Coachinginterview

HOW THE BACK OF A TEAM BUS BECAME GROUND ZERO FOR A £10 MILLION EMPIRE | YANTO BARKER

with Yanto Barker

47:43·7 February 2024

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TOPICS

CYCLING RECOVERY

Yanto Barker built a £10 million kit company while still racing professionally—spending mornings doing six-hour rides and afternoons managing spreadsheets on team buses. He shares how applying stoic philosophy, deliberate identity-building, and the goal-setting discipline from professional cycling helped him navigate the brutal transition from athlete to entrepreneur, and why the most successful people develop multiple versions of themselves rather than clinging to a single identity.

Key Takeaways

You can't instantly shift identities after 20+ years in one pursuit—it takes roughly five years of consistent feeding and commitment to build a new identity alongside the old one, not replacing it overnight.
Breaking big goals into simple decision metrics (like 'is this making me faster or slower?') transfers directly from cycling to business, but life's complexity as an adult means you need multiple metrics, not just one binary lens.
Having two separate professional identities protects your mental health: a bad day on the bike doesn't define your entire life if you're also building something in business, and vice versa.
Heritage and tradition are often the biggest barriers to progress in established industries—even when data irrefutably shows innovation works, people resist because 'that's how we've always done it.'
Servicing a World Tour team is brutally demanding; real ROI measurement is nearly impossible, but the right partnership with aligned values and results is worth the investment and operational complexity.

Expert Quotes

"The one that will win is the one that you feed—basically transposing that fable onto multiple identities: when you start feeding those identities they get stronger and they become more substantial in your character in your life."

"I literally divided my day into halves—in the first half I was a pro bike rider, in the second half I remained a professional cyclist for the first seven years of this business, because in my psychology the mornings I was strong and confident, the afternoons I was weak and learning, but the fact I had both those extremes meant I was pretty good all the time."

"95% of talent is just talent and it's really annoying if you haven't got it, because you can work your ass off but you're only working for 5%—so if you're only 75% anyway you're never going to get anywhere near someone with real talent who could be 95%."

KEY QUOTES

“basically you can't retire from a sport that you did for 20 years or 25 years whatever and then jump out and then in within a week or two be fully up to you know the same level in a new identity that just doesn't work it like it takes another five years and you have to commit to it has to be consistent and you have to be dedicated to it”
Yanto Barker — Professional cyclist turned entrepreneur, founder of Le Col

“I literally divided my day into halves in the first half of the day I was a pro bik Rider and I went out and I did my five or six hours I came home and had lunch and the second half of the day this is for the first seven years of this business I I remained a professional cyclist”
Yanto Barker — Professional cyclist turned entrepreneur, founder of Le Col

“in my psychology in the mornings I was strong confident and an expert in the afternoons I was weak learning and a novice but the fact that I had both those experience to such Extremes in the same day they balanced out to me being pretty good all the time”
Yanto Barker — Professional cyclist turned entrepreneur, founder of Le Col

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT10 SECTIONS

The Good Wolf and the Bad Wolf

I feel like I've got a good wolf and a bad wolf inside me yanto the entrepreneur yanto the cyclist yanto The Family Man yanto the stoic basically you can't retire from a sport that you did for 20 years or 25 years whatever and then jump out and then in within a week or two be fully up to you know the same level in a new identity that just doesn't work it like it takes another 5 years so I literally divided my day into halves in the first half of the day I was a pro bik Rider and I went out and I did my five or six hours I came home and had lunch and the second half of the day this is for the first seven years of this business I I remained a professional cyclist you know and I was Pro con for a couple years with the one pro team so we were going I went to 11 different countries that that season uh spent how many hundreds of days away from home um and I was checking my emails looking at spreadsheets on the team bus on the way back from T Burgos you know 180 K with contador smashing my head in and all the other guys that were there and then I'm trying to focus yo Barker welcome to the romance cycle podcast thank you very much y we're talking off a a little bit about stoicism and as we were talking about that I almost wanted to jump in and say it then but I was like I'll save it till we record because it seems quite fitting to your story there's this brilliant uh stoic Fable and it's about a family and a son living in a small village and the Son and the f are kind of the two Central characters to it so one day it's they're all poor families in this V and one day this hair of horses Rambles onto the family's land and they stay there and all the Neighbors come along are like oh my God you've Untold wealth that none of us have this is amazing and the F responds good thing bad thing who knows and a week later the son falls off one of the horses and he breaks both his legs and the Neighbors come along and they're like oh my God that's the worst look I've ever seen and he the pH responded good thing bad thing who knows a week after that the local mil roll through and they say we're enlisting everyone under the age of 18 to fight in this child Army the kid can't now can't go to work CU he has broke two broken legs and the villagers come past and they're like oh my God you're so lucky your son didn't have to fight he said good thing bad thing who knows when I think about your story I just think of good thing batting who knows British Junior Champion good thing bading who knows into the pro ranks you seem to get a little stuck at the time you would have had the villagers coming up to you and saying oh my God what horrible look what a bad thing but as it transpired hasn't been bad luck at all has it well it all depends on what sort of time frame you look at doesn't it um I love that Fable by the way uh we were we were talking off air and I was saying I've only come into stoicism fairly recently thanks to a chairman um that I'm working with at the moment it's F fantastic guy um but I love that I love that Fable and I've actually known about it for longer than I realized that it was a stoic Fable um and at times of sort of stress and high pressure I I remind myself of it and I think you know it's easy to get caught in the moment and say oh it's bad luck or you know someone else has got it better than me That's a classic isn't it you know especially if in your 20s um but actually you do need to sort of take a broader View and it does help um overcome or deal with what can feel like really really high stress moments in your life because if you just only you know immerse yourself in that one moment then of course you're going to feel like that and you have to kind of spread it out a bit can you take me back to 25 years of age when you walked away from cycling because I know for me and projecting my emotions around that time onto you here like my whole world then was quite cycling focused and I only seen really One path that I could enjoy as a career forward had different career options but that was the one I was like this is what I want from my life and I'm going to do anything to get there and I felt like I worked harder than everyone else I felt like I put in so much more yet I just didn't get that output what was your head like back in 2009 when you decided to walk away it's probably very similar very very similar to what you just said and I I didn't walk away I felt like I jumped off because I had while I wasn't world I wasn't world tour right but I had been GB team five World Championships two Commonwealth Games Plus being looked after you

