‘We worked really hard to create “me too” moments rather than “so what” moments.’
Will It Make The Boat Go Faster? is a phrase that has entered the business lexicon, not just as a book title and the name of a company but as a leadership philosophy. Ben Hunt-Davis and Harriet Beveridge self-published the first edition 15 years ago – Ben telling the inspiring story of how he and the British men’s rowing Eight underwent radical transformation to win Gold at Sydney in 2000, and performance coach Harriet highlighting the transferable strategies everyone can take from it.
Now Penguin are releasing an updated third edition. The principles remain the same, but the strategies are even sharper and the stories brought right up to date, to equip a new generation of individuals and leaders with tried-and-tested strategies for everyday success.
In this conversation, we talk about what it means to develop and refine one powerful idea over time, rather than chasing the next shiny thing, how the book and the business work together, and what it takes to sustain a creative partnership over many years and several editions. And there’s some candid insight into the real work of writing a book, which begins after you’ve actual written the book…
Will It Make The Boat Go Faster? site: https://willitmaketheboatgofaster.com/
Harriet’s site: https://www.standupandthrive.com/
Alison (Jones) on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/the-alison-jones/
The 10-day Business Book Proposal Challenge: www.proposalchallenge.com
Link for submitting your clip for Episode 500: https://bit.ly/45RfpdY
Alison Jones: I am here today with Ben Hunt-Davis and Harriet Beveridge, which is brilliant. I’m going to introduce them separately, obviously. Harriet Beveridge is a performance coach, comedian, speaker, and a budding neuroscientist with a track record of over 20 years in transforming corporate performance.
Ben Hunt-Davis won Olympic Gold in the Sydney Olympics in 2000 in the Team GB men’s rowing eight, and he’s now a performance consultant and a world-renowned keynote speaker. He’s also the co-founder of Will It Make The Boat Go Faster?, Which is a people performance and leadership consultancy, and together they are the authors of Will It Make The Boat Go Faster?: Olympic winning strategies for everyday success, which first came out in 2011 and now 25 years on – 15 years on, don’t be daft, it is out in a new edition from Penguin.
So first of all, congratulations. That’s some longevity for a book. Welcome to the podcast.
Harriet Beveridge: Thank you very much. Thank you
Ben Hunt-Davis: Thank you very much, it’s great to be on with you. Thanks
Alison Jones: And you have actually both been on separately in the past, haven’t you? Which is lovely, it’s really nice to have you. I know, Harriet’s raising her eyebrows in a really comical way, which you won’t have seen if you’re listening on the podcast, but I do recommend you watch the video of this.
So, tell me about the new edition. Why did you think it was necessary? This is actually the third edition, isn’t it? And and how has that whole kind of trajectory developed from the first one?
Harriet Beveridge: Gosh. There’s lots of reasons. I think firstly, the world keeps changing and the pace of change has got faster and the kind of challenges that the first edition addressed and the second edition addressed have just got stronger. So there was something about updating to honor that.
And also I guess if I’m ruthlessly honest, I thought the second edition was too long. There you go. I’m saying it. We needed to edit savagely
Alison Jones: Feel like I need to get some popcorn while Ben and Harriet debate this. What do you think, Ben?
Ben Hunt-Davis: No I totally agree. I totally agree. I think that with the first book we were really– first edition we were really happy, and then we just, for the second one we thought there’s more we can add. And then we looked at it and went, “God, that’s pretty thick.” And so we both agreed that it could be refined.
And there– we put in quite a lot of examples from our however many years of coaching experience to hopefully help guide relevance and application along the way. So hopefully it’s a more kind of refined, focused book that we have in edition three.
Alison Jones: And it is quite an unusual model to take that intellectual property, that concept and take it through time, refining it, as you say, adding more exemplars as you’ve done the work, as you’ve worked with organizations, meeting the need as it arises, rather than writing another book to say, “Actually, no, this principle has longevity, and we’re going to take it through these different incarnations.”
It is a really interesting- because it is 26 years since that moment in Sydney, isn’t it, Ben?
