Achieving high performance

Peter Jackson: Have you ever woken up in the early hours and thought, “What am I going to do about this?” Well, if you have, you’ve had a 3:00 AM conversation. I’m Peter Jackson. As the CEO of international law firm Hill Dickinson, I’ve been there too. This is the podcast that examines those moments in the cold light of day. And I think that’s useful because once you realise [00:00:30] that we all go through this from time to time, it can really help put things back into perspective. I’m going to introduce you to high achievers who will tell you about their 3:00 AM conversations and so you can apply their insights to your own life.

Now in this episode, you’ll meet Paul Cheetham, one of the founders of the Sedulo Group, one of the fastest growing mid-tier business advisory groups in the UK. Paul’s a high achiever who works with other high achievers [00:01:00] and he’s learnt from them all. So you’ll hear what he’s taken from that coming up. But first, let’s hear from my co-host for this episode, Katie Austin. Katie’s a partner in our Liverpool office and advises clients on their succession planning. Now Katie, you know Paul pretty well, so how would you describe him to people?

Katie Austin: I think he’s a true entrepreneur. He built Sedulo from the ground up really about 15 years ago, and he acts for some really big names. [00:01:30] The clients that he’s acted for, the people that he’s encountered, he is somebody that takes lessons from all of them. He kind of borrows things from other people and tries them out. And to me, I think he’s very much a visionary. You can kind of see that when you talk to him. He has some big ideas and he’s generally following through on all of them.

Peter Jackson: So why would people want to hear from Paul?

Katie Austin: I think he’s an interesting person. I knew of him a long time before I met him, and as you might remember, he’s a good friend of Andy Grant [00:02:00] who we interviewed on a previous podcast. He’s not necessarily the person that you think he might be from the kind of stuff he posts on social media and the kind of stuff you might see about Sedulo often isn’t what comes out when you meet him. So I just think it’ll be a really interesting chat.

Peter Jackson: So let’s hear now from our guest, Paul Cheetham. Paul, welcome. Thank you very much for being with us today.

Paul Cheetham: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Peter Jackson: Paul is the co-founder and managing partner now of Sedulo, [00:02:30] a fast-growing business advisory firm that works with some very successful people. I mentioned that because Paul says he takes inspiration from the people he works with and for, and that that inspiration has enabled him to come up with his own blueprint for success and resilience. From growing up on a council estate in Stockport to now running one of the fastest growing advisory businesses in his sector, Paul’s come a long way. He’s an author, having written a book called Taking Care of Business, and has his own [00:03:00] podcast of the same name. And I must say when we asked him for details of his 3:00 AM conversations, he gave us possibly the most comprehensive answer we’ve ever had, and also gave us a different slant on how we might approach a discussion of those conversations.

So Paul, hello again, and thanks for being with us today. One of the first things you did tell us is that you have a strategy for dealing with those 3:00 AM conversations, and that’s going to be fascinating. But before we get to that, let’s put all of that into a [00:03:30] bit of context and a bit of background about yourself. And if I can rewind almost to the beginning, you talk a lot in your book, and I’ve heard you say on a number of other podcasts, that you had to face rejection at an early age. So tell me a bit about that and your upbringing and how that came about, if you don’t mind.

Paul Cheetham: Yeah, when I wrote the book, it really kind of allowed me the first time ever to reflect on a life. The more I realised there’s a child inside us all, there’s a kid that something happened [00:04:00] to. And it can be feeling like the less of a couple of siblings, or it could be the person who got picked when the kids are in the playground picking the football or the netball or the team, you’re last to get picked, or you got bullied or your parents split up. And in my case, my very first memories, there was about two or three years in my life that was chaos. A biological father’s not in my life, he left at two, and his constant rejection from about the age of two to four, two to five plays [00:04:30] a huge part in my life.

And then my stepdad came into my life, by the way, at the age of five, just to be dead clear, and I’ve got a dad from the age of five and I lived then a normal lifestyle. But a normal working-class life. But from two to five, it was just constant rejection. And I think particularly when you become, and I would never say I’m successful because I would cringe at the fault of it, but I think I could probably accept I’m semi successful from where I come from, but [00:05:00] you then start to have more questions. The more kind of money or the more successful we were deemed, the more unhappy I became. So that’s why I’m quite open to talk about it because there’ll be a lot of people wondering why they’re anxious or why they get depressed or why they have imposter syndrome or why do you have 3:00 AM conversations with themselves.

And actually, there’s a point in their life that they need to try and uncover I think to make sure that 46-year-old Paul doesn’t make the same decisions [00:05:30] as a four-year-old Paul, and we never get to the bottom of the real issues. Because the amount of people that are successful that fall off a cliff is because they think that in some cases money or things are going to solve a kind of real dysfunction. And actually, give somebody who’s dysfunctional more money and see where that ends up, and it actually is disastrous. So it’s like let’s deal with. And the only way we do that is by talking about it.

