speaker-0: Hello everyone and welcome back to the Forged Within podcast where we have real people telling real stories about how mental health has shaped their lives and hopefully together we can start changing the stigma around mental health. Today's guest is Dan Newman. Now Dan is the co-founder of Boldy Locks, a UK social enterprise supporting people living with alpica, hair loss and the mental health impact that often follows. Now for some people it's seen as something you just get on with but When you lose your hair especially at a young age, you're not just losing something physical. You're losing identity, you're losing control, you're losing a version of yourself. After navigating his own experience of hair loss and emotional toll that came with it, he turned personal struggle into purpose through Boldilocks. He now creates spaces where men and women can speak openly about confidence, masculinity, shame, resilience and rebuilding self-worth. Dan believes healing begins when we stop pretending we're and start telling the truth about what it is really like. So Dan, thank you so much for being here.
speaker-1: Thanks Sam for the opportunity. I appreciate it. You're doing great work. So it's great to be alongside you in this space.
speaker-0: So before you get into it, what I want to do is just give you the opportunity just to open the show, tell us a bit more about yourself and then we can get into your story.
speaker-1: Yeah, great. So, okay. So I'm on a more human level, I guess, as to who I am. So I'm Dan, as you say, I'm 44 years old, first time founder, but coming to this kind of social enterprise space with a fair amount of life experience in lots of different ways. So it feels like a new era really for me. But as a man in my 40s, I am a dad to two teenage boys. and they're great lads. No two are the same, you know. And they've got great heads of hair, thank God. So that's positive. Mind you, as did I back then. So let's hope that Alopecia's not completely genetic. And for my wife as well, Kath, 20 years married now in September this year. Friends for years beforehand, so clearly it wasn't love at first sight. You know, I eventually caved into her advances. ⁓ Where Kath is the co-founder of Abolvilux, it totally makes sense in respect to her being alongside my journey right through my twenties when I was losing my game, you know. So she's very well placed to be a service like me to those who are affected by visible differences through illness or disease. Because she was alongside me, as I say, when I was going through my own journey of ⁓ rediscovery really through that period. So yeah, I love music. I love making music, listening to music. Babylon the piano played it with a guitar and I recently started drums. So I don't do it to perform. My God, no one would want to ever listen to that. I probably do it for me when I just need to express the emotions I can't find words for. So I think music for me from a very young age was a great outlet. And yeah, and that's essentially my intro, I suppose.
speaker-0: I love that. It's nice to hear that you've got that kind of network as well at home with the boys. And then you've also got your wife then who's alongside you as well. I know the importance of having that strong network, especially someone who understands where it started. Because sometimes you come into the journey and people don't understand where you've come from. And then that can cause an awful lot of, why is he doing it? What's your drive? There's no reason. Why do you want to keep pushing? Whereas obviously your wife has seeing that and then she can understand then the importance of how important this is to you.
speaker-1: Absolutely. it does help a lot, you say, because a lot of the things that we have to go through really bank on you having a strong sense of self-awareness or at least having people around you that you trust to bring things to your attention when, like in my case, for example, I don't ⁓ outwardly display toxic tricks. I'm not a big drinker, I'm not particularly addictive or ⁓ destructive, but she'll tend to know when I go in on myself or when my confidence is lacking, you my posture changes, I become more non-verbal. So, you know, this is important to have that support network around you that creates space, know, and creates ⁓ a sense of trust because sometimes I think when you're going through a low period, low mood or low energy, whatever that is. ⁓ it is, there's a chance, suppose, and you, you don't really trust yourself. ⁓ so my response to that is I kind of hibernate, kind of isolate. ⁓ but I know if I do that for too long, it brings on a deeper level of, of depression. ⁓ so yeah, it's, really, it's, it's great to have that support available to me where, ⁓ things can be brought to my attention when I'm not fully aware of them.
speaker-0: You suffer with alpecia, that's right, yeah? Do you want to just tell us a bit more about what alpecia is?
