Triumph Over Trauma: Dave Coleman’s Journey from Marine Commando to Motivational Speaker | Episode 20

WARNING: This episode contains strong language and discussions of sensitive topics, including mental health and suicide. These discussions may be distressing for some listeners. If you or someone you know is struggling, we encourage you to seek help. You can reach out to the Samaritans on 116 123 or https://samaritans.org/. Please listen with care and prioritise your wellbeing. 

Dave is a former Royal Marines Commando turned successful business owner, public speaker and advocate for mental health. Today we hear his remarkable story of determination to succeed in the military, overcoming his stammer and the grueling stories from the front lines.

Having joined the Marines aged only 16 and passing the Elite Commando training first time - all whilst suffering with a debilitating stammer - David knows first-hand about persistence. At 18 he was deployed to Afghanistan but sustained critical injuries from a grenade attack causing injuries to his neck, body and legs. Refusing to accept that the fight was over for him, he was re-deployed back to the front line only a month later to re-join his troop.

Having experienced so much at such a young age, David’s mental health suffered and following a suicide attempt, he was diagnosed with severe anxiety, depression and PTSD. 

Dave's story is a moving masterclass in perseverance. He also shares his leap into business with Civvy 2 Commando - transforming military lessons into corporate energy. This episode is packed with moving insights on resilience, the importance of a supportive community and embracing transitions for growth – no matter what life throws at you.

In this episode:

00:00 How it all started – How David’s stammer led to childhood anxiety and an extreme fear of speaking.

15:12 Elite Commando training – David’s fast-track through the ranks and adjustment to front-line life - enduring extreme heat with limited water, rations and constant vigilance.

28:57 Surviving a near-fatal explosion and the psychological strain during rehab.

43:57 Transitioning from combat life to civvy life - aggression, medical issues, poor mental health and attempted suicide at just 19 years old.

51:15 Sharing his experience – how talking openly about his experiences is helping others, breaking down preconceived notions of mental health and life after the forces.

01:06:46 Overcoming self-doubt through hard work and bravery, both personally and professionally. How David used public speaking to control his stammer.

01:15:22 Reflecting on how enhancing support in leadership can improve resilience and performance.

Connect with Dave here:

Website: www.civvy2commando.com

Instagram: @civvy2commando

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-coleman-654a51296/

Youtube: @civvy2commando417

TikTok: @civvy2commando

Please like, subscribe or follow, so you're notified of any new episodes coming up, and if you're keen to reach Rusty or Simon with any suggestions, feedback or comments, you can contact them via the show's LinkedIn page here: 

https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-bouncebackability-podcast/

Transcript

Simon Ursell [00:00:00]:
Simon and Rusty here with the Bounce Back Ability podcast. The podcast that explores how to deal with obstacles, setbacks, and challenges.

Rusty Earnshaw [00:00:07]:
Hope you enjoy the pod.

Simon Ursell [00:00:08]:
Looking forward to it. Listen on. Right. Hello, everyone. Banks back at BBC Pod Pass. We're back again. I've no idea what's happening today. Got a guy called Dave Coleman coming on, and, yeah, I don't know anything about it.

Simon Ursell [00:00:20]:
So, what what's gonna happen, Rusty?

Rusty Earnshaw [00:00:23]:
Well, I won't give you too much information just yet, but, DC, get spent 3 3 weeks, and then the summer at Seb comes up and does some, cool activities with the kids and speaks to the parents and, makes me cry.

Simon Ursell [00:00:37]:
Makes you cry. Yeah. Okay. So, yeah. This is this is, this is slightly, I'd say exciting, but maybe a little bit nerve wracking. I mean, you do cry for free though, don't you, Rusty? You're a you're a crier.

Rusty Earnshaw [00:00:51]:
I'm a love is blind, first dates, type of crier,

Simon Ursell [00:00:54]:
you know.

Rusty Earnshaw [00:00:55]:
In the world love. And, however, yeah, DC's story is well, a, he's a brilliant storyteller, but, b, like, his story is was it'll be mind blowing to me and you, really. Like, he's,

Simon Ursell [00:01:09]:
Me and the listeners, have now got a beta breath. So, yeah, let's listen to Dave and see what he's got to say. Bring it on. Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Bounce Back Ability podcast. We've got Dave Coleman on today. Really excited about this because I don't actually know a huge amount about this one. And, we're kinda doing it, revealing live what's going on, which is pretty cool.

Simon Ursell [00:01:33]:
So what we doing, Rusty?

Rusty Earnshaw [00:01:35]:
I'll save a special surprise to you, Dave's story. Dave is the man who has made me cry the most this year.

Simon Ursell [00:01:41]:
No way.

Rusty Earnshaw [00:01:42]:
Yeah. Yeah. Not not not like You

Simon Ursell [00:01:44]:
cry a lot though, so it's I don't know. That's a massive challenge. Right.

Rusty Earnshaw [00:01:49]:
Not because he's been mean to me.

Dave Coleman [00:01:51]:
Just

Rusty Earnshaw [00:01:52]:
not always. Just because because of, like, the story and, like, yeah, I guess, his bounce back ability. So, yeah, I'm pretty I'm pretty excited to reveal some of that stuff today. Let me We didn't tell you that.

Simon Ursell [00:02:03]:
I haven't got tissues in here or anything. I mean, if I'm gonna be crying or maybe I maybe I have got some. I don't know. But okay.

Rusty Earnshaw [00:02:11]:
It's definitely it's definitely gonna be an hour if you keep making gags about the tissues. So, yeah, I just pulled some of the stories out. I said, look, Dave. Awesome to get you on. Apologies we couldn't make this work in person.

Simon Ursell [00:02:22]:
Yeah. Hi, Dave.

Dave Coleman [00:02:24]:
Hi, Simon. Hi, Rusty. Thanks a lot for having me. And, yeah, hard to do it in person. Newborn baby. I've been juggling like a circus clown recently, so it's been quite hard. But thanks for me, Art. I'm very looking forward to

Simon Ursell [00:02:34]:
it. Yeah. It's not just you, buddy. I mean, me and Rusty in the room is hard. But, yeah, that is cool. It's good to have you on.

Rusty Earnshaw [00:02:43]:
So we start at the beginning. And and the thing is, I mean, obviously, the the like, when when I've seen you deliver before, like, there's images which obviously bring this stuff to life, but I I also think you're a brilliant storyteller. So, kind of excited. This is bringing

Simon Ursell [00:02:59]:
tech exciting. Yeah.

Dave Coleman [00:03:00]:
And you're

Simon Ursell [00:03:00]:
not you're not getting picked up much here, Dave. So, you know, no No pressure.

Rusty Earnshaw [00:03:04]:
No pressure at all. Maybe I don't know I don't know when you go back to to when you're like a a teenager. I think it starts back then, doesn't it?

Dave Coleman [00:03:12]:
Yeah. So, I grew up in like Timperley, Cheshire, not far from Ortingham. Around there, I mean I went playing football when I was 7, and the coach sort of told my dad, you know, I wouldn't bother bringing him back, So rugby it was from the age of 8. Yes.

Simon Ursell [00:03:30]:
Well, what a great coach.

Dave Coleman [00:03:31]:
Yeah. Good rate you on. Yeah. I just wanted to play with the lates on that, so but, yeah, wasn't very good, and, got taken down to rugby, Ultraman Kirtle, 1st game away at Chester, knee deep snow, loved it, and, always liked the outdoors. I started getting muddy, the teamwork stuff, and everything like that. Wasn't the most popular kid or anything like that at primary school. Despite what everyone thinks now, I was really good at reading, and I I was good reading books, I was reading a year above me at school, and I got asked to read in front of the school in, like, primary in a assembly, and I started stuttering, like, stammering really bad, like, tongue, face, the lot. Couldn't get the words out.

Dave Coleman [00:04:15]:
Whole school laughed, and world closed in, like, you know Oh, right. And it was kinda like them films, you know, when the when the weather changes, and then, you're stuck like that forever. I just had a had a stammer from then on, and I think looking back, that's probably when anxiety and things started and nervousness, because I developed this fear around talking. So I was scared to talk, because I was scared to do a face, I was scared my tongue's kind of stared, and everyone laughed, and in went in on myself a bit type of thing. I was just really, like, probably a shy, awkward kid, but I always knew I wanted to be something a bit more, but didn't have the sort of confidence to get it out. Looking back at primary school, there was probably telltale signs what I was gonna be. It, wasn't gonna be an astronaut or a a brain surgeon to be sure, but, did you ever do it at primary school when every every, like, member of the class had to draw a little picture of what they wanted to be when they grow up, but it gets put on a tea towel, you know, and the whole school gets it. Yeah.

Simon Ursell [00:05:19]:
I think that I'm too old for it to have got on a tea towel. That would have been way too

Dave Coleman [00:05:23]:
far. It would have been chalk.

Simon Ursell [00:05:23]:
Yeah. It would have been chalk. Yeah. We'd have done chalk on the board, but, yeah. I do remember doing things like that. Yeah. For sure.

Rusty Earnshaw [00:05:30]:
Now didn't know when you were when you were young, Simon, they burnt sticks and drew. Right?

Simon Ursell [00:05:34]:
That's true. We lived in a cave. Yeah.

Rusty Earnshaw [00:05:38]:
I, I would have grown a footballer, so I probably was convinced I was gonna be a professional footballer till about 14 with no evidence whatsoever to back it up.

Simon Ursell [00:05:46]:
Yeah. I was gonna be James Bond. That was my that was my thing. Yeah. It didn't work out.

Dave Coleman [00:05:52]:
James Bond doing things for Baldritt. Yeah.

Simon Ursell [00:05:56]:
Harsh but fair.