Peter Jackson: Yeah, no, [00:06:00] good. Let’s move on slightly on the journey towards, and I’m going to say successful, allow me to say successful.

Paul Cheetham: Go on.

Peter Jackson: Along the journey you talk about one of the steps being, before you qualified as an accountant, you were managing the post room in a debt finance business. And I think it would be right in saying you learned an awful lot very quickly in that role, but you really drove it. So tell me a bit more about that.

Paul Cheetham: It’s the thing I’m most proud of my your work, yeah.

Katie Austin: Is it still?

Paul Cheetham: It’s my most successful moment. [00:06:30] And it’s strange. So I did a sports science degree and then I thought, “I need a job so I’ll be an accountant.” And there was a job going as a trainee accountant in Manchester. So I applied for the job and I got the job. It was growing rapidly and the owner of the business said, “We’ve got a problem in the post room.” Do you remember back in, this was about 25 years ago, debt management was a new industry. That thing where you’re in debt, recession had just been, you ring up a debt management company, say, “I can afford 250 quid, here’s all my creditors, deal with them.” Right?

Peter Jackson: Yeah.

Paul Cheetham: So he was the first in. [00:07:00] He went ballistic. He had 50,000 customers in, I don’t know, six months or something like that. So you imagine the amount of volume of post that was coming through. So he said to me, “Will you do this job?” I didn’t know what it was.

Peter Jackson: You being about 21 at the time.

Paul Cheetham: I was 21 and I’d just got my first suit. I still was in sovereign rings and so on because I was still a bit of a scally to be honest with you.

Katie Austin: Had you ever managed before?

Paul Cheetham: I’d never had a job. My only job that I’d had was weekends at B&Q, right? So I walk into this room and there [00:07:30] must have been, it was millions, millions of pieces of paper, which just was everywhere, unopened. And there was about 20 lads. They were lads, I think there was one woman in there, but there were 20 lads. And then they’d walk around dressed in trackies. Everybody else had a suit. They were called the numpties, and they kind of played on it that they were numpties. They didn’t really want to do anything, they had no self-respect for one another, for themselves.

And it gets about a week in and the guy come [00:08:00] to me, the boss and said, “Right, just tell me what you’ve done this week.” I said, “I trying, I’m trying to get them to work quicker.” And he was like, “Right, of the 400 bundles of post that come in, how many you got through?” “100.” Right, we’d gone behind again. And truthfully, he looked at me and he never said a word, but that look was a look of disappointment, and I thought, “I’m never fucking having somebody look at me like that again.” So the next day I come in and I said, “All of you go home and go [00:08:30] and get something on that’s at least smart casual. You put a shirt on. If you’ve got a jacket, you put a jacket on. Come back tomorrow.” We didn’t do any post that day. They came back the next day, some of them didn’t come back, the rest of them come back looked a bit better.

I said, “Right, the next thing we’re going to do, you’re going to be accountable. So then I’m going to find out who’s good and who’s not good. And that’s the next thing. I’m going to measure you all and I’m going to put it on this board. I’m going to create a league table.” And I was on 12 grand a year then, and I go, “So I’m not going to go to the boss and ask him for any money because he thinks we’re all crap anyway. What I’m going to do is [00:09:00] I’m going to put I think it’s 40 quid a week. And whoever finishes top, he’s going to get a 25 quid prize, somebody’s going to get 10 quid, somebody’s going to get a bottle of wine or a crate of beer for coming third.”

So I said, “The first thing is you’ve got this little competition going on. The second thing is what’s going to happen is I’m going to train you all to be IT literate.” There was one guy in there, one of the supervisors who could use a computer. I said, “You’re all going to get three hours a week on this, right? That’s the deal.” So we did that for about one or two weeks, and then I rang up off my own back, I’m [00:09:30] 21, right? I rang up off my on back a local college and said, “I want all these to get a qualification.”

So this woman came in from a BTEC in say business admin or office admin or something like that, I can’t remember it so much now. But she came in, I said, “I want these 20 people, I want them all to get a qualification.” So I said, “Right, you’re all working late now on a Wednesday, 5:00 until 7:00, we’re all doing homework.” So few of them drop off, but you could see that all of a sudden productivity is really starting to come through. We’re now starting to do 50%. Everybody’s competition [00:10:00] started to go up the league table from division one to three and they want to be in two. And all of a sudden we created a buzz.

And I would say within about two to three weeks, whatever was coming in that day was going out delivered to all the divisions and departments that day, which then meant we could spend some of the rest of the time getting rid of the backlog. And in about three months, the whole backlog, I’m talking millions of letters, right? Gone. To the point where [00:10:30] there was a point where 2:00 in the afternoon, they was just doing pure IT training and computer literacy.

Peter Jackson: Because they’d done the day’s work, they moved on.

