184: How Will Mellors - Blair, a Former Pro Footballer Turned Data Into A Playbook For Productivity

At six years old, Will Mellors-Blair was named a child maths prodigy. By nine, he was modeling space and time on the football pitch. By eleven, he had already decided that sport would be a vehicle, not the destination.

In this episode, Will joins Ryan to unpack a journey that blends elite football, advanced mathematics, artificial intelligence, and entrepreneurship. From the Manchester United academy to the University of Michigan, and now into building AI systems that optimize human performance at scale, Will shares how he designed his second act long before his first one ended.

This is a conversation about identity, autonomy, performance, and what happens when you refuse to be put in a box.

What You’ll Hear

• How Will used mathematical modeling to “solve” football games as a child
 • Why being labeled a prodigy gave structure to his mind rather than pressure
 • The moment academy football began to limit his creativity
 • Why he always saw football as a vehicle, not the final destination
 • The culture shock of moving from English football to the University of Michigan
 • What humbled him academically and forced a shift in habits
 • His obsession with tech founders and what he was really searching for
 • The difference between mimicking success and building your own code
 • Why relentlessness is non-negotiable when building something new
 • How poor data use is costing economies billions in lost productivity
 • The concept of training the mind like the body in elite sport
 • How to step back from being the business and build a true team
 • Why major career decisions should align the head, heart, and gut

Golden Nugget

“Don’t just think with your head when making a transition. Align the three brains. Does it make sense logically, emotionally, and intuitively? If it’s yes, yes, yes, you’re on the right path.”

Want to Go Deeper?

If you are looking for career clarity for your next step, visit www.2ndwind.io
to learn more or book a consult.

Transcript

Prodigy Origins And Early Vision

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Because at the age of six, I was named a child math prodigy. And I'm grateful for that because it provided me with some structure to what was happening in my brain. And from the age of six through to 11, I doubled down on the kind of extracurricular work I was doing, meaning creating new theories, creating new concepts. So I knew about artificial intelligence when I was a very young boy. And I knew at some point the world would converge where AI models, like large language models, can be utilized to build new AI location layers. So I knew perhaps from the age of 10, 11, 12, that that's where I wanted to go. I wanted to go to a place where I could build and utilize my skills to advance whatever field I wanted to advance. So I knew I wouldn't be a professor in a lecture room or a or a lab specialist kind of uh building new concepts and trialing new concepts. I knew that I wanted to be a real world builder.

SPEAKER_01 1:09

Hi, I'm Ryan Gonsalves and welcome to the Second Wind Academy Podcast. A show all about career transition through the lens of elite athletes. Each week, I invite a guest to the show who shares their unique sporting story. Please join me to delve into the thoughts and actions of athletes through a series of conversations. Don't worry, there's plenty to learn from those of you that aren't particularly sporty. Elite athletes are still people at sport. Let's be inspired by the stories of others. Welcome to the show. Good to have you joining me today. Thank you very much, Ryan. Pleasure to be here. Awesome. Well, actually, do you know I'm I do say awesome and it's a word that was reintroduced to me this weekend. I've got my mum visiting and she used it looking at scenery. And, you know, she said, it just really gets you thinking about what's next. And it's quite interesting having a chat with yourself today because it's a bit different to the way that I would normally pitch things. And it's because I think your background is just going to open up so many different avenues, corridors that are interesting both to me, but I'm sure to the listeners and watchers as well. So let's just see where we go today. And yeah, looking forward to learning a bit from you as well. Very good. I'm excited to be here. So uh let's get into it. Yeah, good man. Well, for those who are watching and listening who don't know you, give us the infomercial. Tell us who you are, Will.

SPEAKER_00 2:36

So my name is Will Mellers Blair, former professional footballer and advanced mathematician. So my journey started out with my first love, which was football, and that's English football slash soccer, because I did play some time in the States. So from a very

Show Setup And Guest Introduction

SPEAKER_00 2:55

young age, I was obsessed with mathematical modelling, and that kind of love transcended into football, where I was able to build like spatial models and predict space in time uh before my peers. So I would end up in acres of space with the ball, I'd make things happen, quite unorthodox. Uh, and this caught the attention of Manchester United. So I was a part of the academy from the age of nine. But really, my main love was Manchester United was mathematics, right? The advanced mathematics, the quantum level, quantum layer of mathematics, the layer of the subject where you explain things. So explain things that are happening. So the phenomenological layer. Um, so I've had a career in football, which we'll talk about, but I now spend a lot of my time building complex algorithms for both elite sports and also for large enterprise to ultimately help improve and advance human performance and productivity at a macro scale. So that's what I kind of do day-to-day now.

SPEAKER_01 3:58

No one has ever said that. No one has ever that's right. In fact, I've got to say it's probably the I just think it's fascinating, opening maths and football. So well-educated individuals in and in and around sport. To hear there's a I guess a a comparison in passion for maths and for playing sport. To me, that feels kind of unheard of. I mean, so as you've gone through both playing career and actually perhaps I'll ask a different way, today when you're with other, I'll say, mathematical experts, how many of them have a background or a true love for not watching sports, but actually playing, participating in sports?

SPEAKER_00 4:41

It was quite the anomaly growing up. There was no one I know that had got to the kind of the professional level, the elite level, who had any affinity to the mathematical sciences or mathematical realm as a whole. So yeah, growing

Math Meets Football On The Pitch

SPEAKER_00 4:56

up and entering kind of the senior kind of environment in the sport was quite shocking, really, because I was like one of one. But I had to embrace that, I had to somewhat get over that fact. But I knew very early on that my my life in football wouldn't be my wholehearted life, it would be a part of life. So there's a lot of similarities and comparisons really with math and football. More than people know. So it does make sense when you extrapolate it out and explain it further. Um, it isn't so distant.

