Jo Living: Knowing When to Play a Different Hand

0:00 SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'd only been learning poker for about six months at the time. And I was on holiday in Morocco with my boyfriend. Um, and he'd clocked on the airport transfer an advert for a big international poker tournament in two days' time. Um and I was pregnant, I was tired, I was wanting a restful holiday, I had zero interest, and I was an utter novice, but I guess sometimes life deals you a hand you never see coming because eight hours later at four in the morning I'd beaten the 200 men to win my first international poker tournament, pay for the holiday.

0:28 SPEAKER_01: What happens when the life you worked so hard to build starts breaking you? When success looks great from the outside, but behind the scenes your body and mind are telling you something has to change. My guest today has lived that story from the intensity of the trading floor to being an amateur poker player, motherhood, and ultimately a completely different definition of success. Joe Living, welcome to the turning point.

0:50 SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for having me.

0:52 SPEAKER_01: No problem at all. Thank you for thank you for coming on. It's a delight to have you here. So, Joe, what's been keeping you busy over the summer?

0:59 SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm a mother, so I guess it's that uh startup founder and family life juggle without the uh school hours doing the bulk of the childcare. So it's been a joy, higher highs and lower lows, but uh also really great things happening with ACEs high. Um it's I think going to from strength to strength. We we are hosting lots of corporates in their away days and offsites and helping teams to understand themselves and each other under pressure, how they make decisions in high-stakes moments, and really what poker um can teach you about how you show up in the workplace.

1:31 SPEAKER_01: That's awesome. And and so amazing to keep that going on at the same time as looking after children. Um how old are yours?

1:38 SPEAKER_00: Just one uh nine-year-old, but it's definitely a work-life blend more than a work-life balance, which I really enjoy because sometimes I will need to clock off at three and go and do the school run, but I can jump back on and there's lots of evening events with Aces High where we're hosting poker experiences and workshops and socials. So, yeah, my husband's also an entrepreneur and it just works for us, and I I absolutely love it.

1:59 SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, we can't, as as parents, we we look forward to to the summer holidays, and then when they come along, it's that kind of juggle with trying to work so you can earn some money, trying to actually spend time with the children so they don't resent you for having your laptop open all the time, and it's it's just that constant juggle, isn't it?

2:13 SPEAKER_00: So it absolutely is.

2:14 SPEAKER_01: Okay, I've got a few questions here based on what I know about you, and it kind of follows the normal train of the turning point podcast. So let's jump into these now, if that's okay. So when you look back at the Joe who was thriving on the trading floor, what did success mean to you then? And and what do you think um you were really chasing?

2:32 SPEAKER_00: Well, I definitely graduated from Cambridge with the dollar signs in my eyes. I got swept up in that milk round where all of the investment banks and management consultancies and law firms were sort of waving paychecks in people's faces and um having gone from quite a privileged start in life to a situation where I was on free school meals, I've seen the sort of change in financial security and was really motivated to kind of have that financial independence. And I literally sort of sought out banking as something that would give me a really strong paycheck.

3:07 SPEAKER_00: And I have to say, I wasn't doing it for the primary purpose of the love of the job, I was doing it for the secondary purpose of ultimately that paycheck, and I suppose wrapped up in the status of it as well. So it took me, you know, a little while, a decade, uh going through uh various roles in investment banking to realise I probably was a square peg and a round hole and doing it for the wrong reasons.

3:26 SPEAKER_01: Commuting in and out of London daily, were you?

3:29 SPEAKER_00: Yes, I was living in Ballam at the time and uh working in the wharf with JP Morgan at some points and UBS at others, and doing quite the you know, long hours on the on the investment banking side, and then latterly more on the trading floor. So saw it come from a couple of different sides, and there was a kind of earn your stripes mentality in these early days uh when I was sort of pitch bitch on the on the trading floor in my newly graduated role. I actually passed out on the trading floor three times.

3:58 SPEAKER_00: So I was doing those um kind of crazy stereotypical investment banking hours and not thriving, I have to say, at that particular point in my life. But highs, highs and lows, and there was aspects of it I absolutely loved, and it's um a great place to kind of cut your teeth and learn loads of kind of corporate skills that have stood me in really good stead. So no regrets, but it it wasn't a smooth ride either.

