#15 with John Dykes: Inside the Premier League & Sports Media

[Applause] [Music] hi guys today I had the absolute pleasure of sitting down with Mr John Dykes I've had the pleasure of watching him as the face of football for many many years as a broadcaster as a journalist and now as an entrepreneur I hope you enjoyed the chat as much as I did Cheers good morning morning John how are you I'm very well Paul good to be here thank you so much for taking the time I really appreciate it now before we dive in um I just want to ask you a little bit of a question I know you've sat down and interviewed Global icons like Serena Williams David Beckham and arold sweger who's one of my Idols what kind of insights can you give us about that little teaser you've done your homework haven't you obviously I knew you would to and I'll give you a little teaser about that I think where we're probably going to go today is we're going to unpack a career of mine which is quite weird because how often would you find yourself saying you've interviewed schwartzen egger and one of the William sisters and David Beckham so I think that will speak to the kind of areas we're going to get into today but seeing as you asked it I think what we're going to talk about is we're going to talk about a career progression that was based around the fact that I took so many learnings from different people fundamentally it was be good at your job be respectful and people will give you what you're looking for and that is you know in the Serena Williams case it's all about having a growth mindset about always wanting to to improve in in Schwarzenegger's case it's about earning the respect of somebody and then and then understanding your your purpose in life and in David Beckham's case it's very much a question of having a very true sense of uh of what you are what your brand is and where you can go so we've gone in heavy but in a way I think we're going to come back to all of those please now before for the very very few people that don't know who you are can you just give a quick synopsis and a quick intro wow okay um well it depends how old you are simple as and I'm not going to I'm not going to second guess when you might first have come across me but a very quick synopsis um I'm no Young Star I started off in I'm a media person basically started off living and working in Hong Kong worked for the South China Morning Post newspaper where I was very lucky to work my way up the ranks from Junior reporter to sports reporter to feature writer to editor at the same time I started working in television curiously my I started in TV and entertainment movies and Showbiz hence the Schwarzenegger reference but I'd always been a sports guy and and I went back to sport uh when I started working for Star Sports then in Hong Kong Star Sports merged with the ESPN brought me to Singapore in 1997 and things really exploded we became the biggest Regional player one of the world's biggest broadcasters and I was lucky to present every sport Under the Sun but being an Englishman and being a football expert um they bought the rights to the Premier League Asia wide and I was invited to be the host of that which I did very happily for a number of years uh not just premier league but predominantly and then the Premier League itself um took note of what I've been doing and hired me to go to London for seven years to work on the brand new content service which was a global thing for for broadcast Partners which you will see and you see to this day when you watch it in Singapore we watch it on starhub and so on so I had that seven years in England doing that um but for one reason or another which we'll probably get into I came back to Asia in 2017 worked with Fox Sports who gave me a show with my own name the John Dyke Show which was three times a week that ran for about four years but then sadly Fox was shut down by its new owners Disney um and since then I've basically pivoted career-wise uh into still doing a bit of media work but moving much more into speaking hosting and a bit of coaching amazing well look let's just unpack this how does a young man come from Essex and get to Hong Kong what where did the Odyssey start and how did you get there um as with so many people um this wasn't a case of I had a job in Hong Kong for a month and stayed for 10 years now my father was a banker um and dad was a was a a workingclass Jordi uh he came from ashington which was the home of the Charon Brothers um and um he moved to London when his because his dad was a builder and they went down to rebuild London the capital after the war so Dad as a as a Teenage Jordi lab went down there and he one way or another he found his way into banking um but really from from the bottom level up you know and and and he learned and he worked hard and he joined City Corp um so he was with City Corp all his career wow and he pioneered really um something which would be very common place today something called loan syndication in which what he would do is largely he would go towards governments or institutions around uh civil engineering projects and he would put together a Syndicate of Banks and he would lead it City Court would lead it and so he was doing that for years traveling the world when I was growing up and I went to a boarding school in England as a result of that because Dad was away a lot um and then he got a posting to Hong Kong where he became managing director of something called Asia Pacific Capital Corporation which did what he was doing but just did it around the region and out he went to Hong Kong I followed a little bit later having finished my a levels in England did terribly in my a levels did you which why why if you went to boarding school you w studying or I I was playing sport all the time I honestly I was hop what were your favorite sports growing up playing uh to play I was a runner uh so I ran cross country and I ran track and as I got older I was a bit of a late developer but as I got older and bigger I really enjoyed running like 400 m 200 M on the track um but I I played football without ever really being into football so I've got no skills anyone will tell you if you've see me play football really I can run around and I love a tackle but I I'm not going to keep a ball in the air or or isn't that ironic what you ended up doing it's really funny that yeah yeah I actually preferred playing rugby I like the physicality of it I like being able to tackle offload uh running anything to do with movement but I did everything honestly but I I I played squash I was on the gym gymnastics team I I just sport was everything for me and I think in boarding schools especially that was important when I went to Hong Kong I did like an A- level retake here I was I was lucky enough to get into a little offshoot of the Island School there which was called South Island school and at that time they had nobody and their campus was in an old school down in so comp po where the National Stadium is so we were in there I had like private tuition in the subject I retook and a new one I took which I did great I passed them but I spent the whole year playing sport I I played League cricket Saturday Sundays I was I was very keen on Cricket played for my first 11 at School in England and all that loved it did that and I was on the the cross country team the running Team all the teams a rugby team I just played sport nonstop but but aced my exams qualified for uni yeah went back to England hated it I was doing an English literature degree I couldn't see any point or purpose in it but I um started working on the College radio station because I was really into music I still am I love music okay and I did a sort of Indie alternative rock show which I loved and then I realized I could I could speak and I could do media stuff they sent me to do some interviews and I thought that's it so when I got back to Hong Kong I did some radio internships so you knew you wanted to go back to Hong Kong you had a for it when I was in England I would Mom and Dad were great they got me back to Hong Kong as often as they could but you were you were in Hong Kong during its prime right I never I never went there back then amazing times and and there's a there's a Temptation with anything to do to Hong with Hong Kong to always be nostalgic about it but genuinely from you know from the mid 80s through to the mid90s cuz I stayed there in the end till '97 w IR hand over purely coincidentally just for the job did you um what was the experience of flying in back in the day kitac yeah a kitac was nuts I mean you know seen the videos yeah and the thing about it was when you were coming in you know you knew when you got to Beacon Hill and there was that sign and then you just tilted and you would and it was true you could see into people's living rooms and you'd see the bamboo with the with the laundry on and everything like that and where we live because you know Dad was was fortunate to be a banker we lived halfway up the hill in the mid levels the 36th floor of some beautiful building there and he would sit on the balcony and because Dad literally just traveled all the time we'd sit there and we could see the runway at kayak and he would say oh that's you know Cafe flight so and so from Manila coming in oh that's the United it's crazy flight what have you just knew them all well well if you don't mind just touching on this you know cuz we we've got kids right um and yours are now starting to get to work and at Uni but what I've said to my kids my oldest is 17 is is you want go away and try and study abroad if you get the opportunity and ideally get your first gig working when you're young because if you if not you stay get married you know that opportunity may never come up again yes and one of the things I was really lucky about we we were living in the countryside in S6 I loved it I was a country boy I was running around all the time went to to to this boarding school where I played sport um and I wasn't a very Cosmopolitan you know Urbane kind of guy I was a bit rough around the edges but Dad traveled all the time and when Dad came back he always brought things back whether it was a terrifying tarentula from from the Amazon that he had in a case or or or he come back with his amazing he used to go behind the Iron Curtain and tell us stories about you know being in in in in Russia or or Europe or what have you and he' bring back these drinks which of course him and his mates would get out you know over a Sunday lunch or something and these incredible vlogers from from from that part of the world so he always instill inness this belief that travel was the best thing ever that opening your mind broadening your horizons was great so when we went to Hong Kong it just seemed to fit for and it changed all I've got I've got a brother and a sister we all ended up in Hong Kong for a period of time my sister ended up then going to New York you know to to to to work there uh and it was just fabulous for us so how did you get started what was your first job after finishing uni well the tricky thing was when I went back to Hong Kong initially I I there wasn't really anything for me permanently so I sort of I did a little bit of freelance copywriting I I taught some English for a while I did a little bit of the radio work on an internship but fortunately I then thanks to a friend I got into a little publishing company I got a full-time job but it was a trade publishing thing and they used to do these things where they would write you know it was like an industrial thing but it was mainly China trade okay so I was in charge of the advertising Department you know so I it was a funny little company down in Wai and I did circulation I helped out with circulation and I did copywriting but the copy would be you'd receive an envelope from the you know hey long Jang import export uh heavy machinery department and it would literally be three lines in English for all your needs in tractors really heong Jang import blah blah blah blah blah and it' be a picture of a tractor and they'd say right make an advert out of that so you had to come up with something and then and then put it in the magazine and it was great fun but the the guy was editing the magazine at the time and they also spun off into a computer magazine so that they had a little bit of a stable he went and worked at the morning post and it taken a shine to me and he sort of said look I think I can get you was he a local guy or it was a Canadian guy who'd gone in gone into Hong Kong and and worked and he was lovely and and he SP he said look there's a vacancy going but it's as a kind of a traine reporter on the junior edition of the paper so they had this thing called young post which was the you know the