Dave Coleman [00:05:58]:
The, Everyone at school was, a footballer, like you say all of the girls were playing with flowers and some of them were, you know, doing things like that, and mine was like 7 years old in camouflage automatic weapon you could see the bullets coming out of the gun everything like that, which should be a red flag nowadays in in schools and everything like that, you'd think, woah, woah, woah, woah, but I just was obsessed and infatuated with the military from a young age, really wanted to to join up, and like going through secondary school, I decided I wanted to join the Royal Marines, which was the longest and hardest still is military training on earth. There's none that long. It's 36 weeks now, from start to finish, and the first time pass rate, but, you know, it's it's tiny, but the the statistic and the advert back then was, you might have seen the advert, the bloke running through the field, underwater tunnel, he gets stuck, almost rounds, they pull him out, and it's like, where is your limit? Is it here? Yes. Don't even bother filling out the forms, like, type of thing, and it was 99.99% need not apply because from signing up at the interview to passing every single micro test to get into basic trading and passing training first time, the pass rate was naught point naught 1%, which made it the hardest, one to pass, and I was just determined that's what I was gonna go and do. This fear of talking, you know, in school so the way I try to say it was in the register at school. My, like, my name begins with d. I struggle with d's big time. You know? So 5 times per day, 5 times per week, 25 times a week, and how many times you have a sort of conversation per day, but you're asked to read in front of the whole class.

Dave Coleman [00:07:46]:
And I imagine I I sort of say it, like, if you're scared of spiders, how often do you see 1? Once a fortnight, once a month. This is, like, 100, thousands of times per day to talk, so you get knocked back, knocked back, knocked back, confidence going through the floor and just, you know, I I wanted someone else. I didn't wanna let it hold me back, so I joined the Royal Marines at the earliest possible age that I could. You could register your interest at 15 9 months and then start training at 16, which I did, and out of the 63 of us that started, I think 11 of us finished, and I managed to be one of them, and I don't say that. Everyone goes, wow. You must have been super kid, blah blah blah, all all this, and it's absolutely not the case at all. If the worst bloke in the troop was down there and the best words I'm trying to get this right in the screen. Up there, I was probably here from day 1 all the way to the last day.

Dave Coleman [00:08:42]:
I was not the worst, but I was down there the entire way through, But what that shows is, like, and I say this to everyone now, like, you don't need to be the best to pass. You just have to be there at the end. You know? Don't quit. Don't give up. My learning curve, it was so steep, and my learn rate was so slow, and everyone's picking things up easily. I was up late, had talked on revising, learning, ironing, folding. I couldn't do it. Everyone else was finding things easy.

Dave Coleman [00:09:11]:
I just wasn't natural at it at all. There was nothing that I was natural at, and I didn't know this was mindset back then, but looking back, it it so was. I've just promised myself before I went, I won't quit no matter what because I really want to be there. I've got nothing to fall back on. I've got no life back here. There's nothing else for me to do. I want this so much. I just won't quit, and I'll see how far I can get before someone goes, mate, that's you, Don.

Dave Coleman [00:09:37]:
You're not good enough, but I won't quit. I'll wait for them to tell me I'm not good enough, and that day came on the final test, and I managed to fight it off and fight it off and keep going keep going, and people like that a bit, and I passed and finished skin and body the whole way through story of a life type thing skin and body and past and

Simon Ursell [00:09:58]:
How many people do you reckon on that course would say exactly the same thing that they pass skin of their teeth?

Dave Coleman [00:10:04]:
You know what? Looking at it now in a different set of glasses I probably you're probably right, there was this Lance who was the best at everything, and I was like, you are God, I just can't, you know, how are you so good, and how how do you find it all so easy? And it was effortless to him, and I spoke to him years on, and he was like, god, that was the most the hardest thing I've ever done. I was like, you made it look easy. You like like but at the time, no one shows that, did they? No. So you have you've only got in your mind what you think's happening, and it's not true.

Simon Ursell [00:10:35]:
It's not true. I was I was just thinking my mindfulness coach, Mia, often talks about showing up. You don't have to be the best person in the room, but you gotta show up. And you don't have to do very much, but you gotta show up. This showing up is so important, isn't it, to any kind of mindset thing?

Dave Coleman [00:10:51]:
Self motivation. Yeah. Because when you when you've gotta be up during winter, you know, 3 AM, freezing cold, raining, you've gotta put your wet kit back on, you've gotta get out there. You've gotta do that. No one's coming up going, you know what, mate? Do you wanna come out? Here's a hot drink for you. Come out, and you just gotta do it yourself. No one's doing it for you. No one there's no reward.

Dave Coleman [00:11:10]:
The only reward is you don't get sent home. You know? So there's no little carrot. Well, there's that white green beret. You you you wanna earn that, and that's in your mind. I I want that. And the only way I can get closer to that is by sort of getting out of this sleeping bag, getting in the rain, and just, you know, but yeah. Like you said then about, would they have said it too? I actually reckon so. Yeah.

Dave Coleman [00:11:35]:
Probably everyone feels like that. There was this one time, mate. I'll just tell this quick story, but they do this thing called it pays to be a winner. So there'll be 60 of you, and they'll go, right. You've got to do this 1 kilometer loop around camp. It pays to be a winner. The first three don't go again, and then you'll go again, and you'll go again, and you'll go again. And I've done so many times around this loop, but I've started to get dizzy, you know, like, every week, it was always me near near the back of the the 10 kilometer.

Dave Coleman [00:12:03]:
There's not one. And this one time, I was like, no. No. Not today. Like, I'm not having it. It's not happening. I am coming, but and I gay dive sprinted, and I was tongue out. I was running.

Dave Coleman [00:12:13]:
I was like, I'm not having to go round more than once, and I was I was close, and that lad just sort of jumped past me. No. You're you're fit enough. You don't need to go again. I was like, let me have this one. So burned myself out on that first one, and then that was me in the little shuffle at the back for the whole thing by then just ruined. But I tried. I tried.

Dave Coleman [00:12:35]:
I really tried, you know.

Simon Ursell [00:12:37]:
Yeah. Wow. That's pretty cool. So what next? What happened so you got into the Royal Marines, and, what happened after that?

Dave Coleman [00:12:46]:
So plus basic training, and the thing for us, whilst you weren't going through this doing training for no reason, Afghanistan was in the thick of it then. They just had the 2 bloodiest years of the entire campaign, over a 100 British soldiers killed, in Sanging, and it was, in Helen province, sorry, and it was very widely known. You are going to war straight after this. Like, you've trained for a reason. You will be going to Afghanistan. And I passed out. I was still too young. When I hit 17, I actually volunteered as a battle casualty replacement for 40 commando on their tour of Herrick 12, which turned out to be quite a bloody tour in Sangin.

Dave Coleman [00:13:30]:
So a battle casualty replacement is a a substitution on the war zone, so if you're a team of 8, one person gets killed, they're all, like, really injured and, like, go home. They need someone else quickly. So it came out. We need more BCRs. We need people ready to go. So I got loaded on onto this course down in Portsmouth, 2 weeks training for 50 degree heat of of afghan, I think it was April in Portsmouth or something like that, so it was, you know, really totally different. The bloke who was teaching us, who was, like, regarded for us, you know, like, overall person said the only rule is we have to go out every night. That's it.

Dave Coleman [00:14:09]:
So that was sort of our our build up training out in Portsmouth on the cheap rose 14 days doing training during the day, but we had to go. I finished it, done, ready to go, and I I got to the part where I was gonna go, and they realized I I was still 17. No. Hi. Close, but no cigars on. You're too young. Go away. Like, so I tried to get on the one early, but I couldn't go.

Dave Coleman [00:14:31]:
I was too young. And then 18 all around, and 2011, 45 Commander where I was based up in Ardbroath, Scotland. We're heading out on Herrick 14, to the Nan Alley green zone of Helman province for a 6 month tour, so we prepared for this, trained for this. I was trained up, a long range rifleman and sharpshooter and did other other courses like grenade machine gun and 50 cal shotgun, or sort of combat medic, all this stuff to get prepared for this tour, and we we deployed there. We do a week on, like, camp Bastian, getting used to the heat, doing some fitness, 0 in your, like, weapons, shooting, everything

Simon Ursell [00:15:12]:
like that,

Dave Coleman [00:15:12]:
and sort of getting used to what what's going on, and then you load up in your teams into the Chinook, like, helicopters, fly out, out to your respective PB. PB is a patrol base, and you, you know, this is very much not a base like in England, this is sandbags and barbed wire the size of a rugby pitch, with 4 tall sandbags, 1 in each corner where you just sit on and look, and then you swap, swap, swap. So 247, 365, there's people watching every part because they'll they'll try and get in. They'll try and take you over. So you're in, like, defense mode, bought patrol during the day mode, 8, 12 hours in the 50 degree heat, all your kit, body armor, and then you're on watch for 4 hours during the night. So eating rations, drinking, we were our water was rationed, so you had 10 liters per day out of bottles, and that's to drink, which in that heat doing that work, you need about 8, like, to live, and that's to drink, wash with, brush your teeth with, wash your hands with, wash your clothes with, clean your kit with, so it quickly came down to we're just gonna fucking drink, and that's it. We're gonna pour 1 bottle on us at night, and that'll do. There's no fridges, so it's warm.

Dave Coleman [00:16:29]:
It's warm water. You're not drinking cold water. It's warm water.

Simon Ursell [00:16:33]:
Wow,

Dave Coleman [00:16:34]:
you do your 8 to 12 hour patrol and you can't switch off, you've got to be laser focused, so it's mentally taxing, it's physically exhausting all of the kit and body armor you are in the locker it hurts, and you get back a few hours to sort of chill out, and then you might be on watch from 1 am till 5 am, and then you're up for your next patrol at 6 am, so you probably get in 2, 3 hours sleep, you can't sleep during the day, it's too hot,

Simon Ursell [00:16:59]:
Yep. No. That just sounds absolutely horrendous. Wow.