4:19 SPEAKER_01: I think um because I used to work in Farringdon years ago and I used to commute in and it was a work hard, play hard type mentality, like I'm sure you experienced as well. And it's I think it's kind of seen as a badge of honour if that was to happen to you. People were never signed off with with stress, you just kind of work until you until you drop. It's like, hey, you know, almost like like a well done. But it's uh glad to say that's a bit different now.

4:42 SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I definitely at the time, I mean it was from 2003 when I graduated, there was that sort of yeah, uh earn your stripes, badge of honour, I did a 2 a.m. finish, well, I did a 3 a.m. finish, and and people were thriving off that kind of real focus and all sacrificing, all-consuming lifestyle, but it certainly you know does lend itself to burnout quite rapidly, and there's quite a natural kind of trail-off of people that don't always make it all the way to MD, right? Because uh after a number of years you've sort of done your bit and uh ready for something new.

5:13 SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I had a friend of mine who is a um a trainee lawyer at probably similar sort of time to you, and he would regularly work till two, three in the morning, sleep in the office, have a spare shirt in the work. And he's he said, if I don't do it, somebody else will.

5:26 SPEAKER_00: Because we're the only people that I think actually had it worse than us, as in like we would pass uh deal documents to the lawyers at 1 a.m. or something, come back at nine o'clock, and they'd be they would have turned them around with the legal work. So they I actually felt sorry for the lawyers.

5:41 SPEAKER_01: So w when did you actually first start questioning whether that career and that version of success you worked so hard for was actually still what you wanted?

5:49 SPEAKER_00: Um, I mean, certainly I you know, I was doing quite well at various points, and I found the role rewarding. I actually transitioned out from the the intensity of investment banking into uh different roles within the investment bank, so um, which was more trading hours, and that felt a lot more manageable. And I have to say, like my sleep and the long hours just really didn't suit me. So that was a kind of there was a first turning point where I shifted out of the investment banking proper. And then there was this one later where I had what I think, you know, there was a lot of things leading up to it, but um I had a relationship breakup, which was at the time completely heartbreaking, and then three months later my dad died suddenly.

6:28 SPEAKER_00: Um and I was young, you know, I was 27 or something, and that was the sort of first time where you know the crack started to show, and I really kind of started to question what it was all for and um who I why I was showing up, and then had a sort of mini awakening of various, you know, finding myself kind of very typically um spent three months in India and you know, I was meditating on the weekend and then showing up to banking on the on the weekdays, feeling very unauthentic, and really started to feel more and more incongruous.

6:58 SPEAKER_00: Um and and then um I actually lost my brother, my best friend, and my mother in short succession.

7:06 SPEAKER_01: Well, sorry to hear that.

7:07 SPEAKER_00: Yeah, a little snowball effect of loss, which culminated in you know a real navel gazing of kind of what am I showing up for and why, and what do I want my life to be around? Losing my brother was particularly hard, well, my mum intensely hard, but my brother died at 38, and that felt to me like if I get the chance to show up and fail at something, that's already winning. Like, so it took the really reframed risk for me because all of a sudden quitting my job and uh starting as a startup or taking a chance on something new, I'm still alive, I still get to give it a go.

7:42 SPEAKER_00: I get to, you know, and to put the life in your years, not the years in your life. And so there was a few different inflection points, but um, I think loss was the kind of undertone of that decision.

7:52 SPEAKER_01: That's a huge amount to go through. I mean, you kind of downplay it speaking so openly now about it. I mean, it must have been a terrible time to go through all happening at once.

8:00 SPEAKER_00: I think I do downplay it because it feels like small tea trauma in the sense that everyone will go through losing loved ones. Like I haven't had a capital T trauma of something, you know, really earth-shatteringly bad. Yes, people have died, but that is the normal order of things or the normal way of life. And so with the sort of love and resilience and upbringing I've had, yeah, I've processed that and yes, it's been painful, but you can, it's it's the cracks that let the light in, and that has given me new momentum, authenticity, um, no fucks left to give.

