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00:00:01
Ben Clark
53 Plays3 years ago
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Transcript
Introduction and Ben's Background
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome Ben, thanks for coming on to have a chat with me. Thanks a lot for having me on. We finally got here for our listeners. We arranged some and missed some and yeah, here we are. Brilliant. We've moved mountains and oceans today haven't we? We have. I think before I press record, I could hear seagulls. Could I hear seagulls in your background? You can hear seagulls. I live in Exeter and there are, is it too loud?
00:00:28
Speaker
no no it's good it's good i love the atmosphere well it's very ambient it's very i mean it's not too far away from the sea anyway so it's uh sea vibes and sequels and i just play through everywhere what could you do lovely exeter how long you been there
00:00:46
Speaker
I've been here for about three years now. It's a really nice place. I came down for a university originally and then sort of stayed working for Corros. And yeah, it's a really nice place. Obviously we've got the Dartmoor Ashrow Park just down the road. We've got beaches everywhere. So it's actually pretty good to be fair. It's like living in Cornwall, but without living in Cornwall. So yeah, it's a really nice place.
00:01:15
Speaker
One of our team, Matt, lives in Exeter, and there is actually a UK-run chat, Exeter Running Club, which goes from the keys, I think, if I remember rightly. Is that a local place? It is, yeah. There's the key. I didn't know there was a local group there. I'll check that out. Awesome. Yeah, on a cheap evening, I think Matt does his sessions down there. Awesome. I'll have a look out for him.
00:01:45
Speaker
Cool.
Career Journey: From Garmin to Coros
00:01:47
Speaker
So obviously, for listeners to know, we've spoken previously, but give us an introduction to you, Ben. Obviously, I've said in your introduction there that you work at Call Us, but just give us a bit of an intro to yourself, please, mate.
00:02:04
Speaker
Sure. So, well, I guess my first sort of interest in sport sort of started when I was working at a bicycle shop a number of moons ago, about six years ago, really got into cycling, mountain biking,
00:02:20
Speaker
and then sort of took an interest in wearables information and sort of the whole sort of metrics you get from obviously using GPS devices and you know on bike accessories and speed sensors and cadence and heart rate and all that sort of stuff and how you can sort of improve yourself that that was all very interesting to me.
00:02:38
Speaker
So I actually got an internship with Garmin when it worked with them for a little bit, worked on their product to pay work, so Garmin Pay and how people can pay with their watches and stuff. This was after starting and not yet finishing a business degree at University of Exeter. I need to do that at some point, but this takes precedence at the moment, I think.
00:03:05
Speaker
And just sort of took an interest in wearables. It's obviously a growing industry, a growing market. So it's not just wearables either, it's hearables. It's like, you know, things like Super Sapien and this Gatorade, you know, the way they're tracking sodium and tracking glucose and all this sort of stuff. So it's very interesting. It's very wide and vast.
00:03:26
Speaker
and sort of got in with Coros from an early stage, became the head of marketing for UK and then sort of quickly sort of progressed through the ranks to become head of marketing for Northern Europe, Northern Europe market manager and then sort of recently, four months ago, three months ago, I became the global partnerships manager
Coros: Company Vision and Market Positioning
00:03:49
Speaker
So I work on the basis of sort of performance marketing with athletes and ambassadors and PR and media to the point of now where, you know, it's not solely down to me, but we're in a really strong position where we're really being taken seriously by competitors. Customers are obviously coming to us as a clear alternative choice to what else is on the market. So in terms of the companies,
00:04:19
Speaker
life cycle in terms of it growing. It's still at a very early stage in terms of being an innovator, but it's a really exciting time because we've got so much in the works that is just making people make the switch from, which I'm sure people are with me on this.
00:04:39
Speaker
you know, Garmin dominate cycling industry. And they also, to an extent, dominate, you know, the running industry when if you take into it, take out Fitbit and watching that sort of stuff. And then we're coming in and we're sort of disrupting it with a new product, which is simple and easy to use. And, you know, just a sort of more durable sort of watch. And it's a very exciting time to be a part of. It's a great culture as well. And everyone loves it. And people like the underdog, don't they? So that's,
00:05:09
Speaker
that helps as well. How long has Coros been going now? So I think it was about 2014 which was the sort of launch. That started off from a Kickstarter campaign so it was publicly crowdfunded back in 2014 and Coros actually started doing bicycle helmets to begin with.
