If you’re interested in taking your career (and life) to the next level, then tune in for the inspiring story of Ben Williams, the Founder & CEO of Loopin. A former Royal Marine, now turned author and entrepreneur, Ben’s life is full of valuable lessons and fascinating insights.  

So why should you be listening in?  

You can hear Rob and Ben discussing: 

• The impact of lived values in a company 

• The impact of a military mindset 

• Writing Commando Mindset 

• Ben’s experience of appearing on Diary of a CEO 

• The benefits of personal advice in coaching  

Transcript

Rob Hanna 00:01 

Meet Ben Williams, the Co-Founder and CEO of Loopin from Battlefield to Boardroom. Ben’s journey from Royal Marines commando to tech entrepreneur is nothing short of inspiring. Today, he’s at the forefront of digital coaching, helping over 1 million employees achieve high performance at work. He joined me for the latest episode of the legally speaking podcast sponsored by Clio to share insights on leadership resilience and revolutionizing employee development through AI powered coaching. Tune in for a fascinating conversation about everything from a commando mindset to breaking barriers in traditional coaching. 

Ben Williams 00:37 

Thank you for having me on and that was I haven’t heard an intro like that in ages. I’d actually forgotten half of that, which is something I need to put into my own intro.  

Rob Hanna 00:47 

If I’m doing pictures absolutely well. It’s very impressive. And before we dive into all your impressive experiences, achievements, etc, we do have a customary icebreaker question here on the legally speaking podcast, which is on the scale of one to 1010, being very real. What would you rate the hit TV series, suits, in terms of its reality of the law if you’ve seen it, also appreciating not from a legal background?  

Ben Williams 01:12 

Yeah, so I think I’m the sore thumb here, or the the anomaly being not from a legal background. And I’m going to add to the complexity that I’ve not actually seen suits I’ve seen an advert several times, and also a meme, and so comparing both of those together, it looks very good. So I’m gonna give it an eight, an Eight’s my lucky number, just as it happens. 

Rob Hanna 01:35 

And I think based on that, fair enough, justified, and we’ll move swiftly on. Ben to talk all about you. So would you mind telling our listeners a bit about your background and career journey? 

Ben Williams 01:44 

Yeah, sure. So, as you mentioned there, I spent quite a lot of my time in the Royal Marines. I spent 10 years as a Royal Marines Commando. It was, to be honest, a career that kind of saved me from myself. Ironically, you go into a very new world. I joined in 2008 and served, as I said, for a decade, and that was quite a challenging operational time for the military. And we were obviously had footprints and certain challenging parts of the world. So I got a sore active service. So when I say the Marines kind of saved me from myself. It definitely put me and exposed me to difficult situations moving forward. But I was really off the beaten track as a young man, boy probably is the right way of putting it up, until my, you know, late teens, those adolescent years, using drugs as a sort of escape. I was getting to be honest, ironically, for this podcast, on the wrong side of the law, and had completely lost my way, to be honest, really lost it. And the Royal Marines was something that called out to me many years before that, when I was a young, young child, I always wanted to be a Marine. It was the thing I wanted to do, had the books, probably had the T shirts, went to all the museums, you know, as infatuated with it, but lost that in those late years as a teen, and, you know, really fell into the wrong places. And that was a very, very difficult part of my life, looking back, probably not that difficult compared to some of the things I’ve done since, but I was definitely in a very tight spot, and I was looking at prison, or probably something worse than that, if I didn’t turn my life around. And, you know, fortunately, something within me found the opportunity to say, give something a go. And, you know, timing was time in that I just happened to be seeing a Royal Marines advert on an old version of YouTube when probably the algorithm wasn’t even AI based and was just absolute random chance. I saw it, and it brought a lot back. It brought that young boy back who always wanted to be a Marine. It put a lot into perspective that I was ruining my life, and I had a lot of opportunity, and that was kind of a decision made. And I always tell people it was never as simple as overnight I was clean from drugs and not in trouble. And, you know, there was still a bit of a recovery process there, but near on a year after that, I’d sort of passed all the tests that I needed to pass to enter Royal Marines training, and that’s what sent me on my journey. And yeah, spent 10 years there. Absolutely loved the career. I would have stayed there forever if I could have. But unfortunately, medical issues got in my way of my hearing, which isn’t actually the reason I’ve got a massive set of headphones on today. These my wife’s they’re the only headphones charged in the house, and I was I was given sort of two options, really, when, when I was found out to have quite bad hearing, was I can either take a desk job for the rest of my career in the Marines, or I could take MediCal pension, and I sure as hell didn’t join the Marines to sit behind a desk and. So I took the medical side out, and it was all kind of sliding doors. Moment, to be honest, it was that final term of service for me. The last sort of year, I was thinking about, what am I going to do? How am I going to navigate this world that I don’t know, which is a civilian world? Everything I’ve known to be has been within the four walls of the camps that I’ve worked within. And at that moment, Gary Southgate bought the England football team down to the commando Training Center, and I was just so neatly positioned for it. I was working on a particular team. A couple of us were hand selected to take the England players and staff on an experience for a whole weekend and expose them to our ethos and our mindset and, most importantly, actually, our values. And it was within the sort of first six to 12 months that Gareth had stepped into the role and wanted to put a foundation in place for what being a three lions player meant. And we were part of that, and that opened up a lot of opportunities for me. That added a lot of credibility. I kept in touch with the players, some of some of which are still my friends now, and that was a light bulb for me. I thought, Well, is there something I can do here that transitions across from the military into, at the time, sport and elite level sport around, not the psychology of a team, because I wasn’t qualified to do that, but an element of mindset that’s related to how you instill an ethos in a team, how you use values based decision making to beat your opponent, you know, discipline, the kind of the pillars of what it takes to be in the military, and that was really it for me, I kind of left the Marines, went straight into working in football here and there and and some other sports. And then the kind of door opened a bit more into business. And before, you know, I was running corporate workshops and packages and coaching and training teams of all different sizes and nationalities and different verticals and markets all about the same real thing, which was trying to drive high performance into businesses, focusing on what I’ve already mentioned. And that was quite a 10 few years to be honest. I learned a lot there. I realized how much the corporate space is probably missing, how much businesses, I wouldn’t say, neglect, but unintentionally miss the opportunities to drive high performance. And when covid rolled in and took all of our work off the table because no one wanted coaching and training at that time, we were fortunate enough that in our small, little coaching practice had built up enough revenue and capital to kind of hopefully see out what was, what was inevitably coming, and to sit back and go, Well, what does the world need? And that’s ultimately where the thesis of looping came from, which was, could we put a digital coach in every single person’s pocket? And I’m sure we’ll get on to that.  

