If you’ve listened to the podcast for a while, you’ll know that it’s very much not about me, Chris Hall, but today it is. For a while now, Neko has been telling me that he thinks people would like to know more about me. I guess for some of you, you’ve heard my voice for years now and I’ve not shared a whole lot about myself. So I finally caved in and let Neko take control of the questions. We sat down in Fort William and chatted about my background in mountain biking, my previous career in automotive engineering and how I eventually came to start the podcast. Hear about the challenges of making a mountain bike podcast your full time job and where the podcast is going in the future. Hopefully you enjoy finding out a bit more about me and where this whole podcast comes from.
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Chris Hall welcome to the downtime podcast thanks ni whoa It’s like St Rob water in the club get super excited but never speak to them just like stare at them from from afar and admire them flying around test tracks in a supercar in the middle of the night in Spain in on secret Test Facilities where you can’t even take your phone in a wise person once said to me that you can pretty much ignore 90% of the stuff that gets thrown at you but the art is working out what the 10% is that you actually need to worry about I think that was a bit of a Do or Die weekend to be fair Chris Hall welcome to the downtime podcast thanks Nico it’s kind of funny to say things all their way around it feels very strange um but I I guess I had the idea for a little while and I mentioned it to you no one’s done an interview with you you do so many interviews with mountain bikers um I think you’re really good at interviewing other people thanks mate and you’re a pretty interesting guy yourself and I’d say this in the best way possible you don’t talk about yourself a lot you try to talk about the person the subject that you’re interviewing yeah and I think there’s a little bit of a story to be told about you too so all right we’ll find out uh I guess this this is a pretty big question but who is Chris Hall who is Chris Hall man that is a big question to start off with um well I get well how would I identify myself I guess um uh in the context of this I’m a maritan biker like I have been since since I was super young I’m um a husband and a father uh to a little girl four-year-old girl um which is awesome and very challenging um and yeah I guess I just I just want to try and bring something certainly initially I want to try and bring something unique to the m bik world that I wanted that I felt didn’t exist um and I continue trying to do that I guess there’s more of us in the space now which is cool like there’s loads of people doing it and loads of different takes on it but yeah so I guess podcaster Martin biker husband father son all that dress cool cool and um your background in mountain biking I guess you’ve been a fan of the sport for so long it’s amazing the amount of stats that you know even back to the 9s um how what’s your background in mountain biking and how do you have such a knowledge base to be able to have this podcast um well I’m a geek I guess so like I I retain but I think I do also do a lot of research so not all of those stats are in my head at any one point I’m too old for stuff like that to stay in my brain these days but um yeah I guess going back to when I was pretty young I was a bored kid and I didn’t really know I knew I needed a hobby but like I didn’t know what that was like nothing I guess I would have been like 10 leish that kind of age and I was like I need something and I don’t really know what I am yet or what I’m into and I did you know all sorts of stupid things like collecting postcards and all that like oh this is what’s the list of hobbies and you know this was I guess in the 80s or early 90s late 80s and um yeah I just dabbled with loads of boring stuff um I joined Scouts cuz my best M at school was into that um which was super good for me and gave me that ability to like get outside and do all that kind of you know all that sort of stuff and um one evening we did a bike race in the local woods and I had a rally Mustang at the time like very early I mean in inverted commas marrying bike not really a mar bike in what we’re used to so fully rigid Cy braks 18 gears that barely worked and weren’t indexed in anyway he just had to hunt around with the the friction of the shifter and um yeah we took all our bikes up the woods and the like the Scout leaders set out a little track I guess that was I I don’t remember how long it was but like it was fairly you know was enough and uh me and another lad Jamie who went to a different school but was at our Scout Troop um just absolutely loved it we were like this is what we want to do like we just totally buzzed off it and uh I don’t know whatever night we used to go to Scouts like Thursday or something we’re like right okay Monday should we meet up after school like and go riding come to the woods like okay sweet and it just went from there way like I mean Martin biking I guess was in the fairly early days like there wasn’t maybe mbuk existed as a magazine I can’t really remember but there wasn’t much you no internet and none of that stuff so there wasn’t much outside world to look at it was just a case of us riding bites in the woods and experimenting and building really badly built jumps and and at this point it was early ’90s yeah yeah I guess it would have been early ’90s yeah and then whether mbuk sort of started or whether we discovered it so we were like a this is a a thing that exists um so that’s cool um and you get that inspiration you start to see other Riders and we found a few other people locally just again just knocking about in the woods you’d see other people that were enjoying riding their bikes in the words that were similar age and we all started to hang out together a bit and see what you could do like ride off St drops and build jumps and try and go fast around turns and all of that jazz I guess that’s kind of where it started yeah I think a lot of people listening to this can relate to childhood like that yeah stacking up planks of wood jumping off of them I got um that’s my next B was a sarson tough tracks Elite I think which for some reason they had on sale like my parents can afford the like the lower one but they had the elite on for the same price so I was like super stoked on that had a couple of days and we built some built a ramp out inside Jamie’s house on a couple of bricks like so sketchy I remember hitting that just getting massively bucked and I had a huge crash into a wall or something and the bite landed on top of the wall and put a massive dent in the frame is like two days old no man not good but we all did it right yeah I mean you don’t you don’t buy them you don’t have them to look at them they should should be well used some people do maybe not us yeah so um and then following along with the racing is that something you’ve just been a fan of I I mean initially I went racing so um we got the magazines and you see that Racing’s a thing and we’re like okay well that you know why wouldn’t we have a go at that seems kind of cool so I think we’d said to Jam’s parents or my parents like we want to we want to have a go and um Jim’s family always used to go to Cheddar to the campsite there like it was a place they’d been as a family and I guess they were on a mailing list or something back in the day and they’d said oh we’ve got this bite race coming up like and Jamie’s Dad said oh I’ll drive you do you want to do you guys want to enter we would have been like 13 12 I don’t know young and uh we’re like yeah sick have a go that then why not cross country cross country yeah cuz like there probably were a few DARS maybe at that point but still very limited mostly mostly XC so um yeah we entered that and uh Jamie’s Dad borrowed like a bite rack for the roof of the car CU we didn’t have any other way of getting the bites there and we just went for the day and it took I don’t know how long but a long time to work out to use this bite racky borrowed so by the time I remember setting off at like some ridiculous speed down the down the inf4 motorway across to Cheddar from where we live I grew up in ring and um we got there really late just enough time to literally get the bikes off the car get kitted up and get onto the grid and we’re like hm everyone’s lot older than us so we’d entered the fun category cuz we were like well we’re new to this that sounds like the right thing but we didn’t realize that was an adult category so I don’t know how we managed it but we’d entered an adult Mountain bite race at the age of like 12 or 13 on these chuny bikes and that’s so we had to do like was two or three laps it’s a pretty big course it was wet and like quite sticky clay kind of mud it was brutal but again we just when your kids you just like you buzz for everything don’t you like that so it was a great experience but yeah first race so yeah did a did a bit racing ex initially dabbled a little bit with downhill cuz I guess that was what look cool right it was in the magazines and it was it was Steve P it was Rob Warner will Longden it was those guys py that were in the mags and were like making down it look super cool and so we just idolized that lot and it was flat pedals and it was whatever they were doing and Dave’s chain device on the bike and mismatched grip colors cuz they were doing it and it looked cool and all this kind of stuff stuff so I guess we were consuming racing through the mags cuz there was no other way to do it and then I um went off to University and like didn’t have a huge amount of money didn’t have a only had a hardil at that point and didn’t have a car so I couldn’t really travel easily so I sort of stepped away from racing then I guess a bit and the other guys from back home sort of carried on and some of them were pretty handy and you know not not into Elite but could potentially have got into Elite like they were pretty good Riders some of them and um so I used to attend when I could get to a race I’d go and watch those boys race really cuz I just wasn’t didn’t have the kit and I wasn’t up to speed so I just got into going to races and I’ve always I guess consumed it in the magazines and then as television and video and all