How To Chase Your Dreams Without Fear Holding You Back with Fran Millar
Guests: Fran
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What an amazing story. What a cruel, amazing, twisting career. My next guest has one of the most fascinating journeys through business and through life that I think I've ever heard. She spent her life surrounded by a couple of people that I actually consider to be inspirations of mine. One is Sir David Brailsford, who's been the elite performance coach and cycling coach for Team Sky, which went on to win more than they were ever expected to win. He's the author of this marginal gains thinking, which changed how business and sports teams function.
The other person she was surrounded by throughout her career is Steve Peters, who a lot of you will know from the book he authored, *The Chimp Paradox*, which redefines from a psychiatrist's point of view how our mind works and where our behavior comes from. And the other male figure in her life that's important for the story you're about to hear is her brother, David Millar, who was this incredibly highly-regarded British cyclist who had this cruel twist to his career where he got involved in the doping scandal, which really left a stain on British cycling as we know it.
David Millar recounts this story of him being sat in this coffee shop with David Brailsford and being tapped on the shoulder by three men wearing suits who would then raid his house and find syringes. That was one of the key moments in British sporting history where I think in many respects things have never been the same. We always view our elite performers with an element of skepticism.
But this is Fran Millar’s story. Fran Millar’s story is one of tenacity, of success, of jumping off cliffs and figuring out how to build your skydiver as you fall. Her story is inspiring, it's peculiar. She went from starting her own business to spending 12 years at Team Sky, worked her way up to the very top, and when it became Team Ineos, she became the CEO leading a predominantly male-dominated industry. And then, out of the blue, in the middle of a pandemic when retail was on its arse, she decided that she was going to change lanes and become the CEO of Belstaff, which is a brand that has been struggling, that's been making losses, and was then kicked up the rear end by COVID. She's brave, she is unusual, she is inspiring, she's tough. She describes herself, or at least she respects the idea of being a "difficult woman"—something we'll talk about. So without further ado, I'm Stephen Bartlett, and this is the Diary of a CEO. I hope nobody is listening, but if you are, then please keep this to yourself.
Fran Millar, I’ve done a lot of stalking of your history, your past professional career, and I was stalking your Twitter feed the other day and I saw a quote that you’d written in honor of your brother, David Millar, who is a world-renowned, professional, incredibly accomplished cyclist. The quote said: "Following a boy who loved it so much he got absorbed into the fabric of it and has spent a lifetime carrying the weight of the cruelty, wonder, brilliance, and tragedy it would bring him" is ultimately what got you into the world of cycling. I was slightly taken aback by some of those words: cruelty, wonder, brilliance, and tragedy. Can you explain why you chose those words?
That’s a big opening question. My brother was and is a very talented guy. We were about 10 and 12 when my parents got divorced. My dad went to live in Hong Kong and my mom stayed in the UK. I stayed with my mom, my brother went with my dad. So when we were kids, we’d cross in the air. He’d come home from Hong Kong, I’d go out, or vice versa. He had nothing to do when he was here because we’d moved, so he had no friends around. My mom entered him into a cycling club.
He’d go and do time trials; he was super good at it. By literally 15 to 19, he'd gone from never really riding a road bike to being courted by nine of the biggest teams in the sport. He got signed very young by a big French team and they made all these promises to my mom about it. He was a kid, he was desperate to win the Tour de France and to fulfill his dreams. He totally fell in love with the sport, he was completely enamored by it. In the space of five years, he'd gone from this excited, talented, brilliant kid to this damaged, incredibly sad, deeply ashamed young man. It was like, how has a sport done that? It’s a game, right? Sport's a game, it's entertainment. How has something that is fundamentally to entertain people basically ruined him, taken him down to the core of who he was? And then he built himself back up and he's gone on to do incredible things, but the sport has had this unbelievable impact on my life, on my brother's life, and everything—the decisions I've made and everything else. I guess that’s why I chose those words.
Give me some detail on what you talked about—the sport bringing him down to his core and ruining him. What caused that?
So, he went into the sport in 1998, he turned pro. For any of your listeners who know anything about cycling, 1998 was the Festina year. It was the year of the big Festina scandal where they raided all the hotel rooms, and the guys all protested and sat down on the road. Only a few of the teams were able to finish because so many guys got pulled out of the race. It was the dawning of the EPO era. It was the era where they discovered effectively that you could use EPO in the same way they used high-altitude training to increase physical performance. It was a transformative drug. They couldn't detect it, they couldn't test for it.
They brought in some interventions like a hematocrit test, so if your hematocrit went over 50, you'd be pulled out of racing. But it was a health check, it wasn't a doping check. And it was rife. So when this young dreaming kid went into the sport, he genuinely thought you could do it clean, you wouldn't ever have to cheat. I don't even think he really knew that much about doping at that point in his life. Pretty quickly, he realized that actually most of the guys at the very top were doping, that the doping was endemic, that the expectation was you would dope, that that was what you would need to do if you wanted to be a professional and you wanted to be any good.
He resisted it for a really long time. He was a time trialist, which is racing against the clock; you’re basically only racing yourself. So he really stuck to his time-trialling because he was like, "I can do that with the technology, with aerodynamics, with focus on my training." It’s a shorter period of time, there's less requirement to be as cardiovascularly supreme as the guys who are trying to win the Tour. He did very, very well time-trialling, went to his first Tour de France and won the yellow jersey on day one. But what was happening behind the scenes was this erosion of his belief that he would be able to do it clean. His recognition that actually if he really wanted to take it seriously and try and win the Tour, he was going to have to cheat. The people around him, the network and the framework around him, was people who weren't looking out for him, weren't thinking what's best for him, weren't trying to work out how to help him fulfill his potential. They were trying to work out how to get him good enough to make enough money to win for them as a business. He was a commodity in their business.
I haven't actually ever told this story, but François Migraine, who owned Cofidis—which is a company that basically does telephone loans, I don't know what they do now, probably online loans—he had met my mom. When we had all these teams that were courting David, he met with my mom and he promised her that he would look after him. Promised. Looked her in the eye and said, "I'll look after him." And yet he did nothing. He built a team that was allowed to just get on with it, he sort of closed his eyes to it. Actually, when the big investigation into Cofidis started, it was François Migraine who effectively called out my brother. He's like, "I think Moncoutié is probably clean, but David Millar, I wouldn't put my hand on my heart for him." And it was like, you motherfucker. You know what I mean? He's 24 years old! What? The only exposure he's had to professional sport is your team. So if that's what's happened, it's your team and your people. Don't get me wrong, David absolutely has to take responsibility for his decisions in that, but I for one know that when I was 19 to 25, I wasn't making the best decisions I've made in my life. And he had some influential people around him who, had they told him to do things... and it's that insidious thing, isn't it?
It's a bit like I was listening to a book the other day about decision-making and how if you look at Nazi Germany, people say, "Oh, they were just following orders." There was this big study done apparently where they put people in a room and they told them there's going to be a student in there—I can't remember the name, I think it was Milgram who did the study—and you're going to press this button. Don't worry because it’s to shock them. And the shock is going to get bigger and bigger and bigger. And it's like, 65% of the people would have pressed the button that would have effectively killed the person in the other room. And it's like, what? And that's the human condition, right?
