Latest / I Used To Be Crap At Sales / From The Sales Floor To BBC Traitors Final Four |EP23| Andrew Jenkins

Transcript

From The Sales Floor To BBC Traitors Final Four |EP23| Andrew Jenkins · I Used To Be Crap At Sales

• 0:00
  Mark Ackers: What's coming up in today's episode? I think lots of
• 0:02
  people wear different masks all the time, right? The mask at
• 0:05
  home and mask at work, mask with their friends, but you who wore
• 0:09
  something very similar to a mask in the sense of a cloak, and
• 0:12
  instead of carrying quotas, you were carrying a little lantern
• 0:16
  around the castle.
• 0:17
  andrew jenkins: It's a BBC programme called the traitors,
• 0:19
  where there are 22 contestants placed in a castle in Scotland.
• 0:22
  Mark Ackers: How having a sales background helped him get to the
• 0:25
  Final Four?
• 0:26
  andrew jenkins: He was influencing skills to get people
• 0:28
  on your side. Otherwise, if you don't, you're gone. Did
• 0:31
  Mark Ackers: you start to think, okay, look, I'm gonna take all
• 0:33
  of my learnings and use a strategy. What was going for
• 0:36
  andrew jenkins: your head? We're just guessing, but you're just
• 0:38
  clutching the straws most of the time. You think, oh, you're a
• 0:40
  trait there. Why are you scratching your nose, or you
• 0:42
  sneezed, or you're a traitor. How do you know what these
• 0:43
  people are like outside the castle? So you don't know if
• 0:46
  they've changed. Their body language has changed. You know
• 0:48
  how well they look like outside of the castle? So you're trying
• 0:50
  to pick up on little changes in
• 0:51
  Mark Ackers: behaviour. So you didn't openly admit therefore
• 0:54
  you had, like, 20 year career in sales, I don't
• 0:56
  andrew jenkins: think so. No, no, I didn't know. I started
• 0:59
  lying from day one. People to say the word sales, and they
• 1:01
  think it's a naughty word, they say, take the word sales away
• 1:04
  from here. All you're doing is providing a solution to people's
• 1:06
  problems.
• 1:07
  Mark Ackers: I think with sales, there is just that perception of
• 1:10
  manipulation. Do you think if you would have been quite open
• 1:13
  an institute that, Hi everyone, I'm Andrew, and I work in sales.
• 1:16
  Do you think you would have got as far as you did? Andrew did?
• 1:20
  You used to be crap at sales.
• 1:21
  andrew jenkins: I did. Used to be terrible at sales. Yeah, I
• 1:23
  applied for a job BEC in Lloyds Bank. I thought it's a good
• 1:26
  place to start my career. I suppose in Lloyds I was one of
• 1:28
  the best in the UK. I went on numerous recognition events in
• 1:31
  London. I treated my customers as if it was a mother and
• 1:34
  father, for example, so I could sleep at night. I'd never miss
• 1:37
  all the product in my
• 1:38
  Mark Ackers: life. In 1999 before he started in sales, his
• 1:42
  life changed overnight. I was driving
• 1:44
  andrew jenkins: my car on the 20th of August, 1999 I hit a
• 1:46
  curb on the left hand side, on the passenger side, I flipped
• 1:49
  the car into the right hand side. Now, why did it happen to
• 1:52
  me? Why? Why I'm only really in acceptance. I'm not there fully
• 1:55
  yet. I don't think, but I'm getting there. I'm much better
• 1:57
  now than I was a couple of years ago, but I had to work really
• 1:59
  hard on myself, and what I did.
• 2:07
  Mark Ackers: Hello and welcome to another episode of The I used
• 2:10
  to be crap at sales Podcast. I'm Mark Akers, co founder and Head
• 2:13
  of Sales here at my sales coach and your host, we call the
• 2:16
  podcast that because it's true and all of our guests say the
• 2:20
  same. So who am I joined by today? Well, if you've been
• 2:24
  listening to this podcast for a while, you'll know we usually
• 2:27
  speak to sales leaders, founders, top performing account
• 2:31
  executives, people in the trenches of SaaS sales and
• 2:35
  startups. But today's guest, well, let me start by saying
• 2:39
  they have an incredible story to share. For over 25 years,
• 2:42
  they've worked in corporate sales, including 16 years at
• 2:46
  Lloyds Bank, where they were a top performing sales individual
• 2:50
  and manager. They sold complex financial products, led large
• 2:54
  teams, and seen the highs of lows with the pressure cooker
• 2:57
  targets and relationship driven sales. But in 1999 before he
• 3:03
  started in sales, his life changed overnight, a horrific
• 3:07
  car crash left them with a traumatic brain injury, months
• 3:11
  and months of recovery and a new understanding of what resilience
• 3:15
  truly means. Despite all this, you might know them for a
• 3:18
  different reason. You might know them for donning a cloak,
• 3:22
  sneaking around a castle, carrying a lantern more than you
• 3:26
  do carrying a sales quota. That's right. I'm really excited
• 3:29
  to say this. My guest is Andrew Jenkins, and he's here today to
• 3:33
  talk about his career in sales, his journey through trauma, the
• 3:38
  mindset behind reinvention, and what really goes on in reality
• 3:44
  TV. Andrew, we normally start the episode with a yes, no
• 3:49
  question, but I feel we need to give the audience the context as
• 3:53
  people might not associate you with sales today, but you spent
• 3:58
  over two decades at it. Give us the high level when it comes to
• 4:01
  sales, what were you selling and
• 4:03
  andrew jenkins: where? Well, for 18 years, I sold financial
• 4:06
  products in Lloyds Bank. I was a senior manager in Lloyds and
• 4:09
  then when I left the bank, I went into corporate insurance. I
• 4:12
  was insuring large businesses for their liability insurance,
• 4:15
  building stock. So I go to large businesses like stadiums,
• 4:18
  construction company. Anybody who had a business, really, you
• 4:21
  legally have to have insurance. So I did that for eight years
• 4:24
  then. So now
• 4:24
  Mark Ackers: we've got that context and rich and long
• 4:27
  history in sales. Let's start with the yes, no question that
• 4:30
  we always start the podcast with Andrew, did you used to be crap
• 4:34
  at sales? I did. Used to be terrible at sales. Yeah. And how
• 4:36
  crap are we talking on a scale of one to 1010, so let's get
• 4:40
  into it. First of all, how did you get into the world of sales?
• 4:44
  andrew jenkins: I applied for a job BEC in Lloyds Bank. There
• 4:46
  was a job being advertised. It was called a personal account
• 4:48
  manager at the time. And I thought back, got 25 years ago,
• 4:52
  probably. I thought, you know, great career. Big company.
• 4:55
  Lloyd's one of the biggest banks in the in the UK. And I thought,
• 4:57
  it's a good, good, good, good place to start my. Career, I
• 5:00
  suppose, in Lloyds, what were you selling? And who to I sit
• 5:02
  with lots of like, not enough clients, I suppose, day to day
• 5:05
  customers and sell financial products. So from any anything,
• 5:08
  from a credit card to home insurance to loans, savings
• 5:12
  accounts. So anything you could think of financial I suppose,
• 5:15
  really. And then also I'd refer clients on, then to financial
• 5:18
  advisors to look after their pensions and life cover, and
• 5:21
  also I'd refer them onto a mortgage arranger, then to
• 5:23
  discuss their, obviously, their purchasing the houses and
• 5:25
  Mark Ackers: things. And what kind of salesperson would you
• 5:27
  say you were? Would you say you were more process, more people,
• 5:30
  relationships or numbers? What kind of salesperson were you? So
• 5:32
  people
• 5:33
  andrew jenkins: just come with me the problem. I used to solve
• 5:35
  that problem. So I'm a good listener. I'm a great people
• 5:37
  person, and I'm good at building relationships and deepening
• 5:40
  relationships, because I had hundreds of customers, would
• 5:43
  only deal with me. They'd follow me around whatever branch I was
• 5:45
  working. They'd come and deal with me or I was helping them to
• 5:48
  build something for the future. And I say to people, you know,
• 5:50
  you're basically providing a solution to somebody's problems,
• 5:53
  and if you're not, you're Miss selling. Why would you sell
• 5:55
  something to somebody who they don't need it? So I've always
• 5:57
  I'm a people person, my listener. I sit down listen to
• 5:59
  the person for probably an hour and a two hours first, I
• 6:02
  wouldn't mention products or anything first, until I listened
• 6:05
  to them, found out what their goals were, their aspirations
• 6:08
  and what plans they wanted, also what kept them up at night, what
• 6:11
  they were stressed about, they were worried about, and at the
• 6:13
  end that I provide solutions to them problems just
• 6:15
  Mark Ackers: based on the way you describe that, I can tell
• 6:17
  you have a deeper understanding of sales than lots of people
• 6:20
  within that profession, right? Obviously not. People listen to
• 6:23
  this podcast, people listening to this podcast, get it and
• 6:25
  they'll they'll just be nodding along listening to you. But I'm
• 6:28
  guessing you had to learn that when you first got a sales job,
• 6:31
  you wouldn't have known that. How did you learn that that was
• 6:35
  the approach to sales I
• 6:36
  andrew jenkins: feel like lots of things in life, really, you
• 6:37
  learn from failed mistakes and mistakes in life you learn from
• 6:40
  but I'm very good when I don't achieve something in life, or
• 6:42
  when I don't, know, hit the target. This world we live in
• 6:46
  nowadays, where everybody's a winner, there's no failure. I
• 6:48
  think it's a lot of nonsense. And when I do my talks, for
• 6:50
  example, I tell people failures is not a bad thing. I said, you
• 6:54
  learn more from failure. But I was good at when I didn't
• 6:56
  achieve something, I used to sit back and think, right, why did I
• 6:59
  not achieve that? Why did the customer not purchase that item
• 7:02
  off me? I would never blame a customer ever. I'd always look
• 7:04
  at myself in the mirror first. If somebody didn't buy something
• 7:07
  off me, I think, well, I didn't get them to see that. I didn't
• 7:10
  make them see the need for that product or service. So I never
• 7:12
  blame the customer. Lots of people say, Oh, the customer is
• 7:15
  a terrible customer. This customer that I said, No, look
• 7:18
  inwards first to yourself, you they obviously didn't see the
• 7:20
  need for that product. So I learned from trial and error, I
• 7:23
  suppose, over many, many
• 7:24
  Mark Ackers: years. And I think that's the thing, like many,
• 7:26
  many, many years, it didn't come to you straight away. Did you
• 7:29
  have someone that sort of put their arm around you and helps
• 7:32
  you? Because it sounds like you become that later on your
• 7:34
  career, I was reading about how you refer to as like an agony
• 7:37
  aunt, for example. But in those early stages, did you have
• 7:39
  someone that sort of really put their arm around you and help
• 7:42
  sorry,
• 7:42
  andrew jenkins: it was me, a sorry, it was me, a people
• 7:43
  person. I like talking to people, so I've enjoyed that. So
• 7:46
  it doesn't matter what sales job I did, it doesn't matter what
• 7:49
  the end priorities I'm selling, the process is pretty much the
• 7:51
  same, really, whether that's in insurance, in banking, whatever
• 7:54
  it was, it's the same sort of process in the end, the end
• 7:56
  product that can prod at the end. It didn't matter cars, it
• 7:59
  doesn't matter, yeah. But I had a lot of mentors. I worked with
• 8:03
  some good, some bad. Well, I did. I take the good things from
• 8:06
  the good people, I implemented myself, and leave the bad stuff
• 8:08
  behind. So he's taking the good from all the people around me
• 8:10
  and then using that for my own YouTube, to carve my own craft,
• 8:13
  I suppose. And told
• 8:14
  Mark Ackers: you about that, you said you had some good mentors,
• 8:16
  some not so good mentors. What's the difference for you? Well,
• 8:18
  people
• 8:19
  andrew jenkins: are like as well documented, the PPI scandal was
• 8:22
  huge in Lloyds Bank, the laws at the bank that cost the bank
• 8:24
  billions of pounds. And I saw people, you know, ticking boxes
• 8:28
  on forms the customer didn't know about. Particular the PPR
• 8:31
  on a credit card. For example, you tick a form, tick, a tick, a
• 8:34
  box on their form, the application form. So 99% 95% of
• 8:38
  the time, a customer didn't know about I suppose so I wouldn't
• 8:41
  take practices like that, which obviously Miss fraud, I suppose
• 8:44
  I'm Miss selling. So there was lots of things used to go on.
• 8:46
  This is like a long, long time ago, because the pressure to
• 8:50
  perform was massive. To mean, then it was huge. The pressure
• 8:53
  put on staff to perform and hit their targets was huge. But I'm
• 8:56
  lucky. I'm a strong person, so I never buckled to the pressure. I
• 8:59
  never gave into that, because I'm a quite outspoken person. I
• 9:01
  don't I wouldn't do anything. I don't believe in myself. So I
• 9:04
  didn't believe in something. I wouldn't do it. Let's stand up
• 9:06
  for myself as well, whereas a lot of people buckle under the
• 9:09
  pressure,
• 9:09
  Mark Ackers: I can tell you got a real strong sense of like,
• 9:11
  right and wrong, and again, I really like the way you're
• 9:14
  describing that, but just I probably mumbled my words, but
• 9:19
  when it comes to you were talking about good mentors and
• 9:22
  not so good mentors. You know, people would call them coaches,
• 9:25
  for example. What is it about a good mentor that separates them
• 9:29
  from not so good the
• 9:30
  andrew jenkins: not so good ones, they're quite direct, and
• 9:32
  the feedback is not very constructive. Whereas the good
• 9:34
  mentors, they let you come up with the answers, for example.
• 9:37
  So they'll they'll guide you. They'll ask probing questions,
• 9:39
  umbrella questions, lots of different types of different
• 9:42
  types of questions, because every single person has got the
• 9:44
  answers inside us. We all got the answers inside us. We just
• 9:46
  got to find out we need somebody to help and culture us and
• 9:49
  mentor us and nurture us, for us to come up with our own answers.
• 9:52
  Whereas the top sales people, they were quite egos. A lot of
• 9:55
  them had their egos. They were right fixed mindset. It was
• 9:58
  their way or no way you do it like they. This is the way you
• 10:00
  do it. You can't copy somebody else's sale. You can, but it's
• 10:03
  not authentic. It's not real. So if you're trying to copy
• 10:05
  somebody else's sales model or sales process or whatever, it's
• 10:08
  gonna be hard for you to do that, then eventually. So yeah,
• 10:10
  it's somebody listening to you. They don't judge you, and they
• 10:13
  just sit in the trenches with you, and they give you good,
• 10:15
  constructive feedback, and they ask you more that they ask you
• 10:17
  more the questions, really not just giving you all the answers
• 10:20
  all the questions. It
• 10:21
  Mark Ackers: feels like, again, I appreciate that's your world
• 10:23
  now, and we'll get to that. But it feels like having the right
• 10:25
  coach, someone that has mentored and worked with you, has had a
• 10:28
  big impact on the success of your career. You said earlier on
• 10:31
  how you were the top performer there, and you kind of
• 10:34
  indicated, but I just want to dig into a little bit more. What
• 10:37
  was it that separated you from, let's say, someone middle of the
• 10:40
  road. They had the ability, but they weren't doing it. What?