Dave Coleman [00:17:02]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Rusty Earnshaw [00:17:04]:
Yeah. What a day. It's gonna get worse. And also Great.

Simon Ursell [00:17:08]:
To be

Rusty Earnshaw [00:17:08]:
fair, David. One of the other things is to look at you now, you know, you've got a beard and tattoos, and you look like a grown man and but you the pictures, you are a kid in those pictures.

Dave Coleman [00:17:20]:
Yeah. I was very much a little boy. I thought I was nailed then. I thought I had a bit of 6 pack going on and everything like that, but I looked back, and I must have been so skinny. I was light, and, you know, you are a boy. You know? I I see 16 year olds now, and I was like, mate, I I was in training at your age. I I'm just training. I see people at 18 now, and you know, I think, god, I was in Afghan at your age, you know, like, and just my sisters now, one of them's almost 18, in 6th form, and one's in uni, and I'm like, god, at your age, I was just about to go to Afghan, at your age, I'd already been to Afghan, and to me, they're my little sisters still, you know, like

Simon Ursell [00:17:58]:
Yeah. I mean, that's scary stuff, ain't it?

Rusty Earnshaw [00:18:02]:
And do you think yeah. Just to, like, reflect on that, do you think that, like, the mental skills, like, there's a lot of mental skills you talk about here, like, staying focused, like dealing with adversity, like the fear of going to war. Like, do you think you there's any specific stuff around that, or do you think just I guess the training just got rid of people that weren't able to to do those things?

Dave Coleman [00:18:28]:
This is what's great about it for us is, you're not thrown into a team where you don't know someone's background, or you don't know what someone's story, you don't know someone's qualifications, or someone's experience, you've all done a 32 week, like training course, the same thing, the hardest one there is, if they're there, they should be there, they should be, and you know I don't even have to worry, They're watching me. Like, you know, if if if you were playing outside center and you had to cover out and you were hoping that your inside center made that tackle behind you, it's like that, but on on another level of I I know he's got me. It's fine. I don't even need to check. You you're good. You you know? And the fear of going to war on I'm not saying this trying to sound big headed. I genuinely mean this. I really don't think there was any one of us that was scared to go, and I don't mean that, like, because we're so hard, but it's because you've prepared.

Dave Coleman [00:19:19]:
You've known you're going for a year. It's not a surprise. You've known, you've trained, you've prepared, but you've trained and overtrained, meticulously trained so much. You're just you're not scared. You're just ready. You're ready to go, and you know they're not as ready as you, so you're confident. You know? It's like going into a match that you think there's no way we can lose this. There's no way they're better than us.

Dave Coleman [00:19:40]:
You know?

Simon Ursell [00:19:41]:
Yeah. I mean, that whole that, the whole thing about resilience of being part of a community is huge, isn't it? I mean, you're you're in a community there of people where you you fully understand their capabilities and the type of people that they are. So you feel like you belong. You know you belong. You don't even have to feel like you know you like you say, you know, you know they should be there. That's that's gotta be massive for resilience to have that community around you, whether that be in a sporting, business, military context. If you're in a if you're in a community of people that you fully fully respect, support, and you know they do, you too, you're gonna feel more resilient, aren't you? Is that is that how you is that how you felt?

Dave Coleman [00:20:21]:
A 100%. Yeah. You you know, you feel they make you feel invincible anyway, the way they you know, but that makes you feel more, like, more resilient but it's such a training aid too because when you come together you don't need to build from from the ground up, you can just get on with it, everyone's already built from the ground up to get to that point, it's just now how do we refine this and harness this and make this, make us work together better, but you know if you got a sort of rugby team together for the first time of 10 year olds, can little jimmy pass a ball yet? Can he spin it yet? Can he do that? We're all spinning it, we're all left and right passes, we're good let's just move on to tactics now it's like

Simon Ursell [00:21:01]:
that yeah yeah I hear that that that has got to be helpful and also potentially not helpful as well did did you get a bit of imposter syndrome sometimes? I mean, are you there thinking Yeah. I'm just I I know everybody else is amazing, but I'm I mean, you you spoke about this through your training, didn't you? And you're saying I was I was at the bottom of the pile. I bet you weren't all the time, but it felt like that. Did it feel like that when you were out in Helmand?

Dave Coleman [00:21:27]:
Not so much in Afghan, but when I got to my unit, when I passed training, yeah, I'm quite a visual person. So the way I got through training without realizing it is like I'd imagined what a marine looked like to me, and there was a gym near me back in Sale called uh-uh the cosmos, and it was like the the entry requirement, yeah it was like £1.80 or if you're massive you you just go there, and all these blokes with these marines tattoos, and they were enormous and tattoos about it, and I was just like that's a marine, you know, like that that's all I'd seen of it, I was like I want to be that, and I passed training at 18, dead skinny with no tats, and I was like, god, I don't I'm not one of these. Like, I don't look like them, you know, but and then you get to a unit, they're all bigger again, and you're like, fucking hell. How have I ended up here? I don't you know, this isn't but whoever passes that training has passed it's not a appearance test, it's a can you do the job test, and, you know, but we get people that are black white English speaking not, you know, like gay straight whatever it doesn't discriminate it's just have you passed straight and yeah you can do the job sweet we want you we don't care about any of that, and when you realize that it feels good but for the start, yeah, massive imposter syndrome definitely.

Simon Ursell [00:22:42]:
How did that affect you to to begin with then in in in what you were doing? Did it were you able still I mean, you you you seem like a determined kind of guy. You're not gonna let that get in your way.

Dave Coleman [00:22:53]:
No. And I think one of the things that I say about the determination was, like, going through training on every exercise that you do, every morning they wake you up and you do something called a kit muster, so you lay all your kit out on this sheet like first thing at 5 am and your weapon's got to be cleaned immaculately, stripped down perfect that far away from each piece, and all your kit laid out to make sure that you've changed your socks because them ones are like dirty, and you've changed your boxes, and there's my toothbrush which is wet because I brushed my teeth, there's my razor which is wet because I have shaved, they'll check you and they'll check you've got no dirt behind your ears, and all your kit's perfect, and it has to be perfect every morning the whole way through until you've earned the right to not do it. And if you fail that, if they find 3 things that aren't perfect, and when I say find 3 things, if it's raining, they'll go, why is your kit wet? That's one strike, and you're like, the fuck. It's raining. You know? So it's hard to pass. I failed all of them. I never passed any of them until right near right near the end, like, every time, and you would get sent to the flank, which is like where the where the failures go.

Rusty Earnshaw [00:23:55]:
You know?

Dave Coleman [00:23:56]:
And I just he'd come over, and he'd be like, do you want just go over there now? I'd be like, yeah, sweet. Just know, like, you know, and you would get rushed for an hour up and down hills crawling and doing that. It was horrendous. So hard. And this is in the time you're gonna be resting and recovering. There's none of that. So I'm near the back anyway. I'm always doing extra because I'm failing, which is making me more tired, more knackered, more disheartened, so I'm back near the bottom again.

Dave Coleman [00:24:21]:
It's happening every time, but it's not until recently I look back, and I was like, I actually think that's what's made me so resilient because all the people who never failed were just like, I'm gleaming. I'm good. And then any setback, they're like, oh my god. I can't handle this. Whereas he'd come over and say, do you want the setback? And I'd go, yes. Sounds. I already knew I was going to die. I'll just take it.

Dave Coleman [00:24:43]:
I could have whatever I like. Yeah.

Simon Ursell [00:24:45]:
But that's a lovely metaphor for life, isn't it? I mean, in terms of people being resilient and being able to cope, you've got to have experienced challenge. You have to put yourself in a position where you are gonna fail if you put yourself

Dave Coleman [00:24:58]:
in a

Rusty Earnshaw [00:24:59]:
Take it to the next level. Dave Coleman was choosing the setback. He he wanted it.

Simon Ursell [00:25:05]:
Yeah. I'll have to set

Dave Coleman [00:25:06]:
that up. I just thought I'm saving the time. The time. Yeah. Yeah. Alright then. So, Colin,

Simon Ursell [00:25:12]:
let's keep going. Let's keep going. What what next?

Dave Coleman [00:25:15]:
So it was our first, 31st March 2,011. It was our 1st full company strength operation on the ground, so we've been out in our PB for about 5 days now of the 6 months, and they said we want we're going to send everyone out at once, everyone, all the weapons, all the vehicles, all the helicopters, all the everything, and it's like a show of force, like we've taken over now, this is us, like if you want to have a go, this is us, like you know, this is what we've got, big flecks of of the muscles, to show them we've taken over and we're serious, and and we mean business, but also to go round and to win the heart hearts and minds of the locals and to build relationships, everything like that. You've got to have them on side for this to work. And we've been out on the ground for, I think, over 10 hours, 12 hours, something like that, roasting hot heat. Your water's pretty much boiling now. You're just drinking this hot water. Sweat is in your eyes and everything like that, and you are, you know, you're starting to you can't stay switched on for for that longer. Anyone that says the can's lying, you know, and we've gone firm next to this compound.

Dave Coleman [00:26:28]:
The compounds are these, like, mud hot buildings that they all live in, straight walled down, little things like that, and we've gone firm next to it on our knee, and we're waiting for the next order. And normally there's kids coming up to you, playing with you, can I have some chocolate, have some chocolate, no, fuck off, and they're all coming over? One of them opened my, like, medical pouch once. I haven't seen him, and he's eating this bandage thinking there's chocolate. I'm like, get off that, but no one was here. There was no one. The atmospherics had just changed. No people, no kids, no nothing, and we're like, let's just get out of here. So we stood up, and they have a couple of techniques.

