No One Can Run It For You
Marathon running has taught me about discipline, leverage, and doing exactly what you say you're going to do.
There's a moment somewhere around kilometre 32 of a marathon where the deal you made with yourself at the start line gets tested. No coach. No team. No one to delegate to. Just you and whatever you committed to when you laced up.
That's the part Harry Styles was talking about when he told Runner's World this month: "Running is a conversation with myself." He's right. And if you've ever run a serious distance, you know exactly what he means.
Last October, I ran the Melbourne Marathon. The lead-up and race are documented in the latest Born in Action episode - but the experience got me thinking about something bigger than the race itself. About discipline. About what running actually teaches you. And about why the people I respect most in business tend to take their training seriously.
Harry Styles in the this the March 2026 edition of Runner’s World
The Processing Problem Nobody Talks About
Running a business is relentless. You're always moving forward, always on to the next thing. A deal closes and you're already onto the next negotiation. A problem resolves and three more have appeared. There's rarely time to properly sit with a decision - to turn it over, stress-test it, think clearly about what you actually want.
Harry describes running as his "processing place" - a space to be by himself and work through things. That's exactly how I experience it. Some of my best thinking doesn't happen at a desk. It happens on a run at 5:30am, alone with a problem and nowhere else to be.
“Some of my best thinking doesn’t happen at a desk. It happens on a trail at 5:30am, alone with a problem and nowhere to be.”
Running Is How I Learn a City
I've laced up and gone for a run in more than 40 countries. And I'd argue I know those cities better because of it.
Harry talks about spending his early One Direction years inside hotels and venues - seeing countries without actually experiencing them. He described how running London from ground level showed him whole neighbourhoods he'd missed for years. The detail you absorb on foot is something you simply don't get from a car window or a conference room.
I feel this deeply. Whenever I land in a new city for business, a morning run is how I orientate. You learn the texture of a place. You notice where people gather, where the money is, where the energy is. That kind of contextual awareness matters in business.
Licensing is a relationship business - and understanding the local market, the cultural reference points, the way a brand lands in a specific geography, starts with paying attention at street level.
Running gives me that. It makes me a sharper observer. And sharper observers make better deals.
Self-Integrity: The Only Discipline That Compounds
Here's what I think Styles got most right: "The thing I've found, in the rest of my life but particularly in running, is the idea of trusting myself to do exactly what I say I'm going to do."
That is the whole game.
In business, trust is the foundation of every relationship. Clients need to trust you. Partners need to trust you. Your team needs to trust you. But before any of that - you need to be able to trust yourself. And that self-trust is built in the smallest moments. Not in the big decisions, but in the thousand small commitments you either keep or don't.
I'm obsessive about this when it comes to training. I don't miss sessions. Not when it's raining. Not when I've had a brutal week. Not when I need to be at the airport. Recently in Sydney, after missing a flight, I was up at 4:30am, out to a local park for an 18km run, then straight to the airport for a 14-hour flight. No excuses. No renegotiating with myself.
That's not heroics. That's just what I said I was going to do.
“Self-trust is built in the smallest moments. Not in the big decisions, but in the thousand small commitments you either keep or don’t.”
The reason I'm disciplined this way isn't because running is the priority. It's because the practice of doing what I say - regardless of conditions - is the priority. And that habit doesn't stay in the running shoes. It comes to the office. It shows up in how I negotiate, how I manage relationships, how I run my businesses.
Discipline is not situational. You either have it or you're building it. And you build it by not making exceptions.
What Harry Styles Getting on the Cover of Runner's World Actually Means
I want to pause on something. A global pop star - one of the most recognisable people on the planet - is on the cover of Runner's World talking about self-discipline, solitude, and doing hard things by himself. That's a cultural signal worth paying attention to.
Marathon running has been growing for years, but there's something happening now with the broader culture around endurance, discipline, and what it means to challenge yourself physically. It's not niche anymore. High-performers across every field are gravitating toward long-form physical training - not to get fit, but because of what the training does to how you think and operate.
For me, that's always been obvious. But it's becoming more widely understood: the best athletes in business are also athletes. Not always literally, but in the way they train, recover, persist, and show up.
Watch me run the melbourne marathon
I documented my Melbourne marathon journey in a recently released video. Take a look here:
The Bottom Line
No one can run your marathon for you. And no one can build your brand's licensing program for you either — not really. You can hire experts, build a team, engage an agency. But the discipline, the long-term thinking, the commitment to doing exactly what you say you're going to do? That comes from you. Harry Styles understands this. Most brand owners don't yet. The ones who do are the ones worth working with.
want to connect?
The Born Perspective is one part of a bigger conversation. If you want more, you can find me on LinkedIn for industry commentary, Instagram for what's happening day to day, and YouTube and the Born to License Podcast for deeper dives into the world of licensing. Pick your platform. I'll be there.
Explore the Born Collective
Everything I build connects back to licensing. Here's where to go depending on what you need: