decides before your logic does
• "Go in first before you go out"
• Why James avoids anger release work on his men's retreats
• Whether fighting builds emotional control or feeds the ego

James Hassett has spent twenty years in sport and human performance, and close to a decade of it running on almost no energy. In this episode of The Ben Price Experience he explains why founder fatigue is an energy problem rather than a time problem, and what to do about it.

James worked in sports marketing at Reebok before moving on to the 2007 Rugby World Cup and the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. He then spent twelve years running the Bloomberg Square Mile Relay, growing it from a single London event into fourteen cities across eleven countries. He now runs Indurus, a performance operating system built specifically for founders.

We talk about why high performers sacrifice the health and freedom the business was meant to create, why performance gets mistaken for pushing harder for longer, and how James rebuilt his own energy after fatherhood and business growth flattened it. He walks through his five pillars of sustainable human performance: capacity, composure, clarity, conviction and cadence.

We also get into heart rate training, VO2 max, biological age testing, when wearables stop helping and start adding pressure, why most supplements do nothing unless you are supplementing for a deficiency, and what it means to raise sons with intention.

If you run a business and the hours keep going up while the output quietly drops, this one is for you.

CHAPTERS
00:00 Who are you and why are you here
01:02 Father, husband, and twenty years in sport
02:16 Reebok, Rugby World Cup 2007 and London 2012
03:00 Building the Bloomberg Square Mile Relay
04:11 Helping founders scale without burning out
06:43 Why founders sacrifice their health and energy
09:28 Delegation, and why you become the business
11:13 What got you here will not get you there
14:49 What changes when you raise investment
15:39 We teach what we need most
17:00 A decade with almost no energy
18:55 How fatherhood changed training
20:09 Leaving rugby and taking up running
22:43 Ironman, heart rate zones and Morpheus
24:26 When wearable data starts adding pressure
25:43 Initiation, and raising a son with intention
29:59 How character actually gets built
33:15 Weighted vests, rucking and return on investment
36:00 MindFlick, self awareness and values
38:00 Biomarkers, biological age and the supplement question
39:35 Why VO2 max is the number that matters
43:54 The five pillars: capacity, composure, clarity, conviction, cadence
48:10 Can emotional intelligence be measured
50:54 Where to find James

FIND JAMES HASSETT
Website: https://indurus.co.uk
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-hassett-uk/

FIND BEN PRICE
Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/4eE4om7MzzIIIjaJkuh9Yn
Website: www.initiators.co.uk
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/coachbenprice

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#JamesHassett #FounderFatigue #BenPriceExperience

What does it take to build the capacity for more without simply adding more pressure?

In this episode of The Ben Price Experience, I sit down with Adam W. Barney to explore what happens when the next level of leadership requires more than just working harder.

Adam spent two decades in the corporate world, managing more than $100 million in advertising spend and leading teams inside global organisations. Through that experience, he began to recognise something he now calls “energy debt”: the hidden cost of constantly making decisions, carrying responsibility and pushing forward without properly replenishing what is being spent.

We talk about how great leaders increase their capacity, why delegation is often an identity problem rather than a time-management problem, and what happens when being “the hero” starts limiting the growth of the business, the team and the individual.

We also explore leadership versus control, masculinity, asking for help, emotional responsibility, social conditioning and the difference between looking successful and actually building a life that can sustain success.

One of the ideas I keep coming back to in my own work is that what got me here will not necessarily get me there.

At some point, greater ambition requires greater capacity.

Not more pressure.
Not more performance.
Not more sacrifice.

More self-awareness, better systems, stronger relationships and a more evolved way of leading.

This is a conversation about becoming capable of holding more without losing more of yourself in the process.

Adam W. Barney is a transition leadership coach and author of Make Your Own Glass Half Full: The Empowered Path to Optimism and Autonomy.

Connect with Adam on Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamwbarney/

adamwbarney.com

Become the founder, leader and that "better man" your next chapter needs in business and at home in the next 100days http://www.initiators.co.uk

Ben Coomber finished a charity event simulating the ascent of Everest, had a beer and a pizza with his brother, and woke up the next morning unable to get out of bed.

He was not unfit. He had built three companies, trained hard, played sport and travelled constantly. A year later he still could not walk two thousand steps without spending the following day unable to move.

What he had was long COVID. What he found underneath it was the more interesting part.

For years he had been running a cycle he thought was normal. A week away, then five or six weeks burning back down to empty, then another week away. He was on the permanent edge of it, and deep down he was afraid of the whole thing falling over, because he had attached who he was to what he had built.

The question driving all of it had been set a long time before. Au pair from the age of four. A father in the military, away for six to nine months at a time. Boarding school at nine, military boarding school at eleven. Then, in his words, being the only fat kid out of six hundred and forty.

Layers of asking whether he was worth anything.

That question built a career. It also nearly took him out.

This is a conversation about what happens when the engine that built everything finally stops, and a man has to go back and work out what he was actually chasing.

What we get into:

• Why he describes calling yourself self-aware as the thing that keeps you blind
• The habit that outlives the wound, and why spotting it is easier than the original work
• What his COO could see about his leadership that he could not
• Breathwork, psychedelics, and why he thinks one of them asks more of you than the other
• Why he decided not to turn any of this into a business, even though he wanted to
• The identity statement he wrote three years ago and has run on since
• Why he is unapologetic about the life he wants, and what he thinks makes British men soften their ambition

One line has stayed with me since we recorded it. On how to begin, when there is no obvious blueprint for any of this: just start, because no one knows what they're doing with this stuff.

Ben Coomber is a health and performance coach, and the founder and CEO of Awesome Supplements. He is forty, and a father of two daughters.