kids schools Edition so I went in there and they trained me up um but because I'd been very visible around the sports scene I a lot of the guys on the sports test knew me from playing the cricket at the weekends and i' I'd been running you know I I I got to the sort of you know reasonable Level Playing running for the school boys and I did a bit of rugby and all that people knew me and so the sports desk sort of said you want to come over so dream job so next thing I know I'm on the sports desk as a Cadet reporter covering how old were you then uh so early 20s wow so you early 20s by then right so I'd never trained as a journalist per se apart from on the job you know I'd not done a journalism degree or anything like that but I found myself there learning on the job I covered the local rugby I covered the local Cricket and and because you know as you know places like Hong Kong you can you can FasTrack next thing I knew I was being sent to Manila to cover Davis Cup tennis Hong Kong against Philippines uh I was interviewing Kevin Keegan when he came through town so things things happened um and what was lovely about it was I was doing that and and and a fellow called Spencer Robinson who was our our sports news editor and he then became very famous for doing golf around Asia you know as a journalist and in other gues he said to one day he said I think you had a nice flare for writing feature articles and he sent me off to interview the Aussie uh cricketer Greg Matthews which I did and he said yeah it's a nice piece he said I'll put a word in for you on the features desk so they came to me and they said yeah we like the way you write your features come and work with us on all topics so next thing I knew I put sport aside and I was interviewing politicians authors celebrities I was writing pieces about uh Hong Kong Society W I was doing entertainment and it really broaden by five I mean you threw you in at The Deep End right yeah yeah did you find yourself pinching yourself especially when you were interviewing people like Kevin Keegan yeah it's crazy I mean because what would happen is you know that the sports thing was fabulous you know in the space of in the space of two months I interviewed um sugaray Leonard and Marvin hegler no way I knew that would appeal to you oh was this before they fought uh that was after they fought both came through Hong Kong uh and it was organized by an amazing guy called Derek Curry who was uh probably the most famous famous International overseas footballer in Hong Kong history he turned up there amongst the first players to ever play as foreigners there okay and he had this beard and this long hair he a Scottish fell and they called him yo Jesus they him which was his nickname which was so funny but he he became he was a really great footballer and he ended up playing against Pelle a couple of times he went and played in the in in in the ma over in the states and Major League Soccer and everything like that incredible to think that he did that but he became the pr manager for carlsburg which was a smart move and he he pushed all their sports events wow so he would arrange things like he sponsored the Davis Cup tennis team so that's why I went down to Manila they covered the cost of that he brought the boxes ENT town were they together or no no se separate I was going to say otherwise otherwise just called me out one day and it was like Hey Dy dxy guess who's here and there's picture of me with Marvin hegler with the classic on his jawer and enrolling in that yeah amazing so so you it was a very Hong Kong thing yeah it just seemed to be that there was always a star in town yeah and you know and I tell my kids this my my daughter's funny my 24 year old she says to me I think I've heard all your stories and then you give me another one and that was because the other day I told her that I sat and had a drink with Chris Isaac one day when he was at Hy no way and and then and then you know the next week I'd be interviewing John Larry the author one of my favorite writers uh and then maybe a comedian would be in town so there was always something now you know like when when you think about um I when I talk to people in their careers moving from one line of Bank to another to them seems daunting but I but for you it's real time it's live Wimbledon the Premier League how did you adapt between the two so yeah so so I mean yeah I don't want to ramble on too long I went from feature writing into TV so my my intro to TV was a really interesting one because I was from I'm from a sort of Punky background I like I like sort of Punky music and I like alternative music and loud music and then being a journalist you and being British I think a lot of us we were always raised to be a little bit sort of anti-establishment and and a little bit sort of edgy about stuff so when when someone first came to me um from TVB which was the the you know the big English Channel their TVB poll and said look I was writing film reviews by this stage I was doing my my sort of film critic thing and I was right you weren't doing a Barry Hearn were you not that way Barry Norman Barry Norman that's right see a boxing guy very normal well kind of he he wasn't the most kind at times no he wasn't and and I'm afraid it was tempting to be a little bit British and a bit cynical and and I think I think we're a bit raised like that we were it used to be you know we're the best our TV is the best our adverts our music everything else sucks someone came to me and said look you know would you would you come on the TV and do this and I honestly turned around and said what what look at a camera and talk that's cheesy that's not me I have you honestly it was embarrassing and they said look no honestly we we think you could do it you know so I went on the TV show and the first thing I did I went I said look you can interview me but I don't want to be the presenter so they interviewed me came back to me and said look I producer said well done but next time you got to look at the camera and present so I did and and a couple of and you know one thing Paul that's really important in anyone's careers you just got kind people that help you along the way and a couple of really kind people a fellow called Paul George Who sadly is no longer with us was the presenter and he gave me a few few pointers and you know and then I became the resident film critic on TVB then I became the Showbiz guy and I and again The Madness of my life I would get sent to the junk kits the Press junkets really so when Jurassic Park came out yeah I'm flown to La where I'm put in a Beverly Hills Hotel where you basically what they do is all the Press are brought in and then they wheel out the Stars so you sit in the room two camera set up and then in comes Michael kryon in comes Jeff Goldblum Laura d s Neil and you interview them they flew me to Tokyo which is where I met swega he was promoting the twins movie with Danny deito and you're in a and and you're you're you're interviewing Anie this is when you pinch yourself right so I had this crazy career um but after for a while I sort of started thinking I miss my sport what's my pathway back into Sport and it just so turned out that I'd been at the newspaper a long time in various guises and I thought I'll go fulltime on the sport I started doing a little bit of commentary for Star Sports and at the same time I took on a day job working for a company called World sport group and what they did was they had the rights to show uh well they owned the rights to Asian football production they were the they were the sort of U um the agency for for Asian football basketball and golf and they put out some some content around it an Asian football show golf show Etc I went in behind the scenes not on camera I went in as a kind of Junior assistant to the producer learning how to literally just make stories log tapes go on shoots and then they asked me to make a show which was an all sports show about Asian Sport and again just sitting in edit Suites making a show scripting doing that but at the same time I was starting to do work on on on microphone commentating on sport then Star Sports started putting me on camera hosting anything from from five nations as it was then rugby to Formula 1 to uh football shows uh and and to finally answer your question yeah the I had to learn I was lucky when you come from being a journalist you've got the fundamentals you you know how to find a story you know how to tell a story you got your five ws in terms of structuring a story so you know how to really hit hard and then and then taper off your story so those skills were in me already I had to apply them to actually talking to a camera and and and verbalizing it so what I needed to again very kind people uh there was a director called Phil Betts who's an Aussie guy who's probably the most famous um Sports director around Asia he gave me a couple of pointers about to how to be on camera how to look to something when I wanted the audience to realize that I was throwing to a package it's something I'd do to this day movement on camera pool is really important so if you're if you're interviewing two guests or three guests you have to make sure that their eyeline is is always on whoever's speaking you'll see this in a panel on stage you know any of your you know anyone watching or listening to this who goes to a conference will know that if in a panel one person is just gazing around the room it's very distracting so the key always is if I'm talking look at me if you're talking look at that person and and and what I learned from these guys was keep the audience's eye on you so if I'm now going to say well let's listen to the interview I did earlier with David Beckham I'll just do a little eye movement Maybe down or off and then they oh he's going somewhere and then a video rolls and it's seamless so little things like that uh projecting your voice keeping your head still just just out of curious did did you um watch broadcasters that came before you and say right I I want to copy some of those traits and integrate that into my I think not directly um but I think you'd be a fool not to to understand that you have to learn from people so I grew up and I was just a sports nut so it was always watching back in England it would have been the midweek football shows it would have been match of the day it would have been whatever I could watch I was a big Cricket fan so I'd always watch Richie Beno on the cricket and people like that so I think subconsciously they were very much in my mind the minute I started broadcasting I watched actively I made a point of saying yeah look at me I'm using my hands what do people do with their hands yeah what do you not do uh what are the no NOS here and there so I started learning and of course again I was picking up notes all the time but what you have to do absolutely must do is watch it back yeah and take criticism and it's the most horrible thing yeah anyone who's ever listen TOS back and go oh God do I sound like that I know or watch himself back I say that you realize that you have um you know words that are crutches that you go to whilst you're buying time to think you have gestures that you didn't know you made so you've got to be brutally self-critical uh and that's that's how you do it well later on when we come back to your coaching that's one of the key things I want to touch upon because senior Executives really look at that um what I found you know on in sports is if you take the best athletes and what they do you could see uh just a shadow of them and you would know okay so for example that's Boris Becker serving you could see a silhouette you would know and I think sometimes in whatever field that you've chosen you need to have that expert knowledge in your industry but what I find is people know more about sports because they love sports they're passionate about sports than they do about their own industry I in banking and stuff like that yeah and I tell you something interesting about that when you mentioned passion um some time ago somebody interviewed me and a few other presenters uh when I was at ESPN about why we did what we did and I found two of them I I didn't like their answers two of them said something like well of course first and foremost I'm a fan I'm passionate about sport but my belief is always been first and foremost I'm a broadcaster yeah that's my my my tradeit now of course anyone in that field would will be a fan of certain Sports what have you and today you're encouraged to be a fan I think overly encouraged to the extent that people are are taking fandom or considering more important than actually knowing the basics of broadcasting or the journalism behind it I no I think you