Rob Hanna 07:59 

Yeah, and thank you for sharing that story. And there’s so many lessons in that as well. And I love as well. And I love that you kind of frame it as, you know, the Royal Marines really saved, you know, there’s gratitude in that. And I like that. And also, you’re sort of talking about how you can transition, because I know a lot of people probably get in a career and actually want to transition into law and not sure where they can do it, and there is always something you can pick up from prior experiences that can propel you forward. And, yeah, I just love your outlook. I love your appreciation for gratitude, and I love your entrepreneurial flair. And as you say, that nicely leads us on to Loopin. You said you had a lot of challenges in your life to date, but I think entrepreneurship is definitely a continual challenge. I’m sure you’ll attest to that. So you are the co founder and CEO of Loopin. Tell people a little bit more about what it is and what particularly inspired you to sort of launch it along with the mission that you have today.  

Ben Williams 08:46 

Yeah. So it goes back to what I’ve just said around. Imagine if we could put a, essentially a high performance coach in everyone’s pocket. And that’s really where it started, and where we actually began, was with sentiment analysis. So how are people and then, based off how they are, can you put the right resources in front of them at the right moment as nice as a nice idea? And it worked quite well. I think, seeing the technology market move so aggressively over the last couple of years, especially with the introduction of commercial AI and large language models, which we now obviously capitalize on. You know, our the idea that I had several years ago at two o’clock in the morning that I woke my wife up over and she was like, Go downstairs with your neighbor. Was this coach in your pocket? You know, chat GPT didn’t exist. Well, it did, but it was in the shadows, still baking. And, you know, AI was available, but it wasn’t commercial. It was just my idea of Could, could we make coaching more accessible? What does that look like? What is coaching? And what Loopin essentially has become today is exactly as you introduced it. So it’s a custom High Performance Coaching platform, and the way we go about doing that. As essentially, we’re trying to revitalize all of the resources and content and knowledge that companies have built over the years that are kind of everywhere. They’re in SharePoint, they’re in documents, they’re on PDFs, they’re they’re kind of there, and they’re not necessarily as accessible as they they should be. And also one of the complexities we face now, you know, even looking at my own children, is the way people learn generationally. Our attention spans are waning. We want to learn in different ways. And actually, people want more personalization and more customization to to what they’re trying to to take in. And there’s also a real challenge about knowledge retention. I talk a lot about something called the forgetting curve, and I used to see this a lot when I was training people myself less so in the military, and I’ll come on to that. But in businesses, you know, you they’d pay you 1000 pounds, let’s say, to come in and run a workshop for half a day or a day to talk about core principles, you know, maybe values based decision making or leadership mindset, accountability. And I like to use conflict management as a good example. So imagine you run a workshop for conflict management. There’s people there. There’ll be a there’ll be a percentage of people depending on the culture of the company, but there will be a percentage of people who are there for a day off, and there’ll be, hopefully, lots of people in the room there for career progression. But we’re also busy that we go through this workshop, let’s say, and then maybe I leave a website link behind, or a PDF some sort, or leave something on the table for people to read in their own time. And when they walk out the door, about 50% of that information is going to go immediately. You know, the emails come back on phones, ping, got to pick up another meeting, and it just goes so quickly, just through our habit of how we’re immersed in the go to go to go to go to, day in, day out, with life, and then a week later, 90% of that information is going to be gone. So the actual recall of being able to go back to my workshop and go, What did Ben say about conflict management four weeks later, when you’re having a challenging conversation with someone on your team, it doesn’t exist. We’re unable to pull that information forward. So what we want, what we’re doing with looping, is giving you a tool that essentially enables you, through artificial intelligence, to go in and ask questions. I was, I was on your workshop the other day. Ben, can you tell me about conflict management? I’m a CTO of this particular team, and I think I’ve got some challenges coming. What would you do? And what we’re doing is customizing and making dynamic these tools that are unique to the company. So we build those for a company where someone can come in and ask questions, and you’re just solely talking to the knowledge base that’s in there. It’s not open source. It’s not going off into open AI. It’s talking directly to only the content that’s in there, finding the relevant content and bringing it forward. And we’ve built it in a way that it coaches you through what you’re talking to that content about because content is very One for all, and we’re doing it on a level that we can also repurpose that for coaches themselves. So it’s not just the company and being able to put all of their information in one place, but a coach going in and saying, I’m running a workshop, and here’s my link, and rather than read my PDF, here’s an interactive tool you can use three weeks later when you’ve forgotten everything from this workshop, and you can ask me what to do during that moment based on conflict management, for example. And that’s what we’re really trying to do. And over time, the vision is to essentially create it into a digital marketplace where we bring coaches, we bring thought leaders, experts into the ecosystem, who have their books, who have their own tools that we plug in, and at the same time offer it to large businesses. So you’re not just having your resources and content in there, but you can access the world’s greatest minds with within the palm of your hand at a very scalable level and a very low cost. And that’s ultimately, my vision for the business is to create that digital marketplace that, if I’m honest, is inevitable. The way technology is moving in the direction it’s moving, yeah. 