SPEAKER_01 5:30

Yeah, and I probably want to step into that a little bit because I think of myself as a player in the changing room, I'd get laughed at for reading the newspaper, and it was probably the Daily Mail or The Sun. So for yourself to go going through that, I do want to get into a bit more the interrelation, I suppose, between maths and football, and then perhaps into the broader realm of of sports in in general to talk about what some of the aspects that you do today. But I'm interested in going back and this you, nine years old, man united, finding space on the field. I mean, back then did you see it as a mathematical equation, or was it just, hey, there's the ball I want to play?

SPEAKER_00 6:06

It was all equation, it was all formula, it was all theory, which I then actualized. So I didn't come from a footballing family, right? I came from a business family. But football, I just naturally gravitated towards in the playground. So my first sport was actually karate. So it wasn't until schoolmates of mine said to me, Hey, Will, like you're pretty good. Why don't you come and play for my team? So I didn't understand positions, I didn't understand what you should do. I just knew that if I had the ball or if my teammates had the ball, how do I become the most effective version to score goals? Right. I realize football is about scoring the most goals. You win the game if you do that. So what I'd do from the age of perhaps eight in the school kind of playgrounds is I would kind of scan the fields. I would mathematically model the opposition team per different variables. So I would see who did I think was leadership like, who wanted to like hide who was fast, who was slow, who was fit, who was not fit, who kind of wanted to win the game, so who was motivated, who was not motivated, and all these different variables I build before playing. Then, so that was like my baseline model before a game. Then during the game, I would look at movement patterns, so pattern recognition. I would look at uh the defenders, who would be the one to like move forward with the ball, who would stay at home, fullbacks, who would bomb on, who would stay, midfielders, who would sit, if they sat, what was their pattern with the ball. So I'd build like an in-game model with my pregame model, and that became my game model, so to speak. And then what I'd do is I would like for the first few minutes, just like roam around, you know, the typical number 10 position. I would just roam around and I'd see, oh, there's space and that space again, that space again, interesting. But what I'd do is on the fifth time that space became available, I would just stand still. My midfielder, get the ball, pass to me. I'm then driving at the defense with no one around me. Assist, assist, goal, assist, assist, chance creation. So after like nine months of playing amateur football, that's where United came in and thought, who's this? You know, I didn't have a footballing background, but I was able to completely dissect the team over and over again.

SPEAKER_01 8:31

You know, you found the game inside the game, right? And you started to enjoy, like you say, finding those variables, building out, well, perhaps I'm oversimplifying it. Perhaps you really were thinking to that extent as a nine-year-old, and it it wasn't just following your gut, but there you are, you've broken down the game, you've made another part of playing even more enjoyable. When you think back, or certainly later on as you played, did you enjoy the modelling and the finding the position and winning

Academy Roles Versus Creativity

SPEAKER_01 9:00

by equation or through math models? Or did you just enjoy playing and kicking the ball?

SPEAKER_00 9:06

Yeah, so during the academy system, um, and obviously most players don't get the academy system, so I'm very grateful for that. But everything shifts. You start learning positions and you start being placed into categories of position. So when I got to like 14-15, the number 10 position wasn't really a thing, it was more 4-4-2, meaning you have four midfielders where you have two wingers and then you have two flat strikers. Well, I got placed into the winger category. So from the age of 14-15, I then was trained and coached how to be a winger. And back then, there wasn't a winger that would come inside and play. It was you're on the outsides, you beat your man, you either drive into the box or you cross the ball. So my creativity then got stunted as a late teen because you start to learn the fundamentals and the technicalities of that position specific role. So I then kind of changed my mindset to just wanting to win a game. How do I become the best winger I possibly can to win the game? But looking back at it now, kind of into like my late teens, into the academy system, into my kind of professional kind of career, the creativity was stunted because I had learned then to be this one-dimensional version that would just do kind of one, two, three things really well. But that really wasn't my game. So I shifted my mindset to being the creative spark that made things happen to how do I be an effective cog to do the best that I can to win the game for my team? It's a bit of a different mindset you have to adopt.

SPEAKER_01 10:51

I suppose it makes me think then, why did you want to adopt that mindset? And I asked that question because I'm interested to know, well, where did you want to go with football? Did you did you see this as, right? Well, I want to be a pro footballer, so I'm gonna, you know, so I'm gonna therefore push, follow this, follow this approach, follow this process, or were you thinking there was something else?

SPEAKER_00 11:13

I knew when I was 11 years of age that I would utilize the sport of football to the best of my ability to play as high as I could, but also embark on an academic career, which would then lead me into wanting to build stuff. Right? I knew as a as an 11-year-old I wanted to build stuff, and I knew that wouldn't mean football. So my mindset from 11 was let's see what I can do with football. I don't really want to have a cold-hearted senior career. What I do want to do is get a great education through football and leverage it to the best of my ability. And then if I played pro for a few years, great, but I want to build stuff. And actually, when I look back, in hindsight, I

Choosing Education And A Wider Path

SPEAKER_00 12:05

actually designed my life now back then.

