Since I retired from rugby I’ve been involved in some life-changing challenges which have continued to teach me about leadership, team-building and managing change in adversity. As a Director at PWC, I’ve also learnt how powerful these things can be in the world of business so I set up Optimist Performance to impart that same knowledge in the areas of Teamwork, Leadership, Resilience and Change to help businesses & teams exceed their potential.

This website is also the best place to find out about my latest adventure tours – for example I’m climbing Mount Everest this April – and my broadcasting work.

Whether it’s been captaining England in New Zealand, sailing through 80-foot waves, cycling across America or grappling with a new corporate lifestyle, I’ve always been one of life’s eternal optimists, so the name just seemed to work.

Creating Optimist Performance

I want to thank digital and creative agency Redwing for devising the new brand mark, which I love. Redwing were great in coming up with ideas, taking feedback on board and allowing a step-by-step process before we nailed it together, across the website and also social platforms. The compass and mountain imagery gives a strong nod to my various adventures!

Having a compass is important to me. In a literal sense it’s come in very handy hundreds of times now, but I think it’s crucial that we have a strong and conscious sense of where we’re trying to get to.

In the past couple of months I’ve done some work with an exciting sports sponsorship agency called Dark Horses. As a business they’re growing rapidly in a short space of time, which is great but also brings with it headaches. Like any company up-sizing, they’ll face inevitable challenges when it comes to retaining and nurturing the same core values and cultures they have at the heart of their team and their business, and that means navigating through some testing waters.

Hopefully by sharing some of my own experiences, applying them to my new corporate life at PWC, and also by asking them some challenging questions about how they think and behave, I’ve helped set them up to do that and I look forward to working with them some more on their journey. They certainly seem to be in a great place and hugely well equipped to move forwards.

I myself am still fully embracing my current role as Director for Real Estate & Construction at PWC. I head up a team of incredible people, all of whom know far more about it than I do. In fact, I’m often asked “Ollie, what do you know about construction?!” My answer is that I’m not here to put on a hard hat. I’m here to help them wear theirs as well as possible.

Are you facing challenges in teamwork, culture, behaviour or leadership?

Join the long list of businesses benefitting from a day with one of the most inspirational speakers and mentors in the city. Contact Ollie at Optimist Performance now!

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Optimist Performance: Tell us about Dark Horses and what you get up to

Simon Dent: We’re a sports-focused creative agency based in London for people looking to break away from the field. By that I mean the people within our four walls and also our clients. We deliver world-class creative for brands operating in sport and at the moment we’re working with Nissan, Peloton, Wiggle and Southampton FC.

We think there’s a huge opportunity out there to inject a higher level of strategic and creative thinking into the world of sports marketing. For us that goes across four key areas: the first is creative strategy and finding the unique sweet spot between a client’s brand and its audience. The second is advertising, transforming those ideas into execution. Then there’s content production, from films to blogs and everything in between, and finally sponsorship strategy, where we help brands and rights-holders make sure they’re both getting maximum benefit and value from their relationship. In an ideal world, we work for a client across all of those areas.

OP: What’s the Dark Horses ethos?

SD: We exist for those wanting to break away from the field. We’re built on the DNA of the UK’s most creative company, Lucky Generals, and our drive is to always exceed expectations. We do that by assembling incredible creative talent but also, most importantly, by applying a really strong work ethic of constantly challenging each other to do better. One of my favourite sayings is “The moment you see yourself as the favourite, you’ve lost the race”, and we try to really live that.

OP: You’re growing fast – what challenges does that present?

SD: Our culture is hugely important to us, so recruitment becomes incredibly important. Preservation of what we have built to date is my main priority and as we scale up we need to maintain and even distil that chemistry, not dilute it.

OP: You brought in Ollie to talk with your team. Why?

Ollie is a hugely impressive team player and inspirational leader who’s also making a success of himself in the world of business. He’s been in some of the toughest environments you can imagine, whether out on an international rugby field or sailing the seven seas, but beyond that he has an uncanny ability to relate everything he’s learnt, including to the work place.

Every member of our team is a leader and we want them all to feel empowered to grow quickly with us, so we’re always looking to bring in positive role models, to learn from and also to inspire and help us sense check our values and our behaviours. That becomes especially important as our numbers grow. Ollie is a great example of what can be achieved with focus, dedication and positive mindset.

OP: Would you recommend Ollie, and why?