speaker-1: Yes, definitely. Yeah. It seems to be that a lot of people are affected by alopecia than I originally thought. know, the conversations that I've started having on the awareness that I'm raising around this condition, a lot of people are coming to me saying, my granddad had alopecia or my auntie has had or my friend has had, et cetera. So it's interesting to see that it's perhaps sadly more popular condition than I initially thought because it'd be great if it didn't exist. But it's essentially what it is. It's a hair loss condition. We are led to believe, I suppose, that There are a couple of, ⁓ activators that go on really that lead to the follicles failing in the way that they do. Now, the reason I speak quite broadly is because I'm not an expert. I talked about my lived experience, but also I would, I believe that there's a lack of clinical research when it comes to alopecia because it has just been labeled as cosmetic before. And I think that's probably hindered ⁓ a lot of progress to really understand what causes it. So I'll give you what I'm aware of with it all. So I was told very early on that your white blood cells, when they are around your body trying to kill off infections and things like this, there is something that goes wrong with people who suffer alopecia in the sense that the white blood cells go after the hair follicles. Because there's something going on where they believe that the hair is like a ⁓ like a, like a foreign body, you know, so they, they, they kill off the follicles because they think they're doing the right thing for you, you know? And, and this, this then leads to the assumption, I suppose that because the white blood cells are, acting in a very haywire like way that it must be stress activated. So therefore, you know, if you're stressed, it's likely that this could be an effect. And a lot of people do say, ⁓ you know, yeah, I went through a bereavement, my hair started falling out, for example. ⁓ But then a lot people say about gut health and how poor gut health can lead to a lot of physiological symptoms. So like that can often turn out to be psoriasis or eczema or something like that. I would really sum it up and say like alopecia is a hair loss condition where something's going on in your body and it's making your particles not work as they ought to. that leads to sometimes an immediate total loss, which brings its own shock really to the individual. Or it can lead to a more of a taunting sporadic ⁓ pattern of loss and then regrowth to the point where you're thinking, ⁓ know, my hair's coming back great. ⁓ no, it's gone again. So it's like this constant prolonged agony of like, am I going to be normal again? So it's, and it's distinctly visible because You've got patches all over your head, you know, and it's not so easy to disguise when you're in that kind of lost transition. It's not easy to disguise with hair toppers or hair systems or anything like this. So you kind of got this visible difference that you can't really hide, which again presents his own sort of psychological challenges. So essentially that's what alopecia is. It's a toward-in condition led by the failing of your follicles for reasons that we're not fully aware of apart from your perhaps being down to... your immune system, you get health and stress and trauma.
speaker-0: Fair play. ⁓ You've sounded that perfectly there. I think that gives a really good idea of what Alpecia is for the people who don't know, understand what Alpecia is. But how old was you when you started noticing that hair loss? Because again, I think there's an awful lot of men who lose hair at young age and it is their identity as well. And it doesn't matter what age you are, when you do lose your hair. then obviously, like you said, you become very self-conscious. But when it comes to Alpecia, and it's sporadic sometimes, and you can lose bits and it comes back, it's leading you into a false sense of security. So you think that you're getting better, then ⁓ God, it's not again. So mentally that's got to really exhausting. But it'd be interesting to find out bit more about how old you were and when did you first notice that the hair loss was happening.