SPEAKER_01 12:08

That is pretty cool. Because a lot of these conversations that I have on the on the show are about designing your own career, building out this life that you want to have. And typically we do that much later in life for you having that vision, having it's as if you were joking, really, like you worked out the move by your head. Um well, do do you play chess, Will? I do play chess. I've got two chess boards there. Okay. All right. A tournament more than a practice board. I was I was I was gonna say this is it's gonna have to come in at some point, the the chess uh that you play. But um so I'm interested now, right? You talk about knowing that you're gonna build stuff outside of football. You've described sport as a vehicle to help get you well as far as it can get you. Maybe it can help, you know, move you forward. I know we we'll we'll come on to the the scholarship piece in in a sec. From an academic's perspective, then you said you wanted to build stuff. What did that feel like at that early teens age for you? What what was starting to form there?

SPEAKER_00 13:11

Yeah. So I knew that mathematics was always advancing from the age of perhaps six. Because at the age of six, I was named a child math prodigy. And I'm grateful for that because it provided me with some structure to what was happening in my brain. And from the age of six through to eleven, I doubled down on the kind of extracurricular work I was doing, meaning creating new theories, creating new concepts. So I knew about artificial intelligence when I was a very young boy. And I knew at some point the world would converge where AI models, like large language models, can be utilized to build new AI location layers. So I knew perhaps from the age of 10, 11, 12, that that's where I wanted to go. I wanted to go to a place where I could build and utilize my skills to advance whatever field I wanted to advance. So I knew I wouldn't be a professor in a lecture room or a or a lab specialist kind of uh building new concepts and and trialing new concepts. I knew that I wanted to be a real world builder.

SPEAKER_01 14:25

I'm super curious because I'm just thinking of a kid, a a young in fact, probably even 15, 16, but saying, yeah, I'm gonna build something. You know, you've described things that we can put a name to today, but back then we we we couldn't.

SPEAKER_00 14:40

Yeah. Well, I know, I know the answer to this question. And if I'm honest, I wanted to build a brain. I wanted to build many brains. That's what I wanted to do from the age of like nine. Yeah. I wanted to build a brain, artificial one, to advance intelligence. That was what I wanted to do. I wanted to advance intelligence, and in AI, you solve problems, right? So I knew I didn't know what it was back then, but the the concept was I want to build a brain that can be applied to advance intelligence. That was kind of like the the research kind of model that I wanted to adopt. Yeah. I wanted to go down into that massive rabbit hole. But I didn't know what it was, that was just what I was moving towards. That was kind of like my North Star.

SPEAKER_01 15:25

Yeah, yeah, and I like that. You used you know, using the North Star, you don't know what it is, but you get this sense that sort of pulls you towards it. Yeah, you know, so therefore, super interesting to me to see how you sort of uh apply that into the world of uh not not just sport but in into the way that we think and the the into individuals' behaviours and sort of predictive modelling. I'm interested though, before really stepping into that, this vehicle of sport, right? And for many they come into sport with this purpose of being a professional, being an Olympian, not just being a professional, captaining their country, right, to go to the peak of winning the gold medal and going to the top. I get a sense that wasn't it for you, it was to help get you somewhere in order to, I'll say, build this brain. So when did you have to start making a decision between I'll keep pursuing this football path in England as you know down that versus it becoming then another vehicle to help get you to sort of where where you're heading today?

Injury, Release, And New Options

SPEAKER_00 16:30

Yeah. So from Manchester United, I signed my scholarship at Walsall FC, and at the time they were in League One, and I was playing U18's football at 14. So when I got to the actual youth team age, which is 16, you have obviously school come into the club. So you had kind of your BTEC slash A-level instructor come into the club, and for like one and a half days a week, you do class, you do school, do different subjects, you get to choose, and at the end of it, you get a a different level of qualification. So you then get given an option. Hey guys, do you want to do eight modules, 12 modules, or 16 modules based on what you do, equates to how many grades you get, equates to then what you could perhaps do at the university level next. All of my peers opted to do the easiest kind of module kind of layer. I said no, I want to do like whatever the most is. And I remember vividly my peers leaving like the schooling environment at like lunchtime, and I was there till like six, seven, eight at night, kind of doing it. Because I knew I wanted to get the most amount of qualifications possible to then open up university because I knew I wanted to go to university at some point, so I made that choice at 16. It was a very conscious choice because my peers, for them, it was just football. It was, I need this to happen, so let me just focus wholeheartedly on football and disregard school. Me, I thought, well, I want to do both. I want to do as much as best as I can at football, but I'm gonna go all in an education. So I made the conscious choice at 16.

SPEAKER_01 18:13

Yeah, obviously we we leave school in England, we leave school at 16 to then go into full-time football, you know, as you as you described there. So you kind of had a sense then that well, actually, did you realize at that point, or did you feel, hey, I'm not capturing my country here, I'm not going all the way to the top, or or at least thinking, I can see what it takes, that's not what I'm prepared to do.

SPEAKER_00 18:37

I wanted to explore all options. What I mean by that is I had an inherent, inherent self-belief that I could do anything. I had I had built that mindset from a young boy. So I thought to myself, just go all in and see what happens, knowing that at some point I will be switching wholeheartedly to play,

Crossing To The U.S. System

SPEAKER_00 19:00

sorry, to do school all the time. So my mindset was if I get special contract from my youth team, great, let's explore that. If not, no problem. I'll likely go then into the university environment. So it wasn't there was no ultimatum for me. It was more of a if and then model. If this happens, great. If this happens, great. I was leaving all options open.

SPEAKER_01 19:23

Yeah. What happened at the end of your scholarship?