absolutely have to be a really good broadcaster and then you then you work within the topic and then if you want to show some uh passion for your sport or fandom great that's fine first things first be the best you can be and and I just wanted to go back a little bit there there's there's a story I tell about the person who said something that I think influenced what I do and it influences what I do to this day not just sport not not just broadcasting the doen of uh Aussie Cricket commentators was Richie Benner so we're going back a long time former Australian test captain and this very sort of straight-faced guy he used to appear on BBC when I was growing up and then on Australian uh uh stuff and they always used to take the Mickey out of him because he always used to wear like a a beige or a cream or an ivory or it was always was it was just a a brown man you know in terms of the way he looked but he was so clever when it came to broadcasting and he's very famous for saying if you haven't got anything to say that improves on what we're all seeing on screen right now don't say anything so he was very much about uh brevity when it comes to broadcast and just being absolutely right I was lucky enough to meet him when I was starting out and my producer said this is John and the guy was so lovely he said yeah I've heard of you I'm aware of what you're doing because I did a lot of cricket back then and we met at Lords of all places and he took a bit of time to talk to me and he said something that has stuck with me ever since he said right here's the one thing I'll give you today John he said the secret to Great commentary particularly color commentary or co- commentary is this he said you need to answer a question just as it's beginning to form in the viewer or the listener's Mind wow and what that you can see where I'm going with that what that means is it becomes an organic experience we're watching something in sport but because we have a degree of expertise and knowledge what we're going to do is we're going to show you as the audience the respect to understand that you're beginning to notice something but perhaps you can't articulate it yet and we're just going to step in there and go well as you've been noticing you know this bowler is doing a lot of that and the reason he's doing that or she's doing that is because of this and what happens then is it becomes an organic process in which you're engaging with the audience you're empowering the audience and everyone's getting like yeah I saw that yeah that's great and it's what it's a predictive Progressive thing and I've applied that PLL to every single thing I do in my life I'm not talking down to an audience I'm not simply firing stats at an audience I'm saying hey let's go on this journey together you know and we're going to bring stuff to it that's going to enhance your experience of what we're doing here and we're going to go somewhere yeah and I think that's to this day that happens in everything I do so powerful well actually in doing research for today um I watched one of your recent um Clips where you were talking about the top 10 top five volumes of all time and um I actually hadn't watched your number one but to your point you you made made a point very interestingly about how the player was was actually headed in the other direction it was something that unless you looked at it multiple times from different angles you would have thought about and that's that's brought the skill level of that shot to the next level right it is absolutely and I think that happens with all sorts so I just said that absolutely and I'm annoyed by myself with that because that's a bit of a crutch word and too many people say that but you know why we have those words it's because it buys us a split St of of thought I call them transition words and phrases we all have them right whatever it is we do it and and and and and that's one that a people use that example you chose about the volley and and it was you know not not a very well-known player but it was a piece of skill that was amazing demonstrated something which I think is very important in sport we've all played a little bit of sport you know and and and and whatever the sport may be you we have an understanding of it but what I've always tried to do is when I'm sitting opposite a really famous sports person very often the best pointers I get aren't when we're on camera you know we'll have done our pre-show the match will be on the comment will be doing the commentary and we're watching it in a studio and I'll be next to it could be a Roy Keane it could be a Shane War you know rest in peace it could be somethingone like that and if they respect you and they're chatting with you Alan sheer or or Andy Townsen or somethingone like that then they'll be sort of saying see what's Difficult about that was he was doing this and that and then that I've never done that in my life I don't have the skill to do that but once they've told me then that becomes part of my Armory and I'm able to use that but only once I've heard it from a pro yeah I'm never going to stick my my neck out and sort of just on my own volunteer well we all know how tough that skill is no no and I think that's important I think the audience respects that you know you're all right okay they're sharing something that they've learned or he's sharing something he's learned about Elite level sport well that's why I say to all my team I say look if you're interviewing Senior People candidates clients um that what I find interesting is most people will take notes about the things they understand yeah and I said that that's great but you should be writing the things that you don't understand that are new to you go and study them and build that into your Armory as you said that's it absolutely you've got to grow everyone's got to grow and I'm going to throw the Serena Williams thing at you right now just whilst I remember you mentioned it right at the start of our chat I interviewed her at the start of my career when I was covering all sports I went to Hong Kong and there was a big tennis tournament on and I interviewed Stephie graph I interviewed Anna cornova who was very hot at the time in many ways and uh you know she was famous and she was a good player of course it was a Tournament of Champions and but the Williams sisters were there and they were just starting out so I got to interview all of them conik over and and Stephie were media trained and they were very slick and very smooth but they didn't really give you anything Venus and Serena were brilliant because they were bubbly and bright but Serena especially had this kind of inquisitive nature about her and and they spoke a little bit of Mandarin because they had a coach at the time who'd spent some time in Beijing and he'd been teaching them and during the interview she was saying to me like okay well do I use my Mandarin I said well you're in Hong Kong you need Cantonese and I spoke a bit of cantones so she come on then so she asked me to teach so I taught her a bit of cantones and then somewhere in the interview she used a long word in English yeah quite a complicated word good word and he used it you know in the right place and she stopped and she said no was that right did was that an appropriate place to use that word I can't remember the word and I said yeah yeah good I said why is that she said I'm learning I I try and throw a word in every day try and learn a new one and bring it into a context and I sat there and I thought to myself that's done two things that has humanized you yeah had shown Your Enthusiasm the what we call a growth mindset these days this inquiring mind what it's also done is it showed me a lot of respect it's it's sort of said I know you want something out of this interview you don't just want you know a vanilla kind of interview I've given you something cuz I've engaged with the process and respected what you do and again that informs what I do understand what someone's role in anything is and give them something Empower them show them respect well the thing is you know you meet these uh icons and they probably have multiple interviews and you know it becomes probably a little bit boring for them a bit B standards I think one of the challenges for you is how do you make it you how do you make it different how do you connect well what you do is a bit like you've done you do your homework that's important that's that that's a an absolute musthave right but you can't over obsess about your homework I mean the guy for example who's really great at this do you watch Hot ones on YouTube no right this I can't remember the name of the guy which is embarrassing but he's a brilliant brilliant presenter he does a show where he gets celebrities to come and eat hot wings hot wings oh I hav't seen it seen I seen it his degree and depth of research is amazing and what happen happens is very often you'll see his interview subject go I didn't know anyone knew that good on you and what he's done there is he buys their respect he's earned their Respect by by by the work he's done so you have to have that what you also have to do is I think you have to show people that that you're respectful uh that you get them and I find that that in the course of my career with anyone once they respect you then they'll open up and they'll give you more yeah and so I'll come back to sport in a minute but back again to an early example the swarts an egga one I'm interviewing him at a junkit he's talking to tons of journalists what have you and there was something about you know when I'd asked him what have you he suddenly became really engaging he obviously respected the fact that i' done a bit of research he liked my line of questioning we got on well and I said to him um there are rumors that you're going to go into politics Mr Schwarzenegger that that you know you're going to leave showz behind and what have you and he looked at me he said why would I do that yeah why would I do that I I get to go to Exotic locations I I do the cooler stunts I I work with the most amazing you know actors and actresses and it's so why why would I give all that up and then he looked at me paused a bit and he wined ah thought you've just given me something there he didn't have to and that's it yeah umug you have to you have to realize that these guys are doing the same interview over and over make it interesting for them make it fun yeah and you get something out of it yeah and that's what the secret I love doing interviews for that very reason who um who are the guys that you've sat down and spoken to that have you know if you were to go back on your death bed and say look these are two or three of the interviews that really stuck out um in sport let's do sport um in sport I think tiar enri okay was one that was absolutely amazing I I used to do a show called football up close and what we would do is me and a producer would fly to England and we would normally do two match weekends where we would present live from the stadium into our pre-shows which were from studio in Singapore but in the weekdays we would travel around the country going to clubs and we would do sit down interviews like this tough to get a lot of time with players but we made it as a 24 minute show or it was a 30- minute show but with adverts 24 and a half minutes was our go-to so if I could get the best part of 20 minutes or so we could make a show and trying to convince the clubs to give you players for 20 minutes was quite tough but we we did well we we got a lot of people so we did everyone from Alan Shir to to um arson Wenger to uh Gary Neville that's a good story I'll tell you in a minute H and we got tier HRI I did Dennis ber Camp as well and they were in their pump they were the invincibles they were This brilliant Arsenal team yeah tierry was at that time maybe the best player in Europe maybe in the world best Striker I would say in terms of what he was doing he was flying and so I thought well this is going to be a tough one he's going to be you know in demand and he was but he walked into an interview room at there at London Cony training uh ground sat down and as is the case you're in there you've got the mic and cameras all set up and you're ready to go we're putting mics on and you do a little bit of ice breaking small talk and I'd noticed that he'd had a had a daughter baby daughter with his with his partner not not long previously I have two girls and um I said to him oh okay I said girls are the best aren't they they look to me went yeah they are aren't they and I said I've got two they're beautiful and I said it's just incredible you know and we spoke a little bit and clearly it struck a cord with him it broke the ice he was he he was friendly