Depression After Retiring from Pro Cycling

Know in a manner that you you become accustomed to that you don't realize is pretty unique um and when I stopped I literally jumped off and down into quite a scary place I would say and um all my emotions and all my identity attached to who I'd become and who I'd built up you know I've been doing it for already 10 years at 25 um I left school at 16 to be a full-time cyclist and so a decade of commitment dedicated a motivation that burning burning drive and fire in your belly to go out and do six hours day after day after day and compete and take the risks in Bunch Sprints and you know in the middle of nowhere often um to to get the results you needed to move up the ladder was complete and full and then to to kind of leave that behind was actually very depressing that was my I didn't it took me a while to realize and I probably am self diagnosing myself like 10 years more than 10 years sorry uh like 25 years later but um yeah I think I was depressed that was that was my pretty much my predominant feeling afterwards how do you rebuild the identity piece because the only version you know right now you're wearing multiple hats you're yanto the entrepreneur you're yanto the cyclist you're yanto the stoic you're yanto the family man back then you're only yanto the cyclist how do you go about rebuilding that identity yeah well this is still really really relevant and I have this conversation with a few of my my peer ex-teammates or friends that have been Pros like I don't want to make this the podcast of fables but there is another one that I really really think about which is which is uh a young Native American boy asks one of his um one of the elders I feel like I've got a good wolf and a bad wolf inside me and they fight over the doing the right thing or doing a bad thing and the little boy's a bit nervous and he says to the Elder which one's going to win you know how do I make sure the good one wins and he says how do I know I can rely on the right one and he and the Elder says to him the one that will win is the one that you feed so basically transposing that that kind of fable onto the question that you asked me around yanto the yanto the entrepreneur yanto the cyclist yanto The Family Man y the stoic basically when you start feeding those identities they get stronger and they become more substantial in your in your character in your life and I say this because it's a really really interesting process to retire from anything and not not just Sport and especially if you've over indexed into that sport or that that activity it's become a really big part of who you are you end up being quite weak in other aspects of your life in other parts of your character yeah and they need some nourishment they need some feeding which a lot of people don't quite realize partly because it's really hard to get to the roots of these things and secondly it takes time so just like training you know you get better and better over years and years you can't retire from a sport that you did for 20 years or 25 years or whatever and then jump out and then in within a week or two be fully up to you know the same level in a new identity that just doesn't work it like it takes another five years and you have to commit to it has to be consistent and you have to be dedicated to it and know that it's making progress even though you can't necessarily see that progress happening or feel it you know being done and I think that's been such a big part of my retirement process that I've spoken about with lots of my friends because there's actually a little bit of a laziness in me which is to still be the cyclist even though I'm eight years retired now so so like I say to my wife like I'm going to go out my bike because I like riding my bike I feel good I'm in my strength I'm in a place you know that I know of myself I'm confident I'm good you know I feel just I feel really really good so I don't do other things like you know other sports let's say or other activities that like yoga or I don't know whatever and and so I'm I'm kind of still feeding that cyclist character that cyclist wolf that I said in in the Fable and it's it's a bit out of date now because it can take over sometimes I enter a race and I and I can feel myself like this Beast getting switched on and it and it doesn't know how to do half and half it only knows how to do 100% so you have to be quite careful with that because it I don't think it's right for it to take over you end up with people who you're a bit narrow in their in their character because they've they've only been one thing and that's all they care about and at the detriment to lots of other things anyway I often about uh like their development pipeline for athletes because our development I came from a

