EP 373 - This week we sit down with Jon White, a professional kayaker, engineer, business leadership coach and occasional rock climber, who would probably be doing none of those things if he hadn’t lost his right arm and both legs stepping on an I.E.D. in Afghanistan in 2010.

Jon is fascinating on how calm acceptance (and the royal marine value of humour in the face of adversity) helped him avoid PTSD.  He’s very clear that his personal approach might not work for everybody but we think that there is a lot to learn from his calm, understated approach to life.

*For Apple Podcast chapters, access them from the menu in the bottom right corner of your player*

Spotify Video Chapters:

00:00 BWB with Jon White

03:02 The Afghanistan Conflict Explained

07:56 Life After Injury: Rehabilitation and Resilience

24:41 The Importance of Mindset and Humour

33:10 Rehabilitation and Adaptation

36:13 Innovations in Prosthetics

37:17 Personal Journey and Challenges

38:56 Business Ventures and Leadership

41:59 Engineering and Adaptation

48:28 Philosophies on Life and Leadership

54:31 Quickfire - Get To Know Jon

01:05:42 Wrap Up

businesswithoutbullshit.me

Watch and subscribe to us on YouTube

Follow us:

Instagram

TikTok

Linkedin

Twitter

Facebook

If you'd like to be on the show, get in contact - mail@businesswithoutbullshit.me

BWB is powered by Oury Clark

I was eight years into my career in the Royal Marines.

I was unlucky enough to stand on an improvised explosive device, a homemade mine.

Initially I was on like this emotional precipice ridgeline.

The top of the ridgeline is okay, that's positive emotions and you can deal with that.

But either side you've got despair, depression, anxiety and everything else.

I really struggled with people being around me, being sad, moping, feeling sorry for.

So I ended up pushing people away a little bit, being quite harsh towards them if I felt they were being too negative.

You've obviously turned that bad experience into this good thing.

I knew if I was going to get through this, I just had to be, you know, almost ruthlessly positive.

Hi and welcome to Business Without Bullshit.

We're here to help the founders, entrepreneurs, business owners, anyone who wrestles with the job of being in char.

And if you like what we do here, please rate and review us on Spotify and Apple.

And come say hi on YouTube if you fancy watching us in action.

Links are in the episode description or just search for wblondon.

We chat about how he accepted a bad experience and turned it into a good thing.

How his calm acceptance and the Royal Marine value of humor in the face of adversity helped him avoid ptsd, and how his approach might not work for everybody, but that most people find a way to deal with traumatic events in their own way, but at different rates.

There's many pearls of wisdom from John about how to approach life, all delivered with such calm understatement that you'll probably have to watch it three times to catch them all.

I also really like that he gets as massively annoyed as I do about about companies who drag their heels over paying invoices on time.

We get stuck into those right at the end, so stay tuned and I'll also be sharing my key takeaways from my chat with John throughout the show.

I am Andy Horry and today we are joined by John White.

John's story is nothing short of inspiring.

He served as a Royal Marine commando and faced unimaginable challenges when an IED explosion in Afghanistan left him with life altering injuries resulting in the loss of of his right arm and both legs.

John's resilience and determination have led him an incredible journey of recovery and reinvention.

Now he's living life to the fullest with custom prosthetics that allow him to tackle everything from rock climbing, running and even snowboarding.

Beyond his own adventures, John is dedicated to supporting others as a mentor for fellow multiple limb amputees.

And if that wasn't enough, he's also a sponsored athlete with brands like Visa, Vikobe, Kitron, Kayaks all backing his amazing endeavours.

John, a very warm welcome.

Nice to be here.

Thank you, Andy.

John, you've probably had to tell the story a few times, but I think, you know, what you've been through is obviously epic and I think, you know, let's start there with the sort of what happened and what.

What was going on in your life at that time.

I deployed in the March time and it was quite a quite savage tour.

So the first tour of Afghanistan I did for me was very safe.

I was a liaison officer on Kandahar Air Base.

I did half my work over a cup of coffee in Timmy Hortons.

Whereas this time we were going to a town called Sangin, which was traditionally the center of the opium trade in southern Afghanistan.

The troops that were already in place were taking heavy casualties for 12 months beforehand.

And, you know, in that first four months, I think we took four fatalities, maybe.

I think the time I was injured and by the time the tour ended, there was 17 fatalities from the unit.

And how many is that out of.

That's a unit.

Is it a unit?

It's about 600 people.

So it was, yeah, fairly, fairly difficult time.

I was commanding a patrol one morning and I was unlucky enough to stand on a improvised explosive device.

That's what the EYE is, Improvised explosive device.

Well, I mean, sorry to be.

Let's just be really ignorant.

Hopefully I'm not the only one who's going to ask this.

2010, take me back.

Why are we even in Afghanistan at that point?

What was that about?

Yeah, so great question.

Right.

So the Taliban were the government at the time and they themselves weren't terrorists, but what they openly did was harbor terrorists within Afghanistan.

So the US led the operation to go and neutralize Al Qaeda's headquarters in, in Afghanistan and torso removed the Taliban government, which was willing to Host them.

So that.

And you're sort of going through a town, you're trying to patrol the town.

Yeah, so this was all just before I joined up, so I was going through my joining process while all of this was happening.

Where Al Qaeda were hiding out.

Unfortunately, what we didn't get right was when the Taliban were removed, there was then a vacuum of power and things didn't get too far, vice versa.

There was this sort of initial big kinetic operation for about a year, got rid of Al Qaeda and then we put in a government in place.

Taliban started an insurgency to take back the power.

The US and other allied forces were working in different parts of the country.

And so then it was about suppressing this insurgency that was trying to take back power.

And then obviously, a couple of years ago, we thought we were at the stage where we could pull out and the interim government was no longer interim, it was secure.

But actually what the Taliban did was just wait for the balance of power to be right for them just to kind of roll over Afghanistan again, which is what they did a couple of years ago.

It's a difficult thing, war, and I mean, not that I in any position to talk about it, but, you know, these conflicts are sort of highly complex, really, in what's been trying to achieve.

You know, it's almost.

There's no good answers, is there?

You know, you try and make the right decision as you can at the time, because it feels like the right thing to do, isn't it?

You know, do you know what that is?

Exactly right.

And not many people are able to see that.

That actually hindsight's a, you know, a brilliant thing.

But in reality, everyone's just doing the best they can with the knowledge they have at the time.

And, you know, unfortunately, someone's going to come off worse and, you know, in that case, it ended up being us.

In this particular conflict, the Royal Marines.