• 10:42
  What we what separated you to them, I
• 10:45
  andrew jenkins: was driven. I suppose I know. I like hitting
• 10:47
  targets. I'm very competitive person. I'm sporty, a huge
• 10:50
  sporting background, and I wanted to be a winner. I want to
• 10:53
  be the best I could. And, yeah, and I'm hard working. But also I
• 10:56
  did things correct. I did things right. So people used to come
• 10:58
  into the bank, for example, asking to see me. So I used to
• 11:01
  do outbound calling. For example, I had to do that every
• 11:04
  day to bring in the people I wanted to see. But also, I see
• 11:06
  lots of people coming to me. Recommendations, probably the
• 11:09
  best referral you can get. So I used to get their friends, their
• 11:11
  family, their kids, their grandparents, coming to see me
• 11:14
  because they liked me, they trusted me, they felt
• 11:15
  comfortable with me, and they thought, go and see Andrew. Go
• 11:18
  and see Andrew. Come. Go and see Andrew with his loan. So it's
• 11:20
  got lots and lots of people coming to see me off my previous
• 11:23
  work of referrals from other people, which is the best, best
• 11:26
  sale you can get. Really, I
• 11:27
  Mark Ackers: couldn't agree more, and it's just something
• 11:29
  that we see all the time. Referrals are just the best way
• 11:32
  to win new business. But so few sales reps ask for them, and I
• 11:35
  appreciate this was more you were getting them because of the
• 11:37
  good work that you did. Here's what I want to ask. I suppose
• 11:40
  you talk about being really competitive. Love hitting
• 11:43
  targets, but on the other hand, always selling the right thing,
• 11:48
  only if they need it, and that can be a real trap for people
• 11:51
  morally want to do the right thing, but then we've got
• 11:54
  pressure. We've got targets. Our jobs do depend on us being
• 11:58
  successful. How did you battle that? Because there must have
• 12:01
  been times when you weren't top of the leaderboard that month or
• 12:04
  that quarter. You could have sold more, but it wasn't the
• 12:08
  right thing to do. How did you navigate that? Because that'd be
• 12:10
  tricky. Yeah,
• 12:10
  andrew jenkins: cool. I've seen that. I've got I've seen it so
• 12:12
  many times, and you know, it is a harder pressure. But like I
• 12:15
  said, I've got good morals. I've been brought up properly for my
• 12:17
  parents to do right and wrong. I'd rather not hit my target,
• 12:20
  but doing a correct way, hitting my target, doing the wrong way,
• 12:24
  to be honest, I can sleep. I can sleep at night. I got a
• 12:26
  conscience and I got morals, and I say I wouldn't. I'd rather
• 12:29
  have the feedback or the repercussions off my boss.
• 12:31
  Because I'm strong. I can take I'm strong, and at the end of
• 12:34
  the day, I'm still a human doesn't mean I'm a bad person.
• 12:36
  And then to me, and it's just I was very good also, as well, at
• 12:39
  seeing the people, the high value ticket people, the one I
• 12:42
  needed to see, did help me hit my target, because in the
• 12:45
  branch, in the bank, every product we sold at a points
• 12:47
  value. So me individually, in the branch had a points target
• 12:50
  every quarter, no, it was like 800,000 points. And every
• 12:53
  product we sold in the branch had a product value, a value,
• 12:56
  points value. So I was very good at, like, you know, when I did
• 13:00
  outdoor brown calling, you know, getting the lending, for
• 13:02
  example, the lending me did was the biggest ticket value, I
• 13:05
  suppose, or referring people for a mortgage, you get a huge
• 13:08
  amount of points. If you referred somebody to them your
• 13:11
  mortgage advisor, they took out a mortgage, you get a week's
• 13:13
  target, not far off. So why would I want to work harder? Not
• 13:16
  smart, as I work in smarter, not harder. I'd refer more people
• 13:19
  for mortgages, for example. So I'm not doing the work. Then
• 13:22
  really, I get them to come in, getting to see the need for it,
• 13:24
  refer them on to somebody else, and they do all the work. And
• 13:27
  so, because it was that, and also get a lending in, which is
• 13:29
  good, you know, good points value, you know, people on large
• 13:31
  credit card bills at 30, 40% APR, when I could do a loan for
• 13:35
  5% so it's a no brainer. I was good at objection handling. I
• 13:38
  was very good at objection handling people. So I don't want
• 13:41
  a loan. I don't want a loan. I said, Well, we don't talk about
• 13:43
  loans. We go through everything. We'll have a big interview. And
• 13:46
  so I don't talk about products at the start. And I say,
• 13:48
  basically, all you do is lending money, whether it's on a credit
• 13:51
  card, a store card, car finance. I said, take the label off all
• 13:54
  of that and just call it debt at the end of the day. But you're
• 13:56
  borrowing that debt of 30% why wouldn't you borrow that 5%
• 13:59
  there's a no brainer, really? So, yeah, it's about seeing the
• 14:02
  clients you want to see to help you hit your target. Really.
• 14:05
  Mark Ackers: I think one of the superpowers that it sounds like
• 14:08
  you've got that you haven't said it out loud, is being able to
• 14:11
  story tell, being able to bring what you're selling to the level
• 14:16
  of the prospect in a way in which it makes sense. And I
• 14:19
  think when it comes to like money in fact, people can be
• 14:22
  emotionally charged and not make the right decisions, and that's
• 14:25
  where you've stepped in as that trusted advisor, that
• 14:27
  consultant, and you've earned that because you've listened
• 14:30
  well, you've asked the right questions. You're looking to
• 14:33
  guide them down the path that they want to go down, and you're
• 14:35
  just there to help. That makes a lot of sense. Relationship
• 14:37
  andrew jenkins: build is gaining their trust, then, isn't it?
• 14:39
  Gaining person's trust, and also relationship building is so
• 14:42
  important that every job, everything in life, versus we're
• 14:44
  not just sales. I think having a good relationship with someone
• 14:48
  and you're gaining their trust is really important, I think.
• 14:50
  And yeah, I did most of the time. I taught like I said. I
• 14:52
  talked to the client when they came in. I talked to them for
• 14:55
  about their friends, their family, their grandchildren,
• 14:57
  their weather, their holidays, just to get to know them. Be.
• 15:00
  Little bit of a rapport. First of all, it's like when you walk
• 15:02
  into Curry's, for example, right? You walk into Curry's, or
• 15:04
  whatever. You go curry, they call it, and you walk in, and
• 15:07
  there's little sales guy that tell what we got is television
• 15:10
  is 10,000 pixels. And I'm looking and thinking, you know,
• 15:13
  I use that Telly for, you know, if I was me, I come in, I say,
• 15:15
  No, what are you gonna use? I tell you for, what are you here
• 15:17
  today for? What we got? Which room are gonna use? Italian?
• 15:19
  What are you gonna use it for? Playing video games, watching
• 15:21
  films, but not somebody No, somebody comes in. They'll try
• 15:24
  and sell the most expensive Telly in the world or three
• 15:26
  piece suite. They don't know you're going to use it for. So
• 15:28
  you're thinking you're selling something to me. You're trying
• 15:30
  to pick you're trying to fit a round peg in a square hole. Why
• 15:32
  not listen to me first and talk to me and find out what I want
• 15:35
  to use our product first before recommending products. There's
• 15:38
  so many people recommend a product before you will find out
• 15:40
  anything about that customer, which you're never
• 15:42
  Mark Ackers: going to sell. And I tell you why that happens in
• 15:44
  my experience, and keen to hear if you agree, it's because
• 15:46
  people rely on their product knowledge, because they're not
• 15:49
  comfortable having the question, asking sorry, comfortable having
• 15:52
  the conversation and asking those questions because of fear
• 15:55
  of losing out and being attached to their targets. But you're
• 15:58
  right. You take a step back. What's wrong with your current
• 16:01
  current tally? Like, why do you even need a new one? But so, so
• 16:05
  this, as I say, I think people listening to this podcast is
• 16:07
  just gonna be nodding along to everything you're saying,
• 16:10
  because that, you know, they're they they already invested in
• 16:13
  their careers and doing extracurricular like listening
• 16:15
  to podcasts. We'll wrap up this section of the podcast, Andrew,
• 16:18
  I want to understand why actually made you leave the
• 16:20
  finance world? You know, you're a top performer, you're doing
• 16:23
  well, you're leading teams. You've got a big relationship
• 16:25
  network. What made you leave this world? I didn't
• 16:27
  andrew jenkins: agree the direction I left the banking
• 16:29
  world, to be honest, because I didn't agree with the direction
• 16:31
  the bank was going in. I was there for 88 I think was 18
• 16:34
  years roughly, and then I was a good performer. I handed my
• 16:36
  notice in, and the director came down from Lloyd, the director
• 16:39
  one of the banks, and so where you go? And he said, You got a
• 16:41
  great career every well thought of. And I said, I don't enjoy
• 16:44
  the direction of bankers go. In the last couple of years, I
• 16:46
  didn't enjoy my job anymore because I understand why they
• 16:49
  were doing I'm just a number Lloyds Bank, a huge I'm a nobody
• 16:51
  in Lloyds Bank, but my boss used to say to me, assuming against
• 16:54
  the ocean, you're swimming against the tide all the time. I
• 16:56
  said, Yeah, but I don't agree with it. You're forcing people
• 16:59
  to go online. It's when they come into the branch, they have
• 17:01
  to pay and using a machine, they all want to use internet. But I
• 17:04
  said my skill is sitting with clients, listening to them
• 17:06
  deeply in relation. My skill is relationship building. But the
• 17:09
  bank didn't want them anymore. And last going off one of my I
• 17:12
  was with a client. I dealt with this guy for about 10 years. He
• 17:15
  was in his 70s. He was a widow. I think sometimes you just come
• 17:18
  into the bank just he was lonely, I think. But he come in
• 17:20
  like twice a year. I sit with him. He had 800,000 pound in
• 17:24
  various savings accounts in Lloyds. He could have got better
• 17:27
  interest rates elsewhere, but he liked me, trusted me. I dealt
• 17:30
  with his wife's bereavement, and he kept his money with us. I was
• 17:33
  in the room with him. 1000 there for about, I think it was two
• 17:36
  hours, an hour and a half, two hours. I came up to the room to
• 17:39
  get a brochure, and my director, my local director, was in the
• 17:42
  branch, and he said to me, what are you doing in there? I saw,
• 17:44
  see Mr. Jones, or whatever. I said. He said, he's an hour and
• 17:46
  a half. I said, so. I said, it's not an egg timer on the table.
• 17:49
  Is there? I said, you know, I don't, I don't work like your
• 17:52
  hours up now. You got to go now every another don't work like a
• 17:54
  conveyor belt. I'll sell stay there as long as it takes. He
• 17:56
  said, What are you selling him? I don't sell him anything. I
• 17:58
  said, I'm making sure he got the best. I said, the reason that
• 18:01
  guy is money is with us is because of me. So I'll stay in
• 18:03
  there all day if I got away sex, 800,000 pound, if we got that
• 18:06
  much in, like, savings, that means you could lend it out the
• 18:09
  other side as well. So, you know, that guy can get better
• 18:11
  rates in Halifax, in, you know, principality, but he stays with
• 18:14
  me. He likes me, he trusts me. So I think I don't, I don't work
• 18:16
  like that. I mean, I got, I got a timer. Now, for every customer
• 18:19
  I saw it on a timer. I can't work like that, so I left the
• 18:22
  bank to go into insurance. So even though the insurance is
• 18:25
  heavily regulated by the FCA, it's still quite old school. So
• 18:28
  you win a client, you insure their business. And they don't
• 18:30
  care who you're working for, if you're working for, it don't
• 18:33
  matter what insurance company you're working for. They like
• 18:35
  you. They trust you. To insure their business, to protect their
• 18:37
  business, and you should take the rugby matches, take him for
• 18:40
  meals. Go to restaurants as well. That's about relationship
• 18:43
  building. So I enjoyed that world. I loved I did enjoy
• 18:45
  working in insurance. I only left there recently after
• 18:48
  obviously, I don't know where you're gonna go into but after
• 18:50
  my short TV stint, I left my insurance world after that, then
• 18:53
  about 16 months, 17
• 18:55
  Mark Ackers: months ago, so we're definitely gonna cover
• 18:56
  that. What I want to touch upon now, Andrew is definitely a
• 18:59
  topic that I have not explored the guests before, and I want
• 19:02
  you to share just what you're comfortable with, really, but
• 19:05
  you've openly talked about the crash that you had in 1999 I
• 19:10
  read about it, and you know, it's hard to read about, right?
• 19:14
  Is, even though I don't know you, I appreciate we met an
• 19:16
  event. But can you, just for anyone who's not heard this
• 19:19
  story before, at a level you're comfortable with. Share with us
• 19:22
  what what did happen? I was
• 19:23
  andrew jenkins: driving my car on the 20th of August, 1999 and
• 19:26
  there was five of us in car, in the car in total. There was my
• 19:29
  partner at the time in the passenger seat, one of my
• 19:31
  friend, my best friend, and his girlfriend in the back, and a
• 19:34
  girl I used to work with in the back. I hit the curb on the left
• 19:36
  hand side, on the passenger side, and I flipped the car into
• 19:38
  the right hand side. So I was out. I went out to the driver's
• 19:41
  side window, so the door, I went out that door window. So my top
• 19:44
  half was out the car, and my legs were in the foot well of
• 19:46
  the car. So my head and my arm would drop. My arm, as you can
• 19:49
  see, my arm and my head would drag along the floor for a
• 19:51
  couple of 100 yards along the tarmac. And when the car stopped
• 19:54
  sliding, it landed on top of me. So when the emergency services
• 19:57
  turned up in the vehicle, they were asking people in the car
• 19:59
  quite. Questions, and they said, it's too late now we think he's
• 20:02
  dead, so I'm not a ghost. I didn't die. Don't worry, I'm
• 20:04
  here. But I was, I was in a really bad way, so I lost six
• 20:07
  pints of blood in my body, and we got eight pints of blood. So
• 20:10
  I lost need all my blood. I had to have two blood transfusions
• 20:12
  on the side of the road there and then, and the fire brigade
• 20:14
  had picked the car up to get underneath the car, to get
• 20:16
  underneath the car, to work on me, because it was on top of me.
• 20:19
  I went to one hospital in South Wales called the Royal Gwent in
• 20:21
  Newport, but there was nothing they could do for me there, so I
• 20:24
  had to have a police escort. Then now to another hospital in
• 20:26
  Wales, because that's when neurology was on plastic
• 20:29
  surgery. At the time, I took the top my head completely off. I
• 20:31
  had no hair, no skin on top, nothing on top my head at all,
• 20:33
  and I smashed my skull to pieces. Had a big hole in my
• 20:36
  skull, about that big, probably. And the first operation I had
• 20:39
  that night was take all the bone up my brains. Had a lot of bone
• 20:41
  embedded deep in my brain. So the surgeon had to take all that
• 20:44
  way. That was the first operation I had. I was in a coma
• 20:47
  then for four weeks. But obviously, while all I was going
• 20:49
  on, my mother and father got the dreaded knock on the door from
• 20:52
  the policeman, the one the No parent wants to say, you have to
• 20:54
  come with us now. Your son's been involved in a road traffic
• 20:56
  accident and RTA, and they thought his little bump in the
• 20:59
  car. So so we'll get change. We'll come with you now. And the
• 21:01
  policeman said, you haven't got time to get changed. You have to
• 21:04
  come with us now. Is critical. So they were they were taken to
• 21:07
  the first hospital where I was as soon as they got to that
• 21:09
  hospital, I was on a trial. He came out the hospital be put in
• 21:12
  the back of an ambulance to be transferred to the second
• 21:14
  hospital. They weren't allowed to see me go in such a bad way
• 21:17
  as you can imagine. My head being dragged along with tarmac
• 21:19
  wasn't a pretty sight. It's not a great site now, but it's a lot
• 21:22
  better than it was. Than it was. And then they basically had to
• 21:25
  follow in a police car, and they were also told that I wouldn't
• 21:27
  make the trip from one hospital to the other hospital, which is
• 21:30
  probably about 40 minutes or 35 minutes away. Yeah, so that's
• 21:33
  what happened, and I was in a coma for four weeks in intensive
• 21:36
  care. In fact, given my life, it's
• 21:37
  Mark Ackers: tough to listen to that. I mean that in the right
• 21:40
  way, of course, talk to me about the recovery journey, like
• 21:43
  physically. What did that entail? When I was in my
• 21:45
  andrew jenkins: coma, my family were called in on a few
• 21:47
  occasions. I wouldn't make it through the night. I got three
• 21:49
  brothers, two older brothers, one younger brother, my mum and
• 21:51
  dad, obviously. And then when I did start recovering, they said,
• 21:55
  from the scans we've done on him, he's got severe brain
• 21:57
  damage. There's lots of shadows on his brain, which means dead
• 22:00
  tissue. So he said, You don't think he's gonna wake up. If he
• 22:02
  does wake up, he's not gonna recognise anyone. He's not gonna
• 22:05
  walk, talk, use arms and legs ever again, so won't be able to
• 22:07
  recognise anybody. So I woke up after four weeks in intensive
• 22:10
  care. I didn't know where I was or it happened to me. My mother
• 22:13
  had to explain it to me. She was standing on my bedside, hearing
• 22:15
  my dad, you know, crying, yeah, I didn't know where they had to
• 22:17
  explain where I was, what happened and everything. And the
• 22:20
  doctors came round about three days later and saw four days
• 22:22
  later and told me I would never walk ever again. And my first
• 22:25
  response was, I guarantee I walk in this hospital. He said he
• 22:27
  won't. And I said, I will. And I argued with the surgeon, and my
• 22:30
  mother said, it's embarrassing. You're lying in intensive care
• 22:33
  with all tubes coming out to everywhere, and a tracheoft in
• 22:35
  my throat there, and the man is trying to tell you not going to
• 22:37
  walk again. You know, arguments. I knew will and I did. I proved
• 22:41
  the doctors wrong. I learned to walk again. It took me about two
• 22:43
  weeks. I think it was when I first got to bed was it's quite
• 22:45
  scary or frightening, I suppose, because I trained for a long
• 22:48
  time. I trained as 14 years of age, a lot of rugby and train
• 22:51
  weights and everything. And I know, I know my muscle memory
• 22:54
  anything, but when I got out of bed for the first time, I
• 22:56
  literally couldn't find my leg. I could not remember to walk,
• 22:59
  and the physio to pick my feet up, put one in front of the
• 23:02
  other, and after a couple of days, I remember to walk again.