that sort of stuff came along like sprung and earthed and I mean who doesn’t or who didn’t want to watch all that stuff when it came out like why wouldn’t you it was like I think it would be harder to not be into the racing to be into it by then yeah I think I watched Earth five that was like right around when I got into it Earth four Earth five like 200 times each yeah they wore out we wore out the tapes um and I think one of the coolest things about amateur racing like the stuff that you guys did is a lot of the times you’re doing it the same venue as the the elite racing and especially in the UK with how many good Riders there are it’s got to be so cool to to turn up and get to see guys like Steve Pete and Rob Warner at some of the races and sit next to him on a shuttle or like in the end the Sport’s kind of the right size where you you can have access to those guys and they’re just one of us they’re just other B Riders so that’s got to be pretty inspiring from the UK 100% yeah it was cool you could always watch the elite racing and I remember watching those guys and just being baffled by how they did it Mina came to a couple of like British races because he spent a bit of time in the UK when he was in the sort of animal orange stuff so we saw a young Greg Mina like finding his feet and was like who’s this guy like pulling massive suicides over any jump he could find and yeah it was cool man it was really good cuz there was I mean there is now but there was a really strong UK downhill scene then like it was probably us Australia and UK that had the sort of three scenes with all the rider the big names of riders that you’d know back then and so yeah you could go and you could go and see those guys race and um yeah I grew up quite near Rob Warner so we used to occasionally like see the guy there’s a nightclub in town and you’d occasionally see like if Pete you’d come visit Warner or whatever you’d see those boys in there with like James Alay and some of that lot back in the day we’d be like whoa It’s like Steve P Rob Warner in the club and get super excited but never speak to them just like stare at them from from afar and admire them that’s awesome so in the I guess in the period after you finished University up until starting this podcast um you you still still participated you still mountain bike a lot obviously the the love grew enough to eventually start this podcast like what did that period of your life look like um it was a long period actually so I mean I think I worked for about I say what I worked as if I don’t now but it’s diff feels different um I did about 18 years so I my degree was in mechanical engineering and um I guess like alongside bikes have always had an interesting cars and race cars and stuff and I never really as with not knowing what hobby to do I never really knew what I wanted to do or who I was in that like work context um and you do work experience at school and I’d organized to go to the local local bike shop for work experience B Cycles and um my teacher decided that I was too I don’t know how they worded it but basically said I was too clever to go and work in a bite shop which part of me like I I wish I’d still up and said no that’s what I want to go do cuz I think maybe things would have gone in a different direction but they sent me to the mechanical engineering department at Ren University for a week which was cool like we had a lot of fun we made things on CNC machines and there was race cars in the workshop and we went to the marsbar factory and saw how they make all the chocolate and stuff and we did some cool stuff and I was like oh okay well race cars that’s pretty cool and like making things is good and so maybe I go and do engineering so did that but with no real idea where I wanted to go but I think most people that come out of mechanical engineering degrees are like well I’m going to go and work in Formula 1 so tried to get a job in Formula 1 and that was virally impossible like you seem to need it you needed to have done like work experience in your spare time and around your degree which no one tells you about until afterwards so I just went and worked in the bite shop in the Summers because it meant I got cheap bite parts and I could afford to have you know a vaguely decent bike um so I couldn’t get into Formula 1 um went and did a mountain bik season in leer uh for Al active back in the day as as a driver which up until this job was the best job I’ve ever had cuz you literally just drove people up from the airport who were super excited and drove them back after they’d had a mint week in in the mountains um we got to ride a lot we got to live in Le for the whole summer and it was a really good crew of people um so that was mint and I was toying with the idea of going back and doing a winter season um and then I got a phone call from a company called Ricardo who are an automotive consultancy in the UK Automotive Engineering consultancy um who ID applied to and been to an assessment center for but as far as I was aware I hadn’t got a job um yeah literally as I was just about to commit to doing a winter season without active they rang and were’re like do you want do you want a job it starts whenever it was and I so I took it and um I became an engineer for yeah 18 years uh whether that was a good thing or not I don’t know like bits of it were were amazing and um I probably couldn’t do what I do now without it so although I would have liked to have got to a bike based career sooner whether I would have been able to get to where I am with what I do without all that I think be probably at to happen um but yeah it was it was it was good so I worked in noise and vibration as a sort of specialism I guess so making cars quiet or making cars noisy or somewhere in between solving problems did other bits and pieces as well like beside the noise side um but that was the main thing that I did through those years um yeah 18 years worked for Ford worked for Ricardo for a bit worked at McLaren for a bit um and did all sorts of wild and wonderful things from you know little Ford Fiestas up to McLaren supercars so yeah it was a pretty it was an interesting 18 years for sure yeah that’s very cool I think a lot of ways you’re you’re engineering mechanical engineering background gives you a good perspective on some of the interviews you do that are Tech related for sure um I find it super interesting I think when you sent me a message congratulating me on on delivering my first run of bikes it meant so much more coming from someone like you who really knew what it took to be able to take a product to Market it’s hot eh there’s a lot more details in there um and and and making one prototype is a lot easier than making something for for sale for production yeah you think you’re 90% of the way there when you’ve made one and then you realize you’re 10% of the way there and 90% of the work Still Remains there exactly so can you go into a little more detail on some of the automotive projects that you that you worked on I think some people would probably find them pretty interesting yeah I guess well I pick a few that I’m I may be the most proud of so I was responsible for the the noise and vibration of a V8 diesel engine that went in Range Rover and Range Rover for a few years um I was put way out of my depth by my boss at the time um one of the best people I’ve ever worked for again you don’t realize that until you don’t work for them anymore I think um so Dominic Evans if you ever listen to this shout out um yeah threw me in deepen I was pretty young he was like right I want you to lead this engine program from a noise and vibration perspective um which involves all sorts of mad stuff like modeling the combustion event in the cylinder and looking how that combustion event gets from the cylinder to the driver’s ears so that you can stop it sounding like a diesel engine because no one likes that noise um all kinds of mad stuff like and loads of issues along the way so that was super cool because I was like up a Land Rover a lot and in front of the customer and um yeah I really I think learn a lot and grew a lot in that um and most of the time it’s trying to make the vehicles quieter um again it varies so like the the Range Rover Sport has an element of sportiness to it um and there’s science and engineering behind what makes something sound sporty and I don’t want to go into the details too much because it’s pretty gets pretty complex pretty quickly um but so that product yeah you might want to make certain elements louder or make certain things stand out um but then it’s a diesel engine so there’s you want to like get rid of the diesel noise it’s a turbo engine as well and people generally don’t like turbo noise unless it’s a rally um so you want to try and like attenuate that as well so that honestly you would not believe the amount of things that go on like tiny little things that you wouldn’t think would make a difference like a little rib on the cylinder block that will totally change the way the engine responds and you know the frequency of noise that finally makes it to your ear when you’re driving the thing like wow little details that you’d never notice as a you know you’d be like well they just that’s the shape of it but every little bit is thought out so it’s yeah it’s thousands of hours of work um way more you know engine programs are are big for a reason it’s multiple years and lots of prototypes and lots of testing yeah yeah so obviously you don’t learn every bit of that when you’re in University for sure you got to learn on the ground eh and that again that one I was you know throwing at the deep end um the chief engineer on it was a really good guy but a force to be reckon with like the sort of person that you didn’t mess with um which I learned very early on and we ended up having a pretty good relationship because I did what I said I was going to do and you know treated him with respect and it all worked out pretty well um but yeah it was cool like just really out of my depth learned a lot there and I think that enabled me to sort of learn to um not just do the engineering but do some of the kind of I guess it’s it all comes down to communication right you’re managing everyone that’s involved and that’s a lot of people because you’ve got your suppliers and your quality people and you’re purchasing