Rob Hanna 14:14 

And I think, you know, the great lesson in there, as well as, like you say this, is, you know, the data that everyone holds that you know, like some people might be thinking, well, chatgpt can do this, but no, actually, like you say, this is closed source. It’s within the building your own. You’re then getting the actual value of that system that isn’t then going to be open source. It’s a lot more safe, it’s a lot more kind of tailored. So this is genius in terms of what you’re doing. And law firms can use this in multiple ways, in terms of, you know how they might go about advising tricky clients, or when they’re looking to upskill associates within law firms, we know from a coaching, training, BD, all of these things. So that’s why I think it’s innovative and exciting what you’re actually doing. And you know, values get chucked up on websites quite easily, and people kind of talk about words and just kind of put them out there for marketing. But I know it’s different for you and looping. Because your values are built on empathy, understanding and compassion. And from what I know, and we’re very kindly introduced by a dear friend of mine and someone who’s also featured on the show, Jody Hill, you know, there’s a lot of kind of core values that we share, but the four key values, courage, determination, unselfishness, which I love, and cheerfulness also love, tell us more about the importance of those for you, and how it really kind of helps you operate within the business world.  

Ben Williams 15:25 

Yeah, the I love it when people say values are just chucked up on the wall because they are. And we did this. We made the same mistake within our own business. You know, you found a company. And one of the things that I looked at when we were going through our sort of first year or so, and bringing a team together, and a lot’s changed over the years, and I think the values have helped with that. Actually, was I thought, wow, how powerful were the Royal Marines values. We’ve got to have our own powerful values, because we know how much it means. You know, like I mentioned, Gareth Southgate bringing the England team down. They, they, yeah, they came down to get well, wet, cold and miserable. And I can’t tell you how empowering that is, to make multi million pound players feel miserable for a weekend. There’s obviously a purpose and a reason behind it, but they came down to learn about the Royal Marines, values, what drives us, what what makes us who we are, and we live and breathe, values in the raw Marines, and you’ve just read them out, which is the irony, because I spent some time in our business trying to change words. I can’t get the right values to stick within our own business. The raw Marines were so good, you know, how do I get that within my own organization? Then one day, I was just like, just use the Marines, because I as a founder of the business, as a Marine myself, that it’s not the words that are attached to Green Berets, knife fighting and war zones, it’s courage, determination on selfishness and cheerfulness in the face of adversity. If you need four key pillars when you’re building a startup, it’s those things. And yeah, of course, you could change the wording around them and make them different, but that’s what makes it unique to us. So I bought the Royal Marines values into our business for that reason, that I believe they’re four words that you could go home and live with your parents, your friends, your children, as much as you could go to work and live those values as well. And I think I’ve worked with so many companies in the past, more in a consultative state, and their coaching, where you go in and they’re just like, eight to 10 words thrown up on the wall. And I’m like, when would you ever go home and go, Hey kids, let’s do commerciality today. Like Commercial focus, I get it like businesses need to have that element of business, like wording within some of their values, we’ve got to think that the people within those organizations are the ones that have to align those values. And if they don’t get up every day and live and breathe them, then those values don’t work for you. So that was the real drive behind why we have those four values within the company, and they’re taken across from across the eight core pillars of the Marines, so there’s four more on top of that. And I looked at those, and I was like, cheerfulness, God, if you can’t laugh at the situation, it’s going to laugh at you. Unselfishness is a really hard thing to instill in people, especially in business, and especially when times get tight. You know, survival mode kicks in. But I really feel within our own small team that I’ve got a group of people that, you know, do put others first and will come forward and, you know, support each other and and you’ve got to have that courage. You can’t join a startup and and not have that courage and that determination. So there’s a great amount of meaning. And like, even sat here at my desk, like not even placed for the podcast, but I’ve got my Greenberry that sits sunframed, it just sits on the window still looking back at me, reminding me of those values. And that’s how powerful they can be for a company. Yeah, 

