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'How are You? Out of 10?' Talk Club's Ben Akers on how two simple questions can help stop men's suicide. Episode 6
If you're a male under 50, the thing most likely to kill you is you.
It's a sobering statistic, and one that has a lot to do with feeling trapped, alone and like there’s no-one to talk to.
When Ben Akers lost his closest childhood friend, Steve, to suicide it started a journey that co-created Talk Club, a simple idea to get men talking more - and harming themselves less.
Talk Club is now all over the world helping Ben deliver on his goal of saving the next Steve.
In this episode of Goodtrepreneur, we explore:
😢 Story. The story of Steve that led Ben to co-found Talk Club
👍 Learning. How through trial and error he simplified each meeting down to four simple steps that are easy for anyone, anywhere to follow
⚽️ Football. The importance of meeting men where they are, whether that's on a football field, or in the pub
🍺 Beer. How he and the team dreamed up a new zero-alcohol beer and pitched it to Bristol Brewing Company, where it is now a best-seller and helps fund Talk Club
🥊 Boxing. How having supporters from musician Liam Gallagher to heavyweight champion Tyson Fury helps normalise talking and spread the word to blokes who might not otherwise do so.
To find a Talk Club near you, visit www.talkclub.org
Want to know more? Here's what AI had to say after we gave it a listen...
What if two honest questions could change the way men live and love?
We dive into the heart of Talk Club with co-founder Ben Akers and unpack how the loss of his closest childhood friend sparked a global movement helping men measure feelings, build mental fitness, and prevent suicide with simple, repeatable practices.
We walk through the four-round format that powers every group: a truth-telling check-in out of 10, a gratitude round that balances the day’s noise, a practical plan for the week built on sleep, diet, and exercise, and a check-out that proves talking lifts your number. You’ll hear how sport became a bridge—talk and run, talk and football, talk and surf—because connection lands faster where blokes already show up. Ben shares the continuity of care behind the scenes too: when repeated low numbers show up, Talk Club Therapy steps in with groups and subsidised one-to-one support.
We also explore a new model for funding purpose. Clear Head—the alcohol-free beer created with Bristol Beer Factory—does triple duty: normalises healthier choices in pubs, spreads the message on every can, and funnels 5% of sales back into the work. Add coffee and other everyday products and you’ve got a sustainable engine that scales impact without chasing endless grants. Along the way, ambassadors like Liam Gallagher and Tyson Fury help reach men who’d never step into a “mental health” space, while a tiny team and 700+ captains keep the community safe, honest, and growing.
If you’re ready to swap “man up” for something real, start with the truth questions: 'How are you? Out of 10?' Then share your number with a mate, join a group, or start one where you are. Subscribe, leave a review, and pass this on to someone who needs a nudge to check in today.
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I'm gonna change this world today. Make those bad things go away.
Ben Peacock:Alright, I believe we're recording. Hello Ben.
Ben Akers:Hello Ben.
Ben Peacock:So you're with the Ben's on the mic tonight, and here we go. Man up. Take a concrete pill. Put on your big boy pants. We've all heard these words spoken. Hey, I've even said them myself, mostly to myself. But if this is how we as blokes handle life's challenges, it's just not working. According to Beyond Blue, over 40% of men will struggle with mental health at some stage in their life. But stigma and that pressure to suck it up and be stoic means we're less likely to get help than women and more likely to hit the booze, which of course makes it worse. So how's that working out for us? Not well at all. In the UK and Australia, more than three in four suicides is men, and it's the biggest killer of blokes under 50. Someone has to do something about it. And luckily Ben Akers has a good idea for doing just that. Ben is founder of UK Charity Talk Club, which asks men to start talking with a simple question. How are you? out of 10. And he's with me here today. So welcome, Ben. How are you out of 10?
Ben Akers:I'll be honest, I checked in this morning at an eight and a half, and being here with you, I'm a nine. I'm easily a nine out of ten. How are you, Benny P out of 10?
Ben Peacock:Well, I'm a 10 talking to you. I'm also glad that I'm worth an extra half a point in your day. It's actually a great way to start a conversation, isn't it? You know, just checking in with each other.
Ben Akers:Well, this is the thing, this is what the basis of Talk Club's all about. Because we we call it the truth question. It's your opportunity to tell the truth. Because the whole question is actually just about to get you thinking about how you're feeling. Because we don't think about that enough. We don't really, we're not honest with ourselves. And that's why we call it the truth question, an opportunity to be truthful to yourself.
Ben Peacock:It does stuff make me think. Because you know, in life, you sort of can, it's so easy to go, I'm having a bad day or I'm stressed, or oh, life's pretty good today. But you don't often sit and almost acknowledge that and also ask, well, why am I here? Why do I feel like this? How was I yesterday? What's different today? It's kind of mindfulness in many ways.
Ben Akers:Well, it is, it's mindfulness on it's micro-mindfulness, I call it, right? Because my numbers will go up and down. I was easily a seven this morning when I left the house, the kids were fighting, they're back at school, and they were at each other's throats. But I went for a walk around the park before I came into the office, and I look up, so it's really important when you go for a walk because we spend most of our time looking at the feet, our feet, trying not to tread in something. But you've got to stop and you've got to look up. And I was looking up, watching the sun between the trees. We do have sun here in the UK in September, and it was just beautiful. And suddenly, by the time I walked into the office, I was an eight, and I was an eight and a half by the time I had my first meeting today. And it's just, I think it's really, really important to sort of go, it's a scale that's going to go up and down. And we call it mental fitness because your physical fitness, you know, it goes up and down. You might feel physically fit, you've gone for a run, or you've gone for a surf, or or you're feeling on top of it. And if you haven't done that for a few days or a week or something, you're feeling a bit sludgy. And it's the same as your mental fitness. You've got to know that it goes up and down. And how do you keep yourself up? Because you want to feel good about what's going on.
Ben Peacock:I wish I could get physically fit between leaving the house and getting to work in the same way as you described, but maybe if I run there. Look, I want to take you back, as of course, we've talked about the fundamental question or two questions at the center of Talk Club. But Talk Club, of course, is now a global movement, and it's a wonderful thing that I want to hear about. But it starts way back with a pretty sad story. Are you up for telling it?