Ben Hunt-Davis: Thank you for reminding me, Alison.
Alison Jones: Sorry.
Ben Hunt-Davis: Yes the, Olympic win it was a really long time ago. And yes, the first edition of the book was a pretty long time ago. And I think that– I think we were just really happy with the feedback we’ve got from the book over the last 11 years since we first wrote it, 15 years, whatever it is since we first wrote it.
And we’ve discussed going in what’s the new topic? What’s the new thing? What’s the new book? And we keep coming back to going, “Actually we think we’ve got something that still works really well.” And there might be a new book at some point, I don’t know. But at the moment, I think we just both thought we’ve got something that has worked really well, let’s refine it and improve it rather than start all over again.
Harriet Beveridge: And I also think that if we- we self-published the first one with no help. It was really Wild West. Alison, we didn’t know you existed. Were you around 15 years ago? We didn’t spot you 15 years ago.
Alison Jones: I was in corporate publishing.
Harriet Beveridge: There you go.
Alison Jones: I would’ve been no help to you. Yes.
Harriet Beveridge: I think now probably we’d be advised to be less generous, put less stuff, in that the book is unashamedly, it’s loads and loads of different strategies around high performance.
So yes, you could absolutely probably go let’s have one book on team, and let’s have one book on bounce-back ability and performing under pressure, and yada yada. But no, we chucked it all in.
Alison Jones: And you found a title that really has resonated, hasn’t it? And caught people’s imagination, and I think that asset, if you like, is something that you don’t throw away lightly. It’s like rebranding Coca-Cola and giving it a new name. Why would you do that?
Harriet Beveridge: Funnily enough, we were advised at the time not to use that title.
Alison Jones: Ah.
Harriet Beveridge: Isn’t that interesting? So we were told at the time it’s too much of a mouthful. And to be sure, the number of times that I’ve misspelt it or how many Goats Bowing Faster have we had under autocorrect over the years.
But you’re right, it’s super sticky. To the point where I’ve had a couple of people say to me like, “Yes, I haven’t bought your book because I get it from the title.”
Alison Jones: Wow. That’s a bit of a double-edged compliment, isn’t it?
Harriet Beveridge: Oh, thanks a lot. There’s more in it than just, focus on what’s important. But no we’ve been super lucky. It’s really sticky. It’s really sticky, that phrase.
Alison Jones: And you leverage it out beyond the book.
Obviously we’ve talked a little bit about will it make the goat– will it make the goat…?
Harriet Beveridge: Hooray.
Alison Jones: Grow faster?
Harriet Beveridge: Now that’s in your head.
Alison Jones: Will it make the boat go faster, thank you, as an experience, as a coaching philosophy, as a leadership sort of strategy, how do the two work together Ben?
Ben Hunt-Davis: I first wanted to write the book because I’d been pigeoned as a kind of keynote speaker, and I was going, there’s more. And I wanted to write the book to demonstrate that, I could– we could do more. And then maybe a year after it was published, I was actually looking for somebody to go into business with, and Harriet never really wanted to go into business with me. She wanted to write with me, but not work with me.
And so I got approached by– I was looking for a business partner. I got approached by a guy called Tom Barry, and we set up the business together just after the 2012 Olympics. And so running the two things beside each other, the book is great for the company, and the company I think is great for the book.
And Harriet and I work together totally side by side on the book and for the business. Harriet does a whole load of work for us as a freelancer and is amazing, Oh my God, I wish she could do more for us. But we’ve just got a different relationship there because that’s the way it’s worked out. But I think the two work alongside each other, the business and the book really well.
In the business, we take the IP from the book, and we bring as much of it to life as we possibly can, helping people get really clear, helping people really, and businesses really answer the question, “Will it make the boat go faster?” By getting clarity and getting alignment and all the things the book talks about.
Alison Jones: It’s particularly interesting hearing you say that you didn’t want to be pigeonholed as a speaker because I think that can– when you have done something extraordinary, when you have a great story and corporates “Oh, we love to talk to gold medalists,” and it can be a bit of a one-trick pony thing.