Rob Hanna 18:50 

and there’s a difference, isn’t there between words and words with meaning, and absolutely, when you talk about that and the values that have been instilled in you as well, it’s very powerful and it’s very moving. Want to talk about a recent LinkedIn post that you shared. Coaching has always, coaching has always been a game changer for employee growth. But let’s be honest, traditional methods often leave many people out simply because they’re expensive and hard to scale. You’ve touched on this, but I really want you to hammer the message home, because I think it’s genius what you’re doing with Loopin. How at Loopin Are you really embracing AI to turn it into digital coaches so anyone and everyone can have this access, because once we get this nailed on, I think it could be an absolute game changer. 

Ben Williams 19:32 

So, yeah, I’ve said some random stuff on LinkedIn before, so I thought you’re gonna bring something up another podcast. Yeah, we’ll do the, we’ll do the outtakes version. So, you know, I’ll ask the question back to you, who? Who do you predominantly see gets coaching within businesses? 

Rob Hanna 19:53 

Yeah, typically you’ll look at, from my experience, there’ll be senior people that get coaching, or it’ll. The very junior sort of graduate people, but it’s very hashed out, and it’s very sort of generic, and it’s not necessarily tailored, and it’s just a sort of going through the motions process. And I see a bigger gap, particularly in the legal world, of that sort of lower to mid sized associates that are really kind of lacking with that kind of level of coaching. I think they really need it the most to kind of get to senior levels as well.  

Ben Williams 20:21 

Yeah, so it’s exactly that, and that’s the way we view it in it’s a C suite, SLT, predominantly focused budget, and then, as you said, there with junior employees, it’s more geared towards we’ve given you some manager, we’ve given your manager some training on how to be a coach, and they’re going to coach you through your early days. Now, some of those managers have not been coached correctly and aren’t great coaches. Some of them are brilliant. And I never like to go on things and tar everyone with the same brush, but predominantly it’s a very one size fits all kind of sausage factory approach to how we do that, and it’s not effective. So then there’s that huge void, as you mentioned there, from if your junior might get some coaching, if you’re senior, you might get a really good exec coach. That’s 500 quid a month, 1000 pounds, whatever it is. And you get to spend, you know, a couple of hours with once a month or every six weeks. And there’s, there’s brilliant products out there as well, which I can’t negate with things like better up and coach hub, where they go into big corporates and go to big businesses, and you can go in and say how you are, and it aligns you with a coach, and then it puts you in front of that human. And I think what I need to make really clear in how I position looping is we don’t want to replace coaches like I’ve got no interest whatsoever in replacing the human element of a coach. The part I look at is when the coach is not there. That’s when the ROI matters. So when someone’s told something in the moment which has been paid for, and you’re discussing the problem, great that that’s the delivery of the message. It’s the delivery of the content that doesn’t matter at all unless that person executes on task. What that learning principle was that’s going to help them get through that situation. So there is no ROI unless that person uses that information. And then subsequent to that, especially big businesses proven the ROI is really difficult. So what impact is coaching having? Here we are we more engaged? Are we high retain? So there’s all those problems that sit with coaching alone. But just to go back to that point around I call it the void. So if you have an experience of a coach and you don’t see that coach for another four or five weeks. There’s that void in between, that that’s where the stuff happens. That’s where you need to be doing what you’ve been coached, and that’s where the ROI is returned. And so that’s just that’s a loan. If you have a coach, most people don’t have coaches. Most people don’t have those mentors within their lives, and they kind of trudge on, and if I’m honest, hope for the best, or use learning platforms or YouTube to try and pick up on stuff. And there is, like, there is a really great, positive personal development culture, I think, among younger people, and younger people, especially even myself, are becoming a bit more closed in on how they communicate. So do we sit down with our manager and say, Yeah, everything’s on fire today. I don’t know what to do. Give me some coaching. People don’t really have conversations like that at scale. So looping is about creating a system where people have the opportunity to go and interact with content. And that’s the biggest thing. The content can become the coach. The coach doesn’t disappear and this appear. Loopin appears, even if you don’t have a coach. But the idea being able to go to somewhere where, let’s just say, an easy example, Simon cynics, content exists in a digital form, written loads of books, great podcasts, a keynote speaker on, obviously, leadership and, you know the why and all that stuff, but you got to still divulge that information. What if you could go to a digital version of Simon, which isn’t Simon, but it’s his content, and go, I’m stuck right now on how to buy my why? What do I do? Hey, Ben, this is what you can do about how to find your why. Can I ask you some questions about what you might be and so on and so. And that’s the real smart part the team have built into the tool. Is not just some sort of wraparound AI model that it’s just got content in it and it regurgitates it back to you. We’ve put into the system prompts that coaches the user through it. And that’s where we’re, where we want to head and continue heading is we’re not replacing the coach, we’re not bringing you to a tool to say, don’t speak to a human, only speak to a bot. What we’re trying to get you to do is interact with content in a whole new way. And if we can do that, I think we’ll revolutionize the way people learn and develop on task during the experience, as much as just having. Opportunity to be coached and trained as well.  

