Reinventing Success in the Age of AI: Why Purpose Matters More Than Ever

Hi, and welcome back to another episode. Today's conversation is one that really stays with you. I'm sitting down with Neil Thurbin, an executive mentor, sales trainer, and an endurance athlete who quite literally ran his way into a life-changing realization during a 300-mile race in the Arctic. We talk about his journey from corporate IT and sales leadership into coaching, what he's learned about human potential through extreme endurance, and how AI is completely transforming the way he trains, coaches, and reaches people. But what really stood out to me is that it gives them more time, more efficiency, and more access. It's also forcing us to ask deeper questions. So today we're saying, what are we actually here to do? This episode is about purpose, evolution, and what it means to be human in a world that's changing so fast.

All right, all right, Neil, how you doing today?

I'm fantastic, thank you, Flora. Yeah, good to meet you.

Yeah, nice to meet you. It's, it's fun getting to know new people. So where are you calling from?

Uh, so I'm in the UK. I'm about 45 miles northwest of London.

Okay, and what do you do out there?

Oh, I do a number of things. I've got a portfolio of businesses and interests that I'm in my working life. Uh, so I'm an executive mentor and coach, and I work with lots of business leaders and leadership teams, helping them grow, develop. I have a sales training business, so a value sales training business helping businesses develop their, uh, their sales teams. And I also have an ultra running business. We organize long-distance running events and corporate events and charity events, that kind of thing. So that's my working life.

Well, so before you were a coach though, you don't just like pop up into the world and become a coach. You have to get some typically some experience under your belt, uh, before then. So tell us a little bit about that and with running too.

Yeah, my corporate background is I was in corporate IT, American IT company, for most of my career, in sales again for most of that career. The last role I had in corporate life was running Europe for one of the large IT companies. I had a very large sales team and a large sales number that I had to shoot for, but I came in cross-coaching back in 2007, I guess, maybe a little bit earlier. But in 2007 is when I decided that I wanted to start developing that as a skill set because I went to a Tony Robbins event and just was, yeah, I'd been listening to a lot of his stuff for many years. I went to one of his events, thought, yeah, actually I need to start focusing on speaking and coaching.

Very cool. So, so then you also mentioned your sales, um, coaching. Were you in sales in corporate IT?

Yeah, so I started as a salesperson back in the late '80s, early '90s, and then I moved into sales leadership, sales director, VP of sales, uh, as I went through my career.

Yeah, sales leadership. And just, I mean I love, I love getting a chance to like learn people's histories and their, their stories on what, you know, what brought them to where they are now. Right? So I love even looking at resumes and like kind of seeing the story that comes out. So, so bring us, take us back a little bit. When you're getting into sales leadership in the '90s, that's obviously quite different than what sales leadership looks like now. So talk to us a little bit about like what it looked like then and also what it looks like now.

Yeah, I guess, you know, I was in that classic world of pinstripe suits, white shirts, and nice ties. In fact, when I went through sales training, it was called sales school at the time, we had a stylist come in to style what we wore. And the first thing they said to us was, pay the most amount of money you can for your shoes. Shoes and a decent belt. Your suit you can get away with, your shirt you can get away with, but shoes belt are the most important items. So it was a very, uh, I don't remember if you remember the Gordon Gekko in the movie, uh, um, can't remember what the movie was called now, but yeah, Gordon Gekko, that whole braces, and it was a very, um, competitive, uh, environment. And sales still is in a competitive environment, you know, that hasn't changed because every organization needs the tip of the spear, which is the salespeople out selling, winning business so that they can survive. I think the difference these days is it's more about working, rather than selling to, it's more about working with clients, prospects to help them develop and achieve whatever they're trying to achieve. Rather than trying to sell to them.

I like that. So it's, it's less like selling to and more working with them.

Correct. Yes.

