Simon Benn explains why he coaches children and parents. After struggling with anxiety and failure as an adult, he discovered confidence-building techniques through his own coach and now helps kids become happier and bully-proof. He's driven by watching children transform rapidly and seeing parents recognize the change in their kids.
Hello, good afternoon, good afternoon to you. I hope you are well wherever you are in the, in the world. It's afternoon here, just turned afternoon here in the, uh, in, in the UK, North Yorkshire where I am. So this morning I got asked a question by a mum and she wanted to know why I do what I do. So I thought, well, why don't I answer that question? Because there might be other parents out there who are curious, who are suspicious, who are nosy. I'm a bit— I can be a bit nosy sometimes too. Who just want to know, just want to know. I guess the feeling is the suspicion, behind the suspicion there's that kind of that bit at the back of our brain. Is it the reptilian brain? I'm not sure. The bit that, that's on the lookout for danger. So is— the fundamental question is, is Simon safe or not? Or yeah, is Simon safe or not? And knowing why I— why he does what he does is gonna help me understand that. So I was a pretty happy kid, so it's not that that drives me to work with parents to make their kids happy and confident and resilient. So it's not that. I think it's more to do with the fact that I was an unhappy adult a lot of the time. So I was scared of failure, to put it simply. I was scared of failure. I was never motivated towards success in my business, really. Well, I say never, that might be a little bit overcooking it, but most of the time most of the stuff that went through my mind was concern about the future, concern about failure. So I guess, you know, children's happiness, confidence, resilience, and bullyproof— out of those 4, the biggest one for me was, as an adult, was confidence. I was worried about failure Worried about what failure would do to me. My business was a big factor, so my self-esteem and my confidence were all wrapped into that. So if the business was doing well, then I was doing well, and if the business was doing badly, I was doing badly. And that would change literally on a second-to-second basis, split-second-to-minute basis. You'd get some good news, you'd get some bad news. Good news, baby. And then, I mean, success took a long time for me, financial success. So probably 12, 13 years, I would say, of running the business after my parents retired. And it was a hollow victory. What I mean by that is it didn't meet my expectations. I was still worried about the future. Success seemed temporary. Success seemed temporary. Is that a word? Temporary. And I was onto kind of what next, as a lot of us are. So what next? What am I going to do next? How am I going to— And it's a bit like, I guess it's a bit like a football manager, you know, you win and then you're on to the next game, preparing for the next game. And that was quite unsettling for me. What I mean was hitting the target, hitting this big target that I had in the business. when it didn't make me happy. That was unsettling for me, and that sent me down on the route to kind of personal development. And then one conversation I had with my coach, I just realized that I wanted to be a coach. I wanted— I said, I just blurted out, and a coach, I said, I just, I want your job. I want to do what you do. I want to help, help people. And, um, I tried a couple of things and Sold the old business, tried a couple of things and didn't work out, and was very frustrated by that. And then the kid stuff came along, and I took a load of ideas from stuff that I'd learned that helped me be more confident, have higher self-esteem, self-belief. Happiness, all of those things. But I guess, yeah, mainly the confidence thing again would be the piece, but the confidence obviously feeds into the happiness. So I took a load of what I'd learned and wrapped that into an approach to helping kids and I absolutely loved it, and I absolutely loved having fun. Who doesn't want to have more fun? Having fun with kids. Kids learn more when they're having fun. I love sharing these concepts. I loved inspiring them. I loved empowering them, whatever you want to call it. I love seeing them just having fun and learning stuff that was really important to them about how they can make their dreams come true, you know, be a footballer or a nurse or whatever they want to be. And using that as a kind of like a nice Trojan horse really for to get them into the into the happiness and the confidence stuff, helping them learn to ignore the people that say they couldn't make their dreams come true, helping them ignore bullies. And that was a big thing for me that I kind of stumbled across that. But as somebody that was bullied. That it really became clear for me how much I loved this stuff. And you know, I was what I was—the guy that I'd met. I wish I'd met thirty, sorry, forty-odd years ago when I was being bullied, and because I would have loved to have been bully-proof back then, so the bullies didn't upset me. And So kids telling me that they'd become bully-proof so other kids couldn't upset them anymore, that, that is part of the ultimate juice I draw out of what I do. So that's, that's what I do what I do. And I didn't think really— I loved the stuff with kids so much, I didn't think I'd love training, showing parents what I'd learned. I didn't know adults of any— I really didn't think that that was for me because I had so much fun. But then when I got into Doing that, I love that just as much. You know, I love working with with with kids in schools, and I love with working with parents in homes. And I and I love on Zoom. You know, I work on Zoom, and I absolutely love love hearing the best bit is is seeing the transformation in the in the parents, and then hearing about the transformation that they've been able to. Um, see in their, in their kids. So, um, is that— I hope that, uh, makes sense. 8 minutes, we're on 8 minutes. Uh, that's why I do what I do. So essentially it's about sharing what I've learned. with parents so that they can help their kids. And yeah, that's what it's about. So the idea for Working for Kids came out of the blue, like a lot of our best ideas come from. They come from out of the blue, and I just thought, I'll try this, I'll see I had an inkling and some intuition that kids have, you know, less rubbish in their heads, so their transformation will be faster. But I had no idea how fast that transformation would be. And when that— when I saw that transformation for myself, when I heard the kids talking about what they'd learned about being happier and making the dream come true and bully-proof, all that sort of stuff, which you can find out on— you can see videos, a video compilation of quotes, kids talking to the camera about what they've learned after like a 30-minute session with me on simonbenn.co.uk. That's what rocked my world. It was the instantaneous nature of their transformation and their change. Kids change far quicker than we do as adults. They've just got less on their mind. So from a personal kind of— my world is about— my mission is about changing the world, but from a very selfish perspective, I guess, I'm looking at it from a self-perspective. It's about the juice that I draw from seeing the transformation in, in kids and hearing about the transformation that parents have had with their kids, seen in their kids. So that's why I do what I do. Okay, any more questions about what I do, then just ping me an email, drop me a message, simon@simonbennett.com. And I'll see you soon. Take care. Bye-bye.
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