• 23:04
  Then, so it took me about two weeks, learned to walk again. I
• 23:06
  wasn't very steady, but I could walk. It was awful. The physical
• 23:09
  injury I'm terrible, as you can imagine. My lungs collapsed.
• 23:12
  They caught MRSA, everything you could think of. And then my
• 23:15
  biggest challenge were mental health, unbeknown to me, really.
• 23:17
  So I struggled with mental health for years, and my life
• 23:20
  was literally a car crash, excuse the pun, for many, many
• 23:22
  years afterwards,
• 23:23
  Mark Ackers: and talking about mentally, what was that process
• 23:26
  like? Then to recover from that
• 23:29
  andrew jenkins: disaster? To be honest, I was offered
• 23:31
  counselling after my accident, or therapy. They said, Well,
• 23:33
  you've been through horrendous and I assumed I was a 21 year
• 23:37
  old, ignorant macho testosterone for a kid, invincible, because I
• 23:41
  should talk about bringing in a second obviously, I think it's
• 23:44
  quite related on my upbringing. But so I refuse counselling. I
• 23:47
  thought I would see somebody in a white coat who judged me,
• 23:51
  psychoanalyse me and try and get inside my head. And I thought,
• 23:54
  I'm not seeing them. I can't relate to they can't relate to
• 23:57
  me. So I refuse counselling. I didn't see anybody I like my
• 23:59
  family background quickly. I'll just go into that. I said, Got
• 24:02
  three brothers, two older, one younger. My dream, like lots of
• 24:05
  people in Wales, has played rugby for Wales, and I probably
• 24:07
  would have done that. So from five years of age to 21 my
• 24:10
  dreams play rug for Wales. My brothers played rugby
• 24:13
  professionally. The three of us, we all played very, very good
• 24:15
  standard of rugby. So 21 years of age, my dream got taken off
• 24:18
  me, and I say to people, I said to you know, I talk about toxic
• 24:20
  masculinity and positive masculinity in my talks now and
• 24:23
  everything. And I say, I said, growing up, I didn't show any
• 24:25
  feelings and emotions. For example, I didn't think I could,
• 24:28
  because a man, as a man, you get told to suppress your feelings
• 24:30
  and emotions. Very, very young age, don't cry. Girls cry. Don't
• 24:34
  be a baby. So I was brought up, but obviously the three
• 24:36
  brothers, competitive brothers as well, we still show feelings.
• 24:39
  I didn't show my vulnerable side at all, and so I didn't talk to
• 24:42
  my family after the accident either. So we didn't speak about
• 24:45
  it. For you 20 or 24 years, nobody spoke about it at all. So
• 24:49
  yeah, it was hard, and so I really struggled. So I get up
• 24:51
  every day, go off to work with a shirt and tie on with a big
• 24:54
  smile on my face, and life and soul of the party behind closed
• 24:57
  doors, I hated myself. Wish I was dead, wish I won here.
• 25:00
  Anymore. I hated what I look like in the mirror. I couldn't
• 25:02
  accept my scars. Call myself a freak every single day. My
• 25:05
  mother said it's heartbreaking for her to hear because no when
• 25:08
  listen to her own son called himself a freak every day. Was
• 25:10
  heartbreaking when people just come to my parents. I was to
• 25:13
  visit my mum and dad. I'd run upstairs and hide in my bedroom.
• 25:15
  I don't want nobody to see me because I was a freak. I only
• 25:18
  started wearing short sleeve T shirts for about four or five
• 25:21
  years ago, I saw a long sleeve shirts or jump but I wouldn't
• 25:23
  wear I hated my arm, my scar on my arm, and, yeah, I self
• 25:26
  sabotage. Anything good happening to me. Yeah, it was a
• 25:29
  night. I never tried to do anything. I never tried to take
• 25:31
  my own life. There's some dark days, and when people tell me
• 25:34
  they got depression, they haven't, most people haven't got
• 25:37
  them a bad day, because with depression, this is what I
• 25:39
  think. I never got diagnosed or anything, but I used to lie in
• 25:42
  bed some lie in bed someday, looking upstairs, looking up at
• 25:44
  the sea, and crying my eyes out. To get out of bed was hard work.
• 25:47
  And physically dragged myself to bed every day. It was hard. It
• 25:50
  was a real chore to go to bed. I could easily lay in bed, pull
• 25:53
  the quilt over me, and stay there for months, to be honest,
• 25:55
  that'd been so much easier. So it was hard working out of bed,
• 25:58
  really. So my life was a disaster for many, many years to
• 26:01
  be after my crash.
• 26:02
  Mark Ackers: I mean, again, like, really, really tough to
• 26:05
  hear that. But it's, it's, it's commendable, how honest you're
• 26:08
  being and sharing that, because I think people don't hear that
• 26:11
  side right. And how has that then changed your mindset and
• 26:15
  outlook in life? Like, how do you now approach challenges
• 26:20
  adversity, given what you've gone through, I'm guessing it's
• 26:23
  given you a whole new perspective. It's
• 26:25
  andrew jenkins: only the last few years, really. So you know,
• 26:27
  15 years after my accident, I went for counselling for the
• 26:30
  first time ever, because, yeah, I was self sabotaging things. I
• 26:34
  was upsetting people close to me, loved ones, and pushing
• 26:36
  people away. So eventually I went for counselling, and the
• 26:39
  woman I saw was amazing. So one tip I'll give anybody who's
• 26:41
  listening to this, if you're struggling, please go and see
• 26:43
  somebody. You know, there's lots of people out there suicide
• 26:46
  rates are going up, which are discussing at the moment. I
• 26:48
  think it's because people, they don't want to open up and talk,
• 26:50
  especially men. Bryce, I went for counselling, and it was
• 26:53
  brilliant. The woman I saw was incredible. And after the first
• 26:55
  session, she got I know what's wrong with you. I think I know
• 26:57
  what's wrong with I said, What's that? PTSD and depression? And
• 27:00
  she goes, Yeah, you probably got them as well. But no, you're
• 27:02
  grieving. I said, grieving? I said, What do you mean grieving?
• 27:04
  That's when you physically die. And she said to me, young,
• 27:06
  physically got to die to grieve. She's all grieving is the
• 27:08
  emotional reaction to the loss of the loss of any kind. She
• 27:11
  goes, people, when they're tender for a big project in work
• 27:14
  that doesn't come off. You know, tender of this project for weeks
• 27:16
  or months, it doesn't come off, that's grieving. She goes, when
• 27:19
  you move departments in work, retire from job, have to give up
• 27:22
  a sport from an injury. So people, even when they have
• 27:24
  children, grieve, she said, because then they can't go out
• 27:26
  as much. Don't worry much money. Now, you grieve in loss of
• 27:29
  identity. All I heard of you today so far is I used to play
• 27:32
  rugby. I used to look like this. You're grieving. You're old
• 27:35
  Andrew, your old life. She's got so people watching this. I bet
• 27:38
  every single person on here is grieving at some stage of life.
• 27:41
  I don't mean a physical loss. I mean if they've lost a job,
• 27:44
  retire or change their career, whatever, moved apartments in
• 27:47
  working, when you lost your friendships, and that so
• 27:49
  grievance massive. And I was trapped between the seven stages
• 27:52
  of grief. And I think I was between number two and six. And
• 27:55
  number two and six is arguing, bargaining, depression, you
• 27:57
  know? Why did it happen to me? Why? Why? And then number seven
• 28:00
  is acceptance. I'm only really in acceptance. I'm not there
• 28:03
  fully yet, I don't think, but I'm getting there, and I'm much
• 28:06
  better now than I was a couple of years ago, but I had to work
• 28:08
  really hard on myself, and what I did, I held a mirror up to
• 28:11
  myself. A few years ago, I started working on myself,
• 28:14
  because most people in life, they don't look at themselves,
• 28:16
  they don't hold them up to themselves. They just walk
• 28:18
  around saying and doing things they're not very self aware. And
• 28:21
  people say, Oh, that's just the way they are. No, it's not the
• 28:23
  way they are. They can change. They want to change. They can
• 28:25
  change. And I know why people don't do it, because holding a
• 28:27
  mirror up to yourself is scary. You got to look at your flaws,
• 28:30
  your triggers, your faults. But I said until you start doing
• 28:32
  that, you can't really blame everybody, because in this
• 28:34
  country, we've got a huge blame culture. We blame the
• 28:36
  relationship, your job. You blame your kids, your father.
• 28:39
  Look at yourself first. Start looking inwards first, before
• 28:41
  you start looking at everybody. Else. So I started looking at my
• 28:44
  triggers, my flaws and my faults a couple of years ago, and
• 28:47
  worked on myself. And it's been tough. There's been great. It's
• 28:49
  been enlightening. This is empowering, but I've started
• 28:51
  looking at that, and I started doing that the last couple of
• 28:54
  years. So I'm wondering, I'm in a good place now, really, I'm a
• 28:56
  Mark Ackers: really good place in my life. Well, I'm really
• 28:58
  pleased to hear you feel that way. That's great. What was it
• 29:00
  that made you after all those years, go and see somebody? Hey,
• 29:04
  sales leaders. Do you want a cost effective way to develop
• 29:07
  your team skills and help them smash their quotas? My sales
• 29:10
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• 29:14
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• 29:18
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• 29:21
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• 29:25
  over 25 group sessions to choose from. Monthly there's something
• 29:28
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• 29:32
  Empower your team to perform to their best visit my sales
• 29:36
  coach.com to get started. The link is in the description. I
• 29:39
  wish I
• 29:39
  andrew jenkins: can give some amazing guru answers, if you
• 29:42
  have one, like light bulb moment. But there was, it was a
• 29:44
  combination of lots of small things, really, like pushing
• 29:47
  people away, I you know. And this thing in this country,
• 29:50
  right? We get brainwashed right from a young age. We get
• 29:52
  brainwashed from a young age. We are in school, five years of
• 29:55
  age, six years of age. We our self worth and value as a human
• 29:59
  being. Starts getting judged by the material things and
• 30:02
  achievements in life. So if you're in school, if you're an A
• 30:04
  grade, the teachers love you. If you get an E grade or a D grade
• 30:07
  get written off, you start getting judged by people in
• 30:10
  school, the teachers in school go to university. You have to go
• 30:12
  to university to be successful in life. And you think, I don't
• 30:15
  go to university, but if I want to be successful, I have to go
• 30:17
  to university. Then your parents might start, they might start
• 30:20
  like conditioning you to fit in with society, or don't do this.
• 30:23
  Do this. Be a doctor like your mom, be a teacher like your dad.
• 30:25
  Do this like your brother. So you start getting compared. So
• 30:28
  your playful, like when you're a child, you're the most
• 30:30
  authentic, real, real version yourself. When you're born,
• 30:32
  you're running around, you're playful. You've got no self
• 30:35
  esteem issue, no confidence issues. Then we are conditioned
• 30:37
  to fit in with society. The teachers do it, your parents do
• 30:40
  it, and then we find a job, then the biggest salary possible in
• 30:43
  the corporate world, we're led to believe more money means more
• 30:45
  happiness, or we go off to university and to study
• 30:48
  something which is a total waste of time. Be a thought. Well, I
• 30:50
  got to do that because I want to be successful in life. So all
• 30:52
  these little things, and it's only when you get an awakening.
• 30:55
  I looked in the mirror when I was about 40 odd, and I had
• 30:57
  everything in life that I was told to make me happy. Because,
• 31:00
  again, from a young age, we get led to believe that our
• 31:03
  happiness comes from external things, external achievements,
• 31:06
  material things. But it's not our happiness starts inside. It
• 31:09
  doesn't matter how big your house is, what car you've got,
• 31:11
  what trainers you're wearing, or if you've got 100 it doesn't
• 31:14
  matter. You could have as much money as you want, but unless
• 31:16
  you're happy with yourself, you'll never be happy. So look
• 31:18
  in the mirror. When I was 40 odd, I had a nice house, a nice
• 31:21
  car, good job, nice body, attractive girlfriend, bro.
• 31:25
  Still felt miserable. I was thinking to myself, I got
• 31:28
  everything in life that I was told to make me happy from a
• 31:30
  young age, but I'm still empty. And the reason is, I think
• 31:33
  you're climbing everybody else's ladder, every else's
• 31:35
  expectations. Know your own expectation. They call it the
• 31:38
  second there's a book called The second mountain. So I'm now at
• 31:41
  the bottom of my second mountain, and now building my
• 31:43
  life and do what I want to do, to make me happy, not to keep my
• 31:46
  parents happy, not to make them proud, not to fit in my social
• 31:49
  circle or my friends, and do what I want to do now, because I
• 31:51
  know like three men, for example, in their 40s, who took
• 31:54
  their own life in the last 12 months, who had very successful
• 31:57
  careers in in London, I think it's because they got to the top
• 32:00
  of this ladder. They earned so much money, and they felt they
• 32:02
  felt empty, and they lost their purpose in life, but they
• 32:04
  couldn't go backwards. And they said the only way out for the
• 32:07
  easiest way to do is, unfortunately, take their own
• 32:09
  life. They had children, married. Their partners didn't
• 32:12
  work. They lived such a lifestyle, high lifestyle. These
• 32:15
  men probably couldn't tell their partners they were struggling so
• 32:17
  and they didn't want to take a drop in salary. They couldn't
• 32:20
  afford to take a drop in sorry. Big mortgages. Nice holidays,
• 32:23
  fancy cars. So when you get that state does, it's tough. So
• 32:26
  people, you know, people do take their own life. So, yeah, a long
• 32:28
  answer, I know, but I held them up to myself a couple of years
• 32:31
  ago. So I work on myself basically.
• 32:33
  Mark Ackers: Do you know why, though, why a couple of years
• 32:35
  ago? Why not in five years time? Why not 10 years ago? What was
• 32:39
  there a moment where you're like, it's time to pick the
• 32:41
  mirror up.
• 32:41
  andrew jenkins: I met the man who saved my life two years ago.
• 32:43
  I tracked him down on Google, which were creepy. There was
• 32:46
  lots of little things. I started working on myself and, you know,
• 32:48
  studying and reading, learning about myself and trying to find
• 32:51
  out why, why I was like, I was like, why I was like, why? For
• 32:54
  why I got triggered by certain thing, why? And then I met the
• 32:57
  man who say, my life. I tracked him down. I've always wanted to
• 32:59
  see the guy, but, you know, people say, Why didn't you see
• 33:01
  him earlier? I said it wasn't ready. I wasn't in a good place
• 33:04
  back then, so I felt I'm in a good place about two years ago.