SPEAKER_00 19:25

Yeah. So my first year scholar went really well. I was training with the first team often, playing res uh reserved football often. It looked really good, right? I was doing really well. Second year, first game of preseason, I kind of um tore my ankle ligaments. So from like I was out for 16 weeks, so just over four months, I was out four, and I realized at that point, hmm, this might be actually it. Because typically you'd need to have a full season second year playing reserves football, maybe a first team appearance on the bench to get a look in. So it was perhaps halfway through my second year scholar where I thought, right, I might not be offered a pro contract, and that's okay, because what I now I'm gonna do is just focus to understand what is next. And there's options for what is next. The options were go and play professional in Sweden, became available to me, or look to then perhaps do a university degree, which I made the choice to do the latter.

SPEAKER_01 20:25

Yeah, you know, and you're right about that the path. That's often how it works when you're on on the on that scholarship program. So, what help did you have around you to help make some of these decisions?

SPEAKER_00 20:37

Myself, if I'm honest. I had obviously my academic counsellors at Warsaw via the LFE League Football Education. So I was kind of I was laid out what was possible, but my mum, God bless her soul, she wasn't um academic, she wasn't a footballing mum, she just was teen will. Whatever I wanted to do, she was supporting that. I didn't have many family members, a lot of them had passed away when I was not even born, so there was no liaison, there was no footballing side, there was no academic side. My sister is academic. Um, she went down the university route. But apart from that, there was just whatever I wanted to do, right? There was no kind of like shepherding down a certain route. It was literally whatever I wanted to do.

SPEAKER_01 21:22

How did you map out these options then?

SPEAKER_00 21:25

I should say calculation. Well, I knew that I still wanted to play football, right? I knew that I didn't want to just quit football.

SPEAKER_01 21:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:34

But I knew I was savvy enough to know that in England I would likely have to play non league football, grind it out, right? You know, maybe get a job and see what happens from there. Or I knew because of my grades, I would be able and eligible to perhaps go to America on a scholarship and play full time football and be a full time student or otherwise known as a student athlete. So I knew pretty much two months after I had been released by Warsaw that I wanted to be a student athlete in the United States. So I made the choice pretty quickly.

SPEAKER_01 22:11

Makes absolute sense. And so at what point did you then go over to the US? And what and just tell me then what was the football experience like?

SPEAKER_00 22:20

I was grateful to have some assistance. I had like a liaison who had placed a lot of players out there already. So I had to do the SAT test, the SAT tests. I did that at the uh at the University

Michigan’s Rigor And Habit Shift

SPEAKER_00 22:35

of Cambridge. I did really well. And I was offered a full scholarship initially to go to Georgia State University, which was a good option. It was downtown Atlanta. So it matched a lot of the criteria that I was after. And I went out there and I realized pretty quickly that athletically, so the football team wasn't good enough, if I'm honest, for my standards. And I knew pretty quickly that the academic side wasn't also good enough for my standards. So after just under a year, I made the choice to transfer. And that was where the University of Michigan came in with a full scholarship offer, which for people that don't know the University of Michigan is an always ranked number one athletic and academic institution of excellence, right? It's an elite university both athletically and academically. So when they came in with a full scholarship offer to go to the University of Michigan, I thought this is it. This is exactly what I want and need, a place where I could be myself and be pushed and stretched. And I've got access to world-leading mathematical departments and science departments where I could play football on television for my university in front of thousands of fans a game. So this was it. This was like, yeah, this is what I'd been working towards.

SPEAKER_01 23:52

I'm fascinated now because I feel I'm getting to a good point here where I'm starting to see a shift in balance because, like you say, you're able to play, boom, you've got the TV, you're getting the it feels like a pro, it feels good. You're playing football, right? But you're also at this top mathematical institution where knowledge is just there at your fingertips. Given you were then in that environment, how difficult was it? Or what challenges did you have to find balance during those years, especially at Michigan?

SPEAKER_00 24:28

It was actually quite challenging at the very beginning to find balance because I didn't quite understand the academic rigour of the place. And I remember vividly, because at my old university, Georgia State, before I transferred, without sounding too egotistical, I would like study for perhaps a couple of hours beforehand and get A's. It's quite simple. So I thought, ooh, I can do the same thing. And I remember vividly, my first ever exam, I studied the night before. And I was humbled. And the next day was my exam, took the exam, and I got a 74%, which in America is a C. 74% is a C, and a C is a plus. To get an A, you have to get 92% at my university at Michigan. So I remember vividly getting the uh results, looking at it, I never really got C's in my life. It was always A's or A, the occasional B. So I looked at this like, oh, I better start doubling down then if I want to really get good grades here.

SPEAKER_01 25:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:28

So that was my just naivety playing out. So what I then did was I realized that when being a student athlete in Michigan during the day, so first thing in the morning, you'd go into your lifts, so your weights, or you'd go and train. That was your morning. You'd then go and get breakfast, you'd then switch focus, you're then a student, right? You're an athlete, then you're a student. You'd you'd have like five or six classes, right? Back to back to back, you'd have lunch in between. Then you didn't go out like a lot of students do in the United Kingdom. You don't go out on student nights. You go to the library, and you're in the library all evening. You have your dinner delivered to the library and you're studying every single day. You don't really go out that much. Sure, you might have one night at the weekend if you're if you're lucky. But these kids were going into the library from like 5 pm until like midnight every single night. And that was the thing. That was the social space. So I realized pretty quickly that I need to kind of get on the program if I'm going to do well here. And so what did you do? So, would you mean like course-wise?

SPEAKER_01 26:37

Well, I'm interested-like my habits. A bit of both, really. So I'm interested in the habit shift and I suppose then and get leading towards then the course and where it started taking you.