Team Sky and the Cost of Institutionalisation

Soccer background and our development pipeline is very much you know you get a hundred kids put them all into an English Club one of them will survive and 99 of them their prospects are pretty [ __ ] you know they've dropped out of school early you've definitely taken them on a a road that's less beneficial to them in terms of their long-term development and I know you're good friends with Bradley Wiggins and I often look up Bradley and think by any metric if we just look at this through the narrow lens of cycling Bradley's a runaway success like so many world titles to a France champion but if we zoom out and take off just the cycling Focus lens and put a broader human lens onto it is that what we want to tell kids that success is because Bradley's come out of the process that's made him a champion is also a process that looks to have quite badly damaged them in the process yeah definitely I think Brad is a real example of someone who's the product of his experience and and his conditioning you know he says himself that was institutionalized into cycling and I think he bizarrely same age as me a couple of years sorry a couple of months younger um he as a track more track focused Rider got a lot more support from GB then went on and his career took off in a way that you know I would have dreamt about at the time but in sky and GB at the time they implemented a very extreme uh process to shelter athletes from any distraction um any discomfort any any psychological yeah distraction away from just doing their job which is riding their bikes and delivering results to the extreme that I think has been a huge detriment more than any other nation and and team Sky probably more than any other world tour team um basically removed any obstacle outside of you know direct focus of training and and Racing for the for the athletes that meant they had no capacity to deal with almost anything outside of that very very narrow sphere and therefore didn't develop the ability to know what to do about it how to deal with it psychologically emotionally and then also forming part of their identity they just weren't used to it Brad is the same Victoria Pendleton has got a bit of it as well uh Cav is not quite the same but you can see sort of Hallmarks of the same Watermark if you like of that that that characteristic that is really really hard when you step out of that narrow band of purpose which is being a professional athlete and up until probably four or five years ago I'd have said wow I'd take Brad's career ahead of mine any day you know what I mean like this sounds a bit harsh but now I think not that sacrifice like not honestly not for the rest of your life to feel like you know you're not who you want to be or you don't feel comfortable in your own skin or you know Brad's made this really public and done lots and lots of interviews about this so I'm not speaking out of turn and you know I'm just talking about things that I've read directly from his from his previous interviews but yeah I would I think that's been the good luck bad luck story who knows you have to apply that in a similar way to you know his life and say well I'm not sure actually and when you say when we look at a narrow focus and we say would you take Brad's career over your career well maybe that's an easy answer like Brad won the Tour of France and so many you know amazing races but if you zoom out and you go well would you take Brad's life over your life the answer is probably no yeah and that and that's not like that's not to be competitive about it but it's just you know the challenges I faced that you have a similar sort of experience of you know they made really important parts of my character strong and able to cope you know I think in my role as you'll kind of feel as well when you start businesses and you're a Founder a lot of the time you spend outside of a structure that is a safety structure that most people live within and you're building the structure for other people to feel safe to do their jobs and not be distracted but you know for me there was a long period of time where if the company didn't work you know financially I would be personally bankrupt because I was taking out personal loans uh to make sure that we could cover the cash flows required within certain dips in the in the seasonality like I would have been totally screwed if you know I'd never get a mortgage on my house I had no qualifications anyway so I would have I set up one business that would have failed so I'd be 100% failure you know those types of those types of situations create a lot of pressure that if you don't have some pretty fundamental um you know building blocks and Foundations to cope with they there those are the sort of things that create you know mental breakdowns like real to rebuild a second version of your identity where you decided to step away from yanto the cyclist to becomeing yanto the

Building a Business from the Team Bus

Entrepreneur at what point did you realize a lot of the skills you learned as a bike rider hard work resilience uh eus when did you realize these were transferable skills right from the beginning yeah really really early so the thing the interesting thing that I did was I started to build the new identity while I still had the old identity so I literally divided my day into halves in the first half of the day I was a pro bik Rider and I went out and I did my five or six hours I came home I had lunch and the second half of the day this is for the first seven years of this business I I remained a professional cyclist you know and I was proon for a couple years with the one pro team so we were going I went to 11 different countries that that season uh spent how many hundreds of days away from home um and I was checking my emails looking at spreadsheets on the team bus on the way back from T Burgos you know 180k with contador smashing my head in and all the other guys that were there and then I'm trying to focus on what I need to do for work to make sure I cover the emails and I keep the you know the work streams moving and all that kind of stuff I'm saying that now because in my psychology in the mornings I was strong confident and an expert in the afternoons I was weak learning and a novice but the fact that I had both those experience to such Extremes in the same day they balanced out to me being pretty good all the time instead of if I'd have retired from cycling in 2010 or 9 or whatever run this business full-time 100% I'd have been a novice the whole time and as you said earlier there are decades and decades to get really good at entrepreneurialism and business but I am like 15 years in now and I'm not where I was when I started but where I started was very very very low down and I'm really grateful that I gave myself that opportunity which required probably a lot of energy that a lot of people wouldn't have because you know I was doing six- hour rides and on Big Race weeks I'd have to write myself a to-do list before so as I could actually Focus my mind and do the right things when I got back because I was totally [ __ ] from 5 days of 200k stages but the to-do list kept me on track made sure I was productive and meant that I didn't stand still in those weeks when I was away racing and dedicating my energy to that I could come back and I was still keeping every the other side of my my life moving but yeah it was it was hard I was working seven days a week for seven years great and there for anyone listen to the podcast who is single focused be that on sport be that on just family or be it on entrepreneurship when you only have one strand to your bow and you have a bad day all of a sudden you're a bad person like if you're just a bike rider and all of a sudden you go through a dip and you're [ __ ] at bike riding it's like oh my life is [ __ ] but for you you were able to parse these two into two separate entities where you could have a bad day on the bike but a good day on business and all of a sudden it's still a win I think that's a very important psychological like twist it's 100% you're you're 100% right and it was like I can't emphasize enough how sport is up and down anyway like you know you get a good you have a good result on a good day it is literally hour to hour you could be 100% happy as happy as you could possibly be and then 100% as depressed as you could possibly be about what you're doing business is actually a little bit slower like the Peaks and troughs are much more rounded so you get you know you get a flow to things and I would say they're more quarterly whereas racing was daily or hourly and um I also found interestingly that I couldn't stress about both my jobs at the same time so if I was if I was having a really tough time at work financially like worried about cash flow or whatever or sales when I was on my bike I had an I had a forced rest like I I just couldn't worry about it and do my intervals so so those intervals were like five hours of no screen time fresh air good blood circulation good exercise plus I was knackered so when I was really stressing at night if I done a good ride in the day I also couldn't I couldn't keep myself up because I was knacked so I always had a good night's sleep and those things were bizarrely complimentary equally if I had a bad race I go to work and I'm like well I'm building my my retirement plan I've still got you know I've got some good sales in the pipeline I've got a good you know marketing plan developing here and it really really helped even out those Peaks and troughs that we all go through but yeah certain situations