open we got into the interview and I thought I was going to get this standard interview about you know his career and being a striker but he stly start suddenly started to give me things that were unbelievable when I spoke about his childhood he he said well we you know you and I were talking about daughters earlier on but I want to talk about fatherson relationships he said you know it's a very difficult Dynamic I had a difficult time with my father particularly when you're showing promise in a sport and he went into the Dynamics of fatherson relationships at some point he spoke about his upbringing and he got into uh inner city um racially uh motivated um problems in in the Paris uh uh suburbs which I was not expecting from the interview and he spoke about racism and he spoke about uh immigration and especially in France back then right you remember look what happened subsequently and to have him talking about things like this was it was just an amazing interview and at one point I glanced up over his shoulder and my producer was in the background my producer was just like go this is Goldust this is this is amazing we finished the interview it was wonderful he clearly got a lot out of it he went around he shook the head of every single member of the crew what a um and and and took a picture with me back in the day in those days we didn't take pictures you know it's a crazy P to think these days in which we all want a selfie with everyone in those days it was very much frowned upon to to to believe that you were anything other than just a journalist interviewing somebody they're not your mate yeah it doesn't mean that they have to take a picture with you you're not a fan boy or a fan girl and only on the odd occasion would somebody say hey let's take picture yeah and it was special so sadly it means I don't have a lot of pictures from those days isn't that mad but I have one or two well just to touch upon that cuz Fathers and Sons we you know we've all got different relationships with their dads and I heard this the other day and it's on point when you grow up thinking about your dad and your relationship typically it starts off you idolize him you demonize him and typically after he's passed away you humanize him yeah interesting right that's that's a great line with my dad who was this very driven working never around guy but but he always supported me in everything I did um I loved it Dad sadly passed way too early he he wasn't he he lived a Banker's Life and he was a he was a working-class guy who suddenly got access to food and drink and didn't take care of his diet and to an extent that's why I'm very careful as I get older with how I take care of myself and sadly he suffered a high blood pressure and a stroke and he left us when he was only about 70 so that's 22 years ago now something like that um but but but dad retired when he was in Hong Kong and and moved back to England and and but they were still on the board of a couple of companies and I was you know enjoying my career in Hong Kong and dad would come back quite often for meetings there or in China or whatever it may be and he came back and suddenly it would be dad would either come and stay with me or he'd be in a hotel and we'd go out for a drink and he became my friend and he became my mate and he shared with me because by that stage I was working and earning money and learning about life and and he just shared things with me and having been a father figure yeah sometimes a Stern father figure sometimes a distant father figure but but always there for me he suddenly became my mate and it was incredible humanized at that I'm so glad we had that as said because he passed early yeah I um yeah I start I'll start crying but I watched the uh the rock eulogy to his dad and it was like you know it's it's because it's your relationship is very complex and with my son now it's um it's such a special relationship and as you see he's I'm I'm 5' 6 and a half he's over 6 he dwarfs me and it's I'm so proud when I look at him and it's just it's just a beautiful Journey as you know it's wonderful you know the best I've written a lot of things in my life and there are certain things I'm I've been really proud of uh that I've done for magazines newspapers even for television but the thing I wrote that I was proud of was the was the eulogy for my father okay I flew over to England obviously the the funeral and and the service and and I researched it I I went back spoke to his his his relative spoke to his early colleagues what have you and I and I charted his life from you know from from a coal mining town in in in North umberland to his career traveling the world to to all sorts of things and I wrote it and I read it and I I choked up as I read it it was very hard to deliver it and I look back at it and I look at the original piece of paper with tears on it you know wow and it was amazing and it it was the thing I'm most proud of beautiful yeah um I'll tell you a quick funny story this will make you laugh so I've I've had the privilege of going to watch some great sporting events right unfortunately getting paid like you and en but but that being said you've got to do a lot of work so you're not enjoying it in the same way right it's different it's very different I can only but imagine so I went to I think it was for the McGregor Mayweather fight and I jeal it's my turn to be jealous well so what happened was although although I have my misgivings about it as a contest yeah yeah well it well actually to your point so what happened was I turned up and I thought it was my 4th Earth um I booked the hotel and I booked um some of the restaurants in advance and you know you you can cancel them without any recourse no problem cuz I didn't know if I could get tickets I got tickets so when I arrive I said to my wife I'm going to meet Mike Tyson on this trip I feel it and he was my favorite fighter growing up and um sure enough I'm walking down uh Las Vegas High Street and I can see that he's doing a signing in one of these Sports shops and I turn up and there's like 150 people plus and I go to the front I said is there any way I can get to the front they said well if you buy something over I think it was $250 you get to the front of the queue I said yeah no problem so I'm there and they take pictures on their cameras not your phone and Mike's there and he's Bard stiff isn't he and I'm thinking what what do I say so I say hi M it's a pleasure I said do you know where I can get a decent cigar and he goes well where you staying I was going to try and do his accent and put a list on but I W embarrass myself all right so um I told him I was I was going to noou and he said oh just just opposite noou in Caesar's Palace there's a cigar shop there and I and then he goes I might see you there later I thought it's just the throwaway comic right so I go um into noou and there's a lady she's in a 60s and she's standing and I said would you like to take my seat yeah and turns around and it's Jim Gray's wife oh wow and obviously you know explain Jim Gray so Jim gray color broad color commentator broadcaster done everything like yourself leg legend legend and um you know and for me being a boxing fan I've seen him in front of Mike Tyson when Mike Tyson was scary and I always admired him for having the coffin to get in front of him and so I said Oh Mr gr a big fan um who do you think's going to win and he said that's a stupid question son and um he showed me a few clips that were going out later that night so then what happened was um the place was buzzing it was just full and they didn't have a seat and I was ushered to my T I said would you like to join me until your seat's available yeah and they said oh that would be lovely and he was so busy on his phone he was quite happy I was talking to his wife and she was amazing and he said well when our guests arrive it's okay we don't want to be rude but we'll leave and they and they did that and they went and sat down and it was with one of the owners of the NFL teams wow right and I didn't know who it was I had to look at and that's the thing when your ignorance can be blissed right so I wasn't overwhelmed but also you treat them as a human being exactly so I left anyway and I thought I'll go and have a cigar now so I'm in the cigar shop next thing Mike Tyson walks past and he comes in and he waves and I'm thinking he can't be waving at me so I do this yeah sure enough and he comes up and he he takes my cigar and goes do you mind if I have a a puff and I said wow M no I'd rather you get your own one or I'll get you one I know where your lips have been and he he got he he got a bit scared goes where and I said V A Holyfield's here and he started laughing that is brilliant so he walks you took a risk there I took a risk yeah I'd had too much to drink so as he goes out Jim Gray is coming out they hug each other and they turn back and they look at me and they both wave I thought it was surreal now he's written a book and um I'm just curious have you thought about writing a book that's that's a good question people ask me that all the time and now that I'm in this space where I'm sort of uh entrepreneurial and and I'm coaching and training what you do is as you know you you you put together your collateral and your collateral involves uh your website bunch of brochures one Pages two pages whatever they may be and people get saying to me right and the other thing is podcast so with your permission this will appear on my website along with others I've done so that will be a part of my uh portfolio but people keep saying you need a book so at some point I'll do it and it's funny really because obviously people who come to it let's say they're a sales coach or something like that their book will be about sales coaching or personal branding yeah I guess my one will be much more of a career book so I'll try and get around to that but I'll try and focus it uh on on where we are now I don't want it just to be a kind of Misty eyed Rose tinted lenses wasn't it great back then so I think so just just to your point the story was a really good story because what you've done is what I was set to do set out to do you humanize the person and in so doing that you you you give them a glimpse of oh my goodness okay right I don't have to tell that story about so and so they're asking me about this I'll give you a quick example of two people that taught me that lesson Ryan Giggs and Gary Neville Ryan Giggs I was in South Africa in 2014 and funnny enough I was working on the World Cup which was in Brazil but I was working for a South African broadcaster so we did out their studios in Johannesburg and he came down first ever time he'd been on TV and he was a bit nervous about it all never done it so I sort of you know was asked by his agent to sort of you know buddy with him and and I did and it was great we we had a night off one day and we'd been doing all the TV in the studio with a great cast of Other pundits Des Metta Sammy kufur JJ aota uh Ryan and then one night we were off and they said we're going to have this little drinks thing at a place in santon in Jo Johannesburg and we went in and as we got there the owners were falling over themselves oh look we got an area for you and sure enough there was like a Velvet Rope and a little thing like that and we went up there and me and Ryan sat there and he looked at me he said I hate this he said all my life all my career I've been put behind the Velvet Rope I don't want to be there he said he said John I want to be with you I want I want to go with you to the bar and sit and have a drink and chat with people but he said people always do this and you know I won't go into it here but subsequently Ryan's had you know a few issues in his life and what have you but but it stuck with me and he he really opened up to me and he said look you know some of the happiest times in my life came when I was a young kid with the Wales team for the first time and there was a bit of a drinking culture because I just felt like was one of the lads yeah but otherwise he said I've always been taken away Fergie know it wasn't a criticism of Sir Alex protected him took him away and and they never had that Gary Neville for example when I went to interview him one day I was sitting waiting to do an interview and he was on the training ground and he got a bang in the nose and the pr person at Manchester United said Gary won't be able to do the interview he's got to go to hospital for a precautionary scan can we do it tomorrow and we said no we're we're flying to Newcastle or we going to Newcastle or something tomorrow we we're away and she said well sorry that's it and about a minute later she came back in the room as we were packing up and