The Formula for Success Read online

  Out of the fire and into the firing line

  From Knutsford, I followed James (my older brother) to Bushey Hall School which, at the time, had something of a reputation. The fact that it consistently performed below the government exam result targets over 20 years, and had been in the OFSTED failure category twice, is just touching the surface. Perhaps if I tell you that, at times, we had a full-time police presence on site, it might give you more of a clue of what it was like to spend five years going there.

  This was a case of being taken out of the fire and thrown in front of the firing line. As I said at the start of this chapter: it was brutal. And if Mr Nicholson had instilled any kind of ethics and honesty in that young and highly impressionable version of me, Bushey Hall was about to beat it back out.

  In a rough environment, you need to learn quickly and adapt or you simply won't last. One of the skills I picked up in my first few weeks at Bushey Hall was how to look out for fireworks flying down the cloisters. I'm serious, it was a regular occurrence and, as far as I could tell, no one even tried to do anything to stop it. Many years later, when I watched The Hunger Games for the first time, it very nearly gave me flashbacks. It wasn't just rockets that lit up the imagination of the school's pyromaniacs either – it was also advisable to check your backpack before putting it on because they would attach Catherine wheels (we called them ‘spinning Marys’) to unsuspecting kids' bags and light them as they walked past.

  On one occasion, again innocently walking down the cloisters, someone ran a Stanley knife across my back, through my blazer and shirt, and into my skin – leaving a scar which I still bear to this day. I don't know who did it, I never found out why, and maybe it was no more than a dare. But it was another one of those pivotal moments in my passage towards the darker version of me.

  As I saw it, I had two choices at this point: stop going to school or join them. I tried both and, while nobody seemed to care if I didn't turn up for days on end, I eventually set off along the latter path. It was not an easy transition, and it brought more scars and playground battles, but at least I was one of the crowd and a less obvious target. This new-found position among the troublemakers didn't keep me free from pain though, and during one particularly boring English lesson I got into an argument with another boy who subsequently stabbed me through the hand with a fountain pen. Again, I still have the scar today, but it was the look on the teacher's face, just before she fainted, that will be my lasting memory of that experience.

  It was around this time that I started boxing. I'd been into martial arts since I was at junior school, mostly as a form of physical exercise, but boxing felt more like answering the call of the violence inside of me. I was angry and, particularly during those last few years of school, there had to be a way of getting that anger out. Boxing fit the bill perfectly, though it also sparked off another trait in me that I would later come to recognise as an asset and that has served me well ever since. But at that time, it was purely the anger that I felt each time I went to the gym or stepped into a ring to spar. Boxing became a way of surviving: both physically and emotionally. (I'll pick up on this part of the story in the next chapter.)

  Expelled for conforming

  I have learned that, in life, there are both reasons and excuses. You can blame the system, the environment, fate, or other people's cruelty as much as you like (those are the excuses), or you can deal with life. Bushey Hall School was not a learning environment, and no one came out of that place with great grades. The bullying and bad behaviour were out of control, no one could escape it, and I had no say in being there. It was deal with it, join in, or run away.

  There were genuine reasons that I was going in a poor direction, but I can't make excuses for myself. Looking back, I have realised that bad stuff just happens – but you get to choose what happens next.

  On top of that, things were getting bad at home, and the situation eventually led to my parents getting divorced. Having grown up in a loving family, where home meant sanctuary and the four walls of our house were a barricade from whatever was going on outside, divorce completely changed our family dynamic. I don't blame my parents (as I have grown up myself, I've seen how love and circumstance can be fickle partners), but it did add an extra level of pressure at a turbulent time in my life. So, I moved from a lovely home in Bricket Wood to a one-bedroom, half-way-house flat in Percy Road, Watford. There I lived with my Dad and my brother; and we had the company of the down, the out, and the desperate for neighbours. It was a dark time with few opportunities for any light to find its way through.

  Looking back now I can see that, at my core, I was still me; it was a version where all the good was restricted and the darkness was free to flourish, but it was definitely me. I'm not justifying or glorifying what I became by any means, but there were some strong characteristics on display for sure. I was outwardly confident and fearless, I'd learned how to watch my back, my resilience levels were through the roof, and I quickly learned who I could trust and who was worse than me.

  I had spiralled into the darkness of my environment and allowed it to influence the quiet, impressionable kid who had innocently walked through its doors some four years earlier. Having experienced the influence of a good role model, I was perhaps looking for more and found that my aspirations were disappointed. This led to several confrontations with the authorities, being expelled, and only getting two GCSEs to show for my rebellion.

  James – my older brother – had left four years earlier, joined the police in 2009, and eventually the Counter-Terrorism Armed Response Unit. (His Bushey Hall experience had clearly had a different effect on him.) I left without a clue what I would do next and started to spend a lot of time on my Xbox.

  For the record, Bushey Hall School transformed into Bushey Hall Academy in 2009 and, from what I understand, has become a true bastion of outstanding Hertfordshire education for young people living in Watford.

  ‘I wanted to be the best that I could be, so I started to study the best in the world.’

