Serendipity Soup

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5/1/2022

Oliver Dudley

Season 1, Ep. 14

Welcome to Serendipity Soup! The antidote to celebrity success podcasts.

What can we learn from extremes? This month I’m talking to Oliver Dudley who has experienced probably the most extreme career I’ve covered to date in terms of its highs and lows. He’s a property developer who lost 95% of his wealth during the 2008 financial crash but has – if you’ll forgive the pun – rebuilt his company from the ground up. He’s an amateur sportsman who rowed across the Atlantic despite a deep-seated terror of cold water. And he’s a motivational speaker who coached the world’s number one croquet player.

As will become clear during the interview, I have no desire to emulate Oliver’s amazing physical feats, but I really want to understand what drives someone to constantly push themselves to try something different: to fail over and over and keep going. Because that’s ultimately what Oliver’s story is about. As he says himself, his is a career “riddled with failure”. His honesty is intense, refreshing and inspiring.

There’s plenty more to Oliver’s story and you can find links to some of the things he and I talk about below:

‘Through Hell and High Water’, the documentary covering James Cracknell and Ben Fogle’s Atlantic row in 2006: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Through_Hell_and_High_Water
Unfortunately I haven’t been able to find a link to the Surrey Advertiser article Oliver refers to or the ‘Ocean’s 14’ documentary, but there’s a little bit about his record-breaking row here: https://barnwellprint.co.uk/charity-fundraising/la-mondiale-atlantic-ocean-row/ and here: https://www.worldrecordacademy.com/sports/Fastest_row_across_the_Atlantic_world_record_set_by_La_Mondiale_80124.htm
Oliver also made the news on another rowing expedition, when he and his teammates broke off their record attempt to help a pilot who had downed his plane in the Irish Sea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhxLrW2xLNI
Gary Ward “the human horse whisperer”: https://findingcentre.co.uk/
Reg Bamford: https://worldcroquet.org/reg-bamford/
‘Race To Dakar’ by Charley Boorman: https://www.wob.com/en-gb/books/charley-boorman/race-to-dakar/9780316731928?gclid=CjwKCAjwsJ6TBhAIEiwAfl4TWMNsEaauxgpmgJY0zgYxeqlr2ZLJ56Gp_CcBoUR_n4w_7XxKkAKz2BoCGNIQAvD_BwE
Oliver’s company, In5 Group: https://www.in5group.co.uk/

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Andrew Finlay

Season 1, Ep. 18

Welcome to Serendipity Soup! The antidote to celebrity success podcasts.This month's guest is Andrew Finlay, the owner of Wildview Retreat (https://wildviewretreat.com/), an amazing wellness centre set in the middle of the hills of southern Portugal. He’s a nutritional therapist and has, at various times also been a dive master, environmental consultant and head of environmental protection for the Marshall Islands. Andrew readily admits that he has a strong need to feel that he’s doing something worthwhile with his life but that following this desire, often without thinking about the consequences, has given him both extreme highs and worrying lows. He’s a very forward-looking person. Someone who feels that life’s too short to put up with situations that don’t make you happy and that if you want to feel good about yourself you should always be ready to move onto the next chapter in your life. As you’d expect I challenge him – hopefully fairly gently! – on that. At one level it makes sense, but when is enough enough? When does making a fresh start tip into giving up because things have got a bit tricky? I think it’s fair to say that Andrew isn’t into giving up when things get tricky. You don’t buy an abandoned hilltop village in Portugal and turn it into a fully functioning retreat complete with running water and electricity if you quit at the first sign of trouble. But Andrew’s reflections on the cost of being this driven are fascinating.

Camilla Waterman

Season 1, Ep. 17

Welcome to Serendipity Soup! The antidote to celebrity success podcasts.A lot of my guests define success in work as finding something that makes you happy. But this month’s guest, Camilla Waterman, added a really useful twist. Success is finding something that makes you happy at the time you’re doing it. The thing I envy about Camilla is her positive attitude to change. Just because a job makes her happy when she starts, doesn’t mean it will always make her happy. She seems so comfortable recognising when that point has been reached and then simply acting to improve the situation by moving on. In that respect she’s a lot like my guest in episode 2, Nicole Shamier, who was very comfortable recognising that at some point she wouldn’t be the right person for the dream job she was in at the time. Only two links this month. The first is to the brilliant BBC documentary ‘The Edge’, which is available on BBC Iplayer here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000lhvt/the-edge. The second is a last minute addition as I re-listened to Camilla's episode, which is the Wikipedia entry for the classical Greek legend of Cassandra: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassandra.

Jo Bradshaw

Season 1, Ep. 16

Welcome to Serendipity Soup! The antidote to celebrity success podcasts.Who are the champions of your life? The people who are there at just the right time, with just the right support, to supercharge your life and take you to whatever your next level is. This month my guest on Serendipity Soup is Jo Bradshaw: an outdoor instructor, mountain climbing expedition leader, public speaker and leadership coach. I learned a lot from my conversation with Jo, but I was particularly taken by two things she talks about. The first is the importance of every single person to the successful functioning of the teams she leads. The second is this concept of ‘champions of your life’. Jo mentions several of these people as she talks and I hope you’ve been lucky enough to have had some champions of your life too. Here are links to some of the things we talk about:Breaking The Fever S2-04 I Power dynamics in the office - with Laetita Vitaud: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/breaking-the-fever/id1621524371?i=1000565748591Bruce Tuckman’s ‘forming–storming–norming–performing’ model of group development: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuckman%27s_stages_of_group_developmentCarol Dweck and the ‘growth’ mindset: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_DweckAsthma UK: https://www.asthma.org.uk/Anthony Nolan: https://www.anthonynolan.org/Place2Be – Improving children’s mental health: https://www.place2be.org.uk/The Duke of Edinburgh’s awards: https://www.dofe.org/360 Expeditions: https://www.360-expeditions.com/Discover Adventure: https://www.discoveradventure.com/