00:05:31
Speaker
And these were smart bicycle helmets, so they would allow you to still ride But you'd be able to listen to music and also listen to cars around you as well, but there was also safety helmets, so they would notify you next to kin if you fell off with crash sensors, they would have LEDs in them, but it was all about being safe on the bike and using smart helmet technology. And then we sort of left that industry on the
00:06:00
Speaker
on the basis of releasing the pace watch, which was the first GPS watch by Coros. Um, and this was, this was really sort of dedicated towards, um, uh, sort of track and competitive road runners. And it was so popular, um, and the features within it that it sort of just made a clear sense to go and, you know, follow the GPS category as opposed to cycling helmets.
00:06:25
Speaker
So you probably still will find coral cycling helmets for sale in the market, but we're sort of solely focused on wearables at the moment and obviously taking the industry by storm, which is great.
Technology and Innovations at Coros
00:06:39
Speaker
Yeah, I agree. The comments that we see on social media are always very, very positive about Coros, particularly the battery life. But we'll come back to that. I'm sure I saw a comment a week or two ago saying that somebody had gone to 16 or 17 days and then ran every day and then they were shouting about it. But we'll come back to that. You mentioned that you
00:07:06
Speaker
So you worked for Garmin in product pay. So you, I gave you a good grounding then, did it, before coming on to Coros? That gave me a great grounding. Yeah. So my role, well, I started as an intern with them and then sort of, Garmin had never done an internship before. So it was the first time the UK company had ever done one. And it was clear that they weren't really set up to provide the sort of training in an internship. So I just said to them, listen, I want to be valuable while I'm here. Give me a full-time job.
00:07:34
Speaker
Um, and so I came product product manager, uh, of Garmin pay. Um, and my role was basically, um, all around, um, onboarding and setting up banks to be compatible with Garmin pay. So you could take your watch and go into a shop and pay for it. Um, which, you know, is a very, very long and drawn out process. Um, as you can probably imagine, there's a lot, there's legal framework, there's,
00:08:02
Speaker
Regulation, AML, KYC, there's loads of these regulations, obscure regulations. I don't know what I've heard of before, but all very important stuff to stop money laundering and stop theft of money and it's all tokenized. So it's like, can't be stolen and copied. But it was interesting. And I think also it sort of highlighted, you know, that sort of payment technology is quite an interesting
00:08:28
Speaker
aspect as well to the wearables industry because you've not just got, you've not just got to pay on your wallet, but you've also can have the ability to put little payment chips into literally everything. You could put it into a water bottle, you could put it into your key ring and you could pay, you know, with your water bottle or you could, you know, you could have this little chip, you could put it, you could put it probably in your bicycle helmet. And then when you go to pay, you just put your head next to it and it works.
00:08:55
Speaker
All that sort of stuff is quite interesting. But more than that, it's like you could put a little chip in your little finger and just pay with your finger. And I think that is insane. Is that the future? I think that's the future. I think that's the future for a lot of things. But yes, coming back to the point. So it gave me a really good grounding working at Garmin and obviously Garmin dominating a lot of their categories to have that sort of insider knowledge and that sort
00:09:23
Speaker
understanding of culture was obviously really valuable to a lot of Garmin brands and competitors. That role in Garmin, that was quite weighty then as an internship. I mean, AML and KYC for listeners, you don't know what those are. They're anti-money laundering and know your customers. There were some quite hefty, heavy processes you'd have had to have implemented for a financial thing like that.
00:09:51
Speaker
That's right. So I worked, I had a team, well, they're not my team, but I worked in parallel with the MasterCard teams. So MasterCard have got their own sort of payment technology teams as a guy called John, who's a fantastic guy. And he
00:10:09
Speaker
He basically does what I do, but the MasterCard, so we sync up and we make sure the banks are all set up through the system and it all works seamlessly. But there's a lot of tokenization. I'm not going to get on to how tokenization works because it's an absolute minefield. But yeah, you're absolutely right. It was a lot to take in.