So this idea that we would make a better decision or we would make a better choice or we'd do it differently, people seem to impose that on guys who decide to cheat in sport. It's like, "How dare you make that decision?" If you're in an environment and a culture where that becomes the norm, where that becomes what people do, this idea that you're going to be the one person who—and don't get me wrong, I know there are other people who do that and fair play to them, that is impressive, that you've been brought up in a certain way to enable you to make those decisions—but David was fragile, he was impressionable, he was a dreamer, he was doing something he'd always wanted to do. He was passionate and desperate to be a success, and I think he just got taken down the wrong path.
And do you feel like you went through that with him as a close family? I'm trying to understand the impact it had on you, being the sister. I know you guys are very close.
Yeah. I mean, the impact it had on me was I was—he never came to me, he went to my mom and told her that he was doping. She just said, "Well, just stop. Just come home. Don't worry about it." At the very beginning, he said, "There's a lot of drugs." And my mom was like, "Well, just come home. Go to art school, don't worry about it. It’s just cycling." And yet he stayed and he persisted. Then I think in 2001, when he eventually made the decision to kind of cross the line as it were, he spoke to my mom in that period. She was just like, "You have to stop, you have to come home." And he was a bit like, "No, I want to be successful, I want to go on this journey." He never had that conversation with me.
All I ever saw was the erosion of him. I could tell something was going on, I wasn't an idiot. He's probably cheating. But we had all been indoctrinated into it as well. It was like, well, that's kind of—you turn a blind eye. You think, well, he's doing really well, he's on the cover of all the magazines, he seems happy-ish. And it was only when he'd come home in the off-season and he'd come and stay with me and my mates living in London, and he would drink so heavily that you'd be like, "Okay, this isn't normal, you're a professional athlete." And the depressions he'd sink into and the self-loathing that would come out. It’s like *in vino veritas*, you know? I’d be like, what on earth is going on here?
And then eventually I realized what was happening, and I kind of felt responsible for never stepping in and saying something and never being like, "You don't need to do this." I was just like, well, if you're happy and you're enjoying it and you're doing well, who am I to judge? So I think as a family, it kind of bonded and pulled us apart. We all turned a blind eye to it, I think we've all got our demons to deal with from that perspective. My dad, I think, had a very different view of it all. My brother and my dad have an ongoing difficult relationship. My mom and my brother are very close, I'm very close to my dad and my mom. So as a family, it's definitely created divisions because everyone had a different view of it.
And then in terms of the impact on me, I went into cycling. I ran my own cycling agency, I was working in the cycling industry. I totally rode the coattails of my brother's success. And I was like, shit, okay, now it’s all going to come crashing down. He got arrested and put in prison and, you know, I was like, oh God, this is not ideal. I literally remember speaking to him afterwards and he’d just come out of 48 hours in custody. It was like a week and a half before the Tour, and he said to me, "Don't worry Fran, they're still going to let me ride the Tour." You know when it still makes me want to cry? Because it's like, David, they're not going to let you ride the Tour. That's not going to happen. And I think it showed that little boy inside was just ruined by it.
Sorry, it’s still quite emotional. But yeah, so it just impacted everything. It impacted all my decisions because at that point I was then like, shit, now I've got to go into the office the next day and I've got to stand in the velodrome at events. I'm not David Millar's sister, the kind of glory front cover of the magazine. I'm the sister of this shamed, cheating, lying, horrible human being who no one likes anymore and who has disgraced British cycling and is a complete social pariah. And I'm like, oh shit, okay, now I've still got to go and do my job.
And did you feel that from people? You felt the judgment?
Massively. People were—and it was in the days of forums, you know, when forums were a really big deal. And I'd be like, okay, I'm just going to go and have a little bit of a look on a forum and see what people are saying. And I'd see people I work with commenting. People who were at the velodrome who were doing the timing at my events. They all, literally, like people wishing him dead. It just wasn't cool. And yeah, I really felt it. I felt it for him. I wasn't embarrassed, because it is what it is. He’s made a set of decisions, he's paying the price for it. But it was at that point, sort of about six months after that, I was like, okay, I probably can't represent him anymore because if I have to have another conversation with a journalist—an ignorant journalist—about this kind of binary right or wrong conversation where you're like, that's not how life works, I'm going to end up punching someone in the face. So I should probably stop doing that.
Speaking of punching people in the face... I heard you—no, I saw you share something online which was this article about being a difficult woman. And the importance of dispelling this sort of "niceness" aura that women typically are associated with in business that, I think the article was suggesting, holds them back. How important has that been, especially when you were dealing in an industry which is pretty much full of men and you got to the very, very top as the CEO of Ineos? How important was it to be willing to punch people in the face—being a little bit difficult at times?
It is such an interesting question because that whole being a difficult woman, I think the older I've got and the more I've kind of explored feminism and explored the female condition and the human condition, women are judged very differently for behaviors that in men would be seen as completely normal. So, there's the famous meme that men are assertive, women are chippy; men are confident, women are arrogant. The same behavior gets viewed very differently through a very different lens. I've never filtered myself. Anyone who has ever met me knows that I don't really come with a filter.
I think it's really, really important that young women recognize that they don't have to apply a filter. You don't have to be the quiet one in the room. I remember reading Sheryl Sandberg's book about *Lean In* and it was like, young women will come into a meeting room and they won't sit at the table, they physically won't sit at the table, they'll sit at the side. And I was like, fuck off, who does that? And then I'd go to meetings and I'd notice that the 19, 20, 21-year-old younger women in the room, they'd wait for the guys to sit down. Why are people doing that? Until you realize it’s happening, you don't realize it’s happening.
So yeah, I've always felt quite strongly that you just need to be yourself, be confident, be willing to get told you're a bitch, get told you're—and don't get me wrong, when I was younger I was actually a bit of a bitch. I probably didn't measure that behavior. I was a bit like, "Well, it's just who I am and everyone needs to suck that up." Actually, you still have to be polite and have manners and you still have to recognize that being aggressive is actually just sometimes being aggressive; it's not being assertive. That balance, I think I've learned as I've got older, but I think women are judged totally differently for behaviors that men would be—it would almost be respected in a man for certain behaviors, and in a woman, it's reviled.
There will be young women listening to this and they'll be thinking, "Do you know what? I'd love to be like that Fran, and I'd love to be a bit more assertive," etc., etc., "but I just, it's just not who I am." Where did that—some might see it as confidence, but it's like a confidence in being your true self, right? Where did that—do you know where that came from in you? Was it experience? Something in the household? Your mother taught you that behavior? Your father?
I think it’s probably half nature, half nurture. My mom tells a story about when I was little and I'd literally go off and speak to people. She’d be sat at the bar on a holiday and she’d want to know what's going on with a couple over there. She’d be like, "Frances, go and ask them what they’re doing." And I’d be like, "Okay!" and off I’d go and chat to them. So I think I've always been very innately confident and that doesn't—that's never gone away. But equally, I think I've been very lucky, I've been very blessed. I've worked with people and in and around people where I've been allowed to be myself, I've been allowed to kind of grow up and make mistakes and fail and be a bit of an idiot and get told you're being a bit of an idiot and not have that be a judgment upon me and limit me.
I think it's really interesting that being assertive or being your true self has become a bigger and bigger thing that people talk about. Actually, being your true self doesn't mean you have to be assertive and confident. It means you have to be your true self. For a lot of people, that is a bit more insecure, a bit more—and that’s fine. You can bring that to the table. You can be an emotional person, you can lack a bit of self-esteem and just be honest about that. So for me, I think it's partly how I was brought up, but more the people I have been surrounded by on the journey of my life and career. I've been incredibly blessed that they have allowed me to make a lot of mistakes and course-correct me as I've gone on.