SD: Yes. Ollie is inspirational and I would recommend him to any business looking to inspire a team and get them thinking about mindset and personal growth. He’s worked in a number of different environments, in rugby, sailing, at Cambridge or now becoming a Director at PWC, and he’s always attained ‘best in class’ status. I’m a big believer that one of the keys to survival and success in any field is the ability to adapt and evolve quickly and his continued reinvention of himself is a lesson to us all.

Are you facing challenges in teamwork, culture, behaviour or leadership?

Join the long list of businesses benefitting from a day with one of the most inspirational speakers and mentors in the city. Contact Ollie at Optimist Performance now!

The post Dark Horses back Ollie Phillips and Optimist Performance appeared first on Optimist Performance.

The waiting is over, the countdown clock has fewer than 24 hours on it and all the training is – hopefully – complete!

Tomorrow we leave and for the next 11 days I’m hugely proud to be joining 360-expeditions as a Team Leader, taking a team of intrepid souls to Uhuru Peak, the highest point of Kilimanjaro at 5,895 meters.

It’s going to be a stunning hike through rainforests, moonscape terrain and vibrant jungle and even before that and the peak there will be visits and stop-offs to help acclimatise. For example, we’ll be visiting some vanilla and cocoa farms, which is going to be fantastic.

I can’t wait to see how we all get on – individually and together – when it comes to finding our feet on arrival, co-existing in an alien place and getting stuck into the hard yards, because no two challenges are the same and no two teams are the same.

I may have sailed around the world, cycled across America and run a killer marathon in Sierra Leone but nothing can prepare me, or us as a team, for what we’ll face. It is going to be life-changing. Again.

Take a look at the trip’s itinerary, including what we’ve got through in terms of training to get prepared:

MONTH 1

Option 1
2 x 30 mins weekday walk
1 x 1 hour weekend walk
1 x 10 mins CVS

Option 2
1 x 30 mins weekday walk
2 x 1 hour weekend walk
1 x 10 mins CVS

MONTH 2

Option 1
2 x 45 mins weekday walk
1 x 2 hours weekend walk
2 x 10 mins CVS

Option 2
1 x 45 mins weekday walk
2 x 2 hours weekend walk
2 x 10 mins CVS

MONTH 3

Option 1
2 x 45 mins weekday walk
1 x 2 hours weekend walk
2 x 10 mins CVS

Option 2
1 x 45 mins weekday walk
2 x 2 hours weekend walk
2 x 10 mins CVS

MONTH 4

Option 1
3 x 1 hour weekday walk
1 x 4 hours weekend walk
3 x 15 mins CVS

Option 2
2 x 1 hour weekday walk
2 x 4 hours weekend walk
3 x 15 mins CVS

MONTH 5

Option 1
3 x 1.5 hours weekday walk
1 x 5 hours weekend walk
3 x 20 – 25 mins CVS

Option 2
2 x 1.5 hours weekday walk
2 x 5 hours weekend walk
3 x 20 – 25 mins CVS

MONTH 6

Option 1
3 x 2 hours weekday walk
1 x 6 hours weekend walk
3 x 30 mins CVS

Option 2
2 x 3 hours weekday walk
2 x 6 hours weekend walk
3 x 30 mins CVS

Those are the hard yards so far- wish us luck!

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In April 2019, just six months after climbing Kilimanjaro in October 2018, I’m going to be teaming up with a host of incredible people to raise well over £200,000 for children with disabilities and disadvantages across the UK & Ireland.

We’re not just climbing Everest – we’re attempting to set two World Records along the way as we take on the LMAX Exchange Everest Rugby Challenge: the world’s highest rugby match and the world’s highest ever tag rugby match!

Alongside me as team captains will be former England scrum-half Andy Gomarsall, Welsh wizard Shane Williams and Tamara Taylor, who has well over 100 caps for England.

It will be an unbelievable adventure and there are still places left on the trip, so if you fancy joining us get involved and book your place today.

Could your team benefit from hearing the most inspirational speaker in the city? Get in touch with Ollie at Optimist Performance today!

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Watching the FIFA World Cup blew me away in a couple of ways. Firstly, it broke down some major stereotypes and concerns that millions, if not billions, of people had about Russia and the Russian people. And closer to home, having missed out on playing in a rugby sevens world cup in Moscow five years ago, and then also the Olympics through injury, it brought flooding back memories of calling time on my professional career.