Faster or Slower: Elon's Decision Prism

Or certain roles definitely create a different Rhythm another area I think bike riders are brilliant ass and you know we could spend the next 10 hours talking about areas Bike R are sh at but it's easy to highlight areas we're good at goal setting people in normal life aren't as good as bike riders at goal setting like cyclists at a certain level break everything down into what's the goal of today's session how does that fit into my weekly plan how does this fit into my training cycle I'm in what's my two or three main targets for the year and if you take that in and you bring it across into a business sense it's like wow I'm a level up here on my peers instantly yeah yeah yeah yeah definitely 100% so I listened to a really interesting podcast uh it was actually one of the a guy that works for Elon Musk and he said it was crazy how he made Elon made his decisions which basically he boiled down to or he does boil down to every single decision of any size is this getting us closer to space travel or is this getting us further away from space travel and he said that is the simple prism with which he makes every decision and I remember saying this to my wife quite a lot because when I was a pro bik Rider every single decision I broke down to is this making me faster or is this making me slower and I mean every single thing from what I ate to how much I trained to who I hung out with to how much I walked to what social stuff I went to to how much sleep I had everything was faster slower faster slower simple categories when I retired I found that really hard because I didn't have quite the same Simplicity in that I could eat what I wanted it didn't matter if I was 2 kilos overweight I could walk around if I wanted because it didn't matter if my you know I was standing up for an hour extra than I needed to that day and I've actually struggled to recreate the same Simplicity in in my work even though obviously I'm very focused and we are you know we are focused and we are clear on our objectives but I think it's true what you said um with a life of you know and I think I don't know I don't know your personal like um how much coaching you had in sport and how much sort of um resource and expertise cuz like from a gbt team perspective I was lucky in that you know I spent time with Steve Peters who worked you I absorbed so much information from in a fairly limited amount of time but it it was huge informing who I am and how I approach the world in the way you just described around making um making an objective and then breaking it down to smaller and smaller increments so was literally hour by hour you know what you're doing and also you know hour by hour you can see the incremental progress you're making which then gives you motivation keeps you focused and gets you excited about achieving the Big Goal when when six months time or whatever the Big Goal happens those are those are pretty important skills I would say you think it's a like that decision making metrics we use as a cyclist you know is this going to make me faster or slower like I remember going to like cycling was a runaway training to destroy it so much in my personal life you know through my 20s like I remember going to the cinema with my ex-girlfriend and eating a bag of spinach when she was eating popcorn cuz I was so worried about weight like it was bizarre but then when you step out of that it's like the operating system you have for guiding your decisions is no longer relevant do you think it's yes you know how difficult has it been to build that new operating system or is it something you're still struggling with no I'm still struggling and I'll tell you why and I thought a lot about this as a young let's say single 20 year old something your life is so much more simple than a married businessman Family Man uh with all the mortgage payment commitments and social you know commitments that you have to you have to go to it's easy to be so simple when you're in your 20s and you're single or even if you just got a girlfriend when you have kids like it changes beyond belief and I say this to I said this to Young teammates of mine at the time be enjoy the Simplicity of your life because it when it goes it never ever comes back and complexity complexity is hard because you never get the Fulfillment in that simple simple way because you're always compromising a whole bunch of other things do you know what I mean like if I I I can't think of too many examples but like I I just have to think about how much you spend your time if I if I go away every weekend and race I'm going to miss my kids growing up like I don't want to do that and if I focus purely on money I'm going to work you know hard long long long hours I won't be there to read bedtime stories they'll be in secondary