said Gary's just called knows that you're got to go back to Singapore or wherever he said go to his flat amazing Gary invited us down to Dean gate to this lovely apartment he said get there first my partner will let you up set yourselves up I'll get back from the hospital and and that that again is an example of somebody It Go works both ways yeah it comes from you and me and it comes from them saying right we respect what you're here for we'll show Human Side to us and it it's fun for us as well yeah and I think that's when the media business is fun when it's just purely contractual you don't get great content out of it if it's if it's if it's sponsor driven if it's just something that is done because of a contract it's not great when someone just opens up and goes right let's have some fun with this let work with this then it becomes special have you noticed because in in the US most us athletes are media trained right yeah and the rest of the world it's not the same but what I've noticed is watching like Gary Neville how his person has come out since he's retired from football and and I just find like Alan Sher like he was you know when he I remember when he was playing he was the ice man in many ways right but now I love listening to him talk and uh changes they've had to learn um Gary was disliked I I went into that interview probably not expecting to like Gary very much he had this you know they called him the shop steward didn't they yeah and I know Peter schmeichel called kept quite well and Peter SCH Michel used to look at me and go oh those Neville boys they're so bloody busy they're so bus buy and he was used to go on about them like that Gary just turned out to have a personality that that that that was great and he his guard was up a lot but when he let it down he was good also Gary is so methodical that when he was signed by Monday night football on Sky he asked them to send a touchscreen to his place he spent the summer practicing on the touchcreen because remember doing live touch screen can be pretty scary I know I did it for years on the Premier League he made sure that he was as good as he could be in the moment on that Alan sheir yeah he was very aloof at times had to be to be who he was when he first started on Match of the day people said he was a bit wooden but Allan's got a wicked sense of humor yeah and and and that's started to come through it's nice now that he does stuff on the podcast and that where you can see that tiar hry has a wicked sense of humor as well oh yeah oh yeah he's fast um but I I do think at the time is a lot of these guys they they're in that war zone and they know people want something from them and I think it's almost like they they they change I remember seeing s Pras play um in a friendly against federa in KL I took my team yeah and there was some Heckler in the crowd saying you know that was rubbish and and S Pras you know was known to be very wooden he walked all the way up the stairs and said do you want to have a try and it was brilliant absolutely that's when that's when Sports elevated when when you you get that either Glimpse or they let their hair down same with anything in life I think the thing is with uh Sports it's it's it is entertainment so we all love people that do things a little bit differently yeah um talking about change and difference tell us about your journey about how you've gone from being a broadcaster to becoming an entrepreneur and setting up your own business oh wow there's a lot to to deal with there I think what we have to do is we've got to accept there's an elephant in the room which is that I was for a period of years maybe the most visible Premier League presenter in the world and that's not a flex that's just a fact because I worked for the London produced International content content service for the premier league and I'd done that having already worked on an Asia wide uh Network in in ESPN Star Sports so so I went from being highly visible to now not having that visibility and I I I spend a lot of time people with people coming up to me saying I miss you where are you what you doing we should go back to the Premier League you know what's happening the the truth behind that one is I suppose there are three major reasons why I am now not doing that first one was I I went to London to work on the Premier League's uh content service but I but my I I'm I've grown up in Asia uh my roots are in Asia my audience to an extent in is is in Asia I love Asia I love living in particular in Singapore you know I'm a Singapore citizen now you know that's how much it means to me so I went over there it was like a foreign posting I loved the work I Lov the visibility it got me you know audiences around the world but I realized um that there was no future for me in the UK as weird as this may sound that content service does not appear it's only made for international audiences it does not appear in the UK I had no presence or resonance within the UK market for audiences now a lot of the producers and a lot of the talent who worked on you know BBC ITV Sky BT TNT whoever it might be they knew me because they'd come and work on the Premier League Channel and very often they'd be saying man you should be working on TV here but what I found during my time there was even though I was taken really good care of by the Premier League who renewed by contract and I ended up staying for s years I I couldn't get any work elsewhere so even if I had a midweek off and I went to someone and said hey could I do your Champions League or could I do some stuff I kept meeting this resistance which was well people in this country don't know you or you don't have an agent which I didn't so I agents are very influential there so I I didn't have that kind of in with the right Executives but beyond that I I got to a point where ultimately someone turned around to me from one of the channels and said look your age and your gender are kind of counting against you because they said that they said it to my face and I'm not not saying this from a point of bitterness or anything like that because it's an acceptance that there was a a movement towards far more inclusion and diversity and broadcasting and you know yeah I at least someone said it to my face it's like you know probably it's not the right time for you to sort of start off building a pres and also it would have been me building my reputation in the UK it's not like I was a you know someone who was known so so I realized maybe two-thirds three quarters of my way of the way through my time there that I probably wasn't going to stay there were also other factors which is I missed Asia I miss Singapore I love this place and and anyone who's lived here yeah knows it's very hard to go and be in UK or us or somewhere else there are things there that aren't as much fun as as being here so there was that the other side of it was that when I came back here I knew I was coming back into a market and an industry that had been heavily disrupted the rise of streaming the incredible amount of piracy that happens all combined to make it very difficult for someone to to put out a productive and profitable uh Regional Network it just wasn't happening so things shrunk a little bit ESPN basically exited the market apart from a bit of Social and digital content the star became fox fox sort of didn't have the rights they used to have didn't have premier league and things like that for example but they came to me and said look do you want to come back and I said yeah I do want to come back so I spoke to a couple of really nice guys at Fox who said look you know come in and let's we can help each other they said if you come into this Marketplace and bring your brand and bring your audience we'll give you a show and we won't just give you any show we'll give you your show wow so they gave me a show called The John Dyke Show and the funny thing about that poll is that and I'm not doing this to sort of show that I'm a self-facing guy because my journalistic background I'd never been one to put my name out there literally on screen for many years you would have never heard me say hi I'm John Dykes or what have you I knew there would be a what we call a lower third graphic with my name on it people knew who I was indirectly but it didn't matter my brand was associated with who I work for so it was ESPN it was a show called Football Focus which was our most famous show a football Chat Show which maybe we'll talk about in a minute uh I could walk into a cafe coffee shop bar anywhere from Jakarta to Manila to not Bangkok maybe Hong Kong and even if a bunch of young kids didn't know me they'd say ESPN or they'd say Football Focus because The Branding was so strong but once I became and then I was Premier League I was the Premier League you know that's what they used to call me the face of the Premier League you know globally when I came back the guy said to me want you to do a football show what should we call it and we experimented with oh we were going to call it the full English or we were going to call it the English football show we're going to call it this and then they said to me one day every time we bring your name up in a meeting someone says English football so they said we're going to call it the John Dy show because you've got the brand so they gave me that and it was great fun put the show out chat show um no rights so we were just talking we had guests on I used my connections to get good guests on and it was more of a I became a bit more opinionated it wasn't just an interview show did you before you started it did you sit down with the executives and say look these are my ideas this is the beginning middle and end of what I want the show to look like it it was very important that we had a sense of that it was going to be delivered across multiple platforms by that stage it was obvious that you couldn't just put out a TV show on the television um you know the old Cable model wasn't you know happening anymore you had to have uh social media so what we did it had to be about engagement so the idea was um you know we would we would put out something that would um provoke engagement via our social platforms the Fox Sports network uh that would feed back up on itself where whereas feedback would come into the show and we would make it a far more multiplatform engaging uh um product whereby the audience was very much engaged and that's hugely important these days so we did that and I loved it and and the Affiliates bought into it the sponsors came in we ended up doing things like a a special around Liverpool finally winning the Premier League we had that with sted chter putting some you know some money into it we had it it was really going well and then you know unfortunately Disney bought the whole Fox Global setup they only wanted one or two bits of it and they shut down pretty much all the Fox Sports uh channels including ours so I got to the point where look I'm back in Singapore I'm a PR uh this is home but there isn't really what I would consider to be world class Regional even broadcasting going on there's there's there's bits and PE pieces there's of course the possibility of doing something on on on on YouTube or somewhere but it would be a startup and I'd spent 20 years building a name and a brand and I didn't really want to have to start up again on a platform that I wasn't convinced would would be easily monetizable you know when you've gone from earning a hefty chunk of cash every month yeah you know to to suddenly saying well I'm going to have to start off again it didn't appeal to me so I thought okay well I'll carry on working for different clients and I and and I sort of found I was trans forming in the way I worked so a company in Indonesia for example had bought the RS to the Premier League and although they could broadcast Nationwide in Bahasa they wanted to put out a premium English service but they didn't know how to do it so they said look could you come over and first create conceptualize uh produce and deliver this and also train our staff so I did I spent a year commuting wow every Saturday morning up every Monday afternoon back to Jakarta where I I I I got their Studio set up I I taught them how to to curate the amazing amount of content that comes in Monday to Friday from the Premier League I taught them how to work on Match Day and train their producers in seeing stuff coming in pulling it off the the feed as it came in turning it around and putting it out I set the editorial agenda and then some then I jumped in front of the camera and presented it a lot uh which was actually the easy part for me but what was fascinating was effectively listening to the guys in my ear figuring out as they went along having