Seeing players like Tim Cahill of Australia or Russia’s Sergey Ignashevich still out there playing on soccer’s biggest stage at 38 was remarkable. Hearing the commentators talking about their ‘career twilights’ got me thinking back to my own retirement and all of the thoughts and doubts it brought.

Retiring from professional sport is a difficult time and something that I and all of my rugby-playing pals have or will have to go through at some stage.

Obviously there’s an inevitability about it and you only hope when you’re still playing that the decision can be yours, as it was with Joe Marler recently, and not a doctor’s.

I was lucky in that I had a long and very fulfilling career, playing 15s for clubs in two countries and sevens for England literally all around the world, but eventually you’re left with the cold realisation that the clock is ticking and a new chapter is looming. And that’s when you start to realise what your sport has meant to you, how it’s come to define you and how big the void is that it leaves. That void is made up of many different things: time, mental energy, physical discipline, teamwork, stress, elation, camaraderie and income to name but a few. So you ask yourself how you move on, where your next challenge is coming from.

For me the Clipper Round the World Race, which recently reached its climax for a 10th time, presented itself as a huge opportunity to jump totally outside of my rugby comfort zone, do something amazing, meet new people and finally escape James Haskell!

I first learnt about the Clipper race when I met the founder of the business Sir Robin Knox-Johnson at the London 7s. Sir Robin is an avid rugby fan and delights in all of the game’s many pleasures, none more so than telling me how good Irish rugby is in comparison to English… He’s not far wrong at the moment, but don’t tell him I said that! He had told me about the Clipper Race and how it was one of the last adventures left on the planet and that anyone could do it.

“More people have submitted Everest than have sailed around the world,” he would often delight in telling me.

He mentioned that if I ever wanted to do it, I should give him a call and he would try to make it happen. Injury had hit and my future was uncertain on a rugby field and so I thought ‘Why not?’

So to cut a long story short, I did my research, signed up and went through several stages in the build-up: from extreme anxiety, nausea and sleepless nights to a feeling of sheer and utter excitement once I’d met the rest of the team, to the point where I was a nightmare to live with. And joining that Great Britain team is one of the best decisions I ever made.

Standing as captain behind your try line at Twickenham, a score down with a minute to play and your teammates looking to you for inspiration is tough. But it’s nothing compared with being out on the southern ocean in a 70-foot yacht, being tossed around by 120-foot waves, and looking across at the rest of the crew, wondering how you’re going to get through it together, and then working through it to literally steady the ship, stay the course, keep going and pass a pod of 40 whales not long afterwards who seemed to warmly congratulate us.

You learn a lot out there about the people you’re with and the team you’re in but you learn just as much about yourself, and those 40,000 miles of open water took me on a massive journey of emotional and mental endurance. I was hugely proud to become second-in-command on the Team Great Britain boat and drew so much strength and learnt so many lessons that I brought home with me.

To this day, five years on, that 11-month sea voyage is still the most life-changing time of all my challenges and the one that I use most as a mental compass point as I navigate my way now. It’s also helped me plan all the rest of my team challenges since then to make sure that everyone who comes out with me has the best time and gets the most possible out of each and every trip.

Find out how your business could benefit from hearing more of Ollie’s inspirational stories, and applying them to life now as a Blue Chip business Director. Get in touch now!

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From the moment I arrived in the country it was clear this was not going to be a normal week. The place just immediately brings to life all of your senses. My initial thoughts were filled with nerves and trepidation. It was the first time that I had been to Sierra Leone, a country that had such an infamous reputation for being dangerous, war-ravaged and desolate, so I was nervous to say the least and nervous about the challenge that lay ahead.

I was in the country to run the Sierra Leone Marathon in aid of Street Child, a charity which believes that basic education is the single greatest step that can be taken towards the elimination of global poverty. Since 2008, they have helped over 200,000 children go to school and have supported over 15,000 families set up businesses so they can afford the cost of educating their children long-term. It is a charity whose message I believe in vehemently and who I was delighted to be supporting during my time in Makeni.

Ever since meeting the founder, Tom Dannatt, and the head of fundraising, Chloe Brett, I’d wanted to get involved with Street Child and meeting people on the ground only served to strengthen my resolve that this was a wonderful cause.

Visiting some of the schools that Street Child had help build and seeing the smiles on all of the kids faces was an incredible experience. Their unbridled joy and enthusiasm towards school, towards learning and also towards us was infectious and amazing to see. I can remember taking part in a class and the room was filled with positive energy, huge smiles and continual song and I couldn’t help but sit back and marvel at what had been created in this magical place. And despite all of the hardship and all of the atrocities that some of these children had witnessed in their lives, they still managed to approach life with incredible energy and positivity.