  Chapter 3

  BOXING CLEVER

  Boxing is the oldest, simplest, and perhaps most noble sport in the world. Throughout the ages, it has evolved, become regulated, increased in skill, and lessened in mortality, but it is still essentially the same face-to-face combat that it was many thousands of years ago. Modern boxing, at its highest professional level, with all its razzmatazz, glittering lights, build-up, boastings, and pay-per-view, is something of a spectacle to behold. But at its core, just as it always was, it is two people facing each other with nothing but fists, strength, courage, speed, and skill between them. As someone once said, ‘you play football, you play rugby, but you don't play boxing'.

  But it is fair to say that boxing is not everyone's cup of tea.

  There are three types of reaction to anything that you are presented with in life. You love it, you hate it, or you are completely indifferent. The most common of these traits is indifference: you can take or leave romantic comedies; vegetables are something you eat because they are there; you excuse your friends' poor attitudes as ‘just the way they are’; and you need to have ‘a’ job to pay the bills. The problem with indifference is that it is weak. No one, ever, in the entire history of humanity, changed their life circumstances or achieved anything of any significance through indifference.

  To be motivated to change something, you must either love it or hate it. Nothing will ever change in your life, nor will you be able to meaningfully change the lives of those who you love, until the love of your vision or the hatred of your circumstance overwhelm you and compel you to act. And you must also, of course, believe that you are able.

  The reason that boxing is such a great analogy for achievement in life is that you cannot succeed in it, or in truth even start to compete, until you are committed to the course. You must love the fight, hate your opponent (at least temporarily), and believe deep down to your core that you can win. It is not a sport that you can enter into indifferently – t
o do so would mean pain, defeat, and demoralisation.

  Even if you are someone who dislikes (or even hates) boxing (and if that is you, thank you for reading this far into the chapter and please bear with me), I hope that you see my point. Most people in life are indifferent about achieving greatness. They either don't believe in themselves enough, or they don't feel passionately enough about changing their circumstances. The fact is that ‘you’ need to change ‘you’ first – and that takes guts, determination, belief, bravery, and either love or hate as fuel. Whatever you think about boxing, as a sport, you need to take a boxer's attitude in life if you want to achieve anything more than being ordinary.

  But here is the big lesson to take away from boxing: there is so much more to it than brutally and angrily swinging your fists at an opponent. It is the ultimate test of skill, analytics, awareness, reaction, and strength (both mental and physical). And that is what we are going to discover in this chapter.

  The ancient art of the old one-two

  I started martial arts lessons, on and off, from the age of 11; but in both disciplines that I tried (Aikido and Jiu-Jitsu) I eventually gave up because I didn't like being told off by the instructors. I think the description ‘discipline’ was quite apt at the time. Growing up, I was always essentially an all-or-nothing kind of person, and I either excelled or quit – there was no middle ground.

  Some of my more successful (if not somewhat unconventional) pursuits included: roller hockey, where my team finished in the top ten in the UK; trampolining for the Ministry of Air competition team; and I even came close to representing the Great Britain international tenpin bowling team. If I was passionate about something, I would give it my all. And if I failed or came second (as was often the case), I would torment myself for weeks trying to work out where I failed or what I could have done better.

  My involvement in boxing stemmed from self-preservation and anger. It was towards the end of my time at Bushey Hall school, and I felt vulnerable and on the defensive pretty much every day. Boxing seemed like an ideal way to channel my growing anger and aggression, while also having the benefit of making me ‘pretty useful’ if I got into a fight. I figured that if word got around that I was a boxer, people might leave me alone – and, eventually, it worked.

  I loved boxing from the very first day I walked into my local club. I loved the feeling of being strong, the excitement of anticipating my opponent's next move, the buzz of being surrounded by adrenaline, and even the thrill of taking a punch. But the thing I loved most of all was recognising patterns, analysing behaviours, and adapting other people's styles into my own. And I don't just mean the actions of my trainers and the people I trained alongside. I wanted to be the best that I could be, so I started to study the best in the world – past and present. I also discovered that inside this ancient art of one-on-one, hand-to-hand combat was hidden a treasure trove of life skills. It was so much more than the old-fashioned one-two and then jab, or the famous uppercut or mighty knock-out punch. It was a game of wisdom, skill, speed, and most of all heart. Here are some of the things I learned from the best in the world.

  Jack Dempsey

  I discovered this guy called Jack Dempsey (Heavyweight Champion of the World from 1919 to 1926) watching black and white footage on YouTube, and his story fascinated me. He was born into a poor family and faced a rough, tough childhood growing up on the streets in Manassa, Colorado, with little or no prospects in life. Perhaps, at first telling, you would think that is a stereotypical boxer's story and that they all start that way – but consider how many other kids whose lives start like that never break free. Those that do truly earn it. Jack Dempsey had heart and was driven by a need to survive. His survival ultimately took him to the top of the world, but there were (and still are) many millions of people just like him who chose not to survive.