Paul Cheetham: So the woman came in and she was like, “I’ve never, ever had any group of people go through this qualification. That should take two years.” It was done in six months. So when you actually look at that, when you look at Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmare, he goes in and he does the same thing [00:11:00] every single episode because he’s got a formula, he’s got a template, and I learnt mine there. I tried to make it fun in Sedulo what we do today is a massive, one of our three pillars is just try to make it fun. But I think as I’ve been an employer of people, I’m very, very demanding. I’m a task master. Can’t get away from that. But I always think it’s got to be give and take. What are you going to give and what do you expect back?

Peter Jackson: Yeah, but if you pick the bones out of that, you’re giving them a [00:11:30] sense of pride. You’re giving them the feeling that what they do matters. You’re making them accountable in a proper way. You’re giving them a career path. You’re giving them new skills. It’s all right, isn’t it, in terms of a template?

Paul Cheetham: It is. Creating competition. I’m a big fan of competition. And I kind of play on that same formula regardless of the size of the problem or organisation I’m dealing with when I’m giving advisory work now. We go back to that stage. It’s the thing I’m most proud of.

Peter Jackson: Well, let’s move down the timeline [00:12:00] a bit, bearing that in mind then. Because eventually you get to the stage where you set up Sedulo on a credit card. So what was that all about? Tell us about the start, the early day.

Paul Cheetham: I became qualified and worked in practise, and then one day I just thought, “I’m just adding no value here, and so I’m going to do my own thing.” Then the partner that I was with at the time, actually my boss, he said, “Well, if you’re leaving, I’ll leave.” And I set up with him. So there was two of us originally, and that just didn’t work. [00:12:30] So after three years, we went our separate ways. We had 10 grand a month, we billed 20 grand a month, and we have 30 grand a month for overheads, and we’ve got a 10 grand a month deficit and I owe out about 100 grand. It didn’t phase me, it didn’t worry me. I just knew we’d get there.

So we did, and we slowly started to turn it around and break even, and we slowly started to pay off the creditors one by one. I gave all of my creditors my word, and it’s vital to me. [00:13:00] I repaid every single one of them. And they all stuck by me and we shook on everything. Another lesson there that I learned was if you give people your word and you’re honest and you be upfront and you tell them the truth about the situation you’re in, people help you. If you bullshit them and tell mistruths and lack integrity, you won’t get the same help second time around. So yeah, that’s what happened, and we kicked off and we haven’t looked back since.

Peter Jackson: Okay, Paul, so we are here obviously to talk about 3: [00:13:30] 00 AM conversations, and you’ve given us a different slant on that because you’ve come to terms with the fact that those are going to exist and that they cause you harm. You’ve had panic attacks and anxiety, and we’ll talk about those. But you’ve come up with a number of strategies to cope with those. Graphically in your book, you describe in the early stages of set up the business the anxiety you suffered with and the panic attacks that were crippling at the time. So what was causing them and [00:14:00] what was their sort of effect? Because I don’t think you’ve had a panic attack, have you?

Katie Austin: No. No. What is it like?

Peter Jackson: What are they like as well?

Paul Cheetham: Geez, it’s a really good question and it’s good for me to talk about it. So I got to the age of 28, 29, and I started to feel generally unwell, lots of headaches, lots of feeling a bit woozy, feeling a bit out of the room, didn’t think much of it, maybe my diet, not enough carbs, types of things, just what I put it down to. And then one day I was walking down the road and bam. [00:14:30] The only way I could describe the initial one is as if you were running on a battery and I’d walked out with a plug. I’m in Bramall in Stockport, and I physically can’t move, I can’t walk. Even now, I can feel my heart coming back remembering this. And I remember thinking, “Oh Jesus, what’s that in the middle of my chest?” Palpitations. And I mean, boom, boom. I think “Jesus, I’m having a heart attack. Can’t believe I’m going to die here in the middle of a shopping precinct in Bramall [00:15:00] at the age of 28. This was not how it was supposed to end.”

So I sit down on a bench, I closed my eyes and lie down, there’s nothing else I can do. I genuinely thought I might’ve just closed my eyes for the last time. And then I fall asleep, and then I wake up and I think, “What’s just happened?” And I don’t know if I was asleep for one minute, one second, 30 seconds, 20, I ain’t got a clue. But I remember thinking, “Jesus Christ, where’s me mum? I need to get back to me mum.” I somehow get to me car and I drive to me mum’s. When I get to me mum’s house, [00:15:30] I tried to explain to her what’s happening. She makes me a piece of toast and a cup of tea. Good old mum, right?

Katie Austin: Love that.

Paul Cheetham: And I have a sleep on her sofa. It was like somebody plugged me back in again. So that’s how it feels. And by the way, I then had them for about a year every week, and then you’ve got to decide how are you’re going to come out of that? Because I had it for a whole year.

Katie Austin: Was this when you were setting up Sedulo? Is that round about that time?