Rob Hanna 25:02 

Yeah, it’s brilliant what you’re doing. And I love that, because you’re right. You can’t always have the coach next to you, or real life scenarios happen, and if you have this in your pocket, that’s what really changes the game. Let’s talk about some more of your Royal Marines experience, because you’re the first we’ve had on the show. And I think there’s a lot we can learn that we can derive into business, particularly in terms of now as a CEO, how do you define leadership, and how has that evolved over time? Particularly keeping in mind your experience from the Royal Marines. 

Ben Williams 25:31 

I’m either going to set a really low bar or really high bar for the Marines to see which way it goes. I have to admit, I’ve never found something as challenging as running my own team in this way, I think. And for those that listen and there’s I can, I don’t know what the title of this episode will be, but I’ll assume it’ll have something to do with Royal Marines in there, and that’ll immediately think, you know, camouflage, tough guys, all that stuff the I’ve never had my confidence so probably smashed over the few years, but by my own imposter and having to work day in day out on myself to ensure that I’m staying very present and conscious that I am a good leader. I do know what I’m doing. This is a whole new world that I need to learn and be very adapted to learning it. Make no mistake, when I first set out into running my own business and then founding Loopin, I was definitely a lot sharper. I was a little bit more blunt in the way I spoke. Turns out, employees don’t like doing press UPS when they’ve done something wrong. I still can’t get my head around it, but I think it is good. And, yeah, there was definitely the militarism that I just needed to drop slightly. When I actually dropped it, I almost went the other way. The pendulum swung in the other way, where I was almost too soft, too nice, and didn’t really know how to gage the team. I didn’t know how, like, I’ve never worked with developers before, and again, not to stigmatize people, but there are certain personality traits that you come across within the technology world that I probably didn’t come across so much of within the Marines, and like in the Marines, I’d have probably said, Are you a real person? But outside, it’s more, oh, you have a really different way of looking at things, and you have to learn that along the way. And I’ve had to found my place, and I’ve had to found my place in the business and do what I’m good at. And we’re hiring at the moment to bring some more key thinkers into the business to help support me with the leadership. What I’ve come to learn and only probably in the last nine months, if I’m honest and I’m okay with that, because no one runs and starts out straight away and gets it all right. You know, it’s only in the last nine months that we’ve worked out how to build revenue, and we’ve worked out that a vision does matter. A vision does matter. You know, what’s the real problem we’re solving? And one of the biggest things I’ve really tried to sort of harness is allow people to get on and do it. I used to get really involved in our product, because I love product. I just I’m a creative person. I was creative before I joined the Marines, less so within the Marines, and then probably since leaving, more so, especially having children, that creatively. I love art. I love playing guitars and all that stuff, and obviously written a book. So there’s a creative in there, and that’s why I like to be quite close to product. But I found by being too close to products is actually hindering the product. And so the one thing that’s my baby having to let go of and go like someone else deals with it. And you see things go wrong, or, you know, if you get those emails, those complaint emails quite often, and this doesn’t work. This bugs here, and this feature would be better here. And you get it, and you think, God, come on, someone. Do something about this. But there’s a process, and we’re learning that process, and you have to let go. And I suppose my answer is probably not as clear as maybe you wanted it, but I think the reality of it, it’s a constant evolving cycle of how to get to it right, because one minute, you have to lead with pure authority. And I think this is a difficulty. When you look at leadership, you see it very segmented, or you’re more of an authoritarian, or, you know, you’re more of a passive leader, or, you know, all the other sort of leadership traits that you can have. I actually find the best leaders are the ones who can jump between all of them at the right moment, but if we have to put our foot down and charge, it’s going to take authority to get us to charge. Drop what you’re doing. Get on this. We’re doing it. No questions asked. There’s other times where you need to sit down and be completely empathetic and listen to your employees and wonder and understand what’s going wrong. How can it. Better hear the bad stuff about you. And I think if there’s any words of wisdom within that, it’s don’t sit yourself down as being one vertical leadership, and know when to be at the right type of leadership when you need to be and that will make you more effective in the roles that you’re within.  