Okay. And I wonder, I mean, there's kind of this, this also this shift of, I mean, the term account manager, right? Like, I feel like in the last like 10 or so years, that term comes up a lot. And an account manager is essentially a salesperson, right? But, but you're, you're managing these accounts, you're And that kind of reminds me of this idea of like you're working with your clients, you're not just like selling to them.

Yeah. And there are so many different terms for salespeople these days because, you know, I'm really passionate about sales as a profession. It is a profession just like being an accountant, a lawyer, any other type of profession.

Yeah.

And no organization can exist without it. But people are uncomfortable using the term sales in their job title. So they call themselves account managers, business development managers, that kind of thing. Whereas actually, why not just say what you are? I'm here to sell. And what that means is I'm here to help you achieve your business goals. You know, I'm not gonna try and sell you something you don't want because you can't do that. Yeah, that's a very short-term relationship. So I'm here to help you develop your business or whatever it is you're selling to help you fulfill your wants and needs.

So, so you have this background and you, you attend a Tony Robbins seminar, let's say. And I've heard kind of recently that someone explained to him as like Tony Robbins is just like in his dharma, right? Like he is doing what he's supposed to be doing and it is contagious clearly, right? So you go to the seminar and you're like, yeah, I, could also be— I could be in this position of, of sharing this passion for others. So you start there, and at this point, this is— is this your first time starting a business when you, when you go into, you know, creating your coaching?

Uh, so no, the first business I started was the events business, running business.

Okay.

Um, and that's— but I built that up alongside working in corporate life. Well, so that was the first venture into building a business which is still running today. 17, 18 years after we started it, it's still thriving.

And what is that business?

So it's a business called XNRG or Extreme Energy, and we organize single day, multi-day ultra distance running events. So that's longer than a marathon events off-road. We also do quite a lot of walking events for charities to help them raise funds and raise money. Oh, um, and we've, we've organized many cycle events and all sorts of team building days and stuff like that as well. So that's what that business does.

Okay. So my father, when I was growing up in the States, he, um, was a race director and owned a bunch of, um, adventure racing businesses. And so like when I would go visit for summers, they would have all of these, you know, crazy athletes, and I use the word crazy quite intentional because they paid money to, to be tortured. Um, but I imagine it's, it's somewhat similar, right? Like you're, you're putting on these courses and they are these large events and people come and they, they pay you money to just be traumatized, to have an amazing time. Oh, okay.

That's right. Yeah, but no, adventure racing, right? So I was an adventure racer back in the late '90s, early 2000s. That's how I met my wife, actually, was interesting. And, uh, absolutely loved it because it was running, canoeing, cycling, a real mix of activities.

So yeah, I wonder if you ever did— did you ever do anything with Odyssey Adventure Racing?

I never did anything.

Primal Quest? Okay, okay, okay. Yeah, they did some things around like the Himalayas and stuff too. So anyway, we'll come back to that. So you, so you have this business, and, and it's, it's— and I only share that little anecdote with you because I, I got a quick snapshot that that is a, is a true business and probably your time job after your full-time job, right? So, so you're running that business and you're like, okay, cool, I can probably copy and paste some of these, like, these methods that I've learned, um, in this business to this new leadership coaching business, right? Talk to me a little bit about kind of those parallels.

Yeah, I think the parallel— well, as any business owner will, will say and will know, you only learn about business when you're in business.

Yeah.

So, you know, I made, the good thing was I had a full-time job while I made all the mistakes I needed to make with the businesses I was building it up. So the things I could take into the coaching and mentoring business and the sales training business, I'd learned a lot of the mistakes that, okay. You know, I've not, I'm still making mistakes now to be honest, you know, all those years later. But that's because the world changes and you have to try new things. Yeah. But, so I think the parallel I took in was just give it a go, just go for it. You know, don't hold back. If you've got a passion, you've got to say, try it, but you don't have to burn your bridges straight away. You can try it. You can, what do they call it in the States? A hustle, your side hustle. You can have a side hustle, try it, learn it, see whether it works, see whether people will buy it. And then if you want, you can make that decision to burn the bridges and go into it full time.