• 33:06
  So I sent him a long email saying, you probably don't
• 33:08
  remember who I am. This guy is really well respected in
• 33:11
  medicine, so he advised the government, for example. And
• 33:14
  then I sent him a long email. He replied A few days later,
• 33:16
  saying, of course, I remember who you are. Your injuries will
• 33:19
  always stay with me. So for him to say that, first of all, I
• 33:21
  thought, wow, that's, that's, he's operated on 1000s of
• 33:24
  people. So I went to see him. I went to see him where he is, and
• 33:27
  I walked into his office, and it was a really emotional day. It's
• 33:30
  not every day you get the chance to meet the man who saved your
• 33:32
  life or shake his hand. I walked in and he said, Wow. He said,
• 33:34
  You're a miracle. You should be dead. You should have died on so
• 33:36
  many occasions. I can't be a big and strong you are. It's
• 33:39
  incredible. So meeting him made me realise I got a second chance
• 33:42
  at life, and how close I come to death. So I can either walk
• 33:44
  around for the next 3040, 50 years with a chip on my
• 33:47
  shoulder, resentful, angry looking back at life, or I can
• 33:50
  use my trauma for good now to help inspire other people,
• 33:53
  because I don't want people to struggle like I did for 25 years
• 33:56
  in silence, like lots of people do, I know I struggle for
• 33:58
  sighting silence like I only spoke to my mother and father
• 34:01
  the first time ever about the accident. Two years ago. It
• 34:03
  happened. 26 years ago, we bottled it. I didn't talk to
• 34:06
  anybody about it, nobody really, apart from the counsellor, yeah.
• 34:09
  So I wanted to start sharing my story and talking about people,
• 34:12
  and then talking about my accent and my how I felt and I was and
• 34:15
  it was funny. The first video I put on social media, on
• 34:17
  Facebook, I had 1000s of views. I had hundreds of people
• 34:20
  messaging me, saying, I can't believe you're going through
• 34:22
  that you always seem a life and soul. You always seem bubbly and
• 34:26
  fun. I can't be they felt they had really sorry you're going
• 34:28
  through. I said, it's fine. You know, they'd be sorry about
• 34:30
  this. I wouldn't have shown you that side of me anyway. And if
• 34:32
  you had offered me help, I probably would have said no. And
• 34:34
  they said, a lot of people messaged me saying I felt
• 34:37
  exactly the same as that, because a lot of my friends are
• 34:39
  gym people, corporates, doormen, body guards, gym people, the
• 34:43
  worst, toxic rugby people. So lots of people messaging me now,
• 34:47
  saying, I feel exactly the same as that. As a result of you now
• 34:49
  I started now talking to my father, my brother, my sisters,
• 34:52
  my kids. So rather knock on if it had the effect they wanted,
• 34:55
  really,
• 34:55
  Mark Ackers: it certainly sounds that way. If someone is
• 34:58
  listening and resonate. It's and feels that way. How would you
• 35:03
  encourage them to pick up the mirror and start it's
• 35:05
  andrew jenkins: being brave and being courageous and being
• 35:07
  vulnerable. In this country, we think vulnerable is a weakness,
• 35:10
  but it's really not as a strength. And I was vulnerable
• 35:13
  to millions around the country on television. But yeah, it's
• 35:16
  being brave. It's having and to be honest, it's about thinking
• 35:18
  the people around you who really matter. Okay, they're gonna love
• 35:21
  you exactly the same, no matter I like I touched earlier on. I
• 35:25
  know it's all it's very good to achieve things in life and get
• 35:27
  good grades and win things in life, but if you don't, don't
• 35:30
  beat yourselves up. Don't think you're a bad person, because
• 35:33
  you're not. I said the people around you, your parents, your
• 35:35
  caregivers, your family, your brothers, they're not gonna stop
• 35:37
  loving you. If you don't achieve your grade, they're not gonna
• 35:39
  stop love if you miss your target in work or the people who
• 35:42
  actually matter, they're gonna love you exactly the same. So be
• 35:44
  brave and have that conversation. Because in this we
• 35:47
  build things up in our head like I did for 24 years. I'm not
• 35:50
  gonna sit here and say it's easy, because it's not. The
• 35:52
  research says 85% of all you overthink or worry about never,
• 35:56
  ever comes true. 12% comes true, or 30% comes true. But nowhere
• 36:00
  near as bad as we think is something like two or 3% comes
• 36:04
  true. So there's all this energy and worry we give give this
• 36:07
  thought never comes true. Because I said, be brave and
• 36:10
  courageous. And I said, as soon as you start being open and
• 36:13
  vulnerable with yourself, your relationships every round you
• 36:16
  will be much better, because they again the true version of
• 36:18
  yourself, not some persona putting off it's been it's about
• 36:20
  being authentic and being true. I took my mask off. People,
• 36:24
  probably people watching this now wear masks. Everybody wears
• 36:27
  a mask. So I wore a mask for pretty much all my life, I
• 36:29
  suppose. So I took my mask off a couple of years ago and being my
• 36:32
  true version of myself now. So I say to people, talk to people.
• 36:35
  Have a good support network around you, and just make sure
• 36:38
  you talk to someone really
• 36:39
  Mark Ackers: So Andrew, it's really interesting, and I've
• 36:41
  been smiling away because a couple of times you've hinted at
• 36:44
  your appearance on TV, and there's a nice segue there, you
• 36:48
  talk about wearing masks, and I spotted you so an event, and had
• 36:52
  to come and talk to you about it before we get into that. Just
• 36:55
  for anyone who has been living under a rock for the last three
• 37:00
  years, tell us all what TV show you're on and how would you
• 37:05
  describe it? I can probably
• 37:06
  andrew jenkins: butcher this, though I probably won't give it
• 37:08
  the justice it deserves, but I've got a programme called it's
• 37:11
  a BBC programme called the traitors, where there are 22
• 37:14
  contestants placed in a castle in Scotland. Claudia Winkelman
• 37:17
  is the host. And at the start, we're around a table called a
• 37:20
  round table. They're all blindfolded. And then Claudia
• 37:23
  will pick traitors amongst you. So we don't know how many there
• 37:26
  is. There could be one that could be up to six or five, I
• 37:28
  think there was. And then once you take your blindfold off, the
• 37:31
  rest you are called faithful. So you got traitors and faithful.
• 37:34
  The whole point in the game, there's a few things. Every day
• 37:36
  we have a challenge to win money. And at the end of the
• 37:39
  game, then is a prize fund, and the winner wins the prize fund.
• 37:41
  So every day, you have to a challenge, and then every night,
• 37:44
  there's something called the round table. And the whole point
• 37:46
  of the game is to vote out the traitors. So you've got to vote
• 37:48
  the traitors out. Otherwise there's any traitors left at the
• 37:50
  end of the game, they win the prize fund. But also, every
• 37:53
  night, the traitors get to murder one of the faithful, not
• 37:56
  really, but they do not literally murder them, but they
• 37:59
  can murder one of the faithful. So it's a game. It's a really
• 38:02
  clever game, to be honest, because during the day, to
• 38:04
  complete your mission, you have to work as a team. So they put
• 38:07
  you together as a team. In the day, you're high fiving each
• 38:09
  other, hugging each other at the end, and then a couple of hours
• 38:12
  late, they're ripping each other apart the round table. So it's a
• 38:14
  massive psychological game and a physical game, I suppose. So,
• 38:18
  yeah, it's a clever game, yeah. So that's it in a nutshell.
• 38:20
  That's the that's the game in the Castle in Scotland.
• 38:23
  Mark Ackers: And I will go as far as to say, in recent years
• 38:26
  in terms of, I think you'd call it a reality show. It's it's
• 38:30
  been one of my favourite watches. Like all three series,
• 38:34
  I've watched the Australian versions the American versions.
• 38:37
  I'm big, big fan of the show. I think the show's got some
• 38:40
  interesting flaws around, like traitors getting to recruit
• 38:43
  people and faithful. Do they vote each other out? Is that a
• 38:46
  more sensible strategy? And like you say, you're working together
• 38:50
  during the during the day and the night time, and people
• 38:52
  sometimes vote tactically rather than actually going for
• 38:55
  traitors. But for all of that, I just think it's incredible TV.
• 38:59
  And I remember your series, well, I remember you got to the
• 39:03
  Final Four, didn't you? Yeah, but let's just go back a step.
• 39:07
  First of all, again, you've spoken about how it took you a
• 39:10
  long time to accept who you were, a long time to really show
• 39:13
  yourself to the world. Talk about going 100 mile an hour.
• 39:16
  You've gone from, you know, saying that you could just lie
• 39:19
  in bed all day and not get up and not see anyone, to going on
• 39:23
  what was arguably the biggest TV show in terms of anticipation.
• 39:27
  Series One was huge. Series Two, everyone now wants to watch it,
• 39:32
  and you put yourself out there, which is incredible. How did you
• 39:35
  actually get picked, though? Because there's 1000s and 1000s
• 39:38
  of people who applied, I'm guessing, through the
• 39:41
  application process, you use some of your sales skills to
• 39:45
  stand out and to be picked and to work with the producers. How,
• 39:48
  how did you land one of these 22 spots? Well,
• 39:51
  andrew jenkins: initially, I basically, my previous partner
• 39:54
  made me watch the first series because I don't like reality I
• 39:56
  don't really watch reality TV. I don't watch a huge amount of
• 39:59
  Telly, to be honest. But. She kept on. We always thinking of
• 40:01
  things to watch in the nights on Netflix, for example. I mean,
• 40:03
  when, when a series finishes, all we got to watch next. So she
• 40:06
  kept saying to me, Oh, this is programme of your it is really
• 40:09
  good, called the trait does I said, I'm not watching reality
• 40:11
  TV. It's rubbish. I'm not watching reality TV. So she wore
• 40:14
  me down, like lots of women do. She wore me down. Wore me down,
• 40:17
  and I eventually gave in. So we can watch it, I said, but if
• 40:21
  it's rubbish, we're turning it off. She's put the first episode
• 40:23
  on. I'm thinking inside, I'm thinking, it's all right, I
• 40:25
  don't mind that. I didn't tell her that though. I said, Yeah,
• 40:27
  it's okay. I don't mind it. At the end, she got to the first
• 40:30
  episode. What do you think that's all right? I don't mind
• 40:32
  it. So it's not that it's okay. I don't mind if you don't watch
• 40:36
  the next one. So we binge watched the first series over
• 40:39
  four three days. We watched the 12 episode of three days, and
• 40:42
  the first series on in November or December, somewhere, like the
• 40:45
  centre of the Christmas it was, and I said, Oh, it's funny. I'd
• 40:47
  like them. I wouldn't crack or to go with that. And I put in
• 40:51
  the cosmos, I think so. And then in March, then the following
• 40:54
  year, I had a message on my Instagram from a casting
• 40:56
  director saying, your story looks incredible. You look like
• 40:59
  a nice person. Do you fancy applying for this show? Because
• 41:01
  I didn't initially apply. If I didn't, I didn't apply, I
• 41:04
  wouldn't have applied for myself. I said to my partner at
• 41:06
  the time, if I don't care about being recognised in the street
• 41:09
  or whatever, and I said, but I could get a great profile, a
• 41:11
  great platform and connections, I'll do what I want to do now.
• 41:14
  So I wanted to start talking about mental health and things
• 41:17
  that help people with mental health before the show came
• 41:19
  along. But I had a couple of followers, not many followers. I
• 41:23
  never really use Instagram, so, you know, I didn't really have
• 41:26
  any, you know, connections or anything. So I only went on the
• 41:28
  show to get a profile I got now to help more people what I do
• 41:31
  now. So it had the effect they wanted. So initially, I didn't
• 41:34
  approach that. They approached me initially, and then I had to
• 41:36
  go through the application process. And I think, when you
• 41:39
  what, I always think, what would they want from somebody on tech?
• 41:42
  They want somebody the good story. It was nice to watch it.
• 41:44
  They don't want somebody on the tell who's boring, because the
• 41:46
  viewers aren't going to watch that, are they? So I want
• 41:47
  somebody who's got a good story and just normal, I suppose.
• 41:50
  Yeah. I went through the process and my story's my story. I
• 41:52
  couldn't make my story up. My story's my story, I suppose so.
• 41:55
  And if you look at all the people in there, most of them
• 41:57
  have got a good story, like Molly, for example, their limb
• 42:00
  difference and stoma. There's lots of down. There's got really
• 42:02
  good stories and backgrounds. So it was normal people in a castle
• 42:05
  we know, like, celebre is normal people. We don't know each other
• 42:07
  from Adam, so, yeah, we just chucked in this castle and
• 42:10
  thrust in the limelight. And it's a good series. It's really
• 42:13
  good. I
• 42:13
  Mark Ackers: think that's the pill of it to me, in the sense
• 42:15
  of you are just, as you say, normal people. And I think
• 42:18
  that's where the the like American version, where it's got
• 42:22
  celebrities and pre connotations and ideas around who each other
• 42:26
  are, doesn't quite have the same effect, but so that's
• 42:28
  interesting. So a producer reached out to you, saw your
• 42:31
  story, and quite rightly, you identified that as a great way
• 42:34
  to build a bit of a platform for yourself to do what you really
• 42:36
  want to do in life and and share the story that you want to
• 42:39
  share. I love that. Let's go back to when you got into the
• 42:42
  castle. Then you've obviously seen series one. You're now in
• 42:44
  that castle. Did you have a strategy? And do you feel like
• 42:50
  your sales skills that you spoke about earlier, building trust,
• 42:54
  building relationships, empathy, listening, asking the right
• 42:57
  questions? Did you start to think, okay, look, I'm going to
• 43:00
  take all of my learnings and use a strategy. What was going for
• 43:04
  your
• 43:05
  andrew jenkins: head? I wish I could, honestly, if you could
• 43:07
  tell on the telly, I think I wish I could say I did have
• 43:09
  amazing strategy. I didn't. I've just beat it myself. I thought I
• 43:11
  get to know everybody. Be like I say you don't want to say too
• 43:14
  much, otherwise you get voted off or murdered, but you don't
• 43:17
  want to say anything at all because you get they look
• 43:19
  suspicious. So it's about getting that balance. And it's a
• 43:21
  tough game. He said, it's a numbers game, like sales. This
• 43:23
  was a numbers game, isn't it, you gotta get enough people on
• 43:26
  your side influence. Use influencing skills to get people
• 43:28
  on your side. Otherwise, if you don't, you're gone. BEC, as soon
• 43:31
  as the numbers turn against you, like Johnny, for example, it was
• 43:35
  eight people against him, like so no matter what he said, once
• 43:38
  they're against you, there's nothing you could do to change
• 43:40
  their mind. And you don't know these people from Adam. So I,
• 43:43
  like, you know, I did, NLP, for example, neuro linguistic
• 43:46
  practitioners study human behaviours and that. But how do
• 43:48
  you know these people are like outside the castles? You don't
• 43:50
  know if they've changed their their body language has changed.
• 43:53
  You know how well they look like outside of the castle. So
• 43:55
  you're, you're trying to pick up on little changes in behaviour,
• 43:57
  but we're just guessing, but you're just clutching the straws
• 43:59
  most of the time. You think, Oh, you want to trait that why? Or
• 44:02
  just scratched your nose. Are you sneezed or you're a traitor.
• 44:06
  So you just guessing most of the time. And that's why I think
• 44:08
  most of the every series so far, the trait has been winning seven
• 44:12
  one. I think every everybody the trait does a winning eight one.