Ben Akers:Yeah, yeah. Okay, so when I moved back from Oz, I'd been back in the country for two weeks, and I got a pretty hard phone call. I got a phone call saying that my mate's cousin rang and she said, Are you sitting down? And I was like, Why are you ringing me, Bex? No, I'm not sitting down. And she was like, Was anyone with you? And I go, No, no one's with me. Why are you ringing me? And yeah, she tells me that Steve, who was my sort of childhood best friend, we were inseparable from sort of 11 to mid to late 20s, born four days apart, and taking his own life. And it pretty hit me pretty hard. Uh it's sort of like we'd only just returned back to the country, and so I was all over the shop, really. And his funeral, and I'll be honest, probably about three years of therapy, lots of questions of why, trying to work out the whys. And if anyone's been confronted by suicide, you realise that there is no answers to whys. And as you sort of said, your opening, it's the biggest killer of men under 50, which means statistically, the thing most likely to kill me is me, which is pretty horrific the way to look at things. So I spent a long time trying to work those things out. I started making bits and films when I was out in Oz, and I decided that I was wanting to sort of start continue that journey of making films when I was back in the UK. So I read an article saying that men of my age watch sport and documentaries and those horrific statistics, and I was like, okay, I'm gonna make a film. So I made a film called Steve. Steve Documentary.com, it's called. Uh, so it's a doc about those horrific statistics and what's going on, especially in the UK with mental ill health. And it described by a very kind journalist as a changeary, not just documentary, because the documentaries hold mirrors up to the world and go live scrap and you go live scrap, and that's it. Bring this number at the end. But what I wanted to do is I wanted to make change because that's what I learned when I was out in Oz, how to sort of try and take on problems, try and make change. That's what we did. I made it as a little uh I did a little crowdfunder in my head. It was going to be a little 15-20-minute film. I ended up with uh 53 hours of footage. Did you film all that? Yeah, because my yeah, we did everything. We well basically the problem was my daughter was my second daughter, my youngest, was born while in the middle of filming, and my wife was the producer, so obviously she was distracted now, she's got a kid. So never let the writer, producer, director be the same person, me. So we end up with 53 hours of footage, and we talked to some amazing people because what we're doing is we're when we did the crowdfund, it was fascinating. People don't just invest with their tenors, they invest with their stories. So they started telling me these amazing stories, and I was like, okay, you're you're emotionally invested, not just financially invested. So we started collecting these amazing people and these amazing stories, and we ended up with this like we cut it down to a 90-minute doc, a 90-minute quite tight film where we explore what mental health is, what mental ill health is, and how we can look after ourselves. So that was where we got to with the film, and then what we did was we I did a pre-screening of it just to make sure it wasn't complete rubbish, and someone came up to me afterwards and sort of said, now what? And I was like, What do you mean? And we was like, now what? You've opened me up, now what are you gonna do with me? And I was like, Oh, am I allowed to swear? Oh bugger.
Ben Peacock:And swear word, okay.
Ben Akers:Uh no, but I was about to say, I was about to say another word. So I sort of uh I realized that that if I really wanted to make change, I needed to be the change that I wanted to make. So what I did was I decided that we were gonna start a talking group because what I found was that there was great things out there, people are doing great things. I learned a lot from Movember, from Calm, from Andy's Man Club, but I realised that no one was actually looking at prevention, everyone was just looking at triaging, keeping people, men alive. No one was looking about how they weren't trying to keep them from taking their lives, not looking at why they were doing it. So we explored the idea of being a bit further upstream, and then there's a rugby player called Danny Scolthorpe, ex-England rugby union player, a rugby league player, and he introduced me to the idea of mental fitness. And most men don't know what mental health is, they think mental it's you're talking about mental ill health. So, like, and even if you Google it, you Google mental health and you'll see depression, anxiety, and sort of like all these other negative signs. But if you Google physical health, you'll see running and you'll see football and you'll see yoga and you'll see all these positives. So I just wanted to change the conversation. So as soon as Danny said mental fitness, I was like, boom, I like that. Because if you're mentally fit, you're mentally strong. And if you're strong, and how do you get strong by talking about your feelings? And suddenly it's now no longer you are weak if you speak, you are dealing with a positive word with mental fitness. So I had this idea of mental fitness, I had this idea of creating some sort of talking group. Blue, one of the other founders, is in the film. He sort of said, Well, I've been doing some mentoring with kids, and we use how are you out of ten. And I was like, Well, men are just kids, let's just use that, let's just nick that. And suddenly, suddenly, sort of like as Picasso says, good ideas are borrowed, great ideas are stolen. So I stole all these ideas from other people, and uh, I'm with Picasso, me and Picasso like that. So that's where Talk Club came about. And the idea was there were six of us with the founders. I wanted to try and create a big gang because I knew that it'd be hard, especially if I'm talking about Steve every day. But also going to start something new, you need people who've got different energies and different ways of looking at things. So, yeah, so 2019, we did the premiere of Steve, and I did 50 screenings of Steve before we got locked down, and the idea was to go where men were to take it on a pub tour. So I did it as a pub crawl, pub tour, pub crawl, but I did it as a pub tour up and down the UK, and I went from sort of like everywhere from Valmouth, which is right down in Cornwall, to Aberdeen, which is right up in Scotland, and the idea was to leave a Talk Club in my wake. Um, so that's where we started the first sort of like round of it all. Then we got locked down.
Ben Peacock:So leave one at each pub. So you do the screening and then hope that the people who saw it then go, okay, we'll use this as the start of the talk.
Ben Akers:Yeah, yeah. So just uh so that was like literally, it's a Trojan horse. The film's a Trojan horse to get to get men speaking, you sort of like men thinking, men talking. And because what you find is if you do it in a pub and you've got the landlord there. I mean, I probably sort of like I we probably set up 20 clubs off those 50 screenings, and it was amazing because what's happening is the landlord's there and he goes, Well, how easy is it to do one? I go, You could do one here tomorrow. It's a really, really simple. I'm talking to scaffolders and I'm talking to solicitors. I need to make sure that everyone feels included as part of this movement, this mental health movement. So, yeah, so that's what we did. We did the screenings of Steve, and then we set up the first ever one in Bristol, and now we've got nearly 130 groups around the country, and we've got affiliated ones around the world. Yeah, so it's sort of been a bit of a journey since 2019. But basically, I'm I'm the accidental CEO. I mean, I'm a CEO of a charity. I didn't mean to start, I didn't mean to do this. I just sort of like I'm I've just made a film because about my friend took his own life. It's sort of like, and now we've got sort of five, six thousand men and now all their families, part of a global movement to sort of like to look after themselves, really, to be mentally fit.
Ben Peacock:It's very impressive. It's very, very impressive. And you're not just in pubs, you're in companies too, right? You can basically adopt this into any situation.
Ben Akers:Yeah, where we started was doing it as talking groups, just sit in a circle, eight to ten men, sit in a circle, go through four rounds of how are you out of ten, what you're grateful for, because most of the time you'd sit there and you'd So slow down, take me through it.
Ben Peacock:I want to pretend we're in a Talk Club now. Obviously, there's not eight of us, there's two of us, but we sit down and we say, How are you out of ten, like we did at the start. Then what happens? Yeah.
Ben Akers:Okay, so so what we do is we so this is a talking ball. So what we do is we have a talking ball. So every group has a talking ball, right?
Ben Peacock:Yeah. So for the listeners, the talking ball is a white ball that looks a lot like an oversized cue ball, really, but it's squishy.