Paul Cheetham: Yeah, it was. It was about a year in. It was about a year into Sedulo as it is today. And I’m guessing I wasn’t used to that [00:16:00] level of stress and anxiety. I still have the same triggers and the same thoughts today, but I don’t have the panic attack. I actually think I could have one. And so I live a life to try and mitigate it.

Peter Jackson: Okay, so you’ve worked out what the triggers are?

Paul Cheetham: I’ve worked out I’m capable of having panic attacks and I’ve worked out I’m capable of having anxiety.

Peter Jackson: Right.

Paul Cheetham: And what I’ve tried to do is live a life of commitment and dedication to reducing the triggers. So say for example, caffeine, [00:16:30] I’m not going to have caffeine when I wake up in the morning for an hour because cortisol levels are the highest they’re ever going to be in my body all day because my body knows I need to wake up and it wakes me up by giving me cortisol, serotonin, which also bring on anxiety. So when you put caffeine in your body in your first hour, your body already knows that you need serotonin and cortisol. So you don’t throw caffeine in if you’re anxious in your first hour. I don’t have it after 11:00 because I know I need to have a good sleep. Because big problem with anxiety and [00:17:00] depression and panic attacks and stress is not getting good sleep. So I’m very aware of what I put into my body. If I start to get shaky or edgy, I’ll make sure I’ve not had that much alcohol. I do like a beer and a glass of wine, but I’ll make sure and monitor it with hydration, with where my sugar or food intake is. I’ll make sure I monitor my sleep.

I live a life that allows me to work a high-pressure job, and I play the a probability game of preparing [00:17:30] for high performance, which is one of my obsessions in life. Like why we expect sports people who want to perform have to go through a certain protocol, but in business we do exactly the opposite of what high-performing athletes do. We champion, and back then I was a weekend warrior, I burnt the candle at both ends, I said yes to everything. I socially interacted Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and probably [00:18:00] Sunday. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday was trying to win clients and Saturday, Sunday was playing football and going for beers. It was sleeping’s cheating. I can get in at 2:00, 3:00 AM and get up at 7:00 and I’ll be first in the office, because I’m role modelling. That’s the irony. I think back then in my life, I’m a role model. And then you end up having panic attacks and you look back at 46 going back 15, 16 years, and you think, “Well, I wonder why.”

Peter Jackson: So [00:18:30] I’ll suggest this to you, you tell me, rather than realising there’s a particular issue or a dilemma that will trigger a panic attack, would I be right in saying you’ve just realised that the life you lead in business, high performance leaves you vulnerable to anxiety and panic attacks, and with the self-awareness that you talked about earlier, the stopping at 40 and thinking back and all of that process you’ve got, you’ve worked out a lifestyle that effectively guards [00:19:00] against the possibility of that happening?

Paul Cheetham: Yeah. And I’m working on probabilities, aren’t I? Tyson Fury talks about that a lot in his book because he had a lot of panic attacks. I think it’s the same. So I play the probability game of making sure I’m prepared at best I can to withstand it.

Katie Austin: It’s like when you say it’s anxiety, it’s a biological response and what you’re addressing are the biological responses to things, isn’t it? You’re kind of looking at it from a very analytical point of view.

Paul Cheetham: Yeah, that’s the accountant in me. That’s the practicalities. [00:19:30] So yeah, I’m really, really obsessed with the messaging, if I’m honest with you, about why surround myself with a lot of sports people. Because their channel of high performance is no different than our three, their channel’s different, but the methodology and the practicality of high performance for a business meeting is no different than the high performance of running 100 metres playing rugby or having a boxing match.

Katie Austin: You’ve said that, Peter, haven’t you? Sports psychology, that’s something that’s come up over and over again.

Peter Jackson: I think there’s so many similarities [00:20:00] between high performance in business and sport. I think there’s so many similarities between leadership and motivation in sport and business. You’re managing high performing egos, you’re managing high performance people. You’re trying to get the best out of them. You recognise, as you said, they’re human beings, they’re not machines. You’ve got to make them work time and time again when the natural inclination is not to. And the techniques for achieving that are so similar. [00:20:30] If you look at some of the high performing football managers, the Jürgen Klopps, the Arsène Wengers of this world, the Alex Fergusons, how they get the best out of people I suspect is very similar to how you get the best out of your team and I used to get the best out of my team. So let’s move on to our next 3:00 AM conversation, and that’s very much about performance in business.

Paul Cheetham: I was speaking to Kevin Sinfield not long ago, and we were chatting about what makes a great performer. And he said to me, “The only difference between a high-performing [00:21:00] pro-athlete and a high-performing semi-pro-athlete is not the talent, it’s the ability to recover.” But it really struck a chord with me that, because this was a bit further down the line where it wasn’t the weekend warrior and the role model of four-hour sleep’s enough for me and 5:00 AM club-type nonsense that exists all over LinkedIn. Just that one line alone made me just put a lot of focus in recovery. So I like to be around people like him because I like to understand [00:21:30] methodologies he uses to get to where he’s got to and other people like him. S sport is the best. Because there isn’t that many role models in business, is there?