Are sort of, you know, the name in itself, it's almost a bit like the sas.

This sort of.

It's slightly creme de la creme.

Is it Royal Marines.

I mean, technically the Marines are people who work on land and sea or something, isn't it?

That's right.

So amphibious forces.

So technically, or we are part of the Navy, but we certainly during the Afghan period, often we were under army command because we're working on land there.

In terms of the levels of UK troops, obviously we've got our Tier one Special Forces, which are ses, sbs, Special Reconnaissance Service.

Oh, sorry, Special Reconnaissance Regiment.

And then we've got what we call our Tier 2 troops, which are the paratroop regiments and the Royal Marines.

And basically the idea is they're kind of expeditionary warfare experts.

So they're going to be first, you know, if you like main forces into, into any conflict.

So hence why, you know, Falklands, for instance, the, the Paris and the Marines, it's got a lot of publicity down there.

It's that sort of underpinning that historically for a long time, you know, the, the, the, the Navy is really all we had.

We had a small army.

We would pay other people to fight battles on land.

So the sort of the Navy is our jumping off point.

And then the Royal Marines are the sort of land based bit of the Navy to sort of then of the Navy originally, you know.

Yeah, that's it.

And you know, in modern times there's been talks or, you know, certainly in the late 70s, early 80s, they're looking at disbanding the Marines.

But the reality is, is I can't remember what it is, but something like 80, 85% of the world's population, it's massive lives, you know, within, within the sea, within touching coast, within touching distance of the coast, you know, it's, it's huge.

And then you've got the, the way borders work, coastal borders.

So the fact that a navy could be, you know, sat 12, 12 miles off any coast and be in neutral territory, but actually have a whole load of forces there waiting to deploy on land, that's quite a handy asset to have.

And I mean this is, this is your passion in your life.

You did you go straight into the forces or the Navy as it were, after school and things.

So yeah, I took a year out.

Unfortunately I messed up one of levels and I'd also, I'd also failed.

Which one did you mess up?

It was a geography module, which was meant to be my strongest subject, but.

It'S always the way.

But for some reason I got three B's and a U in that, in that subject and went back, redid the exam and got B in it.

So did that I'd actually tried to go through the process of joining a year before as well and had failed at the last hurdle there.

So during that gap year, I decided to go back and have another shot set and this time, luckily got in.

So what attracted you?

What was sort of your driving force then?

So I think firstly I grew up in a military family, so my dad was in the Royal Marines for 25 years.

My mum's eldest brother had been in the Marines, I think, for 16 years.

And so as a teenager, I was sort of growing up surrounded by them.

And for me, I wasn't the most talented kid at school.

I was kind of quite average.

But I used to sort of meet my dad's colleagues and also there were a lot of other military children out of school, lots of other Marines amongst fathers, and just think they were quite aspirational.

People used to enjoy the stories they told and I thought if I could end up like them one day, I'd be pretty happy.

So, yeah, it was quite aspirational for me.

This really interesting.

There's a.

He's a rapper and poet called B.

Dolan, but he does a brilliant thing about the US military, a very dark poem.

But, you know, there's the point he makes in that I think is so well put, which is that pacifists, or people who are very against military or want to go down that route, they don't really understand the ground on which they stand, that effectively, most of the stuff that we've achieved as a nation, an enormous amount of it comes from military strength.

And indeed, whether you.

I'm sure most people probably listening in the modern world think it's a terrible thing and we should have never done it was the modern British attitude of this course about the empire and stuff.

But how did get an empire through naval strength?

You know, how do we have the freedoms and liberties we have?

We.

We have them through a lot of fighting, to be honest.

And I think it's a sort of uncomfortable truth that being strong militarily is.

It's a tough old world out there and you've got to be able to defend yourself.

But there's that difficult balance at the same time, isn't there?

Because there's a sort of military industrial complex.

This is sort of, you know, do we.

Does it feed itself as a thing?

And there's all of that.

But I don't think, you know, the idea that you could get rid of.

Get rid of your military.

I think there's only one country in the.

Without a military, Costa Rica or something.

Hasn't got any military, basically.

But, you know, what I'm trying to express is that sense of honor within the.

The requirement and the need and the respect that we need to have.

I mean, in America, people always say thank you for your service.

They have this phrase, don't they?

What do you think the British attitude is it.

Do you get similar respect for your time you served and things like that?

Yeah, I think it's a bit mixed.

I think in the last couple of years.

So I think it's almost during that Afghan conflict when it was very obvious.

It was on the news all the time, there are lots of us coming back injured.

The news was full of funeral parades or.

Sorry, not funeral parades, but coffins coming back through Wootton Bassett.

And at that point there was a lot of very outward support.

It was very obvious.

I think in the last couple of years, that's probably dipped down again and people are probably questioning military power a little bit.

The reality is, as you suggest, I think we're in a different place now in terms of projection of power and what we do with that power.

But we can't be naive to the fact that there are people that will try and suppress us, will try and suppress other nations.

There are people, yeah, rogue actors.

Not even rogue actors.

I think there are still nations out there that, given the opportunity, they.

They will.

And, you know, you only need to look at what's going on in Ukraine at the moment and, you know, Israel, Gaza, you know, it's all come about with.

In amongst it all, there are people willing to do atrocities and, you know, kind of the way, not just human sociology, you know, any animal sociology works, is it.

It only takes one or two, you know, bad actors to completely, completely undermine any civility.

And we, we just.

Freedom could be gone like that in reality.

Yeah.

And that's the way, you know, if you look at it on a, you know, that describes it in a.

A multinational setting.

But the way we have to govern our people, it's.

It's all based around, you know, the 1% that are willing to be bad.

We don't govern for the vast majority of good people.

We govern for the people that will see what they can get away with.

And, you know, we just always need to bear that in the back of our mind.

The few friends I have who fought in Afghanistan, and I think anyone who's fought in the armed conflict, as someone in ignorant and not been there, you tend to ask questions, say, oh, what happened?

What was it like?

And, you know, I think of one friend Particularly when I say this, Nick, but you, you see this look come over them, that talking about it is very difficult.

And you know, I remember Nick saying to me once, he just sort of, you know, sort of almost shrugged his shoulders, what do you need to know?

What is it you're trying to find out?

Because I'll try and answer your question, but stop fucking asking me about it almost.

Which is really interesting that, you know, being in those and Afghanistan I think was particularly difficult because that's where he was and did a few tours.

You know, is that it's, it's hard to talk about.

Is that, is that fair or it's difficult to help people rel to it is.

And I think, you know, what you need to sort of bear in mind is the vast majority of us that are in the military are not psychopaths.