SPEAKER_00 26:46

Yeah. So habit shift, the University of Michigan, you didn't have to select what your kind of degree was going to be until your sophomore year, until your second year. So I had a semester to choose what I was going to

Senior-Year Epiphany And Builders’ Mindset

SPEAKER_00 27:00

do. So I knew that I wanted to shape my education around advanced math, advanced science. So I ended up doing both at school and also my spare time. I did mathematics, mathematical sciences, data science, epigenetics, computational neuroscience, artificial intelligence, quantum mechanics, quantum computing. They were kind of like my core. I also did communications because I knew I wanted to be able to speak to people and present stuff. So that kind of became my like package. So that was like the topics of study. In my spare time, it was, well, I'm just going to do what everyone else is doing and just go in this the library every day. And it became like a social club. Studying became like the cool thing to do. You'd like message your friend after this class, like, do you want to go to this library and study? That was like your nights out. It was let's go to the library and study. And then you might pop out for an hour and get some pizza and go back and study again. That was the vibe every single day of your life.

SPEAKER_01 27:59

When did I suppose I'm trying to see if there was an inflection point? And you know what? There may not have been an inflection point. But one where you saw the, I'll say the mathematically influenced career taking priority over sport and then a preparedness to leave the sport, the playing of the sport behind.

SPEAKER_00 28:20

So I played all throughout my time at Michigan. I was a starter, did really well. I then played for the Detroit, Detroit City FC, which were in the USL champ. I became top goal scorer or goal scorer of the club, had loads of pro teams wanted me to go. I went to the revolution in an MLS for like training, right? So there's still that side of me being expressed. But in my so uh my senior year, so your final year, I had like an epiphany one night, and all of a sudden, the kind of internal voice was leading me to research kind of technology CEOs, right? All of a sudden I became obsessed with like Steve Jobs, right? And Elon Musk and Alibar, right, and Jack Dorsey, Brian Chesky, Travis Kalinick, all of these tech CEOs, you know, Apple, Alibaba, Uber, Twitter, all of these CEOs that I've done and shifted industries, I just became obsessed with them. Jeff Bezos, Amazon, right? So I just became like obsessed in my senior year with do my degree, do my extracurricular learning, do my lab work. But then going home and reading the biographies of these CEOs, that was what I was doing every night.

SPEAKER_01 29:39

What what were you looking for?

SPEAKER_00 29:41

I was looking for the entrepreneurial mindset, I think. What it took to build things. Is there a mindset? Do you have to be a certain way? You know, what hours of the day do you work? You know, what were their out-of-hours routines? Do they wake up early? All these things. I was trying to deduce is there any like universal like mindset to be a builder? What what what was that? What does that look like? So I think I was building a codex. I think I was starting to codify what version of me do I need to be once I've graduated.

SPEAKER_01 30:12

That building of you then, once you graduate, because sport continued. You were still able to get these trials and things. Did you still see sport as a vehicle to get you somewhere at that point? Or or had it become something adjacent adjacent to what else to what else you did? There are too many stories of bankruptcies, mental health issues, and unfortunately too is dying. And so I think it's time for it. Every year we see thousands of athletes that reach a point where they need to consider their life activities for it. This might be a retirement, injury, or they need to juggle your careers between sport and a job. As a former English professional footballer, I have somehow managed to transition from sport into banking, strategy, innovation, and now life coach career practitioner and founder of the Second Wind Academy. So I want to help those around me find their career secondwith.

Defining Performance Intelligence Work

SPEAKER_01 31:10

Find me on Insta or through my new Facebook group, Second Wind Academy, where I'd love to know your thoughts and suggestions.

SPEAKER_00 31:22

I did play, I was in the professional environment kind of like League 2 National League, so Knott's County for a little bit, um, Solihu Moores in the National League for a little bit. So I did have that professional exposure, but for me, it was just a hobby. I didn't really care that much about it. I wasn't chasing contracts, I didn't have the same passion. I knew that my passion was moving in towards being a builder, building stuff. I was now able to somewhat express it. So I think for me, football became became then a hobby where then building this new version of me to build stuff became kind of like my dominant kind of mode of being, my operat operatus modi, modus oper operamni, sorry. Yes. Um I knew that was next. Right, I knew that was next.

SPEAKER_01 32:15

What's fascinating here, so the pattern that I'm hearing is I take you back to nine, nine years old on the football field, lots of little kids running around, you seeing the code, you're starting to see, oh, it's about space and scoring goals. That moves you into this professional realm, Academies, Man United, moving then through. As you hit in those late teens, and and I guess as you're becoming a pro or you know, a pro player, suddenly you're starting to be given positions and told where to play, how to play. And that shifted your mindset there because you were told, boom, this is this is the type of you that will that you now need to be in order to succeed at football. You then, as you were going through, I guess, in your senior year, and you're looking then at these these other builders who build these tech firms, and you were, like you say, you were starting to codify, well, what type of person do I need to be if I want to build something like that? With that, you've now recognized this. Football starts to drop a little bit. You enjoy it, it's the hobby, but the passion for it to take you somewhere's shifted. It's what you enjoy doing. In fact, it perhaps is a distraction. So now you've you've seen this model on well, if I want to build, I need to go and do stuff like what they've done. So I'm I'm curious now as to what was that? What were those first steps that you then started to take, or next steps that you started to take to build this this version of you so you could go on to be this builder?