Peter Jackson: No.

Paul Cheetham: There isn’t.

Peter Jackson: For the very reasons you talk about, we don’t approach it with the same methodology, mentality. You talked earlier about the start-up mode and you are, if I may be allowed to say it, in success mode at the moment, business is going very, very well, isn’t it? Do you think the triggers are different [00:22:00] from start-up mode to success mode?

Paul Cheetham: I’ll tell you what I like about start-up mode, you’ve got nothing to lose. And so weirdly, I think the pressure I’m under today is tenfold on a start-up. When you’re backed into a corner, if you’re boxing or you watch your dog and you’ve got nothing to lose, you’ve kind got nowt to lose. I think when I start to see business owners start to become, I’m going to say more anxious, because that’s just one way a business owner can go, but I think when [00:22:30] they struggle the most is when they get something. When they get something and you can lose it.

I interviewed Pete Cowgill at JD, they ended up at 12 bill before he left, but there was 6 billion on the market at the time. And he was on my podcast and I said, he was 60-odd at the time, “What’s making you go?” And he said, “Well, I feel sick every morning.” “And why do you feel sick, Peter?” He said, “Because what happens if we go backwards?” And I’m like, “But you’re 6 billion market value today.” And [00:23:00] he was like, “Yeah, but what happens if we go back to 5.9?” So I think that that real risk of losing is the double-edged sword. It’s what gets me out of bed every morning. And on the flip side, it’s what makes me feel the most uncomfortable.

Katie Austin: Is it responsibility as well for the team that you’ve built? Because you’ve got some great people and they’re all relying on you, aren’t they?

Paul Cheetham: Of course. Imagine. Just imagine people have to go through that. And there’s the ego [00:23:30] side. Imagine the downfall. I’ve always said to my missus, “We’d have to move, we’d have to just… I could not walk around after everything I’ve done and how I’ve built my business to put myself out there.” A lot of us who are successful, if we use that word, we’ve got fragile egos. Because, well, guess what started us? We started from a position of vulnerability. So we’re still quite vulnerable. So there’s a whole mixture of “What happens to the staff? What happens to the family? What happens to my reputation? [00:24:00] What happens to my identity?”

One of the things I still struggle with is that, the question you just asked me is I should be able having given it a go, achieved what I’ve achieved from where I’ve come from, how much we’ve given back to kids and foundations and all that stuff, if it all went wrong tomorrow, really I should be able to just sit there really comfortable in my own skin. But I wouldn’t. My identity would be shattered. I think that’s what some people don’t understand. They think if you are successful, you cross a line [00:24:30] and you’re forever successful. But you’re not.

Peter Jackson: That’s it.

Paul Cheetham: You’re as successful as your last six months or 12 months maximum.

Katie Austin: Yeah. And I mean, you see business owners who leave in their 70s that lose their identity, don’t you? It’s not necessarily that you’re in the thick of it. It’s hard for people to leave something like that behind and live a different life.

Paul Cheetham: Yeah. And I mean, that’s if it goes bad, but it’s the same if it goes good.

Katie Austin: Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Paul Cheetham: Because purpose is a thing that keeps us alive. There’s studies on that with the rats. The ones that had a purpose stayed alive, the ones that wasn’t died. Now I work [00:25:00] with a lot of athletes and they retire at 35. Business owners when they sell out, I’ve always found it’s quite sad that… We’ve got to be careful because we do a lot of deal advisory work. But there is nothing around an entrepreneur who sells out. So PE come in, give them the money, buy them out, not always PE, of course it can be trade. But there’s absolutely no idea, there’s no even thinking of that that person’s just banked a big check, but lost his identity and his purpose. [00:25:30] And it’s such a dangerous part of people’s life that, and I’ve seen it go wrong at least as often as I’ve seen it got it right. And we watch athletes who are mega stars fall off a cliff when they retire. The double-edged sword in that is you keep going like I do, and you stay purposeful, but it means the yin and the yang is you’re still always under consistent and constant pressure.

Peter Jackson: So if we move to our final 3:00 AM conversation, Paul, and you’ve talked [00:26:00] earlier about your work with Kevin and a number of other leading sports personalities. I’m not asking you to name anyone necessarily, but is there another one that you would pick out as a role model? And what have you learned from them about managing these anxieties and mind games that happen to all of us?