We're not war hungry.

Yeah.

And it's like, how many people did you kill?

Is almost a stupid question that you want to ask.

Exactly.

But.

And I remember asking my dad a similar question when I was a, you know, pre teen kid and just getting a very, you know, evasive answer, you know, and it's only now, looking back that I understand that.

And there's a bit of pride in having gone and put ourselves in the positions that we did and doing what we do.

But, you know, you, you don't have pride in, if you like, the archetypal military acts that people, you know, like to think that's going on.

So yeah, I think that's probably why that's the case.

You know, we're very protective about what we disclose because it's just, it's not really right to, to talk about it too much.

Well, you people are asking you.

It's interesting just to ask it because in a way I just want to throw a bit of light on what should you ask someone who's been through arm.

I mean, my understanding is they don't really want to talk about it.

The, you know, and these are my ignorant views, so I'm throwing them out to be corrected.

But, you know, ultimately some bad things happen.

Yes, they may have killed people.

These are things they have to live with.

But it was within a framework of a situation and within.

And training.

I mean, a lot of it's about training, isn't it?

You know, why do you train and train and train?

Because when happens your brain goes into panic mode and depending on your personality type and sort of how ADHD you are, you know, whatever or how calm you feel and stuff, but you fall back on Your training, you know, why do they teach people every time they get on airplane what to do?

Because it shows.

If you remind people what to do when those moments come, they remember and they fall back on that training.

The nice bit, for me, as far as I understand, and what makes military, the military so fascinating in many ways, is the teamwork, the camaraderie, the way you look, you're a family and you really look after each other, you know, So I imagine that's the.

That's the warm bit, isn't it?

Is it?

Yeah, absolutely.

And, you know, even now, you know, I'm still in touch with a lot of the.

A lot of the guys that were in my troop.

Lots of them still refer to me as boss.

Damn right.

I've got one guy who.

I was his boss back in my first troop command, but I now sit on an advisory board for his business.

He's quite entrepreneurial and has done far more than I have.

And, yeah, he still sits there and refers to me as boss, which I find ludicrous.

I keep telling him he needs to stop doing it because it's like a family.

You've got this depth of trust.

That's it.

It's lifelong bonds.

It's amazing to fall back on.

And, you know, I'm just in the process of putting a house on the market.

My plan is I've already found somewhere to move to in Exmouth, which is, you know, the town next to Lympston where we do our commando training.

So.

Funny old thing.

Part of the draw there is being surrounded by old friends.

I can't walk down the street in Exmouth without bumping into someone.

I know.

Nice.

And I mean, I joke, you know, if you want to get to know someone, if you got stuck in a lift with someone for three hours, you probably end up friends with them at the end of it, you know, and you're talking about.

Experience is way deeper than that, you know, way more intense than people dying and people getting injured like you.

I mean, that's just so tough for people to go through, but the life is almost that camaraderie, that being together, you know, you could say in the same, in a family.

Me and my sister died recently, and you, you come together as a family, you hold together as a family, and you.

You allow them to live on and hold their spirit as a group of people.

So, I mean, there's something really beautiful in that.

And it's.

It's such a.

Much more of a pressure cooker.

Yeah.

And also, adversity tends to bring people together as well and, you know, in many cases, brings out the best in people.

I've got some really close friends who unfortunately, their.

Their mum's just been diagnosed with cancer and, you know, they've had all sorts of difficulties in the last couple of years and all of a sudden that diagnosis has just brought them together.

You know, they're quite young, early twenties, late teens, and they've just kind of grown up in a matter of weeks because of that.

And, you know, I always think it's a shame that often it takes tragedy to make people sort of put their differences aside and pull together and bring out the best in people.

But the worst things you go through are often the best thing that ever happened to you.

And I don't want to.

I actually.

It must be really hard for you to relive it all the time because I think you would have obviously had this day when this accident happened, happen to you, and it will be a huge memory and.

And moment in your life that, you know, is probably painful to relive.

So, you know, obviously this incident and how had you.

You lost some limbs and stuff, but I think you've obviously turned that bad experience into this good thing, you know, and that's the strange thing.

No matter how bad the experience is, there's light in it.

Is that fair?

Yeah.

So probably, unsurprisingly, I've become fairly philosophical.

And, you know, I think the.

The big basis of my philosophy, my way of thinking, of being, is around acceptance.

So I used to talk about, and I still do talk about forgiveness a lot.

And, you know, how I realized there.

There came a point in time where I went, hang on, I may have been through this tragedy, but I've now got a, you know, whole array of things going on in my life that are all amazing, which potentially wouldn't have been going on had stepped on that bomb.

And that sort of led me to this place of going, well, it doesn't make sense to be angry.

It doesn't make sense for me to be angry at that guy who was the local bomb supplier in our area, who I'd met but didn't have the opportunity to arrest at the time.

And so you go, well, actually, I can forgive him because I'm in this good place.

And actually a couple of years on going well, I also kind of need to take personal responsibility for all of that.

It was my decision to join the Marines, my decision to do a particular specialization that got me a particular job, which meant I was on that tour.

And so I Needed to be able to forgive myself as well.

There were risks involved that you were aware of.

Coming back to your point right at the beginning, around where we're all just doing the best we can with what we have in any given moment, the majority of us, the majority of the time.

So I now talk about this idea of acceptance.

I can only be right here, right now if I've been through everything that I've been through beforehand.

Any deviation takes me to a different place.

And you're alive.

I don't know exactly and I don't know what the different place is.

But what I do know is right here, right now, I've got a whole world of things to be grateful for.

You know, I've had a whole load of brilliant experiences.

I've had children, I've made new friends, I've taken up new sports, traveled the world and, you know, I happen to have a pretty decent life.

You know, it's not without its difficulties.

We.

We all have our different difficulties.

But, you know, I've got a pretty good life and I need to accept, you know, the good, bad and the ugly of my past because all of it has got me here.

Yeah, after it happened, obviously there'd be some terrible days and stuff, but for you, what was the turning point?

Was there a point someone said something, something happened or anything that you thought, right, come on, I'm going to take a different approach.

I think initially I was quite self aware and I realized that I couldn't let any negativity into my head.

Is that your training maybe as a military person?

I think yeah, there's a little bit of that.

Nature versus nurture, was it already there?

Did the Marines nurture it a bit more?

Probably a bit of the.

Bit of both.

So what that meant is initially I was very conscious about what I was thinking, what I was allowing myself to be exposed to.

And that was whilst I was in, in hospital and you were in hospital.

Out there or you'd come back here.