That point about being assertive and being direct and being open and honest... I was actually chatting yesterday about how I've changed over the last 10 years, from the kid at 18 to the kid at 28. The big change that I've seen in myself is I'm way more direct. And I'm not sure why I'm doing that. I don't know whether it's because I've got so many things to do that I'm trying to save time at all times. I'm way more honest with my feedback. There's this sort of fine line between being an asshole and being honest and direct and trying to be time-efficient, and realizing that sometimes your feedback or the way you say things might hurt people's feelings, but that's secondary to what we're doing here. How have you towed that line? I imagine, from what you've said, it's more difficult as a woman because people will determine the same behavior to be a really negative thing. But how do you toe the line between being direct and firm, which is so important in my opinion when you're dealing with teams, and especially if you're dealing with teams of high-testosterone men? How do you toe that line? And also, I guess the more important question for me is, do you agree that it’s an important trait to have?
Okay, so have you read a book called *Radical Candor*?
No, it's on my bookshelf somewhere but I've not read it yet.
Okay. So yes, I do think being honest is important. I think being a dickhead to people is not acceptable. And so I think honesty can get veiled—sorry, being a dickhead can get veiled by "I'm being honest," right? "Well, I'm just being honest and it's feedback and you should take it." One of the best lessons I was ever taught and one of the most influential people in my life by a mile is Steve Peters, who's a forensic psychiatrist. He always says you have to be compassionate. Even if you're telling someone they’re losing their job, or you're having to give someone really honest feedback, be compassionate, be sensitive to the fact that you're going to get a better response from someone if you're just nice to them. You can say some really, really shitty things to people and it gets a horrible response, or you can say shitty things but get a really positive response back because you do it in a different way. So I think it's really crucial to be honest, it's really crucial to be authentic, but that doesn't mean you get a license to be a dickhead.
And is there a place for aggression and anger and being annoyed in business in your view?
No.
Not ever?
Well, you can feel those things, but I don't think you can inflict those things on other people. No, I don't think that's acceptable.
It's remarkable how many of the world's most admired leaders, when you read their biographies and stuff, you find out how much of a dickhead they are. Steve Jobs was a good example where I was told from a friend that they basically had to put him in his own building and warn people that worked in that building that Steve was—and Elon Musk in his biography is very, very similar.
The reason I asked you about *Radical Candor* is when I read it, it made a lot of sense to me about people like that. She basically describes this quadrant where effectively you've got how much you care about people and how willing and honest you're able to be. And so if you're very, very honest but you don't care about them at all, then you're basically an arrogant asshole. If you really, really care about them but you're really, really honest, then you're radically candid. But if you really, really care about them and you're not honest, then you're kind of—it's almost like a malignant empathy. It's like, I'm going to be really nice to you, but because I'm not going to be honest with you, you're not going to develop.
So that for the first time, and she said in a business, it's better—it's way better, as much as it's counterintuitive, to be the arrogant asshole. Because actually the feedback is what's important. So if people are getting the feedback, if they’re being told the truth, they are likely—some people might not be able to handle it, but the people who can handle it will develop and get better. It's worse to be empathetic and not be honest than it is to be an arrogant asshole. And I was like, oh, that's why there's so many arrogant assholes in the world! Because actually it does work. On the whole, if you give people the feedback they need, even if it's in a slightly dickish way, it's actually helpful to them. And genius, you know, forgives a lot, right? When people are geniuses, they can behave very differently and they get away with it because they're geniuses, and there is merit in that. I think if people are very, very honest with you and give you brutal feedback, as long as you're able to take it on board, you'll get better. But if someone's lying to you and saying, "You're doing a great job, Stephen, don't worry about it, it's absolutely fine" because they don't want to hurt your feelings, you're never going to develop.
You switched from working at Ineos over to Belstaff relatively recently. And I was listening to one of the podcasts you’d done and you talked about how you'd worked in cycling pretty much your whole life; it was pretty much your everything in terms of your professional experience. I've also recently quit my job and—
How does it feel?
Everything. You feel everything, right? You feel bittersweet, you feel excited. On one hand, you're unsure about the future, but I trust myself enough to know that I'll figure it out because I always have. But yeah, all feelings. I guess my question for you, and the bit that I found particularly interesting, is people will do a thing for 10 years, for five years, whatever, and then they'll tell themselves that they *are* that thing. They'll give themselves the label: "I work in cycling, I'm a cycling person." It seems to be incredibly difficult, especially if they've been in that industry for a long time, to then take on a different label. You're now working in fashion with a whole new set of challenges, completely outside of your comfort zone to some extent, in some ways. How did you make that switch? How did it feel? Tell me all about it.
It's—again, I'm going to reference Steve Peters, but I remember because I was so wedded to my job in cycling. I lived and breathed it, I loved it, I cared deeply about the people. It was so wrapped up in my identity. But I hadn't necessarily got a huge amount of satisfaction out of the job over the last two or three years for a whole host of reasons—nothing to do with the team, just personal development-wise. Every time I spoke to Steve, he'd be like, "Well, then why don't you just leave?" I’d be like, "Because I don't know who I am if I leave the cycling team." It was always a much longer conversation than that, but what effectively I was saying was I don't know who I am if I'm not that.
And he kept—he said over and over again, "You will be whoever you go on to be. That's not going to change. You are still there. You're letting this thing influence all these views about yourself. You're letting it influence what you—your value, your worth, your substance, your contribution to life. It’s a job." He's like, "It's a job." And I was like, "You don't get it, you don't understand, it's more important than that." And you know what? When I got asked to go and do Belstaff and I left, it broke my heart. I cried my eyes out. And I started at Belstaff and I sound awful saying this, but within 48 hours I was like, "Oh my God, I love it here and I love the people here and this is brilliant, I'm so excited." And actually, it *is* just a job. That was just a job. And yes, I miss it and yes, it was incredible and yes, I loved the people and I still love the people, but it's just a job. It's not my family, it's not who I am, it's not my identity. It's just a part of my life and I'll be eternally grateful for having done it. But now I've got a new challenge. I'm really pleased I did it when I did because everyone, I think, had been saying to me for a long time, "You know, once you leave, you'll be like, 'Oh, I should have done this five years ago.'" And I don't feel like that at all. I feel like I did that for the right amount of time. I loved it, I've banked it, moving on to something else.
And it's that point there about thinking that job was your identity that really holds people down. Because you're right, jobs are where their family, friends, their community are. They are purpose, they are, as you say, they're your identity.
And that's dangerous. Really dangerous. Because actually they're not—they're not your identity. And no matter how much you love it, no matter how passionate you are about it... and this would be the lesson I would sort of give to myself: it doesn't matter, it's a job. You're being paid to do it, it’s a job. I would have railed against that even a year ago. "No, it isn't, it's more important than that." And you know, as soon as I left, I was like, "It's just a job." My brother always used to say to me, "Your team aren't your family. Your team aren't your family." And I never really understood what he meant because I was like, "Well, they *are* my family. I love them, they are my family." Then you leave and you're like, "Oh no, what he means is your family are there forever." Your family are wedded and you can't unpick your family. They are something that's... whereas when you leave a job, you take away the memories, you take away the happy times, you take away the good stuff, but the fabric of who you are doesn't change.