Paul Cheetham: So I think there are different things I’ve learned from plenty of them. So for example, a 3:00 AM conversation that a lot of us have, self-belief. David Hay. David Hay was 14 [00:26:30] fights undefeated, 14 knockouts, got in a ring, fight number 15, expected to beat a guy called Carl Thompson. Fifth round, he’s winning, gets knocked out. And I wanted to know what it felt like on the way back to the changing rooms. And he said, “Well, when I woke up, I go out with my team and as I’m walking back, I smiled to myself and thought, ‘I needed that knockdown. I needed that defeat and needed that on my journey to becoming heavyweight [00:27:00] champion of the world.’” Now what a self-belief message that is. So whenever I get knocked down and in business, we get knocked down almost every day, I go back to what some of these other people have done on their self-belief journey. So that was David.

What have the ones have I got? There’s just so many of them. I tell you, Alistair Brownlee’s one, the triathlete, he was an interesting guy. He was one of the guys who just went to Bradford Grammar School, so he never had… And he said, “I’m quite rare. I didn’t [00:27:30] have any of that inner turmoil as a kid. I just started swimming, running and cycling and never stopped.” But he said, “Every day when I get out of bed, I’ve got my trunks next to the bed and the pool next to my bedroom, and the first thing I do is put my trunks on and go swimming.” And he goes, and every day my mind nearly tells me, “Can I be bothered?” Every day for 20 years his mind is nearly… And he said, “But I recognise it every day and I just turn it off.”

And [00:28:00] that’s such a simple tool. But I can’t tell you how many times I’m going to the gym and get stuck in traffic and I feel like I look at the clock, “Can I fit this?” And as soon as I get it, I remember Alistair and I think, “Just do it. Just switch your mind off.” I live a life every day where I’ve just surrounded myself with people and I just try and take one or two things from them. And that’s what I’ve tried to do in sport.

Peter Jackson: There’s so many parallels there with business. I remember one myself, the David Hay one, and [00:28:30] as a young lawyer, I was working with one particular barrister in London, and we’d had five or six wins on the bounce, which was great. Didn’t know what it was like to lose in court. Fantastic. And we had a case go horribly wrong on us. The witness changed his mind. The expert witness decided he agreed with the other side, and we lost. We were battered. And I went back to the barrister’s chambers in London and the chambers had one of those old clerks who knew everything, who’d been around the block several times. And as I walked in, he [00:29:00] could tell we’d lost. And he said, “Oh, sit down Peter.” And he just opened the filing cabinet and two glasses came out and a bottle of whiskey and poured two, he says, “About time you and Mr. Mason got bloody nose, it won’t do you any harm, son.” And that was 30 years ago. But there’s so many similarities, aren’t there?

Paul Cheetham: Yes. So many. Tanni Grey-Thompson was one. She listed all her accolades and said, “It took me 30 years to achieve all that, but actually all my world records and all the gold medals put together, it was something [00:29:30] like three minutes.” And she’d worked 30 years to put together a collective of three minutes. And you look at business how quickly it goes by the way. But I look at 15 years of what we’ve done so far and the blood, sweat, and tears that goes into every single day, and actually when you actually look at the success, it’s just minute in comparison to the preparation, the commitment, the discipline that the elite sports people are willing to go in to just have that 10 seconds on a podium [00:30:00] or cross that finishing line first.

And business is the same. You know what’s wrong with society today and business people is they want it really quick. That’s the big problem. It’s great for me, great for the people who are willing to stick it out, to get knocked down like David Hay and come back, to handle the 3:00 AM conversations and keep going. It’s great for us, if I’m honest with you. Because people nowadays, they want things too quick. They’re not willing to put 30 years in to get three minutes of success or stand on a podium.

Peter Jackson: No, no. No, that’s definitely true. [00:30:30] Looking at the business today, you’ve set up the foundation. How’s that going?

Paul Cheetham: We talked about purpose early on. Purpose underpins all that. I was really worried about what would happen to me if I lacked purpose when I looked in the mirror. When I set out I really wanted a million pound business. But, by the way, when I set out in a job I wanted to earn 25 grand a year. When they paid me 25, I wanted 27. When they paid me 27, I wanted 30. Well, that was no difference with Sedulo, I wanted a million, then two, then four, then five, then 10, then 20. And you start to understand contentment and happiness is not going to come from meeting [00:31:00] numerical objectives. So I wanted to create a purpose that was infinite, which means until I’m gone, I’ve got something to work towards and achieve.

Katie Austin: Does the foundation cause you any kind of worries in the way that a business does? Or it’s kind of a side project that what it produces helps?

Paul Cheetham: So our mission as an organisation is to give back, to make positive change in the communities we exist in. That’s our mission or obsession, I would call it. Our [00:31:30] obsession is to help kids. And the 20 graduates that started last week, they can share in that mission or obsession just equally as I can. Because there’s always going to be a pecking order. In a Formula 1 team, there’s a driver, and he gets paid more than the person who puts the nuts and bolts on the wheels. But the people on the nuts and bolts, they can’t get it wrong. They have to be the best nuts and bolt or tyre person in existence, like he has to be the best Formula 1 driver in existence. So how do you get them as an orchestra all aligned?