00:10:33
Speaker
I think quite interesting as well and probably might even return to that industry in the future if it comes to fingers. Yeah, it's very interesting to think. On last week's episode of the podcast, I spoke to Ed and Nina from Bird.run and they're building an EQ AI coaching app and I was trying to discuss with them
00:11:00
Speaker
you know, what the future lies with technology and you've alluded to it already, you know, finger payments, et cetera. It's crazy how fast, the faster technology
Exploring Financial Technologies and Behavioral Economics
00:11:09
Speaker
advances, that technology enables you to advance even faster. So thinking where we'll be in the next five years is just mind-blowing really, isn't it? Absolutely. And my sort of chosen sort of major at university was behavioral economics. And it's looking at the way in which people make
00:11:28
Speaker
decisions and obviously how people are almost predictably irrational you can you can guess what they can do before they do it and one of the one of the many things within that and it comes back to payment technology and it's very interesting is the idea of financial abstraction and it's the whole idea of having a wallet on your wrist
00:11:44
Speaker
You're paying electronically, not via cash, so you don't feel the transaction. You don't feel the actual money leaving your account, so you spend more. It's one of the reasons why restaurants don't put prices on their menus or they take away the pound sign from the menus just to sort of take that sort of transaction or idea away from it.
00:12:05
Speaker
And I find that incredibly interesting. And, you know, it comes back to this thing in the future, if MasterCard can get out some way of putting chips into people's fingers, obviously, there's gonna be a load of regulation, human, EU directorates, you know, that stop this sort of thing. But if you could, people are just gonna spend to the point where they just, they bankrupt themselves probably. It's, you know, it's, it's, it's insanely interesting, isn't it?
00:12:31
Speaker
But I guess that's why we have payment restrictions, you know, up to 40 pounds in shops and stuff, so that people, well, A, don't have their card stolen, but B, you know, are in a rational mindset when they make a purchase. Yeah, yeah. So, tell us more about Coros then. What's your, a bit more about your role? That'd be good. Sure, so as I said, so I'm global partnerships manager, so I work,
00:13:00
Speaker
globally, but with English speaking countries, which are obviously North America and most of Northern Europe, so Benelux, but also Australia and New Zealand, a little bit Malaysia and some other countries around the world. And my sort of role is sort of split between what we classify as guest content, which is sort of micro influences. These are people who aren't at the stage you are, you know,
00:13:27
Speaker
Instagram influencers, they're more sort of loyal, they're brand ambassadors, they're people maybe who have got up to 30, 50,000 followers on Instagram, just as a sort of ballpark figure to give you an idea. And we work with these people to obviously create content and obviously stories around our products. And then
00:13:47
Speaker
Aside from that, I also work with PR and media. So I've got one of the biggest media lists you ever seen in your life of people who are going to review our products, put news features out, and obviously having these relationships with PR and media, but also with the guest content people. So in terms of relationships, I'm effectively the relationships manager.
00:14:17
Speaker
It's a really nice job because it means I get to talk to and work with a lot of people. Obviously it's slightly difficult at the moment with COVID because ideally it would have been great to go to the National Running Show and meet all these people finally because I'd started with KOROS just before COVID hit. So it would have been lovely to meet all these people, but we can still do it in the future, hopefully.
Remote Work and Digital Nomad Lifestyle
00:14:41
Speaker
But yeah, it's a really cool job. And obviously it's one of those jobs where
00:14:46
Speaker
It's performance-based, so you can see if your efforts one month or one week or one quarter are making a difference to the overall product activations. We say how many watches are activated in a particular week, and we use that as a quantifiable way of whether we're doing well. And you can see from the amount of work that's going into PR or guest content that a week later or a month later,
00:15:12
Speaker
there is a significant development in the number of product activations. And that's obviously good in terms of morale and motivation going forward. So it's a really good position to be in. Love it. It's going well. Good, good. Well, I'd imagine you'll, well, you don't have to travel nowadays, but if you've got that kind of remit, you could be traveling around, meeting all of your people as well post COVID, which hopefully we're getting there, hopefully.