• 44:15
  There's seven wings at the start, you're just guessing it
• 44:18
  to be to get caught as a trait at the very start you gotta be
• 44:21
  You're hopeless to get you get caught out at the start as a
• 44:25
  traitor. When you're a traitor, you can see you're watching
• 44:27
  that. You're seeing everybody. You're looking at everything
• 44:30
  that's going on. So you're playing chess, basically, you're
• 44:32
  listening to other people. Remember, really got to do a
• 44:34
  lot. So in Harry one, to be a traitor from the very start is
• 44:37
  easier than change. I'm not just saying that, but from the start
• 44:40
  you got one game plan. You got to say that game the same game
• 44:42
  plan the whole game. When you got to change halfway through or
• 44:44
  later on, it's much harder. You're trying to change your
• 44:47
  game plan. And you also get you feel as you start getting a bit
• 44:49
  paranoid that everybody's talking about you, you think
• 44:51
  you've changed. You probably haven't changed, but you just
• 44:54
  think you out so like being a traitor from the very start,
• 44:56
  things easier. And all you're doing when you're a traitor, you
• 44:58
  listen to people arguing you. And you're just adding fuel to
• 45:01
  that fire. So if one person goes against the other and tells you,
• 45:04
  yeah, he's a guy, I agree with you. I think they're a traitor,
• 45:06
  and all you'll do is add in fuel to the fire. Because if you
• 45:09
  watch Harry, he didn't have to say or do a lot, to be honest,
• 45:12
  he just had to, like, add a bit of fuel to each of the fires.
• 45:14
  Now you just sat back and watched it, watch it unfold in
• 45:17
  front of him, really so I don't know if he was really good or
• 45:19
  everybody else really
• 45:20
  Mark Ackers: bad. I think the audience would wonder that as
• 45:22
  well. He had that key moment, obviously, where he got Paul
• 45:25
  banished. That was a big moment. But here's a question I'd love
• 45:28
  to ask you, right? So, and you said at the start, people see
• 45:32
  sales as a bad word. I think you use dirty word. I can't remember
• 45:35
  the exact word, yeah. Did you tell anyone the castle you were
• 45:37
  a salesman. I
• 45:39
  andrew jenkins: did an insurance broker. I think it was an
• 45:41
  insurance broker. Well, they thought that. I don't know, but
• 45:43
  insurance broker, I was an insurance broker at the time. I
• 45:45
  was still doing my insurance
• 45:47
  Mark Ackers: job. So you didn't openly admit therefore you had,
• 45:49
  like, 20 year career in sales, for example, I
• 45:52
  andrew jenkins: don't think so. No, no, no, I didn't know. I
• 45:54
  started lying from day one. Do you think that would
• 45:56
  Mark Ackers: have harmed you? Because I agree what you said,
• 45:59
  like, the perception, again, not people listening to this
• 46:01
  podcast, but the average person on the street, if you were to
• 46:04
  say a little bit like, when people have gone the show and
• 46:06
  said that, yeah, they're an actor or an actress, like,
• 46:08
  straight away, oh, well, that's a true behaviour we saw in the
• 46:12
  last series. You know. Oh, Doctor by day, murderer by
• 46:14
  night, people try and take your occupation. But I think, I think
• 46:18
  with sales, there is just that perception of manipulation,
• 46:22
  right? Again, like you say, putting fuel on the fire, but,
• 46:26
  but really, sounds isn't about that, like sounds is exactly how
• 46:29
  you described at the start. It's about only doing and helping
• 46:34
  someone solve a problem, and your job is to ask the right
• 46:37
  questions and to listen. But that perception is not going to
• 46:40
  be the reality of 22 people in the castle. Do you think if you
• 46:43
  would have been quite open an institute that, Hi everyone. I'm
• 46:46
  Andrew, and I work in sales. Do you think you would have got as
• 46:49
  far as
• 46:50
  andrew jenkins: you did? I think the castle that switched on?
• 46:52
  Yeah, I probably would have. I think I don't know. I don't
• 46:54
  think, I don't know. We just, I think a lot of us just a bit of
• 46:57
  fun. Things were fun. We didn't really play a game. Or I think a
• 47:00
  lot of it's quite surreal. It's hard to say until you get into
• 47:03
  the castle. It's different. It's different. You watch it at home,
• 47:05
  and it's easy to when you watch at home, you think, oh, it's
• 47:07
  obvious who the traitors are, but obviously they edited it in
• 47:10
  a way to make it look good for the television. Don't get me
• 47:12
  wrong, everything you see on the television is exactly like it is
• 47:15
  in real life. Nothing is nothing is scripted. They don't tell you
• 47:18
  what to do, what to say, but obviously the editor, like from
• 47:21
  day one, you know on the television who the traitors are
• 47:23
  from the straight from this first episode or second episode.
• 47:26
  But when you're in the castle, you know you you wouldn't know
• 47:29
  that, and you don't get to spend a huge amount of time with each
• 47:32
  other in the castle, to be honest, you because when you're
• 47:34
  filming, it's such a big place, such a huge, beautiful castle,
• 47:37
  you can't spend all your time with each other. So you're like,
• 47:40
  you got two of you in this room, three. You outside, two. And
• 47:43
  then you have a couple hours in the morning reality TV or
• 47:45
  filming, and then all of a sudden you gotta get ready for
• 47:47
  the mission then, which takes a couple hours of the day. You
• 47:49
  gotta have your health and safety briefing. You gotta drive
• 47:52
  to wherever you're filming. So that takes out a big chunk of
• 47:54
  your day. And by the time you get back then to the castle
• 47:56
  after filming your mission, you gotta get ready of your dinner.
• 47:59
  And then you gotta go to the wrong table then, so you don't
• 48:01
  get a huge amount of time. Amount of time. You get bits of
• 48:04
  time with each other, but not it's not a huge amount of time
• 48:06
  to try and pick up on different behaviours, and different people
• 48:09
  say, twisting each other. You don't really get that much time
• 48:11
  with each other. So it's much harder when you're in the
• 48:13
  castle. He
• 48:13
  Mark Ackers: looks on the telly. So I can well imagine, like you
• 48:16
  say, it's a 24 hour day, and we get 60 minutes every night,
• 48:21
  obviously trimmed down, you had to go from faithful to traitor,
• 48:25
  which, again, I remember that happening because you weren't
• 48:30
  happy about it, but it was a do or die situation. So if you
• 48:33
  understand the game, you had to do that. But I think just from
• 48:35
  everything you shared, just being a trait, wouldn't sit
• 48:38
  naturally to you, right? It's deceitful, it's lying. It's
• 48:41
  manipulating. It's it's doing all the things that you've had a
• 48:45
  whole career not doing. And again, you don't want to be seen
• 48:49
  like that. If you're seeing this as a platform where you can
• 48:52
  build a bit of a name and a brand for yourself, you don't
• 48:55
  want to come out as the bad guy. You know, no, no one likes the
• 48:58
  asshole that was on a reality TV show. So I imagine that was
• 49:01
  quite difficult for you, but equally, you had no option. You
• 49:04
  wanted to stand the game and build your profile as long as
• 49:07
  possible. But how did you find that going from faithful to
• 49:11
  traitor and starting to lie overnight? How did you handle
• 49:14
  that emotional flip? I think if
• 49:15
  andrew jenkins: you watch the show, you could see I was quite
• 49:18
  distraught. I wasn't very happy about changing. I took me. I
• 49:20
  took a while to think about it, and then once I calmed down, and
• 49:23
  after the envelope with my chair, I feel like if I, if I
• 49:25
  didn't join I was gonna get murdered. And that's what they
• 49:27
  told me. Paul and Harry said to me, you're such a strong,
• 49:29
  faithful I didn't get any votes around table. So long any votes
• 49:32
  around table. And then they said, The only way you're gonna
• 49:35
  leave is either getting murdered or joining us. So if you didn't
• 49:38
  join them, I was gonna they would have murdered me the next
• 49:40
  night, so I did the right thing, and I thought to myself at the
• 49:44
  end, it's a game. I The whole time I was in there, my feet
• 49:47
  were firmly on the ground. I'm not a stupid person. Is a game
• 49:50
  at the end of the day, it's an intense game, don't get me
• 49:52
  wrong, but it's a game. I thought my family, they love me
• 49:55
  exactly the same. I come first or tend a lot. It doesn't matter
• 49:58
  where I come. I wanted to stay in. Game, and I thought, people
• 50:00
  will watch it. I was myself. I didn't I didn't lose my temper
• 50:03
  on the television. I didn't shout or cry or make anybody
• 50:06
  cry, because I thought, after the show, I want to do mental
• 50:08
  health and talks and that, so I can't very well be making Molly
• 50:10
  cry shouting at that. And then a couple of weeks later I talk on
• 50:13
  mental health, then I think, well, that's contradictory while
• 50:16
  you're on the telly. So I was I come across. I think I come
• 50:18
  across quite well. I haven't seen any bad feedback, and
• 50:21
  everybody said I was true, I was authentic, I was genuine, and
• 50:24
  that's what I am. I've always been the same. I can't be
• 50:26
  anything. I'm not. And when I when people meet me now, they
• 50:28
  say, you're exactly the same real life as you. I'm gonna tell
• 50:30
  you, see, what do you expect? I am a normal person. I'll never
• 50:32
  change the person I am. Don't care how successful I am, how
• 50:35
  much money I have, I'll never be that. I'll never change. I'll
• 50:37
  always be the same person, and I'll treat every single person
• 50:40
  with the same respect. I don't care if you're a cleaner or a
• 50:43
  CEO of a huge company, I'll speak differently depending who
• 50:45
  I got in front of me, but I'll give them the same respect, and
• 50:48
  I'll treat them all exactly the same. I come from a council
• 50:50
  estate in South Wales, so I know where I come from. I've had to
• 50:53
  work really hard in my life to get what I have, and I've never
• 50:55
  been given anything in my life. My three brothers would say we
• 50:57
  all all successful. Yes, I was. I'm genuine, authentic, and it's
• 51:00
  a game at the end of the day, but I didn't like because it
• 51:02
  goes to like it goes against all my
• 51:04
  Mark Ackers: morals, really, and I can sense that, and I could
• 51:06
  imagine that it's difficult, but like you say, it is a game.
• 51:09
  That's exactly what it is and and you've got to see at the
• 51:12
  table, so to speak. It's interesting what you said
• 51:14
  earlier. So I hadn't realised that, but comes back to me, you
• 51:16
  didn't get a single vote at the round table. And I wonder, was
• 51:20
  that because you were doing what just subconsciously you've been
• 51:23
  doing for 20 years, listening to people, asking questions, having
• 51:27
  empathy, being curious, being interested, to be interesting,
• 51:32
  making about them, not about you, just enough so you're not
• 51:36
  completely under the radar and suspicious, but really using
• 51:40
  your sales skills to build those relationships where you are seen
• 51:44
  as that trusted person, like, it feels like, Well, you didn't
• 51:48
  have that strategy. That's who you are, and it served you
• 51:51
  really well. Is that
• 51:52
  andrew jenkins: fair? You hit the nail on the head there, to
• 51:54
  be honest. I think, yeah, I think everybody liked me, every
• 51:56
  trusted me. And yeah, I was listening to I didn't really,
• 51:58
  like, manipulate anyone, or I didn't really, I didn't spread
• 52:01
  any gossip or anything. I didn't, I didn't lie at all.
• 52:03
  Really, I didn't have to lie at all. I didn't really say I just
• 52:06
  got to know everybody, a little bit of everybody. I got on with
• 52:08
  everybody, I think, in there. And yeah, I say, use my sales
• 52:11
  skill. Like I say, I haven't been known to me. That's what I
• 52:13
  done. I've done naturally all my life, I suppose, yeah, like I
• 52:15
  said, get to know little people, listen to people. And I didn't,
• 52:18
  yeah, I didn't really. I didn't cause any suspicion towards me,
• 52:21
  I suppose I didn't like I didn't tell somebody one thing and tell
• 52:24
  somebody something different. I didn't, I didn't do that. So,
• 52:26
  yeah, you hit the nail on the head, I think, to
• 52:28
  Mark Ackers: be honest, yeah. And when you started wearing a
• 52:29
  cloak, I imagine that's a lot of fun, though, in a way, right?
• 52:32
  Like, it's a lot of fun you get to, you get to sneak around the
• 52:35
  castle doing traitory things, and like, you get more time with
• 52:38
  the producers, and they'll probably make you feel a little
• 52:40
  bit more special and make you feel like you're a bigger star
• 52:43
  in the show. And I imagine it's a lot of fun, but was there a
• 52:46
  moment where you were having to tell lies and looking people in
• 52:51
  the face? And there's a classic phrase, I'm 100% faithful, I
• 52:54
  promise. Like, were you at any point just really uncomfortable
• 52:57
  andrew jenkins: with that? Oh, yeah. Back to the cloak. I've
• 52:58
  always I've loved Luke Skywalker growing up. So I thought I was a
• 53:01
  Jedi. So I've always I love Star Wars, Star Wars, my firm where I
• 53:04
  loved Star Wars, all of the Star Wars films. So putting that
• 53:07
  cloak on me feel like a Jedi Knight. So yeah, but one thing I
• 53:11
  felt really bad for was Ross, because we recruited Ross me,
• 53:14
  and how you recruited Ross, brought him into the castle, I
• 53:16
  brought him into the tractors fold, and then we turned against
• 53:20
  the round table and Ross, I think that was one of the
• 53:22
  reasons I lost. I could have won that game. I think, personally,
• 53:25
  I was going under the radar. I was going to start talking to
• 53:28
  Molly and jazz about Harry, because jazz was 5050, anyway,
• 53:30
  and Molly, I got on really well. There I was like, I was like,
• 53:33
  their dad. I was like, Harry and Molly's dad. They were calling
• 53:35
  me dad, both of them, and they are younger than my son,
• 53:37
  actually. So because I was going to approach things towards the
• 53:40
  end the last few days, whatever. But then Ross went mental at the
• 53:44
  round table. He lost his head at the round table because I said
• 53:46
  the word elusive. So he said, Oh, you called Harry elusive.
• 53:50
  And looking back, I don't know, I just didn't say yes, because I
• 53:53
  thought, if I say yes, now Harry, I had quite a lot of
• 53:55
  people on inside, so if I'd said yes, Harry would have known I
• 53:57
  was going against him. So he would have got me murdered or
• 53:59
  banished the next night. Then. So I thought I said the Ross, I
• 54:01
  thought I said the Ross. I didn't say that word. And he
• 54:03
  went mad, and he changed his vocal round table from Harry,
• 54:06
  are you? I can't remember jazz or something. He changed to me
• 54:09
  after that, after that, then everybody was saying to me,
• 54:11
  Molly, why did he Why did he do that? So I don't know. I
• 54:14
  thought, oh god, he's messing my chat. It's suspicious coming on
• 54:17
  me then. So like, Molly, after the show, said to me, I didn't
• 54:19
  really suspect up until that point. So, so like Ross, Ross
• 54:24
  cost me 95,000 pound. Really, I'm not bitter about it at all.
• 54:27
  But who needs 95,000 pound?
• 54:29
  Mark Ackers: Hopefully he's, he's bought you a pint, at least
• 54:31
  after the after the show. Right now, how stressful was it?
• 54:34
  Because, because I, again, it's saying that sit on the sofa, you
• 54:37
  watch it, and you just think, I don't know if I could live with
• 54:40
  that stress of constantly either as a faithful not knowing, and I
• 54:44
  think that would drive me crazy, the not knowing people in the
• 54:49
  morning, everyone's celebrating, welcome to breakfast. I'm
• 54:51
  thinking, three of you are just liars. I'd really struggle with
• 54:54
  that side of it. And I think I'll just, I think the producers
• 54:58
  have to take me aside and tell. To calm down, because I'd
• 55:01
  struggle with that, but on the flip wearing a traitor cloak and
• 55:04
  just having to constantly think, what have I said? How am I
• 55:07
  acting? What am I doing? It? It caused me such anxiety. Like,
• 55:12
  how stressful was it for you? It was okay
• 55:14
  andrew jenkins: for me. The hardest bit was the wrong the
• 55:15
  round table is not nice, but I was fortunate where I didn't
• 55:18
  really get accused that much at the round table. So I saw
• 55:20
  people. Brian, for example, just totally crumbled, and he started
• 55:23
  muttering and talking to himself. And either what
• 55:25
  happened in him the round table, he's lost the clock, I think he
• 55:28
  accused himself at one point of being a traitor. I don't know
• 55:31
  what happened to him, but I'm a calm guy, a cool guy being a
• 55:34
  bodyguard for letting down your doorman. So I keep my calm, and
• 55:36
  I was okay, but it's not nice when people start accusing you.