[00:32:00] And I just generally thought that we had to create a mission that meant everybody can be equally as deeply passionate about it as what I am. And so the foundation gives the organisation that, it gives me purpose. The output of all that is good. Now I can tell you now, everybody says to me, “When are you going to sell out?” Well, I can tell you what my sell out would be. I would sell out, then I would train, then I would eat healthy, and I’d spend the morning [00:32:30] of righteousness and then I’d go on the lash because I love a drink. And I can be as obsessed about drinking as working. Or, helping kids.” So I’d rather help kids. And that’s why I’ve set it up. And it’s my proudest… My proudest moment is never anything we’ve done. Another question, “So what’s your proudest…” It’s never selling a business. It’s never growing a business. I’m quite proud of the post room story.

Peter Jackson: I could tell.

Paul Cheetham: It’s probably the least [00:33:00] numerically successful story that I’ve got, probably is actually. But I’m most proudest of it. But my proudest reflections is when I take the staff away every year, 250 of us going to Tenerife for this Christmas, and I look around and see the team and seeing them having fun and see them passionate about what we’re doing. And that’s my most proudest moment along with the Colour Ball, which you obviously came to.

Katie Austin: Yeah.

Paul Cheetham: Which is I see how much our community backs our [00:33:30] mission, how much our clients put their hand in their pocket.

Katie Austin: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Paul Cheetham: And that I’m quite proud of.

Peter Jackson: It’s okay to be obsessed about that. Definitely.

Paul Cheetham: If you’ve got my personality, you’ve got to be obsessed about something.

Peter Jackson: Yeah, definitely.

Paul Cheetham: So choose it wisely.

Peter Jackson: We could go on all day. You’ve been very, very generous with your time. Thank you very much for your time.

Paul Cheetham: Thanks for having me.

Peter Jackson: It’s been a pleasure. It’s been great.

Katie Austin: Thanks.

Peter Jackson: And good luck for the future. Thank you.

Paul Cheetham: Thanks very much. Thank you.

[00:34:00] So Katie, what did you think of that?

Katie Austin: Okay, so what I think stands out the most is that Paul is one of these people, and sports people are like this as well, he’s just got something about him that we don’t all have. Yeah, talks about things like the post room analogy, just show how he just had something about him at the age of 21 that most 21 year olds wouldn’t have, to kind of come in with this really analytical mind and just assess the situation, get it all in order, and get it to a good place. And to have that at 21, I think [00:34:30] just shows he’s got something about him.

Peter Jackson: Yeah, I really liked the story about the post room. But also the way he could analyse it after the event and appreciate what he’d done in business terms there. He’d made them accountable, he’d made them competitive, proud, ambitious. He’d given them career paths, he’d upskilled them. I mean, it was an absolute case study in how to turn around a business. The other thing that struck me was the analogies he drew between [00:35:00] sports and business. It’s always been my view that that’s an obvious analogy and that business can learn a lot from how sport runs itself and vice versa.

Katie Austin: So what is this analogy between sport and business then? Because it comes up time and time again, but what do you think he specifically meant?

Peter Jackson: What I took from it was the analogy between leadership in sport and leadership in business, particularly at the elite level, although not exclusively so. And that’s about how [00:35:30] you manage and lead and motivate a team of high ego, high performing, highly driven personalities and how you get them aligned to the common objectives, how you get them aligned to the values of your organisation, how you get sometimes a group of highly talented individuals working as a unit and getting out of them more than the sum of their individual parts. [00:36:00] What’s your view on how he was putting it across?

Katie Austin: I mean, I think he drew some comparisons between how elite sports people approach, for example, a race or a boxing match and how he kind of approaches a big day at the office, in that he very much prioritises physical health and mental health. He makes sure that he really takes care of himself in the way that a sports person who does that professionally would do so, which I think is probably quite rare.

Peter Jackson: I think there’s something in what [00:36:30] you say and what he says, and I think sometimes as a leader you can get overtaken by events, the issues you have to manage, the issues you have to face, the challenges you’ve got, and they take precedence and priority over your own mental health, your own well-being. When I did the Harvard Business School leadership course 15 years ago, 16 years ago, one of the whole days of their programme was about how you look after yourself as [00:37:00] a leader and how you get the best out of yourself. Because it is so easy to fall into the trap of the business comes first, last, second, third, fourth, and fifth, and you put everything to one side. And that’s not good. There are days when that has to happen, don’t get me wrong. But you’ve still got to look after yourself. You’re better to your business if you’re fit healthy, mentally clear, alert, etc, than if you are worn out, knackered, depressed, downtrodden.

Katie Austin: I think it’s [00:37:30] role modelling as well, isn’t it? Because accountancy, like the law, is a business where the assets are the people. And so if you want your people to pull it together and drive the business forward, they’ve got to be in good health as well. So you’ve got to set an example I think from the top.

