¶ Sports and Career Paths Conversation
Hi , before we start this episode , I just wanted to say that this week marks the official opening of the Running Show , a spectacular event taking place at the iconic NEC , birmingham in the UK Now . Raccoon Media organised the event and they also produced a podcast called Outside and Active .
It just so happens that I have the host of the podcast , dominic Brown , on this week's episode . As I do quite often with my interviews , I have split this into three parts . Now let me tell you , chatting with Dominic was a blast . In today's segment , we kick things off by delving into his school days and exploring his early experiences with sports .
It's a journey you won't want to miss . I had such a great time during this interview and I'm crossing my fingers that you are going to enjoy it as much as I did . And hey , the excitement doesn't stop there . Part two and three of this adventure is dropping next week and the following week , so make sure you're locked in and subscribe .
So , without further ado , let's dive into my conversation with Dominic . So you're thinking about running , but not sure how to take the first step . My name is Brian Patterson and I'm here to help . Welcome to Brian's Rompod .
Well , welcome back to another episode of Brian's Rompod and I'm your host , brian Patterson , and today we've got a fantastic guest on the show . Well , today I've taken a different track and I'm interviewing a fellow podcaster . Please give a warm welcome to Dominic Brown , a host of Outside and Active podcast and digital communications manager . Outside and active .
Now . Dom wears many hats , managing content and marketing for the site and even documenting his outdoor escapades and musings . I've checked out his website and let me tell you it's a treasure trove of outdoor goodness .
He says , and I quote I've been playing all varieties of sports since the age of five , but in the past years I've somehow become a runner and this has opened my eyes to a whole new world of adventure . I still love playing team sports and heading to the gym .
Now he has interviewed some amazing people , olympians such as Colin Jackson , sir Chris Hoy , paula Radcliffe and our very own Katelyn Limmer , who has been I've interviewed on Brian's Rompod . He also shares something in common with my daughter , who went to the same university , royal Holloway .
So a shout out to Royal Holloway and a shout out for my daughter , who always tells me off and not mentioning her name , anna . Anyway , as I said , welcome to the podcast , dominic .
He's nice to be president and listening to an introduction live is brilliant , brilliant , brilliant .
Like I do with many of my guests , I just wanted to sort of go right to the beginning and find out whether you know sport was very much part of your growing up at school , either primary school or , you know , senior school .
Yeah , I mean you mentioned it there in the introduction of sport very much has been a part of my life since pretty much the age of five , since , as long as I can remember , my parents are both very sporty . My dad's played every sport that you can imagine similar with my mom , and so sport was kind of in my genes , if that's such a thing .
So it started with school where , where I grew up in Surrey , load of the mums and dads and kids kind of became friends in the first year of reception and then when we got to about the age of five it then became , oh well , that's that they're very keen to be outdoors and be sporty , so let's get them into the local rugby , cricket and football clubs .
So I joined them with a lot of my friends from school and I think it kind of started from there .
I just loved being outdoors , I loved playing sport , I loved being social around people and it's pretty much stuck for the last 21 , 22 years of wanting to get stuck into any sport that is there , usually team sport , but I'm sure come on to that compared to running , it running in a little bit , but it's just always been a passion of mine and now I've been
very fortunate to make it my career .
Have there been , like me ? I mean , there's kind of maybe a couple of standout moments at school . Is there any for you at school ? You know , like I don't know .
Yeah , I was very privileged to go to a school that had a in Surrey that had quite a lot of sport , was a big focus of the school and in the first couple of years I was a big fish in a small pond in terms of sporting , especially with cricket . Clearly there was a couple of us that were very good at cricket and they kind of carried the team .
And then all of a sudden there was a big influx of players in and students in what would have been year nine , where all of these districts and county cricketers came in and very quickly became a small fish in a big pond , which was different but great , and I had the opportunity to play with some players that are now professional cricketers Phil Salt , who's
playing for England , and Douthrae , who plays for Glamorgan and a couple of teams in Wales and had the opportunity to play against some very high level cricketers at that school a cricketing school against other schools nearby , and probably didn't recognise it at that point .
But looking back now , the opportunity to play cricket alongside some of the best cricketers in the country that they now are was amazing , and looking at them on TV whilst I'm sat there with a soft drink on a Sunday afternoon watching them play all around the world is good fun .
But no , I think I was very fortunate to have the exposure to some great opportunities , like I said , I think I said rugby , cricket and football were the main things that I played , but I think I said before I wanted to try anything from badminton and swimming and squash and anything that .
Patonc was one that just came out of nowhere , like French bowls , but yeah , anything that was to try out , it usually went towards it with an open mind .