00:15:42
Speaker
Absolutely. And the fantastic thing about this role as well, I should say as well, is that it's all remote based. So as long as I've got Wi-Fi, you know, I can work. So I could be literally anywhere around the world. I could be, you know, across Mongolia in a campervan. As long as I've got Wi-Fi, you can just work anywhere, which is great. And obviously have the freedom to visit people and go to different cities and towns and stuff. So that's really cool as well. It's interesting how Covid
00:16:11
Speaker
You know, the working from home theme is, so I've, I've spoke to a couple of people this last week. So a good, a good friend of mine is he's in, he's in a quite a high level corporate position. Um, and he, he's got autism. So he, he actually said, he made a point to me that he had, he had thrived during COVID because he hadn't been around people as much, even though, you know, he knows how to handle it clearly because in, and knows,
00:16:40
Speaker
knows what works for him and doesn't because he was in such a position. But then I've spoken to other people who can't wait to get back in the office. They've had enough of being at home. Just on your point there, I can really see these digital nomads type career
00:17:03
Speaker
really, really, you know, having taking off and continuing to happen post COVID because people like the flexibility, don't they?
00:17:13
Speaker
Absolutely. And I think, you know, we're starting to see with corporations, I think it was just the other week, I can't remember whether it was Deloitte or PwC, but they said that they were going to allow all of their UK workers to work from home going forward, which is obviously fantastic in terms of the big corporates doing this and probably other companies going to follow. But absolutely digital nomad culture. It's fantastic. I've been doing it for years, but it's really, it really is a future because as long as
00:17:42
Speaker
your employer has trust in you to do your job effectively then I think there's no real issue. One of the things I have noticed is as a downside to potentially working in an office all day every day is that you don't really sort of get the social life, you know you don't sort of see your colleagues every day, you don't sort of
00:18:03
Speaker
interact with them in their lives and their lifestyle events. So you kind of miss that out in terms of a social life with them. But, you know, you've effectively got less time where you're commuting. I think when I worked at that when I was working with Garmin, I think I had an extra 10 hours a week downtime, you know, taking into account commuting and showering and, you know, even just going for lunch in the canteen, you know, that in itself is, you know, that's not my time. That's their time in reality.
00:18:31
Speaker
So there's all that extra time you get and you can weed all that in wherever it is throughout the week and actually become more productive as well. I agree.
Coros Product Focus and Athlete Engagement
00:18:40
Speaker
So it's the future, isn't it? Conor, tell us more about Corus. What do Corus do? What makes Corus different and why are you in this strong position you're talking about?
00:18:54
Speaker
Sure. Well, basically we've got four main categories. So we've got track running, we've got trail running, we've got ultra running, and we've got mountaineering and adventure. And I'm going to talk about pace first. And so I talked about the pace before. We brought out the pace too in August last year. And this is sort of focused towards
00:19:15
Speaker
track competitive running so it's the lightest GPS watch in the world on the market at launch and I believe also still to date so you know if you're doing laps of a track you know having a light product and light equipment is obviously really helpful but also you know we still managed to pack in
00:19:39
Speaker
a lot of features for the value of $179.99. So when you look at it and where it fits in the market, it's actually one of the best value watches on the market, both in terms of software features, but also in terms of hardware features. So you've got things like the battery life up to 60 days in Ultra Max mode. You can have up to 30 hours in
00:20:03
Speaker
30 hours in GPS mode, which is continuous tracking. So in terms of software and hardware, you've got a really good product here for a really good value. So for people who are just starting off and running, it's a fantastic first watch for people like, you know, Elliot Kipchoge, one of our athletes, greatest of all time, or Emma Coburn in the US and Emily Infield.
00:20:28
Speaker
You know, it's really made for them in reality. And so if it's good enough for them, it's probably good enough for 99% of the people on the market. Were you involved with getting Kipchoge and your ambassadors on board?