Dave Coleman [00:27:06]:
The, Taliban said they drill holes in the compound walls, only that big, and they call it murder holes, so they can spy through that, and they can see camouflage compost, and they'll know it's English, and they can just do something, they can set something off, and then they just walk around their little compound like anything's going on. At normal day, we don't know what they look like. They all look the same in, like, normal clothes. They're not wearing military clothes, so it's hard to distinguish who's who, and they do something else called commands. So if the compound door's here, they would pop out, act surprised, and pop back in, And then you're like, what's that? And you're running after them. They lay a little trip wire and then boom, and it's like a little trap, basically. But we know this, and we're taught not to respond to this. And they did this, like, big come on in front of our of our patrol.

Dave Coleman [00:27:56]:
Our point man, Lucky, he was like my best friend back then, was like, I've seen someone. I'm going in. I'm going in. We went, no. No. No. Stop. And then big, like, bang.

Dave Coleman [00:28:07]:
Well, no. It wasn't even a bang. It was a thud. So like the movies, it's just a there's this big dust cloud disorientating. You can taste dust, taste sand, taste melt, taste blood. I was lying down. I sort of came to, but the first thing is, like, like, where's my rifle?

Simon Ursell [00:28:26]:
Where

Dave Coleman [00:28:26]:
like, where is it? Been blown away from me. Couldn't find it. I'm looking down, checking myself. I've got blood down my legs, a piece of metal stuck in my shin bone. I've got blood down my arm, blood down my neck, and blood blood in my face. And, basically, what they've done is they've used that command to make us go forward. They used the murder hole to spy on us and rolled a, frag grenade over the wall, and it had landed by my feet. So frag grenades have got a kill radius of 10 meters.

Dave Coleman [00:28:57]:
Over than 10 meters is dead, and anything within about 20 to 25 is having their day ruined, you know, seriously injured, and this was about a meter and a half from my feet, so I was within the kill radius, within the everything radius, and, our comp our track was hard rock sort of track like gravel. If it stayed there, we we would have been dead, it rolled off, I went to some mud, a little bit of soft mud, which saved my life basically, but still the bang, all of the frags got in, dropped down to the floor and bleeding, I'm trying to get my own bandage out, wrap it around myself, and sort of, like, strap myself up the way we're taught, and my mates come over. He has to make a sort of safe lane to make sure there's no, IEDs, improvised explosive devices with his, like, metal detector. So he's coming over. He's getting bandages on me, morphine going in, and and we need to get out of there because we're we're vulnerable now. Generally, they'll wound 1 person to draw people into them, so then we're down from 8 men to 5 men, and then they attack us when we're a little bit weaker. They would never fight us head on because there's only one outcome there, so we we need to get out of here now, and we have to go across no man's land really or like open ground grass, we don't know whether it's safe or not, to get back to this main road, an MSR, which is like a main supply route, and the sergeant major was coming on a quad bike over the radio to come and pick me up and take me back to helicopter Evac. So I'm hobbling out in my kit trying to get out this piece of, like, a sort of metal in my shin rooted out, and, we get to this wadi.

Dave Coleman [00:30:41]:
It's like a stream, and that streams are very dirty. Like, you you won't wanna drink that that water, like, just to put it just put it that way. And medics, like, you need to jump over this. Your leg can't go in or your leg's coming off at best. You know? Jump over it. Don't land on your bad leg. And I said, like like any young lad who couldn't spell could spell fudge with his g t s e's I sort of ran over it just wanted to land on that bad leg landed on it the metal's gone in you know it's in now sort of like collapsed down it felt like a needle into your bone it felt like a dead leg but in your bone but white hot you know, like real hot, so I almost fainted now, I'm trying to get out, I've got out to the road sergeant major picks me up on his quad bike, and he's driving facing forward with his weapon, I'm facing backwards out the back in this like metal bin, and there could be IEDs. We don't know.

Dave Coleman [00:31:35]:
We need to get out of there, and he's just driven it out with sort of fingers crossed hoping we don't get sent into orbit, and then back to the base, and waiting for helicopter pickup. So, yeah, by that point, the medics come over. Do you want some more morphine? I was like, first one didn't work. The pen had all broken. So I was like, alright. Fine. You banged it in me, and I'm really like, Jesus Christ. That's that's done something.

Dave Coleman [00:32:03]:
We're waiting for the black hawks to come in, and it kept getting delayed, kept getting delayed, you know, like when you're watching for an Uber, and it just like cancels and cancels. Imagine that, boy, you know, time's turn. So So I was getting really really peed off with it. I was like, why is it not coming? You know? But I was alright, really. I wasn't I wasn't gonna die. I was in pain, but I wasn't gonna die, and I'm getting angry, like, where is it? Where is it? And it finally comes, so one of them lands, a black hawk helicopter like off the film Black Hawk Down. 1 of them lands, and one's circling with the hellfire cannon, and it's sort of any any targets come out that can take care of them whilst they pick us up, and they sort of get out safely. I got stretchered onto it by some mates, and I looked up, and the roof was just covered in blood from the last person, so it was getting delayed probably because there's people a lot worse off than me, you know, which is sobering thought at 18 and strapped in.

Dave Coleman [00:32:59]:
Yeah. Strapped into it lying flat down, and their side doors, like, open. So they have the side doors open. They fly. Flies off like that to do this really banking turn, and you're all looking out down at the ground under you. Gotta hope these straps are good. You know what I mean? And then I I remember thinking back then, like, this is cool, you know, like, how many 18 year olds have done this before, but at the same time, I was like, you know, there's blood on the ceiling from the last bloke. You might not be going home, so it was like it's a different it puts into perspective for you, and then I was flown back to, American Field Hospital, where I underwent some scans and things, But, yeah, I'll get I'll I'll get to that part after handing back to you, I suppose.

Rusty Earnshaw [00:33:45]:
You made a Simon choir to the first time ever.

Dave Coleman [00:33:48]:
Oh my god.

Simon Ursell [00:33:50]:
You can't speak him that. Holy smite. That's amazing. So you were 18 years old? Yeah. And you got blown up by a grenade.

Dave Coleman [00:34:00]:
I worked it out with the time difference that my mates would have still been at school. They'd have been in school when it happened in 6th form. You know, I hope the time difference. Yeah. Yeah.

Simon Ursell [00:34:09]:
Oh, my word. And so they so they they came and got you took you out, and so you had to sit in the back of a quad bike in a bucket worrying about somebody shooting at you or trying to blow you up on the way back there with your leg on fire.

Dave Coleman [00:34:23]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So

Simon Ursell [00:34:25]:
Wow.

Dave Coleman [00:34:25]:
There's a lot there's a lot going on, but I suppose I didn't process any you know, like, you don't process any of it because it's all so quick for for years, really, but only recently over the past few years that I've been speaking about it publicly and things. And, you know, you start to say it and you're like, Connell that was quite, you know, but at the time it's just crack on, and if anything being honest at the time because you know stories about marines who've come off a lot worse, who've lost 3 limbs, who've who've died, who've whatever, You always feel embarrassed to talk about it because you're like, well, your story was only that, and these people's were that. Like, who are you? You know, you you have this mindset around it, and that's where the imposter syndrome comes in, definitely, because you know someone's always been worse off than you.

Simon Ursell [00:35:06]:
Yeah. Yeah. I hear that. I mean, we had Gary Bamford on the pod, didn't we? Rusty spoke about this a little bit about the whole sort of the humble thing. You know, don't brag don't you feel like you're bragging? You're not bragging. I mean, it's just incredibly, harrowing, isn't it? There's no there's no bragging.

Rusty Earnshaw [00:35:23]:
Does does does anyone I know, this might be something that happens later when you return from Afghanistan, but does anyone help you make sense of it or because I know you you wanted to, and I think you guys you went back, didn't you? I see you had the option to not go back, but you wanted to go back.

Dave Coleman [00:35:40]:
Mhmm. Yeah. I got to the hospital, and they were like, right, we need to this American doctor. Right, ma'am, we're gonna put you through this full body scanner. So I'm like, all strapped into this thing, and I guess I get sent through for a full scan just to show the damage, and he's like, ring Coleman. I've got some good news. I've got some bad news, and he's like, the good news is I told you the stammer would come in eventually. That that caught me slow down.

Simon Ursell [00:36:07]:
That's okay.

Dave Coleman [00:36:09]:
Hey. Your legs are fine. You're gonna make it blah blah blah. He goes, but the bad news is one of your testicles is gonna have to come off. And I was like 18 years old. I was like, what do you mean? I was like, what do you mean? And he's like, look at the scan, and you could see all these bits of frag, all these little pepper things, and there was one on my ball really, and funny thing, I had, a MRI scan 2 years ago for my ankle. There's still bits of frag in me now, 14 no. 13 years on, there's still bits in that haven't come out yet.

Dave Coleman [00:36:43]:
Don't do all small bits, still in there, but he said, right, we're gonna have to slice that off, we can put a fake one in, we can stitch it up, we can, like, leave it alone, you know, like, how do you want to proceed? I was like, I don't want to proceed.

Simon Ursell [00:36:58]:
Get off my balls, man.

Dave Coleman [00:37:00]:
Send me back where I was and I have to pretend this never happened. We don't talk about it again. Is it our little secret? And he was like, how how does it feel? I was like, it feels fine. You know? Stop asking me. So I'm like checking, and I'm going like, I think it feels good, you know, and he's like, yeah, you you would say that, you know, but, had about 10 junior nurses in who all got slightly more attractive as the day went on, and I got a little bit more shy as the day went on. Do you know what I mean? It has to happen. Just stop everyone checking me, and they all came to the conclusion there was nothing there, and that's like there was no frag there, not there was nothing there, like there was something there, but

Simon Ursell [00:37:41]:
What was supposed to be there was there is what you're saying.