Rob Hanna 30:18 

I love that. And because we’re human, we all have different emotions. You know, we’re in this you know, it’s not B to B, B to C. I say 1000 times on the show. It’s H to H. It’s human to human connection we’re craving with our clients, with our people, with our employees, with our leadership. And I think it’s fantastic that you highlight that. And you know, you’ve done lots of things. Obviously, you’ve had your book that we mentioned in introduction. You’ve also been on some of the biggest podcasts in the world, which I’d like to talk about you had experience of featuring on Stephen Bartlett’s Diary of a CEO. How did you find your experience there? And what did you most enjoy about discussing a journey on that show? 

Ben Williams 30:49 

Cool? Yeah, I always, I think Steve in the Marines have definitely worn my heart and sleeve a little bit more than probably expected when I walked out the diary of a CEO. I He Stephen said to me afterwards, we’re having a chat. As you can imagine, having a wind down. Anyway, what’s, what’s the car you’re gonna buy when you have an exit or you’re successful, and I’m not really a car guy. I was just like, I don’t know Range Rover or something. I kind of like Range Rover would be nice, don’t get me wrong, but also thinking about the environment these days. That was a couple of years ago, so I was like, ah, be cool to get Range Rover. Maybe I’m not a Ferrari guy. He’s like, okay, cool. Just went quiet and sort of, we’ll talk about something else. And he’s like, Oh, your car’s here. And I went outside and there was this, like, Flash, very nice Range Rover, Vogue. And he was like, oh, that’s your lift back to the train station. I was like, I wish my train station wasn’t five minutes away. And I got in there, and do you know what? I was exhausted, and I just cried, and I was sat in the back of this quite nice experience crying and I couldn’t work it out. The driver was probably like, what is this guy’s problem? I’ve got another lunatic in the back. Yeah. And I rang my mum, and straight away she was like, how was it? I was like, Mum, I’ve just had the strangest experience. Because what Stephen done when we love him alone. I know people have got their different perspectives of Steve, and I actually think he’s very admirable in what he’s done, and he’s doing a lot for entrepreneurship, and we had a great conversation together, but he managed to open me up in a way that no therapist, no Marine, has ever been able to enable me to do, which was to help me identify why I was actually going off the beaten track before I joined the Marines. And I won’t get into that now, but it was like this overwhelming freight train just smashed into the side of me, and I just, you know, my mum was quite close to what many of those reasons. And I was like, Mum, I can’t believe it. I’ve actually worked out what some of it is and was. And we had a good teary eye on the phone, and it was such a revitalizing conversation. I don’t mind saying it every now and then, when I’m having a really bad couple of weeks, I’ll watch that, and I’ll go, if I can go on that podcast, and I can write a book, and I can build a business at the stage we’re at, anyone can do anything. And if there’s anything that I’d love to anyone I’d love to inspire is, you know, my two children who can believe that, well, if Nubbins can do it, you know, we can do something. And it’s not about being on the podcast. It’s not about the book itself or business. I don’t want to sound like that’s what success looks like, but that’s what achieving milestones looks like, and that helps you on the way towards whatever that success is. And I’ve come to realize over the last few years from that conversation that all of this is a journey. It’s it is just simply a journey, and the happiness sits in the journey, even if it’s painful, even if it hurts, and it’s at the end that you’ll go, that was worth it, or it’s at the end you’ll go, I missed a few opportunities there, and yeah, it’d be really it was a great opportunity to be honest podcast. But I don’t know if I’m the only guest who’s managed to do it, but I definitely came off and was like, well, that changed my life, and I’m thankful for that moment, not just for the reach it has, but for the fact that it allowed me to have that moment with myself.  

Rob Hanna 34:32 

Yeah, and I love that, and thank you. No, it wasn’t but that’s the beautiful thing you know. You allow people to open their mind and share their thoughts, and I really appreciate you sharing authentically and from the from the heart there. Um, let’s talk about your your book, because you know, what were the motivations behind you wanting to write it, and what do you hope for readers to really learn from from digging into it? 