spent hours that afternoon saying look this is going to come up tonight when that happens do this think about this as an editorial line so so the point I'm making is I found myself being seen more of a mentor even in commentry I was doing some commentary recently and the client said to me look we've got these really great commentators but we'd like you to come in and maybe bring a little bit more structure to it and perhaps you know show and shape them a bit more so increasingly I found that in my broadcast space people see me or have been seeing me as someone who could train so I naturally thought to myself well why don't I start delivering that to a broader audience I've always spoken and I've always MCD and hosted but it's been done on an ad hoc basis suddenly I had people come to me saying what there's a ton of voice and speech and presentation trainers out there but you do it you've lived it you've learned it and you live it why don't you actually do it so so now I'm out there working with people in the corporate world I was working with an investment adviser recently who literally just came up to me and said I pitch all day long I talk to audiences I'm trying to promote this fund this fund manager this Market but I could be better what do I have to do and I said I I'll train you beautiful so I I I built a course out with this guy I'm now developing that for other people uh I'm looking to extend that but I'm also now getting onto the stage a lot more in a more formal way so to do all this I realized I can't just do it as a kind of a every now and then ad hoc thing I need to build a business around it so I'm a solopreneur I've got a website designed I went to someone to to deliver me some brilliant marketing collateral I'm now learning I'm I'm kind of I'm reverse engineering this I'm having to learn what the nuts and bolts are about pitching about proposals about follow-ups about customer relation about following up on leads but more importantly Paul the the single most important lesson I've learned is it's not about me saying I can do this da come and get me yeah it's about me going to people in L&D departments or talking to Executives and saying what do you need what's the problem you need solving what's the pain Point as we like to say these days and how can I adapt something to that yeah and for me it's fascinating I'm like a I'm like a sort of you know almost 60- year old virgin in that regard I'm like a born again business I've never known anything about business or entrepreneu I I know it yeah because because it's in my in in in my background but I haven't tapped into it well I I think I think the thing that people don't realize when they go into business is let's just pretend you are a contractor yeah um you get paid for doing the work but the reality is I don't know what percent but let's pretend at least a third of your time is spent going out writing proposals meeting prospective clients and only a small Slither of it will come through and one of the things that I talk to people about is um training think about sales training if if your Clos rate conversion is one out of 10 proposals and if you know you waste all that time isn't it time well vested if you can increase that to maybe eight out of 10 and get referral business on and that takes time and then it actually the thing that people don't realize is so what you do takes a hell of a lot of Courage getting up speaking to you know iconic famous people um but making a sales call reaching out to somebody that that's not easy either oh I find that the difficulty for me as well is is time management you know you spoke about you know get one one one return on 10 for example and and I have to tap into what skills I might have so I found I have to be very careful not to go running off in pursuit of something that's either not going to lead to anything or it's going to Tire me out or or or be just futile I have to try and focus my my time and my resources on on stuff that's actually got a purpose to it and that's not something I've been very good at in the past but what I've learned from my broadcasting career it's a bit like prepping for I'm doing a match commentary tonight on a football match I'm not going to go in with that pile of notes that thick I'm going to go in knowing what I need to know and I've learned over the years that what you do is when you prep for something you research smart you anticipate what's going to come up and you learn what you need to learn you don't go beyond that whereas some people Pride themselves on Having learned every single stat about this stat and the other it's never going to come up yeah you've just filled your head up with stuff and you've wasted your time so that's what I've got to learn that's an important one the other side of it is going to be um and what I find really hard is is price because I never really negotiated contracts much I had a bunch of really nice bosses who said we're going to pay you that and I thought to myself seems pretty good to me so when it comes to doing stuff one of the hardest things I do is is putting the value on my time and pricing it accordingly and and and and I get keep getting told off by people in my industry going ah you've undervalued yourself there or you got this is how you should do that but you just learn you learn and I'm learning from people I've surrounded myself and this is one of the key learning I have sought out mentors trainers I've paid people to do various bits and pieces associations who who can who can come to me and help me and I can observe them I go to meetings and watch these people do pictures and presentations one when the other day was about scaling a business up I don't intend to scale my business up but along the way I learned some stuff so I'm just learning you know what I find interesting is um on on my career coaching business senior people completely understand what it takes to get to the top they got to the top and they're still trying to Aspire to get further or you know not get knocked off and they've got no money no problem spending the money and then you know I'll have other people that don't earn a lot of money will say well that cost a lot I said but you know if you invest in yourself now this is what your future looks like so for example in my company Library we've got 131 books and I say to my guys if I told you if you read you know half of those books in the next five year is um you're going to start making a million dollars a year would you read it yeah of course I would yeah and I said but there's no secret form there's no absolute but why don't you start reading those books yeah and and people just don't seek that wisdom and you've got to do the work haven't you you have to put the work in and what I always say to people is when you become you you know you've been a very high black belt in what you've done for many years and the reality is what you're doing is just a continuation of it it's just opening the doors to getting that business in yeah that's right so so I think that transition actually won't be too difficult and um it's it's exciting what one of the things I wanted to ask you about is um when you started thinking about going to business for yourself for those people that are exploring this idea was it daunting or was it a reality I need to do this and I need to therefore lean into it yeah so I I I I sort of spoke about this earlier on and you can't kid yourself you know in in my case I choose to live in Singapore I choose not to be somebody who runs around bemoaning the fact that I can't get high-profile TV presenting jobs anymore I I do some work in broadcasting I still commentate I still pop up and do shows every now and then for people but I I was a little bit shocked when I was in the UK and in certain established markets where because I always had the out I always knew that I could come back to Singapore go somewhere else in the world what have you I saw some people in the in the UK uh TV sports TV scene who were in this kind of you know spiral of diminishing returns who weren't getting the bookings anymore more who were getting bitter and twisted about it who were letting it really eat them up and and it was horrible to see and I I vowed I don't want to be that person I'm not going to spend the rest of my career just Clinging On to still trying to do what I used to do but not really getting as good gigs and not doing as good work I couldn't I'm I'm I'm too positive person for that but you have to acknowledge that that there will come a time in your career when you got to say right okay am I going to be that person or am I going to be someone a bit more front foot but proactive so I see it as as a pivot and and an evolution and it's very important to say right what I have been will inform what I'm not it's not a handbreak turn you're not suddenly discarding 20 30 years of of experience and and knowledge you're saying I'm doing this now and I'm going to dig into elements of what I've been to make me what I can become and I'm finding so so many things that resonate in terms I just yeah the prep I do the the ability to have confidence that I can do this you spoke about it being daunting when you sit in a press conference or as I did back in the 2000s and Sir Alex Ferguson in his pump was holding a press conference and you'll have seen this if if if a journalist even if they asked an okay question but he just didn't want to answer it he could eviscerate that journalist he could tear them apart on camera with a bunch of cop fantic journalists all chuckling away at this and what have you yeah and it can make you feel very small it's not a slight on him he he had a focus on what he wanted to do and he controlled and owned the the media in the way he wanted to that was how he operated but boy you needed to know your stuff you needed to think right what am I asking is this going to work I'm not going to bow down but I'm going to ask a question that I think we'll get the right answer that's daunting going on TV about to present a major final or a major match and I've been on TV when when when salons happened around into the China markets I think we did a game once where there was a Manchester City team with a China player um uh Sun G High against an Everton team with lier a China player and it was sold on someone told me that our audience was close to a million you know when you're on live TV and and when I do live matches I don't work off a running order I don't work off sorry an auto que I work off a running order so I don't have the words written what is a running order a running order is the the structure of the flow of the show and it's for everybody who works on the broadcast this is the item we're going to do this is where the sound is going to come from this is where a graphic might come in so it's it's the flow of the show the flow of the show is what dictates what we do but I don't have a teleprompter running a script yeah what I do is I rehearse yeah rehearse really really seriously I worked under a great director in England one of probably the best studio director around football in England and his theory was this every pre-show you do you do twice as much rehearsal 45 minute pre-show you do an hour and a half rehearsal and what that rehearsal does is it gets the whole team attuned to where we're going what's going to happen next who's going to push what button who's going to fade up what have you and in my case one of my words going into this package this item so he knows when to when to it just makes the broadcast better again that I tap into that now when I'm confronted by today I've got to make a call today I've got to figure out how to do this today I've got to go and Coach somebody or I'm going to get on stage and speak I go through my processes am I ready for this have I done it before do I know have I anticipated what need to do it's the same thing just applied differently it's it's hugely important I mean um my son wants to be a filmmaker and I introduced him to the the original Karate Kid and now Cobra Kai's love it he loves it and he he and I found um a rehearsal of the whole movie shot in a warehouse and it's like watching the movie It's and and had done it so many times and you could see why that movie was so successful because it was so well rehearsed yeah let's talk a little bit about your coaching so dealing with things like Crisis management Executive coaching mastering the art of getting on the stage delivery yeah you know talk to me about how you work with your clients so okay so I'm at the point where the journey is really starting in terms of the coaching but as far as getting on stage that's already happening so I will get on stage and I'm I I'm building some Keynotes out that I think will be the