Back in the uk, in Birmingham.

So I only spent four weeks in hospital in Birmingh, Birmingham.

Unfortunately, one of the side effects of that, which is a slight regret, but I kind of also give myself a bit of grace on it, was I really struggled with people being around me, being sad, moping, feeling sorry for me.

So I ended up pushing people away a little bit in those early days or being quite harsh towards them if I felt they were being too negative.

My mom in particular probably took the brunt of that.

You take it out on the ones you love anyway.

And it's hard for them to not react in that way.

The problem was, is I just didn't have the bandwidth to do it.

I knew that their negativity would feed into me, and I knew that if I let any into my mindset, that would be it.

I was in such a fragile place that it wouldn't take much for me to shatter.

So I had to be pretty ruthless about that.

And, you know, over time, I've.

I've repaired all of those relationships.

I'm not sure.

I'm not sure people will ever fully understand.

People struggle with it.

Sis, when she was dying, you know, she got pancreatic.

So she didn't have long.

She didn't tell many people because she learned when you tell people, yeah, they start writing to you like you're dead.

And there's all this sympathy and it's.

You just.

You just want normality.

You want distraction, you want jokes, you want.

You know, I'm just watching the Christopher Reeves thing, actually, you know, and what a story.

I'm only halfway through the documentary that's on whatever, Amazon or whatever, you know, and obviously he was great friends with Robin.

Robin Williams the comedian.

And.

And I just watched that bit how Robin Williams dressed up as a doctor and came in and pretended to be this Russian doctor or something and said, I, you know, I can't do the accents or anywhere near what Robin Williams did.

But, you know, and he laughed.

And that bit of the documentary is like.

I realized I could still laugh, you know, and it's like the.

It's like the Beatles song, isn't it?

You know, the best things in life for free.

It's like, you know, we think.

What you think is important isn't necessary.

What's important?

To be able to laugh.

I don't know.

You know, that's enough, isn't it?

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

It gets you a long way.

And funnily enough, one of the key values within the.

Within the Royal Marines Court of Spirit is humor in the face of adversity.

And so, yeah, that's something kind of always the funny.

Are the jokes, too?

I mean, some of the jokes towards the end, when we're right at the end, the end, you know, might make myself cry.

When Sis was just like, so in hospital, and actually she was in hospice then, you know, I came in and I was like, this cancer's a real.

Isn't it?

If you tried paracetamol, you know, and we were, like, laughing.

I was like, how about ibuprofen?

If you Tried ibuprofen and she was like, shut up there, you know, but it was.

To be honest, I'm not saying I'm funny as in like they are really funny those moments because they're so ridiculous, you know, but, but I mean, and I could totally understand that you've got especially a mother.

Everyone gathering around you sob, oh, what?

You know, and it's like, it's not what you want to hear right now.

And I think that's interesting.

You feel it's a regret to push them away.

I don't think you've got any other option.

That's self preservation, isn't it?

Yeah.

And that's why I say I kind of give myself a bit of grace around it.

I wish I'd had the capacity not to have done that at the time, but you know, just go back, I was doing the best I could.

I knew if I was going to get through this, I just had to be, you know, almost ruthlessly positive.

And that's the way I was.

And then I guess I then it took me about two years to get to that stage where I started, you know, coming up with that concept of forgiveness.

And you know, that the way I describe all of this is, you know, initially I was on like this emotional precipice ridgeline.

And the top of the ridgeline is, okay, that's positive emotions and you can deal with that.

But either side is depression.

It's like, yeah, you're walking, balancing, you're.

Balancing on it, but either side you've got despair, depression, anxiety and everything else.

And so as long as you can be ruthlessly positive and keep taking little steps forward all the time, eventually you get to a place where that ridgeline kind of flattens out, rounds out and all of a sudden you can let yourself of meander left and right a bit and you know, experience a more normal range of emotions.

And you'd what, you started talking about it, had you or.

Yeah, I've always been quite, quite comfortable talking about it.

I think for me it's been a.

Almost protective therapy is the best way I can describe it.

I think it's protected me from suffering from PTSD or any other issues to.

Vocalize it, to share.

Yeah, well, I think because what it does is it encourages me to recall the memories of what happened in a fairly safe and controlled manner and then.

Not then invasive memories that are just popping into your head at times.

When did you have support to explain that that was a good thing to do?

No, I just started doing it and it's only really, again, kind of 10 years down the line, looking back on it, going, I understand this now, and I think some of that has come from watching friends who have suffered with ptsd.

And one of the interesting things I've noted about that is how their stories change over time and get worse.

And some of them who were in the same places at the same time as me, their recollection of events was so vastly different from mine.

And I'm not saying I'm right and they're wrong, but I was kind of looking at the gap between them and going, I feel like theirs has definitely exaggerated over time.

And I think what happens is when you recall a memory, it's like taking a file out of the filing cabinet and before it goes away, you kind of scribble on it and change it a bit before you put that file away.

So if you're pulling those files out in a nice controlled environment and then you're putting them neatly away again.

Oh, interesting.

Rather than you're upset and you've had a drink and then you're.

And then you're like.

And it becomes.

And the memory grows and gets worse and all of those things, and maybe you don't put the file away in.

In the right place in the filing cabinet.

Right, then.

So what have been my key takeaways so far?

Let's break them down.

Number one, war is never black and white.

Combat decisions are made in the moment, but history judges them differently.

John gave us a raw, unfiltered take on the complexities and tough realities of war.

Number two, your mindset is your greatest weapon.

After his injury, John was ruthless about blocking out negativity, because even the smallest crack in this mindset could have been devastating.

His lesson, protect your mental state at all costs.

Number three, humor isn't just coping, it's survival.

The Royal Marines swear by humour in adversity, and John explains how laughter helps through his darkest days.

Science agrees laughter rewires how we process trauma.

More key takeaways coming up later in the show.

Now back to the chat.

What happens in terms of how do they support you to get back to work or.

Yeah, so in the Royal Marines, we had a specific small unit called Hasla Company.

Once you had been injured, you were taken out of the command of, you know, the serving unit you'd been in and you were put under the command of Hasla Company and they were geared up specifically for rehabilitation and resettlement.

And so, you know, they would have resettlement experts.

So finding you a home, literally.

Yeah, yeah.

So I ended up building my own house.

Oh, well, as you do as a man.

He's just lost his arm and legs, you know.

Yeah, that's impressive.

And, you know, that became my resettlement actually, you know, it was probably a two year project and I literally, you know, project managed it.

I was on site almost every day at times I was actually building there.