Dave Coleman [00:37:44]:
Yeah. Everything was in order. Yeah. Yes. And basically, he said, were you scanned with your blast pants on? So you get given these undershorts like cycling shorts, but they've got Kevlar built into the crotch, and they're so hot. I I never wore them because you're so hot there. And on that day, my friend Sam was like, you're taking, you're taking the piss by not wearing them. You're like jinxing it.

Dave Coleman [00:38:06]:
He said, you should wear them. And I made a joke out of it like I'll wear them but I'll wear them for you and that's it, you know, some of them seemed like that. I wore them and I got scanned with them on and the frag was inside the the like blast pant, he scanned me with them off and it was fine, so they saved my, save

Simon Ursell [00:38:23]:
my And that was the first time you'd the first time you'd won them?

Dave Coleman [00:38:26]:
Yes. 1st day to that point. Never won them.

Simon Ursell [00:38:29]:
Wow. Lucky. Yeah.

Dave Coleman [00:38:33]:
So after that, I had 5 operations, to take out the frag and to stitch it up, anything like that, and he said you can go home, you'll get your bonus, you'll get your medal, and you'll just go home and, you know, blah blah blah, and I was like, no. I've only been here pretty bitter a week, so it said like I've trained for this for so long, the way I described it was it'd be like a boxer doing his big training camp walking down to the ring and getting blindsided by a fan on the walk to the ring, and then that's it, it's off, as I said like like no way, I've thought it started yet, so didn't want to ring my parents. I didn't want to tell them. I didn't want to worry them, but I had to, so I tried to make a joke out of it, which didn't go down well.

Simon Ursell [00:39:17]:
I bet it didn't

Dave Coleman [00:39:18]:
go to. No. I translate it. I was like, oh, mom, like, this has happened. She's like, what? I said, oh, no. It's alright. I'm alright, really. And, you know, she's like, oh my god.

Dave Coleman [00:39:25]:
And my dad was like, that's my boy. Good offer, you know, type type thing. Stay out there, son. So after a month I've come back out I've been sort of reunited with the lads because like what I was saying and you know my mates would go you know they would take a look out of this but like genuinely, what I was saying there about you've got to do 4 hours watch at night, so you'll get about 3 hours sleep off, and there's there's 12 here. You're now down to 11, so everyone's got another hour. Well, one less hour of sleep, and they're like we we need and that is missed, like that is really really missed. I wanted to get back for that, but if I am honest, I didn't want to miss anything, I didn't want to miss out. I thought if that's week 1, this is going to be nuts for 6 months, I was like get me back there ASAP, you know, I want to get back, I don't want to miss anything, so I got back, did 3 or 4 more months, and then you get 2 weeks R and R where you get sent home to go and see your family, and then and then you come back, and my my wounds had kept opening throughout the time that I was there, and and like I said we didn't have much water, it was hard to keep clean, and I ended up contract, I basically had these holes forming all over me, like holes, like an actual hole, and one was on the tailbone, it was a massive lump, like a massive cyst, and on watch night time in this other base that I've been sent to, you couldn't stand up, the little unker was like that, see, you were like, and I couldn't sit.

Dave Coleman [00:41:00]:
I was on one arse cheek like this. I was like, I couldn't sleep. I was like crying. The pain was that bad. Like why is this, and I went and showed my like troop sergeant back then, and he went I know people like you, you just want to get out of here don't you, absolutely not, I said I want to be here more than anyone, but I am, this is bad pain, and anyway this sister formed into a hole, and I went and showed the medic then who was called Kate Nesbit, she was, a 4 foot 10 navy medic, she'd won the military cross on a previous tour, felt like bravery, she's a legend, and she could see my tailbone through this hole. You can see my tailbone. Uh-huh. And she was like, you're getting out of here fucking today.

Dave Coleman [00:41:43]:
That is the worst thing I've ever seen in my you know, like like, that's that's horrendous. And I've caught this Afghan flesh eating disease. My body was eating itself from the inside out. It has the same symptoms as AIDS, basically, so you it kills your white blood cells, so your immune system just goes through the floor, you form these boils, and then if if that's your skin layer and down here, it starts down here and it opens up eventually and forms this hole. And they're like, if this gets to your lung, it's gonna put a hole in your lung. You're gonna die. So

Simon Ursell [00:42:17]:
How long how long have you had that and you were you were, like, cruising around doing stuff?

Dave Coleman [00:42:22]:
I don't well, they think, going back to it, there's no way of ever knowing I could have picked it up for the dirt from the frag, but they think more than likely I picked it up at Bastian Hospital, because we have to treat Afghans there.

Simon Ursell [00:42:35]:
Yeah.

Dave Coleman [00:42:35]:
There was a Taliban in in the bloat opposite me, in in the bed space, opposite me, and there was also a little girl opposite me, a little, Afghan girl who her whole family had been killed. Face had been melted off, and her eyeballs dangling out by the thing, and that was opposite me, screaming every day, you know, screaming screaming screaming, and the Taliban bloke would celebrate when our guys would get brought in injured, spit his tablets out, like piss everywhere and all this, and that's you were there for a month, so you no wonder, oh, I wanted to go back, or I was getting out of here, you know, so I wanted, but so I could have picked it up from there, I could have had it for months, or it it or it sort of could have been when my wounds opened, I could have got some like dirt in, but I got sent back, and they were like you need to go home like right now, you need to go back to sickbay. And if you've been in normally, when you finish Afghan, you get you get sent to Cyprus for 2 weeks of mental decompression to bring you back down to normal. But if you're injured, you don't. You fly straight back. You miss that because you need to get back to the UK. So I've flown back to Bryce Norton in Oxford, been picked up there, driven back to my base in Scotland in Arbroath. The doctor was off for 4 days, so I jumped in a a mate's car, went down to Manchester, and I was out in 5th avenue that night.

Dave Coleman [00:43:57]:
So from 24 hours, I've gone from the front line to a nightclub, was fighting, so I was still plugged into the mains. I was still hyper aware and hyper vigilant and hyper aggressive, I was frustrated I've been sent home, and I was just going out fighting, I got sent back to the doctor finally. I was quarantined, I was on all these tablets, I had to throw my clothes away, I was on this wash, and I didn't get the all clear from that for about a year. My immune system is still bad now. It is still bad. Like, I'm fine, but I get ill noticeably a lot easier than what I used to. I suppose during that time so I got about 4 months leave, and I got this big bonus, and then I got my medical, like, payout, and I had all my pay from Afghan saved up, and I was just going out and spending it, basically. My mental health plummeted and attempted suicide when I was 19.

Dave Coleman [00:44:57]:
Didn't, you know, finish it off anything like that, but ended up down a bit of a sort of mental decline on mental health. I was offered help. I didn't want it. I didn't really know about it. I wasn't educated in it. There was no help back then. It's much better now. And then over the years, got a lot happier, got more comfortable in my mental health and things like that before, I suppose, deciding to leave.

Dave Coleman [00:45:23]:
I ended up leaving the military, 2016, and moved to Australia, to go and start a new life, be a bit happier and everything like that, but everything the way that ended and everything like that just wasn't I don't know. It wasn't right for me, and it wasn't what I wanted, and it didn't it wasn't what I'd imagined in my mind, really, and I suppose but it's definitely, you know, forged me into the person that I am today and taught me how to how to bounce back. I'd say plug. What a plug.

Simon Ursell [00:45:55]:
What a plug.

Rusty Earnshaw [00:45:56]:
I mean,

Simon Ursell [00:45:58]:
I I am speechless. That is

Rusty Earnshaw [00:46:00]:
Yeah. I feel you might be speechless.

Simon Ursell [00:46:02]:
Unbelievable. I mean I mean, it sounds horrendous. I mean, that field hospital just sounds horrific. Contracting that sounds horrific. And then what happened straight up? So you're basically just taken back and dumped in the UK and pretty much given a bit of care, but that was it. Yeah. I mean, the strength for you to be able to cope with that is just ginormous. What'd you put it down to? I mean, do you is it your upbringing? I mean, your dad sounded like, you know, good lad, crack on.

Dave Coleman [00:46:32]:
I've always been like, you know yeah. I'd say I'm not a Molly Hoddley person. I'm not like a you know, I I'm empathetic, but I do get on with it. Do you know what I mean? But the marines, mate, like, you you taught, like, you taught that. You can't be like that. You don't have sick days. You know? There's there's no option. There's no poor mate.

Dave Coleman [00:46:51]:
It's just you just get on with it, and you're so busy. You're back. The next trip's coming up. The next trip's coming up. You're going to, you're going to France. You're going to here. You're going to there. You're going to there.

Dave Coleman [00:46:59]:
You're going around Europe on a ship, and there's always something coming. So you're just so busy. You do like I said, you don't have time to process it. You're just too busy.

Simon Ursell [00:47:07]:
But it sounds like you did process it, didn't it? I mean, when once you once you got back and everything had kind of stopped.

Dave Coleman [00:47:14]:
I think I didn't when it all came out of me. Yeah. When I was quiet, when I when I was at home for those months by myself Yeah. And I wasn't busy, that's when it all happened, I suppose. It all came out, and I was just going out drinking. I was in the worst place I could have been doing the worst thing I could have been, surrounded by no one that understood. Yeah. And I was just taken out on every other space.

Rusty Earnshaw [00:47:36]:
Wow. My, I've got a good friend as well who'd, called up recently, been to, been to Kosovo, and he spoke about no one really took up the option of the decompression. Yeah. Even that kind of, you know, making sense when, you know, when you, come back to the from one planet to another planet, quite literally, isn't it? Like, having something to help or someone to help you make sense of that would be pretty critical, I would imagine. And he said, none of us took that option. We all just wanted to get, added to our families or to go and have some beers.