SPEAKER_00 33:43

Well deduced. That was such a beautiful summary of events. So one of the first things that became apparent was I would need to adopt a relentless mindset, meaning uh every day won't be smooth sailing. Because up until that point, up until my graduation, if I'm honest, my life was pretty easy. I'd always naturally achieved, I was always somewhat funded to do work that I was doing or the playing of football, you know, my education was fully funded. So I had pretty much an easy ride up until the point where I graduated. So the first thing I understood was this is probably gonna be a grind. And I hadn't ever understood that. So as soon as I graduated and got into the real world, I realized that, oh, this isn't easy. This is actually quite difficult. You'd have some days that are pretty easy and breezy, but most of the time, you're gonna be banging your head against the wall. So that was the first thing. You have to adopt a relentless mindset. But bear in mind, initially when I graduated, I had adopted and started to mimic what had already been done. So actually, I wasn't being true to my own self. So I had a period of time where I wasn't actually being myself. I was mimicking others, I was imitating what had already been done. So that led me

Data Silos And Decision-Making

SPEAKER_00 35:10

to kind of a dark place within my mind because I had been doing what had already been done versus creating my own unique code of how to do things. So that kind of was a from perhaps 2016 through to maybe perhaps the COVID period, or maybe 2021. I had been doing what others had already done, behaving a certain way, dressing a certain way, being a certain version of myself, versus who is Will Mellows Blair? Like who is he? Right? So there's a whole transitionary mindset piece that I would move that I was moving through that taught me a lot of lessons. And the first thing was you have to be relentless. And by relentless, what do you mean in this instance? In this instance, never giving up, never taking no for an answer. If one day you don't find the solution to a problem, find it tomorrow. If you don't find it tomorrow, find it the next day. So relentless in the sense that you can't give up. Because if you give up in the real world, you're done. You're absolutely done. And you may as well just go and find a nine to five job. So that's what I mean by relentless.

SPEAKER_01 36:12

And for you then, what were those first steps? It's like you know where you want to get to. And I'm interested then in the environment that you perhaps create for yourself. What were those? You finished studying. So what were the roles that you were trying to pick up as you well, and it to me it sounds okay, you know, you're mimicking others that you see as successful, and through that path you start to realize what your real essence is. So I'm interested then what types of roles were you doing and you know, sort of where were you trying to position yourself?

SPEAKER_00 36:42

When I graduated and I started to observe all of these figures in tech, I realized then my passions lied in performance and productivity. So I knew then I wanted to build my life work around human performance and productivity, advancing these fields. So I then aligned myself to what I call performance intelligence. So utilizing large amounts of data, centralizing, analyzing, and providing companies and institutions, both public and private, with protocols to how to improve performance and productivity. So I initially did some work with Eon Energy as a contractor. That was fun. But very quickly I was then headhunted by the UK government to work alongside them to mathematically model a health and well-being initiative to upskill the nation in kind of health and well-being qualifications, right? PTs, nutritional therapists, you name it. The the time came for the country to upskill in these qualifications where the government had funded them. So it was my job to kind of help build models to get as many of them kind of utilized as possible to eliminate wastage, sunk costs. So that's what I initially did. But then after that gig, I was kind of headhunted a bunch of types. Google, Salesforce, Public Health England, the World Health Organization, UN, right, EU AI Labs, you name it, I was headhunted to do the same thing. How do we take all of our data well? How do we centralize it? How do we analyze it? And how do we then make better decisions with our humans to increase performance and productivity? That's kind of what I did as a consultant for some time before then starting my own first venture.

SPEAKER_01 38:38

Before we go into the venture, can you I don't know, just bring it to life for me. Give me an example, can you give me an example or uh of of of what that means, that productivity means and the sorts of shifts

Why Entrepreneurship Over Corporate

SPEAKER_01 38:50

that you're working on?

SPEAKER_00 38:51

This was before any of the research elements. I then later found out that as a macro economy, um because of poor utilization of humans within the workplaces, so employees, uh, we actually lose and our productivity is declining. This is a macro level problem, but in the UK it's quite bad and has been bad for like 40 years. So one of the reasons why this is, is because of poor data utilization, meaning people in work in businesses, either at home or the office, are utilizing platforms to do work. You know, Google Workspace, HR systems, productivity and collaboration tools, finance tools, benefits tools, whatever. There's so much data being captured every day. But this data lives in silos. It lives all over the place. Different data controllers living in different parts of the world, none of it communicating. And then you have senior leaders and board members making decisions on kind of gaps in their data knowledge. So what I used to do back then is help them understand what data they could start to centralize. And with platforms that are used, you can then extrapolate metadata. So signals. Every time you use something, you're capturing data through the API, stream data, and through the platform itself, you then take the small bits of data, metadata we call it, and you can start to triangulate these metadata points across platforms and start to tell stories, which then helps with decision making, more informed, data-driven decisions versus anecdotal gut level decisions. So that's what I did initially for all these organizations. I started to help them understand how they could utilize their data better to make better decisions that are data-driven.

SPEAKER_01 40:42

I like that. I'm truly interested in it in, you know, in a lot of the work that I'm doing and productivity, or indeed sometimes just efficiency, is what we're looking at. And data is, you know, understanding that data is is so important. And I think it's fascinating when we come from an athletic background where that's been part of us, where data is used all the time to make a decision, perhaps not well at times, but data's always there, certainly more and more, you know, as you look through sports today. So what was the instigator to you? Well, I guess following your family

Mindora: Fixing Workforce Productivity

SPEAKER_01 41:20

down the business through becoming an entrepreneur.