Balancing Family, Self and Saturday Mornings

School before I know it and then they're left left home you know that's not that's not what I want that's not why I had kids you know those things and that complexity grows slowly in your life as you become sort of mid-30s mid- 4S I'm 43 now so you know I've had a fair run at complexity you can't have that binary lens before you're able to say well does it make me faster or slower on the bike you know an intuitive one now would be well is it better or worse for my family but it it doesn't work the same because yes you know to kind a Cheesy expression you need to put your own mask on first like if you didn't write your bike and you weren't in a good head space and you didn't peel away that selfish time you're not going to be a good role model to your kids you're not going to be a good husband to your wife you're not going to be the best version of yourself so it is difficult to figure out where that balance lies yeah 100% like and I think men and women struggle with this differently um I hope my my wife definitely this is this is a common common Challenge and not only that like I speak to all my peers who are married with kids and we all have the same challenge like just give us an hour on a Saturday morning and you can have the 47 other hours of the rest of the weekend I'll be 100% whatever you want we'll go wherever you want just give me the hour first and and it's funny how you know wives just if they're not athletes or I don't know they just got their own agendas they they it's not that they don't understand it's important to you but they can't appreciate the significance of the importance and the emphasis of how satisfied you are having got that out your system like you say put your own mask on it's not a huge amount of time we'll go out early in the morning and then the commitment to the rest of the family in terms of being there for football practice swimming you know going out to the beach or whatever like it's it is and I talked to a friend of mine um who's a lawyer but also very keen cyclist about this and exactly the same exactly the same and always a constant battle as well 100% let's take a little bit of a U-turn because we both raced in France and one of my abiding memories of France was how [ __ ] the kit was like I was you know maybe a little bit more obsessed in my peers at the time about aerodynamics I'd scrim together some money to get into the wind tunnel very early and I was focusing on time trial and I knew the importance of stuff flapping around and then I went to France and it was like training in a cotton t-shirt it was absolutely shocking but we've seen this incredible Evolution over the last you know what was I in France like over 10 years ago now I'm aged myself there but how do we get to this point now where the innovation in that industry has just been incredible like the case is it's every Brands all the top brands nearly are like a work of art how have we got here I think it's good for a start um I remember the kit that we had to wear exactly like you but I was probably 10 years earlier I went to France in 2000 and yeah thankfully I was a bit that back then I was actually pretty oblivious to it um I you know I knew I wanted a good fitting Jersey but and occasionally we pinned them you know you pinned them actually you Lego this we had our shorts used to write up so it was a blue and red kit for Appo so you'd have to get red insulating type and run it around the your High to stop the short riding up like hot pants like Miley Cyrus for the end of the race wow goodness yeah well I mean I lived with a couple of other teammates uh English guys at the time 2001 2002 and uh yeah there's all sorts of funny funny stories of things being done like that but I think the progression is is pretty impressive actually and and it kind of feels like it is where it should be but it's not happened smoothly you know there was Brad talks about this actually when they when team Sky first started wearing speed suits or skin suits in road races they were ridiculed by the Italian French you know pros at the time Pato and a few of the other guys just to name a few um and I think that's quite interesting because UK actually and and also like some of the Southern Hemisphere like Australian brands have been much quicker to progress in the development of Kit than what you might think of as more Heritage nalini the the European Brands and I thought about this quite a lot and actually I I kind of bowled it down to um Heritage and tradition are probably some of the biggest barriers to progress because you'll still see someone like Al Philip winning in a shorts and jersey now anyone who's been to the wind tunnel I don't know how much you've been since since uh you scrimped

Talent, Aerodynamics and Hairy Chests

That money together but I've I've been probably a hundred times and he and lots of people use it as like well he's winning in shorts and jersey so it doesn't matter and I'm like no he would win more if he wore a suit like every time he finished second or third count that as a win as well what would his palmares look like they would be Bonkers like incredible and that's irrefutable data there's no you know the fact that he can do it anyway is is regard is a separate Point altogether it's they just don't there's so much talent there I remember uh my teammate in France he was the Irish under 23 time trial Champion that year uh you know great friend of mine and he was really dialed on his aerodynamics like pimped out as much as he could be back then and we were riding the time trial and he was caught in the time trial by one of our teammates who was on a road bike and had his jersey fully zipped down with his hairy chest and his Medallion out and he's like yeah yeah keep going ER well done well done there was just a different level of talent you could deduce into that it's like correlation causation like firemen always show up at fires does that mean firemen cause fires no it doesn't yeah yeah yeah yeah exactly I mean I always say this like 95% of talent is just talent and it's really really annoying if you haven't got the talent because you can work your ass off but you're only working for five% so if you're only 75% anyway you're never going to get anywhere near someone with real talent who could be 95% of what you could be anyway pay for reality but how do you see the industry now changing like AI looks like it's going to be a huge huge disruptor in every industry and the separation is largely going to be in my view people and businesses that Embrace Ai and people in businesses that don't Embrace Ai and knowledge and access to knowledge could be very important in the next 10 years I'm reading I'm reading a really interesting book at the moment called uh machines that change markets and it's basically the invention of every prominent thing from the steam engine to electricity to the telephone and people's first impressions of them versus what they went on to change in our world and pretty much 100% of the time there are very influential people damning the new invention like the telephone and even things like um Blockbuster Video rental company could have bought Netflix for 100 grand is a classic classic example of did not adopt online technology you know stayed in that analog world and just totally died like simple so I think AI is going to have a similar kind of um I think it's more firstly it's it's more kind of widely recognized as going to change and and for the better but how exactly it's expressed and implemented and assimilated into current day worlds and businesses and lives I think is still I I do actually watch quite a lot of podcasts on this because as a parent I feel a bit concerned around what our kids are going to grow up into and how that world's going to change and yeah what what should I be what should I be kind of encouraging them to focus on that is still going to be relevant in 20 years time you know when they need to get a job so I do think there's still quite a lot of speculation I'm not sure exactly you know which roles will be hardest hit and which will be you know most um valuable because it it can't be delivered by AI but it's definitely going to change the world and I think actually I I feel positive that will be a very positive uh influence on our lives and while I read another book recently um basically catastrophes always make the news but incremental progress of of the positive kind just don't and it actually really warps our perspective on reality so basically a reality check is there are more kids going to school in all parts of the world now than ever before as a proportion not as a quantum number there are more girls getting equal education to boys which again in certain parts of the world is just was you know massive Gap massive Gap there is less poverty more access to electricity which means education and um food and uh nutrition and all these things like it is all better every single country in the on the planet is moving in the right direction at a trajectory that is pretty substantial but it just doesn't make the news because it's incremental and I think AI can be something similar that is going to help all of us benefit from the contribution that it's going to make which is is going to be a Quantum Leap I think in our in our societies and in our ability to deliver results I have a friend who's quite a prominent entrepreneur and he reckons in 12 months any company worth at Salt needs to be employing an Chief AI officer and that means someone who's figuring out and just keeping a finger on the pulse of that AI ecosystem to figure out new ways to integrate AI into your business because in the short term you know if you're an employee AI is not coming for your job