keynote will be like the the grand slams weren't they you know because effectively I'd like to do what I'm doing in front of individuals or groups of people i' never know someone might say why don't you get on stage and talk about it could be about my career transition it could be about uh uh communication but if we break them down everything starts and ends with the communication side of things so I think at the heart of what I'm going to offer or what I am offering already is storytelling in terms of finding the story that's my journalistic instinct uh crafting and shaping the story how you then deliver it in terms of hooking the audience attention or your your client attention uh engagement with them making sure that you you you deliver this engagement that you read non-verbal cues that you have your own non-verbal uh um gestures that work so so there's all of that happening and that that's underpins everything I do because effective communication in any circumstance is at the root of everything it could be in crisis management for example you're confronted by something when you work in sport or live broadcasting everything is a crisis because it's unscripted things Anything Could Happen which means that your preparation your confidence your lines of communication within your team your second guessing of what might happen and therefore contingency planning is there and above all else the confidence I mentioned I think go a running order or a rundown the audience doesn't have one yeah they get what they get yeah and if you deliver what you deliver in a smooth fashion that looks as if it was planned all along they're none the wiser and that to speaks to some of the stuff I do in that space just just building people into a position where things are going to happen but you're prepared for it I wanted to ask you um maybe you're going to give away your Trade Secrets but do you have things that are prepared in your pocket so you know like they think it's all over it is now do you think that was pre-prepared or uh that wasn't pre-prepared no CU that was that was now now yeah it was I mean no because that could only have come organically CU he he didn't know he didn't know people were going to run on the pitch right we're talking about Kenneth wlson home there 1966 World Cup final it's a really interesting point you make and I'm just going to go back to COBRA Kay and rehearsal rehearsal is absolutely fundamental and what I say and I and I build something out on this this is something that I want to talk to everybody about and I think anyone who's listening to this should want to hear this I rehearse hard to earn the right to be spontaneous I love that think about that it's very powerful and I'll explain that you do the rehearsal so that what you deliver isn't over rehearsed or stale or flat you rehearse in every part of your team rehearses so that you then deliver something that's even better than you planned it because you're doing it spontaneously securing the knowledge that you know where you are where you're going what's happening that's important on predetermined commentary I have a bit of a theory and a bit of an issue with that right now it's risen with the rise of the shoutcasters with the soundbite culture with social media so what's happening now and this is no slight to those who do it but we've gone from a period where you had commentators who had a great voice who had a great sense of the occasion who worked in the now to those who've prepared lines and sometimes there's one I know who at the start of a match and it's obviously he's prepared this and he reads a little speech out no matter what's going on on the pitch or what have you and you think to yourself it's a bit too prepared by all means set the scene for something and I think this is where I talk about organic uh delivery all the time set the scene but respond to what you're seeing because it's an organic moment that's that you know that's you might be charging off on your line about when two giants of this meet each other it's like jousy and then suddenly a brilliant shot comes up are you going to ignore that shot yeah no you got you got to be organic and work it in so what I find now is that there's a generation of youngsters who are saying oh we don't like that commentator because he's too flat we like the one who shouts those lines now obviously Peter Drury is very good at that but Peter's more than just that Peter does it for 90 minutes yeah but like people like to pick out it use that sound by cuz these days we we we chunk it up into little bites don't but I met someone a while back who was a shoutcaster on orts and they thought that all they had to do was go blah blah blah blah blah oh that's crazy and they go yeah well that's all that people care about is my one line where I've come up with this crazy and I go yeah but you got to commentate as well yeah you can't just be remembered that speci for orts was it it was an orts one and so I say orts because it meant it was coming from a generation that that that has has risen up with sound bites being really important and catchphrases you you know you know what was funny um I was a massive I'm still a massive Sprint fan so 1992 when uh Mr Christie won the Olympics um my dad always had us he was a builder always helping him do work with the weekend oh yeah and I just said Dad please whatever happens can we get back in time to watch the final yeah and then he said I'll do you one better we'll get the semi-final and the final we was we were in greenford outside of fish and Shippy listening to it on the radio and I was um I was just horrified but I remember David Coleman saying um next to lyord Christie is Leroy Burell he's blinding in I can't if he said if it was his left eye or his right eye so so lyord can't see him and then he was gone to his notes and he said actually he's blind in the other eye so lyfi will be able to see him and I was thinking that was ath and it made me chuckle it was it was great it was brilliant and that's the thing I mean we spoke about humanizing it earlier on um the other thing I talk about is um and people identify this in me and I you know it's funny because you do a thing like this you don't want to give away your trade secrets but one thing I talk about is is being in the now and I was chatting with a a guy yesterday Who I Really respect he's been working in the speaking space for for a long long time and he said to me you know he said when I think about you John I think about one thing and I said what's that he said you're in the now are you work in the now in the present and and I said what do you mean by that he said when you're doing an interview with someone you listen to the answer and you don't just listen you pick up on what they say and then you tailor what you've got you respond you bring the audience in and and and and it becomes something that actually is Progressive rather than just a I speak you speak I speak you speak which you see so often at presentations or what have you and I thought about it and I said yeah that's really at the heart of what I do um and one of my ex- bosses noted that he sat I interviewed him once he was actually in charge of the the company I worked for and happened to be he said ah now I figured out what you do he said unlike so many people you listen and and you'll know this um presenters and broadcasters are a vain breed let me tell you that you might have guessed it already and there's a lot who are so obsessed about how they look and sound that they have their list of questions and once they've asked the question they don't listen they switch off they're sitting there going okay how am I going to look good asking the next one now the interview subject might actually give you a juicy half volley of an answer that needs to be smashed but they miss it because they're not even listening they're too busy thinking about how great they're going to look when they phrase their next question you take that half Folly you smash it you bring the audience in you then follow up with another question and the reason I say this is what you've created is a unique moment for you that person the audience that was only available to people in that time in that place because you made it unique yeah I funny enough you talk about this so I feel when people are having interviews or they're making presentations um they're so busy focused on what they're going to ask what they're going to say that they're not listening to what the person say precisely what I'm saying yeah and and that's a real challenge so I've given away something there but in a way you need me to tell you how to do that because that's huge that's very very important and that elevates every interview TV show podcast panel discussion Fireside anyone ever does and that's effectively according to my mate that's what I bring let let me ask you some things if you don't mind about how you keep your mind so sharp and active and fast cuz you you picked me up on Barry Norman right you you I hadn't thought about him for a long time let's talk about what we talked about before in our very first discussion something that we both love which is exercise and Sport diet sleep coffee like you know because when you're going on and you're on every day you've got to be on your game yeah can you just talk a little bit about your yeah your diet in terms of all of that I yeah I mean the main thing is high performance yeah um and it's it's a bit of a it's a bit of a buzzword and a bit cliche these days because you see it applied everywhere but but one thing I've discovered is that you have to be putting yourself in a position to perform at the very best you can trust me I wasn't the best of that I when I was a teenager I was a late developer but I became a really good athlete um in terms of I was running track and running good times at 400 meters and I played all sorts of sport and then sadly I went to University and I got into all the bad habits you know with drinking and and what have you and even though I still played a lot of sport I I I I I was never I never really took care of myself and I don't think I took care of myself for about 30 years going into going into journalist as a young man back in the days when it was a hard drinking career yeah and I had a dispensation towards that anyway again you know I got into and Hong Kong bloody hell Hong Kong what a place to be journalist Hong Kong so so yeah you know I I I I wasn't always the best but because the job I did I could turn up to interview you but I'm not on camera if I'm just running in a notebook I could be a bit hung over not my best what have you but I knew that by the time I sat and wrote I'd come up with something good so so kind of for years but then I started appearing on television and straight away as soon as I appeared on TV uh you can't you can't go on TV looking rubbish and you you vality thing means you want to try and keep yourself keep yourself as good as you can but um I was blessed to to marry to meet and marry beautiful woman who's very very good with diet takes care of herself doesn't drink doesn't mind me drinking at all or or what have you but we eat sensibly uh she likes me to be she seven years younger than me so she kind of wants me to be you know fit and healthy as much as possible and look as good as I can so so so so you know combined with my career being something I took extremely seriously and that I naturally tried to take care of myself but then I went to another level about seven years ago when I met and I'll give a shout out to my personal trainer John Wilkinson here he's a he's a great um a great trainer he's an expr footballer who came to Singapore played for Singapore naturalized um in fact became a Singaporean um but he's also a real student of of of everything to do with with with physiology and psychology um and and he he he he pulled me a few years back and sort of said look come and train with me because he said I know that you know you you think you keep yourself in shape and everything like that but he said I could I I see I see something in you that I think I could really work with and so we started working together and he said the other thing as well is you are in a highly competitive field you're in a stressful field you're I've seen you work you're in a job where you're have to be laser sharp I keep hitting the mic it's very amatec uh laser sharp and focused for long periods of time and that's true you know if I was doing a three match Premier League Saturday I might go on air UK time 12:00 noon first game 12:30 go through at 8 8:30 at night having to be at it live all the way and I found and I have discovered that thanks to working with him I can in terms of my mechanical skills if I work out earlier