• 55:40
  I was a faithful when I got accused by Diane, I think he was
• 55:43
  or somebody accused. I can't remember who, even though he's a
• 55:45
  faithful, I felt you think you get hot inside. You start
• 55:49
  feeling hot, and you start getting your temperature goes
• 55:51
  up, your adrenaline kicks in, and it's not nice. But I guess
• 55:53
  I've seen people, if you've got 2345, people against you, you're
• 55:57
  fighting a losing bat like but that's not a nice feeling. I saw
• 55:59
  like Johnny, for example, I felt so sorry for Johnny because I
• 56:02
  was gonna vote for him, but by the time he got around to me,
• 56:05
  he'd already had six or seven votes, and he was a broken man.
• 56:09
  He just sat there, broken and he's a good he's a great guy.
• 56:12
  He's a lovely guy. And I really got a lot of time for Johnny.
• 56:14
  And I thought, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna kick him or get
• 56:17
  him anymore. He's a human being the end of the day. And all
• 56:19
  these people here. They're human beings. They got real lives. As
• 56:22
  soon as they leave this show, they got a real life for their
• 56:24
  friends and families. They're not going to break people or
• 56:26
  upset people. But yeah, it is stressful. Round Table is can be
• 56:30
  quite stressful, but the game itself, and when you change from
• 56:33
  a faithful to a traitor, that's a bit strange. You just thought
• 56:35
  myself feeling guilty. It took me a few days to get into that
• 56:38
  role, I think, as a traitor. But if the first few days, it looked
• 56:41
  so obvious on the television. It was so obvious. I think the
• 56:44
  breakfast, I was like shocked in breakfast, and it was so obvious
• 56:47
  I was a traitor, genuinely.
• 56:48
  Mark Ackers: If you've not guessed, I could just do the
• 56:49
  whole podcast talking to you about the traitors, but keen to
• 56:52
  move on, because I want to talk about what you're doing now. But
• 56:55
  before I do just my last question, what's it like coming
• 56:58
  out the show with that sun level of attention and recognition,
• 57:01
  and I appreciate you wouldn't say you're famous today, but
• 57:05
  equally, I spotted you at show, and I'm like, well, first of
• 57:08
  all, I was like, I swear I've had a couple of discovery calls
• 57:10
  with this guy. Like, I didn't know where I knew you from. Then
• 57:13
  the penny dropped, and I wanted to come say hello to you, right?
• 57:17
  I'm glad I did, because we sorted out the podcast, even
• 57:19
  though it cost me 20 quid because I lost a bet. I was
• 57:21
  listening. I bet rich Smith, what series you're in. I was
• 57:25
  wrong. I'm so sure as well. But what was it like going from, you
• 57:29
  know, you know, just being a normal person, like you used the
• 57:32
  word nobody earlier on, which is obviously not a nice phrase, but
• 57:35
  being a normal person to being recognised, having people follow
• 57:40
  you on Instagram and Twitter, and people having an opinion of
• 57:43
  you. What is that like?
• 57:44
  andrew jenkins: Nobody can prepare you for that, to be
• 57:46
  honest. Obviously, they're great to their well being. Studio,
• 57:48
  Lambert, who produce the tractors, they've really got
• 57:50
  their well being. It went on for months. The application process
• 57:53
  goes on for quite a few, quite a while, I suppose. And they tell
• 57:56
  you all that, and we know, you know, we're gonna get involved
• 57:58
  in and your media and all this sort of thing. And people will
• 58:00
  come out to the woodwork and say, you know, nice things about
• 58:02
  you. And things about you and doing it, but nobody can
• 58:04
  actually prepare you to actually happens. And when you're on the
• 58:07
  show, it's strange. Whenever you leave the show, you've got a
• 58:09
  different experience, I suppose, and it's hard. So like Aubrey,
• 58:12
  for example. So for months and months and months he built up in
• 58:16
  his head, and he'll be back, and you're on the show, and he gets
• 58:18
  voted off first. So there's months and months and months of
• 58:20
  planning. He gets voted off the first day. So, like, you didn't
• 58:23
  see Aubrey again then and then, obviously, other end of the
• 58:25
  scale, and the winner is totally different world he's in now. But
• 58:28
  I like, for me, I come forth. So I'm quite a recognisable person.
• 58:31
  I said, I've got a big guy scars, and I quite memorable. I
• 58:34
  suppose. I get recognised all the time when I go places. Now,
• 58:36
  18 months later, I get asked about it all the time. And about
• 58:39
  the first couple of months was crazy. Wherever you go, every in
• 58:42
  Cardiff or whatever I was I'm sitting with my partner or
• 58:45
  sitting with my son on a quiet meal, and you got so many coming
• 58:48
  over to you, coming over to you, constantly coming over with your
• 58:50
  kind of photo, girl photo, the number of times I left early,
• 58:53
  whatever I was able to go home. I saw it. I saw overwhelming. It
• 58:57
  says so much I like talking. As you can tell. I like talking and
• 59:00
  meeting people and everybody come up. You had they were all
• 59:03
  amazing. Lovely feedback. He was such a great guy. You should
• 59:06
  have won you the best traitor. Your lovely your lovely story.
• 59:09
  And so I never any bad feedback. But it's still sometimes you
• 59:11
  want a bit of privacy, to sit with your family or sit with
• 59:14
  somebody. But it's relentless. And you sat on a train coming
• 59:17
  back from Manchester and people walking past, kind of taking
• 59:19
  photos or sneaky photos. You on the sly and that, and you can
• 59:22
  see him doing under their arm or so, taking a photo. And that is
• 59:24
  a bit it's funny. But I can't imagine our real celebrities,
• 59:28
  how they how they manage all that constantly, all the time,
• 59:30
  all these big celebrities where it's like, everything you say,
• 59:33
  everything you do, it in the paper straight away, the guy
• 59:35
  went for a massage, or if I'm going to see a chiropractor, the
• 59:37
  next day, I posted on my Instagram this, I've been seeing
• 59:40
  him for a couple of years. I post on my Instagram that day,
• 59:43
  or internet, in the newspapers and the next day. This is where
• 59:46
  Andrew keeps his body in shape. This guy literally the next day
• 59:49
  from Instagram. The next day, it's all the newspapers in the
• 59:52
  sun, the Daily Mirror showing us your chiropractor. It's funny,
• 59:55
  like it's not even good news. It's rubbish news, to be honest.
• 59:58
  But yeah, it's funny. Write about. So it's fun. I just think
• 1:00:01
  it's been a fun debate. I enjoy it. And I'm not a celebrity.
• 1:00:04
  People, you're famous. And I said, I'm just a normal guy. I'm
• 1:00:07
  not. I'll never change. But there are some negative
• 1:00:09
  downsides to her as well. Other people come out the woodwork,
• 1:00:11
  turning lies on you, trying to manipulate and tell lies and
• 1:00:14
  sell stories now. So it's not nice. There is stressful as
• 1:00:16
  Mark Ackers: well. So I should ask Andrew like because everyone
• 1:00:19
  else will be thinking this when you're saying home, watching it
• 1:00:23
  back on TV. I'm guessing it's like five, six months later.
• 1:00:26
  What does that feel like?
• 1:00:28
  andrew jenkins: Cringy, I hate the sound of my voice. I don't
• 1:00:29
  hate I don't hate anything, but the sound you don't sound
• 1:00:32
  anything like in real life. Of I don't think you're doing it's
• 1:00:34
  the same. Whenever I talk to people, people say that's what
• 1:00:36
  you sound like, though I don't think I sound like that. It's
• 1:00:38
  the same as well. When you listen to yourself back, or
• 1:00:40
  anybody listens to themselves back. You don't sound like that.
• 1:00:43
  But, and I don't get to see it on the television. I don't get
• 1:00:45
  to see it before you, so I'm waiting, the same as everybody
• 1:00:48
  else from the country, waiting to watch it like you said. I
• 1:00:50
  filmed it five months, six months before, so I can't
• 1:00:53
  remember what happened to what I said six months ago. So sat
• 1:00:56
  there thinking, Oh, please don't say but I know I didn't do
• 1:00:59
  anything bad anyway. But you can't remember all the stuff we
• 1:01:01
  did and said, and it's funny when he walks in the back. So I
• 1:01:04
  every Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, I sat there waiting,
• 1:01:06
  watching your family waiting this year. And obviously the
• 1:01:10
  editor version is incredible. It's like a film, to be honest,
• 1:01:12
  with the owl everywhere. And it's brilliant. Well, yeah, it's
• 1:01:15
  brilliant while you see on the telly, but it's strangely
• 1:01:18
  listening to people talking about you. And yeah, you listen
• 1:01:21
  to people they said on your back, and things. And it's quite
• 1:01:23
  fun here. But it is funny. It is strange, though it's very
• 1:01:27
  strange. Did
• 1:01:28
  Mark Ackers: you all have, like, a big Whatsapp group? We have
• 1:01:29
  still got the WhatsApp group. Yeah. And if you don't mind,
• 1:01:32
  because I always find like, what's, what's the name of the
• 1:01:34
  group? Is anything interesting, other than traitors
• 1:01:36
  andrew jenkins: 2024, traitors family. It's just called no
• 1:01:38
  date, just traders family. And
• 1:01:39
  Mark Ackers: is every contestant in it. Yeah, good stuff. Work.
• 1:01:42
  So again, you can tell I love the show. I could talk to you
• 1:01:45
  about that for the whole podcast, but I really want to
• 1:01:48
  talk about now what you're doing since, because that was the aim,
• 1:01:50
  right? If I can get on this show, I can build a platform for
• 1:01:53
  myself. Can really talk about mental health and drive that
• 1:01:56
  awareness. So after the show, you've come out, you've you've
• 1:01:58
  launched Andrew Jenkins coaching. Tell us what, what
• 1:02:02
  does that business do?
• 1:02:03
  andrew jenkins: My main, my main income stream, or what I would
• 1:02:06
  do mainly, what I enjoy that my passion is two things, I
• 1:02:09
  suppose, doing the keynote talks, but I call them
• 1:02:11
  educational talks. I don't call myself a keynote speaker or a
• 1:02:14
  motivational speaker, because they are so boring. I've seen so
• 1:02:16
  many of them over the last 20 odd years in rugby clubs and
• 1:02:19
  things I think, yeah, good talk. I am relatable, so I call myself
• 1:02:23
  an educational speaker. Or I like them. Call them educational
• 1:02:26
  talks because I want the audience to take things away
• 1:02:28
  they can implement in their lives, their friends, their
• 1:02:30
  families, their work colleagues, for example, because my story is
• 1:02:33
  relatable to millions in this country. So my upbringing was
• 1:02:36
  fine and my upbringing was good. We just didn't talk about
• 1:02:38
  feelings and emotions and that. So, you know, I talk about
• 1:02:41
  failure. You know, I thought failure was a bad thing growing
• 1:02:44
  up, and I wouldn't step in my comfort zone. So I stayed in my
• 1:02:47
  comfort zone, or my fixed mindset for many, many years
• 1:02:49
  now. The last couple of years, I've stepped massive up my
• 1:02:51
  comfort zone, but I enjoy it. I got a growth mindset now. So I
• 1:02:55
  talk about that. I talk about social media. Talk about a lot
• 1:02:57
  of social media, which I've been involved in a lot the last year,
• 1:02:59
  which is massive at the moment. So I do a lot of talks, and I
• 1:03:02
  also like working in schools with the younger generation,
• 1:03:04
  because I think if you want to change the culture in this
• 1:03:07
  country, we have to educate the next generation, the kids, the
• 1:03:09
  children. Because it's all very well me standing up in front of
• 1:03:12
  corporate companies women and men in their 30s, 40s, 50s. But
• 1:03:16
  then if you want to have change in this country, we got to talk
• 1:03:18
  to the younger generation, talk to them about you know,
• 1:03:21
  feelings, emotions, and it's okay to fail. It's not a bad
• 1:03:23
  thing. And I say what I think I want. I love going to school and
• 1:03:26
  talking to kids, and that's my purpose, I think, in my passion
• 1:03:29
  in life, and meeting that doctor who saved my life, he gave me,
• 1:03:32
  my purpose in life is what I'm doing now. I also do lots of
• 1:03:34
  workshops as well, around resilience, vulnerability,
• 1:03:37
  leadership. So I break my talk down into, like, different,
• 1:03:40
  different workshops, really. So what I've been through, what I
• 1:03:42
  experienced myself in a corporate world, and it's funny,
• 1:03:45
  I tick lots of boxes. I've been in a corporate world for 30
• 1:03:48
  years, successfully. I was told to never walk ever again. I've
• 1:03:50
  been in a coma. I lost my self confidence, my self esteem was
• 1:03:54
  nothing and no self esteem. So I talk about that, which is a
• 1:03:56
  massive problem at the moment. Yes, I everything I talk about
• 1:04:00
  is things I've experienced or overcome myself, to be honest.
• 1:04:02
  So nobody can ever say to me, what do you sell your tax book
• 1:04:05
  for five years? What do you know? Well, I know because I've
• 1:04:07
  been through myself. I
• 1:04:08
  Mark Ackers: think that leads back to what I labelled for you
• 1:04:10
  as a superpower that you didn't mention. Storytelling coming,
• 1:04:13
  coming from a place of I've done this and and that's what, that's
• 1:04:17
  what lands with people authenticity. This person's
• 1:04:21
  walked and lived and breathed the story they're sharing. I've
• 1:04:24
  got your workshops in front of me, So in no particular order.
• 1:04:27
  Well, they're all on your website, so maybe there is a
• 1:04:30
  particular order, but one's called dare to be real the power
• 1:04:33
  of vulnerability in leadership. One is the failure is not final.
• 1:04:37
  So cultivating a growth mindset in teams, and then we got the
• 1:04:40
  resilience revolution, which is empowering leaders to combat
• 1:04:44
  burnout. And then there's thriving minds unleashing the
• 1:04:47
  power of mental well being at work, I'm sure you'd say all of
• 1:04:50
  them. But if you had to pick what's your favourite one to
• 1:04:53
  deliver and why, I enjoy
• 1:04:55
  andrew jenkins: the I like I like them all, but I enjoy the
• 1:04:56
  failure one, to be honest, because there's such a stigma
• 1:04:59
  out there the failure. Yeah, and I've been through myself in my
• 1:05:02
  sales job, I suppose, where leaders used to shame people
• 1:05:05
  into performing. I say you're not gonna get the best out of
• 1:05:08
  your staff by shaming them your bottom of the league table, the
• 1:05:11
  bottom of the KPI. You're at this KPI, and like in the bank
• 1:05:15
  years ago, if you did it to target the individual target
• 1:05:17
  that day, or you didn't sell your ppi, for example, on a
• 1:05:20
  loan, sometimes the manager make you stand up in the morning,
• 1:05:22
  huddle in front of the whole branch, tell the branch why the
• 1:05:25
  branch in this target yesterday, or why you didn't do your PPI
• 1:05:28
  yesterday. They're trying to make you look you know, shame
• 1:05:30
  you I say that's the wrong way of doing things like vulnerable
• 1:05:32
  leading is good, and people think vulnerable is like the
• 1:05:35
  boss is crying or making sure they're weak. I say it's not
• 1:05:37
  about that. It's about humanising yourself, and it
• 1:05:39
  creates a much better culture in your workplace, in your
• 1:05:42
  environment, in your office. I said, because when you're at the
• 1:05:44
  top of the ladder, when you're an employer, what you're looking
• 1:05:47
  at these MDS and their CEOs, these large companies, and
• 1:05:49
  you're thinking, they're like, God, they're untouchable. They
• 1:05:51
  never make any mistakes. They're perfect. I see the leaders admit
• 1:05:53
  to your staff you've made mistakes in the past, but also
• 1:05:56
  how you overcome them. And then so people can say, well, I'm
• 1:05:59
  making mistakes off it's not a bad thing. I won't get chastise.