So do you think that theme of sport , like you said , coming from the age of five and then going into your senior school , did you ? Was there a point where you thought this is what I'd like to do or be involved in some as a career , or were you open minded to other jobs or careers ?
Yeah , I think probably at an early age I would have thought , as most people I think would if I'm going to work in sport , I have to be a professional athlete .
I got to a point where I realised that that was not going to be something , and it was probably towards the ages of 14 , 15 , 16 , where I kind of got gripped by filmmaking and media and editing and things like that .
I used to again , very fortunate , went on a cricket tour with school to Barbados and thought , oh , I'll take my GoPro and I'll film the two weeks and make a video that everyone can kind of remember for as long as they want to remember it , which we still look back on with for memories every now and then .
And oh , I did that with a couple of other holidays and trips and just began to make content from , you know , from editing and behind the camera , and that became something that I then wanted to study , so A Levels . It was definitely something that I was interested in and studied .
And then went to university , as you mentioned , the beginning of the whole holiday , and did like a film , television , digital production course and it only then became after that where sport continued to be a back , kind of consistent backdrop in my life .
And then when , as most students do , and they come to the end or middle of university and going okay , what , what , what am ?
I going to do now yeah , I need to go and actually work now and presented the opportunity to actually combine one .
Now I'm very much doing that , but combining the two media marketing , social media and a love of sport became a love of health and fitness , because I think there's a kind of a little bit of a difference not difference between the two as a parallel .
But I think , oh , I love sport is quite different to being passionate about health and fitness , which encompasses maybe a little bit more about that I'm sure we'll speak about in a bit .
But I've been very fortunate over the last two and a half years that I've been here of being able to combine my two loves of social media , marketing and content , and also health and fitness .
Do you think , Well , I don't know how you can put it Do you think it's easier now I know this is a bit of offener tangent to for people now to create their own content into whatever discipline , whatever it is , then it was then maybe say I don't know , maybe when you were at school earlier on .
I mean , I know , compared to when I was at school , which is a thousand years ago , but I mean then , when it's every year , it is getting easier . there's sort of more channels , Then again the same . There are a lot of challenges as well . We talk about social media and whatever , but do you think it's become easier ?
It's the pros and cons . I mean , there used to be sort of three main channels of media with magazines and television and radio , and then I think YouTube very much changed that , youtube 2000 . I think it was 2005 where that started , and then all of a sudden it's four or five years for that to really kind of become a widespread media platform .
And then it was like oh , I can , people can upload content , their own , for free , and start to challenge traditional media . And then you've just seen in the last kind of four or five years , well , obviously then Instagram , facebook , twitter X , whatever that is now .
Whatever the people call .
that has taken over and people again have more access to to stay with how they feel and interact with people , and that has become almost accelerated even more in the last five years thanks to TikTok and then , obviously , a real short . Of course , yeah , you can create content and actually you don't need a million followers to be able to create a viral clip .
You can make your first video and it can go viral and all of a sudden it's there . That's the benefits it connects more people , it allows people to be creative , it allows companies to be more creative and human .
The flip side of that is that the average engagement time is about five seconds four and a half seconds , if that and I think and I've noticed this from my own experience that the way I engage with media and probably life , is a lot more impatient and a lot quicker and it used to be like my , you know , doom-scrolling and just general impatience and having this
thing , my phone I'm holding in my hand , I try not to close to me . So , yeah , a bit of a tangent about social media , but there's pros and cons to it and unfortunately or fortunately , that is , my role is trying to battle with it and engage with it . It is yeah , it's a weird world .
I mean it is sometimes . I mean like I , you know , going on Instagram and following . Just getting back to the running , is that there is someone who you know who puts up some videos about warming up and that kind of thing .
So it does provide there are some sort of benefits , it gives you a few ideas , although there's half the exercises that she's doing which I could not . I think I'd probably go to hospital after I did that ?
Oh , in the same boat , yeah .
Right Now moving
¶ Exploring Film, Education, and Career Paths
on . So you did a film and a TV degree that was part of your was . That was . That was that kind of , as the Americans would say , you kind of majored in . Is that right ? Was there anything else that you did within in as ?
part of your degree . Yeah , it was predominantly film and television production , which was half theory and half practical , which is what I wanted and I thought was good . I mean , learning about 1920s . Russian film wasn't quite on the oh right , but you know I fell in love with 1950s French films . So there's unexpected benefits .
And then the practical side learning how to , whether you want to do cinematography or sound or producing or directing . I went down the cinematography route of how things look and how things are filmed , and a weird element of that was digital production , which is kind of a bit more .
If anyone's ever been to tape modern and looked around there , there's a lot of elements of digital art in there , weird and wacky things . I mean you go in there and you see a toilet in the middle of the room and that's called art and you make sure you think about it .