8:34 SPEAKER_00: And so I think it's taking those silver linings from what is an unfortunate situation and having the alchemizing that into something beautiful, and it's a testament to my loved ones that I show up authentically and yeah, put my put the life in my years, and I'm grateful to them for giving for showing me how important that is because you don't know what tomorrow holds.

8:55 SPEAKER_01: Absolutely. That that's inspiring. I I didn't know that about you before. That's a really inspiring story.

8:59 SPEAKER_00: Thank you.

9:01 SPEAKER_01: Walking away from a successful corporate career, it's not just about leaving a job, you're potentially leaving an identity behind. But who were you when you weren't drove from the trading floor?

9:12 SPEAKER_00: Yes, your identity does get wrapped up in that status, particularly when you kind of over-exaggerate the importance of that and society tells you success looks a certain way. As I touched on outside of that, I was growing increasingly interested in kind of self-improvement and spirituality and meditation and ways of being that could like in enlarge and your the possibilities. And so there was a gradual drip-drip of feeling kind of less authentic and less motivated. Um, and yeah, I was showing up in a different way in my personal life than I was in my professional life, so it felt like I was having to put on a game face, a work persona.

9:51 SPEAKER_00: Um, and I think over time that inauthenticity kind of eats away at you, and so really started to question. I actually resigned three times before, not that they let me, but before they taught me back each time. And then the third time I was like, no, I'm actually doing it, and I quit with nothing to go to. So I didn't have a ready built-up next steps actually. I knew I had an entrepreneurial itch to scratch. I'd always been the kid with the lemonade stand, the student with the side hustle, and I had ambitions on a grander scale, but I didn't really know where that would take me.

10:20 SPEAKER_00: I didn't have a kind of VIX startup idea. I d I've dabbled around in about four different startups now. I had built a mindfulness app around the time that Headspace was taking off and clearly lost that one, but learned so much, right? And then subsequently I was able to launch a FemTech app, which was a support for women going through IVF to access fertility experts, emotional support, and their treatment plans. And for that startup, I actually raised venture capital investments, scaled it, and was able to sell the IP to a pharmaceutical.

10:52 SPEAKER_00: So that continues to help women today. I'm not um retiring as a femtech millionaire, but again, huge lessons about building businesses and raising investment and what it takes. And in parallel, I was playing poker as a hobby. So I always say I'm an entrepreneur first and a poker player second. But playing poker in casinos, hosting my own home games, starting to like really enjoy that as a passion, I saw how it had helped me to assert my value, to negotiate, to make decisions in high-stakes moments and to handle myself in a room full of men.

11:26 SPEAKER_00: So I took everything I knew from investment banking, everything I knew from the poker circuit, and came up with the idea of Aces High about how the poker table can be a proxy for the boardroom table. So that's really what uh is my passion. And I started to reflect on this concept of pick a guy. Have you come across it? I have indeed. Yeah, what do you love? What do you good are you good at? What do people need, and what will people pay for? And as I started exploring that, and I also saw how my beginner poker nights that I was doing for women was helping them, they were organically reporting that learning poker each week had helped them to close client deals at work and assert boundaries in their home life.

12:06 SPEAKER_00: So they were telling me, my friend Caroline said after a particularly successful client negotiation, she said, I realised I had aces, there was no way I was folding. So, combined with my own experience of how you know the poker parallels real life, it's a kind of microcosm, and having these other women, um, I did a little bit of thinking about what it could look like to reimagine poker as a corporate experience, to sanitize it, strip out any gambling whatsoever, and make sure it's completely inclusive for beginners, so we can um take people through a Texas Holden workshop that with a with a friendly competition for prizes, but actually hold up a mirror to how they're making decisions under pressure.

12:46 SPEAKER_01: I love the story. And and your your comment about leaving without anywhere to go to. So, my my coach, um Oli Olerton, that there's um he he says you've got to burn the bridges. If you've got the plan and you've got your goal, you want to go and achieve, that goal may not be crystal clear, may not be 100%, but you know you're going to achieve something, burn the bridges because your subconscious will all keep you in an uncomfortable certainty over a potentially better uncertainty. Um so when you actually ended that, drew the door down, you've got no way to go but forward.