Ben Akers:Yeah, squishy, right? So what we do is, and it's got talking ball written on it, right? So just in case you didn't know. So what we do is we sit in a circle. In a typical talking group will be a talk and listen group, we'll sit in a circle in a quiet, male comfortable space. So backs of pubs, sports clubs, somewhere that you feel comfortable and you feel it can be confidential. So it's something anything that's said in there stays there. And what you do is you'd have the captain, so I'd be the captain, the captain is the bloke who runs the group, and they are men 18 plus, and it takes an hour on Zoom to learn how to be a captain, right? So it's very, very simple on how to do it, and then obviously extra support after that. What they do is they'll run through four rounds of how a Talk Club works. So they'll ask, so everyone will say, check in. So everyone will say how they are at a 10, and they'll explain why. And they normally they can go as long or as short as they want. The captain sets the tone, the captain checks in first. Normally, if the captain's really honest, if the captain checks in, say, I'm a six because I've had a rubbish week at work, this is happening, this is happening, this is happening, it allows everyone else to be honest. If the captain comes in and goes, I'm a 10 and everything's brilliant, even if they are, it's great to sort of be a 10 and everything's brilliant, and hopefully a lot of our captains are, but they've got to set the tone about how to be as honest as possible. And then what happens is this ball goes round, everyone says their number and why. And as I say, they can be as quick or as as long as people need. Then you go for round two, which is what you're grateful for. So what normally will happen is when I do my check-ins, I'll moan about my kids, right? And most parents, most I'll moan about my kids, right? Don't be heading, they're little this, they're a little that, right? But then what am I grateful for? I'm grateful for my kids. So I always know how ridiculous it is. So then my gratitude round's really, really important. And as men, we really, really need to, all of us need to, but especially as men, we need to understand what we're grateful for. We understand who's got our backs, who, who, who's good things in our lives. So that goes round, everyone does a turn of what you're grateful for. And then the next round is how are you gonna look after your mental fitness this week? So it's actually about moving forward. So it's not about what's happened in the past, it's how you're gonna look after yourself now. And we asked to base that around your diet, your sleep, and your exercise. So those are the three big things when it comes to your mental fitness. So, how are you gonna eat properly this week? How are you gonna sort of drink a lot of water? How are you gonna sort of make sure that your internals are good? Are you gonna sleep well? How are you gonna get yourself to sleep in better, right? Because most men don't sleep well enough. Um, and they because they've taken stress to bed with them. And then the last bit is exercise, because exercise will always help. So, is it a walk? Is it some yoga? Is it sort of like how are you gonna look after those those three together to combine? And then you do your checkout number. And what we found is that our average check-in number is uh I think 5.1 and our average 6.1 and our average checkout number is 7.6, 6.1 and 7.6. So you've got a rise of 15%. Just by having a chat, yeah. And just by talking. And what's happening is that I've never like sometimes you have men, sometimes you'll have men who might stay the same, but in the thousands of men that we've had in circles and the thousands of men, uh thousands of hours that we've had bums on seats, if you like, like I'd say 90 to 95% of those men are coming out in a an up number. And I've never, I've never sat in a room where those numbers have gone down, never. So, but what's interesting for me is that when we started talking exercise during COVID, so during the lockdown, so we weren't allowed to sit together in a pub, but we were allowed to run together. So we started to talk and run, and then we have now talking football, we have talking surfing, we have talking skate, we have talking just your check-in number, your exercise, and your checkout number. And that was the first time I'd ever been introduced to my number going down after a session because we'd lost. So we we played our first ever lost the game of football. I played our first ever game of talk and football, and I was like, I came in at a seven, I'm now a six because I've lost. So I was like, that doesn't work.
Ben Peacock:So suddenly it was like the other team's feeling pretty good, right?
Ben Akers:Yeah, so suddenly you're not allowed to include the score in your checkout number, right? So you sort of like so you can't you're not allowed to sort of suddenly it's like do you feel better after running around and shouting?
Ben Peacock:So but so if you're lost by two goals, you've got to add them back onto your checkout number.
Ben Akers:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But but this is this is the great thing. This is the great thing. It's the way that you want to deal with it. We're just gonna give you the techniques, we're gonna give you the ways of doing it and the space to be open. And it's a really they are really fun. Someone sort of said once, one of the early groups, his wife said to him, Why do you want to go and sit in a room of men just moaning? And he goes, It's not like that. We laugh. We sit there and we're always having a laugh, and we're always sort of like opening up and and just being that they're really the talking groups can be quite intense, but they are full of laughter and full of joy. And then when you play the games, it's really interesting. You sort of like you you start playing football, and you'll what you someone will check in at a six and you'll just pass, you'll start passing to him a bit more. And if he starts berating himself because he's missed a shot or whatever, you're a bit kinder and you start understanding and and you don't care about the score because you just care about the bond that you've got with these other group of men. And that's where it's all is. It's really, really about a lot of it's about just being able to connect with people and being heard. Being heard is so important because I don't think that, especially men, we don't feel heard by other men and we don't feel heard by society. But I think it's I do think that there is a there's a communication issue with sort of like actually really being heard about I don't feel comfortable with this or I'm having a rubbish day and I want someone to hear me. And that's what the community is building around. And then so we've got those two, and then we realize that for continuity of care, if men were regularly checking in below a five, because the talking groups are about if you are they're peer-to-peer. So you sort of like, so if you are regularly checking in below a five, you need extra help more than a talking group can give you. So we introduced tool club therapy. So now we've got tool club therapy groups, and we've got tool club therapy one-to-one. So we sort of like, and those are both online and in person. So we've got this complete continuity of care now. You can come running with us and or you can go all the way to subsidized one-to-one therapy. And then we've got an app. So we've got an app where you can actually go like where you can check in with yourself and you can run through the four rounds and you can track where you're up to. You can get the Talk Club app off the app store or off Google Play.
Ben Peacock:Unfortunately, not in Australia, you can't. I tried. Maybe you could sort that out for us Australians. That'd be lovely. You can't.
Ben Akers:Oh no. Okay, I'll get onto the team and get them to sort that. But but that's the thing. It's very to us, it's sort of it's just trying to sort of. I mean, you don't you don't need the app, you can do it with a piece of paper. But actually just sitting there and actually being present and going, as I say, yeah, as you said about mindfulness, we don't spend enough time just checking where we are. We are moving so fast, and we don't know why we're moving half the time. But actually sort of sitting there going, actually, what am I now? Why have I just got off that phone call and it's just dragged me down two points? Why am I sort of like, why am I feeling stressed about this? What can I change about me? And I gamify it. Like literally, I go like this morning, I come out at a seven. I didn't sleep particularly well. My youngest still came in, was kicking me in the back. So I probably woke up at probably a six. I'm a seven by the time I've left the house. I can either sit with that seven all day and not be happy with it, or I can turn change the rules. So I went for a walk around the park, look up, see some sun, and suddenly I'm an eight, eight and a half before I've even walked in. But I've taken control of that.