00:20:42
Speaker
So we work with, so Kipchoge is obviously a very, very busy guy. So he's got a team which we work with, which is the NN running team. And so we work with them and their athletes, and obviously we do our content through that. But we have direct line with Kipchoge, so we'll send him the products in advance. So new hardware, new software, he'll get it before anyone else.
00:21:06
Speaker
and so with our other athletes like John Kelly in the UK and Walter Runner and they'll give us feedback on the hardware and software and then that'll go straight back into the product as soon as we can and then that'll come out in the release. So we use our athletes actually because they are the exact category of the people that the watches are made for. Having their feedback is absolutely
00:21:30
Speaker
key, because, you know, although it's maybe only one percent, you know, for example, if Kuchogi is only one percent of the actual people who will use the watch, the watch is made for him. And if it's good enough for Kuchogi, then it's good enough for everyone else. So that's kind of the philosophy that we take when it comes to designing these products, which is very
00:21:53
Speaker
an Orthodox, when you look at what other brands are doing, I'm just going to use names today. When you look at Garmin, a lot of their watches are sort of a mixed match of lots of different features. So if we say, you know, take the Phoenix 5, which I'm sure lots of people have got, the Phoenix 6X, it's got a lot of features in there, it's got a lot of lifestyle features, and it's got a lot of
00:22:20
Speaker
adventure features but there's no sort of focus on a particular thing.
00:22:25
Speaker
Um, and so you end up getting a watch, which is very good as an overall all rounder. Um, but it's sort of going after that sort of 90% of the market. Whereas what we do is the philosophy is to go after the 5% of the market, because we want to be able to make up watch, which is the best for those people that are going to use it. Um, but you know, because we're able to segment slightly better than what Garmin do, which is, you know, saying track running, trail running.
00:22:51
Speaker
um you know ultra running and mountaineering it's a lot easier for us to be able to focus on what matters for the person who's doing ultra running which is battery life durability you know touch screen um maps uh you know that sort of thing so that's that's that sort of helps in terms of the end user and what their needs and wants are um but coming coming back to sort of what makes it special is that
00:23:17
Speaker
When we released the Vertex, this was the longest-lasting GPS watch in the world. So not only did we have the lightest GPS watch in the world, we had the longest-lasting as well. And the Vertex will last us 150 hours on a single battery life in Ultra Max mode.
00:23:34
Speaker
So if you're going to go and do marathon decirables, then a six-day, multi-day ultra marathon event, then you can absolutely do that without needing to charge your watch. And it will also last for the entirety of the MDS in that sort of heat as well.
00:23:51
Speaker
and because the heat affects the battery and stuff. But we've just had an ambassador recently, Hoshvard and Yoshi, who's just climbed to the top of Mount Everest and used the Vertex. So it makes it a great adventure watch, but also a great endurance watch. So it really is quite amazing by what the athletes and ambassadors are able to do. Yeah. But we take their feedback every time, you know, they can submit reports and we get the feedback and we're constantly improving features. Yeah. And recently,
00:24:19
Speaker
The great thing about watches is that we can bring out new software all the time. So we've just bought EvoLab, which has got a load of new performance metrics. So people who have bought a watch a year ago now thinking themselves, oh, this is old technology. They get this new software update and boom, they've got a new watch effectively. So it's sort of a long, long lifestyle for all the products. That's good.
00:24:45
Speaker
Just a note on the battery life. Like I said, I remember seeing a tweet a couple of weeks ago and I remember specifically they were saying that they had not to charge it for 16 days. So if you're saying 30 hours, then that's completely plausible and they were really shouting about it. And you've just said they're about 150 hours lasting. Is your ideal customer then
00:25:10
Speaker
Are they the real endurance? So ultra runners, real long distance cyclists, or am I wrong there? Well, it comes down to that segmentation again. So if we're going to look at the Vertex and the Apex Pro, and even the Apex, so the base two is the road and competitor product. The Apex through to the Vertex is sort of like your ultra marathon, and then the Vertex is sort of more sort of mountaineering. If we were to look at the Apex Pro, which is the ultra endurance watch,
00:25:40
Speaker
The ideal customer is someone who's doing multi-day events. I'm just top of my head, Apex Pro is up to 120 hours, not too much GPS. I'm trying to top my head, I think, 40 hours in continuous GPS, which is a multi-day event.