  ‘When I was a young fellow, I was knocked down plenty. I wanted to stay down, but I couldn't. I had to collect the two dollars for winning or go hungry. I had to get up. I was one of those hungry fighters. You could have hit me on the chin with a sledgehammer for five dollars. When you haven't eaten for two days, you'll understand.’

  Jack Dempsey

  Dempsey became known as ‘The Manassa Mauler’ on account of his ferocious and aggressive style and phenomenal punching power. In his day, the rules were that you fought until you finished and that often meant the loser (and occasionally the winner too) were unrecognisable after the fight – even to their nearest and dearest. I dare you to go and look him up now and see how brutal his world was, and then you might understand why they used to have whiskey in the corner between rounds instead of water.

  My big lesson from Jack Dempsey is that you should never stay down. Because if you are feeling the pressure and are ready to throw in the towel, it is likely that your opponent is too – and you only need to keep going longer than them to win. I used this in the ring and have translated it into life circumstances too – and it works. You will be amazed at how many times your competition gives in just after you have said to yourself ‘come on – give it one more round’.

  And even if you do sometimes lose (it happens to the best of us), make sure you learn from the experience, shake yourself down, and have another go. Another of my favourite quotes from Dempsey after losing a fight was: ‘Tell him he can have my title, but I want it back in the morning.’

  Mike Tyson

  Known as ‘the baddest man on the planet’ during his fighting years, and to the untrained eye a brute of a fighter, it was actually Mike Tyson who showed me that the history of the sport mattered. Watching him in an interview one day, he talked in great depth about the hours he spent learning about other fighters, watching what they did, and applying what he learned to his own style. He was so much more than the fierce fighting machine that you saw once he entered the ring. Mike Tyson was a thinker and an intelligent man who knew that opponents who feared him were weaker for it – so he invested in building that fear and becoming known for being bad.

  On a practical level, Mike Tyson was the master of the body shot, and that meant he focused a lot of his time in the gym on pad work. He was famous for it, and his pad routines were amazing. So, I simply stole them and made them my own. After all, he had stolen them from the people he idolised in the first place.

  ‘I'm the best ever. There's never been anybody as ruthless. I'm Sonny Liston, I'm Jack Dempsey. There's no one like me. I'm from their cloth.’

  Mike Tyson

  My biggest lesson from Mike Tyson is that you don't need to work everything out for yourself. There have been generations of successful people passing on the things that they learned from the change-makers that went before them. And all we need to do is listen, observe, understand, and apply what made them great to the uniqueness that exists inside each one of us. It is that simple.

  Muhammad Ali

  Imagine describing someone using just one simple, generic word, without any reference to sport, politics, science, the arts, or even a particular nation or era, and everyone knows who you are referring to. Muhammad Ali was undisputedly the ‘greatest’. Yes, it was an audacious self-proclamation, but he backed up his words and, even though he suffered several humiliating defeats during his career, no one doubted him in the end.

  ‘Only a man who knows what it is like to be defeated can reach down to the bottom of his soul and come up with the extra ounce of power it takes to win when the match is even.’

  Muhammad Ali

  Ali was known for his speed and his jab. He was like lightning around the ring, always moving, always dancing, always ready to close in with a volley of jabs and then quickly escape anything coming back the other way. In his day he was absolutely unbeatable. But what really made the great man the champion that every other sportsperson looks to as their inspiration was that he understood his environment. He was a champion in the ring, but what made him the ‘greatest’ was that he also controlled what happened outside of the ring.

  A great example
of this was the build-up to the famous ‘Rumble in the Jungle’, in 1974, between him and his long-time rival George Foreman, the then undefeated heavyweight champion of the world. Held in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), the fight was watched by 60 000 fans in the huge open-air stadium, and over one billion on TV around the world, smashing the viewing figure records for that time. It was a tense affair in the build-up and Ali's usual banter and razor-sharp rhymes added to the edge and rivalry that brewed before the two warriors entered the ring.

  The whole event deserves a book in itself, but one of the things that stood out to me was how Ali won over the people of Zaire and compelled them to adopt him as their hometown fighter. His relaxed style, mixing with the people and speaking to them in the street, contrasted massively with Foreman, who touched down with all the glitz and glamour in his private jet accompanied by his German Shepherd dog. Foreman clearly didn't know (or maybe didn't care) that historically, while under Belgian occupation, the breed had been used by the police to control the people of that nation. The predominately black population interpreted this as a symbol of white oppression, and Ali was fully prepared to capitalise on Foreman's error (he would have made a great trader). He became the people's hero and won their hearts long before he won the fight. There is no doubt in my mind that the great man had planned this well in advance (knowing that Foreman took his dog everywhere) because he understood that home support would play a crucial part in the build-up to the rumble.

  My biggest lesson from Muhammad Ali is simply to be prepared and don't leave anything to chance. When it comes to trading, for example, the more you know about a specific company, the marketplace in general, any extenuating circumstances, the news, the controlling board, the customers of that business, historical performance, and any issue or detail that you can discover, the more likely you are to make a decision that will reward your investment.