And that's what I try and do. I just finished writing my book, and there's a chapter on this idea of labels and me trying to resist these labels to make sure that I continue on my journey of challenge, keep myself stimulated, and I don't get to a certain age and feel like I'm having a midlife crisis because I don't know who I am and I can't leave and I don't have any new skills. To really sort of realize that the label I have is *me*. It's like, Stephen, I'm a guy with a bunch of skills and experiences, and I can apply these skills and experiences to a bunch of different challenges. I'm not "Social Media CEO," you know what I mean? And that I find really liberating. So I quit, I start DJing, we're doing this, putting on this theatrical play. I'm just trying to do all of the things that I think I shouldn't be able to do, right?
But speak to me about the challenge. So you decide to take this job at Belstaff, and it *is* a big challenge. It's widely reported that Belstaff has been—it had struggled across the years. It was acquired in, I think, 2017. It was making losses then and the losses have, I think, narrowed over the last couple of years to some extent, but it's a big challenge, right? A big challenge. It would have been much easier to take a different job.
So first and foremost, I didn't *take* it. I literally had a conversation with my chairman at Ineos about, "You know, maybe, maybe over the next couple of years I want to think about moving on and doing something different. When Dave Brailsford comes back from the Tour—this was in September—when he comes back from the Tour at the end of the season, I think I'd like to sit down and have a chat with my chairman and my boss, Dave, about my future." That was the sum total of my conversation. And literally a week later, I got a call saying, "Jim would like you to be the CEO of Belstaff." And with the best will in the world, when Jim Ratcliffe asks you to do something, you don't kind of go, "Hmm, let me have a think about that." I just thought, okay, well, what an opportunity, and I went for it. But I wasn't looking to change, I wasn't looking—I hadn't planned to move on. So that was in some ways, whilst it was quite traumatic, the sort of three or four weeks of—because I literally got phoned like on the 16th of September and I was in role on the 1st of October.
Wow. So like two weeks. Why did you want to have the conversation though when Dave got back?
Because I wanted to—so I wanted to—I’d sort of been thinking, like I said, about the conversation with Steve about, "I'm not sure if I'm happy doing this job anymore and if I'm not sure if I'm fulfilled." I’d kind of reached the point sort of middle of last year where I was thinking, "You know what? I do need to start thinking about my future and my life and my career, and I don't know whether that's always going to be in cycling and I don't know whether this CEO of the cycling team is 100% what I want." So I wanted to speak to my chairman first to kind of sound him out, and then when Dave gets back from racing—because I didn't want to interfere with the racing—have a conversation about my future. So I just literally put it on the radar of the chairman. And probably a little bit out of frustration for myself as well. I was like, "I want to feel like I'm moving this on, because otherwise I'm going to sit and not do anything with it."
Did you feel stagnant in the role? Is that the main crux of what you're getting at?
I felt—so, I had done what is effectively 20 years in pro cycling. It was, like you say, it was all I knew, it’s all I’d done. I know everybody in it pretty much, you know? I've been in and around it my whole life, I'm David Millar's little sister, it's like part of my DNA. And I loved being part of Team Sky, we did that for 10 years and it was—I sort of always used to say, "Cut me in the middle, I'd bleed blue." And I absolutely loved it. And then when Sky said they were out at the end of 2018, I was like, "Right, I'm done. I'm out of here. I'm not going to do this anymore." I went straight to Dave Brailsford and was like, "It's been amazing, I've loved it, but once the team stops being Sky, I'm going to go." And he was like, "Okay, cool." I don't think he believed me, but he was like, "Okay, cool."
And then he said to me, "Look, would you help at least find a new sponsor? Let's see if we can find a new sponsor." He's a bugger like that, sort of like, "Okay, I'll try and help you find a new sponsor and then I'll move on." And then February 2019, he meets Jim. Jim decides that he wants to acquire the team. Jim’s arguably one of the most successful businessmen in the world. We went and met with him and talked about the design of the kit and everything else, and I was like, "I'm going to get sucked into this." And then one of the other senior managers in the team decided to leave and go and work for another team. Dave Brailsford was like, "Would you stay? You can be CEO," which was what I really wanted to be. "It's a massive opportunity." And I was like, "Okay, I'll stay."
And I think that was the point of the decision there that I was like, you know, this is a big career decision for me that I'm staying again. I told all my mates I was going to leave. I was like, "This is it, this time I'm going!" They're like, "Mhm, okay, Fran." And so I stayed at Ineos and then we worked on the 1:5:9 project—Eliud Kipchoge’s sub-two-hour marathon. And Dave Brailsford obviously was the project lead on it all, he was the CEO, my boss, but he very sadly got prostate cancer in that period. So he was off doing the Tour de France, then he had to go and have surgery, and so I took on like a deputy CEO role, kind of delivering the vision that he’d come up with. He’d structured all the performance team, but then I was doing the delivery of the event—everything from working with the London Marathon team to supporting the performance guys to doing all of the engagement piece and everything else. And I loved it.
I felt like I was working 18 hours a day for what was about five, six weeks in the build-up to the first test event and then through into the actual event. And I just loved it. Totally different, totally new challenge, new people, different approach, fresh—it was just—I was literally on cloud nine. I couldn't have loved it more. And I was working so hard, like I was literally crippled by it, but I loved it. And I came out the other side not so much just because we’d done it—obviously that was incredible—but it just really made me realize that I was just going through the motions in the cycling job. I was just ticking over, I was really comfortable, I was good at it, I loved it, I liked the people, but I wasn't growing. I wasn't developing, I wasn't learning new stuff, and I wasn't kind of—and I'd been going at a million miles an hour in the team, helping other people develop and helping other people achieve their potential and helping other people kind of rescue their reputations or enhance their reputations. And I was a bit like, "What do I want to be doing? Why am I not focusing—none of this has been about me?" And even actually cycling is a little bit about David, you know? I was on this journey to sort of save young British talent from going through what David went through. It was like, "Actually, what do I want to do? Maybe I want to do something different." And that just planted a seed really, and I think I probably went and spoke to the chairman because I thought, "I want to go and do something different, I'm ready, I'm ready to move on, I'm ready to do something that's not this anymore." And it was almost like an involuntary—I think everything else about me was like, "Just stay, because it's comfortable and it's easy and you get good money and nothing bad's going to happen." But my soul was like, "You've got to, you've got to go and do something else now." And it was literally in the space of two weeks, I was out of here.
So it was identical to me in the sense of something niggling at you. And then for me there was a trigger moment where I was like, "Send the email!" and then you're like, "Oh fuck, fuck, what am I doing?" And then you send it. But that idea of being able to throw yourself into uncertainty, it's like throwing yourself off a cliff when you were cushy in the house on the side of the cliff. You’re like, "Oh my God, I'm going to jump!" and you're throwing yourself off into the unknown in the hope that you'll build your glider as you fall and then land somewhere better. A lot of people can't do that. Like most people can't do that.
How did you—how did you feel though about—because I found it really traumatic. I felt like, "Ooh." First of all, I felt quite out of control. It was like, "I'm out of control of this now." I literally said goodbye to my team who I’d worked with for 10 years and got on a train, woke up the next day and went into Belstaff and like, "Hi, I'm your new CEO!" And the trauma of all of it—I had to move out of my house, I had to go and do—say goodbye to people, do something—have a different email. I’d had the same email my whole life! All that kind of stuff that just doesn't seem to be important, but felt really significant. How did you—did you find it traumatic or not?