Simon Ursell [00:48:14]:
Was it was it kind of seen as I mean, it sounds like, you know, that's how the marines are. It's just get get on no sick days. Just, you know, it's one thing. It's the next thing. You just gotta keep going relentless. That doesn't sound very, healthy, if I'm honest.

Dave Coleman [00:48:30]:
I think it's you're you're in a you were in. It it it it's a lot better now. Mental health is at the front now. It it, like, really is. They do think about it. But back then, you're in this big boys club, and everyone was hiding. I thought I'd lose my job if I said something was going on, and I didn't know what it was. I I didn't I was not educated on mental health, so I didn't know I was having bad mental health.

Dave Coleman [00:48:51]:
That was what I felt wrong. I got taken to sick bay. Someone found me and took me to sick bay to the doctor. And when he told me, like, you've got anxiety, depression, PTSD, and I see hundreds of people on this camp for this, and I was just like, oh, the weight just came off. I was like, really? It's not just me who went to your mental? You know, like, just you. He said, so many people have it. He he, like, showed me this photo and went, statistically, out of all these people, this many will be seeing me, and I just felt relief, like, utter. I I felt better for him telling me that, you know, knowing I wasn't the only one, and I've done it to myself, this self made pressure and bravado and,

Simon Ursell [00:49:33]:
you haven't done it.

Dave Coleman [00:49:34]:
Speak to anyone because that's not what what we do. It was just so wrong, didn't it? Yeah? What do you say?

Simon Ursell [00:49:38]:
I mean, you hadn't done it to yourself, had you? You just didn't have any kind of system systemized backup to help you signpost you to stuff that would help. And, you know, you're in a boys club where I guess it's gonna be seen as weakness to to say you're struggling at the time. I mean, I appreciate now it's very different. People understand it a lot more, but I mean, wow. So I mean, it just yeah. It's quite shocking to hear that you

Dave Coleman [00:50:02]:
Every time I

Simon Ursell [00:50:03]:
did it thinking like you did it to yourself. You didn't do it to yourself, did you? I mean, you didn't I mean, that you didn't you didn't get blown up and you didn't get put in that situation. Yeah. You volunteered and wanted to go, but you didn't get put in those situations and then not, and not helped afterwards. That's nothing to do with you. I mean, I I don't know how you feel about that, but from my from, you know, just the the short bystanding opinion is I mean, it's got nothing to do with you. You just I mean, the fact that you survived is incredible.

Dave Coleman [00:50:33]:
You are right. I think I I think I've been I've I've always been my worst, but like as in I put things on myself that don't need to be put there

Simon Ursell [00:50:40]:
Yeah.

Dave Coleman [00:50:41]:
I put pressure there, I put expectations there, I put very high standards there of everything, you know, like, and I I did it with my mental health when I didn't need to. Yeah. You know, and every every person that I opened up to and spoke to, and it felt like the scariest thing to ever do. I'd always wait till I was absolutely steaming drunk and then pour my heart out to someone, and I never regretted it. Not the drinking part. I mean, I never regretted speaking about my mental health. Every time that I did, someone just absolutely surprised me, and a lot of them went, mate, same, and I was like, what? You? You really? And they're like, yeah. 100%.

Dave Coleman [00:51:15]:
I was like and then I I was like, I wanna tell more people. Tell I bet there's more people, and I kept doing it. And I've I've spoke about it I've spoke about it that many times now to people that have done, you know, like, things like this to get it out, and people will see it that I bring I could bring that up in conversation now. Like, someone could bring up how they have their tea or or the or their coffee because I'm not scared about the conversation anymore. And every time that it's actually you actually get more out of that conversation because people surprise you, and it helps people, and they help you selfishly. It helps me to bring it up to people because a lot of people say I was the same, my friend was the same, and blah blah, and all the people who you put on a pedestal and said it it it wouldn't happen to them, they're superman, and they all tell you, yeah, it happened to me. You're like, why have I done why have I, in my mind, not allowed that to have been a possibility when it was the whole time?

Simon Ursell [00:52:05]:
Yeah. Sure. I mean, what a story. My word. Are we still going with the story? I'm slightly frightened now. Are we still going or are we there?

Dave Coleman [00:52:13]:
I can I can skip you a few bit and finish off, but, like

Simon Ursell [00:52:16]:
I mean Yeah?

Dave Coleman [00:52:17]:
I moved I moved over to Australia and, playing rugby there for the mighty Waverly in, like, Bondi, which is like

Simon Ursell [00:52:24]:
Beautiful. Yeah.

Dave Coleman [00:52:25]:
Yeah. Yeah. There was the option of like, you know, go to a team that would take rugby seriously or, like, go to a team that takes social seriously, and I definitely made the right choice, you know, made an abundance of friends very quickly, you know, I've been there a week and was in the WhatsApp group with a 100 people done. Yeah. You couldn't move for friends. It was great. It was amazing, and it made everything great. And they had a paratrooper on their team, a former UK para called Scott, and marines and paras archenemies, you know, like rivals.

Dave Coleman [00:52:58]:
Yeah. And, he's like, are you this marine then? Like, yeah. Are you this para? He's like, yeah. I went, oh, sorry to hear that. We ended up being really good mates, really good mates. He was top bloke. We spent a lot of time together, and we chat after rugby, and, we chat about the marines and the army and afghan and things like that, and he told me because he'd had really bad tours, worse worse than mine, that he'd suffered with his mental health too and everything like that, and you know we were drunk one night. If you ever but I feel like that, you tell me, and if I feel like that, I'll I'll tell you type of thing.

Dave Coleman [00:53:32]:
Yep. Don't. Bam. Mates and everything. And for one reason or another, I had to move home. It was during lockdown. Well, no. I moved home.

Dave Coleman [00:53:41]:
I got a job, and then lockdown happened, so it was around that time. And I heard that him and his and his girlfriend, like, long term girlfriend had broken up, but I didn't want to cry. I didn't wanna message him and be like, oh, mate. I've I've heard about this. It's not what you want, is it? You know? At the time. But, well, I I didn't think so. And, in the back of my mind, I was worried because I knew where he'd been before mentally and everything. And, I woke up one day, 20 missed calls from a friend, and I knew what it was before I'd even got to the phone, and Scott had killed himself.

Dave Coleman [00:54:16]:
And, it absolutely derailed me completely. I felt so guilty. I've done therapy on it now, and I know it's not. But I I I felt guilt not making it all all about me, but I felt guilty that I didn't reach out and because I'm knowing how he'd been mentally, I could've thought I could've said something or could've offered a bit of a a different perspective, a military friend's help who'd been mentally there before. And yeah. And, it sent me back down. I was I was suicidal again, and I was driving my car, my van with my eyes closed, and I was drinking every day. And I was driving places.

Dave Coleman [00:54:50]:
I'd cry, and I'd come back, and I'd cry. I'd stay up all night drinking, and I was in a bad place. I was it it was quite dangerous. And my missus got me to go through the NHS talk therapy, which was helping. But one night, when I was drunk, I saw on Facebook that a few of his friends from home were doing this ultra marathon for him to raise money, 43 miles to his old arm army barracks to his rugby club with rugby ball to pass for them to kick off his his charity game. So I'm drunk. Yeah. I'm in.

Dave Coleman [00:55:25]:
And I haven't run for a long time then. I haven't, and I've been drinking lockdown food. And the next day, I I woke up, but I had 10 weeks, and I hadn't run for about a year, and it was like, I've got 10 weeks to prep for this 43 miler, and everyone's like, we're so glad we've got a Royal Marine doing with those. Thank you so much. And I'm like, fucking high expectations, standards, so I was like, I need to go out and do a run today. So I went out for a 9 mile and I made it about 5, and I had to walk home. I was like, oh my god. What have I done? Like, what have I done? Ended up just training, waking up at 3 AM, doing marathons for work and stuff like that, and, we raised £20 for Roxy Recovery, armed forces mental health charity.

Simon Ursell [00:56:06]:
Well done.

Dave Coleman [00:56:08]:
The night before the run, the match the match got canceled because it was the last game before Christmas, and they didn't want COVID spread from rugby. It got canceled, so I was like, I can't we're gonna push it back 3 months. I was like, I can't run anymore. I can't train anymore. It's happening tomorrow. That's it. So me and my missus drove around the lanes from my house back to my local pub 43 miles. I'm riding it down, turn left there, turn right there, turn left there, and I'm like, right.

Dave Coleman [00:56:35]:
5 AM tomorrow, I'm off. That's it. Done. So settled the next day. A few friends met me with water and all that, but it was just a self run run, like, sort of carrying water and food and snacks and some toilet roll. And, yeah, got to the end. I was in the Hurt Locker, but, like, he he hated running. He'd he'd been like, why are you doing running? That's so stupid.

Dave Coleman [00:56:56]:
You know? Like, you know, it was quite ironic, really. There was never a time where I wasn't like I I was smiling during it. I was laughing. I felt good, you know, felt good. I was putting it to bed and finished at the pub a few pints, a lot of few pints, FaceTimed his, like, family and everything, which was nice, and his friends and got to close the book on a really good chapter. I think it's a really good thing to do for grief, but not to be a big role. It can be anything. Right? But when people speak about him now, you can tell the pain's there.

Dave Coleman [00:57:24]:
They don't wanna talk about it. You know? Oh, no. I don't wanna I don't wanna speak about that. For me, the last page in that book is a really good page that I'm proud of, and I really like talking about, because it feels great to have done that, you know, and I love talking about it now, and I I can look back on it fondly in a good memory. I finished that, had Christmas, and January, I was like, I'm determined now to I'm ready to run through a brick wall, but I don't wanna do any more running, but I wanna do something else. I then started my own business then, and that's what I've been doing since, really.

Simon Ursell [00:57:57]:
What's your business?