people and your designers and you’ve got the test facilities and the customer and you’ve just got to keep everybody on the right page and going in the right direction I mean you’ve seen this and what you’ve been doing on the on the the bike um so I think I learned a lot of that and that enabled me to have I guess bigger roles later on in my career um I guess the one I’m most proud of is I was um kind of responsible for the engine based um intake an exhaust system on the McLaren mp412c when they relaunched the road car project after the SLR um McLaren McLaren Mercedes SLR project um so that was huge we came in kind of late they were with someone else and it wasn’t going so well and um they came to us and we’re like we’ve got this engine it’s like it’s in this position we’re going into production here was like 18 months or something um we need a factory to build it in and we need the engine finishing can you guys do it so the company I was working for were like yeah okay well we think we can do it and we basically ended up redesigning the whole thing from the ground up as well as designing and building a factory to make it in um in I think we did in about two years it was and a normal engine program could be six or seven like it was full on I’ve never worked so hard or been so stressed um I remember we had we had one day they were doing a a photo shoot with some of the early prototypes and we had so McLaren had Jensen Buton leis Hamilton on the team at that point so they were I can’t remember what track it was maybe Goodwood they were at track in the UK they had a helicopter film team and both the drivers had flown in from Monaco or wherever they live for the day so there was a lot of money getting burnt up and they had two prototype cars available and both of them broke and um both of them were my parts and the pressure on those sort of days where like you get a phone call you’re like we’re at such and such a track and um none of the cars are running and it’s your fault what are you doing about it and it you you learn to like think on your feet and move pretty fast and I guess like everything now just seems easier after that project it was a proper a proper test of mind and body like what you can get done and it yeah it was the group of people that we did it in the made it special like some of my best friends were part of that project and still are my best friends and uh yeah we sometimes some of us meet up occasionally now and like reminisce about how good that was cuz was like a dream team and like everyone just got stuck right in and yeah it was cool we had a lot of fun and you know again highlights like getting to meet the you know people like Jensen button and Lewis and chat to them and like flying around test tracks in a supercar in the middle of the night in Spain in like on secret Test Facilities where you can’t even take your phone in like it’s checked in at the door and all of that kind of stuff and in an envelope that you pick up when you leave and that’s amazing yeah there was some super cool stuff but also like yeah it nearly broke me but yeah but sometimes um those sort of experiences they give you a different perspective going forward they make you so focused and and you have to react the right way with not not much time to think that after after you go through that you’re like you’re programmed to be able to deal with things differently yeah and you understand yourself better as well I think like I know what stress feels like I I can understand some of those signs and symptoms in my body earlier than I could before I mean it got to the point they got um some pretty heavy hitting people from Harley Street like experts in stress and stuff to come in and help out the team because we were I mean we were buried like 100 hours would have been a briy CH week and yeah people had bags under their desk ready to travel at the drop of a hat if something went wrong somewhere and you needed to be at the car or whatever and it was it was pretty extreme at points and um but yeah you come out of that stuff stronger e like you always do yeah you just got to get through it I think you can identify the stress points coming from further away too yeah once you’ve been through it you’re like I can see that this is going to be a stressor and we’re going to do something about it in advance yeah yeah a wise person once said to me that you can pretty much ignore 90% of the stuff that gets thrown at you but the art is working out what the 10% is that you actually need to worry about and it’s so true like people would ring you get used to like oh that person’s ringing I know that’s going to be about this and I know if I just leave them they’ll probably sort that out on their own they just can’t be bothered to think so I just won’t answer that call and then you’ll get another you’ll get a message from them like three hours later oh Chris don’t worry about that I’ve sorted it and it’s that it’s like learning what you can back away from and step away from and what you’ve actually got to deal with so yeah definitely just you get better the more you do those challenging things I think yeah that’s amazing did you ever get to drive the car I did I’m I um I was one of the few people so I worked for a a consultancy I was with Ricardo at the time um so we were remote we were based in Brighton and mcclaren’s in woken but because I had the intake in the exhaust system they interfaced super heavily with the car so even I mean throughout the project I’d be up in worken at least one day a week and towards the end when we were trying to get everything into properly into production and across the line I was there fulltime um and I got obviously got to know the team there pretty well so and I felt like I felt the pain of our team being remote as well like they weren’t as connected to the product as I was because you don’t see it like when you’re atw and you you walk in the building and you’re surrounded by Formula 1 cars and you know the even the way that you go to lunch you walk through the trophy cabinet like every time to get into the lunch place like it’s designed to like make you want to work hard for them in a way like to to inspire you yeah to inspire you and everyone that was down in this like fairly gloomy office on the south coast of the UK wasn’t getting that so I arranged for um I think we did it once a month or something like that for the one of the test drivers to give six slots at Dunville which is the top gear test track cuz it’s near woking we used to use that quite a lot and um we’d randomly pick six people out the office to go and have laps in the car so that at least there was that enthusiasm and they’d come back and they’d tell everyone else how stoked they were and yeah so Chris who was one of the the test drivers was the Stig for a bit and on top here like he’s he’s handy cool so they were driving around that at a fair rate um but as part of that I negotiated with the head of Powertrain that at some point before I left I was going to drive the car like that was non-negotiable I will drive this car and he was like yeah cool you put the Graft in I’ll make sure you get you know you get some laps in the car so yeah yeah I did right at the end um I had some very wet Laps on the top gear track in it and I scared the mvh manager um getting a little bit sideways around the Hammerhead which scared me a little bit as well to be fair because I’ve never driven a 600 horsepower Supercar and um yeah it was pretty Punchy as it turns out so yeah I did I yeah two or three laps around around the Top Gear track was all I got but you know it’s kind of cool people pay a lot of money for that experience and and it was nice cuz yeah it was it was two years of a lot of work so it was it was nice to like experience that and and again I was like I say I was lucky I got to go on test quite a lot cuz a lot of my components you needed the vehicle to test them properly so yeah we did all sorts of you know instrumenting cars for temperatures and we were melting bumpers at some point cuz the exhaust gas was so hot that the rear bumper was melting so we had to like drop the exhaust so that we could bring it back up and point it up over the bumper so the hot gas would clear the bumper so we did testing in Barcelona for that and yeah like you have to get the car hot so the best way to do that is full B accelerations down a 3 km long straight in a test facility which is a lot of fun and then as hard as you can on the brakes and do it again so yeah there was as as hard as it was there were some incredible like fun days in some pretty ropey protype cars yeah yeah and more than boosting morale do you think that you and your team getting to drive the car helped you to better do your job in designing it um I don’t know I’m not sure about that I think I think the end product and the Driving Experience for people involved in the engine is so far away from there’s such the connection is not that strong like for the people that are involved with the ergonomics of the cockpit and all that sort of stuff then yeah 100% um I think for us one of the things that really helped was that we all spent time building our components on the production line so did it at the at the vehicle plant and woke in and the guys that were more kind of engine based did it in shorum on the engine um facility so rather than just designing stuff and then handing it over and letting someone else deal with that like we all spend time building our components and like I remember I we had some heat shields around the exhaust system that had really sharp edges and like the amount of times you cut yourself on the early prototypes like well that’s clearly not good enough we need to sort that out and so we got the edges rolled and just little things like that or you know you can’t I can’t reach that or I can’t get tool to it stuff that you can do it in Cen in software but like there’s no substitute for actually just getting your hands dirty and building it so yeah all of us involved at some point spent time in the relevant part of the production and like yeah saw how it all went together and then took the abuse from the people that work on the line and went away and fixed it that’s so cool and it’s got to be such a challenge to you design the the the engine to work a certain way and then to take that engine that you’re