Not Ed Sheeran but Ed Clancy.
Last year I got the chance to see Ed Clancy, the three-time Olympic champion at consecutive Olympic games in the team pursuit on the track in cycling, speak at my favourite bike Café, Velo Verde.
It turned out that it was the first time Ed had spoken publicly as a retired Olympian since finishing in Tokyo.
Last night he spoke to 40 people at The Campbell Academy as part of our peer review group.
This is just an example of ‘if you don’t ask you don’t get’ and I contacted Ed through his new business partner Phil Kelly who runs a performance management and coaching company based around Newark.
Phil is an extraordinary individual who is a former professional footballer for Cardiff City and Newport, he then went into the army and learnt about performance coaching and came out and now teams up with Ed to provide performance coaching for businesses and organisations.
Pro-noctis also train high level people in business and in sport to lead teams.
These evenings and talks are, to me at least, priceless and inspirational.
I have never though, seen one as honest and as heart felt as the one that Ed Clancy provides.
He tells the tale of someone who, at age 4 left the family home in the back of a police car with his sister due to serious, serious problems with his parents and never returned.
He was raised for most of his young life by his grandparents before returning to his mum and his new step dad who was the one real positive influence in his life who turned things around.
He was a classic tale of an endurance athlete who was ‘always running away from something’. You’d assume that he’s marked by this and tortured but he’s one of the nicest and seemingly kindest and gentlest guys you could come across, who is so grateful for any opportunity to speak and share his story and for any opportunity that comes his way.
The way he describes values and living your life from a value-based concept, backed up with the way he’s lived his own life is extraordinary.
He is success.
His honesty about what it’s like to come down from a gold medal (three times in three consecutive Olympics) and to know that that’s going to hurt like hell even though it’s supposed to be the best thing that ever happens and then to literally get back on the bike and go again is outstanding and inspirational.
What it teaches us is that there is, at least in part, an equation for success in the quest for long-term goals.
It also shows us the commitment that’s required to be a professional athlete which is utterly insane.
It also shows us that everybody is human and the ups and downs and the bad luck and the terrible things that can happen to families and friends, escape no one but in spite of that it’s still possible to go after the things you would like to achieve.
We’ve reframed slightly out peer review meetings and team-up with our dental buying group meetings so now we can have some meetings which are non-dental but inspirational so watch these channels and keep in touch because later in the year I hope we’ll have another former Olympic athlete speaking and due to the ongoing success of the buying group and the money that’s allowing us to invest in education for our peer review group, more and more of these will come.
Blog Post Number - 3034
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