00:25:58
Speaker
so you know someone you know they could be doing that one day or they could be doing that over two weeks so the person who's quoted 16 days it's likely what they've done there is they've had it in smartwatch mode which is sort of having notifications come through and sleep tracking during during the night but they've also gone and then done runs during the day and they've tracked their GPS and the watches do last really long so I think it's on the vertex it lasts up to 45 days in regular use which is
00:26:26
Speaker
will we classify as smartwatch mode which is notifications and sleep tracking stuff and then obviously you've got two GPS categories which is continuous GPS which is sending a signal out every second and so you get a continuous plotting
00:26:42
Speaker
and then Ultramax GPS mode which is, don't quote me on this, but it's I think it's every 120 seconds it sends out a ping for 30 seconds and then it turns it off again for 120 seconds and that just allows you to conserve battery life to get that longer sort of battery rating for a super long event and then the internal sensors when the watch will sort of use the ABC, the Ultimator, the
00:27:11
Speaker
barometer and compass and all these sort of motion sensors to sort of pair that up in terms of internally and then put that onto roots. But yeah, in terms of what we want, in terms of a PACE 2 user, we want someone who's doing track running, someone who's doing competitive road running.
00:27:28
Speaker
someone who's just doing road running or someone who's training for a marathon. I think the great thing about these watches, although we even focus very specifically and exclusively on the segments, is that they can be used by anybody.
Simplifying Wearable Metrics
00:27:40
Speaker
And obviously, as I said before, if it's good enough for Kipchoge, then it's probably good enough for most people as well.
00:27:46
Speaker
So you're obviously someone who's got a lot of knowledge around the wearable space. What is your take on the number of variables that we have? Is there a case to say that there's too much and that sometimes we're drowning in stats and it overcomplicates it? Well, I think, you know, I think
00:28:13
Speaker
yes to an extent but you know the great thing about Strava is it allows people to sort of you know see them to break down up their roots and their runs and stuff and I think giving that sort of control to people allows them to become slightly fitter and become better and better and bettering themselves through exercise which can only be a good thing but in terms of
00:28:35
Speaker
I think we, I'm going to just talk about course because when I look at the other brands, you know,
00:28:44
Speaker
It's not fair to say that. Let me rephrase that. So it's a case of allowing people to have the basics. So we give people pace, distance, and time, which are really the most important things. And then you've got things like steps, and you've got calories, which are the basics. And that's all you really need.
00:29:05
Speaker
people can have the benefit of using slightly more aggressive and more in-depth metrics like training load and training fatigue and training effect and aerobic and anaerobic types of exercises and v02 max and sb02 and all this other stuff which is all great but i think unless you're training for a marathon and you know this isn't taking into account as well glucose glucose ratings and how much
00:29:33
Speaker
you've got in your body and your blood. And, you know, I was just recently looking at Super Sapiens, you know, which is a glucose monitoring, see how much sort of glucose you've got in your body, which puts you in the right state of body. I don't think the word, but it basically allows you to maximize running a marathon. Yeah. And all that sort of stuff is great.
00:30:01
Speaker
the vast majority of people don't need that.
Personal Exercise and Hobbies
00:30:03
Speaker
Unless you're doing constant marathons almost every weekend, then that would be more useful. But people who are doing couch to 5K, they don't need that. They need pace distance to time. And they need to be able to see active calories and ideally also nonactive calories.
00:30:19
Speaker
which your non-active calories are obviously your 2,500 a day, if you're a man, sort of over the age of 18, and your active calories, which is what you're burning during your exercise. So you can work out there's a deficit there and obviously lose weight or lose calories or burn fat or whatever. But I think, yeah, I mean, when I look about what I use, in a lot of cases, I don't actually record my runs because I'm a little bit
00:30:48
Speaker
as I'm sure a lot of people are now and a little bit, a little bit maybe embarrassed by my times. And I think this whole sort of idea and what Strava has done in a lot of cases is make people really sort of aware of how slow they might be if they're comparing to other people constantly, which obviously has that downside when you, it's a social network really. It's like people are trying to compare each other and social comparison theory off each other all the time.