AI, Kit Deals and Bora Hansgrohe

Right now like a robot's not coming to do my podcast but somebody with that knows how to use AI is coming to replace somebody that doesn't know how to use Ai and I think that's the short-term Trend as I see it yeah agreed yeah so um basically head of AI is the new most important role maybe maybe you you're back in the world tour this year with Bora hgroov and probably the nicest kit actually in the pelaton this year in my opinion uh how does that come about how does it is that because I got a few Irish is that because I got a few irish guys you're not give a b at much love though I know he's struggling a bit although yumbo at the T at the moment yeah he's look I think word round the campire is he's off to AI doer for next season I'm not sure the the truth in that but yeah he's had a troubled enough time What A Catch Roan you know how serious I take my goal setting and I know how serious you take it too so whether you're chasing Fitness or lifestyle goals and you're looking for a powerful alloy to support you on this journey look no further than heal heal has become my secret weapon for when I don't have time to repare a balanced meal it means I get the nutrition I need without sacrificing time or taste plus it stops me from reaching for the takeaway menu I always throw a bottle of this banana into my backpack when I'm heading into the city and it stops me eating junk convenience foods that don't support my training goals it's handy it's nutritious it's 22 g of protein it's perfect for athletes that don't have time to cook or prepare food before a training session it's convenient nutritious fuel at your fingertips ensuring you hit your daily fueling needs hu ready to drink has over 26 essential vitamins and minerals in every bottle making sure you get 175 health benefits plus it's made from amazing natural ingredients like sunflower seed coconut and more and the best part eight melt watering flavors my favorite the banana that's what's in my backpack at the moment you can get hu direct to your home by going to hu.com roadman that's hu huel.com rman uh like how does that partnership come about CU from the outside looking in these are incomprehensibly Big deals to get done but they're always shrouded in a veil mysticism like what's the what's the courting relationship like to make this happen it's uh it actually follows a very similar pattern to how it would be if you were looking for a girlfriend you got you got the drun you know you kind of sometimes yeah absolutely uh um basically you kind of make make it known that you're available as a as a brand or as a team both ways uh and then you kind of um you kind of say to tell all your friends or look out for me won't you you know if you hear of anything or anyone or any contracts coming up let me know and then uh actually the Bor deal was uh a LinkedIn message from Ralph denk um you know the the owner of the team and I was like oh yeah I like Bora that's a good team because also you know you got to find a match there's a there's a cultural match that is really important there's a financial match because you know some teams are commanding much bigger license fees than others and then there's the kind of result results and activation match as in you need to be able to speak about it talk about it and engage that story into your audience and into the coms plan that you share with with the database as much as possible otherwise you're not extracting the full value and you're wasting you're wasting money basically spending it on on European races that just don't get enough airtime in the brand so all of those things are kind of quite carefully considered but Bor has been a fantastic deal for us we've won we've won stages of every Grand Tour we've had a yellow Jersey and we won the jro in two years in the last two years like it's been phenomenal and for us as a brand to have that validation has been a massive like boost but it but it hasn't come for free you know a lot of people don't realize or maybe don't realize until you do it that servicing a world tour team is so extremely hard like they are incredibly demanding and the way I would describe the package before Bor and then now this year's package basically I spent a lot of time in the Wind Tunnel um because I got declined a contract from a team because they didn't believe I was going to be F the kit was going to be fast enough so basically I spent a a ton of money and time and employed an aerody damy and went to the wind tunnel to make it the fastest kit in the pelaton and we basically you know across the whole package we had a really really fast package but when it came to the team the Bor team for the first year they were like look the speed suit is fast but it's good for time trials but actually doing a six-h hour Grand Tour stage or you know Monument it it's actually a little bit uncomfortable and we