So, I had already— I’d quit a business that was my baby as well when I was 21. I started a business at 18, quit that one when I was 21. So I’d been through it once before. So when I earlier said the key thing for me was trusting myself, I've done this before. I know the feelings, I know that I don't know what my future holds, but when I did that when I was 21, it led to this even bigger business that was 200 times bigger and 200 times more successful. So that’s been this guiding thing in my life—like I dropped out of university after one lecture and it worked out. So when you have those case studies, you think, "You know what? I have no idea what the future holds, but I'll back myself to figure it out now." And that’s because I’d done it three times before. So I imagine the next time in the future, if ever, that you decide to jump ship from Belstaff or whatever, you'll have that case study or that evidence in yourself that you've been... and that I think will calm you a little bit. The first time I quit was all kinds of emotions and worry and not sure what I was now and all those things. But slightly easier the third time. I'm a bit of a prolific quitter; I think it's a really underrated skill. People talk a lot about starting as if it's the be-all and end-all of success, but quitting is the thing you do right before you start something new.
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I was reading about this "winning behaviors" role you took on, which is a very curious title. What was your remit as the Head of Winning Behaviors at Team Ineos?
So it was when it was Team Sky, but same-same. Basically, 2010 we first started racing. We’d started the journey of starting the team in 2008 off the back of the Beijing Games. Started racing in 2010; we were shit. Like embarrassingly shit. We’d been smoke and mirrors and we had the big bus and we had all the money and we were sponsored by Sky and it's like, "Whoa, we're going to be amazing!" and we were rubbish. So we totally reset everything. Dave Brailsford, to be fair to him, he's a master of "Okay, we're going this way, it's not working, we're going somewhere else." He's incredible at it.
So he totally shifted the way that we were going to run the team, we took a totally different approach. We started to be very successful in 2011. We’d obviously set the objective when we announced the team that we were going to try and win the Tour de France with a clean British rider in five years—that was in the start of 2010. Bradley Wiggins won the Tour in 2012. So in the space of three years effectively, we’d done it. The following year, Chris Froome won it. And we had gone from being this team that was like on a mission—heads down, arses up, and we were going—to suddenly, when people sign up to that, people are signing contracts in 2010 with a team that doesn't exist, that has never raced on the road before, that comes from a track background, that's full of Brits who aren't historically that famous for road cycling. They were adventurers, right? They were these bold, ambitious... "this is a bit bat-shit crazy, but we'll do it."
When people were signing contracts at the end of 2013, they were signing with a team that had won the Tour de France twice, that was arguably the most dominant team in the sport, that had gone on to achieve these incredible feats. They had a different expectation of what they were joining than what we were. And we sort of suddenly realized that actually if we were serious about continuing and continuing to be successful, codifying what had gotten us where we were was going to be crucial. And we’d also seen—for those of your listeners who are cycling fans—we’d had the Bradley Wiggins and Chris Froome divide. Brad had obviously come first in 2012, but Froomey had come second. Brad never rode the Tour again—Brad never rode in 2013, Froomey did and he went on to win. You started to see this divide in a team where it’s like, "Well, I'm Team Bradley" or "I'm Team Froomey." It’s like, no, check your paycheck, you're Team Sky.
And that kind of—actually, who are we? What do we stand for? What do we expect from people? What do we need to be able to do to be the best in the world at this? Needed codifying. It needed a way of a sort of charter almost to tell people, this is how you're going to have to do this. Really, it was about eradicating losing behavior. It was about saying to people: bitching, backstabbing, saying you’re Team Froomey or Team Brad, or criticizing people behind their back or whatever—that's not acceptable. But being "Head of Losing Behavior" would have been shit. So we called it "Winning Behaviors." It was all about creating a set of behaviors for the organization that enabled us to say to people, "This is what it means to put this jersey on. This is what it means to be a part of this team."
It's not just about the glory and the winning, this is hard graft. It was arguably the hardest thing I've ever done, working in that environment. It is unrelenting. I mean it’s brilliant and it’s amazing and incredibly good fun, but it's hard, hard work and you’ve got to go all in. This isn't for the faint-hearted. So the whole "winning behaviors" thing was about creating an environment where we could give people the parameters that we expected them to live by, but also ensure that they felt supported, safe, able to deliver their very best in an environment that is actually very high pressure. So that was my job effectively: helping Dave create the behaviors in the first instance with the whole team, and then helping keep them alive within the business.
What were some of those? You mentioned a couple of them there about not being a backstabber and understanding the importance of hard work. What were some of the other—let's just focus on losing behaviors. Some of the traits or some of the threats to success that you'd see in the team?
So we separated them into five different areas: Self, Team, Communication, Continuous Improvement, and... what was the other one? It's gone. Anyway, quickly move on, right? But Self was all about identifying your own emotions, managing your own emotions, being in control of your own emotions. So a losing behavior of that would be losing your shit, being aggressive and arrogant with people, not being able to recognize when you were too emotional to be in a high-performance environment. We have the whole Chimp model—Steve’s philosophy around that is there's nothing wrong with being emotional, there's nothing wrong with having a chimp, but you have to know when to get out the room if that's what's going on. Don't bring your emotion into an environment where you're expecting people to perform at their very best. So that kind of management of self: absolutely critical.
And then Team was all about the impact that you have as a team member. People kind of think teams are this kind of static thing that you create a great team and that's it. As you will know from having run successful businesses, teams are like these organic, ever-changing—you could bring one person in and it have a massive impact on the team, you take one person out and it can ruin a team. So the dynamics of a team and your role within that are crucial. So, not wearing your team kit, wearing a slightly different trainer, criticizing the team, not buying into the collective opinion... Dave Brailsford has this really big thing about: he'll listen, he'll seek counsel from everyone, he'll listen to everyone's opinion, he wants to get to collective opinion, he wants to get to a collective view of what the right direction is. But ultimately, if we can't get there, he'll make the call, and then you've all got to be on the bus. Non-negotiable. If you sit in a meeting room and you agree with something and you say, "Yeah, okay, whilst I don't agree with it, I buy in. I've given you my point of view, you've said it's not the way we're going to go, but I buy in," and then you walk out the room and you're like, "I don't fucking buy that"—that is one of the worst losing behaviors you can have because it's insidious and it goes around an organization. It can be destroyed by—it’s like a virus.
You talk a lot about Dave as well—Sir David Brailsford—very fondly. What are some of the key qualities of him that have made him so successful and his mindset?
Him and Steve Peters are the two most influential men in my life, without a shadow of a doubt. They are symbiotic because I think if Dave hadn't had Steve, he maybe wouldn't be who he is, and I think if Steve hadn't met Dave, he maybe would be a slightly different version of himself. So they complement each other brilliantly. Dave is a brilliant man-manager. He's incredibly visionary, he's very brave. You said the thing about jumping off a cliff and hoping you get your gliders as you fall—Dave's the king of that. Dave's like, "We're going to go and achieve that!" and everyone's like, "Fuck off." And he's like, "Come on, let's go!" and people are like, "Okay." And because he's so bold with it, he's so confident with it, he's an incredible leader that people would literally—I mean, I would have followed that man off the edge of a cliff. And I think that he has that quality in him.