Ben Peacock:And you've recognized what'll help as well through past experience.
Ben Akers:Yeah. And that's the thing, everyone's got like, everyone's got different things. I mean, talking may not be for everyone. I journal and I do loads of different techniques, all about trying to keep my numbers up.
Ben Peacock:I want to pick up on this. You you said at some point, you know, everyone from the solicitor to the scaffolder. And it goes to something you said in your TED talk. You say you spoke to a man in an ad agency making £300,000 a year, and he feels trapped by his job and by money and having to do this job. And he feels lonely and literally kind of feels incarcerated. And then you said you went and saw a man in jail who is literally incarcerated, and he too is lonely and feeling trapped. But both of them share this need to talk. So two completely different people in different scenarios. And as soon as I heard this, I was like, wow, I've felt totally trapped for like most of my professional career. And it was sort of a wake-up because I feel like I have spent a lot of my life, honestly, is walking around looking at my feet, thinking about everything I've got to do, feeling trapped, feeling quite frankly, a bit self-absorbed, thinking I'm the only one, no one else understands, there's no point talking to people. But when you speak like this, it really makes me realize quite clearly that I'm not the only one. It's kind of everyone. And really, if we can just reach out to someone else and they reach out to you, suddenly we all talk about it. It feels so much easier because it's kind of this shared experience, you know, and recognizing you're not the only one. And then it's almost a pandemic, frankly. And so do you feel that the more that you do this, the more you realize that it's almost everyone living in this state, but feeling alone and just that recognition can change things?
Ben Akers:Yeah, 100%. I mean, you said in your opening section about the percentages of men who have suffered mental health issues. It's I'd say it's a hundred percent. I can't see how you can like literally you're trying to say that no one has suffered a physical health issue. This is the same as like if you bang your toe or you've got cancer. These are physical health issues. And what happens is exactly the same when it comes to our mental health, is that we've not been taught by society on how to recognize these things. Mild anxiety, right? Mild anxiety is natural. If you're walking into something, you don't know it. You walk I say to the kids, you go, uh, if you're walking into the unknown, our bodies are created to create mild anxiety so that you can actually work out whether fight or flight. Whether it takes over, that's something different. So you need to be able to look after yourself. And the way that you can do that is by connecting. And how are you at 10 allows us to do that? It allows us to sort of to be honest with someone else and go, actually, I'm having a pretty crap day. Or even better, I'm having a brilliant day. Why are you having a brilliant day? Because I've done this, this, this, and that becomes really inspiring to sort of like when you're surrounded by positive people. And you know, as long as there's honesty there, like there is a lot of provado are still out there in the world. But as long as someone's being honest and you go, actually, no, like classic case. You see someone going out for a run and you don't go, oh, they're unfit. You go, good on them for going for a run. Right. When I say I'm going to therapy, especially when I was in my ad world, uh ad industry, I'd sort of say I'm going to therapy. And I remember coming out of a meeting and my business director went to me, why what's wrong? And I went, Nothing. He goes, Well, you got therapy. I go, Yeah, nothing, because I've got therapy. And that's the thing, is it's sort of like we're so when it comes to our mental health, we are literally, we wait for ourselves to have a heart attack before we get off the couch and go for a run. That's the same way we look at it. We don't look after our mental health the same way that we look after other parts of our lives. But if this goes, most of us, the world falls apart, right? So we really need to start giving our mental health and our mental fitness a priority. We are literally in a broken fix it mentality when it comes to our mental health. We wait for it to be broken before we try to try and look after it. And it's just, it's just wrong. And that's the reason why I think we're growing the speed that we do, because of our positivity, because of the need is definitely there. But because we're not trying to pat people on the head and go, oh, you need help, you need help. We're saying we're gonna give you the tools to help yourself.
Ben Peacock:That's what we're all about. Do you find most blokes are open to the idea at first, or do they sort of poo-poo it and you know have to be dragged kicking and screaming by their mate who says, No, come on, this is gonna be good. How do you get people to get on board?
Ben Akers:Real mixture. Real mixture. I think I'm still probably, even though we're sort of five years in, six years in, I'm probably still dealing with low-hanging fruit, if I'm honest. I know that the builders that I'm working doing my house at the moment, they don't quite know how to engage it quite yet. But repetition, repetition, repetition, and they've been working on my house for a few weeks now, and they started opening up towards the end of last week, and they sort of like, I said, Well, what number are you today? I go, Um, I'm probably a six today, Ben. And so, so it's actually you have to create safe spaces for them to do that. Like, there's a there's a bloke who came to football with us, and he was regularly checking in. He's a Romanian man, and he was regularly checking in at an eight. And I looked at his eyes and I was like, bollocks, you're not an eight. And I checked in at a six, I was checking in at sixes and sevens, and he went, and after probably about three or four weeks, he went, I'm an eight, and then he went, No, I'm not, I'm a seven, no, I'm not, I'm a six, no, I'm not, I'm a five, I'm probably a four, and I've probably been a four for the past month. And suddenly it's like you could just literally, I just saw this in his eyes. I just saw this the facade drop. And then we got him into a talk and listen group, and then about three months later, we were playing again, and he got and I went, okay, what are you? And he goes, I'm an eight. And I go, Are you an eight? And he goes, It's I'm actually an eight this time. But the thing is, it is, it's about whether you want to share. It's about whether you want to, if you feel that it's worth it and you want to open up, but also going, like, not everyone wants to go for a run, not everyone wants to look after their physical health. We know that we should, but not everyone can be motivated. But what we're trying to do is we're trying to make it as easy as possible for men to feel motivated. I don't want you to like, it's quite funny. Like, as I say, like the first ever group was in Bristol, and it was introduced to me by the bloke who runs a gym, bloke called Craig, brilliant bloke. And I said to him, Are you gonna come? We'd been running the club there maybe a couple of months. And I said, Are you gonna come to the club tonight? And he goes, No, no, I don't need that, don't need that. And I remember literally clapping my hands together and going, again, okay, so do people just come to the gym to get fit and once they're fit, they don't come back? Or do they come to get fit and then keep coming to stay fit? Because that's all Talk Club is. Talk club is about staying mentally fit. You might come and you might be fives and sixes, but I want you to come when you're an eight, I want you to come when you're a nine, and I want you to inspire the kid or the bloke who's just walked in, who's 18 and doesn't know his feelings yet, and then he's he's at a six and he sees you at 50 and sits there and goes, Okay, this is how I look after myself. And that's what this beauty of these communities are. They're lovely tight groups where men just really look after each other and and a herd, just a herd.