Dave Coleman [00:57:59]:
Civita Commando, so it's a sort of, military preparation company. We do online online coaching training programs for people joining the military, military weekend camps, military corporate events, public speaking, and then going to places like Semper School where I met Rusty. And we on the sort of, like, summer at Easter courses when they're doing rugby, when they're doing this, we just one lesson where they come and do some, like, resilience, some teamwork in a different set, in a different scenario to what they've ever done before as a bit of a change of scenery, and pass on some of these messages back to the kids, basically.

Simon Ursell [00:58:33]:
Wow.

Rusty Earnshaw [00:58:34]:
And the parents.

Dave Coleman [00:58:35]:
So And the parents. Yeah.

Rusty Earnshaw [00:58:37]:
Just to give Dave some feedback, again, you just made me cry a little bit then. Not as many times as when you normally speak. I think the room lights up when

Dave Coleman [00:58:45]:
you enter.

Rusty Earnshaw [00:58:47]:
I think I you have amazing impact on the kids and the parents when you come to Sabra. It's pretty amazing stuff. So out of what sounds like something that Russell and Shaw would be able to deal with, has come some incredible stuff. Like, I think you're like, impact you know, the ripples you're creating now as a result of this are significant.

Dave Coleman [00:59:11]:
Thank you. Appreciate that.

Simon Ursell [00:59:13]:
Yeah. I mean, I mean, number 1, thanks for sharing all of that because what a story. And I mean, yeah, I've I do feel a bit weepy. I mean, I'm not I that is just such an emotional tale. And Rusty's right. You're an amazing storyteller. I've got so many questions. I think I think, but but, you know, we haven't got another couple of hours on the podcast to ask them on.

Rusty Earnshaw [00:59:38]:
And it's so very you could probably do you'd do a day with Dave.

Simon Ursell [00:59:42]:
I can definitely do a day with Dave. I mean, sorry, Dave, because I would probably bore you senseless asking those stupid questions you had a million times.

Rusty Earnshaw [00:59:49]:
I've got half a day with Dave where we had John Fletcher, who's definitely been eating well, wrapped up in a in a car. I'm mean, but okay. But, honestly, even that was stressful. That was but, again, just I actually saw the I think I saw the other day on Dave on LinkedIn, maybe that you'd done, like, a thing at a wedding as well. So someone

Dave Coleman [01:00:12]:
wedding, actually. It was a big char big charity fundraiser.

Rusty Earnshaw [01:00:16]:
Oh, okay.

Dave Coleman [01:00:16]:
I'll keep it they wanna remain anonymous and all that, but what the, thing of it was essentially, we wanted it it was to aid military veterans that have been injured to raise money for them, and they wanted a big visual scenario as a surprise to everyone there, so there was 100 there, this big mansion, 14 Ferraris parked outside it and all this, and they said what we're going to do, we're going to bring a helicopter in, we're going to fast rope you out, that bit got canned by the end health and safety, so we had a helicopter circling anyway, and me and my brother Mitch came with balaclavas on into the pie with weapons, we picked up these, this like female singing band, we picked them up, dragged them outside in a hostage situation, everyone's like what is going on, what is going on, and then a team of our guys came through the the woods with weapons shooting, and we had explosives, we had fireballs going off, we had bangs, we had smoke grenades, we had this, rocket launchers, mortars firing firing bang bang bang, they came and killed us, killed us, picked up the girls, put them back on stage, and they carried on with their song, and that was, back to the party. I was lying there playing dead. I was lying there playing dead, and this woman came over. She's probably, you know, That was awesome. It was so good. It was so so good. Absolutely.

Rusty Earnshaw [01:01:58]:
I saw some pictures of it, and I thought I thought, hey. If I was there, I might have, like, been hiding under a table.

Dave Coleman [01:02:08]:
Just trying to think

Simon Ursell [01:02:09]:
small thoughts.

Dave Coleman [01:02:11]:
Where where can we go with it? There's so many things to do, and, I think people just like a taste of it, don't they, of a world they don't know, and, you know, they want to see it and feel like they're there and feel like they're involved.

Simon Ursell [01:02:22]:
People are attracted to the machinist of it. And I guess the the, the, the stuff you've gone through is so extreme and so a like Rusty says, it's a different planet. You know, that most of us will never experience any of that, let alone have to deal with it afterwards. And I guess my I mean, like I say, there's so many questions. But I get the really big one, I think, would be if you could go back, do something for the younger you either before, during, after. Would is there anything that you go, oh, I wish this support was there or these things had happened, or is there anything you would go back and put in place, not change, but would you put in place to sort of help other people?

Dave Coleman [01:03:17]:
If if I could tell myself something back then, the the kid that went through, like, school school but went through basic training just scared and so terrified to put a foot wrong and afraid of failure and worried and anxious, and I just tell him it's gonna be alright, like Yeah. It's gonna be alright. As long as you work hard, it's gonna be alright. Don't worry. It will be okay. You'll get where you wanna be. Don't worry. Be patient because I'm not at all.

Dave Coleman [01:03:42]:
I want it all now right now, and I hate waiting. I hate I want it all now. Just it it it it will happen. You will be okay as long as you don't give up, I suppose. And then to sort of tell back to other people, I suppose, it just you get anything you want in life if you work hard for it, but you've just got to be like we said about the showing up, you've got to be there. You can't win the lottery without buying a lottery ticket. You know? If you don't go if you're scared if you're afraid to have a go, if you're afraid to try something, you can't pass. It's impossible.

Dave Coleman [01:04:15]:
I was at the bottom when I started training, and I was at the bottom when I finished training. If you'd have asked anyone at day 1, day 100, day 200, do you think he'll pass first time? Every single person would have said no. But I did just by not so special, but it's because I just didn't quit. Probably probably too stupid to quit. So, yeah, I would tell that to people.

Simon Ursell [01:04:33]:
Yeah. It's that whole whole resilience because it's it's not about being amazing every day, isn't it? It's it's just being having that determination to to be present with whatever you're trying to achieve. You don't have to do it well. You know, go to the gym. You don't have to have the best gym session you've ever done. You know, just go and do a do a

Rusty Earnshaw [01:04:54]:
few bits.

Dave Coleman [01:04:54]:
I'm really, really trying to work on, and I've I've been doing therapy on it, well, recently is my mind. I'm so all or nothing with everything that I do. I'm either going to the gym every day, my food is perfect at what time that I'll eat it and measure to the gram and everything, or I'm like there's no point going, there's no point training, let's get a KFC for the next 2 weeks and just just give up. I like being fat, you know, you know, you know, you know, and I just I can't find that middle ground, I've never been able to do it, but that's where I'm gonna get to is finding that middle ground and being able to normalize that, you know.

Simon Ursell [01:05:31]:
I hear that. I mean nothing like as extreme as you, but I'm I'm definitely, an all or nothing kind of guy and got a got a lot of drive in me. And I've been working really hard on trying to become a bit more content just just to do things just just to have a bit of peace occasionally and not always be trying to do incredible things. You just got He said

Dave Coleman [01:05:53]:
it's like you're probably trying to do incredible things so much and that's you swimming underwater, right, you're swimming, you're swimming, you're swimming, you're swimming, and you want to get there so much, so far away, the ocean's so big, you keep swimming, you keep swimming, you keep swimming, just stop stop swimming, pull your head up and just look back and go, Christ, I never thought I'd swam that far in my life if I look back 10 years ago, and just enjoy it and appreciate it because I I don't do that ever, and the younger me would be so happy with, you know, I'd have cashed out at this. Yeah. That's fine. That's fine. I'll take that. Yeah. But because you get so consumed in going further, you don't look back and it's a really good thing to practice, like you said.

Simon Ursell [01:06:31]:
Yeah. I mean, that's that's a that I'm gonna use that. That's cool.

Rusty Earnshaw [01:06:35]:
Once you, once you look back on the, proud of in the last kind of 12 18 months if we were to take you up from the water, what would be the stuff you think's had impact?

Dave Coleman [01:06:46]:
I think the it'd be doing things I never thought that I would be able to do. I always put myself in a bracket of so I'll say a personal one and a professional one. I'll say a personal one if I always thought that I was, you know, I wasn't smart at school, I didn't come from the best area, blah blah. I always never put myself in a bracket as a person who could have their own nice house or their or would make their own business. I'd be in the bracket of just rubbish job blah blah blah, and I I didn't believe I was one of those people, but I've made myself one of those people by hard work. Well, anyone could be that person, you just can't work at it, yeah, but on a professional point of view, it's a few people, a few a few standout things. You know, feedback that you get from from the kids, from, like, whoever, but there was 2 years ago when I started it, my stomach was still really bad, and I was coaching people online and I was messaging them back they were voice noting me I said you you you have to voice note me to get confident but I wasn't confident enough to voice note an 18 year old back I was too scared to do it because I thought I'd stammer and I wouldn't look good and I was like Dave, you absolute, like, fraud. I was like how dare you? Tell these people to be brave, and you're not being brave.

Dave Coleman [01:07:58]:
So I started voice noting these these people back. I'll send it. I've almost been sending 200 voice notes a day for the past few years. My stammer's more or less gone apart from the odd time. 2 years ago, it was horrendous. It was really really bad, and I've had a lad come on my training program called Greg Tracy. Shout out Greg Tracy if you're listening. A young Scottish lad who came on.

Dave Coleman [01:08:23]:
He was fit anyway, but he had a really bad stammer, and he said, I wanna join the marines, but I need help with my stammer really, and you're I heard you on a podcast, and it resonated with me, and I said, right. You're not allowed to message me anymore. Gotta voice note me every message. I don't wanna even see a text message from you. You you have to voice note me, or I'm not prepared to coach you. So he's like, yeah. And it was bad. His stammer was bad, really, really bad.