happy with the performance of and actually get it through a production line efficiently there there comes the real challenge yeah when you look at how many pieces there are like I think I I mean I own the yeah the intake and the exhaust across two variants of the car the the soft top and the hard top and just that alone was like 330 components wow which all need to be durability tested and performance tested and bought and bought in quantity and quality checked and stored and all of this and then you look at the I mean there’s thousands of parts in an engine and every single one of it one of them needs to work properly and do all of that stuff so yeah I mean you’ve had you’ve had your experience of I mean how many parts in the bike like 30 uh coming down to every every bolt probably 40 probably 40 yeah yes and you know what what that’s like right so m apply that up and it just and just keep in control of it like every time there’s an issue with anything anywhere in the world cuz the cars were all over the world all the time doing all sorts of different you know use and abuse testing performance testing whatever like if there’s an issue it’s not just a phone call like it’s written down it goes into a computer system it’s assigned to the right people you have to work through various steps to solve it like everything the process has to be so dialed cuz it’s be so easy to miss something thing when you’ve got that many things floa about so it gets yeah it gets pretty complicated pretty quick yeah that’s so cool that’s such a cool background it’s bit different to podcast so how how do you get from here doing race car engineering to starting the downtime podcast um so I I met my now wife um while I was doing the McLaren project um we were both in Brighton at the time um and and we were both in a redundancy pool when we met and um Carrie lost her job she completely different work but a different place but randomly we’re both in redundancy pool at the same time um she lost her job and I somehow managed to keep mine and um so she moved up to Leed in the north of UK and random things meant we ended up sort of seeing how this would work right we were I went away riding with some friends and her parents lived really near where we were riding in North Wales and she was there for the weekend I saw her then and we were both in London at the same time so just these things kind of knocked on and we ended up like giving it a go and that turned into us um you know keeping this relationship going remotely for a couple of years and then the McLaren project finished and I did a few other bits and pieces at Ricardo but I wasn’t it was hard after that to find something like a I wasn’t with this dream team of people anymore I was back to like little smaller projects with maybe one or two people and it you know it wasn’t a super car and all of that and just wasn’t the same so I was like well maybe I should make a move and um a guy called Andy Hamilton who I worked with um when I was at Ford for a bit had moved to cumings in Huddersfield which is near where Kerrie was living and uh he was like oh we’ve got some openings like maybe you should apply so I got a job up there I think it was a senior project engineer initially um and moved up um moved in with Kerrie which was a big step neither of us particularly good at commitment so that was pretty interesting um and and work there and um sort of work my way up to being like the head of projects for the advanced engineering team for the turbocharger part of that business um and I just didn’t really enjoy it like it was a pretty long commute either way every day pretty heavy traffic um I in you inherit often you inherit the people that you work with them for rather than choose the people you work with them for and that doesn’t always mean you get the best people around you there were some great people there don’t get me wrong but there were also people that I wouldn’t generally choose like low energy people that would take energy out of a room rather than add energy to a room and um I just a budgets we’re getting C and I sort of felt like I had to I felt like my role was to defend the department and to keep money and to keep projects going and to keep the company moving forwards um and that was just getting harder and harder and my job was pretty much just spreadsheet engineering and presenting to management and trying to justify budgets rather than doing anything that I actually enjoyed and it was to be fair it was also pretty easy in a way like that was boring and dull but it wasn’t hard and it wasn’t that timec consuming and I I’d often like I joined I was Road riding a little bit CU it was it fitted in and it was doable and there was no decent off-road really like close so it was good to get out for a quick ride and I was a member of this Facebook group and people would post on like a Tuesday afternoon I’m just popping out for a couple of hours anyone want to go for a ride I’m like how does this work like how how do you earn money but still get to go riding when the sun’s out like what’s what’s going on and it just made me really inquisitive about like was there another way like are people how are these people making this work like what’s going on so that had got my brain thinking and I was often sat at my desk staring at the window on sunny days like with not enough to do really certainly not enough challenging work to do and just like this is killing me like I want to I don’t want to be I want to go riding anyway long commute um and got into listening to podcasts and not only did that like open my eyes to some of the other ways of living that don’t involve a like 9 to5 for the man kind of thing um but it also made me realize that at that point there wasn’t really anything that was like what I was enjoying listening to in the world of podcasts for mtin biking so I I’d sort of thought that’d be kind of cool like how how hard could that be like it would be good to do something it doesn’t exist and I felt like you could almost there was a lot of like um I can’t what the articles are cool but like basic interviews on M bik websites and I sort of felt like I could write the answers like even though I wasn’t anywhere near as embedded in the sport then as I am now still a massive fan and you know be on the websites every day and reading stuff especially when work was quiet and um yeah I just felt like I could kind of write the answers and I was like there must be more to these people right there’s stories that we’re not hearing there’s a lot of great information maybe I should do something and I chat to a mate and he was like yeah you should go for it and and then um just sent world had started a podcast I think um Johnny Becket and then vital started their podcast and hookit had started dve started doing hookit podcast and I was like oh have I missed the boat here like are we is this Peak mountain bike podcast is there room for another one which seems crazy when you think about how many m b podcast there are now um so I sort of wrote it off for a little bit and moved on and was like I still need to work out what I wanted do because it’s not this but I don’t I don’t yeah I don’t know and then I went to um I went to University with Sai who runs cotk who you now know well and have collaborated with on the bikes um and another guy called John fur who at that point in time was marketing director for O’Neal clothing so they supported Min at that point um I was at a New Year’s Eve party at another friend’s house and sort of saying oh I’d been thinking about doing this podcast but don’t think I’m going to and uh John was like I’ll get min on for you I was like M okay and so I was like I think I think you need to do this Chris like I think you need to crack on um he he he has this he calls this thing the [ __ ] it button so like he he says he lends people the [ __ ] it button and you press it and it’s like right let’s just do this so anyway I was like okay well can’t really turn down Minar as an early guest so I went home like yeah literally January the first like that evening probably still a bit hung over and started working out like okay how do we do a podcast like what’s the mechanics of it how do you how do you create an RSS feed how do you make a website how do you record it what do I need how cheaply can I do it because there wasn’t money to just throw at a project um and yeah I the hardest bit initially was guests actually so i’ pinned K Chris Kil Murray down and um he’d agreed to did you know him already no I just cuz he had literally a direct email on his website so it was an easy in cuz I was like dming athletes and stuff stuff and I don’t think anyone really knew what a podcast was or didn’t care or didn’t know who I was which fair enough um and all that sort of stuff and I hadn’t heard anything back from anyone that I tried to message so I was like right I need a better more direct way of contact which is funny it doesn’t seem that long ago it wasn’t 2017 early 2017 and um yeah so I got Kil Murray and then I’d emailed Martin Whitley because again he has a direct email on his website and he was like oh yeah sounds cool like who do you want I was like oh this is that’s cool I was like well you know these guys like who do you think could be good and he mentioned some guy called niik malali and Justin leov and put me in touch with you guys so I think Chris was episode one you were episode two Justin was early on Beck Baron I think she was looking for she was like sort of almost crowdfunding I guess her season back then so she was fairly easy to access through Facebook um so I got those first few episodes recorded the first one went out on February the 14th 2017 as a Little Valentine present to the bike industry um at 3:33 in the morning cuz I had to choose a time and that was the time I was born so every episode now goes out at 3:33 in the morning UK time um which is a bit weird and yeah put it out there and I think we had like 90 downloads or 92 downloads or something of the kill Murray episode on the first day and I was like am I disappointed and then I was like well imagine putting 94 people in a room that’d be a pretty busy room like I’m all right with that that’s that’s pretty good um so yeah just kind of got stuck in on that and like everyone that I had on I would ask like who else do you think I should have on