And that was a little bit of what digital arts was , which was very left field but very makes you think about things in a slightly creative and artistic way .
So then did you start at what was it outside an act of straight away after university .
Not straight away actually . So a finished university degree , and then I was opened up to the opportunity of what , if anyone's ever been involved in their students union at university it's a sabbatical officer role A vice president role . A lot of people hear you say that and go what ?
I was the vice president of sports at university , which makes it sound a lot more official than it actually was . They're effectively an elected . You're elected by students , or there's a campus wide campaign . You have to campaign for votes and tell them , create a manifesto of how you're going to change your area whether it's education , sports societies .
You get elected . You don't get elected . You find out on the night alongside the other people that have run against you and you find out if you've got a job the next year . So I was very fortunate to do that . I then got reelected and you're only legally allowed to do that for two years and that was effectively combined Well .
That really kickstarted my career in health and fitness because that made me think about how to improve people's life at university in a sporting sense every day . So I had that two years and , unfortunately , finished that in June of 2020 . Oh , yes , yeah . So finding a job in June of 2020 was very , very tough .
Fast forward a few months and I was very fortunate to then be offered a position at where I am now Raccoon Media Group . It's the overall company Doing marketing basic marketing for BTC health and fitness events .
We organized a national running show , a national outdoor expo , a number of other shows in different health and fitness markets cycling , snow sports , equine and began there and did kind of marketing for six months to a year .
And then the opportunity came up to kind of take over or be a part of the content for this platform called Outside Active , which had existed in the company for a little while because it became a digital event .
When you couldn't run events , obviously , in person , for a few years during lockdown Events , companies had to be imaginative and we created this digital event and outside active . Then was this thing and the powers at beer recoup media group said hey , we kind of want this to be a thing . Can you do something with it effectively , which I'd never done before ?
It's quite scary . It only kind of run social media accounts at university and kind of done my own thing , and all of a sudden it was part of a job and I had to create a community and create content and do it in a professional career sense and take it on and mold it .
But two , almost two and a half years later I've been fortunate enough I think you mentioned in the intro to be able to speak to unbelievable people . The names you mentioned , even the names that you haven't mentioned , that I'm sure will come on to have genuinely been life changing . I would say it sounds a little bit .
I mean I was going to say is that do you get that feeling that I'm in the room with like so or whoever , and you have to pinch yourself .
¶ Interviewing Olympic Athletes, Building a Podcast
Absolutely .
I mean , these are people that not only have achieved unbelievable things at an Olympic Games at the top level , but there are also people that , from from a podcasting and interviewing point of view , have been interviewed on international national television networks by people that have been interviewing and podcasting , or you know similar type of thing , for years and
years , and they've been asked every single question and are what's it like to win a gold medal and all that type of thing . So the challenge with those people , I think , is where's the niche , where's what's ? What can you bring out of them that maybe they've not spoken about before ?
But , yeah , completely a sense of I'm just me being , with the opportunity I always use that word to speak with these unbelievable people , yeah , incredible .
But at the same time I mean listening to some of them , like I listened to the one a leash mcoglin yesterday because I saw her over Christmas , her documentary about her , and you know they're all very , you know , humble you know just like you and I , although they are , you know , a completely rare breed , they are an athlete and they are , you know , different .
I was put in a different category .
You know they are . They're completely different . You know there and but at the same time you know they're just like . You know you and I in some ways . You know there . I mean , I remember I , when I was a gym instructor in in Twickenham , the Holocaust guys used to come in and I used to speak to Jason Leonard and he was the nicest guy he was .
He was , you know , and he would always have time for you .
You know , I know they're human , human beings as well , like they actually want to see you as a , as an equal , and I have been guilty at the beginning of doing this , of obviously even you see . So Chris Hoy or Ray Mears or what X , y , z person that you kind of kind of chat to and you you build it up and you get nervous .
And even I've been fortunate enough to speak with influences that have been on popular TV shows that you kind of think , you build up an idea of them in your head where there are .
Sometimes it's in a slightly negative way , because you think , oh gosh , I'm just me , I'm just dumb , and you know why are they going to want to speak to me or they're going to be a little bit blasé , or they might be rude . I've not had a single instance in two years .
Wow , anyone , I've been very you know touch , touch word If anyone being incredibly like , rude or dismissive or looks like they don't want to be there . But they don't look like it . And I've been . I've come out of certain interviews and recordings and chats and going , I've firmly going .
Oh , I feel like a bit of a bit of an idiot because I thought that person might have been a certain way and they absolutely were the loveliest person , that's that I've ever had . So yeah , like you were just saying , they just know people , they want to give you time and and it's very lucky , very lucky .