SPEAKER_00 41:23

I think it's always been in my clothes, right? In my deoxyribonucleic acid, in my DNA. I think it's always just being in there waiting to awaken. So I think this is where the 11-year-old builder mindset came from. I grew up watching my mum operate three businesses. So seeing her do that, as well as take me to football, right? As well as just be a super mom, God bless her soul, she was incredible. So I think observing that and being indoctrinated in that, it was always going to express itself at some point. So I think when then I went into the consulting kind of gig or gigs, I realized that I didn't want to do this for other companies. I was to build flagship models that could kind of do this for everyone. So that's where my kind of first research and development venture came in. In 2018, I started my first venture, which was called Fitpak, which ultimately became a real-time workplace stress monitor during the pandemic for big pharma companies. Because back then, the stress of big pharma and the COVID transitions led to a lot of suicides, a lot of stress, chronic stress, which affected the big pharma industry a lot. So that's when I kind of built the framework. I delivered it and it was successful. It was great, but it was always research-based. It was always research for what I'm doing now. It was never meant to be commercial. It was meant to be kind of illuminating for me to see if I could deliver something first of its kind to understand the efficacy and the effectiveness.

SPEAKER_01 43:09

That sounds like you know, you're doing a project. The 11-year-old in you then came forward and said, right, this is a business. I suppose I'm curious then, was there this I don't want to work for somebody else, or was it I can't, there's not this environment that is really where I want to be. I can go and build this myself. Was there a part part of you that sort of had this itch to go and do something else and then you just jumped in and did it?

SPEAKER_00 43:36

Yeah, I never had a corporate job. I went to one interview, and I remember doing this presentation out of university to this company. I won't name any names, of course not. But I did the presentation, and at the end of it, they told me they really want me to work there. And they told me what it entailed. It told me about all of the silos I had to go through to get decisions signed off. And I really Realized, oh, I'm gonna be held back again. Because in football, especially during my academic career, I was somewhat held back. I was told how to play. I was told where to pass the ball. I was told when to cross. I was told when not to cross. Right. So I then graduated and I realized I don't want ever to be told what to do. I want to work as a team, right? But ultimately, I do not want to be put into a box ever again. Because the way my brain works, I can't be put into a box. So yeah, you're right. I didn't want to ever work for anyone else. I wanted to work for myself, but I wanted to work as a team towards a collective goal where everyone has an opinion, but ultimately choices have to be made. And I always wanted to be the person to make those choices.

SPEAKER_01 44:48

So talk to me about your business and the types of problems you solve.

SPEAKER_00 44:53

So I am a founder of two AI models. Um, one is Mindora and one is TrueMind, which our AI model is Edge. So if we take ourselves back to the idea of advancing uh human performance and macroeconomic productivity, Mindora is our flagship model that ingests, so integrates with large enterprise workforce data cross-platforms to centralize, analyze, and to then deliver protocols for senior leaders and board members to optimize human capital

TrueMind: The Mental Data Layer

SPEAKER_00 45:30

management. This might be workflows. This might be when to allocate tasks to certain people. This might be when to give more breaks. This might be relationship flow issues. This might be managerial issues. This might be leadership upskilling, right? This might be extensions of projects. This might be getting that person from that project to this project. So complete efficiency increases is what we're looking at via Mindora, which then has an incentivization layer we're going to build, which then rewards performance by providing then tokens to then utilize either on the blockchain or in real world, in the real in the real world. So that's Mindora's thesis. That effectively is to combat the 9.6 trillion dollar a year productivity deficit that venture is currently to is being backed by the government of the United Kingdom. Because in the UK we lose £350 billion a year because of these properts. So that's Mindora, it has its own C-Squeak, C-suite, advises investors, and that one's set to do really great things. TrueMind. So there's two parts of TrueMind. So TrueMind effectively is born as a result of my desire to make the mental data layer visible. Because in my experience, when I experienced things like doubt and fear, confidence issues, it was somewhat invisible. But through my modeling and research, I've built, I've built concepts and algorithms where you can train the mind that you train the body. So initially, TrueMind is an education provider. So we work with EFL teams, English football league teams, at under-18s level, all the way down to under-9s, where we start training the mind like you train the body. But then the flagship model for TrueMind is called Edge, where we're first helping clubs and the pilots start in preseason this year, where we start helping clubs mentally or build mental performance profiles. So the same way you would do a psychometric test in a company, to start codifying your leadership team and your managers, we do the same for players by positions. So then teams and their sports psychologists and their departments are given a very objective view of where their players sit mentally to start helping train that within their kind of development process, with the view then of having Edge integrate all available data sets, whether it be biometrics, game day data, training data, et cetera, to then build what we're calling the elite performance operating system, starting first with that proprietary mental data layer. So that's what I do day to day. TrueMind, it has its own C-suite where I am the founder. So I don't work day-to-day in that organization. I oversee the strategic direction and the vision, but Mindora is kind of like my day-to-day job as CEO.

SPEAKER_01 48:28

Great to hear because different areas of impact. Wonderful how they do sort of come together. I suppose the the question set I've got, you know, coming towards the end of this is more I guess two things. One, you bring in a C-suite, you've got people then working for you, you're all about that productivity. How do you set up that culture, that working rhythm, so that you are implementing what you're learning as you go through?