Ben Peacock:So that's interesting because getting people on board can be hard depending on who they are, but you've worked on those builders and just repetition has broken it down and make them comfortable with it. Then you've got people who want to give it a go, they're kind of open to it. So I guess inevitably what he's saying is there are people who are meanable, but overall blokes can be a bit hard to get to do these things. Now, two of the people you've got as ambassadors, I think, a genius. You've got Tyson Fury. This guy is like a multi-belt holding world heavyweight boxer. You know, you want the tough guy? There he is. And the other one's Liam Gallagher, and he's like one of the bad boys of rock and roll, right? These are two of your highest profile supporters. Do you find that that helps? That guys are a bit like, I want to, but I don't know if it's blokey, but hey, if Tyson Fury says it's bloky, it must be blokey, so it's all good and off I go, you know. Does it help to know that you have these figureheads? Does it help get people on board?
Ben Akers:100%. 100%. It's sort of like literally what we found was that there's 167,000 charities in the UK. And there are probably thousands of talking groups, right? Male talking groups. And what we always were aware of is that we need to do it differently. Mental health can't be about patting you on the head, right? It needs to be something that's slightly cooler, slightly more accessible, slightly something that you want to be part of. So from Word Go, we were always looking at if your typical charity was doing it one way, let's try and do it differently. So, through lots of great conversations that Gav had with different people, Liam knew about us, and he was creating a song called Too Good for Giving Up. And he said, Could we do it for you? His management rang up and said, Could we do it for you? We went, You're all right then. Yeah, let me get back to you. Yeah, let me get back to you. And um, so we did that, and it was fantastic because it was sort of like Liam's really obviously he's one of the world's biggest rock stars, but what you've got on top of that is that he's not sitting there talking about his struggles all the time. He's he's sort of almost seen as someone who's mentally fit. And what was great for us was actually going, because quite a lot when in mental health spaces, you've got people who talk about their struggles, but they don't talk about how they have got over their struggles. So, like I was really interested. I've always I'm I'm a big football fan. I want to know how Lionel Messi does it, I want to know how Ronaldo does it, I want to know how they become mentally strong, because that to me is inspiring. To me, that is the interesting stuff when it comes to inspiring different people inside those areas of collecting, as you say, collecting those people. So Liam gave us a really, really interesting opportunity for exploring these bang on target audience, biggest rates of suicide are between 35 and 55-year-old men. That's your biggest area of Liam fan. So we were like, this is brilliant. They did a music video treatment. I rewrote it to become a four-minute advert for Talk Club, but obviously made it feel like they were doing it. But they were great, they were a great gang. And then while we were doing that and it became really successful, then we probably can't see us. But I'm wearing the Liam t-shirt. So the Liam t-shirt, and then that he became a billboard almost like for selling t-shirts. So we were selling t-shirts to Japan and all over the world and sort of stuff like that. People were buying them. And while we were doing this, Tyson Fury was just about to release a song called Sweet Caroline, his version of it. And they'd been talking to another charity, and the charity had been quite hard to work with, apparently. So they rang us up and sort of said, Could Tyson release Sweet Caroline for you guys? And we went, Yeah, right then. And so it was that pretty weird.
Ben Peacock:Yeah, you get this world heavyweight boxing champion wanting to release a piece of music which happens to be Sweet Caroline, where you're like. Is this a print call?
Ben Akers:Yes, right. And we did. When it first came, when the email first came through, and it was like, who's having a laugh with us here? And then we talked to them, we realised it was Warner and they were lovely people. But then what we found was that that gave us a very different target audience because, sort of, being in AdWorld, I'm always thinking about how I can get to certain people. So what we can do is you go, okay, so you might be a Liam fan, but you might not be a Tyson fan. So a Tyson fan might be more your scaffolder or someone on a different demographic. And I know that he's has talked about his own mental health struggles, but he's done it in a positive way. So we thought he'd be a great ambassador. So he released Sweet Caroline for us. You can watch that on YouTube as well. I think what happened was what's really interesting was that sort of, as you sort of said, it gave us a credibility to actually be okay to open up. It gave us credibility to sort of like it actually goes, okay, if these guys are doing it, then we can do it too. And then we've collected since then, we've collected a footballer like loads of others. For example, there's a footballer called Troy Deaney who has had his own struggles and went to prison before he got into football and stuff like that. And he actually says, we've got a video of him saying that he believes that if Talk Club had existed when he was younger, he wouldn't have gone to prison because he would have helped him be less angry because he's now trained captain. We've got rock band called The Idols, and we're collecting people weekly for sort of like being ambassadors and wearing the t-shirt. Because the idea is that if you wear a t-shirt, you can spread the word about what we're doing and how we are out of 10 and create those conversations. Because we've like in five years, I haven't never had a marketing budget. And the hardest thing was actually going, how do you get it out there? How do you get people to listen to you? How do you get people to pay attention? So we're always trying to work in different areas to try and get to different target audiences. And our ambassadors are a massive way of us getting that noise because we're tiny. I've got five salaried staff, five part-time staff, but I've trained over 700 captains now, and we've got nearly 130 clubs around the around the country.
Ben Peacock:Big impact with a small team.
Ben Akers:Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, and we work really hard to make sure that everyone's mentally fit as well. All the team have therapy, monthly therapy. All the team, we regularly check in. We have a check-in and check-out numbers every day. Like we have a Google Sheet of So I know one of the founders, Neil, lives in Portugal. So if he checks in at a six, I know exactly where he is and I'll bring him up. Well, LMH, chat it over. Where are you up to?
Ben Peacock:So I know exactly where everyone is. You could apply this to any company. A lot of companies have this mental first aid people, which is great, and like six monthly check-ins, but this is more regular, like it's a daily check-in. A simple, easy thing any team can do to make sure everyone's okay, but also track people's mental health over time.
Ben Akers:Well, that's what you were saying when you were saying about working with businesses. So mental health first aid is a fantastic thing. But to be honest, are you really going to tell Beryl from accounts your deepest, darkest secrets or what's going on with your marriage? Probably not. So an external voice comes in, Talk Club, we send in one of our listeners, and they're there for that if you need to. But also, if mental health first aid is working really well, who's looking after them? So then we have supervision support for mental health first aiders. So we're trying, always trying to sort of how can we get a mentally fit society? Can we work with businesses? Can we work with celebrities? Can we work with companies? Can we create products? I'm always trying to find another angle, always.
Ben Peacock:You've set up a lot, clearly. So what's been the most challenging part of that? What's been the hardest bit of the whole journey to get where you are? Oh, that's a good question.
Ben Akers:Most challenging part, I'll be honest, talking about Steve every day. I find it really, really hard talking about Steve every day. I sort of I do suffer from compassion fatigue, if I'm honest. And I work really hard on my mental health. And I work, as I say, I have therapy and I work on that. Finances, finances are always hard. Um, I sort of earned more money when I was 22 than I do now. And it's sort of like, and it's never been to me, it's never been about the money, but I do need to sort of, I have got three kids, so I do need to work that out. But then that guilt inside that about making money off my friend's death, which has been really, really hard to sort of balance out. Well, yeah, I know.