• 1:06:02
  I won't get dragged over the coals or made to look stupid if
• 1:06:04
  I'm open, honest. Because if you, if you are vulnerable
• 1:06:07
  people in your workplace, everybody wants to contribute.
• 1:06:10
  Nobody's scared of failing. Everybody contributes good
• 1:06:13
  ideas. It's much innovative, creative company as well. So
• 1:06:16
  yes, that's what, that's what I think is really so,
• 1:06:19
  Mark Ackers: yeah, so here's what's difficult about the sales
• 1:06:21
  world and being vulnerable and failure. And I want to hear what
• 1:06:24
  you say to this, but you mentioned right at the start,
• 1:06:28
  egos. I believe everyone in sales. I mean, I believe most
• 1:06:34
  people in general, but everyone in sales has an ego to some
• 1:06:37
  extent, like it can be really small, really big, but
• 1:06:40
  everyone's got a level of ego. It just depends where they are
• 1:06:44
  on the scale. So there's ego there, then there's no one
• 1:06:47
  really wanted to be in sales. We all sort of fell into sales,
• 1:06:49
  right? Like no no one grows up saying they want to be a
• 1:06:52
  salesperson. When you go into schools, I bet no one says to
• 1:06:55
  you they want to grow up and be a salesperson,
• 1:06:57
  andrew jenkins: especially insurance broker. Nobody ever
• 1:06:59
  wants to be an insurance broker, right, exactly.
• 1:07:01
  Mark Ackers: And then you've got the failure. Well, if you fail,
• 1:07:05
  you lose your job. And actually, if you fail a couple of quarters
• 1:07:09
  in a row, you can lose your job. It can be very hard. And then,
• 1:07:12
  like you say, it's leaderboards, it's KPIs, it's targets, it's
• 1:07:16
  about every part of a sales rep is measured on revenue and
• 1:07:20
  activity and they're successful, one quarter that's back to zero,
• 1:07:24
  and there's that competition, and then you've got the ego
• 1:07:26
  side. It's such a cauldron of emotion that you can understand
• 1:07:31
  why people are afraid to fail. And here's the biggest problem,
• 1:07:35
  when you're afraid to fail in sales, it leads to the wrong
• 1:07:38
  behaviours that you push into your prospects. That's when you
• 1:07:41
  start selling the wrong thing. That's when you start acting
• 1:07:43
  desperate. That's when you start being pushy. That's when you
• 1:07:46
  stop doing what you said. Why do you even want this product? What
• 1:07:49
  is it you wrong with your product today? What room you're
• 1:07:52
  gonna watch the TV in? Why are you gonna use it? Whatever
• 1:07:55
  example, whether it's TVs at Curry's, it's finance products
• 1:07:58
  at Lloyds or insurance products. But it's really difficult. How
• 1:08:02
  can we embrace this as a salesperson failure? How can we
• 1:08:04
  embrace this? And it is tough, and I'm gonna
• 1:08:06
  andrew jenkins: say again, I'm gonna sit here. This is easy,
• 1:08:08
  because I've been under lots of pressure over the year of many
• 1:08:10
  years, I suppose, where I mean, but I think it starts from the
• 1:08:12
  top of a company. It does start from the top, but I say to
• 1:08:15
  people, normally, nobody really goes to work to do a bad job.
• 1:08:18
  Don't get me wrong, there are people out there who are
• 1:08:20
  sabotage. That's different conversation altogether. Then.
• 1:08:23
  So I think there's a skill issue. Is a will issue, pure of
• 1:08:26
  skill and will. If they got a will issue, that's a different
• 1:08:28
  conversation. And if they got a bad attitude or change, they
• 1:08:30
  needed that something different. That's a maybe a coaching plan
• 1:08:33
  or a PIP or whatever. But they've got a skill issue. You
• 1:08:36
  recruited that person for a reason. You obviously bleeding
• 1:08:38
  that person when you recruited them. They got the skills, they
• 1:08:41
  got the knowledge, they got the experience. They got the
• 1:08:43
  experience. You obviously like that person. Recruited them,
• 1:08:45
  then, you know, coach them, nurture them, give them, give
• 1:08:47
  them the right skills and right tools to be able to be
• 1:08:49
  successful. You know, not. You know, people go through bad
• 1:08:51
  times in life, and you know, outside things in work might be
• 1:08:54
  causing that, and people say, don't bring things into work.
• 1:08:57
  We're all human. We all got feelings and emotions. If you go
• 1:08:59
  through a divorce or somebody died, course, you're gonna bring
• 1:09:02
  into work, you know, in a robot, so at the end of the day, and I
• 1:09:04
  used to take my things into work sometimes, but I guess having a
• 1:09:07
  good manager to try and know their staff and find out what
• 1:09:10
  makes them tick. And when I do my you know, when I was a
• 1:09:12
  manager for many years, lots of different branches I worked in,
• 1:09:15
  I was trying to treat every member of my staff as
• 1:09:17
  individuals, but also found out why they came into work that
• 1:09:20
  day, what makes them get up every single day and come into
• 1:09:22
  work and come into work every day? And people saw money? I
• 1:09:24
  said, No, it's not money. Everybody can save more money.
• 1:09:26
  It's what are you going to do with that money? Or send my
• 1:09:29
  little boy to university, buy my girl her first car? Right? So
• 1:09:32
  that's your motivating fact, that's your purpose. And every
• 1:09:35
  time you want to stop doing something or do something,
• 1:09:37
  remember your purpose, your why. It's just about treating your
• 1:09:40
  employees and find out, you know, treat them all as
• 1:09:42
  individuals and actually find out what makes them tick. I
• 1:09:45
  suppose we're also coach them and nurture them getting the
• 1:09:47
  right skills to be successful. So I think everybody's got the
• 1:09:51
  ability to be successful the right with the right coach and
• 1:09:53
  the right
• 1:09:53
  Mark Ackers: support. I believe that as well wholeheartedly, the
• 1:09:56
  challenge is time. Most people don't get the time that they
• 1:09:59
  need to. Be successful and like sports, a really good analogy
• 1:10:02
  for that. I can't really talk rugby to you, because you'd find
• 1:10:05
  out I don't have a clue about rugby. But when it comes to
• 1:10:08
  football, like management is just a great example. If you're
• 1:10:11
  not successful, you can lose your job after six, seven games
• 1:10:14
  in sales, it's a couple of quarters. I think what you said
• 1:10:16
  is really interesting, though, right? So first of all, let's
• 1:10:19
  talk about recruitment, like you say, is it a skill or a will
• 1:10:21
  thing? One of the things is really interesting. So my sales
• 1:10:24
  coach, we we provide evaluations where we can evaluate sales
• 1:10:28
  people, and we evaluate them against 21 core sales
• 1:10:32
  competencies, and it benchmarks them against 2.5 million sales
• 1:10:36
  people. Is incredibly detailed, scientific research, proven,
• 1:10:41
  validated assessment. But you know, the number one competency,
• 1:10:44
  that's the most important is commitment. If they're not
• 1:10:47
  committed, no matter what you do, they are not going to be
• 1:10:50
  successful. So I think the commitments there, that's the
• 1:10:53
  will thing. Then it comes down to a skill thing. And like you
• 1:10:57
  say, you've hired them, you believe in them, but it comes
• 1:10:59
  down to now enabling them and coaching them. Here's the
• 1:11:03
  problem in sales, and you've experienced this, good
• 1:11:06
  salespeople get promoted because they're good sales people. That
• 1:11:10
  doesn't make them a good coach. And you've said yourself,
• 1:11:13
  there's good coaches and bad coaches. How do we solve this
• 1:11:15
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• 1:11:18
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• 1:11:21
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• 1:11:39
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• 1:11:42
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• 1:11:45
  andrew jenkins: I see it so many times, if people get promoted in
• 1:11:47
  the bank, for example, to management positions because
• 1:11:50
  they were good at sales I said, they're two totally different
• 1:11:52
  skill sets. They're totally different. I said, you know,
• 1:11:54
  sales people got one different you know, I'm not saying they
• 1:11:57
  can't be but a lot of the time these good sales people are
• 1:11:59
  quite ruthless and they're quickly, they're good sales
• 1:12:01
  people, whereas the management are more nurturing people, more
• 1:12:04
  empathetic, and they're different skill set all
• 1:12:06
  together. So I know lots of people have been promoted into
• 1:12:08
  thrust into a management position, and they fail them
• 1:12:10
  because they don't get the right level of support and coaching,
• 1:12:13
  they've got the right tools, and they end up failing. They end up
• 1:12:15
  feeling vulnerable or failing as a manager. Then, because they
• 1:12:18
  weren't given the right skills, they end up on a pip and end up
• 1:12:20
  under so much pressure. I said, Well, no, it's the bosses, the
• 1:12:22
  people of tops fault for giving that job in the first place,
• 1:12:25
  doing them today, anything to prove that a good manager? No, I
• 1:12:28
  was a good salesperson, but I like to think I was a good
• 1:12:30
  manager as well, but because I'm a good listener, so that's a
• 1:12:32
  really important thing. When you start, you get to know I got to
• 1:12:35
  know the customer. I got to know my staff as well. So I could
• 1:12:37
  transition between sales and management quite smoothly, to be
• 1:12:40
  honest, apart from the compliance, and learn the
• 1:12:42
  compliance in the background stuff and but I treat my staff
• 1:12:45
  really well as a good listener to my staff as well. So I always
• 1:12:47
  try and find out what's going on at home as well. Try and find
• 1:12:50
  out what's going on their lives outside of work as well. You
• 1:12:52
  know, it's really important to make that, make that staff and
• 1:12:54
  feel valued, and that there was one occasion, for example, where
• 1:12:57
  there was one lad, he used to come in late every day, and
• 1:13:00
  nobody had taken the time to sit with him or find out why. They
• 1:13:03
  always to slag him off and bend his back and that he's a pain.
• 1:13:06
  He's coming in late all the time. So the branch is open at
• 1:13:09
  nine o'clock, and they got to be up and running in by nine
• 1:13:11
  o'clock. So I say, right, taking emotions out of the situation.
• 1:13:13
  I've always learned, if you want to have a difficult
• 1:13:15
  conversation, take the emotion out of it based on facts and
• 1:13:18
  evidence. So he's coming late, but I used to make a note to
• 1:13:20
  make a note to it for a week or two. When I went to the branch I
• 1:13:23
  was working, I made a note to me. I sat him down and said, I
• 1:13:26
  know, what time do you have to what's your opening hours in
• 1:13:28
  working hours? He said, I gotta be up, alright, so tell me.
• 1:13:31
  Then, why did you come into work 10 past so you can't argue back
• 1:13:34
  with her. Then if I had another evidence, I said, you come late?
• 1:13:37
  You would have said, No, I'm not. Yeah, I didn't end up an
• 1:13:39
  emotional thing. Emotionally got involved. Then he was a nice guy
• 1:13:42
  as well. I say to people, strip the emotion out of the situation
• 1:13:45
  and base it on evidence of facts. And nobody can really
• 1:13:48
  argue with that then. So I said, you're telling me, but I dug
• 1:13:50
  deep bugs. I'm a firm believer in everything in life, and
• 1:13:53
  something called Root Cause Analysis. Get to the root cause
• 1:13:55
  of the problem. Peel back the layers of the onion. There's
• 1:13:57
  lots of analogies for it. So I drill drill down, drill down.
• 1:14:00
  Basically, his partner was suffering with severe
• 1:14:03
  depression. They had two young children, so he was having to
• 1:14:05
  try and get the kids ready for school in the morning, look
• 1:14:08
  after his partner get to work on time. So he was stressed to the
• 1:14:11
  max, and he carried on for months. So I just said doing
• 1:14:13
  right simply, if you is too few things we can do. We could
• 1:14:17
  change your working hours from nine to 930 start, and I'm half
• 1:14:20
  an hour for lunch, and that's what we did in the end. It
• 1:14:23
  changed this guy's life. Everybody in the branch knew
• 1:14:25
  that he started Half past nights. Rather than slagging him
• 1:14:27
  off and moving behind his back, they knew he started out by
• 1:14:30
  saying, basically, right, he starts half past nine. Now he
• 1:14:32
  was half hour for lunch to make up for lunchtime. So like he
• 1:14:34
  said to me, nobody has sat to me and taken the time to find that
• 1:14:38
  information out. They all just put me on a pip. They all just
• 1:14:40
  said this and said that. They all he was a problem employee,
• 1:14:43
  if you like. But I took the time to sit down and drill, and I
• 1:14:45
  said, it's really important. That's why you got to treat all
• 1:14:47
  your staff members individually, you know? And I think I said, I
• 1:14:50
  don't think he didn't, he wasn't doing it on purpose. There's a
• 1:14:52
  reason behind something. And I always try and look at people, I
• 1:14:55
  think, right, why are they saying that? Why are they acting
• 1:14:57
  like that? And there's always a reason, most of the times, a
• 1:14:59
  reason. In behind it. I think
• 1:15:00
  Mark Ackers: there's two sides to that story. So one, you've
• 1:15:02
  done an incredible job of separating emotion to logic and
• 1:15:07
  getting to the root cause. So you've done a good job there.
• 1:15:11
  But here's the problem that we're not talking about that we
• 1:15:14
  have discussed earlier. That individual, let's give them a
• 1:15:18
  name like I don't mind if you use a fake name. What's their
• 1:15:20
  name, David. So David is suffering in silence. Why is
• 1:15:25
  David not speaking up? And again, this is the world of
• 1:15:30
  sales, right? We we come into to a sales role. We've got
• 1:15:33
  pressure, pressure, pressure. Every week. You start back at
• 1:15:36
  zero, every month, every quarter, back at zero. KPIs,
• 1:15:39
  tight. But we're human beings, as you mentioned about people in
• 1:15:42
  the track, human beings, you're gonna go home or leave the show,
• 1:15:45
  whatever, go back to normal lives. And so everyone's got
• 1:15:48
  their own shit to be dealing with. When you come into work,
• 1:15:51
  we feel like we can't speak up. We can't say, I need help. Why
• 1:15:55
  is this? Why do people feel this way? It's
• 1:15:57
  andrew jenkins: fear in it. I think it's fear, fear of
• 1:15:59
  failure, fear scared if they if their manager is not very open,
• 1:16:02
  and nobody you know very open about talking about things, you
• 1:16:05
  feel scared. You're scared, I suppose, in fear of fear of
• 1:16:07
  being dismissed, fear of being sacked, fear of being put on a
• 1:16:10
  coaching plan for you, being part of PIP, and nobody wants
• 1:16:12
  that's all added stress and pressure. And there's so much
• 1:16:15
  pressure out there at the moment, the world in general is
• 1:16:17
  just a fearful world. I think every stress, their money is a
• 1:16:19
  big problem every at the moment. And it's a tough, it's a tough
• 1:16:22
  world there at the moment, I mean, but I think, I think it's,
• 1:16:24
  I think a lot more leaders and managers and team leaders need a
• 1:16:27
  lot more coaching and support. I think to, you know, show them
• 1:16:30
  the benefits of looking after the employees, well being. Show
• 1:16:32
  the tell the manager, if you started doing this, you get x, y
• 1:16:35
  and z off the back your employees, like that boy, I had
• 1:16:37
  his loyalty that after I did that for him, I could have told
• 1:16:40
  him to ask him do anything. He would have done it for me. He
• 1:16:42
  had done it for me, he worked extra hours not being asked
• 1:16:44
  because he like I think, he felt listened to, seen and valued,
• 1:16:47
  and that's all people want these days, is feel listened to and
• 1:16:50
  valued and seen, I suppose. And he did so after just taking that
• 1:16:54
  time to have that conversation, and people say, I get it. People
• 1:16:56
  don't have a difficult conversation. I said it doesn't
• 1:16:59
  have to be a difficult conversation, you base it on
• 1:17:01
  evidence fact, like targets, for example, your target is this,
• 1:17:05
  but are you coming at this? They can't argue with that and then,
• 1:17:07
  but also then find out, why is it something going on? Why they
• 1:17:11
  need more support regarding objection handling? They need
• 1:17:14
  more support around telemarketing. They more say,
• 1:17:16
  find out what is, and give that person that support and coaching
• 1:17:19
  and to be successful. Because I, when I was a manager, it was my
• 1:17:23
  whole team was successful. It wasn't just me on my own being
• 1:17:25
  successful. I got a buzz that everybody else in that team
• 1:17:28
  being successful, and I was helping coach and nurture them.