That’s your story. That’s great. But what you’ve done is spin it out into something executable for other people and I think that’s a neat trick if you can pull it off.
Ben Hunt-Davis: And the guys I rowed with, they spent so much time taking the mick out of me about going, “Oh my God, you rowed and then all you can do is talk about it.” And I think now with the longevity of the book and the business and what we’re able to do, I think finally I might have got a tiny bit of respect from them…
Alison Jones: …who’s laughing now?
Ben Hunt-Davis: A tiny bit.
Harriet Beveridge: Oh, love it.
Alison Jones: And you talk– Harriet, again, if you’re not watching this, you won’t have seen it, but Harriet was nodding in a very determined way when Ben was talking about how she didn’t want to have found a company with him.
But let’s talk about your relationship as writers, because as you say, it was a Wild West back in 2011, you published the book. How has that… you’re still talking, so that’s nice. But, how has that relationship developed over the-
Harriet Beveridge: and can I just clarify that this wasn’t a personal thing, right? It was at the time,
Alison Jones: I think it’s too late for that now.
Harriet Beveridge: No. This has become a kind of some kind of therapy session.
No I want to save the world and be back in time for tea. So I knew that starting a business with really small babies was just not what I wanted.
It’s been great that we’ve joined at the hip in terms of the book, and as I say, I do a lot of work with Will It, but yes, I knew that starting a business is wild, right? And I kind of wanted to see the children some of the time, not all of the time.
I think the co-author thing has been brilliant because we bring such different things to the party.
And, I can’t remember when we settled on the approach of Ben would write his story bit and I do the kind of so what’s the coaching bit. But that’s been magic because it meant that we could be our own voice, we could really lean into our particular skills, because I play it up, but it’s absolutely true that I’m not sporty. I have no interest in rowing .
And so I’m the kind of “So what? Why is that relevant? How does it work in the real world?” And, in the book, Ben, the story’s amazing. It’s such a page-turner. It’s such a rattling good read. So it just seemed like a really, yes, happy, easy partnering really.
Ben Hunt-Davis: And I think away from the actual writing I think that I’m not necessarily the best completer in the world, and Harriet is very clear, on kind of timelines, deadlines, if I say something, then she damn well expects me to do it, which I’m not always so good on. And so I think we’ve also brought different things in terms of how we work together, what we can bring to the party away from the actual written word.
And I think we’ve complemented each other really well. We’ve been able to be really straight and honest when we’ve got it wrong in various different ways. And, so just in a kind of really rounded way, we’ve brought different things, and it’s worked fantastically well
Alison Jones: It’s so interesting because when you co-write with someone, you’re really, hostage to fortune. It depends very much on how that relationship goes, how you work together, and there’s all sorts of issues often with feedback on each other’s sections, how you divvy up the work, how you find a voice that is the sort of combination of both of you.
And I think you’ve had a really neat solution to that because as you say you both had your very distinct roles, you both had your very distinct voices. But what is surprising, I think, is the way that you have kept that shared vision of the book, as well as a good working relationship, through those different iterations of the book.
I mean, is that something you sit down and go, “Where are we going next with this? What has to change in this edition?”
Harriet Beveridge: Definitely, when we first sat down and talked about writing the book and the story, I don’t know if I’ve embellished this, but the story as I remember it is I was made redundant. It was the crash of 2008. I was made redundant on maternity leave, so I suddenly had this kind of “Oh my goodness, I’ve got no job and I’ve got childcare.”
And, Ben phones up and goes, “Brilliant news, we can write a book.” I think you were a little bit more empathetic than that, but…
Ben Hunt-Davis: … no, not that much, I think.
Harriet Beveridge: So it was really, we sat down and we, like the crew did, we sat down and went very much through what is our vision for this book? What’s the goal? What do we each want? Are we absolutely clear and aligned on what that is? I wish we’d kept that scrap of paper, I can still, I can see it in my head. And we talked very explicitly about like, how do we get the best out of each other, and how is this going to work?