Yeah, the foreman gave up on trying to stop me climbing scaffolding in my prosthetics.

His, his wife used to give him quite a hard time.

But that's part of the problem with disabilities, isn't it, that the disabled people get, almost get told, you know, I've heard this from other disabled people.

It's almost like, well, you're not going to work again, you know what I mean?

Or you, you can't, you know, there's so many assumptions yet we all know you don't need to go on YouTube.

The things people do is insane.

I mean, I read out rock climbing, you know, it's not something nor someone normally write down is possible, but anything's possible almost.

Yeah, you have to adapt the way you do things.

But, you know, my big thing now is kayaking and, you know, especially the ocean kayaking, but also the flat water kayaking.

The boats I paddle, you know, if I was to let you sit in one, unless you've done a lot of paddling in the past, I can guarantee as soon as you sat on it and let go of the side, you'd fall out the other side.

You just let that wobble.

Yeah, because you balance with the oar.

Well, you learn to balance with your hips, you know, and you know, that's the difference.

Yeah, I'm just very comfortable sitting in these boats.

And then how do you do the oar?

Do you have a prosthetic arm?

Yeah, so I've got a prosthetic arm.

I ended up designing, working with an engineer and I came up with a design for a wrist unit.

And the wrist unit actually recreates what my elbow does.

So the wrist unit retracts and extends.

You're meaning the wrist unit.

So it fits on but the bit of the wrist.

Yes.

And it basically does that in the forearm, but it's straight.

But by doing that, actually what your elbow does is control how far your hand is from your Shoulder border.

Yes, that's the function.

So I've recreated that in a wrist unit.

The prosthetics have moved along.

Crazy.

I mean, I know also in Iceland, I've been to their factory and they were obviously quite pioneering and stuff.

Yeah.

And then I use Ottobock.

So I've just got their latest knee, the Genium X4.

So I got that earlier in the month.

And the advancements coming are huge.

Are they with robotics or.

I mean, it's far off or not yet, so.

And it kind of, of depends.

Ossa, they kind of look at the latest technology and I think they try and get the latest technology into the market.

That's what they're quite good at.

What Ottobock are really good at is kind of taking well established technology and really fine tuning it into something that works really well.

OSA is the only business presentation I have ever watched.

I watched.

I met them all in Iceland years ago and we do a lot of work with Icelandic.

So they kindly wanted to talk to us about some stuff and they said, oh, let me show you.

I know we were talking earlier that people don't want to see everyone be sipping there.

I cried during their presentation.

It's the first time someone showed me a business presentation that wasn't like, oh God, here we go, you know, blah, blah, blah.

PIANO PLAYING Aren't we brilliant?

But it was just beautiful.

It was just like, wow, someone doing something.

You know, I think prosthetics is a.

An industry where the effect that they're having is really tangible and obvious to them and it is, you know, life changing.

I.

I don't use wheelchairs unless I really need to.

And how much.

Do you have any leg left or.

Yeah, so I lost my legs just above the knee, but the, my legs were quite difficult to fit those.

I lost a lot of flesh and scalp skin which made them difficult to fit.

And ultimately down the line led to a lot of infections and reconstructive surgery.

And the reason is, is I know wheelchairs are amazing for people who need to use them and they're life changing.

But, you know, to give you an insight, I compared to being on my prosthetic legs, I just hate them.

You're very restricted.

I mean, the amount of times if you look around, you can't do something.

Yeah, exactly.

So I know People have had to learn to love their wheelchairs because they don't have a choice.

And that's what companies like OSA and Ottobock are able to do.

They make those differences and they make people's lives better and easier.

For people who don't, aren't aware of this, if you hire someone straight out of military, you actually save tax, you get a national insurance relief and stuff.

So go Google that.

You know there, you know there, you do need to support people coming out of the armed forces and things like that.

And there, there is some tax relief and stuff for that, but they provided you support.

But let's talk about your business.

I mean, you, you are in the business now of communication, I guess, are you?

Or you know, as in telling, telling and inspiring people and what, what, what?

Yeah, so mine is slightly complex and that I've got lots of different things that I do.

So primarily now, actually it's the kayaking and I'm lucky enough that sponsors pay me to race, which means day to.

Day you're professionally kayaking.

Yeah, that's it.

So my number one priority is training, staying fit and healthy for that.

Then kind of related to that is the talking.

So conference speeches.

And of course the reason I say they're related is part of the story is what I do now and that's part of what people, I guess, want to hear.

You go through the difficult bit, the tragedy.

But how do you then get to a good place and what have you done with it?

And for me that's the athlete bit.

But then I've also got a consulting business where I run leadership and resilience development and leadership coaching.

So executive coach, 360 reviews, all of that sort of stuff, organizational development.

And then I've also got a small engineering business as well where I, I manufacture roof racks for racing kayaks.

No way.

Oh, brilliant.

Let's conclude on the, I mean the, the experience and everything you've been through to lead you to do sort of leadership coaching.

You, you've, you've said some of this and alluded to some of it in terms of forgiveness and then sort of acceptance, I think of where you are and who you are right now.

What are other sort of primary philosophical thoughts you found yourself on?

Well, I guess one of my more recent, I guess iterations of the acceptance is transferring that across to leadership and realizing that it's.

That understanding of acceptance has made me take myself less seriously.

And it goes back to what you said and I've repeated again, again, we're all Just doing the best we can at any given time with the information we've got.

And we will look back in hindsight and think that we've made mistakes and we've got things wrong.

And actually, what does that mean?

Well, it means I just need to carry on doing the best I can with what I shot.

And sometimes you will need to make fast decisions, sometimes you'll have the opportunity to gather in more information and wait and make more considered decisions.

But you just got to do the best you can.

And if you do get it wrong, well, it's probably just an honest mistake most of the time.

Hold your hands up, admit it, let the ego go a bit.

And I think that's what the acceptance has allowed me to do is just relax that ego a little bit, take myself a little bit less seriously, realize that I will get things wrong, but just try my best not to.

The engineering business is so you realize there was you obviously passionate about kayaking.

Was this something you did before the accident?

No, no engineering background whatsoever.

But I think I probably had a slightly engineering brain kind of the way I think.

And then you can imagine I just see the world now as a set of obstacles that I'm constantly having to engineer my way through.

That's how life became for me.

But anyway, moved forward, got into kayaking.

One of my really good friends, Farley, had this business, Farley sport making these roof racks.

He survived.

He survived, yeah.

And because he didn't want to be around the racing scene, he stopped making and advertising the roof racks.

Everyone was on Facebook complaining that he wasn't answering emails and wondering how to get hold of his products.