• 1:17:31
  I struggled with that for you for a while, actually, to be
• 1:17:33
  honest, because I'm I love hitting my own personal targets.
• 1:17:36
  I love being the best. And when I was a manager for the first
• 1:17:38
  year or two, my boss would say to me, you didn't work till nine
• 1:17:41
  o'clock every night, your team have gone over five o'clock.
• 1:17:44
  You're doing all the work. You're doing all the sales. Give
• 1:17:47
  them to other people. I say, No, but nobody can do a good a job
• 1:17:50
  as me. He said, I know, but you've got to try and coach and
• 1:17:52
  sail and help them to be as good as what you are, otherwise you
• 1:17:56
  get burned out. And he says, how good a manager are you? If
• 1:17:59
  you're doing more sales and your team. What are they going to
• 1:18:02
  think if you're not getting coached or helped or support?
• 1:18:04
  Guy was there rushing around, seeing all the customers, and I
• 1:18:06
  was busy, and I found it really hard to let go, let go. I found
• 1:18:10
  that really hard to try. And I'd rather do the sales and see the
• 1:18:13
  customer myself and help coach other people. I did find it
• 1:18:15
  really hard to step or not step away completely, but I found it
• 1:18:18
  tough. So I was doing more sales than my sales people I was
• 1:18:21
  hitting. I was doing more times. Doing more. I was hitting more
• 1:18:24
  sales than them, every day, every week, every month, for the
• 1:18:27
  first year, two years, probably I say my sales matter my
• 1:18:29
  management career.
• 1:18:30
  Mark Ackers: I think every manager listen to this will
• 1:18:32
  resonate, because you've been a top performer, you've been
• 1:18:34
  promoted. You know what success looks like, but now you got
• 1:18:37
  across the chasm of helping someone else fill that gap. And
• 1:18:42
  you mentioned you got so at least one. How many children
• 1:18:45
  have you got? I got one boy. He's 24 years so did you teach
• 1:18:48
  him to ride a bike at some point in his life? Yeah, a little bit
• 1:18:51
  like I remember when I taught my son last summer to ride his
• 1:18:55
  bike, I had to say to at the very beginning, you are going to
• 1:18:58
  fall off. You are going to hurt yourself, you are going to cry,
• 1:19:02
  but at the end of this you will be able to ride a bike
• 1:19:05
  confidently. But we don't want to let our kids fall off the
• 1:19:07
  bike. We want to do it on grass. When grass is really hard to
• 1:19:10
  ride it, you want to ride on the bike. It's really tough, right?
• 1:19:12
  Like that analogy of you've got to let them fail. And I think
• 1:19:17
  that's the difficulty that sales leaders have because they've
• 1:19:19
  been promoted because they're good at sales, not because
• 1:19:22
  they're a good manager and and you've got
• 1:19:25
  andrew jenkins: to ego. I think it's back to ego, isn't it? I
• 1:19:27
  like being top of the league table. I like being I like
• 1:19:29
  hitting targets. I like being top of the table. I like being
• 1:19:32
  the best, to be honest, after being sporty all my life, being
• 1:19:35
  a winner, I like to be. I like to be. It is an ego thing as
• 1:19:38
  well. Letting go your ego, which is tough, like you said earlier
• 1:19:40
  on, I think not just sales people. Every single person's
• 1:19:44
  got some little ego inside them. How big or small that is? I
• 1:19:47
  think that's fine, but everybody's got a bit of ego.
• 1:19:50
  Everybody has,
• 1:19:50
  Mark Ackers: and social media is, in the last 15 years, done
• 1:19:54
  nothing but exaggerate, terrible and that need for approval, etc.
• 1:19:59
  Yeah. Yeah, as I say, it comes back down to though your
• 1:20:03
  favourite talk to deliver, and I know you like them all, but that
• 1:20:06
  failure, right? And that's difficulty, one of the things
• 1:20:09
  that you've mentioned a lot, it's almost like you were
• 1:20:13
  prompted, even though you was not, is coaching, right? Like
• 1:20:16
  you spoke a lot about the impact of coaching, here's the thing
• 1:20:20
  that I know you know to be true, but I just wanna get your hot
• 1:20:22
  take on it. Most sales people, most managers, do not get
• 1:20:26
  coaching, and if they do, it's not regular, it's infrequent.
• 1:20:29
  It's too late. Why do you think that is? And more importantly,
• 1:20:33
  what impact can regular coaching have on sales professionals and
• 1:20:38
  managers? It's really important. Coaching is
• 1:20:39
  andrew jenkins: so important, than ever. It doesn't matter if
• 1:20:42
  you're a top performer. It doesn't matter like look at all
• 1:20:44
  you know, footballers out go back to football. Cristiano,
• 1:20:46
  Ronaldo as a coach. He's the best. I think Percy, this is
• 1:20:49
  subjective. I think he's the best player, better than Messi,
• 1:20:52
  but that's my opinion. That could cause a massive debate.
• 1:20:54
  But I think he is. But well, he hasn't got a coach. Of course.
• 1:20:57
  He's got a coach. Everybody, every sportsman, a boxer, world
• 1:21:00
  champion boxer, you sick. He's got a coach. He's a full belt
• 1:21:03
  World World Champion, and he's got a coach. So sales is exactly
• 1:21:07
  the same as every now and again. You may get complacent if you've
• 1:21:10
  got a growth mindset. I'm always I crave feedback after every
• 1:21:13
  talk I do, after every workshop, whatever I do, I say to people,
• 1:21:16
  I want feedback. Good and Bad, the way I'm going to learn and
• 1:21:19
  get better is not constructive feedback, because there's some
• 1:21:23
  feedback just pointless, and there's other people who can't
• 1:21:25
  give feedback. Giving feedback is a skill as well listed as a
• 1:21:28
  skill, but some people give feedback, but no, it was. It's
• 1:21:30
  not constructive. You can't take nothing from it. So constructive
• 1:21:33
  feedback. How you give the feedback? Make sure you don't
• 1:21:35
  damage somebody's confidence, or really back to them. Give them
• 1:21:37
  in a right but get that person give you the answers. Say, how
• 1:21:40
  do you think that went? I let them tell you. And normally, if
• 1:21:44
  you know if you're in a way person or switched on, but you
• 1:21:46
  know if someone hasn't gone right or wrong, you know if it's
• 1:21:48
  a sportsman as a salesperson, you know if something's gone
• 1:21:51
  wrong. And normally, people come up with their own answers
• 1:21:54
  themselves. So you get rather than you tell him, I think you
• 1:21:57
  should learn this. If you tell somebody how to do so in the
• 1:21:59
  chances of doing us continuing to do it are slim, but if they
• 1:22:02
  come up with the answers themselves, they think they come
• 1:22:04
  up the answer themselves. They are. They're going to more
• 1:22:06
  likely to do it and carry it on then. So, yeah, so I think it's
• 1:22:09
  really important to listen to Yes, it's really, it's an
• 1:22:12
  important skill
• 1:22:13
  Mark Ackers: that is, yeah, it certainly is. And look, Andrew,
• 1:22:15
  I'm conscious we're coming towards the end of our time
• 1:22:18
  together. I've loved so many of the things that we've spoken
• 1:22:21
  about today, and I feel like we share a lot of beliefs in terms
• 1:22:25
  of what sales is, the importance of coaching Ronaldo being the
• 1:22:29
  best. I certainly agree with you there. I found it a really
• 1:22:33
  interesting podcast. Like, we've had some real, like, sobering
• 1:22:37
  moments, and I love how much you've shared, but it is. It's
• 1:22:41
  been sobering to sit and listen, actually tough as the host, to
• 1:22:44
  sit and listen to some of the things that you've gone through
• 1:22:46
  and and think, am I asking the right questions? Because most
• 1:22:49
  people don't open up like that, and I really applaud you for
• 1:22:51
  that, but, but then we've had some real highs, like, I've
• 1:22:53
  loved talking about the traitors. I've loved hearing
• 1:22:55
  about how you sold and got into that world. I love what you're
• 1:22:58
  doing with your with your life now and and Andrew Jenkin
• 1:23:01
  coaching, um, tell us, where can people come to to book you and
• 1:23:07
  find you, give us like all your handles, so to speak.
• 1:23:10
  andrew jenkins: Oh, here we go. Nobody good at this sort of
• 1:23:12
  thing. It's my my Instagram is at at Andrew Jenkins, official.
• 1:23:16
  My LinkedIn is Andrew Jenkins. And then my website is www dot
• 1:23:20
  Andrew jenkins.co, but I say my Instagram is more of a fun
• 1:23:23
  thing. I think it's more of a relevancy thing. My ins, my
• 1:23:26
  LinkedIn is more professional platform. I've used that for
• 1:23:28
  probably 25 years. LinkedIn in banking, insurance. So LinkedIn
• 1:23:32
  is more Yeah, most of the people come to me through LinkedIn, to
• 1:23:34
  be honest, your website as well. But um, my website is I don't
• 1:23:37
  update it all the time. They're not very good at that sort of
• 1:23:39
  thing. So my Instagram, my LinkedIn, get updated all the
• 1:23:42
  time with work I'm doing, the things I've done recently. So
• 1:23:44
  you want to see what I'm doing, yeah, but that's they're the
• 1:23:46
  most recent ones. I suppose they're the best way to get hold
• 1:23:48
  of me. My coaching style, I think, is different. It's like,
• 1:23:51
  like you just said, my coaching is more of a storytelling.
• 1:23:54
  Coaches coaching through storytelling. So I get them to
• 1:23:57
  tell me story. It's like a general chat, and there's lots
• 1:23:59
  of light bulb moments that go off and I share my story.
• 1:24:02
  They've experienced so much in my life. I've experienced more
• 1:24:05
  than most people go through their whole lives, to be honest
• 1:24:07
  you. So I like getting out and walking and talking. I like out
• 1:24:09
  walking in nature is so important. It's so good for my
• 1:24:12
  physical and mental health. So rather than sat in a coffee shop
• 1:24:15
  all the time, because I don't I like doing a lot of coffee but
• 1:24:19
  when you're helping someone a coach or wants me to talk and
• 1:24:21
  open up, I find get out in nature and walk or go for a walk
• 1:24:24
  somewhere, is much easier. The person feels it's not so
• 1:24:27
  confrontational, standing side by side, walking with someone
• 1:24:30
  and just chatting, like chatting with a mate. It is where a sat
• 1:24:33
  opposite someone, or even driving the car, for example, is
• 1:24:36
  another good thing to do. You sat off, you know, next to
• 1:24:38
  someone. I just chatting, you end up open talking. So my
• 1:24:41
  coaching style is, I try and get out to the office and get out
• 1:24:43
  somewhere and have a walk around and chat for an hour, or two
• 1:24:46
  hours is walking around. And I find people just feel more
• 1:24:48
  comfortable out in nature with a victim, indeed, but a serotonin
• 1:24:52
  and outside, they feel much better.
• 1:24:53
  Mark Ackers: You sounds like what you've identified is the
• 1:24:56
  key is to get people to speak, to start that conversation. Most
• 1:25:00
  people don't, and it sounds like you've done that exceptionally
• 1:25:03
  well. And I do, I encourage anybody to reach out to you. Try
• 1:25:07
  and attend one of your talks, try and come to one of your
• 1:25:11
  sessions, and I can confirm you are very responsive on LinkedIn.
• 1:25:14
  You've always replied to me very quickly, and it's been an
• 1:25:18
  absolute pleasure, Andrew, having you on the podcast. I
• 1:25:21
  hope you've enjoyed coming on, because I imagine this is quite
• 1:25:24
  different to the podcast you've been doing since the traitors,
• 1:25:27
  right? I imagine it's quite different. So
• 1:25:28
  andrew jenkins: it's very good, very, very professional.
• 1:25:29
  Actually, it's very good. And I've enjoyed it. Thoroughly
• 1:25:31
  enjoyed you're a nice guy. You've created a safe space for
• 1:25:33
  me, which is really important. That's the problem with people
• 1:25:35
  with mental health. People don't talk. Then got a safe space.
• 1:25:38
  They feel people, you know, they feel judged or something. So I
• 1:25:41
  think it's really important somebody's struggling with
• 1:25:43
  mental health, especially in the workplace. No, be there for that
• 1:25:45
  person. Don't walk past them. If you know somebody's struggling
• 1:25:48
  and work with it. They have their target. They're going
• 1:25:50
  through a separation or divorce, don't walk past it. And I get
• 1:25:53
  why people do. They don't. They're scared, they want they
• 1:25:55
  don't trigger people. But I say to people, I'd rather come I'd
• 1:25:57
  rather you talk and I'm awkward conversation now, or you cry and
• 1:26:00
  come to your bedside in six months time, or, even worse,
• 1:26:03
  your funeral. I'd rather you know, don't walk past it like if
• 1:26:05
  you notice Dave, for example, started coming in late every
• 1:26:08
  day. He don't have his lunch. Shortly that he stopped eating
• 1:26:10
  his lunch, you think, just say to him, Hey, Dave, I noticed you
• 1:26:13
  started coming in late. Is everything okay? Just have that
• 1:26:16
  conversation. And a lot of the time when people are struggling,
• 1:26:18
  all they want is and you listen to them. They want somebody to
• 1:26:21
  them, they want somebody to sit in the trenches and listen to
• 1:26:23
  them. They don't want fixing. They don't want answers. They
• 1:26:26
  want something to listen to. So I say, don't, you know, don't
• 1:26:28
  how many, I think a lot of these suicides out there couldn't be
• 1:26:30
  prevented if somebody had a safe space. So that's really
• 1:26:33
  important. So don't walk past
• 1:26:34
  Mark Ackers: anybody who's struggling really. Well, let's
• 1:26:36
  make that call to action for everybody listening. Why don't
• 1:26:38
  you just text one person today and ask how they are, right?
• 1:26:41
  That's the start point. That would be an amazing place to
• 1:26:43
  finish. But I have to ask you one more question, and it's the
• 1:26:46
  last one I wrote down second mountain ages ago. What is your
• 1:26:52
  second mountain? And let's end there. Want to
• 1:26:54
  andrew jenkins: change the world. I want BEC I want. I want
• 1:26:57
  to close my eyes my deathbed. Hopefully that'll be a long time
• 1:27:00
  away knowing I made a difference this planet. I made an impact on
• 1:27:03
  the planet. I've saved lives. I had a message of somebody, a 16
• 1:27:06
  year old boy last week, actually, he said he's thinking
• 1:27:08
  to take was thinking of taking his own life. We decided not to
• 1:27:11
  do it because you see my videos, and I turn my life around a
• 1:27:13
  motivation. So when I get messages like that, and that's
• 1:27:16
  quite a regular thing, I get message of people all the time.
• 1:27:18
  So you know what? I'm helping them, and that's what keeps me
• 1:27:20
  going. So I'm tired when I'm stressed and feel down, I want
• 1:27:23
  to quit, and I've had hard work things like that keep me going.
• 1:27:26
  So I just want to help people. BEC, I want to help support you
• 1:27:28
  and give back to people. I want people to struggle in silence
• 1:27:31
  like I did for
• 1:27:32
  Mark Ackers: 24 years. Really, I've got no doubt you will
• 1:27:34
  continue to impact and change many people's lives, and I've
• 1:27:38
  loved the chat. I do say this quite regularly on every
• 1:27:41
  podcast. Oh, I wish we had more time. I do. I wish we had more
• 1:27:43
  time. There's loads more. But what I'm confident now is I'll
• 1:27:47
  probably see you at an event again, like we did in Leeds, and
• 1:27:50
  maybe next time we'll grab a beer. But thanks for coming, and
• 1:27:53
  you've been amazing. Thanks. Becca, thank you, mate. You.