He's unrelenting. Anyone who's worked with him... he's difficult, you know, like all geniuses are. He's a tricky guy. He's very particular, he's very detail-oriented. He wants to know all the facts before he makes a decision. He'll go after something for ages and ages and you're like, "Oh my God, make a decision or get on with it!" And then he'll make a decision that's totally off to the other side and you're like, "That doesn't make sense." Or it's brilliantly genius because you think all that work that you were doing and the decision I would have made and just got on with it would have taken us that way and that would have been the wrong way. And all the way through my career with him, he would do that. I'd be like, he’s just clever like that. Ferocious appetite for learning, unrelenting work ethic, sets incredibly high standards and expects people to meet them.
And not all people can, right?
No, absolutely. And we openly say that not all people can. There's nothing wrong with not being able to meet them. You've got to be "compassionately ruthless," that's what he always says. Which is basically, if you're not—you set a standard and if people can't meet them, then they're not in the right organization. And it's better—it's a bit like the arrogant asshole—it's better to be honest with them and say, "You know what? This isn't for you" than to kind of allow them to keep failing. I think that can be very cruel to people, you know, if they're in an environment where they're constantly trying to be better but they just can't do it.
You talked a lot about when we were talking about winning behaviors about this importance of a high work ethic. And you've expressed there that Dave has a relentless work ethic as well. You've probably observed how this narrative around hard work has become somewhat toxic over the last couple of years. And now I almost feel bad sometimes when I'm saying that I don't know how I would have been successful in what I've done if I hadn't worked hard. In fact, I don't really know anybody that's really successful in their discipline or their sport or whatever that doesn't work hard. So I know we're not trying to give anyone depression and anxiety by saying that, you know, they have to be a hustle porn star or they won't be happy, but I still can't get to the point where I will tell anybody that hard work doesn't matter. It really, really matters to me. And it's—I can't imagine—and you know what? I was in the gym last night and I was thinking, sometimes words really mess people up, right? So this—when people say "work," they think of me in a factory or in a mine hammering some rock all day. But I was thinking, because I enjoy my work so much, imagine if I just changed the words and went "hard pleasure." You know what I mean? Can you have too much of hard pleasure? It sounds dodgy, I know, let's not go down that route.
It's interesting as you were asking me the question, my response... because I actually similarly read something that you'd written about you feel a bit bad that you heroed the 18 hours a day and "I'm going at it" and bragged about it. And I sort of think, I get it, I get why people feel like that. And I think there's a difference between being exceptionally busy and working all the hours God gives and thrashing yourself and all those sorts of things, and working really hard with purpose. They're very different. And when you're working really hard with purpose and you're passionate about what you're doing and you love the people you're working with and you're enjoying the striving for the achievement, there's no shame in that.
That for me is absolutely part of motivated, ambitious people. That's what you want them to feel. And people used to say to me, "What’s the work-life balance?" I was like, there isn't a work-life balance. My work is my life and I make no excuse for that. I love it, I'm passionate about it, I enjoy it, it's "hard pleasure." It's brilliant and I like the challenge of it. I chose not to have kids, I don't have a partner—it's the passion point of my life is my work. But that doesn't mean I need to be not going out and seeing my mates, it doesn't mean I need to be up until midnight tapping out emails. I can still—I take days off, I live a normal life, but I work really, really hard.
I've also struggled in the relationship department. Unsurprisingly, never been that good at relationships, never been able to hold a relationship down. I can't really see how it happens necessarily. Talk to me about that part of—I was going to call it "sacrifice," but when it's somewhat intentional and when you're aware of it, it's hard to call it sacrifice.
It just doesn't motivate me. I know that sounds awful. I'm not motivated to have somebody in my life. I'm not motivated to be like, "Right, I want a partner, I want that companionship." When I arrived, we were chatting about how actually I love being on my own. I'm very happy in my own company. I'm very passionate about what I do and I think that fulfills the space that maybe other people have other passions for. And so, yeah, it's never been a goal of mine. I've never dreamt of the white wedding, I've never wanted to... there's never a bit of me that sits at home and thinks, "Oh, I wish I had someone to sit and watch telly with." Ever. It doesn't even cross my mind. And my mates are always like, "Do you not get lonely? Or do you not worry?" And I'm like, "No, I feel like I *should* because it would make you all feel better."
About five or six years ago, because everyone was on at me all the time, I did a bit of dating, used some apps. I was like, "Why am I doing this? I'm doing this because society wants me to do this, I'm doing this because my mates want me to do this. This is bullshit. If it's right, it'll come. If it's not, it won't." Did I date at all throughout the last decade? Here and there. But it's like, kill me now. Small talk—oh God, it's like my idea of hell on earth. Going and meeting a stranger, having small talk, slightly awkward with kind of one end-game. I'll know within two minutes if that end-game's happening and then I'm like, "I don't really need the small talk." We don't need to dress this up. So yeah, I just—yeah, I did a little bit but it's not—I'm not looking for that. And I think if I wanted to get married, if I wanted to get into a relationship, I could. I'm not adverse to it, but I'm just not out seeking it. And I think you get what you look for, right?
So other sacrifice—I don't think it's a sacrifice by the way, I genuinely don't. The reason why—at one point, when I was younger, I wouldn't have thought it was a sacrifice. Then I started reading all this stuff about the importance of meaningful connections and relationships. And I realized that I didn't really have those, and if I was going to become wildly successful, then it would just be me and my Louis Vuitton bag sat inside my house. And I then started to change my perspective and thought, "Steve, do you know what? You need to create a little bit more openness or balance towards that stuff." So I tried a little bit more.
But see, I have incredibly meaningful relationships and incredibly connections. I have my friend—I have like five or six friends who are my world. I'm incredibly close to them, their kids are my godchildren. I feel very, very connected. I don't feel isolated in any way, I don't feel like I'm missing out. And I actively participate in the lives of my friends' kids and in my friends' lives. And I think that's my connection, that's my tribe. I would go to war for them. It's just I don't think that added bit of a companion for me right now—not saying not forever—but I'm not sure that bit for me is something that I need. And I think it's—there is a difference there, because I do agree with you, I think you absolutely have to have connection. The human condition is to feel connected, to feel part of something, to feel that you have a purpose within your community. And I think having your own community and having your own tribe is crucial. I don't think that needs to be through companionship with one other human being.
There's a pressure that—as you talked about—the societal pressure. And I’ve got to be honest, I'm just going to be completely honest because I would be really dishonest if I didn't say this: I have been guilty of when I have a friend who is struggling in that department, feeling like I need to help them because, again, that's my own worldview pressed upon them. I'm thinking, well, in order for me to be happy, I would need that, so I need to make sure you have that, right? That pressure especially for women is intense post-30. And it causes a ton of anxiety. I see it in my direct messages from strangers.
Well, it's interesting though. So I'm 42 now and the pressure drops away because I think you get to the point where people think it's rude to ask if you're going to have kids because they're like, "Can you still have kids?" Okay, right, fine. You get to that age, right? But certainly all through my 30s: "When are you going to settle down? Do you not want to have children?" And I feel very, very lucky that I feel the way I do. I've never really had a biological clock that's ticked, ever. And I've never felt the need for companionship of one other person. Like I say, my tribe is very important to me. And I think that's potentially biological. Because I do have friends who they're desperate to meet someone, they're desperate to have children, they're desperate to move on to that bit of their life. And I've just never felt like that. And I feel very lucky because of that because I think if I’d felt like that my whole life would be very different.