I went to have a chat to him and he said, well, look mate, I designed them so monkeys can make them.

And I said, right, in that case, I'll buy the business off you.

And that's what I did.

So for that business and what it does is it a keeps me quite central because you can imagine it's quite a niche thing to do.

There's only a couple of us in the country doing it.

So it keeps me quite central in that community but also it allows me to, through the business, have an engineering workshop whereby I then can make my own prosthetics and adaptions for my kayaking in particular.

But anything really.

So I've just learned to become an engineer and so I'VE got the business stuff, the stuff I sell, but then I can then use that equipment to do my own stuff too.

You said a really great phrase.

I thought this life is like a set of obstacles for you that you're just getting yourself through.

I think for everybody, their life is a set of obstacles to get your way through, but the sort of.

The very practical way that it becomes for you.

My cousin lost his arm in a motorbike and I remember it was his right arm.

And it's sort of similar, isn't it?

He would say to me, it's the most simple things, Andy, that you go to do.

I can't.

I mean, it's like taking the top off an egg or whatever.

There's like a couple of these things and he's like, they're a nightmare.

He said, you know.

Yeah, well, if you're missing a.

If you're missing a hand or arm, you know, buttering bread is.

It is just a nightmare.

Can't you nail the bread down?

Is that what you end up doing?

Well, I have got one clever little chopping board that's just got two raised edges.

So you put it in the corner and you kind of.

Oh, you push it one way.

But yeah.

Yeah.

I just don't think that's ever going to be easy.

I'm always trying to warm up the butter just enough so it doesn't melt, you know.

Yeah.

Whenever I'm with anyone and they see me try, they always end up just taking over.

They can't.

Is that annoying?

It.

It depends who it is and the way they do it, basically.

Yeah.

What's your.

What's your advice in that?

To someone?

It's okay to offer.

If you can see that someone's.

If you can see that someone's genuinely struggling, it's okay to, to, to offer a bit of help.

But also don't assume that they're going to struggle before they've do it.

You know, give them the opportunity and, you know, if they ask for help, then, then that's lovely there.

It shows that they feel comfortable around you to do that.

Yeah.

Because I think, I think you've got young kids like me.

You've got kids, seven.

You.

Yeah, 10 and 12.

10 and 12.

A bit older than mine, but I minor at the age of sort of 4 and 5 where they're, you know, they're desperately trying to want to do everything themselves, isn't it?

And I think you see that hu, hu.

Human trait that we want to be independent.

We don't want people Doing stuff for us, you know, and there's a kindness.

Kindness is very nice, isn't it?

Kindness is a beautiful quality, but it's, you know, underneath it, we just.

We, we.

We.

We just want to have our independence, you know, and I guess the modern world gives it to you.

I mean, I.

I wonder what happened if this had happened to you 100 years ago, and how that experience would have been, you know, different, I guess, you know, and things.

It's.

It's interesting.

People often say to me, you know, it's amazing the way you've dealt with this.

I can't imagine I would.

I can't imagine many people would.

But you know what?

I've met a lot of people, unsurprisingly, in my situation, and very few of them haven't got to a place in the end where they've been able to deal.

You know, we all.

We all do it at different rates and take slightly different routes, but most people find a way to deal with it well, eventually.

So I think, you know, we often underestimate the human spirit, and often that's based around fear of the unknown.

You know, we imagine how bad a situation must be, and therefore we imagine that we can't.

We wouldn't be able to do it.

And so we're amazed when we see other people doing things.

Yeah.

And in.

Inspiration is a complex word in disability, but, hey, it's inspiring in the sense of, you need to know that it's okay.

You can do these things.

Life ain't that bad, you know, don't be so scared of it.

You know what I mean?

Things can happen, you know.

Yeah.

And, you know, going back to what we mentioned earlier about how it's slightly tragic that it can take these sort of terrible events to bring out the best in people, I kind of hope that maybe I give people the opportunity to see that, that they can do a bit more without having to go through the same kind of trauma that I went through.

Stop your grumbling.

Do you know what I mean?

You know, we get upset about the tiniest things, don't we?

I mean.

Yeah, and I do, too.

Well, maybe that's human nature, isn't it?

You know?

You know?

But, yeah, you know, the place, the one place where you'll hear me scream and shout a lot is my kitchen.

I haven't got a full set of crockery.

I seem to be very clumsy in there, and you'll just hear me curse myself a lot.

But that's like my little outburst.

That's where I Get to let loose in a contained environment.

There's like Gordon Ramsey and other people.

I'm sure it's an acceptable place.

Lots to chew on.

Right, let's boil it down some more.

Here are my final two takeaways.

Number four, Prosthetics are redefining mobility.

His story shows how innovation is giving people with life changing injuries more independence than ever.

And five, resilience is about response, not avoidance.

John's journey is proof that even life's toughest challenges can become opportunities through acceptance, forgiveness and growth.

He rebuilt his life on his own terms, proving that mindset is everything.

What's the best piece of advice do you think you've been given?

Good question.

I go back a couple of bosses, actually a couple of people gave me the same bit of advice very early on in my career in the Marines.

And it was around not worrying about what, what job you're given too much.

Just go and enjoy it and do your best at it.

And that was all because, you know, you can imagine the, the military is a big organization and there's kind of of this very prescribed, if you do this job, this job, this job, you'll get promoted at this time if you do this, this.

And there's kind of that idea in that people get very wrapped up in, oh, that job's not available.

I've been offered a different job instead.

And some people will fight the jobs.

And I just got told, whatever you get given, just take it graciously, go do your best and enjoy it.

And you'll be amazed at the experiences you have.

You have.

And in the end, actually, it's what's written in the reports that's most important.

So if you go and just give it your best and enjoy it, you're more likely to get a better job.

And I think that's really sort of sage advice.

And it, you know, it goes much wider than, you know, just the job you got is whatever opportunities you get offered, just make the most of it and see where it takes you.

It's that attitude, not aptitude will decide your altitude.

There's that phrase, which is quite true, you know, and as you say, you know, if you, if your expectation, oh, I don't want to do, I'm no good at that, you know, then I mean, you're buggered at the start.

Yeah, you're just setting yourself up for failure.

And now a quick word from our sponsor.

Business without is brought to you by Ori Clark.

You can find us@oriclark.com Ory is spelled O U r Y before we press on.

Just a quick reminder to come say hi on whatever social platform you like.

We're pretty much on all of them.

Just search for wblondon.

What do you think is bullshit in, in business or in, in, I guess in the industry of engineering or any of your business industry endeavors.