SPEAKER_00 48:51

It's a great question. It's a wonderful question, actually, Ryan. So my research spans 15 years in the field of human performance and optimization, where I know that the typical way of working, you know, the eight hours, nine hours, ten hours a day behind a laptop with minimal time to rest and take breaks and eat good food, it's archaic, it's backwards. I know that humans, us, we work well when we work in spurts, or I like to call it deep

Building Culture For Deep Work

SPEAKER_00 49:20

work, where we are aligning our attention to tasks that need to be done versus low-value tasks. Low value tasks have their time and plays, but day to day, if we're doing one or two things that need to be done a day, having time then to exercise, right, drink water, eat good food, take the kids to school, pick them up, etc., we're going to be high performing for longer, right? For prolonged durations of time, versus sprinting through a task, burning out, etc. So I install these mindsets within both organizations, understanding what makes us as human beings function optimally, but then aligning work to how that individual works best. Sometimes person A might not work well at 8, 9 in the morning. They might need to start at 11 a.m. Because their whole circadian rhythm doesn't wake them up until 11 o'clock. So why then would you make someone clock in early when their brain isn't functioning well for the first two hours of the day? So I like to customize workflows based on how human beings function at the scientific level, so brain and body, neurophysical level, neurophysiological level, but also the preferences of set individual, aligning people to their productivity protocols and just getting it done.

unknown 50:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 50:49

So it's kind of like um it's an amalgamation of a lot of things to help people perform well for longer and be healthy and well and not burn out.

SPEAKER_01 50:58

I'd love to learn a lot more about that. Definitely. We're we we're gonna have to have another conversation on that. And I see I see it happening so this changing world. And so the other bit's actually super fascinating, probably penultimate question is you're able to look for most people building businesses, they are the business through your research, through the way you've set things up, and I think a lot of athlete well, I know a lot of athletes struggle with this, is when and how do they step back and let other people come in? Because as an athlete, you have to do it, you do it yourself. You know, I'm watching the ski jump in the winter Olympics, you're jumping, you're not giving that to somebody else to do, you're focused on what the essence of that job to be done is. How were you able to detach yourself from that?

SPEAKER_00 51:44

Yeah, so I think for a long time I was the energy, I was the credibility, but I think it comes a time where you realize you can't do it alone. If you're gonna do something great and achieve something monumental, you have to do it together, team, together, everyone achieves more. Team. And I realized that my brain will be needed at Mindora all the time. Of course, I'll have an element of my brain power attached to TrueMind to ensure it's navigated the right way. But when I hired the CEO of that company, the COO, I was effectively given the keys over. In fact, I remember posting a GIF

Letting Go And Leading Through Teams

SPEAKER_00 52:30

in the leadership chat with the keys being handed over. So that was a conscious choice because I built the operating models with the C-suite where day-to-day they know what to do, how to do it, what success means, right? They that we've been doing it now for a year and a half. So now it's kind of built itself. So me handing the keys over is quite simplistic for me, quite seamless. Whereas Mindora, yes, I've got a team around me, but I am the driving force. And I'm consciously doing that because I realize until perhaps the next phase, which is where the intelligence is operating autonomously in organizations driving value for them, at that point, it will be the business case and the models driving value. Therefore, I will be more of a cog in a machine versus driving the machine. We're perhaps a year away from there. So until that time comes, I'll still be a driving force. But there will be a time in in life, perhaps in 12 months' time, where I won't be the businesses. The businesses will be the businesses, and I will be the face and spokespersons of them.

SPEAKER_01 53:41

And that's great. And I'm hearing again this pattern of recognizing your role, seeing the space, getting into that space, using it well, and then at different times having to to move and play a different role and letting others do that work. And you know, you mentioned whilst not wanting to necessarily work from someone else who put you into that box again, it's recognising the teamwork. You know, it it's still important and you're you're still building that. So I I just think that's great, Will. Uh I've I mean I've I've enjoyed this conversation. I look forward to having having more with you on some of these topics. I suppose the the last question, because it's the same question I ask everyone at the end, is for those, but I think for you, I'll ask it a bit differently. For athletes who have this academic pull and have this athletic pull, based on your experience, what guidance would you give them to keep moving or be productive? You know, what what what advice would you give to them?

SPEAKER_00 54:39

My main advice is to align what I call the three brains when making choices in transition. So oftentimes we just think with our brain, logos, logic, you know, what we think is the right choice. But I like to make choices based on the three brains. So the head, the heart, and the guts. When you're thinking about your next career transition, or if you want to start that business, or if you want to join that company as an advisor, does it make sense logically, emotionally, and intuitively? If yes, to all brains, great. You're making a good, solid, sound choice. So that's my best piece of advice for anyone making career transitions. Don't do it impulsively. Don't think it's the right thing to do, because it makes sense logically for your CV transition and trajectory. Does it make sense to your head, your heart, your gut? If yes, and yes, and yes, great. You're making a good choice. So that's my best advice, if I'm honest, for everyone making choices.

SPEAKER_01 55:41

I think so. Um, but listen, Will, thank you. Thanks for joining and for sharing that little nugget at the end there. There's going to be people watching and listening who are going to want to get in touch or follow your story. What's the best place to do that?

SPEAKER_00 55:55

My honest opinion is find me on LinkedIn. Right, LinkedIn, search Will Mellers Blair. You will find me, come and connect, and let's chat and keep the conversation going. Love it. Will, thanks very much for joining me on the show.

SPEAKER_01 56:10

Absolute pleasure, Ryan. Thank you. Thank you for listening to the Second Win podcast. We hope you enjoyed hearing insights from today's athlete on transitioning out of competitive careers.

Advice: Align Head, Heart, And Gut

SPEAKER_01 56:20

If you're looking for career clarity for your next step, make sure you check out secondwin.io for more information or to book a consultation with me. I'd like to thank Claire from Betty Brook Design, Nancy from Savvy Podcast Solutions, and Cerise from Copying Content by Lola for their help in putting this podcast together. That's all from me. Take it easy until next time.