can you put me in touch and then may 2017 Fort William World Cup so I took a couple of days off work shot up here got some super cheap sketchy accommodation in town and just literally walk around the pits pretty much all weekend trying to meet as many riders as I could explain what podcast was what I was doing and try to get people’s kind of contact information I think that was a bit of a Do or Die weekend to be fair I think had that not happened I would have run out of guests and it would have choked pretty quickly um but I think being on the ground and just I mean I dread to think how many steps I covered that weekend I don’t I think I maybe I popped up the hill once but I literally just was in the pits like right let’s this needs to work let’s get let’s get on it well that’s the type of elbow grease that needs to go into a decision to make a big change like that and and do something else like going in person and just hustling to make it happen that’s what you need to do right yeah there was no choice right I I wanted to make it work so yeah and that was it that was it like part-time I guess I did it when I could um so at this point you hadn’t quit your job no still fulltime at work um like I said it wasn’t like it was long hours but it wasn’t long hours of work it was long hours of being in a building and sitting in a car um so I could sort of be on website and you know wasn’t stretched to do a bit of research and what you got the Excel sheet on one Tab and pink bike open on the other exactly easy switch right I’ve never heard people do that before there’s an easy there’s a there’s a keyboard shortcut for switching as well so that’s easy enough um so yeah I could sort of do that and then um I negotiated a day at week a week working from home cuz I mean the Kimmy sucked and I was like I could do podcasts on a Friday cuz it was hard scheduling right like trying to make it fit around work hours cuz I was generally at the house 7 till 7 every day at least and then um yeah trying to make it fit and athletes are busy and trying to get people’s schedules and stuff especially then if you get time zones in the mix so I was like oh if I could be at home on a Friday you know if I if I’m spend the odd hour here or there recording a podcast I’m sure no’s going to lose too much sleep over that so negotiated that did that and I was just doing it I was doing an episode every two weeks which is fairly manageable um but just hating work and just hating being stuck there and um yeah it got to later that year and I mean the podcast was far from Big like the numbers were not big I think it took uh I think I’m right in saying it took about 18 months to get to a thou 100,000 downloads and now we can do 100,000 downloads in a month like quite happily so it’s the F the growth was was slow um I’d be intrigued to see what podcast coming into the space now achieve because I think it’s easier to grow quicker um so I didn’t really I have anything concrete and then I’d looked at doing a little bit of other work part-time to kind of Tide me over I tried to get a sabatical from work um because that was an option like they offer 12 month sabatical so I put together this plan that showed how they could live without me for a year which they definitely could well they have they’re still alive um and Pres presented it to them and said I’d like to have a year off like I’m not totally happy with what I’m doing I’d like to give a bit of space and have a bit of a think like here’s how you guys can manage while I’m not there here’s here’s how it work and it’ll help the department save a bit money and you know that’s what we’re trying to do and they could not get their head around it like they couldn’t believe a that I wasn’t happy and wanted to leave that I had nothing really to go to and that they could live without me they couldn’t get comprehend any of those things so they said no and then I challenged it and kind of took it up a couple of levels and they still said no um so I quit at the end of 2017 yeah 2017 with with a solid plan to go into the podcast or well I had a bit I had a bit of like part-time work on the side to kind of help just TI me over and I’m through I’m pretty good at being Frugal like I can live like a student pretty easily if I need to um so I was confident that I could like throttle back we had a pretty small mortgage that we could afford to pay had some money in the bank that had saved up like I was like I can get through a year Here Without Really earning much and we’ll be all right and then that parttime work fell fell over like pretty early um I think before I even actually finished at cumings and I was like well what have I got like I’ve got a podcast I haven’t got anything else what’s the point in trying to build something else like I thought about doing some consultancy or whatever I was like I’ve got a podcast let’s just go all in like let’s just do this and see where we get to and um if by the end of the year we haven’t got anywhere then I need to find a real job and it got pretty close I think it was like October or something was like the first piece of paid work that came in um the first brand that got on board with 661 shout out 661 for believing early doors um and then yeah just it’s kind of snowall from there I guess in many ways like from the brand support side of things and this you know like we are one got on pretty early and they’ve been with us consistently um loads of brands that I’ve worked with and have been awesome has been that’s been cool and then also like I think people in the sport knowing what a podcast is has really helped and also knowing what downtime is and so it’s made like access on the whole a lot easier and it’s been progressively easier to get athletes it still baffles me when people ask to come on the show like that’s yeah it feels I I have I’ve saying to someone last night I still get massive um impostor syndrome doing what I do but I think that’s I that’s kind of healthy anyway so if you take it the right way but yeah it’s cool I love it it’s an interesting story you know there’s so many people that work in this industry and get sick of the the pays not as good um it works a lot harder but it’s the passion that keeps us going and I think a lot of people that do work in in mountain biking sometimes get burned out and want to go the other direction to where you came from yeah and to see a guy like you who’s gone the other way got sick of the the regular uh work week cprad more time to ride your bike yeah and figured out a way to build a life around the passion for mountain biking yeah it’s like and it’s not just the mountain biking element I mean it is it’s it has been amazing to be able to go riding when the sun’s out in general last year or so hasn’t quite been so so similar like it’s been pretty hectic to the point where I’m starting to try and work out how I can improve that and get myself a little bit of headro back um because it has got hectic in a good way um but it’s family stuff as well like I don’t we neither of us were like stoked on the idea of having a kid we couldn’t quite see how it would fit cuz we were both super busy and I was out the house 7 till 7 every day and like I’m not now I’m at home and we have a little girl and that’s mint like I’ve spent so much time with her i’ I up until pretty recently only work four days a week I always had a day a week with her and and this was advice again it came from syac he was super busy in his day job and growing cic when his his girls were small and he was like spend as much time with your kids as you can like I regret not spending some of the time that maybe I should have done and you can’t make that up so it’s cool like it’s enabled me not only to ride a bite more which is obviously very cool um but yeah to have to make a family work and all that sort of stuff around it too which I just don’t I I wasn’t I wasn’t healthy I don’t think before like I wasn’t happy I wasn’t healthy I wasn’t you know depressed or anything I don’t think I don’t think like I’d take it that far but yeah Life’s a lot better when you find that balance that kind of works for you I think yeah so transitioning into starting to get some paid work podcasting yeah I’m sure it was still like you got almost to the end of your first year buffer that you had saved and then it was probably tied after that right I I was I mean I started looking at what jobs were around in the engineering world for sure like it was yeah it was a bit Twitchy so how is that steadily grown into something that you can make a living doing I guess just perseverance really like you keep turning up if you really want to do something you keep doing it you keep doing it as well as you can and you keep turning up there’s going to be an episode every week all right let’s do it it’s not like every week and we might miss one here and there it’s every week pretty much I think I had week off when my daughter was born maybe one off over Christmas once but you you show up like you do what you say you’re going to do which I guess I learned you know back at Ford working for uh strong whe bosses that if you do what you say you’re going to do then everyone’s happy um so I think that’s super important um and Brands see that I think they know that you’re not a flash in the pan they know that you take what you do seriously and that you do you’ve got a good work ethic and that maybe that like resonates with their brand or their values or whatever and that that means they’re willing to kind of support what you’re doing and I think like networking is massively important and I’m not um I don’t really know where I sit on this whole introvert extrovert thing I think I flicker I think I move along that Spectrum I enjoy chatting to people clearly like it’s my I’ve made it my job but I don’t always find it easy I’m not necessarily comfortable in every social situation I’m not like that social butterfly that strolls into a bar and just chats to anyone one I’ve got better at it over the years but I think just again being at events being at races going to EUR bike meeting people spending time with people building relationships with people like I think all that has helped again it’s like a trust they know who you are they know you do what you say you’re going to do they’re more likely to to trust you to kind of represent their brand or it’s the same