So, so what, what made you say, you know, I really feel called to, to, to do these leadership trainings? Like what made you think, you know, I'm going to offer something else than others out there?

Okay. So this all happened. It was a moment, you know, there's a moments in time when decisions are made.

Yeah.

And this was a moment in time when I was in the Arctic doing a 300-mile foot race.

Crazy. That's crazy.

It was, yeah, it was a little bit crazy, but, and I'd just gone through a really hard night. It was one of those evenings, the temperatures got down to -55 degrees centigrade. There was 45 people started the event and only, 6 people got through the first night because it was so brutal.

And were you one of them?

Yes. Yeah. In fact, I won the event eventually. It was 6 days later. But as I came out of that night and there was this beautiful sunny afternoon, I was feeling great and I just thought, you know, if I can get through these hardships— and it wasn't the first big event I'd done. I'd done desert events and mountain events. If I can get through these hardships, there's some lessons here I need to share with other people. And that afternoon, it was about 4 o'clock in the afternoon. I know exactly where I was. I made a decision I was going to leave corporate life and I was going to spend the rest of my working life, my life, because I don't plan to stop working, but I was going to spend the rest of my life helping others achieve their big goals, whether that's in business or their personal life.

Cool. So you're kind of like on this high and you're like, okay, if I can be here achieving my goals, others can too. And my, my dharma is to really help people see that yes, they can also achieve these, these goals, right? Yeah.

Yeah.

Cool. I love it.

Exactly what my purpose in life is, that my dharma is exactly—

how do people know that they need to work with you? Do they just search like I need to achieve my goals, you know, like how do they get to you?

Yeah, that's a really good question. And there isn't one simple way. So people will find me by looking, you know, they'll see me on social media, they'll see me speaking at an event, and then they might follow up along those lines. Typically I get a lot of word of mouth. So someone has worked with me and then that gets passed to someone else. But you know the expression, when the student is ready, a teacher will appear. And it's so true, right? So when the moment's right, you might be watching that one TikTok video or that one YouTube video, or you might be just searching for something and a name pops up. And I, I'm a big believer that, you know, the, call it the universe, call it fate, call it whatever, the right things will pop up at the right times when you're ready.

So are you on TikTok? Are you, are you out there on, on, uh, social?

So I, I am, um, I'm on all the social media platforms. So because my name's quite unusual, it's easy to find me. So I'm on Instagram, I'm on Facebook, I'm on, uh, TikTok. To be honest, I didn't really know what TikTok was until about 8 months ago, and my marketing team said, Neil, you need to be on here. And that was, and actually I found it a great platform for learning. And I've got my website where people can find out lots of information about me as well.

So then what are you offering though, your clients that others aren't? Like what is your, what is different about the way you work with them?

Yeah, that's a good question. And to be honest, they'd probably better them answering that than me answering it. But what I hear is, so there's the technical side of having got experience in business, in the military, and in my endurance sports. So I bring a mindset that's different to other people because of those three things. And I coach and mentor people using that knowledge and using coaching skills that I've developed and learned as I've qualified over the years. But the thing I hear most is people love working with me because when they leave a session, they have more energy and feel like they can achieve more than when they came in. Awesome. So I don't know how to put it, but that's that transfer of energy, I guess, is what I hear people say.

And this empowerment and someone just being in their court saying, hey, you can do these things, let's do them.

And it's helping them make that connection and believe they can by asking the questions and helping them see that some of these stories they're telling themselves and some of the blocks they're putting in the way just aren't real.

Awesome. So, okay, so you're in the '90s, they're like, spend the money on the boots and the shoes, the shoes and the belts. Not the boots and the shoes, belts and the shoes. Anyway. And, and then, okay, great. Then you go into the 2000s and things are also starting to shift a little, right? 20 years later, AI really becomes very accessible to, to everyone. Right. And so talk to us, bring us back like 2, 3 years ago, ChatGPT becomes available. OpenAI, you know, is is, is everywhere. Talk to me a little bit about, like— and, and, and I know, I imagine your relationship with AI is quite different now than it was 3 years ago, right? So talk to me about how you felt when that first came out.