Hear the full story and the lessons behind it in the complete conversation.

Find out more

Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/bencoomber/

Personal Coaching with Ben - https://www.bencoomber.com/
Supps - https://awesomesupplements.co.uk/

Become the founder, leader and that "better man" your next chapter needs in business and at home in the next 100days www.initiators.co.uk

Most men who hit the number do not talk about the week that follows.

Will Polston has a name for what leads up to it. He calls it "when-then syndrome". When I achieve this, then I will be okay. When I get there, then I will be all right.

He was running it himself for twenty years, and he can trace where it started. He was about ten. His father left the house at five in the morning, came home at eight at night carrying the day with him, then lost his work altogether and stopped going out. Will had two wealthy uncles who seemed perfectly content. Three men, one conclusion, drawn by a boy who had no reason to doubt it.

Money equals happiness.

It took him two decades to test it.

What he built instead is what he calls a North Star: a mission in life that you never achieve. Not a goal you finish. Something large enough that the numbers along the way stop having to carry the weight of your whole life.

In this conversation we get into what that actually looks like in practice.

What we cover:

• Why arriving at the goal so often produces the quiet week afterwards, and why that is not a flaw in you

• The difference between a mission and a target, and why Will dropped his own number entirely

• Five routes to working out what you are actually for, including the four pieces of evidence about yourself you have already been producing for years

• Why the man with the most opportunities is often the one who feels most stuck

• What happens to a man when the role ends and he is no longer the soldier, the owner, the husband

• Why Will believes time does not heal anything

We also disagree, properly. Will works hard not to feel pride. I think most entrepreneurs give themselves nowhere near enough credit for what they have built. Neither of us moved, and I have thought about it since.

Will is a coach and author who has run over five hundred events across the UK. You can find his work at willpolston.com.

Hear the full story and the lessons behind it in the complete conversation.

Former paratrooper Keith J Abraham on ayahuasca, psychedelic therapy for veterans, and ten days alone in the Peruvian jungle.

Keith served in Iraq and then Afghanistan in the summer of 2008. When he came home the standard routes did not touch what he was carrying. He tried antidepressants three times and stopped, describing himself as devoid of all emotion, blank and feeling nothing. He would rather have kept the suffering.

Six years later he was dropped at a wooden hut in the Amazon with no running water, no electricity and no toilet, and left there for ten days.

He now runs the UK branch of the Heroic Hearts Project, helping British military veterans and emergency services personnel access psychedelic therapy in Peru and the Netherlands.

What he built is deliberately not what he did. Three weeks of restrictions before anyone travels. A week more afterwards, then integration that can run for years. His view is that the discipline is not preparation for the work. It is the work.

Chapters

00:00 Who Keith is and what Heroic Hearts does
01:19 The spectrum of suffering, and who this is not for
04:33 Paratrooper. Iraq, then Afghanistan 2008
07:51 Devoid of all emotion: why he came off the medication
13:37 The bergen he left in a kitchen
14:32 Ten days alone in the Peruvian jungle
17:52 MDMA and psychedelics are not the same thing
20:26 The most common way this fails
22:26 Three weeks of preparation, and why it is the work
29:25 What actually happens on a retreat
32:10 Fresh snow on old tracks
34:15 The purging, honestly described
37:57 What he has seen change
39:59 The wives who have been bracing for years
44:11 Initiation, and young men being left behind
49:49 Active duty, Ukraine, and where he draws the line
58:35 The ten year vision
01:03:39 How to get in touch

About Keith J Abraham

Keith J Abraham is the founder of the UK branch of the Heroic Hearts Project. Heroic Hearts Project UK serves British military veterans and emergency services personnel: police, fire brigade and paramedics. Waiting list at heroicheartsuk.com. They are funded entirely by donation.

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This conversation discusses substances that are Class A in the UK, and mental health including a reference to suicide. It is not medical advice. Nothing here encourages illegal drug use.

Men don’t need another lecture about “toxic masculinity.” They need somewhere they can tell the truth.

In this raw conversation, I sit down with Jonnie Jensen, founder of the High Value Man Project, to explore what happens when a man loses himself inside work, marriage, fatherhood and the pressure to hold everything together.

Jonnie speaks openly about losing his mother at nine, being beaten by his father, his brother taking his own life, divorce, family court and the emotional breakdown that forced him to rebuild himself.

We confront the lie that men don’t talk, the damage caused by unprocessed wounds, the rise of the manosphere and what it actually means to become a strong, grounded man.

This is a conversation about responsibility, brotherhood, initiation and becoming the man your wife, children and future need you to be.

Because your family doesn’t need you to be perfect.

They need you to come back.

Owen O'Malley started meditating at four years old. Not because anyone taught him. He just pulled the covers over his head and went somewhere else entirely.

Then school happened. University. A career in salmon farming. Thirty years of the matrix, as he calls it. And then Tony Robbins, a room full of the world's wealthiest people, and a system that changed everything.

What Owen taught me about money is not what I expected. The numbers are almost secondary. The real lesson is emotional. Most people buy when things are high because they fear missing out. They sell when things are low because they are afraid. The stock market, he said, is just a graph of human emotion. Fear and greed, repeating the same patterns, generation after generation.

"The market doesn't care about your feelings. But your feelings will destroy your returns if you let them."

He has built investment clubs in fifty countries, fifteen languages. His son started trading real money at six. Walked out of university with fourteen years of actual market experience. Owen's mission is to help a million people reach financial freedom. Not for the money. So they can get on with the work they came here to do.

That last line stayed with me.

Full conversation in the comments.