In light of what these kids have lived through, and go through on a daily basis, 26 miles was a small sacrifice on my part and of course I’d put in the miles back in the UK, pounding the roads for months in preparation. I’d even bought the best running shoes I could find the OnCloud Cloudflow [link]. It was the first time I’d ever attempted running since my career-ending injury and I wasn’t sure how my nerve would hold up, but the OnCloud shoes certainly helped mitigate some of the issues that I typically suffer when running.

In reality, though, nothing prepares you for that race, which I’d still recommend to anyone. First of all, visually the route is awe-inspiring, from Makeni’s famous Wusum Hill stadium through the rural villages and tropical tracks through some of the most beautiful scenery in Northern Sierra Leone, a place totally alien to me, and the race definitely has the “electric atmosphere” that the event hosts advertise.

Having said that, there is no way you can replicate the 30-degree heat and the humidity you face. It was right up there with the toughest things I’ve ever taken on physically.

Not that the local kids seemed to mind – they skipped along with me all the way shouting and screaming and generally taking it all in their stride!

It was a fantastic thing to do and I was absolutely thrilled that we, a group of 118 runners, managed to raise in excess of £220,000 for Street Child – funds which are still to this day going towards building new schools and helping ensure that the children of Sierra Leone and beyond receive the education and support they deserve.

Please take a moment to watch the video and get in touch and if you fancy joining me on one of my next life-changing charity adventures.

Find out how your business could benefit from one of Ollie’s motivational talks

Through his new business Optimist Performance Ollie applies all his considerable learnings in leadership, team-building & culture, adapting to change and dealing with adversity, to life now as a Blue Chip business Director. Get in touch now!

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Why? Because it was almost surgically attached to me for 3,000 miles across America, from California to Maryland on one of the most incredible team challenges I’ve embarked on.

You can look at a map, you can plot the course and do the training but when it comes down to it there’s nothing that can prepare you for crossing 12 American states in eight days, and climbing 175,000 feet of hill road along the way. But that’s why the RAAM, or Race Across America, is like no other race in the world.

To give you a bit of background on the cycle, the route travels west to east and is simply breathtaking. Along the way you cross the Sierra, Rocky and Appalachian mountain ranges, the Colorado, Mississippi, Missouri and Ohio rivers and the Great Plains, as well as the Mojave and Sonoran Deserts…..how’s that for a bucket list!

I was part of the incredible ‘Antonia’s Friends’ team made up of me, my fiancee Lucy, my boss Barry, former Wales backrower Alix Popham and another 17 fantastic human beings who came away on the trip as riders, drivers, cooks, navigators and general motivators.

For 36 years RAAM has been pushing ultra-cyclists to and past their limits, raising millions for charity. We were cycling for Asthma UK and a young girl Antonia Thomas, a bright, funny, beautiful, energetic girl who had been diagnosed with mild asthma, yet tragically died from an asthma attack in under 10 minutes at the tender age of 10. Raising awareness about the dangers of asthma and how you can manage it correctly and appropriately was something that I was passionate about and felt very strongly committed to, and it certainly motivated me and drove me through some of the dark moments during RAAM.

Over the course of the race every one of us experienced moments of doubt, extreme physical pain and emotional suffering.

Ultimately, though, we also felt exhilaration, redemption and massive reward. As a relay team reliant on each other, the race really is the true test of speed, endurance, strength and above all camaraderie.

I think the best thing about it all was the collective efforts of the whole team involved. Yes there were eight cyclists and we had to work hard on the road, but the support crew were just incredible. For example, having a resident chef that was ready and waiting with some of the most fantastic food you’ve tasted as soon as you finished riding was amazing, even more miraculous was the fact that it was cooked up on the side of the road! Then there was our onboard navigator/team leader coordinating our every move. The general set-up and how well it worked was testament to everyone’s hard work.

You might think that a support crew of 12 and the eight riders all cooped up and travelling across the United States together would be a recipe for disaster, but it was successfully the best experience I’ve had and the most enjoyable team to be a part of.

I would recommend the race to anyone as long as you’re willing to put in the hard yards to prepare. Although I might not have looked it at times, at 33 I was the youngest on our team with Richard the oldest at 63 and everyone got so much out of it.

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The post The Art of Self-Challenge: Race Across America (RAAM) appeared first on Optimist Performance.