So, so you're right, massively different now than it was even a year ago. Yeah, actually, you know, so I I guess I started using AI as another form of Google to start with. That was kind of how I used it to start with. And then I guess it was probably 18 months ago where I really understood the value of it when I met someone who had just, who was an AI, a professor basically in AI. He was teaching at a university, he'd gone into business for himself I ended up helping by coaching him and he started showing me what AI was capable of.

In what ways?

Well, the first thing where I really saw the value of it. So with sales training, we do a lot of role play and to build role play can take days of research into the industry, into the types of objections and issues that you might come across. And I would spend hours interviewing people in different companies to build those role plays.

Wow.

I tried it in ChatGPT to see what came out. And honestly, I just put in some prompts, put in some information, and what came out was amazing. And it was better than I could have created over 3 days. And it took me 1 hour. So, wow.

So at that point, you're like, okay, I'm obviously— this is my new tool for this. And then what? And then what kind of developed in your journey here?

So I, I still use it loads to help me with those sort of things now. Um, the— I guess the big developments— there's two, two big developments I use it for now. One of them is I've got an AI coach that is available to my coaching clients. I don't do it as a separate, but it's It's there and it's available to my existing clients to ask questions and, and, and help them with problems if I'm not around.

And you've trained it as GPT, obviously. And yeah, cool. Okay.

Yeah.

Tell me more.

A lot of effort into training it with all the content that's out there, all the books I've written, the YouTube videos, everything's in there. So that's the second thing, which is really exciting, the sales training. Is creating roleplay, online roleplays using AI.

Awesome.

So I can create a person that acts like a customer and then the salesperson will be given, you know, you need to make a call and get an appointment. And they'll phone up and they'll do it online like this with the AI and the AI will put up objections, they'll act like a normal human being, and it's, it's real great learning. And then they get feedback at the end how they did.

Amazing. So then, so question for you. So if someone came to me and they said, hey Flora, you need to go spend some of your time role-playing with like an avatar or an AI, I would, I would probably think about 150 other things that I'd want to do with my time instead, right? And I imagine this is one of those things where it's like Okay, finally, once you're out there doing the role-playing and then you, you encounter a similar experience, you're like, yes, I'm so glad I had that experience in that role-play experience. But how do you— I mean, going back to this question, like, how do you know you need it before you actually need it?

Yeah, I guess it's like any skill. Um, you know, if you think about any sport, like a martial art, You know, you practice certain and you rehearse certain blocks, certain punches, certain moves so that when you, and you rehearse it over and over again so it becomes like a muscle memory.

Yeah.

And it's the same with sales is just a skill that you practice over and over again so that when you get hit with that objection or when the customer is non-responsive, or is difficult to deal with, your muscle memory, because you practice it, steps in.

Yeah. Cool. Very cool. So then where do you see yourself using AI going forward?

That's a great— it's a really good question. And there's so many places. I think in the sales training, it's just going to keep developing more and more and more. I don't want to go away because I could, use Claude or something like that to record me and then I give it a script to teach. And that may be useful for the online courses I do because I do some self-paced online videos that you, so at the moment I go in a studio, I record them, they get edited and then they get uploaded to a platform where students can use them.

And is that like through Kajabi or something? GoHighLevel or something?

It's Teachable is what I use. Yeah. So, in the future, I may just be able to create the one video of me talking for 20 seconds and then give it the script to, so I don't have to go in a studio and do it. So I guess that's one way I could see it being utilized going into the future. And with coaching, I think with coaching, there's probably a way of, I work one-to-one with coaching clients and scalability of that is my time. So if I want to help more people, then creating a really good coaching AI may be the way of doing that. Okay. So yeah, so where do I see AI in coaching, I think I see if I can get to more people, because at the moment it's just me. It's just me and I do work one-to-one with clients, so it's limited by the number of hours that I coach in a week.