for you with sponsors I guess like you they need to know they can trust you and that you’re going to deliver on what you say you’re going to do and also I think just like part of it’s been education I was one of the earlier Martin bike podcasts Martin biking as an industry is maybe not like the most Progressive from a marketing perspective like I think there certainly are some companies that are but like on the whole it’s maybe a little bit behind other Industries so actually just explaining like what a podcast is and what it can do for you i’ I’ve seen that as my role and I hope that’s helped other podcast that come into the space because it’s more familiar as a way of spending marketing dollars now than it was previously um some Brands still don’t get it some Brands love it once they’ve done it and they’ve seen the results then they tend to come back for more because like they speak for themselves I think but yeah so it’s a bit of all of that I think just just graft and and enjoying it as well I think I think people can see that I hopefully can see that I enjoy what I do absolutely I think it comes through through and all of the interviews that you do so I don’t know how much you can talk about this but how does the business side of a podcast work I’m not sure it does um I don’t well depends whether you consider consider it business I guess so I will I have effectively like two slots for for supporting Partners some some podcasts will put in more I think it can get a little bit overloaded if you go too far um so I just I have a like a media pack that I send out to Brands um normally around the sort of August September time when like budgets are getting set for the next year that just explains like what the podcast is what I believe I can do for them how that would fit um what it costs um and I’ve just tried to tried to keep it really simple for Brands basically like every brand especially at the moment is underresourced and overworked a lot of marketing activations are quite labor intensive cuz it’s you know organizing a photo shoot or getting Riders somewhere for something or a video project or whatever I’m like no you like tell me some key points give us a discount code or a website link or you know and send me some products if there is so I go try it and you know form my own opinion on it and I’ll take it from there like if you want to hear what I’m going to say you can but most brands trust me to to just get on with that um so yeah I guess that that’s kind of it really um it still is a struggle I I’ve never filled every slot um I’d like to and I genuinely believe there’s no reason why I shouldn’t but every time I fill like I’m getting somewhere something happens that like feels like it knocks it back whether it’s covid or bike industry crashing or whatever like whenever I feel like I’m getting momentum and traction but again I think this is every business right it just feels like someone’s come and whack me around the head and been like come on don’t get ahead of yourself like it’s still not easy yeah um I still have this hope that one day it’ll be easy but it’s not for now but then the brands that I have worked with you know have been great and this this past year I was back in the last year I was pretty ruined I’d um I think off the back of sort of yeah 18 years of hard work as an engineer straight into seven years of hard work as a podcaster I mean don’t get the violins out it’s not been that bad but a lot of travel uh covid having a child moving house blah blah blah blah blah and I I will put in the hours I was training I was doing big events I did Stone King that near finished me off and then I was just ruined for the second half of last year and was kind of hard just to get through and do the basics like just churning out one episode a week even I wasn’t even I’ll be honest I wasn’t even looking forward to post race shows on occasions and that’s I love Jam you boys like such a fun part of my job and for me to not want to hop on a call and do that is a bad sign so I was in a bit of a mess um and I was like I cannot face sending out hundreds of emails to Brands and getting ignored or getting that no there’s no budget I just couldn’t bring myself to do it so I was like right who are the brands that I’ve worked with repeatedly that I have a good relationship with I’m just going to email them and say Here’s my 2024 offer are you cool and actually it’s I was in a better position like for work for 24 at the end of last year than I’ve ever been and I only sent out like eight80 emails or something and I’d normally send like 110 so so they’re obviously seeing a return on it if they yeah 100% And I think you just like you maybe it’s better to Foster the relationships that are good and strong rather than always trying to like be please everyone in a way right the people who already like it making them like it more is more important than more people seeing it yeah that time so yeah no that’s really cool so the primary income from a podcast comes from advertising yeah which are the sponsors that you hear at the beginning of the episode Y and that’s driven a lot off of the listen the amount of downloads amount of people listen to it yeah yeah there I think there are there are probably a few different ways that people charge for it but it’s generally on a like CPM rate cost per thousand yeah and they at this point as you said it’s getting easier that they’re aware of what the downtime podcast is yes for sure it’s it’s rare for Brands not to have heard of it now and actually again this is something that I never expected but a lot of the listeners are you L the athletes and the industry people I’m always I made it for me I made it for the fans but actually it seems to have really like caught a lot of athletes and Industry folk as well so it’s cool like a lot of people are you know it might be the first time I’ve spoken to them but they’re like oh yeah been listening to the podcast for like four years wow ready Cool pretty senior people at like big companies you’re like well so yeah that massively helps yeah it it’s so much easier than when you try to explain to somebody what it is than they when they already know 100% And yeah even from early days if you if you spoke to someone in a company and they were a podcast listener irrespective of whether they listen to downtime or not if they were a podcast listener you were like okay this is a good start if they don’t listen to podcasts it was so much harder yeah because they’ve not SE seen it heard it they don’t know how it works there’s a lot of they have to put a lot more trust in what you’re offering rather than someone who understands podcasts and knows how it will work so yeah but no it has got it’s got easier but I still don’t feel it’s where it should be but that’s good yeah we keep working yeah for sure it’s a motivation yeah so and and at this point you can make a living doing only podcasting depends what you define a living as um but yeah which is pretty cool like from okay if Shaq has a podcast about basketball he’s got a huge Head Start yeah if you’re starting a podcast as somebody that doesn’t have any inside advantage in the industry yeah and just building it off of hard work to a point where you can make a living running a podcast about your favorite hobby that’s really cool yeah it’s pretty amazing isn’t it like what the the internet and Technology enables us to do like this still runs out of what was the back bedro of our old house it’s the spare room like in the eaves of our current house like it’s pretty basic there really not a lot of investment in this like other than time really um but yeah the internet and everything just enables you to do that and you put in the graft you can make it happen which I think is so cool like the way that the stuff that kids can do now that I I hope the education system like changes enough to help them believe they can go out and just create things and make stuff happen because it’s not like it used to be you don’t have to go and work for someone and do a N9 to-5 if you’ve got something you’re passionate about and the I guess the energy and the drive to go and like make it happen which is yeah it’s cool I don’t think that’s something that even in my parents generation I just don’t think that it was a lot hard to grow something yeah you can apply yourself now and figure out the way to make it happen and it really is at your fingertips you can promote yourself through social media platforms you can the platforms are there to put the the content on to yeah yeah yeah and it’s up to you to figure out how how you want your your podcasts to look and totally and create it yeah and my I mean my marketing budget over the last seven years has been basically zero like I haven’t spent or even had the money really to spend on marketing so it’s this is purely organic growth off the back of yeah social media Riders sharing stuff people talking about things people sharing it with their mates like how cool is that it’s amazing that very people have liked it enough to help me get to this point where I can come to a race and do the things it’s cool yeah absolutely so so the growth comes a lot from um obviously reaching the right people reaching new people um mountain bikers in the sport um I imagine having the right guests on yeah and um getting those guests to then share share the podcast that they were on yeah and then people listen to that maybe they’ll listen to another one I imagine that’s probably been like the biggest way to grow yeah that’s a big part of it for sure and then I guess just like making it easy for people to come back so making sure they know where you are and they know you know like okay it’s Tuesday it’s this time in my time zone that they come out I know there’s going to be something there so when I hop in the car Tuesday morning I’m going to put that on and like having a website where people can go and like click the follow button or whatever and all of that just I would say making yourself sticky like making it almost harder for people not to come back than to come back um sorry making it harder for people to come not to come back than to come back yeah yeah mod my own words up um so yeah I guess there are some more subtle things like in the way it’s set up um even down to like boring things like search engine optimization and stuff like