Ben Peacock:You really, you know, in a thousand years, I would never have come up with that. Never.
Ben Akers:No, but it's been something that I had to work through in therapy and and even down to that conversation of do you think a therapist is making money or a doctor's making money off of someone's illness or anything like that? So it's very but it was a struggle for me. It was a struggle for me at the beginning. And and obviously what you find as well working in quite a lot of what we do inside the purpose-driven world is actually trying to balance that money versus need, want versus need versus value. So I think those have probably been my hardest, my personal hardest points have been actually just balancing what need is versus what want is or what my value is. And I miss my friend. I miss my friend. It's sort of like it's you talked about my TED talk earlier. It was the hardest thing I've ever done, my TED talk by far. The way they work is they give you a coach and you sort of you work through this coach, you work through, and you try and get down to 12 minutes and you're trying to sort of remember everything. And I couldn't remember it, and I was finding it so hard. And I was talking to my therapist, and it was like, why am I finding it hard? And if I was talking about tractors, it'd be easy. But I'm trying to quantify my friend into sort of like into this story. And I woke up the morning of the TED talk at five o'clock in the morning, and I thought he was still alive. And I rang, I was about to sort of went into a shower and I was like, Well, I have to ring Caroline, who was my coach, and I'll have I'd have to ring her and I have to tell her, but but obviously I can't do it now because he's still alive, and maybe he could walk on, or maybe I'd do it and could walk on. But I was so convinced for about 10 minutes that he was still alive, and then suddenly it hit me that he wasn't. And and I remember dropping to the floor in this hotel room and crying, and then pulling myself together and going out for a run and trying to clear my head, and then breaking down on the street and crying. But it was really hard to sort of like to actually go, okay, and now I'm gonna stand up in front of a thousand people and tell them my story. The vulnerability and the emotion you feel in that TED talk is 100% real, is none of it's fake, and it was really worried about me with sort of like how are people gonna perceive my story and my story talking about Steve. But I very nearly didn't do it. I did another practice in the morning and I broke down and cried in the morning. And they said to me, You look, you don't have to do it. And I sort of said, I sort of need to do it. I need to do it, I need to sort of like, I need to do it for him and I need to do it for me. And now it's like, now that and Liam are probably the two biggest things that have impacted on the charity because there's like 110, 120,000 people have seen that that talk. And it was the hardest thing I'd ever done because I've just got this, I've got survivor's guilt. It's not complicated. I've got survivor's guilt because I'm here and he's not. So every day I'm trying to save the next Steve, I'm trying to help the next one. I'm trying to get families and friends to not go through what I've been through and what Steve's family's been through.
Ben Peacock:Do you get people sending you messages and emails that you've helped, like save them or help them?
Ben Akers:Yeah, yeah, I've I've probably got up to a hundred now of just sort of and it is I'll I'll be honest, sometimes it's sometimes it is a driver, yes.
Ben Peacock:And that's just the ones that take the time to send you something, right?
Ben Akers:Um I had one which was we were doing uh talking golf, and this this bloke called Chris walked in, and there was a there was a few of us, it was like sort of four or five of us in this in this meeting. And uh I was sitting like in the uncomfortable bit right in the corner, like in the the you know, like when you got your table and you have to sort of like squeeze past people to get out. So he came over and he goes, Oh, before we begin, can I Ben, can I give you a hug? And I was like, Yeah, cool. So um I hug everyone and like whether they like it or not. So I went out and I gave him a hug, and he goes, he said to me, I'm only alive because of Steve. I'm only alive. He goes, I've watched it so many times, and you've saved my life by making this film. And then suddenly it was like, so everyone is like, uh, all I could do is say thank you, and I'm glad I could help. Um, then we've obviously got into this now uncomfortable conversation where we've got to sit there for an hour and a half talking about golf courses. I think I'll be honest, I think one thing I do really, really enjoy about it is the realness of it all. Because we're dealing with the climate and we're dealing with something that is so far in the future that is just nubbing away at us, that we don't really can't, we can't really get that moment of am I am I making any change here? Am I doing anything that's changing here? And you've got all these people who are sort of telling you that it's not making any difference, and you just have to keep believing in yourself. And I promise you guys, whoever's listening to this, you are making a difference. Please keep up your good fight. But when you've got it with Talk Club, when someone is telling you this and they're standing in front of you and you see in their eyes, or someone thanked me after a talk and told me that that he's alive because of what we're doing, and then followed me on one of our social medias, and I just looked on that's interesting, who's that person? And then saw a photograph of him and his kids, and suddenly that hits you. That really, really hits you. But those are the sort of like, and those are the ones I know about.
Ben Peacock:We've talked about what's been hard along the way. So, what's been easy? I mean, has any of this been easy, easier than you thought? Is there anything you've gone, gee, I thought that'd be harder? I'm I'm really glad that worked out a lot simpler than I expected, or is it all hard?
Ben Akers:I think we've made it easier for ourselves. We've made it easier. What happens is because we've kept to I knew that I wanted to save a 40-year-old man, literally. I've been so laser-like focused about what I want. I want to save the next Steve. I want to save a 39-year-old man uh from taking his own life in five years' time or three years' time. So I want to try and create a safe space for him to be able to do that. So, how are you out of 10? Mental fitness, being laser-like in the way that we do things. We can bring in all these other things from around it, but actually going, if you just keep your message really, really simple, you keep everything really, really simple and allow people to join you on that journey has made it simple. Because I think like money's always a problem. I mean, like for any charity, raising money is always always a problem. But the amount of so that's been a hard one, but the amount of people that know about us and want to join us on that journey because they want to help someone else or they want to help themselves, it's been reasonably easy once you've actually created really, really sort of good rules. I think we've been really lucky in again with the team that we've got. I mean, Gav's my co-CEO. So working with someone who's got a different skill set to me is brilliant. He's a therapist, and we're both quite entrepreneurial about the way we look at things. Having backing and having trust from sort of him and the rest of the team. We've got sort of like there were six founders, but three of us went to the board of trustees, and three of us went to run the charity. So creating a really good, strong team right at the beginning was really, really good, really made everything a lot easier. I think sort of, I think once you know what you're good at, but also more importantly, know what you're not great at, and letting someone else do that stuff makes everything a lot, lot easier. Um, and getting out of my own way. I get out of my own way quite a lot. I try like sometimes I'll you'd be so obsessed with trying to make sure it was perfect before it got anywhere, and you go, actually, just get out of your own way. Like create something simple, create simple rules for people to follow and then let them interpret it. That's what we do. We create really simple rules, and then we let as long as you stay in line with that, then you will grow and you will own it your own.
