Sally Gunnell: 'It's about being the best version of yourself'

Welcome to Small Business Snippets, the podcast from SmallBusiness.co.uk. Today’s guest is Sally Gunnell, entrepreneur, motivational speaker and former professional athlete. We discuss moving from sport into business and how older entrepreneurs can look after their wellbeing. You can also visit smallbusiness.co.uk for more on workplace wellbeing. Remember to like us on Facebook @SmallBusinessExperts and follow us on Twitter @smallbusinessuk, all lower case. Don't forget to check out the video version of this episode and subscribe over on our YouTube channel!

Sally Gunnell podcast transcript

Hello and welcome to Small Business Snippets, the podcast from SmallBusiness.co.uk. I’m your host, Anna Jordan.

Today we have Sally Gunnell – entrepreneur, motivational speaker and former professional athlete.

Born in Essex, Sally actually started out as a pentathlete and long jumper at her local ladies’ athletics club. Over time her talent for hurdle events became apparent, winning her gold medals and championship titles across the world. In fact, she’s the only woman to hold World, Olympic, European and Commonwealth Gold medals all at once.

After retiring in 1997, Sally became part of the BBC Sport team and was a regular on athletics broadcasts in the early 2000s. Since then she’s appeared on breakfast television shows as well as A Question of Sport and Total Wipeout.

These days she runs Sally Gunnell Corporate Wellbeing to encourage wellbeing in the workplace. She also runs Optimise Your Age, giving health and wellness tips to the over 50s, alongside her husband Jon.

We’ll be talking about moving from sport into business and how older entrepreneurs can take care of their wellbeing.

Anna: Hi there, Sally, how you doing?

Sally: I'm very well, thank you. Yes!

Anna: Great!

The first point I want to talk about is you moving from sport into business. So how did you come to that decision? What kind of challenges did you have going from sport into business?

Sally: Yeah, I mean it's always a difficult one when you retire and I guess it’s difficult when you're only 27 years old. You're young and you've had one career and it's probably the career that you've had all your life, and then you think, "What do I do next?" So I guess I sort of did it in a way that I would have done with my athletic career. I had to know what I wanted to achieve out there. I had to have aspirations for new things, I had to learn new things. So I planned it, almost. But yeah, I mean, I look back now and I think it was a bit of a gamble. You're not quite sure where you were going with it. But actually, it made me realise just how much I'd learned from my athletics days and my achievements, and how much of that it helped me to that next stage of my career, but be able to pass that on for others. And I think that that's what came out of it. And that's what helped to make it as smooth as possible.

For a lot of at