So from a logistics point of view, I ended up getting a job that I was two days in London. I don’t live in London, I live in Bath, and stayed overnight on a Tuesday and basically I freeloaded dinner at Ben’s house, and we wrote the book on a Tuesday night. So from a logistics point of view, but also from a feedback point of view, and we’ve kept doing that, those kind of, that vision and those rules we’ve kept, that’s core each time, isn’t it?
Ben Hunt-Davis: Yes, it is, and I think, the rules we started with, we definitely updated as we went along as we found out more about… we had worked together however many years before, six, eight years before or something. But as we got into the process, as we worked out what made each other tick and annoyed each other, we updated as we went and went how do we…
I think our goals and aspirations were pretty similar the whole time, and how we went about doing it, we’ve kept just having pretty good quality conversations, I think, about going, this is, I feel as though you let me down, or I think this or I think that and, we need to work on that.
Which is, so our ability to be really open with each other has been fantastic.
Alison Jones: I feel like this is a sort of couples therapy session as much as it is about co-writing, actually
Harriet Beveridge: No, it’s, oh, but it is so true. For the third edition, we met up in a hotel equidistant, and we literally spent the day in the hotel lobby just talking through what’s the goal this time? What’s the rules of the game this time? What does success look like this time? How much time are we willing to put towards it? How do the financials play out?
You’ve got to talk all that stuff through, otherwise it comes and bites you on the bum
Ben Hunt-Davis: And it was a really nice hotel, the one in the kind of the middle of the M4 services at Newbury. It was…
Harriet Beveridge: …in a roundabout.
Alison Jones: How funny.
And what was the goal for the third edition? Because it is– Many people already know the book, a lot of people already have the book, and you’re doing a new edition. What is the ambition for it?
Harriet Beveridge: God, we should have rehearsed this, make sure we’re totally aligned.
Alison Jones: Where’s that scrap of paper?
Harriet Beveridge: Yes, damn. It’s to keep improving it. Each time I want it to be better than the last edition. So for example, the Amazon scores have gone up from the first edition to the second edition. I want them to go up for the third edition.
The Goodreads feedback, if there was any negative ones, it was that it was a bit too long, the second one, so write sharper, better.
And it’s going to sound so cheesy, but ultimately the biggest buzz I get is of people going, “Ah, I used your book and did X.”
And we WhatsApp each other with these just amazing stories. There’s a school where they’ve cut their behaviour problems from pupils massively. There’s a guy who’s a hockey hobbyist, and he’s now representing his country. There’s just in every- there’s businesses where like their whole business is on the philosophy, and I get really- just that, it’s that.
So if we can make it easier for people to pick up the strategies and if we can broaden it so it’s available more easily to more people, game on.
Ben, what was your goal? Something completely different.
Ben Hunt-Davis: No, I think getting more of those emails or messages or whatever we get is right up there. And then we also spoke about numbers. When we originally wrote the book, we heard a stat, got no idea whether it was true or not, that if you can do– if you can sell 100,000 copies of a sports book, you’re in the top 1% of sales.
I have no idea whether that stat’s true, and we’ve done the 100,000 and we went the next thing is to do, it’s taken us, I think it took us 11, 12 years to get there. Can we do the next 100,000 in a year or two? So there was, we wanted kind of volume and we wanted more of those amazing messages that we get sometimes of just going, “It’s made a difference because…”
Alison Jones: Lovely qualitative, quantitative blend.
Ben Hunt-Davis: Yes.
Alison Jones: Brilliant. Yes. You know this because you’ve been here before. I always ask guests for their best tip for first-time authors particularly. I’m going to take Harriet first. What would you say this time, Harriet?
Harriet Beveridge: I’m going to cheat and do two, which is one, be very clear on your goals and differentiate them between stuff that’s outside your control and inside your control, right? So we have no control over how many we’re going to sell, but I do have control over putting on my big girl pants and, making requests, doing marketing, that kind of stuff. Or I’ve got no control over the feedback people give, but I have got control over being really happy with the quality of what I’ve written. So there’s something about the goals, definitely.