Ben Williams 34:55 

Yeah, there was a there was a few books being written at the time. And. And, you know, the SAS, the SBS, lads, Special Forces stuff was sort of getting quite lively then, with Foxy and Middleton and those guys. And, you know, don’t get me wrong, I think, no, their books are great. And they, they paint particular pictures. What I wanted to do, though, was paint a picture of my perspective and how it can help people. So towards that sort of latter part of my career, I started reading a lot of personal development books, and I think at the time, I had the idea to start turning my thoughts into a book, which I’ll come back to in a second, because it didn’t start as a book. I was reading Simon sinek’s work. I think it was leaders eat last and, you know, he was talking about his time in Afghanistan and what he learned about the US Marines, and the way he described the culture. And I’ve worked with the Yanks, and yeah, they are, they are crazy, but they are very good at what they do. And I just love the way he managed to spin these learnings into something that he could then pass on to other people, which is readers like us, and I already had these words written down, and where the words actually stemmed from was I was going through a bit of a tough time mentally. You go through these ebbs and flows within the military, especially in combat, and I was going through a bit of a dark period. And I was working with a charity, or they were working with me, rock to recovery. So I need to give him a mention. And someone from that charity said, Have you done anything creative? So come back to that creative point again. Why do I want to build a product? Because I like the creative side of it. Someone said, Have you done anything creative? No, not really, miserably. I might play the guitar every now and then, but that’s it. Why don’t you go and try and write down your thoughts or paint your thoughts? I was like, God, really? Like, I was like, more arrogant to it than ever, but I was like, Really, go and write down my thoughts. Okay? And I was just, I’d left it for ages. I didn’t think anything of it. I was, I’m not doing that. And then one day, I just thought, actually, let’s see what this does. I just started writing. I just started tapping away. And we had a herb cupboard, not a cupboard, it’s an Understairs cupboard. I wasn’t getting in a herb cupboard, but there was an Understairs cupboard, and just about fit a desk and a chair in it, and I sat there and all these, like pots of herbs and different things that we use for cooking, a laptop. And I was just writing my thoughts about what it meant to be in the Marines and what values look like. And, you know, I wrote some stories down from operations in in Afghanistan. And also I was like, actually, this feels really cathartic. So just kept writing and writing, and I spent ages doing it, and I’d come down at like, probably the most obsessed of being in a long time, come down at 4am and just write, write, write, write, write, and I wasn’t writing a book, I was writing for me. And then I let my wife have a look at it. She was like, this has actually got something, and I don’t know what it is because she’s not from that background, but she just made the assessment. She was like, something in this, and we have an author and a family and a very successful author and a family. So I sent her the what was probably my dogged manuscript, and she emailed back, going, This is unbelievable. I didn’t know you could write. And I was like, me with a dime. She said, There’s something here. You should really look at it. And that’s where I’ve kind of picked up on the reading side of personal development. And then began seeing how authors were doing that. And I thought, I’m going to give this a go. I’m going to see if I can write a book. And the journey began, and it took four or five years to get over the line. So many no’s, so many failures stopped for a while, started again, and then finally, yeah, one penguin business. And they always say, as an author, if you can get two public publishers bidding for your book, you’re doing quite well. And all of a sudden, I had five. I’d gone from 90 rejections on the first round of the proposal, to then leaving it for a year to then going back. And then I suddenly had five of these publishers on the table, and Penguin business is one of them. They didn’t offer the top range of money for it, but they definitely did well. But what threw it for me was the editor I was going to be working with was Simon cynics editor, and I was like, if there’s this, there’s not a more compelling reason to go those guys, then that’s the one and that, and that’s where command and mindset was really sort of born out of. And one of the biggest things that I had to get right for my own self preservation, more than anything, but for my own integrity was to do the guys proud that I’d worked with, not to inflate the stories, not to make it about there’s bullets everywhere, and I was running with people on my back, and I was a hero. I wanted to put readers in the moment that I was scared, I was worried. I thought at that moment I was going to be killed or injured and talk. About those experiences in the rawest form, but then used personal development techniques of what I’d acquired over those years that people could read, ah, that’s how I can transition it into my world. And I talk very deeply in one of the chapters about losing one of the guys, which was a very unfortunate incident when he was killed. And I don’t think many people I know who was on that operations been able to deal with that very well at all. And I know his family have really, really struggled with it. And then what would it have been 10 years on 910 years on from the incident, the book was out, people were reading it, and I got an email dropping completely out of the blue from one of his family saying, I’ve never been able to process, obviously, doing a rounded up version of it, but never been able to process what had happened that day. And you put me there, and can put me through the eyes of what happened, and I thank you for it. It’s made everything so much clearer and better for me. And I had a few of the Marines reach out as well, who said they were so proud of being able to see what’s been written. And that, to me, was all that mattered, as if the guys were knew that hadn’t inflated it. It was respectful, it was integral. And yeah, people found a way to read it, to maybe see through some of their own problems, and affected what I wanted to affect. And yeah, it’s gone on to do okay.  