Yeah, of course.

If I, if I could make it scalable using AI and create an AI, a really good AI coaching version, then I can help more people. Really what I want to try and do.

No, I love that. And, and you just reminded me two things of this, this idea of helping more people. I had, um, a, a guest on here one day and she, um, does AI for the environment, which is like, what? AI? Like, how do you do that? You know? And I was like, not good for the environment, I thought. Um, and she— my lesson from her was, um, look, AI is a tool, right? And you can either use it for good or you can use it for bad. And this tool is out there and I want to use it for good, right? So I this idea of just like being out there to help more people makes me think of that. And then, you know, I imagine you're pretty new to, to Jam AI, right? So, yeah, I work alongside Jam. Jam is really this— our thought leader on AI. She has this ability kind of going back to this idea of like dharma, right? She has this ability to consume and learn tools as they come out, like they can come out that day and she's just digested it and then she shares that information and kind of these bite-sized, you know, tangible ways for people to understand. And that's not me, right? Like I'm still using ChatGPT like Google. And the reason we work so well together, though, is because I really love to learn these like human sides of people and their AI and their story. But she said something to me years ago. She's like, AI is going to allow people to be more human because it's going to give them back their time. And I mean, you mentioned this earlier and this idea of like your side hustle, your, you know, kind of that passion project on the side as it comes out. It's like AI is giving us even more time to do these things. I know I throw a lot at you, but I'm here. I'm curious.

That's true. And But do you know what's really interesting, Flora, is I work with some pretty senior people that run big businesses. And when I say to them, because they're typically late 40s, early 50s, and they want to get ready for stepping away from the big corporate job or from running their own business. And when I say to them, so tell me how you want to be living your life when you've got that time. What do you want to be doing? And I get a long list of all the things they don't want to do. Like what?

Give us an example. Okay. Yes. Oh yeah, I was curious. Yeah.

Yeah. So I don't want to be on Zoom doing calls. I don't want to be getting up at that time in the morning and jumping on a plane. But very, very few people know what they want to do. And so you're absolutely right. AI is going to be creating all this time and opportunity. And this is, I think coaches are going to come really important in this is helping people find their dharma, their purpose, their— what am I going to do with this time that's going to make me feel fulfilled as a human being when I'm not working?

Yeah, I love that. And I— we've, we've been in my, in my little, my little family, um, we've been talking a lot about this idea of like visualizing, right? Like, you know, you, you know, you can't go toward something unless you have an idea of what that thing is, right? And what you just said, kind of, it's like Cool. Like, yeah, we're all pretty quick to tell you what we don't want in life, you know, but like, what is it that you do want? I love that.

Yeah. And if you— and because I get people come to me and go, you know, I've got this issue, I've got this issue, and I need to make a plan for how I can change it. But until you know where you want to be, you can't, you can't sketch that map. You can't build a map to get you there. If you don't know where you want to be. It's like the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland. When Alice gets to the crossroads and the Cheshire Cat's sitting in the tree and she says to the Cheshire Cat, which road should I take? And he says, well, where do you want to go? And she says, I don't know. And he says, well, any road will do. And so if we are not clear on where we want to go, any decision will do. It doesn't matter.

I love that. And then when people get the chance to work with you, you really facilitate the right questions, probably using some AI, um, to help identify exactly where they want to go.

Absolutely. That's a— it's a key part of— because you can't help someone with the actions, the how, the what, until they, you know, the where and the why. Where are you going and why are you going there?

Awesome. Super cool. Well, Neil, I feel so honored to have had this time with you. So thank you so much. Where can people find out, you know, how to work with you?

Yeah. Thank you, Flora.

Yeah.

So neilthubron.com is my website. That's the best place to go. Or if you just Google my name, you'll find lots of stuff about me.

Awesome. Great. Well, thank you so much. Take care and have a great rest of your day.

My pleasure. Thank you, Flora.

Talk soon. Ciao.