13:17 SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and that's what I needed. I I needed the time and space to separate from Joe in b in investment banking to even explore what I wanted to be. And actually, the first thing I did, because I'd been used to sitting at a table with six screens in front of me with loads of numbers on, I wanted to do something really rooted in sort of humanness. And I actually went and did a massage qualification in therapeutic massage. I wanted to kind of feel rooted in my body, to feel real, to connect with people in a way that wasn't just making rich people richer or looking at numbers and graphs on a screen, but felt real.

13:51 SPEAKER_00: And there was definitely this feeling that everything up to that point hadn't been rooted in it lacked humanity. So I did a massage qualification. I never did anything with that. Again, that was sort of a hobby, but it helped me have some structure of something to go to, and um around the side I was kind of having coffees and networking and exploring next step.

14:10 SPEAKER_01: Yeah. And your um points about negotiation and transferable skills, because I I did a period of my time in my early career in technology recruitment. I was working for the S3 group and they had very regimented training. And the skills I learned then negotiation techniques, closing techniques, communication techniques, body language techniques. I use them all today. Oh, yeah. I use them all today in all my nearly all my daily interactions with clients, with prospects and everything else. It's it's fascinating.

14:40 SPEAKER_00: So much in that, and some of it's so simple as well. Like it's not always sort of rocket science body language. A really easy one is um that you can do in normal conversation is to monitor someone's blink rate. Um, and if they are, once you get a handle on their kind of baseline, so when they're not stressed, if it goes up, that's very often an indicator that someone's having a stress response. Unfortunately, at the poker table, there's no tell for bluffing. You can only have a tell for having a stress response.

15:07 SPEAKER_00: So it doesn't mean you always know are they stressed because they've got aces or are they stressed because they're bluffing. But you can look at patterns of behaviour, baseline, um they're kind of regular, how long it takes them to make a move, and in you know, the same in corporate life, and then look for deviations from that. But there's there's loads we can take, and I enjoy um exploring all of that.

15:25 SPEAKER_01: I'm conscious of my blinking right now. And my um I I catch myself if I'm in a a stressful situation and a client's asking something tricky, I I I sort of fiddle with the back of my neck and like no, stop doing that, put your hand down.

15:38 SPEAKER_00: I hold my breath. My tell is holding my breath. I do it at the poker table. I'm soft sometimes if I'm giving a big keynote, I talk a lot about lessons from the poker table that can help you raise your game. Um, and if I'm particularly nervous on any occasion, I'll breath hold and I get breathless in my talking and also at the poker table. So it's interesting once you build awareness around this, which is the first step actually to countering uh your kind of default stress response.

16:02 SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and that's interesting because I do um some public speaking and I've had to work very hard on actually breathing because you focus on talking. Oh shit, I've not breathed for three minutes.

16:12 SPEAKER_00: That's really common.

16:14 SPEAKER_01: It's a real uh real challenge. Um, so on on with poker now. There's um from my research, there's an incredible chapter in your story where you're pregnant. It's around 4 a.m. and you're in Morocco playing poker against roughly 200 men. Take me into that room, and and who was that version of Joe taught me through that?

16:31 SPEAKER_00: Yes, I mean I'd only been learning poker for about six months at the time, and I was on holiday in Morocco with my boyfriend, um, and he'd clocked on the airport transfer an advert for a big international poker tournament in two days' time. Um and I was pregnant, I was tired, I was wanting a restful holiday, I had zero interest, and I was an utter novice at this literally six months into learning, but I'd read a couple of books and started to look at the poker strategy, and he wasn't letting up, he was kind of nagging me, come on, let's say it's a life experience, it'll be great.

16:59 SPEAKER_00: I hadn't done any live tournaments at all, and so I reluctantly rolled off my hammock and back on the bus to Agadir. And I actually took a book along because I was so sure that I would be knocked out very early and I'd have to sit around for hours whilst uh you know he played on. But I guess sometimes life deals you a hand you never see coming because eight hours later at four in the morning I'd beaten the 200 men to win my first international poker tournament over the holiday.