Rob Hanna 41:25 

It’s more than okay, and it’s, I would really encourage our listeners to go and check it out. There’s so many lessons in there. Ben, this has been a masterclass, as I knew it was going to be. There’s been so many lessons throughout there, sharing your knowledge and so many things people could transfer, not just within the legal world, but in any professional career or indeed, pursuit or passion they may have. You know, I understand. Loopin’s mission is to empower over 1 million people with the tools they need to feel good and achieve great things. We absolutely support that. So as a final question, what would be your advice to people who are interested in starting coaching? 

Ben Williams 41:59 

It’s probably end up as a LinkedIn post tomorrow for me. Now there’s, there’s about 1.7 million coaches in the UK. There’s a lot. That’s a lot of people. Some of those are obviously in in full time work and do coaching on the side. You know, some of those will be physical training coaches. And there’s lots. I think it’s 300,000 business coaches from my sore I might be wrong, 30,000 or 300,000 still big number. A lot of people coach. And what I’ve come to realize is know why you’re coaching and who you’re coaching and be really authentic with that coaching. And I found so I have coaching, and my coach is really authentic and transparent with me. She’ll tell me things that aren’t good in her life. She’ll give me a perspective of what’s wrong and what she’s getting wrong and how it can be better. And it’s not her session, obviously, but it helps to really bring forward that human element to coaching I’ve seen in the past that, I feel coaching can turn into a I’m going to ask you some questions, and you’re going to solve the problem yourself, which is actually a really effective coach, but it feels like the coach on the other side is better than me, or is the hero or and actually that can be quite imposing for some people. People want to work real people, like I’ve written it down there, H to H, human to human, like a great coach will also give you some of their problems in the sense, this is how I solved it. Actually, I can relate to that, because I’m experiencing the same thing. You don’t make it about you, but you find ways to navigate that conversation with that individual by really tactical questioning, but giving your perspective as well, and I found that’s been a really useful tool to be effective at coaching. So yeah, it goes back to that point. There’s a lot of people out there. It’s quite a saturated market, you know, find who you’re coaching and why you’re coaching them, and make sure you can relate to them. Because if some of those core ingredients are missing, I think you’ll fall flat on your face as a coach.  

Rob Hanna 44:04 

Such great advice. And thank you for sharing that. And I think the only thing I would, I would add, is coaching is a strength, you know? I think some people may have a mindset, oh, you know, I don’t need a coach, you know, I’m already there, or actually, I’ll get through it. But actually, you look at any professional tennis player, any formula, one champion, any rugby player, the reason coaches exist is to help you optimize performance, and I think you’ve done a tremendous job today of talking about all the benefits, and you know what you’re doing with looping. And helping people get it in their pocket and get access to this is only going to help everyone, myself included. Um, if our listeners want to know more, which I’m sure they do, Ben about your career, or indeed, looping, where can they go to find out more? Feel free to any website links social media handles, we’ll also make sure we share them in this episode for you too. 

Ben Williams 44:43 

Sure, but before I do that, and this might give you editor a headache, but we’re always coaching. That’s the thing I think people forget, like coaching is not just a an exchange of money for giving advice or helping someone through a situation like my son the other day. He’s really He’s only 10, but he wants to build a. Business. Ah, I better build a website. He said it the other day, I want to build a website. I’m going to start doing some flyers. We’re going to do X, Y and Z. And I just found myself, probably bored him to death on it, but I was like, What’s the problem you’re solving? What you’re actually solutioning for? Have you found that problem? And then all of a sudden, his mind goes off in a different direction. I think that’s one of the most important things around we’re always coaching, coaching ourselves. We’re coaching our partners. They’re coaching us back. You know, look for those little words of wisdom and those moments that are helping you be an effective coach. But anyway, so hopefully that doesn’t make too much problematic problem.  

Rob Hanna 45:34 

No, it’s a valuable point. It’s a good point to to close, but do feel free to shout out where people can find out more about you guys.  

Ben Williams 45:40 

Yeah, so I’m on LinkedIn. That’s probably where I’m most active. So you can search with Ben Williams. If you put in loop in, I’m probably going to pop up. And then, yeah, you could go to, let’s loop in.com to see more about what we do within the business side of our venture. If you’re a coach, or you’re in or you’re content creator and interested actually building one of your own digital coaches yourself. Just search for Omni on our website. Or you can actually go to separate handle, which is, let’s omni.com o, M, N, I, and you’ll be able to find us there and be able to get started. Other than that, that’s pretty much where I hang out. And for those of you interested in my experiences and what commander might that might be. I think it’s available still on Amazon. Every time I check I go, it says it’s free, whether they’re clearly doing like a drop pricing on it. So hopefully it’s back up to 1299 but commander mindsets where my thoughts lie. 

Rob Hanna 46:35 

Perfect. Well. Ben, thank you ever so much. I’ve really enjoyed having you on the show today. I’ve learned a lot from you like you say, we’re always coaching. We’re always learning from one another. We’d like to wish you lots of continued success with your entrepreneurial pursuits and indeed, your mission with Loopin but from now, from all of us on the legal speaking podcast over and out.