Does nurture play a role in that? Because I know it did for me. My parents were toxic for each other. Watching my mom scream at my dad for seven hours a day. My mom's this African-Nigerian woman and the decibel she's able to achieve is gold-medal worthy. She is unbelievable at shouting. And she can do this amazingly high-energetic scream for seven hours a day without flinching. And I watched that as a kid growing up. My dad sat there, this passive English man who didn't say a word ever, and this African woman just torturing him with this loud sound. Me thinking, the lesson I learned was: relationships are prison. And for a man, you are trapped and it is torture. So anytime when I was younger, like 16, a girl would like me and I'd chase her and I'd try and get her on the playground, minute she said she liked me, deep feeling inside of me of: escape quick. So I would like come up with all these reasons why girls that I’d spent the last year pursuing, why we were not right and we couldn't be together and she needed to leave me alone. And I didn't notice that until I was like 25, and then I started to work on that part. Does nurture play a role, do you think, in your views on relationships or men or women or whatever?
I think it probably plays a role in my view of having kids because my mom was adopted. So my mom literally didn't know who her mom and dad were, she was kind of picked out of an orphanage by my grandparents. And until she had David and I, she had never met anyone who looked like her. You know how we all connect to our families because we've got similar features? She’d never had that. And so my mom loves my brother and I with a kind of wonderfully oppressive, kind of dominating... she just loves us with everything that she's got because we're for a whole host of reasons, but also I think because we're the only physical, sort of biological connection she's ever had.
And that love always used to scare me a little bit. Not from her, but I used to think, like I've got dogs and I worry about my dogs, and I've got like nine godchildren, I've got two nephews and a niece, and the minute they get on a plane or they go, I'm panicking like, "What if the plane crashes? What if they die?" It's like I can't handle it. And I'm like, Jesus, if I'd have had my own kids, I wouldn't have been able to handle that amount of love. I know that sounds ridiculous, but I think that always played quite a big part for me that I was like, the responsibility of it, the constantly having to worry about it... all of my female friends who have kids, they live in a state of almost permanent anxiety because they worry about their kids all the time. In a love way, you know, it's like that wrong love you have for a puppy. But—and I don't think I ever—I've never felt that I wanted that in my life. I never felt that I needed it and I never felt that I wanted it. I always felt quite like, "No, I'm good. I've got the right amount of love going on in my life. I don't want that additional responsibility and burden, in many ways, of having something that is always ever-present and would cause me, I think, quite a lot of anxiety."
Is that in part because you have so much responsibility and, naturally, honestly, worry that comes from your other love in life, which is your career?
Yeah, for sure. And it's why I don't think I need a companion, because I already have—I get so fulfilled from my job. I get so much from that and so much from kind of working in and around people and having that kind of—I've got the community of my friends and the community of my work and I think those two things I find very fulfilling. So the idea of having a companion or children or anything else in the mix of that didn't really ever appeal to me. I mean, I was engaged to be married when my brother got served his ban, so 2004. And I’d been with the guy for like, I don't know, seven years. And I remember like moving into our—how we bought a house together in Shepherd's Bush and we moved into the house and I remember, like vividly, putting the key in the door, turning the lock and thinking, "I don't want this." Like I don't want this. I loved him to bits, he was an amazing guy, but I was like, "I don't want this kind of—I don't want to be in a normal life with a normal husband and a house and kids." I just didn't want it. I wanted something different. I've got a tattoo that says "A Life Less Ordinary." I just wanted to just do it differently. And I don't know where that came from, but I've had it my whole life. That kind of—I just didn't feel the need to conform to society's pillars of: okay, you go to university and then you're going to get a job and then you're going to meet a guy and then you're going to get married, then you're going to have kids. I was always like, "I'm not interested."
Any idea why?
No, and I'm fascinated by it. Because I feel very blessed because of it. Because it's given me a freedom that a lot of people don't have.
Had you wanted it—had you wanted that typical life that society says people have to live and followed all the timelines and milestones—do you think you would have been able to achieve as much as you have?
My ego was going, "I would have been amazing at it!" I'd have been like, the boss. No, because I don't think you can. I don't think you can have it all. I really don't. I don't think you can—and I know there are women who do and hats off to them, I think it's incredible. You read about these women in the city who’ve got like five kids and they're CEOs and it's like, fair play to you, but I couldn't do that. Because I would feel constantly compromised. And I don't like compromise.
If people were to—people they read about you online and they see, you've been the CEO of this amazing sports team, you ran your own agency before that, you're now the CEO of Belstaff. A lot of people, especially young women, are going to think, "That's exactly what I want to do." There's always a disclaimer that comes with all of these things. What is the disclaimer in terms of the cost of the success you've achieved? What are the things that if I—you would turn to me as a young, aspiring, ambitious person and say, "By the way, before you follow in my footsteps, here's what you need to know"?
You know what? I wouldn't have one because I think I—yeah, I really wouldn't. I feel exceptionally blessed. I feel really—I love what I do, I've loved the journey I've been on. Like all the mistakes I've made and like I said at the beginning, I've been very, very lucky to be allowed to make all kinds of mistakes and them not follow me around. It's like I've been kind of carried and supported and encouraged to fail and to try and to do stuff that other people just wouldn't have got the chance to do. So I'd be like, no, go for it! Don't worry about it, like don't worry about fucking up, don't worry about making mistakes, just get on with it.
What would you tell me though that I had to *have* in terms of my qualities? Would you say, "Okay, well, if you're going to follow in my footsteps, then you're going to need a little bit of this and a little bit of that"?
It's so hard, isn't it? Because you can't follow in someone else's footsteps. It's impossible. And that's the thing I think that people—I would say you can't. You can have your own footsteps and you can go and do your own thing. And Jesus, if someone had said to me at 25, "This is the career path you're going to follow," I'd been like, "There's just no way I could tell someone how they're going to do that because it's bonkers!" I explain to people, people like, "Tell me a bit about your background," and I hear myself saying it and I'm like, "That's bonkers!" So I don't think you can follow in someone else's footsteps, but I do think it's like a bit like at the beginning where I was saying: be yourself, you know? Be nice to people, be approachable, take the opportunities when they're given to you. Recognize that sometimes things are scary and you're going to have to do it scared. And actually, change is sometimes the best thing that can happen to you. And you know, all those things that you read in cliché memes on Instagram—they're pretty much true. You've just got to take that approach in life because you're not going to get another one.
But it's not easy, Fran. The stress of your job must be pretty intense. You're running now a big company that's in the process of turning themselves around and reinventing themselves to some degree. And I know the stuff that you have to deal with, because I've dealt with it.
Yeah, but I'm not curing cancer. But I feel like a lot of it's relative, right? Still, big problems are big problems relative to the challenge you're facing. So tell me about that perspective though, because a lot of people would be like, "Oh my God, you're in a tough job and there's problems every day." But I'm so lucky, Stephen, that's the thing. I'm so lucky. Someone, an incredibly successful man, bought a business three years ago and has said to me, "It's not working very well. I really like what I've seen you do in the two years I've been exposed to you. Could you go and run it for me?" It's like, "Yes! I'll go and do that! What a great opportunity."