Measuring ROI on a Sponsorship

Need to make some progress on this for for you know some developments so I basically worked really really hard to make the speed gains that I'd developed in the win tunnel myself more comfortable more usable and more accessible to every Rider to the point where in the first season only about half the Riders chose to war wear their speed suits uh um and the other half stuck to jerseys the jerseys have been to the tunnel as well so they were still really fast compared to your average Jersey and even compared to a lot of other skin suits but this year I would say 85 to 90% of the team wear their speed suit 90% of the time and that's a massive statement of how much progress has been made not just with the performance but also with comfort with the durability with um you know how how comfortable and how how happy they are to be in that product every day all day you know 67 day can you measure the return on investment from this deal no which sounds bizarre which sounds really weird like and I'm a data driven person so I want to know how well is that pound performed that's how I break it down you know it might be one of a thousand one of 10,000 one of a million one of 10 million but I'll break it down to the pound and I'll be like I want that pound to have worked in my mind I have like a metric of performance a bit like I have a metric of of performance for my own time for everybody in the company's time and then for our time collectively how much progress we can make but it's so hard to just really validate substantially without any kind of ambiguity or doubt or um yeah grayness it's impossible but I can tell you categorically that it's worth it if you get the right deal and the right team and they get the right results it's worth it but you can also really mess it up like there are stories of uh kit providers getting the whole first batch delivered wrong either wrong logos or wrong features or something wrong and it costs you know I don't know3 or 400,000 to correct that problem thankfully we didn't we didn't make any mistakes like that but that way you're now on a like it's going to take three more years to get your value back from that deal because you just wasted £300,000 on a mistake a human error mistake that but I think it's okay that you can't measure it and this freaks marketers out but like right now I'm wearing a pair of Jordans like why am I wearing a pair of Jordans how have they found their way onto my feet is it because I went onto Nike's website and they cookied me and use code Nike 15 on a podcast I check out no it's none of those things that are measurable it's because LeBron wears them it's because Jordan it's because of the Phil Knight and shoe dog it's because of the Last Dance it's because of long form storytelling over decades that's why I'm wearing Jordans and this is the the task I have with the podcast all the time I'm like you know your discount code you know Roan 50 in a checkout it doesn't represent the value of long form conversations because your your story telling your brand building it's as cliche as it sounds I think podcast and these long form discussions there there's something Primal or ancestral about them it's like a trow back to when we'd sit around a campfire and me and you would be you know eating a leg of a a a cow over a fire and drinking some poene like we're we're wired to listen to these conversations and it's kind of refreshing to hear that you don't have that hardcore metric for measuring Roi well we do just I just can't apply it to worldour teams because I have Rob Rob Rob chillet that sponsors uh Israel premere Tech he's the founder of factor and he's the same it's like I know it works but I just can't show you in black and white on a spreadsheet why it works yeah yeah yeah and I don't mind I don't mind that I mean I think you're right though about this long form um kind of uh conversations and content because like I really want to wear nare Jordans but I don't think they suit my feet but but I really want to be part of that brand you know I watched the last dance was one of the best Netflix series you could ever watch as far as I'm concerned um but um but yeah so really like those are important as well to recognize because you're trying to recreate that you know I'm trying to recreate something like that for my own brand so I look at the Phil Knight story I look at Jordan's story you know there's loads and I've read all the books as well lots of lots of entrepreneurial startup books and I'm not reading them just because they're interesting I'm reading them because I'm trying to extract as much information as possible what are the common denominators what are the patterns what are the ingredients that we need to apply to create something similar because you know I think if you if you've got all if you got a bunch of similar ingredients you can you can at least hope for

Loneliness, Community and Brand Integrity

Some similar results if you can't even get the right ingredients in the right place then I was reading a World Health Organization report recently and forecasted to be the biggest killer in the next 10 years it's none of these crazy pandemics that you know we can imagine up it's not AI it's loneliness um when I T about that yeah I know so many people you know maybe not first time but friends are friends that have killed themselves in the last five years but the antidote to loneliness for me it's connection and it's community and cycling does this so well I'm wondering how seriously do you guys take community and what are you doing to build community around the brands 100% like I could not agree more and I think this is where like I hope that we as a brand and me as a as an individual can compete with other brands in an authentic way because one of the other things I was going to say about like the long for the long form media and content it you can't really create that without Integrity like you have to have some real insight you have to have a proper connection to what you're talking about you have to have some experience and you have to believeing it and want it to be relevant otherwise you're a fraud and it will come across quite easily I think in this type of media if you're not really living what you say you're living then then you can be found out kind of thing so for me Community is about talk about I'll go back to another thing you said which I thought was really useful is you know put your own mask on first so I when I started this business one of the key aspects of what I wanted to create was a thriving nurturing nourishing environment for myself to feel good be strong and be my best right that was really simple objective and and I've done it through a company but secondly once I get those ingredients locked in for me I know what they look like I know what it feels like to have them missing and I know the combinations and timings when they'll really matter the most and I work really really hard for my team to give them those ingredients at the right time when it's relevant when it matters and when they'll feel it you know at the most and you know ideally it's so as they can do their best job but I don't want them to just have a good job I want them to be happy at home have you know strong relationships with their partners and their kids I want them to have a good work life balance so as they don't come to work stressed Fed Up depressed whatever you know because they'll be on a churn they'll I'll have I'll be having to recreate re recruit them you know so for me that is so fundamentally part of the core of this brand in the office in the way I approach cycling in the way I like to talk to other people who are cyclists and share stories and you know everything that anyone can experience on a bike I've also been there and I've felt it I've I've suffered and I've you know been elated with all the same of experiences I've just done it thousands and thousands of times I've written it down I've thought about it I've kept diaries for years and years and years I go back and look at them again I try to extract as much value out of that experience as possible and I think that for me forms the absolute backbone of it of a community that if you are connected to me as a as an individual or us as a brand Lal as a brand then I I'll be disappointed if you don't get that sense of care um concern and um want for your wellbeing I think it's it's really important and same for my kids you know I I don't really distinguish that much different between wanting to give my kids the best life and I mean in a balanced way versus wanting my employees to have the best life and then wanting anyone who's come in contact with the brand to go oh you know what that actually that is really that's a really good job y from the outside looking in I thought this was a brand that's on the up now having had a chance to spend the last eror talking to you I'm absolutely sure it is is a brand that's on you up thanks very much for taking the time to chat me today thank you it's been a pleasure cheers y I really enjoyed that that was so much fun everybody thanks for tuning in to today's interview if you like this interview I'm going to put another interview up here which I know you're really going to enjoy and please click on that subscribe button talk to sound