One of the things I struggle the most with is the, the bigger the company, the, the longer it takes them to pay me.

God damn it.

I just heard large companies in the uk, I just learned this this week in one of our training sessions.

They're going to now have to fill in and publicize the rate at which they paid people.

Because I think it should be illegal for large companies to say, oh well, we want the balance sheet to look better, let's just pay people in 90 days.

It should be illegal.

Oh yeah.

I think some of the big companies have ended up waiting 4, 5, 6 months for whereas the little school that is only paying me a small amount, but it's big for them, they'll pay you the next day kind of thing.

And I think there shouldn't be an excuse at the end of the day for me, each one of those invoices that I submit, it's kind of not got any backup.

That's it, that's what I'm living off.

So you're doing your best to budget and then all of a sudden you're having to wait months and yeah, it gets quite stressful at times.

Well, when they talk about growth strategy for the country and things like that, the inefficiencies are really important.

And this country's got way more SMEs than it does.

Large companies like crazy amount more.

There's like 7,000 large businesses and 5.5 million SMEs and stuff.

So.

So I mean if they turn off the tap at the top, it destroys SMEs, as you say.

They just cannot afford that kind of cash flow situation.

And also a lot of the bigger companies are the companies that can afford a bit more.

Generally.

Maybe they're listed, maybe they can raise money, whatever.

I mean, certainly leading from the front.

I mean I learned this, which is fascinating and I'm not suggesting we do this, but in Brazil I think it's is every invoice is logged with a central authority.

If the invoice is not paid within 30 days, then you go in this black book It's a public database and people won't trade with you.

So someone will say, oh, can I do this?

And you'll look them up and say, you're on the blacklist, you didn't pay your invoices.

And I don't know exactly how it works.

I imagine after a period of time you come off it, if you're then a good boy.

But, you know, I mean, that's an interesting and slightly brutal way of dealing with it, but I think it shows the importance of it.

You know, SMEs will flourish if they knew that they could get paid properly.

And the other thing they do, they bury you in paperwork, the big companies, don't they?

They need a number to get the purchase.

Oh, we've got to get the purchase order in the system.

I mean, sometimes I get calls from clients saying, I need a DUNS number.

If you've never heard of a DUNS number, it's a D U N N number.

They're issued by Dun and Bradstreet and some large companies require you to have one.

To get one, you ring up Dun and Bradstreet or contact them and say, I need one.

And if you're a UK limited company, it will take a few days or whatever it's spending, how much, you hassle them and you'll get this number.

But there's just this, these sort of layers of bureaucracy and I always wonder how much this is, you know, about them making it more difficult to get paid.

There's an advantage to them.

Yeah.

There's a skeptic that obviously that's where your first thoughts go to.

But then I guess potentially it also goes back to what I said earlier around governance and the bigger the company, the potentially easier it is for people to take advantage of that.

And they've just got to govern for the.

They need more procedures because more people are involved in.

In their system.

Whereas, you know, me and my system is just me.

Now we're going to do a couple of fun bits, so we're going to ask you a few quick questions just to get to know you a bit better.

You should know the answer to these.

We call this the quick fire round.

What was your first job?

Bike mechanic.

What was it nice?

What was your worst job?

Job?

I sorted rubbish out skips.

Did you?

Oh, my God.

Oh, my God.

What?

As a skip?

It was part of a skip company.

Was it a waste management company?

Yeah.

So I think the proper term was I was a transfer station operator, but I got given a special job one day where we had to go and clear out a pensioner collector maniac's house whose wife had been taken in to hospital.

And he basically lived in a, you know, terrace house just full literally of rubbish.

And it was literally, you know, if you imagine a standard terrace house, you.

You went in, I remember the hallway was on the right hand side, there was a door on the left into what would be the living room, but you could only open it, you know, six inches because it was just literally floor to ceiling full of rubbish.

And we had to try and clear this house.

And I went and did it for a day.

The guy that I was working, working with, refused to go in the house after I just worked on my own.

And then I went back to work the next day and refused to go back there again.

I was like, I'm not doing that again.

Yeah, it was pretty horrendous.

Wow.

Favorite subject at school?

Geography, apparently.

Yeah.

Probably was geography.

Yeah.

Do you know, my best subject was physics and I buggered up my A levels.

I think you relax, don't you?

Yeah.

Teachers like, you'll be all right.

I've still never got my head around.

Around how I could have done so badly in one exam.

What's your special skill?

Oh, good question.

I think just problem solving.

It's the engineering part of my brain.

Yeah, you sound like you might be dyslexic.

What did you want to be when you grew up?

I decided I wanted to be a Royal Marine when I was 14.

So, yeah, that was pretty dominant.

Because your dad still about?

Yeah, yeah, my dad's still about.

About, yeah.

Oh, wow, that's magic.

What do your parents want you to be when you grew up?

Not.

Not particularly a Marine.

What's your go to karaoke song?

Well, I'm not very good at singing, but.

Paradise by Dashboard Light.

I don't know that song.

Oh, you must.

I'm gonna have to meet.

Hang on, hang on, hang on.

Paradise by Dashboard we're gonna have to have a little.

Little.

Mainly because it's about six or seven minutes long.

So it's just torture for everyone else having to go through.

Understand Karaoke.

What?

Dashboard Light is the name.

Paradise by the dashboard light.

Ah, that's cool.

But it also changes up during the song.

It's got very discreet parts to it.

It.

Oh my God.

It's going on my list.

That, that's great.

And you can't, you can't mess with meatloaf.

I don't care what anyone says.

Office, dogs, business or business.

Oh, thank you, friend.

He's over here.

Sleep okay?

Yeah, he's been.

He's been in one of these podcasts before.

He's up.

Well, nothing's happening for a couple of hours.

Let's just crack it out.

Have you ever been fired?

Yeah, I got fired as the bike mechanic.

Did you?

Yeah.

Pray tell.

Well, so supposedly I had.

There had been a whole load of complaints about bikes that I had prepped before they went out, but I kind of know that the figures didn't add up because I got fired in, like, the February time.

And they were like, oh, the last 10 bikes you did, we've had complaints about.

I was like, I haven't done 10 bikes in that because it was just after Christmas.

So you don't sell any bikes after Christmas.

I think it was more that the new boss had taken over, fancied one of my best friends and didn't like the fact that I was good friends with her.

Really?

Wow.

Hilarious.

And what's your vice?

I've got a very sweet tooth, so I can't.

I can't keep chocolate in my house.

I end up eating a lot of pineapple, too, because it's the only thing sweet enough that isn't too unhealthy that I can have inside.