And the other thing is just being patient, because we weren’t brilliantly happy with the results of the book in the first six months. And then for the second edition, we have the dubious honor of we launched that edition the day the UK went into lockdown. So we literally were selling a book that no one could buy. So I think there’s something about, especially if you’ve got a business book and it’s entwined with what you do as a business person, brilliant. It’s your passport. It’s your business card, so be patient. Those would be my two.
Alison Jones: Yes, it’s a long game. Beautifully illustrates that. Thank you. What about you, Ben?
Ben Hunt-Davis: If I’m allowed two as well, I think the first one would be prepared for what happens after you think you’ve finished the text.
Alison Jones: As Harriet sprays tea all over her keyboard. Yes
Ben Hunt-Davis: For each edition, maybe I’m a really slow learner. For each edition, we finished the manuscript and go, “Yes, we’ve done it.”
Alison Jones: It’s now done. I can get on with my life.
Ben Hunt-Davis: Yes, no, we might be halfway. So I think realizing the manuscript is possibly half the journey.
And the other thing we worked really hard on was to create as many ‘me too’ moments rather than ‘so what’ moments.
And we tried to– We listed out a number of different kind of personas of people who might want to read the book and went, “Do we have a story? Do we have an anecdote that works for this group of people, for this group of people, for this group of people, this group of people?” And we worked really hard to create as many, “Ah me too. Yes, I get that. Yes. Yes, I understand that.”
And we were pretty thorough with going through each chapter going, Are we hitting enough of those different personas enough times? And I think that was – We got that as a tip from a friend. And I think it was, I think it was really good
Alison Jones: Yes, I love that. ‘Me too’, rather than ‘so what’, so that’s another way of thinking about it.
Brilliant, normally we get one tip from a single author, so we’ve had four tips from two authors today. So just, talk about over-delivering. That’s amazing.
Do you think you’d be able to restrict yourself to a single book recommendation, both of you?
Oh well done. Okay, I’m going to come to Ben first this time.
Ben Hunt-Davis: So, I think, I actually very nearly went to one of your books, but as I’m only allowed to say one I won’t say Cath Bishop’s The Long Win. Instead, I’ll say Danny Meyer’s Setting the Table.
Alison Jones: I see what you did there. Brilliant. Thank you.
Harriet, what about you?
Harriet Beveridge: I would go for Difficult Conversations. And I’ve forgotten the author. Ah, rookie move. It’s behind me. I can go and grab it. I think that any business requires good quality conversations, so anything that can help you with that.
Alison Jones: Brilliant. And you’re exemplifying it as well. Amazing.
And if people want to find out more about Will It Make The Boat Go Faster as a business entity, but also more about you two individually, where should they go?
Harriet, I’ll start with you.
Harriet Beveridge: So my website’s harrietbeveridge.com. I’m an imaginative bear.
Alison Jones: Where can they see you? Are you performing anytime soon?
Harriet Beveridge: If you’re in Bath, I’m doing a gig on… but that’s June 12th, so that’s probably after this goes out.
Alison Jones: Recording this in May 2026, just for the context.
Harriet Beveridge: But no, on a keynote conference circuit near you.
Alison Jones: Yes, keep your eyes out. Watch the internet. Brilliant.
And Ben, what about you?
Ben Hunt-Davis: So getting hold of me, at willitmaketheboatgofaster.com. Yes, pretty easy.
Alison Jones: Not will it make the goat go faster? No.
Harriet Beveridge: Have you bought the website?
Alison Jones: I think…
Harriet Beveridge: …buy the…
Alison Jones: …buy that URL.
Harriet Beveridge: URL. Will the goat bow faster? I feel like there’s a separate entity coming on.
Alison Jones: Amazing. Thank you both so much for your time today. It’s been just a joy to talk to you both. I wish you every success with the third edition, and thank you for your time today
Harriet Beveridge: Thank you so much, Alison.
Ben Hunt-Davis: Thank you for having us on, Alison. It’s been great chatting to you.
