Julian Dowe on building Football 4 Football

11/08/21 • 52 min

Julian Dowe started his career as a professional footballer. As he was breaking junior goal scoring records in the Salford leagues he was playing in he became highly coveted by the likes of Manchester United, Manchester City and Leeds United. After a brief spell at United, he signed as schoolboy for Everton, then went onto Manchester City where he started training and playing with first team squad at 15. After a period playing for Wigan, he became the youngest British player to sign professional contract in Spain at age 18. There were a few more moves but a persistent knee injury saw him retiring from the game at 26.

But it is not just his time spent ‘in’ football that we are discussing today, but the time he has spent ‘for’ football. As Julian shares how he came up with idea and has developed the resource platform Football4Football.com that supports players of all levels on what he calls the four pillars of the game.
I think this is a fascinating story and I am sure that you agree, so I want to thank Julian for sharing it with me. It wasn’t a matter of everything he touches turns to gold, there are lessons from success and from failure. There is spotting opportunities, and facing and overcoming challenges. There is learning from your own experiences and there is surrounding yourself with people who can provide their experiences knowledge, talent and skills. But most of all there is doing the work.
So thanks to Julian Dowe for taking the time to walk through his story, insights and perspective and the lessons that he has learned on how to continue to get better. Make sure you head over to Football4Football.com to check out what he is talking about.
There is a lot of lessons in this one, so take a listen and let me know what you think.
Of course if you are working on your own goals and performance improvement and want to explore how our coaching, workshops and seminars could help, you can always find more information, resources or just reach out to me over at infinitepie.co.uk, and on the various various social media platforms.

In the meantime, remember ‘improve your thinking, improve your performance’

In the meantime, remember ‘improve your thinking, improve your performance’

Previous Episode

Leidy Klotz: Subtraction as part of your decision making

So today I am speaking with Leidy Klotz, Professor at University of Virginia and author of the book Subtract: The Untapped Science of Less.
Leidy focuses on removing barriers between design and behaviourial science and we dive into what that means and how we can apply these principles into our daily lives, both on a personal and professional basis. It is amazing to explore the research that shows how many of us do not include the option of subtraction into our decision making process and the impact it may have if we did.
I want to say big thanks to Leidy for sharing his research and insights and it has really made me think about how often I am exploring how I can use subtraction in my decision making framework. It really is so easy to default into just adding things in all the time. I am sure that you will also agree that there is so much more to this than just taking things away, and as we discuss, it is actually the work involved in taking the complex and simplifying it, to gain real clarity on what you are actually trying to achieve before defining and deciding the appropriate solution and course of action. So, if you want to know more about all of this, I highly recommend that you go and check Leidy's book - Subtract; The Untapped Science of Less.
There are lots of ideas and lessons in this one, so take a listen and let me know what you think.
Of course if you are working on your own goals and performance improvement and want to explore how coaching could help, you can always find more information, resources or just reach out to me over at infinitepie.co.uk, and various social media platforms.

Next Episode

Damian Hughes: Lessons from High Performance

Professor Damian Hughes specialises in creating high performing cultures within sports teams, businesses and organisations, is a best selling author and is the cohost of the very successful High Performing Podcast with Jake Humphrey. Damian is now also the first returning guest to the infinite pie thinking podcast.
In our original conversation we explored a number of fascinating topics that relate to the mindset and mental side of performance improvement, so I was excited to get Damian back on, to dive deeper into areas like 'commitment culture', what it means to 'do the work in the shadows', how to develop 'feedback loops' and why they are important, and to actually understand how he defines 'high performance'. However, I was also keen to explore what he has learned about himself since we last spoke.
There really is a lot to take from this one so I hope you enjoy listening to Damian Hughes share lessons from high performance.
If you would like to reach out and let Damian know what you have taken from this conversation you can find him on instagram @liquidthinker or via his website liquidthinker.com.
If you are working on your own goals and performance improvement and want to explore how our coaching support, workshops and seminars could help, then you can always reach out to us at infinitepie.co.uk, find us on LinkedIn, or instagram @infinitepiethinking (and if you share this episode use #infinitepiethinking as I would love to join the conversation).