I don’t fully understand well no I don’t even partially understand that world but I’ve put in the effort to understand just a few of the basics to like give myself the best possible chance cuz with the best will in the world everyone sharing and stuff is great but like anything you can do so that when someone types into Google Mountain bik podcast you come out out on near the top and all of that sort of stuff is like a massive leg up for people discovering the show so that’s awesome so what have been some of your favorite episodes and and guests that you’ve had that’s a great question um I mean a massive highlight for me was Josh bryland I mean who wouldn’t want to sit and have a chat with Josh for starters like he’s a lovely kid um or not a kid anymore he’s uh now a father I believe but yeah that was pretty special I never thought I’d be able to make that one happen um I went to I think it was a premiere of gamble side gots tickets um in Sheffield and I saw rat was there and I was like right I need to make sure I like accidentally bump into this guy on purpose and see if he’s Keen so I sort of I managed to make sure that I bumped into him and explained what I was doing and you know said like it’s totally up to you like if you’re up for it that’s cool this is the podcast check it out um and then yeah rat like never thought I’d hear anything and he got in touch was like yeah I like what you’re doing like I’m Keen to come on so we recorded on his Canal but he was living on the boat at that point in the marina and it was just mind-blowing cuz I was so nervous like especially at that point he was at the very peak of his career just stepped away and um but yeah just such a disarming guy so friendly so easy to get on with just sat on the floor and his boat having a cup of tea in a chat was like that was incredible I really enjoyed that and hope I’m hoping we can uh make a part two happen at some point um because I’d like to catch up with him I think A lot’s changed for him it’d be cool to see what he’s up to um what else like I said I genuinely really enjoy all the World Cup stuff the pre and post race shows like I’ve learned heaps from you OT now OE and Chris all over the years and like it’s nice having that repetition of guests because we get to know each other better it flows better it’s easier I love it when we can do it in person as well because that makes a massive difference not always possible um and yeah then some of the like the guests that have become regular I suppose Katy Winton Eddie Masters people that I’ve sort of ended up sitting down with maybe once a year or so thereabouts on average cuz it’s just you I’d never I don’t claim to be like friends with riders but you start to get to know these people and it becomes more of to mates chatting rather than feeling so much like I’ve got to be prepared and it be an interview so I’ve really enjoyed picking out guests that I like chatting to and that are popular as well and like coming back to on a on a regular basis and it I I guess I have a format certainly the first time I interview someone there’s a I guess a sort of a chronological history sort of thing that we do which has become my thing and it’s probably almost a comfort thing for me in a way because I know how to do that and it’s nice not doing that the second or third time because yeah it gives me more freedom it challenges me more to be be more open and and follow a conversation more than a timeline so I really I’ve been enjoying that um and hopefully yeah got a little project going on in the background um which will be out by the time this goes out I think um that’ll be even more like into like a specific thing so even more detailed more expansive on like a particular period in time rather than like the whole history of ride sort of thing so yeah I like I like the challenge of all those different styles as well but I I mean I like I like all of it I can’t think and that’s the great thing about mountain biking I don’t think there’s anyone that I’ve interviewed maybe one that I wouldn’t want to sit in the pub with and carry on the chat you know like it’s even if it’s been a tough interview for whatever reason the guest super nervous or often with younger Riders they maybe not as confident or outgoing or whatever it’s it’s never bad like it’s fun yeah I love it do do you get some that are like it’s a dep deposition and being interrogated there’s a little bit of that yeah there’s been there’s been a few I the first time I interviewed hopefully won mind me saying the first time I interviewed Greg Williamson I think he was super nervous I didn’t realize I was still doing it literally like a phone call back then so you couldn’t see each other which is I think is can be quite hard and um I just wasn’t expecting him to be as short in his answers as he was and I wasn’t really I wasn’t doing a good job of facilitating the chat for sure and that was like it was quite not hard but it was like I me go back and find it was quite a short interview and then I bumped into Greg at the Scottish mountain bike Awards a year or so later we were chatting and he was like oh man I was so nervous like and uh so we had a good chat we got to know each other a bit there and then I I went and interviewed him his well I don’t know if he still lives there but the fly he was living in at the time like maybe 6 months after that and it’s like one of my favorite interviews because we were in person you know sat with a cup of tea and we sort of know we knew each other a bit because we’d met at this mountain bike thing and so it can be like it doesn’t it’s not a particular guest or whatever it’s the circumstance I think like he was nervous we weren’t face to face we couldn’t see each other he didn’t know what to expect he didn’t know me and then yeah flip that around put us all in the same room get to know each other a bit and Away you go so there’s definitely something to be said for that i’ like I’d love to do them all in person um and I’d love to continue to like build rapport with riders so that it straight into like an open conversation rather than that discomfort and kind of nervousness that can be there initially sometimes that fades in 30 seconds sometimes it takes half an hour like you can feel it you can feel it in a guest when they like finally start to relax into a chat so yeah I I I can relate like in some of the first podcasts that I had I had been interviewed in you you are nervous because you don’t want to sound stupid you don’t want to say something wrong um you want to represent yourself well and I think sometimes when you overthink it it makes it so much harder to to be interviewed yeah when you when you kind of think of all the answers in your head before you’re asked yeah rather than just a free flowing convers if you’re just like we’re just two friends having a chat 100% it’s so much easier we we know the subject better we’re talking about yeah we didn’t plan it and try to remember what to say no exactly there and there’s no trick questions you know we’re chatting about bikes we all have bikes like I do what I can to put guests at ease and I’ve actually had quite a lot of feedback from guests saying how comfortable they felt which is really nice because it’s not easy um but it’s not always possible and sometimes it is remote and sometimes the internet connection can be bad and that makes life hard and yeah well I remember the first time I interviewed T was terrible like the internet connection was abysmal and she kept cutting out and missing each other and it was so hard and you know I’m a big fan of T and I was so stoked to like get that interview it pretty early on and I don’t think she’d been on a podcast but it was yeah it was so disappointing that the technology didn’t play ball and then I’ve interviewed tiny a couple of times subsequently in person and it’s been brilliant like really good fun and yeah just such an easy person to chat to so yeah I’d love to be able to take the technology out of it and just talk to people face to face all the time it makes the video side of things better which seems to be like a big part of where podcast is heading these days um but yeah it’s not always easy people are geographically spread out as we’ve talked about in the past like for Moto you could put a studio in California and everyone’s there but for mountain biking it’s not it’s not quite that straightforward so somehow try and follow it around the world whether that’s remotely or by packing a bag and turning up at events like this yeah very cool so how do you see the future of a downtime podcast or any Evolution something coming in the in the years to come that’s again a good question mate um I think I don’t think I forward plan enough often because I’m so hectic in the moment that I don’t give myself the space to look at that sometimes I try and step back and look at like where it’s come from it’s very easy to just get down on it and be like oh it’s not good enough and then you step back and you’re like actually yeah we have done it right here like we’ve built something pretty cool um so for the future like I’m trying to put a bit more effort into the video side of things um which like I said like it’s a big part of where podcast seems to be going I think the latest stat was like 27% of people it’s the preferred way to consume a podcast which I don’t fully get like I like to listen to them when I’m driving or doing something else not sitting and watching necessarily but people are loving it so that’s cool um so try to make the video side of it as good as I can both remote and in person which fair play to all the media squids out there that do video it’s uh it’s not easy and it’s a steep learning curve I think I’m getting better but if anyone ever wants to offer advice I’m always open um so yeah kind of looking to improve that I’ve recently bought on um someone to help out a little bit behind the scenes um awesome guy called Archie does some work with Miss spent Summers I met him in L last year took him on track walk when the Juniors were up on the hill introduced him to everyone and got to know and burn he’s super sound and yeah just Keen to get work in the mountain bite space um so he’s come on board really recently to help out um so hopefully people will start seeing a bit more of the video stuff on social and few more bit more YouTube content