Dave Coleman [01:08:45]:
And I coached him for 6 months, and he got better and better. And he came on my weekend camp, and as a person with a stammer, to have to stand up and intro yourself is your worst fear, and I was like, you're all gonna stand up and intro yourself. You're last, and I could see him, like, oh, no. So he's gotta wait. The anticipation's building, you know, and he stood up, and he said, hi. My name's Greg Tracy, and I've got a stammer, and I was like, don't lie. You didn't stammer once. You haven't got a stammer.

Dave Coleman [01:09:09]:
I cure you of your stammer, you know, and he got me this bottle of, whiskey, him and his dad, and, it they changed the date to 16/64 because that's where the Royal Marines was was formed, and it was the city to commando whiskey, and it said because my nickname was mumbles when I was in, and it said to mumbles from mumbles 2.0, thank you for giving me my voice back. And I was like, fuck. I was like, go away. You can't see me. Go away. You

Simon Ursell [01:09:42]:
know? Oh, that's beautiful. What? That's that's lovely.

Rusty Earnshaw [01:09:45]:
Oh, here it is.

Simon Ursell [01:09:46]:
There it is.

Dave Coleman [01:09:49]:
Oh, no. It's a blurred screen.

Simon Ursell [01:09:50]:
If you go back a little bit, we can see it. You

Dave Coleman [01:09:52]:
take a look there.

Simon Ursell [01:09:53]:
Yep. There we go.

Rusty Earnshaw [01:09:54]:
Oh, there he is. Yeah. Class.

Dave Coleman [01:09:57]:
Beautiful. Prized possession, that. I felt really really proud. That that's something that resonated. Yeah.

Simon Ursell [01:10:04]:
Wow. Well, I mean, we're gonna have to end there because, we're out of time, but we could go on for hours. I mean, Dave, I really appreciate you coming on, because that Thank you. That was that was an amazing story. And, you know, such a there's so much in it as well, I think, for people to take away, so many things. Really, really appreciate you coming on, buddy. Thank you.

Dave Coleman [01:10:27]:
Thank you. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. It's been a really good shot.

Rusty Earnshaw [01:10:30]:
Thanks, DC. I'm excited to tomorrow already. Sorry. It's so much.

Simon Ursell [01:10:35]:
Hey. No. It's all good. Best things come to those who wait there. Okay.

Dave Coleman [01:10:39]:
Oh, alright.

Simon Ursell [01:10:39]:
See you all again soon. Cheers, everybody.

Rusty Earnshaw [01:10:41]:
Bye for now.

Simon Ursell [01:10:44]:
Oh, my word. That was just ridiculous. I mean, what a story. I mean, I am I genuinely got caught a little bit weepy in several parts of that. I was yeah. I was just getting dust in my eye and things. I mean, wow. The guy has been through just the most harrowing stuff.

Simon Ursell [01:11:02]:
And and it just keeps coming at him. And so I just thought, I mean, what's gonna happen next? I mean and it just keeps coming, keeps coming, keeps coming, and he's still going. I mean, talk about bounce back. I've never met anyone like him. That's incredible.

Rusty Earnshaw [01:11:16]:
Different level, aye? And 3 weeks in the summer with Rusty as well, which

Simon Ursell [01:11:20]:
Well, there. Okay. That's you got him some resilience. Yeah.

Rusty Earnshaw [01:11:25]:
But, yeah, I mean

Simon Ursell [01:11:26]:
How? And thank and thank you for bringing him on because, I mean, I I reckon I'm speaking for everyone listening to this to say thanks for bringing him on because that what a story. I feel privileged to have heard him speak about it. I really really do.

Rusty Earnshaw [01:11:39]:
Yeah. I've listened to his story three times, at Semba, and each time, like, yeah, just about the impact on me is is is pretty significant. I mean, some great lessons. I love the, you know, just be there at the end mindset. It's probably inspired me to go out for a run today. I'm gonna be honest.

Simon Ursell [01:12:00]:
I'll turn up, haven't he? I was gonna go to the gym this morning, but I'd had red wine last night, so I didn't go. And now I'm thinking, yeah, be more Dave Coleman.

Rusty Earnshaw [01:12:09]:
Be more Dave Coleman. That's Tom. Yeah. I just think it's a it's a great mindset to have, isn't it? Like, as you said, you don't have to be a 100% every day, but if you can just show up and be there, then you've probably got a better chance of doing good stuff.

Simon Ursell [01:12:24]:
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And I and I absolutely love this coming up for air analogy. I mean, I'm definitely gonna use that. I'm quite a watery person, Rusty. A lot of my imagery revolves around the sea and water. So that really does speak to me.

Simon Ursell [01:12:36]:
I really and I really like the idea, you know, you're swimming underwater, you plant, but sometimes you got you got to come up and go, oh, look what we've done. So I'm definitely gonna try and do a bit of that. Maybe put it in my diary or something. Say, right, time to come up for air for an hour or something. That's that's nice. I mean, it's just that if everyone did a bit of that, I think they'd be doing better, wouldn't they? That would be that would be how everybody's bounced back.

Rusty Earnshaw [01:12:59]:
Yeah. Maybe it's a a Friday, a meeting or Thursday at, Tyler Grange. You you come up for our meeting where you just reflect on what you've achieved this week.

Simon Ursell [01:13:10]:
Yeah. Positivity, isn't it? It's like stop, think, yeah, wow, look, appreciate, you know, what you've managed to do. Give yourself a bit of encouragement and kindness. Yeah. It's cool. It's cool. I mean, I love it.

Rusty Earnshaw [01:13:22]:
I also loved it. We it's come up a lot on the pod, you know, the, you know, resilience by community type stuff. But actually, probably the extension of that for me was, like, the quality of the community. So, you know, just the reality that they've just done this incredible amount of training and testing to realize that they're the best of the best. And then when you're in a room surrounded by great people, you know, that's that's probably gonna be helpful for you when times get tough.

Simon Ursell [01:13:49]:
Yeah. I mean, the bounce back ability of being around people you fundamentally, at a very, very deep level of trust, is gotta be amazing. I mean I mean, it does have a yin and yang thing, though, doesn't it? Because you're there thinking I'm not as good as them.

Rusty Earnshaw [01:14:02]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Simon Ursell [01:14:02]:
But however, the the, the ability to know that person's got your back and actually genuinely know it, not even there's no doubt is there in their minds that the people that they're out serving with, are gonna be stellar. Really, really good. So, yeah, that that's pretty cool. I mean, community is huge, isn't it? But quality of community is incredibly important. We've talked about

Dave Coleman [01:14:28]:
that quite

Simon Ursell [01:14:28]:
a bit, haven't we? I mean, that's come up like you said, it's come up a lot. You know, if you're in a if you're in a community or in an environment that's not it's not good for you, get out. For goodness sake, change. Because it it's not good for you.

Rusty Earnshaw [01:14:41]:
True story. True story. I saw you I saw you lighting up a little bit when he spoke, I guess, a bit around the decompression and processing it. And

Simon Ursell [01:14:50]:
Yeah. Well, absolutely. I mean, I I think it's terrible that when he when he was going through a lot of that, there wasn't enough There wasn't enough support, was there? I mean, he basically was just chucked back into Manchester and allowed to go out on the lash. I mean, that is dangerous, isn't it? And just and that's just irresponsible that that was allowed to happen. It's nice to hear that that's changed and now there's a lot more focus on it. And as as you said, it's right at the front. However, I bet it's not good enough still. I bet there's plenty more that could be done.

Simon Ursell [01:15:22]:
And I think that sort of can we could all take that away into our lives, couldn't we? Into especially those of us in leadership roles. How much are we are we doing enough to support people when times are tough? You know, I'm thinking about just example with Tyler Grange, you know, it can get really, really hard. People can get really stressed. Am I helping them enough? Are we putting enough in place to help support them? And we do we do a lot that definitely could do more. And that's gonna that's gonna improve people's ability to bounce back, but it's also gonna improve performance. I guess you see it in sport as well, don't you, Rusty?

Rusty Earnshaw [01:15:58]:
Yeah. It made me think a lot about transitions. So, you know, when you transition from sports to real life, you know, when you Yeah. When you join business, when you leave a business, when you move into a leadership position where you're now suddenly managing people like yeah. I just think more attention around transitions and, you know, that because because those situations are often high challenge without you even having to add the challenge. Yeah. It's then, you know, what what does really great support look like in those

Simon Ursell [01:16:29]:
Any any kind of change, isn't it? It's like you say transitions change, things are happening. I mean, I've changed from managing director to chair and I found that hard. That was a transition. But but loving it now. I mean, fortunately, I've got an amazing community that got my back. So I'm very lucky with TG, but, yeah, it is it is Okay.

Rusty Earnshaw [01:16:50]:
Sounds like the PA has been has been high support in the last few weeks.

Simon Ursell [01:16:53]:
Yeah. I've got a PA. That's exciting. Yeah. Really excited about that one. You need a PA, Rusty.

Dave Coleman [01:16:59]:
I need a PA.

Simon Ursell [01:17:00]:
You do need a PA. Anyway, thank you so much for for getting Dave on because that was that was unbelievable. I really, really appreciated it. So, yeah, over and out, and we'll see everyone soon.

Rusty Earnshaw [01:17:12]:
Over and out. Thanks so much for joining us on the Ban's Speculative Podcast with Simon in Bristol. We've really enjoyed your company. If you wanna reach out to us, Simon, where can they reach you?

Simon Ursell [01:17:23]:
LinkedIn's best place. Simon Ursel, u r s for sugar, e, double l. Send me a message. Rusty, where can we find you?

Rusty Earnshaw [01:17:29]:
TikTok? No. Not really. LinkedIn, Russ Lansaw. And then the same on Twitter, but please, ignore all my political thoughts.

Simon Ursell [01:17:37]:
Yeah. Second that.

Rusty Earnshaw [01:17:38]:
Over and out.