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

How did Yanto Barker start Le Col cycling clothing?+

Yanto Barker founded Le Col while still racing as a professional cyclist, managing the business from the back of team buses between training rides and races. He split his days in half, dedicating mornings to six-hour rides and afternoons to spreadsheets and emails across eleven countries. The company grew over seven years of concurrent racing and building, eventually reaching a valuation of roughly £10 million.

How do retired professional cyclists cope with loss of identity?+

Yanto Barker argues that rebuilding identity after a professional sports career takes around five years, not weeks. The key is deliberately "feeding" other roles and interests before retirement arrives, so those identities are already established when racing ends. Barker drew on stoic principles to manage this transition and credits starting Le Col while still racing as central to preserving his sense of purpose.

Is Le Col a good cycling brand?+

Le Col is widely regarded as one of the most prestigious cycling apparel brands in the world, competing at the top end of the performance kit market. Founder Yanto Barker built the brand on standards developed from his own experience as an elite professional, ensuring the clothing was tested under genuine racing conditions from the outset.

How do you build a business while still working full time as an athlete?+

Yanto Barker's approach was strict time-blocking: treat training and racing as non-negotiable in the morning, then switch immediately to business tasks in any available window afterwards, including travel time on team buses. The method requires accepting that progress on the business will be slow and incremental across several years rather than rapid. Barker's experience shows that the overlap period, though demanding, removes the financial and psychological cliff-edge that often derails athletes who wait until retirement to start something new.

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Key Takeaways

You can't instantly shift identities after 20+ years in one pursuit—it takes roughly five years of consistent feeding and commitment to build a new identity alongside the old one, not replacing it overnight.

Breaking big goals into simple decision metrics (like 'is this making me faster or slower?') transfers directly from cycling to business, but life's complexity as an adult means you need multiple metrics, not just one binary lens.

Having two separate professional identities protects your mental health: a bad day on the bike doesn't define your entire life if you're also building something in business, and vice versa.

Heritage and tradition are often the biggest barriers to progress in established industries—even when data irrefutably shows innovation works, people resist because 'that's how we've always done it.'

Servicing a World Tour team is brutally demanding; real ROI measurement is nearly impossible, but the right partnership with aligned values and results is worth the investment and operational complexity.

Expert Quotes

"The one that will win is the one that you feed—basically transposing that fable onto multiple identities: when you start feeding those identities they get stronger and they become more substantial in your character in your life."

"I literally divided my day into halves—in the first half I was a pro bike rider, in the second half I remained a professional cyclist for the first seven years of this business, because in my psychology the mornings I was strong and confident, the afternoons I was weak and learning, but the fact I had both those extremes meant I was pretty good all the time."

"95% of talent is just talent and it's really annoying if you haven't got it, because you can work your ass off but you're only working for 5%—so if you're only 75% anyway you're never going to get anywhere near someone with real talent who could be 95%."

KEY QUOTES

“basically you can't retire from a sport that you did for 20 years or 25 years whatever and then jump out and then in within a week or two be fully up to you know the same level in a new identity that just doesn't work it like it takes another five years and you have to commit to it has to be consistent and you have to be dedicated to it”
Yanto Barker — Professional cyclist turned entrepreneur, founder of Le Col

“I literally divided my day into halves in the first half of the day I was a pro bik Rider and I went out and I did my five or six hours I came home and had lunch and the second half of the day this is for the first seven years of this business I I remained a professional cyclist”
Yanto Barker — Professional cyclist turned entrepreneur, founder of Le Col

“in my psychology in the mornings I was strong confident and an expert in the afternoons I was weak learning and a novice but the fact that I had both those experience to such Extremes in the same day they balanced out to me being pretty good all the time”
Yanto Barker — Professional cyclist turned entrepreneur, founder of Le Col

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

How did Yanto Barker start Le Col cycling clothing?+

How do retired professional cyclists cope with loss of identity?+

Is Le Col a good cycling brand?+

How do you build a business while still working full time as an athlete?+

HOW THE BACK OF A TEAM BUS BECAME GROUND ZERO FOR A £10 MILLION EMPIRE | YANTO BARKER

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