Yeah , yeah , so was it with Raccoon Media . Is it Raccoon Media ? That's right yeah . Was it , was it their idea to , to push forward .
You know this platform , you know the on well , to outside an active onto onto the podcast platform , and they sort of say , dominic , there you go , he's got I would say that it was outside an active with something I created in my bedroom one day when I was one of what it's price , something I would love to give that store .
Unfortunately that's not that's not the case , but it kind of is what you said there . It was handed over to me in a little bit of a . It had been thrown around , and was it going to be a film production ? Was it going to production house ? Was it going to be a digital events with webinars only ? Was it going to be just a website ?
And it kind of got to this point where they said , oh , here's this guy that's been here for a for a half a year or a year , who he likes being on camera because he does the interviews , not likes being on camera , but can be on camera , he can do the technical stuff behind the scenes and he has a bit of motivation . What can we do with him ?
To give something to see if it works Outside ? I think it started with about I had about 200 followers when I took it over A few clients that we'd worked with . The podcast had just kind of got started between me and a colleague that was here at the time and it was a little bit of an experiment and it was right .
Right , you own this , do with it what you will . And it has very much become part of my life , like I'm not just saying this because it was handed to me . Oh , but my boss is my listening . It is not . I come in and do this from 95 , like I'm outside and active or you know , what I do is very much . I live and breathe that .
Whether that comes back to the whole health and fitness is my passion . It's not just my career . I have lived and breathed it for the last two , two and a half years and very passionate about building a community providing high quality content and also the boring stuff of having to make it commercially viable . It is outside and active .
It is very much just me doing the marketing and content for it .
Yeah , so you get the , because I noticed you do get sponsors now and again , don't you ?
Yeah , I have a commercial colleague , tom , who's fantastic at that , does that side of things because effectively , whether it's in a business or whether it's individual , sometimes it has to wash , wash its face and then some . But my core is content .
So I often then have the editorial battle of saying , no , we're creating this because it's good content , and that's my always my forefront . Obviously there has to be a commercial element to that as well to keep it going . But outside and active has just sort of become me , which is weird . Which is weird .
I remember two and a half or two years ago I was kind of like , well , I don't know if I don't know if this is something that I'm ready for or something I'll be able to do , and it's just . I've just been able to grow with it . There's still a long way to go , but it's , I've enjoyed it .
Yeah , so do they in terms of getting guests ? Is it sort of in conjunction with the exhibitions that you run , or do you kind of reach out .
How do you ?
go about reaching out .
Bit of a mixture . There is a
¶ Building Connections Through Conversations and Friendship
bit of a mixture . Obviously , like I mentioned , we're connected to the shows , very fortunate to have a fantastic content team that work across all of our shows across the US and the UK , where they bring in some of the most amazing speakers .
I mean , then we've got the National Running Show next week , as we're recording this on the 20th of January , and Mo Farah is speaking there . I think he's only there for about 45 minutes , so I think he's doing his job .
I'm leaving , so unfortunately not going to have the opportunity to chat to him , but some speakers that we have but yes , the headline quote , unquote headliners that have X amount of Instagram followers and that have won X amount of gold medals are fantastic , but they bring in speakers from all over the running world , whether it's inspirational , educational or pure fun
and entertainment , and a lot of the times I then work with the content team to say , hey , who's got time for an interview or chat ? Who wants to do it ? Who would be good ? What gaps are we not spoken to ?
So there's a lot of that of working with them and then sitting down with people at physically at the show , but there's also a lot of me being able to reach out .
And as a podcast grows and as your connections grow with people , you then have access to a few more people who go hey , they reach out to you , you reach out to them and hey , do you want to sit down with me for half an hour and have a chat about the outdoors and make it quite fun and quite relaxing ?
And obviously there's a little bit of give and take ? Is that I get some content for it and you're going to get some promotion out of it , or you just want to sit down and have a chat ? You mentioned Caitlin at the beginning . She's just living , lived life .
For people that know Caitlin's story , if you don't , then absolutely listen to her story , but she is just a lust for life and says yes and grabs every opportunity . I was fortunate to sit down in this room with her and have a one-on-one chat in person . But you just meet people like that and your connection grows .
We've been connected now through that conversation and the connection that we now have we'll then spread and have access to more , and that's what it's all about .
So , yeah , now I'm trying to get into a position where it's happened a few times , where I chat to people and bring people in and then the show team and the content team go oh hello , you've had a chat with Helen Glover , who's an Olympic rower . We would love to have her at the show .
If you give her a contact to yourself and I'm going , finally I can have a little bit of a balance in the conversation .
But no , like I said , the vast array of people that I've been able to speak to from all over the world , from people that I've watched on the Olympics to people that I've never heard of before and have now fought genuinely great friendships with has been an unbelievable experience .