00:31:16
Speaker
Um, which isn't good. Um, so that's why I don't record my runs. And for, and for a long time, actually, I never recorded my cycles either. Uh, cause it was always, you always felt like you were, you were cycling gates of the clock. Whereas it shouldn't feel like that. You should be out enjoying the bike and enjoying the road. Um, or whatever, whatever. Um, so yeah.
00:31:39
Speaker
You mentioned cycling. What do you get up to outside of work? What's your chosen sport?
00:31:50
Speaker
Is it cycling or running? Well, I do a lot of cycling. I do do running, but as I said, I don't really record it. But I do a lot of cycling. Xtra is either flat or very, very hilly. There's no in between. So I do a lot of flat riding down to the beach, but also just on the outskirts of Dunlop or National Park as well, sort of outside towards Etterton Airport.
00:32:18
Speaker
It's quite hilly, which is obviously good for, you know, building strength and stuff. So quite enjoy that side of cycling and obviously social rights, and especially if we can sort of pair that up with a pub and have that be a bar crawl going.
00:32:35
Speaker
But I actually also play dodgeball semi-professionally. So it's not just a childhood school game. It is actually a game that people play. Yeah, I was going to say, is there actual leagues there for dodgeball? I didn't know that. So in the UK, we have the Southwest Dodgeball League, which is all the sort of top universities in the Southwest, Bristol and Bath and that sort of stuff and extra. We get together and we play leagues
00:33:06
Speaker
and tournaments and it's very good. We've got a team in Exeter called the Dartmoor Beasts. So we get together and we throw balls at each other basically. I've just got that image of Ben Steller in my mind with his mustache. Dodge, dog, tip and dive. It's amazing. It's really good exercise as well. Obviously we've had COVID so we've not been able to play very much, but we had our first session last week.
00:33:36
Speaker
And it's quite amazing the amount of muscles that you use, muscles that you just don't use in any other sports to the point that I'm still aching from last week's
Contact Information and Conclusion
00:33:46
Speaker
session. Yeah, I bet. That must be a very dynamic sport and quite explosive. Absolutely. I mean, I wear my heart rate strap as well. I think I've got about a thousand calories in just under an hour, which is a pretty intense workout. I always think I was at zone five for most of it.
00:34:14
Speaker
It's so much fun that you actually almost forget that it's exercise. You actually forget that you're almost to a point of passing out because you're just having so much fun and your heart rate's so high. It's amazing. You should come down, come play. Yeah, that's how it should be, definitely.
00:34:31
Speaker
And what else do you get outside of work? Have you got any non-sporting hobbies? I do a lot of motorcycling. I've got a BMW 12 with a GSA, which is like a big sort of adventure motorcycle. So I do a lot of riding on that. The plan is to find a metal fabricator and sort of try and weld a bicycle rack onto the side of the pannier of the motorcycle so I can take my bicycle with me.
00:35:01
Speaker
and motorcycle around Europe in September and just remote work basically around Europe. So that's what's on the cards at the moment. That's the plan. There we go. Full of stock at the moment, which I just need to get rid of. So that's the plan.
00:35:22
Speaker
Cool. Well, give us all of your social handles so if people want to connect with you, they can, please. That'd be great. Sure. Well, people can contact me on LinkedIn. That's probably what I use mainly. It's just Ben Clark, Global Partnerships Manager at CoreOS Wearables. You can find it through the CoreOS page.
00:35:40
Speaker
Or you could type in Young Professionals Awards 2021, Ben Clark, and that'll equally come up. Or they can contact me on Coross UK, which is Coross, at Coross, you know, I've messed it up, at Coross underscore UK on Instagram. And that'll get through to me. Brilliant. Ben, thanks ever so much for coming on and having a chat. It's been really good to speak. Yes, thank you very much. Cheers, Ben.