Ben Peacock:Stop trying to control everything, hey?
Ben Akers:Yeah, well, you can't control everything. And you if you're building a community, you need to be able to sort of let people add their own stuff on it in a safe way. Well, that's what it's got to be, the community owning. I mean, um, we've created these rules. Let the community own it. Yeah, we create keep everything safe. We don't sort of say, all as I say, all you can say in Talk Club is thank you for sharing. This is safety, right? It's sort of like we can't have a vice, we can't have people going off on angles and stuff like that. We don't talk about politics or religion, right? But when it actually comes down to it, is that they men especially need to be able to know the rules and interpret it their own way. And that's what we do with a lot of tool clubs. So I think we've made it easier for ourselves. Like setting up groups is so easy. Like it takes an hour on Zoom to be trained, and you can run a group from anywhere. So, but I think we've made it easier for ourselves. That's the reason why we're making groups, like there might be two more groups set up by the time I finish this call, you mate. So they're coming thick and fast.
Ben Peacock:It's going to be three or four more if we don't wrap up soon. But I'm not letting you go yet because you've brought up the conversation about money a couple of times. And I want to talk money for a minute because one of the things I'm really impressed with is you've created this idea that anyone can go and do anywhere, like Talk Club, right? It costs nothing to run it, it costs nothing to be involved. And that's wonderful if you want to get more people involved, which of course you do. But it's not great when you're trying to run a charity because you've got no clear income stream, but obviously you've got costs. But what you've done is found some sort of an answer in this by partnering with a zero alcohol beer company. Can you tell me about that? Because I find it to be a fascinating business model.
Ben Akers:Yeah, well, it's even better than partnering. We created it. So we went to Bristol Beer Factory, which is where our first ever Talk Club was. Uh, a beautiful man called Sam Burrows. And I walked into him, me and Neil, which is one of the other founders, had this idea. We love pubs. We grew up in pubs, we love pubs, but we know about alcohol and depression. So we went to Sam and we said to him, We want to create an alcohol-free beer. We've got this name of a beer called Clearhead, which Neil came up with, which is absolute genius. So I went to Sam and I said, I'm going to create an alcohol-free beer and I'm going to do it with you. And he went, Nah, never going to go anywhere. And I was like, I promise you it will, mate. I promise you, it's going to be this was 2000 and just before the lockdown, 2020, right? So we were like, it's going to go somewhere. So he saw piss off, Ben, it's never going to work. Right. So I came back again with a load of research because we used to back in the day working on Diageo and all the where the things are going to go about whether I've got free beers, especially here in the UK. And he went, nah, piss off's never going to work, right? And then came in the third time. This is persistent, Ben, because he never gives up. I came in the third time and went, okay, why won't you do this? Because it's going to go somewhere. What's wrong with it? Have you not got the equipment for it? Are we talking tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands? If it's tens of thousands, I can crowdsource that. And James, who was his barman at the time, and he was just wasn't Sam wasn't convinced. James, who was his barman at the time, I said to him, James, how much how many times do you get asked for alcohol-free beer in a week? And he goes, I get asked three times a day. And suddenly Sam's ears pricked up. And then, luckily for us, lockdown happened and they went through four rounds of RD. And Tristan, who's the head brewer over there, everything seemed to align at the same time. They worked out a new way of doing it with their current equipment. This new hop came on the market, got happen to it. And then they created Clearhead. And it's a really, really good alcohol-free beer. It tastes like a beer, comes to the pint, it's got a lock, like quite a lot of them are a bit light or a little bit chemically. It's a really good IPA for over here. And uh sort of like sits in part of their stable, and now it's their biggest selling beer. They're definitely their biggest selling can. And we get so my model was always like, as we said about money, most charities exist of fundraising. People run out of mountains, and you need a big brand for that because most people go the ones they know, and or grants, so local government grants or big lottery grants. These things are they come with their own strings because they're telling you where you should spend your money or where how you should do things, but also the money's drying up over here, so on especially on that. So I always wanted to create different revenue streams that were passive, that we could actually bring in money without me trying to do too much. So Clearhead was our first one, and we just got a couple of months ago, we got to £100,000 worth of donations from them on 5% of sales, which means that for us over the five years, that's fantastic because I've been able to employ someone off that. But on top of that, is that they've made a lot of money as well. So they've made a lot of money because they're only donating 5% of it. And so they've done a lot of good, they've made a lot of money, and it's a really good sustainable model. So from there, we created a coffee with Hogan's. So we've got an out, we've got a coffee called Tool Club 10, which is a full caffeinated because people ask me about is it decaf? But I'm also working on a decaf because what I found is that quite a lot of men don't like drinking, look, quite a lot of people don't like drinking out caffeinated coffee after three o'clock because it affects their sleep. So you've heard of breakfast tea, we're creating afternoon coffee, which is going to be a decaf. I'm hopefully doing that with Wogan's. And then I'm also working on other products. I'm working on, I'm trying to work on a moisturizer, I'm working on a toilet roll because men spend 14 minutes a day in the toilet and uh is that all?
Ben Peacock:And yeah, and that's if they forget their phone.
Ben Akers:Exactly. And well, the idea is that if you're on the toilet and you can check in instead of doing the scroll of Doom, you're checking and check on the Talk Club app. So that's the idea of that. And then obviously, who gives a crap reinvented the toilet roll market by getting delivery. So I'm currently trying to work with a local UK-based one who's a similar thing to Who Gives a Crap. Um, creating a toilet roll with them, hopefully. The beer's great because they go into pubs. I got a phone call. The landlord saw the logo and started right quite looking at what Talk Club was all about, messaged us on a Tuesday. We trained him on the Thursday, we set up the club on the following Monday, and then two years later, I was talking to one of the members there, and he said, I'm only alive because of this group. So, and I can bring that right the way back to the can. I can bring that right the way back to Clearhead. Like, if Clearhead hadn't existed, then he wouldn't have known about their Talk Club, and the tool club wouldn't have been set up there. So, so a lot of what we're doing is actually going, I'm trying to get it triple threat, you know, I needed to make money, but I also needed to spread word, and I also needed to make change. So that's where we are. We're products are really, really important with me and the future of what I see Talk Club being. I sort of see it, I see a lot of us going like the power of brands and the power of purpose. And I sort of said to the toilet roll man, I sort of tell me you're worth selling toilet roll and let me use me as a test bed. Like that's what I want. I want sort of like we've got a community that will buy stuff because it was helping the community. It's really hard to sort of go, give me a fiver, but they go, but give me instead of give me a fiver, give me the toilet roll, give me the money that you would spend on toilet roll, or let me or buy my beer or buy my coffee, then suddenly you can still help the charity. And that's to me where it starts getting interesting and the stuff that I enjoy doing.