Interesting.

Is it the sweetest fruit?

Is it pineapple?

I don't know if it is the sweetest, but I find it.

It's certainly sweet enough for me.

That takes the edge off needing to eat chocolate.

Any top tips for founders or entrepreneurs?

I don't know if I feel qualified really to do it.

I think you've been through enough life experience to give people some advice.

What do you say in your leadership thing?

Is that more sort of trying to take in who they are in their journey?

Yeah.

So I guess a couple of things, then.

One is give people as much rope as possible.

Give them as many opportunities.

Accept that there's an element of risk in that, but the more opportunity to fail you give people, the more they'll succeed.

Succeed, Interesting.

You're meaning in terms of.

Create them a big space.

Yeah.

And.

But you've got to.

You've got to do it and you've got to accept that you're taking on that, that risk, and if it all goes wrong, you.

You don't take it out on them because they're probably just doing the best they can with what they've got.

But more often or not, they, you know, people will pull through, they'll do amazing things.

And the more opportunity you give them to do that, the.

The more they'll shine and morale will just be better.

People feel trusted, empower.

And what happens is everyone starts working up a level.

And for you as a leader, it gives you the space then to get on with other stuff, new stuff.

It's sort of delegate a lot and give people second chances.

So the way I describe it is you can delegate tasks, but you don't delegate responsibility.

You grow responsibility.

So you might give someone responsibility for something, but you're not giving away your response.

You're still responsible for it, but you're also giving them responsibility.

So you're growing.

So you want to grow as much responsibility as you can within any organization.

And you know, people are struggling with that idea or sort of go back to your family and go, well, you don't have a finite amount of love when you start a family.

You don't halve the amount of love you have for your spouse when you have your first child, and then you don't reduce that amount of love for them again when you have the next child.

God, you just keep on growing more of it.

And that's what you want to do with responsibility.

Love.

You can, you can have, you can have a lot of it.

Don't think it's a zero sum game.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, that's great.

Is there anything else that jumps to mind of the sort of what the military does that is very smart, actually, you think, or could be learned from?

So I think there's definitely a inherent understanding about the way we, we function.

So the cognitive behavioral model, and so a lot of the stuff you see, for instance, on the parade square, getting people to stand tall, march in time, all of that, it's all about understanding how the way our behavior, our thinking and our emotions all relate to each other.

And so, you know, if you stand in a certain way, so stand up tall with your chest out, shoulders back, you create a sense of pride.

You make people feel better about themselves, you make them feel more invincible.

Dress smart, dress smart, all of those things.

And again, that's one of those things that is the basis of a lot of our psychological therapies these days, that cognitive behavior model.

Most people, if they've had any psychological intervention, the chances are it started off with some kind of cbt, cognitive behavioral therapy.

And that's really a lot of what military drill and traditions is based around that kind of inherent understanding of that, how to get the best out of people.

So that suggests a sort of uniformity in business, is it?

Or just being aware of how you affect others, I guess, you know, yeah.

And so what I'm not saying is you, you need that kind of uniformity.

But what, what I am saying is it, it just shows an understanding of how we function as humans.

So we know that there are times when we need our men to feel fairly invincible if we're going to get them to do things that they otherwise, in a normal situation wouldn't do or any normal person wouldn't do.

So we know in order to do that, we need to get them in the right emotional state.

And to get them in the right emotional state, we need to get them to behave in a certain way or to think in a certain way.

And that's what they understand.

And it's working out.

Within your business.

When you're dealing with people, what is it that you need them to do?

Are you in a business where you need people to be very empathetic and have the ability to listen a lot?

Well, if that's the case, how do you make sure they're in the right place to do that?

Do you need people to be very confident and good at sales?

Well, what do you need to get people in the right place to have that level of confidence?

And maybe that is a great example where some kind of uniformity may come into it.

We know that that kind of idea, if you look good, you feel good.

Good and you know, if you forget feel good, then you're going to behave differently.

So, you know, that's, that's a possibility there.

Yeah, that's interesting.

It's a bit like group behavior.

Groups can do terrible things like group behavior or me.

That's, that's like that stuff when they put them people in a room with a button which kills chickens or whatever, you know, that people end up pressing the button because they sort of peer.

But the opposite is true as well, that we, you, you, you're going to go and try and do something difficult.

But as a unit, you can do that, you know, you can.

Inspire is not the right word, is it?

I think you said, but sort of align, align yourself to take on a difficult challenge, you know.

Yeah, yeah.

And there's, there's plenty of research that shows you if you give people overarching aims, it allows them to overcome difficulties with, you know, within the group.

So, yeah, I think, as I say, there's a lot of stuff that the military does.

You know, you kind of almost unpick it all and go, oh yeah, there's actually some quite clever psychology behind that, but they've just got no idea about it.

Well, I think you described it well, It's a very old organization.

Things have been passed down iteratively and it's just, they've, they've just formed these solutions, haven't they?

They've, they've had, you know, ultimately, you've got one of the most difficult tests in the world.

You go back a thousand years.

You know, we're talking about defending the country.

You know, terrible, complicated wars that, you know, it's like, you know, we've had to win sometimes.

So it's, how are we going to, you know, John, you've been an absolute delight.

I appreciate you coming down today, you know, sharing your, your incredible story and philosophy on life.

So thank you.

People want to find out more about you.

Where did they go?

So, yeah, my Instagram's a good start.

John White, 50 and then LinkedIn, if you look me up.

JOHN White so J O N.

And you'll, you'll find me on there.

And then also I've got my website, which is currently the Whitehouse future.com and that's the White House future.

The White House future.

So my house is called the White House House, which was a hangover from the architect calling it the White House as a project because John White and then I just thought it'd be quite a cool name to keep and linked into a business.

But I'm actually going to be going through a rebranding process soon.

But I think we'll keep that URL.

And so you, if we want to see you kayaking.

How do I see you kayaking?

Is that something ever on TV or anything?

Yeah.

So things like the European and world marathon champs are normally on YouTube.

They're normally streamed on YouTube, so you, you can look them up there.

The power races are starting to get more coverage.

Often you'll get the live, live streams, but they don't necessarily have the, the follow.

They don't put it on YouTube permanently afterwards.

But hopefully that'll change over the, the coming years.

It's kind of growing, growing discipline.

But yeah, there's always stuff for me on, on Instagram.

So.

Beautiful.

Beautiful.

Thank you, John.

Thank you, Dee.

Thank you, dear listener.

That was this week's episode of Business without, and we'll be back next Wednesday.

Till then, ciao.