Peter Jackson: Another line that really struck with me was when he said, people think you achieve success, but then you step over a line and that’s it. What is success?

Katie Austin: Yeah.

Peter Jackson: Fascinating.

Katie Austin: Absolutely. He was talking, [00:38:00] wasn’t he, about that your business gets bigger, but actually can you truly enjoy it? Or actually, are you worried about the people that you are bringing with you? I mean, you must have felt like that at some point.

Peter Jackson: Yeah, I have. And I’ve heard other leading entrepreneurs talk about it. And Steven Bartlett says it, doesn’t he, in one of his earlier podcasts about when he sold his first business and he made millions, he was sat there with the brochures for mansions in Surrey or Hampshire, wherever it was, and Maseratis. And it just wasn’t doing [00:38:30] it for him. And I think there’s both an individual and a collective attitude to this. Because as the leader, you can appreciate success, you can appreciate when your business does well, you can appreciate when you do a good deal, when you recruit new people, when you promote your own people, whatever it might be. But there’s always tomorrow when you’re still responsible for your people tomorrow. And you can’t get away from that. If you take responsibility seriously, however well you do, there’s always another day. And it shouldn’t depress you, [00:39:00] but you should be aware of. It keeps you grounded, keeps you level.

Katie Austin: I mean, have you got any moments where you can remember thinking, “Do you know what, I’m just going to enjoy this. I’m going to enjoy this moment. I’m not going to be worried about the next day”?

Peter Jackson: Yeah, it was walking away from DLA’s office in 2018 when we’d signed the deal to transfer all of our insurance group to Keoghs. It was a great deal for everybody. It was a deal that [00:39:30] secured the future of the insurance group and a business that understood it and had the infrastructure to let it thrive. And it was a deal that really saved Hill Dickinson because we were in difficulties before then. Not in danger of going bust or anything like that, but we weren’t sustainable with that mix of business. And I think it was raining, actually, it was certainly very late at night. I remember walking to the car and then driving back to Liverpool [00:40:00] thinking, “Yeah, we did all right there. We’ll be all right with this.” And thankfully it turned out to be the case.

Katie Austin: How long did that last for then?

Peter Jackson: Yeah, it lasted about 10 minutes. That’s an interesting one as well, because with some business decisions, whilst you can sit back at the time and say, “Yeah, I did all right with that one,” they take months, years sometimes to unfold. And that one did take some months to really give us the evidence to support the gut feel we all had that this was a good deal. To actually see the results [00:40:30] tangibly took some months. So when it did you get a bit of a second hit at that point because you think, “Yeah, that was the right thing to do.” So Katie, three things you’re going to take away, bullet points?

Katie Austin: So I knew Paul was a good business leader, a good leader of people, I should say, because I know lots of people that work for him. But I loved some of the stuff that he referred to. I like the way he role models in terms of his own health. He prioritises his own health. I know he prioritises his weekends with his children, that kind of thing. [00:41:00] And I love how he approaches problems. I think his mind is so analytical and he applies the same sort of logic to every problem he encounters, whether it’s his business or a client’s business or some other problem, he just comes at it from a really high level and just seems to analyse it in a great way. What about you?

Peter Jackson: I think first of all, to remember that however successful you are, there’s always tomorrow. And if you’re the leader, you’re still responsible for your people tomorrow. Secondly, his self-awareness about [00:41:30] his own mental health. He accepts that he’s in a high profile, high pressure situation, that he suffers with anxiety, suffers with panic attacks. That’s just the way it is. But he’s found mechanisms to cope with that and to ensure that he can continue to perform despite what he knows are inevitably going to happen to him. And then thirdly, and finally, isn’t it interesting that a number of the people we’ve spoken to on this podcast have something that happened in their formative years that keeps coming back to them in [00:42:00] business or in life?

So we had Andy Grant saying he cried for his mum the week before he was on our podcast, and she’d died 20 years ago. We had Sacha Lord who had a fractious relationship with his dad and chose to do everything that his father wouldn’t have done. And here we have Paul on a park bench crying for his mum when he has his first panic attack and the first thing he does is go around and have tea and toast with her. And it’s just fascinating how each of these high performance individuals [00:42:30] can go back to their formative years and highlight and pinpoint issues that have stayed with them and taught them things that have carried them through the entirety of their career.

Katie Austin: Yeah. And they’ve all shared them with us in the podcast, which has been great. Everyone’s been so open.

Peter Jackson: Thanks, Katie. There’s so much in there that you and I have clearly taken away from it. Hopefully you will do too. So thanks for listening to this episode of 3:00 AM Conversations. And you’ll hear from us again in a month’s time. Please [00:43:00] rate, review and follow the podcast, and that way you’ll be able to spread the word. And if you’d like to find out more about how Hill Dickinson might be able to help you, then head to our website. Thanks for listening.