17:22 SPEAKER_01: That's such a good story. So yeah, that was and and then went back to the hotel for a well-earned rest.

17:27 SPEAKER_00: Yes, I mean yes, the irony is that I don't sleep after poker tournaments because I'm replaying every hand in my head and the adrenaline is still searching for your body, and I literally see the cards in front of my mind. Um, and especially where the ones where I know I played imperfectly or I slipped up or I maybe got lucky or got away with it, but I played badly, and so I start kind of re-revisiting those. Um so I think I was awake for a few hours after, but we got in the cab very quickly with a bundle of cash as I was stuffing it into my handbags.

17:57 SPEAKER_00: All very James Bond. Yeah.

17:59 SPEAKER_01: Yeah. I I don't play poker. I mean the closest I've come to it is is three-card poker in the casino and various other games when I was younger. But but it from what I know, it seems like such an interesting mirror for for life. So you're including risk, ego, emotions, knowing when to push, knowing when to walk away. What did poker actually teach you about yourself, do you think?

18:20 SPEAKER_00: Absolutely. People say it's not a card game played by people, it's a people game played with cards. So you're absolutely right. It's commonly um a game played by men, but it's also absolutely made for women as well, because there's so much in it around kind of intuition, reading the room, parking your ego, patience, discipline, strategy, and having that kind of empathy. And empathy is not often a word that people associate with poker, but there's almost three ways you could play poker. You can play your own hand, you can play your own hand and imagine what someone else has, and then you can play your own hand, imagine what someone else has, and imagine what cards they think you have.

18:59 SPEAKER_00: So definitely you're getting into the psychology of that. So I think poker's taught me empathy. It's taught me to step out of egocentric thinking. What cards do I have? What do I want from this negotiation? What are my boundaries? And what do I want to win? What do I want to lose? To pause on all of that, it doesn't matter if I'm playing kings, if they're playing aces, and I'm not aware of that. So it's listening and it's it's watching every move, it's the patterns, it's their previous behaviour, it's their aptitude and appetite for risk.

19:29 SPEAKER_00: Um, so you're much more reading the opponent than actually playing your cards. And some of the best poker players will win hands without ever looking at their cards because they can bet in a way and know that know the behaviours and the fears of the other opponents. So some people show off by, you know, placing bets uh blind.

19:46 SPEAKER_01: Yeah. Interesting. And again, it says so in in my my day job and my corporate job, it's similar to when we're submitting proposals and tenders to clients. You've got to look at it from the 360-degree angle. What do we want out of it? What's the client going to think of our proposal? What's going to make them buy? And what could our competitors potentially be pitching as well? And and if you can combine all three of those, where so many people just write a one-sided, this is our offer, here you go.

20:13 SPEAKER_01: It's it's all a load of blurb about how good we are as a company. They'd be stupid not to sign up with us and then they never hear back from them.

20:20 SPEAKER_00: And the equivalent to that is just playing your cards, right? I'm betting my kings because I think it's a strong hand. I'm asserting my value in a kind of unilateral, one-direction way. But I talk about the brilliant basics and the magic moments. So you need to play your cards. They are the brilliant basics. You need to know the statistics, the likelihood of you hitting your flash or your straight, the bet sizing to you and the expected returns, expected value of the bets that you're making. But you also need the magic moments, and that is where you can layer on the intuition and the reading of the room, the pattern recognition, uh, maybe stress responses.

20:52 SPEAKER_00: Not a strategy on its own either, but the two combined can be really powerful.

20:57 SPEAKER_01: Yeah. Yeah, I love that. So we talk about success and definitions of success quite a lot on the turning point. So you've experienced success in in very different worlds. Looking back, when did your definition of success actually begin to change? Do you think?

21:13 SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think it was quite a pivotal moment in my late 20s with a series of losses. Um, and I had a quite a cataclysmic year where I quit banking, ended a relationship, met my now husband, and had and and changed friendship groups in some ways as well. So it sort of evolved from the you know, banker Joe to entrepreneur Joe, and immediately felt this authenticity. And I think you mentioned you have to cut ties, you have to burn your bridges. Um, I didn't deliberately do that, but I never looked back.