Ben Peacock:You're reinventing the funding model of charities, really. Yeah, I just don't want too many people to do it though. So so you're an innovator. Where do you come up with all this? I mean, look, there's no doubt a lot of listeners out there going, I'd love to do something good for the world, but I just don't have an idea. And you're bristling with them. So, how do you come up with this stuff? What does someone do to have Benny Akers big brain full of ideas?
Ben Akers:Um, so I've got good teachers. To be honest, I've always looked at it. What does success look like? And if you can work that out, it's a lot easier to work backwards from that. And I think to me, that's really, really important. If you know what you want to achieve, and then you go, how do you want what do you need? We need money, okay, or we need spread the word, we need this. But I've got no money. So how do I get money? And how can I get that to cross over with that? And what were people going to spend money on? That's literally how I came up with Clearhead. It wasn't more complicated. I did a talk, I don't know, a year ago, and a fundraising convention, and it's like the way you described it, it's like people's minds are blown. And to me, it's really simple. It doesn't seem how I don't see it as complicated at all. Like I'm always to me, we're always just trying to solve the problem. That's what I'm trying to do. And behavior change is all about that. And you, if you can combine as many of these things together as possible, and you surround yourself with really good people to make the other things work that you don't know about. Like I've learnt a lot, but I'm not a therapist. I didn't want to know about therapy. My mum's a therapist, my co-CEO's a therapist. I'm not, but I'm just a bloke that has ideas, and that's the stuff that I get excited about. That's the stuff where how do you get that builder to look after himself? We talk a lot about depression, is anger turned inwards, and obviously domestic violence and violence is anger turned outwards. So, what we're trying to do is we're just trying to stop men being angry, and I think that that is quite interesting for the whole of society because I'm not a violent person, so that's the reason why my anger was obviously turning inwards, because I was angry about my place in the world and stuff like that. And that's where Steve was. Steve's anger was he wasn't violent, but his anger was turning far, far deeper than I ever thought. Because he didn't know how to express, he didn't know how to remove that anger. So even just simple things like removing the alcohol and giving men an opportunity to not find the answer in if you're finding the answer in the bottom of a pint, don't let it be alcohol pint. Because these things are coping mechanisms. Like when you think of self-harm, most people think of young girls cutting themselves, right? Or young boys cutting themselves. But self-harm is you trying to take control over your lives with things that will hurt you. That is a definition of self-harm. So alcohol abuse, drug abuse, overworking, even over gymming, overeating, these are all coping mechanisms to try and get control over your life because of mental ill health. So everything I'm always trying to do is just trying to find another angle, another way of getting to get men to help themselves. That's all it is.
Ben Peacock:The world needs more people doing things like this, more people like you having a go. So if someone's out there thinking, I've got an idea, I just don't quite have the courage to have a go, or I don't know how to do it. You got any hot tips for them?
Ben Akers:Do it. Stop pissing around. Build a plane while it's in the air is always my way of looking at things. We fail so much, right? I love the entrepreneur way of Silicon Valley, fail fast and cheap, right? It's just sort of like we try things and they may not fly, but it doesn't cost anyone any money and it doesn't hurt anyone. So what I would always say is like, if you've got an idea, don't wait for it to be perfect, just try it and start learning. Because we like, for example, the first round of we've got four rounds of uh talking group. The first one was seven rounds or something like that, just far too long. So we tried it, it didn't work. Then we just cut it down and cut it down and cut it down and cut it down. So my advice is don't overthink it, just do it because you will not get it right first time. You have to fail, and you'll learn far more from the failures than you will from waiting for it to be perfect. Like I watch Steve now, and I'll go, oh Christ, I got that that's far too this or that's far too that. But I just needed it to be out. I needed it to not be perfect because if perfection will never come. I don't think I've ever made anything that's perfect. I'm never happy with anything I've ever created. So you have to learn to sort of like to just do it and let go of it and just sort of because other people will start shaping things around you. That's what it is. You sort of like you'll start collecting really interesting people. If your idea is big and bold enough, how can you change the world on this thing? And I didn't mean to change, I didn't mean to do this. I didn't mean to do it. If if Stephen died in a car crash, I'd be taken on speeding. So, but I'm where I'm meant to be. I'm here and I'm meant to be here. I'm meant to be here. And yeah, I have this guilt with Steve not being with us, but I can't do anything about that. I can't go back, I can only go forward. Like every minute's gonna tick on. I mean, my 50th in November, it would have been his 50th four days later. That's really hard for me. It's really, really hard for me because we had a 18th together, we had a 21st together, we had a 30th together. Now I've got sort of like now uh I didn't have my 40th, now I've not got my 50th. So it is hard. But if you don't do it, who's gonna do it?
Ben Peacock:Basically, that's the way I look at it. We're the people we've been waiting for, as someone once said. So if I'm a listener and I want to get involved in Talk Clubs or start one, I could be in Australia, I could be in the UK, where do I go? So uh hello at talkclub.org. Just email us, hello at talkclub.org. Or just go to the website, talkclub.org.
Ben Akers:Yeah, just go to the website talkclub.org. Um, yeah, we're working on the international stuff at the moment. We have affiliated clubs, we're not meant to be spending UK earned money on other classes or parts of the world because of the charity commission. But that doesn't mean that we can't train people up and set up their clubs online and sort of stuff like that. So that's all good. But also going, if anyone's interested in becoming a partner or got an interesting idea or product or anything like that, then I'm always interested in sort of having more chats. And yeah, and if anyone does want to reach out and say hello, just email me or grab me on LinkedIn. Because to me, this is the thing that we should all be doing, working together. And my take on your listeners will be that they will already be part of the purpose-driven community because that's why they're listening to you, mate. So we all have to look after each other.
Ben Peacock:Certainly do. We most certainly do, Ben. I really love talking to you about it, and it's been wonderful. And I feel obliged to ask after our chat, how are you out of 10?
Ben Akers:Um, probably a good nine, still a good nine, but I've just realized how late it is, and you're like it's like four o'clock in the morning there over there with you. I've really enjoyed this. I'm a bit tired. I've been talking since nine o'clock this morning. It's now one o'clock in the afternoon or whatever.
Ben Peacock:So well, it is Talk Club.
Ben Akers:It is Talk Club. You know, I love what you do, so you just keep fighting the good fight and keep on this podcast. It's some great people already, uh, and me. But yeah, I just think the more people we can keep talking to and keep it open. So how are you then? How are you out of 10?
Ben Peacock:Um, honestly, I'm feeling the happiest I have all day. I'm gonna go out with a 10. It's just inspiring stuff, it really is. And I haven't been a 10 all day. It's talking about this stuff and listening to you and what you're doing and all the ingenuity and energy behind it that's it brings me up, quite frankly. You're very impressive. So, congratulations and thank you very much.
Singers:I'm gonna change this world today. Make those bad things go away.