And I'm just—I just feel very lucky. And yeah, they're big challenges and Brexit at the moment's bonkers and all our shops are shut because of COVID and I'm having to meet and work with new people, but I wouldn't change it for the world. I think if you can—and this is where Steve Peters has been so powerful because he's like, "It doesn't define you. Just try your best. Do..." and that was—Jim Ratcliffe actually texted me—I texted him to say thank you very much for the opportunity. We're not friends, we don't like hang out. But I just texted him to say thank you so much for the opportunity, this is incredible, because I hadn't spoken to him about it at all; it was all via the chairman in the business. And he just replied and said, "Fran, the only thing I can ask you to do is your best." You know when you're like: the freedom of that, the opportunity? And that's what Dave's always been like: "You can just do your best, Fran, you can't—there's nothing more you can do in life." And I think if you release yourself of expectations and "What's the standard you've got to meet?"—this is in the last probably two years that I've started to realize, you know what? What is the worst that's going to happen? Like, what's the worst-case scenario here? Belstaff folds, let's say, or when I was in the cycling team we didn't win the biggest bike race, or whatever. As long as no one's dying, as long as nothing's—as long as people are okay, the people are okay, I'm kind of all right with it, you know? It's just life.
Are you scared of dying?
No. Are you?
No. I was when I was religious up until about 18 years old, and then once I realized that I was going to the same place that I came from, which was nothingness and peace, it became quite a liberating feeling and I thought death was actually—I dare say not good, but not something to be scared of.
Interestingly, I had—three years ago, I crashed my bike and landed on my head. And for some reason whenever I crash my bike I land on either my face or my head. And I landed on my head. Our team doctor at the time was like, because I'd got a bit of concussion, "I think you should go and get a brain scan." He's very overcautious. So I went and got an MRI and my mom had had to come up because of the concussion, I wasn't allowed to go home on my own. And I got this phone call from a brain surgeon who had been given my MRI—they looked at my MRI and they'd found all these patches in my brain. And he was like, "There's these—we've found—are you with someone?" And I was like, "Yeah," and he's like, "Okay, we've got your brain scans, we've gone through them and there's—we're seeing changes in your brain." And you know when you're like, but I've never had an MRI, so how can you have changes? Anyway, long story short, I've got all of these unusual patterns in my brain that are like patches that could be—they were like, "They could be potentially the starts of tumors, they could be just your—" I had to go and meet the brain surgeon, he talked us through it. She was like, "But what else could it be if it's not tumors? What else could it be?" And he's like, "Well, have you ever been like a very heavy drug user?" And we were both like, "No." And he's like, "Just weed?" "Lizzie, we don't need to go into this, he means heroin." "Oh yeah, no, we've never done heroin."
So basically, I had about a year period where they weren't sure what it was. It still is—I still have them. And it's symptom-based. So they're like, we could do a biopsy and see what it is, and I'm like, "Nah, you're all right." Or if I ever develop symptoms, which would be electric pulsing or anything like that. And I think that period was quite good for me because it's probably where a lot of the positivity and the "Actually, you know what? You only get one chance" thinking came from. Because I was a bit like, shit, if I have tumors growing in my brain, that's quite intense, and what does that mean for my life? Like, what would I change? Like, what would I do differently? And I genuinely—I remember being sat in my living room, everyone had gone home by this point and I sort of had had my first proper other scan—it was like a two-hour MRI, which is quite intense. And I was like, "You know what? I wouldn't change anything. I would carry on living my life the way I live it now. I wouldn't change anything. I would probably go deeper and harder in some of the things that I really enjoy, like my job and seeing my mates. I would keep spending the money the way I spend it. I literally wouldn't change anything." And I was like, "Great! This is a good place to be." Because I think a lot of people would get that kind of diagnosis and be like, "Right, shit, what do I need to do differently?" And I didn't have anything that I thought, "No, I want to change." But interestingly, my job has now changed. And I think deep down the reason I had the chairman conversation, the reason I was willing to say yes to this opportunity at Belstaff is had I maybe not had that incident and had all of that associated thinking and bit of deep soul-searching, I maybe would have said, "No, it's right, I'll stay at cycling." But I just thought, "You know what? Fuck it, let's go and give it a try."
What an absolute blessing that is to know—to know that you wouldn't change anything. I have this sand timer—is it behind me somewhere? Is it there? It's usually sat behind me. But the reason I have a sand timer in my house is because it's that sort of visual—it's the only way you can really see time. At some point I realized that I was getting older and that you don't notice, and that you can fall into the trap of thinking, as I think most people do, that we'll just live forever. And it's not until you realize that life is finite or you have those moments that you realize that some point I'm going to die. And seeing my time pouring away is that reminder of like, "Is this important? And am I making the right decisions? And am I living true to myself?" And I wrote a little article about that called "Deathbed Thinking" which pretty much says the same thing: giving you that perspective of from your deathbed potentially, what really matters.
Remarkable. I'm so inspired by your story, and every time I sit down with someone who's become a success in their career or their pursuit, it feels like there's similar themes but so different in so many ways. What does the future hold for you do you think? Do you know? World domination?
I don't know what the future holds and I don't really mind. As long as my family and friends are healthy and happy, and as long as I’m pretty cool with whatever the world throws at me, I'm sure it will be a laugh. It'll be fun. I don't have a five-year plan or a three-year plan. I used to have five-year plans but they're all hilarious when I go back and look at my five-year plans. I love how ambitious I was! Where's that yacht? I think when I was a kid I was very—I remember actually when I set my agency up, my best mate and I set it up together and we got a coach and we were about 22, 23. And the coach was like, "Right, go off into separate rooms and write out where you want to be in 10 years' time, and then come back and read them to each other." We were best mates, we'd lived together for three or four years, set a business up together, he was dating my best friend. We came back and we had them both written on our pieces of paper. And he was like, "Right, I want to be running a successful business earning a good salary, I want to be living in a nice house with a wife and three children, and I want to be healthy and happy." And I was like, "Oh fuck." I’d written: "I want a yacht and a jet! I want to have loads of money!" I had this really materialistic list about wanting to be successful and a global sensation and have all this money.
How old were you?
23. My dad was in the RAF, so to begin with, middle class, but then when he left to go to Hong Kong, he went into civil aviation in the kind of glory years of the expats, so definitely very lucky and I got business class travel everywhere. So it was pretty next level. But now I wouldn't want that list now. But it was just that really interesting like, "Oh, okay, we want totally, totally different things." And I didn't have partner, I didn't have kids, I didn't have a nice house anywhere. I was like, I wanted the universe. You know what I mean? I want to go over there and do something massive.
Well, you've smashed it, Fran, and I'm sure you've been paid well along the way for that. Money?
Money becomes irrelevant though, right? Money is just a great tool for helping my friends and family, for doing cool stuff with people, for having experiences. I spend all the money I earn doing stuff with the people I love. Give you an example: took my sister-in-law to Dubai for her 40th birthday with my best mate, stayed on the Palm, we had an amazing time. I've took my brother back to Hong Kong for his 40th, I take my friends on holidays. I love experiences. I spend my money on experiences, going and doing stuff, seeing stuff, but always with the people I love. None of my mates can afford to go to the hotels I go to, so I'm always like, "Well, I'll just pay!" because I don't want to stay in a rubbish hotel.
I can relate. Well, listen, thank you so much for all of your time today. It's been truly fascinating. And even just researching your background and your mindset has been really, really inspiring and energizing for me. I can relate to so many elements and other elements I'm just amazed and impressed by. So thank you for your time, I know you're an incredibly busy person, so it feels like an additional honor for you to say yes to come and chat with me today. And where can people find you?
I have a private Instagram and I'm on Twitter, but I don't really use it very often. I'm rubbish with LinkedIn.
Well, if they want to speak to you enough, I'm sure they'll find you. Thank you so much for inviting me, it's been fascinating, I've really enjoyed talking to you. Thank you.