in the day uh I find that later in the day when I need it I can tap into that energy I can just switch it on again and I can just kick on again and I and it keeps me sharp but also it means that I'm clean I'm I'm I'm light I feel good you know but when you're doing something you don't want to go into it heavy and and sluggish so I feel sharp and light and at it the other thing in a broader sense is it's learn I've learned resilience a lot of the training I do I used to be a runner but in 97 no 98 97 98 I wrecked my my left knee badly playing football I've ruptured the ACL and the lateral collateral huge rehab nicely the graph I had put in failed about 8 years later another reconstruction so I'm I'm walking around on a on a knee that's buckled and bent and what have you so no more longdistance running but when I train I train resistance training and I do circuits and I and I train for functional um durability really so I've done Spartan races which I loved and I can just about limp around 5K I love it all I love the the fact you go from heavy to that and it's about gritting it out yeah so so I work to be durable and resilient and that works outside of the gym in my life in my career in taking on what's happened I've been able to and you know this comes with sleepless nights and financial stresses yeah what I do is I I train I tap into that going if I can get through this bloody workout which is tough and I work out really hard yeah and we do I'll be 60 this year you look fantastic oh thank you I'm not fishing for compliments I I regularly set the best times in the gym on challenges that we do it might be a 35 minute challenge where you're grinding from circuit to Circuit putting some doggy runs in and and burpees and stuff like that and John says to me it's because you you're durable you don't give up you keep going they might be a bit quicker or explosive but but but you set the best times because you just you just maintain and and that's what I try and do in life and long well that longevity is coming through right it's huge and here I am I'm starting a new thing and like I said 60 is just a number uh I'm I've I'm in no hurry to do anything other than build a business and work at it for as long as it takes next decade or so so talk to me um in terms of the next projects what's imminent what are some of the things you want to be working on well yeah so so so the broadcast funnily enough broadcast work still comes to me so well table tennis have been hiring me recently to go and commentate on their their wtt tour which is great fun they've taken table tennis and made it really fun you know jazzed it up made it bright and it's a great it's great to watch isn't it it's great to watch I love table tennis and and I hadn't done a lot of table tennis commentry uh but I I used to do multi Sports so I worked on all sports from tennis to to golf to Formula 1 to football and rugby so you know I'm comfortable with anything and so I've loved doing that F1 recently I was doing a bunch of Hosting but in a corporate sense and I loved that I did something for Marina Bay the other night I got on stage at the sky park at NBS and I interviewed caros signs and Char charl clir and and and uh Fred vaser the team principal and you know that that's great so I like the fact that my broadcast work and journalism has taken me into that space But now I'm all about what I'm building now and I'm I'm so excited about it because now that I'm talking to people like you and other people in that field they're say oh boy this is going to be fun oh yeah so if I can get the work done and boy I'm working hard on the backend stuff I'm you know I've got all the stuff in place I'm already going out and already speaking and stuff I I I really want to share what I know with as many people as possible I want them to get as much enjoyment as I have done out of taking sporting lessons and examples and applying them to their lives and their businesses and their own careers uh and and I really just want to build that out in as many ways as I can uh and then share it because I'm a front foot guy and and I've got so much from it I don't want people to get something from it well look I I've got a few rapid fire questions if I may so talk a little bit about your key journalistic Inspirations who are the key people you've looked at and thought I I want to follow those guys they're great okay I started off as a writer so people like the great Shu movani who was a great long long read kind of guy inspires me I love reading uh people like Gabriela marcotti Barney Ron who take Sport and turn it into something magical so I I'm really into that journalistically I mentioned a broadcast I mentioned Richie Beno earlier on in terms of what he taught me uh the great Football commentators uh and Andy Gray as a color commentator yeah yeah okay forget what happened in terms of why he left Sky uh I think co- commentary is not as good as it was when he was doing it he knew particularly working with Martin Tyler uh to do that thing I spoke about interpret something bring more than just describing what happened answer a question that's falling in the viewer's mind love it favorite football club and why I don't support a team many people will be amazed to learn this one but I did when I was a kid go and watch if switch town a lot it was the nearest club uh my dad was a Jordy Bobby Robson was manager dad said let's go and watch them they were a lovely family Club you could get in there almost anytime you wanted to and I would go there to watch the other big teams come and play there but I developed a real affection for them as a as as a club but never really became a hardcore supporter if if pushed I would say yeah they're a team I follow uh but I it would be a lie of me to say that I followed them closely for years so I I like hi switch well listen it's good you've got to be a bit neutral in your job right yeah and that helped and as I went in my career I found I I don't like being a fan by the way okay people go on about The Angst of it I don't like that I didn't like what it made me feel if I was trying to be a fan so I genuinely can watch any sport without taking sides love it uh favorite sportswoman and sportsman a to watch and be to interview I I think I mentioned tiar enri uh the Irish don't like him because of the handall understandably but when he was in his flow the way he moved uh as a runner I always loved it uh cricket I watched Michael holding the fast bowler because his approach to the Wicket and his delivery was beautiful and I always felt that someone who could move nicely Ed Moses just I love that kind of person uh woman fe uh I like anyone who uh uh has had to fight uh Crow Serena Williams would be there uh just in terms of somebody who who came from a position where they worked hard and made something of themselves and then just kept winning and kept I like someone who doesn't win once but just knows how to win again and again and again because that means that they're special yeah indeed um most memorable interview of your career that would be the ti onry one uh in terms of uh sport but I was lucky not to always work in sport and that informs what I do I interviewed Tim Burton once just after a Nightmare Before Christmas there uh The Nightmare Before Christmas I I just I just love talking to people from all walks of life and he just took me in areas that I I I I like being stretched musically and otherwise and I I really enjoyed interviewing him beautiful Premier League or Champions League which is more exciting to to cover to cover probably Premier League because I've done it for so long um and I felt that with the Premier League there was always this kind of urgency champions league is is is this thing that because I'm in Asia it happened in the middle of the night I don't like getting up in the middle of the night Premier League's more viewer friendly but but but to in all honesty I like the crowd engagement and I like the the the the vibe and the buzz around Premier League Most Star Struck moment because you've interviewed a lot of people right goodness well probably coming face to face with Alex Ferguson that was a bit scary but in terms of of of of of legendary people uh it's always the ones that you've idolized growing up I suppose um so even not growing up but watching Shane War okay Shane War I was I found myself in a position where I sat with Shane ju and had a couple of drinks One Night in qu Lumpa you just beautiful oh my goodness what am I doing here pinch myself amazing U I know you've had a few of these but toughest moment during a live broadcast um yeah toughest moment might be tech text the thing that can let you down I I I Wasing FA Cup Final once from uh Wembley and we lost to communication so we were still on air but no one could talk to me and all I had to do was remember where we were supposed to go roughly and kind of just deliver a show without anyone able to actually communicate with me live on air standing on a pitch not even in the studio in my comfort zone broadcasting to to you know Asia miles away uh that that that sort of thing is scary and you just deal with it yeah it is tough I can only but imagine um what is the one trait that you think all successful presenters really need to have if you were to choose one humility ah it's not about you it's about the broadcast love it you might have answered this earlier but best career advice you've ever received um actually no I'll give you another story it's it's it's a little bit of a story um um sell yourself well and reach and and and the example the reason I say that is before I moved into sports broadcasting as a broadcaster I was working as a producer there was an opportunity to go to work at at at Star and and the guy who was interviewing me sort of said look I've heard you you you're interested in coming to work here what do you do and I sort of said well I'm a producer and I'm a presenter and the guy was No Nonsense he sort of said well what are you and I was on a speaker phone my boss ran in from the next office and he put his hand over he said you're a present you're bloody idiot and and and I said well I'm a presenter all right come and talk to us then and and my life turned from then took off my career took off all because a guy had the generosity to say to me sell yourself reach for something that's very powerful and and it's it's profound right it's very simple but it's good point um what do you miss most about full-time football commentary I don't I've done so much of it I don't miss it really I tonight I'm going to go and commentate on a on a Southeast Asian shoy Cup match uh I've got a commentary coming up actually the weekend to do some local Singapore premier league and it's it's lovely to get in front of them M can do it occasionally but I did so much of it in the past presented so many matches that I'm more excited about doing what I do now doing something differently I love it so looking forward to what you're doing now thus far what's been the most rewarding part of you know becoming an entrepreneur keynote speaker uh the most rewarding part was training somebody who came back to me and said yes that thing you told me to do I did it and it was great and it's working and and ultimately if it's working for him that means he's making more money or his clients are making more money yeah and and that's now what it has to be about for me I I I believe uh subscribe to and I always have done is a rising tide raises All Ships and and and it you know that guy will do well he'll speak well of you more referral business yeah you know John I've been watching you for years and you were so kind when I called you it's been a real great pleasure I'm looking forward to doing a lot of collaboration with you in the future is there anything that you want to say to wrap up um well I think Paul what I would say is this um I love the field that you're in uh and and and you know now that I'm beginning to learn about careers and career transition and what have you the more people like you that are around the better and I said this earlier on but I have learned I I I'm a team sports player and therefore when I was in big broadcast teams I loved it and I was a bit lost for a couple of years missing it sitting at home back ending stuff being on my own not having those engagements that I loved what I've started to do now on my journey as an entrepreneurs I've reached out to people and people have come to me and I'm building these lovely communities and relationships now and that I think excites me more than anything right now and and you're a part of it I love it John's it been an absolute pleasure thank you thank you cheers [Applause] [Music]

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