21:41 SPEAKER_00: I always thought, actually, I said to myself, as a kind of fail safe, well, you know, if it doesn't work out, I can always go back to banking. Um, but although the paycheck hasn't been what it was, I actually have never looked back and consider myself like really lucky. Because on the day I resigned, some one of my colleagues said to me, if I didn't have three kids in private school. A wife that shopped in Harrods and a mortgage in South Ken living next door to footballers, I would be doing the exact same thing.

22:06 SPEAKER_00: And although he was uh much more senior and well paid than me, he felt poor. And I'm not kidding, because he lived a lifestyle where he was trapped in this sort of expenditure and mortgage and lifestyle and school fees. Um, and I got to a very lucky point in my late 20s, early 30s, where I was able to find some level of you know financial freedom, you know, nothing to begrudge banking. I got me into a very nice position fairly early in life. Um, but then I really took stock and I said, am I going to go and get a new, a bigger mortgage and you know, extend my spending, or am I going to find this sort of financial freedom?

22:40 SPEAKER_00: And that coincided with my dad passing away, meant that I had ultimately, you know, a very nice little um nest egg to be able to have that security. So I was extremely lucky. But I think that financial freedom you know c culminating and corresponding with those losses at a time when you know I was ticking along just fine and I could have carried on, but it really didn't feel like enough. There was an itch to scratch. I couldn't at the time put my finger on it, but I knew I wanted more.

23:07 SPEAKER_01: So for for anybody um listening to this who who maybe feels that they look successful on the outside, but privately they know that success is starting to cost them too much, or like you, they've said that they're kind of a square peg in the roundhole and they've got an itch that they want to scratch. What would you want them to hear and what advice would you give?

23:26 SPEAKER_00: I would want them just to reflect on, you know, you don't know how much life you've got left, you've probably only got one life to live, as far as we know. How do you want to show up? What's authenticity for you? And why are you doing? Like, really like pull back the lid to understand what your motivations are. And I think if it's too much people pleasing around the expectations of your parents or the need to provide for your family and or what your friends think, and I I understand all of those motivations, I really do.

23:54 SPEAKER_00: Can you disaggregate or at least unpick those to see like what's the cost? As the opportunity, the flip side of that is sacrificing your own ambitions. And you know, it doesn't have to be all or nothing. Not everyone should quit their corporate job and do a startup, right? It's high risk. But what can you explore on the side to experiment? To say, well, okay, what would it look like if I did this side hustle? And or if I'm not, can't quit my job and you know, race motorbikes, can I get a motorbike alongside my corporate job because that brings me joy?

24:22 SPEAKER_00: And so, like, how are you sparking enough joy in your life? Because what else are we here for? And and what are you going to regret when you're on your deathbed? It's not the you know, I didn't get that client deal done. It's typically I didn't, it's the opportunities you said no to or missed out on, not the ones that you took. So just be true to yourself and work with a coach. I I think you've had um really powerful insights from working with a coach, and many people do, and I've had moments of that myself, and it just provides some structure.

24:49 SPEAKER_00: I think sometimes still, particularly for men, maybe there's some stigma associated with therapy or coaching or you know, self-reflection or self-help books, but honestly, they work for a reason and they're there. So I think just whether it's podcasts or self-help books or a bit of coaching, put some structure around your thinking, put it down on paper, and then set yourself some timelines so you've got some accountability either with a coach or a friend or in your own to say, okay, well, I'll give this a shot for this long and then we'll check in at six months.

25:18 SPEAKER_00: And if you're still not happy, what needs to shift again? And and it's just such a shame. It just feels really sad to me that we so many people in the West have all this privilege and we have comfortable lives and holidays and cars, and I see so many people unsatisfied at work and you're making do. And is that really enough for real life? Like, I want more than that. I don't know if that's greedy.

25:42 SPEAKER_01: No, I I I agree, and I think that would resonate with with a lot of people. There's no time to start than than today. And as she said, but put a time on it because so many people were like, Oh, I'm gonna start that business, but I'll start next year, I'll wait till New Year, I'll wait till summer, and then before you know it, you've missed your chance.