and it should all start looking a bit a little bit better and a little bit more streamlined um so yeah big shout out to Archie he’s going to help level that up a bit um yeah I’m interested to see where it goes like YouTube is a weird place for podcasts it’s the algorithm rewards clickbait and sensationalism and fails and all this kind of stuff and I don’t really feel like that’s what podcasts are about and you’ve seen I feel like I’ve seen some of the mainstream you know the really big podcasts head that way and it’s almost like they’re just trying to create controversial content yeah and you almost start you know you led to you question whether you really believe some of these so-called experts or whether it’s just there to like polarize and create clicks um I don’t really want to go that way I’ve played about if you look at the YouTube channel at the minute you’ll see that I’ve been playing about with thumbnails and titles and more clickbaity and less clickbaity and it just all makes me feel a little bit sick but I hate doing all the effort and then getting none of the views because you’re not playing the game so I don’t know I’d be I’m intrigued to see if there’s a platform that isn’t YouTube that video podcast finds a home on that’s um there a better more healthy place for podcasts and allows creators to make genuine conversations rather than go after like algorithm pleasing content cuz that don’t really like that too much um you I’ll have sold out in six months and you’ll see totally change but um yeah so more focus on the video side um yeah there’s this little project going on in the background um with Fox uh suspension um to to spend some time with Jordi and some of their athletes to get into the details of maybe a specific event or whatever so that’s that could be well that will be quite interesting I think and hopefully it’ll give people a bit of an insight into how they could tweak their setups as as well and like improve things so that you know aligns the why I started this which was to make good information available to people to help them um so there’s that going on I love doing the pre and post race so I want to carry on doing that um I don’t know I’d like to get to the point where I can focus a bit more on the content and a bit less on everything else but that relies on income to pay people to do all the other stuff so it’s a big punt really getting arching CU I can’t really afford him at this point but I figure that I need to try and find the money and eventually the work he does will enable me to afford to pay him um and yeah it would not be nice to get someone else to kind of help out so that I could yeah get guests research prep record and then maybe hand over some of the the business side and the editing and the all of that because it’s becomes quite arduous to be fair not in a bad way but like there’s a lot there’s a lot to be done yeah and I guess with a podcast it’s not as creative it’s just needs to be done correctly yeah it’s not like you’re yeah doing massive amounts of like funky editing and you don’t need to be a Premier Pro wizard I mean I’m clearly not and I can hack together a video that looks I think just about passable um so yeah it’s like in a in a way it’s not super glossy and exciting like that um so yeah at some point I’d like to get some people to help out and it’s cool it’s been really nice having Archie part of it cuz he’s excited about it he’s a fan of the podcast anyway he’s a fan of the sport um and it’s just nice to have someone else involved because it’s been just me for seven years and whenever I yeah I I did some work down at YT last weekend there was another video crew in doing a bike check on Valley’s bike and it was just really nice like they helped me out with some lighting stuff and but it was just nice being around other people my job often is me in a tiny room like replying to emails or creating video edits or trying to make audio sound passorn all this sort of stuff so yeah I like the idea of having a few more people involved in it and yeah not taking over the mountain by world but just carrying on creating stuff that hopefully people want to listen to that again hopefully stands out and has some sort of unique offering alongside you know there are a lot of MB podcasts now and I think that’s super cool cuz everyone’s come out it slightly differently and if you don’t like me then that’s cool cuz there’s probably someone else doing it that you will like and that you you kind of get on with their style so yeah I think it’s uh it’s cool but I do always still want to try and offer something that isn’t somewhere else you know I don’t I never set out for this to be like a me too project so it’s harder now I think to stand out in that podcast m b podcast space but we’ll keep trying yeah yeah for sure well well I think I speak for all the fans and listeners when I say thank you man it’s been so cool to have this podcast to listen to I listen to almost every episode you put out thanks mate while I’m in the gym and uh it it’s so cool like the interviews are very well done and um the guests are are really interesting so um from everybody that’s listening to this thing thank you very much for doing it it’s been a pleasure well and that thanks you know goes the other way not especially to you cuz you I think people realize quite how much you’ve put into this podcast over the years like you’ve been super supportive literally from episode 2 to we’re episode 400 and something now if we still numbered them um but yeah doing all the post Ray helping me come out to the US and you know get involved over there I think you’ve been a big part of growing the podcast in the US like our us audience is massive um which is yeah definitely something that you’re responsible for so thank you man and and also thank you to everyone all the athletes and all the industry folk cuzz I genuinely was at a point especially in 2017 where I was like I don’t know if this is going to fly and it’s purely down to the fact that everyone’s been willing to get involved to come along to share their stories and to be a part of it and then Brands to get on board and support financially that enabled it to keep going because I definitely have a lot of passion for it but I would have struggled to continue doing it especially at the volume now alongside a regular day job so yeah it’s a big thanks to basically everyone that’s touched it at some point over seven years which is a lot of people now yeah man it’s awesome well thanks for coming on the downhill downtown podcast it’s been a great experience mate you’re good at this oh I don’t know about that I uh yeah I I I did not set up any of these cameras I did not make sure these microphones were working I sat down and uh tried to ask you some interesting questions I enjoyed it mate it was a lot of fun cool well you you don’t want to sound like you’re asking for people to follow along but when people are listening like it means a lot for for athletes like myself for guys like you you don’t want to say like And subscribe but that’s how we are able to justify this to the people who pay us so complely if people love this show like go out and follow it um leave a comment um like the the content that’s coming out and then we can take that to adver advertisers and yeah we can do more cool stuff completely it genuinely makes a massive difference like none of us want to pay all this stuff like I didn’t set out to make content and then hide it and try and charge people for it I’d love it to be fully supported by Brands and at the minute that just about Works it’d be nice like I said if it worked a bit better but like yeah it’s cool and it it is those likes and it is the subscribers and it is Shar sharing it with your mates or saying have you heard this episode like check it out and sending them a link it’s not big like you know I’ve got a patreon and and people do contribute which is amazing because I’ve not been in a position to really reward that and I massive love to everyone that has supported because it’s that’s really helpful especially at times when it’s been tighter on the advertising side um but yeah like it’s simple thing like sharing it with your mates does does genuinely make a difference so yeah keep doing that for for us but yeah for anyone that you enjoy their content from and and want it to remain free and creative and yeah all of that stuff cool all right man well let’s get into the week at Fort William thank you let’s do it thanks mate Cheers Cheers
12 Comments
Thanks for the shout out. Can’t work out if I suggested you move to a crap job or I was the catalyst for your change of career!! Either way, great interview guys!
As a fan, I've been waiting for this one for quite a while, great job Chris and Neko ! So inspiring to hear how you got Downtime started Chris. It's definitely provided me with motivation to keep my own Mountain Bike venture going. It's never easy, but the passion for Mountain Biking keeps driving us to push on..
been listening since it started!! love the youtube episodes now as well, and all the different types of interviewees…
Great episode! Been waiting for this one, thanks so much for all your hard work, you have created something which feels like has brought the mtb community closer together, I have been listening since almost the start and never miss one, its always one of the highlights of my week. Keep up the great work Chris! Come visit Queenstown sometime 🙂 always got a place to stay or a bike to borrow.
Remember the first one going out – great to see the progress for the hard work, hope it keeps going 👏
Two of the hardest working and hairiest men in mountain biking!
Great episode, nice idea and who better to host it. Great to hear the comments around the future of video podcasting it must be a tough one to consider. One issue though, where are the 4 questions !?
Great episode. Thanks for sharing!
Even if there was no coffee chat, this has been one of my favorite episodes so far. Blown away by your background..kudos for where you are now. Hard work and passion has paid off! Best podcast 💯
Thanks guys that made a long commute very short
Loved this. Chris is so humble even though he is killing the MTB podcast game. Cheers guys.
Honestly best episode i've heard, your life story has been super interesting and Neko has been a great interviewer! cheers guys