25:56 SPEAKER_00: Yeah. But you're never too young. There's always an option, and um you're never too old. I mean, and yeah, I think just do it, just do it, explore it, learn something. Every no is a data point, everything you find out about you know the thing you want to explore, and then find ways to balance it. I'm a big believer in balance. I was out of balance in banking, you know, I missed friends' birthdays and important um events and was working and I was kind of not eating well and I was not exercising sufficiently.

26:24 SPEAKER_00: And I don't believe that, you know, I think you're an ultra marathon runner, but I'm personally never going to be an ult a marathon runner. And so I think everything in balance, and that's an important word for me. So yeah, you might stay in your corporate job if if that's serving you, but balance it with things that you know are joyful for you, or you come to a realization that's not serving you, um, but you still need to make money. So you've got to kind of you know have your head and your heart in sync, I think.

26:49 SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, I I agree. So I do my my men's coaching in my spare time. So I run a uh WhatsApp group, we keep each other accountable. We're starting conveniently starting the day the kids go back to school, we're doing a 30-day no-sugar challenge. I'm I'm running a um an on-site breath work and ice session for for people locally as well. And and it's just something that I enjoy doing using kind of my experiences and and my challenges to help other people. Um it doesn't take a lot of my time. Obviously, family's got to be a main priority, but but I just enjoy doing it.

27:19 SPEAKER_01: It's some it's another dimension to me.

27:21 SPEAKER_00: And I think there's a really nice ripple effect because if you show up to you know an ice bath session, you'll get chatting to one person that you know opens up new possibilities for you. So it doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing quit banking and you know, ground zero like myself. It can be a drip-drip of, oh, I met one new interesting person and we have shared interests, and now I'm gonna do some breath work, and now I'm actually gonna start journaling, and now I've realized this about myself.

27:43 SPEAKER_00: So it it was, although mine looked like a sudden fall off a cliff moment, there was probably three years preceding that of self-inquiry.

27:51 SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I get that. And also, uh, I mean, there's there's three people I know of directly who because I I quit drinking nearly two years ago, never looked back on it, and there's three people in my group who've given up, and it's not just the impact on their lives, it's the impact on their families' lives, which I think is the great thing.

28:06 SPEAKER_00: So that's very inspiring. I gave up from six months from the first of Jan last year, 2025, and did it till around July, and then very much fell off. So I am drinking again. I d I'd never qu intended to quit permanently. I just said, let's see if I can do this for an extended period. But you're inspiring me to revisit that.

28:24 SPEAKER_01: It's it goes it comes down to identity. So my new identity doesn't have drinking appear anywhere in it, uh, and it doesn't serve that new identity. So for me then it wasn't just I'm not gonna drink for this amount of time and kind of white knuckling it, it's now well this person on me doesn't drink and it's uh just not not an option now.

28:42 SPEAKER_00: Bit more work for me to do on that one, I suspect.

28:46 SPEAKER_01: Um if um if everything you've achieved disappeared from the biography tomorrow, so the career, the poker businesses, all of it, what would you want people to understand about who who Joe Living actually is?

28:58 SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's an interesting question. Um I think I want I think authenticity and balance, they're like my words right now that I cling on to as um how I show up. You know, I've I don't want to pretend to be something I'm not, I don't want to be out of kilter. So without any of the accolades or the um, you know, business success, I would go and be the authentic version of myself. With me, that's balancing family time with yoga and eating well and trying to be true to friends and family. And you know, I think everyone has a similar answer, I imagine, that you come back to what really matters when that's stripped away and it happens for people.

29:34 SPEAKER_00: People lose, you know, a whole family in in accidents or uh a business in a heartbeat, you know, things happen during COVID and it can be life shattering, and people have to pick themselves up. And I think for me, I would come back to my husband and my son and my kind of immediate friends and family uh for that support and try and show up you know with humility as a good person.

29:54 SPEAKER_01: Authenticity and balance. Yeah, you mentioned that a few times now. That that's great. Joe, that's a great point to leave it on. Thank you so much.

30:00 SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for having me, such a great conversation.