speaker-1: Well, interestingly, I was never the first to notice when my hair started falling out. And it happened on three occasions really. So I only recently found out that when I was about six years old and my mom told me this, she said, was first aware that you had an issue with your hair when you're about six years old and you walked past me in the house or whatever. And I ruffled up your hair as you were walking through. Because I had this like really dense thick hair, right? That I often complained about. a lesson learned there. But anyway, so she kind of ruffled up my hair and she said, it kind of lifted up like as if you were wearing like a toupee. So her response to that was, of course we didn't have Google back then, right? We didn't have smartphones and nothing you're about in the mid 80s, you know? And so her response to that was essentially to pack my hair back down and then just see me on my way. So like, nothing was really investigated or really looked at, you know, to see what was going on with that. ⁓ and then fast forward, maybe about eight years later, when I was kind of preteen, I guess, ⁓ or early teens. And, you know, we, then, maybe, maybe it still happens now, really on the playground, you know, that you used to get picked on if you were a bit poorer than others, if you didn't have the right shoes or the right kind of logos and stuff. And one of the other indicators that you may have been from a poor household was a bad haircut. Right. so. There was some truth to this, my parents went through a bit of a tricky patch financially. A friend of theirs with best intentions cut my hair and it came out not looking so great, but ultimately it wasn't down to a lack of skill, it was down to the fact that I also had another bout of alopecia, which showed itself this time ⁓ along the hairline at the back of my head and down the bottom. So it just looked like someone had really screwed up a haircut like Edward Scissorhands, but getting it wrong, you know. ⁓ so nothing really came with that either. No, no kind of research, just like a slight acknowledgement. ⁓ well, it is what it is. ⁓ and then the third and final bout that Bala Pishva had then was activated really, believe anyway, ⁓ by, ⁓ an attack I experienced when I was about 18. ⁓ so I was, I was assaulted by two guys and, ⁓ you know, shortly after that then Uh, I, uh, I will, was trying to rebuild my, my confidence off the back of that traumatic incident. I was in the hairdressers in Cuffelia town where I grew up and, uh, and the hairdresser at the time, uh, basically he said, Oh, you've got a hole in your head. And I was like, what do mean? Like I was totally thrown by what he said. So I was thinking that's something literal. Like I was there to hold my head and I'm getting it. The only hole you want in your head, your eyes and your mouth, your nostrils. So just throw and he said, I know you've got a hole in your head. So he like actually pressed the back of my head. Where there was a patch under my crown. This is always like the size of a 10 pence coin. You might want to see a doctor about that. So this was like, say six months after I was attacked, that I developed my first patch of this bout of alopecia. And that was when I was 18 and I'm 44 now. Right through my twenties, it was patchy all over. And I eventually got to a stage in my late twenties where I felt like, okay, it is what it is. Let's just surrender to this. So I started shaving it down. And now in my early forties, you barely notice really that I've got alopecia. It just looks like just, just a bald head. But what you don't see beyond my glasses, I suppose, is the fact that I don't have any eyebrows or eyelashes. So it affects me, you know, all over. So yeah, so most of my life I haven't had hair, but I think what we shouldn't do really is diminish the effect that it has on your sense of self, your sense of identity, because it can affect your confidence, whether it's male pattern baldness or alopecia, because, you know, we, maybe as a society in the way that we see masculinity, for example, ⁓ it's, it's, it seems important to have hair. ⁓ and. But I would say though, with alfisha, you know, you don't really see it coming. Some people experience clumps of hair loss in the shower on their pillow. couldn't really experience that. And apart from what I just told you there, I suppose the male pattern baldness, there's a chance that like, you know, you might look at your dad, your uncle, your granddad and say, ⁓ bloody hell, they lost their hair in the 20s. It looks like I'm going that way. So you do get some kind of advance, note this, I suppose. of potentially facing that. But it's, yeah, with alopecia, it's particularly taunting, like I say, because it can often be aligned with a traumatic episode, not always, and you just don't know how to respond to it in the instant, really. So that's kind of my life experience of alopecia so far.
speaker-0: Yeah, no, and it's interesting because I, before I went to Thailand when was 18, the boys were messing about. had a leaving party before I went and they went, the boys went and cut my hair for a laugh and they shaved it right down. And I already had a really high receding hairline and I've got a very large head. So that makes even things just hands out. So since I was about 18 years of age then I haven't, I've never had hair. I've always shaved it back. Okay. But, but I... But what's interesting to me is that I wear hats a lot. So I wear, I've got so many hats. Even the wife said to me last week, said, why have you got so many hats for? And I'm just like, well, it's the only fashion statement I can have. Dreaming when I go out of my head, that's what I wear. But I think that's a self-confidence thing as well, dreaming. And I don't suffer with that, P.S. But being bold enough having hair, I still feel conscious of when I go out, people make sly remarks upside down head because I can grow a beard, problem at all. but I can't grow hair on my head. So that has an impact on identity as well. But if we go one step further from what you're experiencing, where you have no hair at all, no eyebrows and no eyelashes, it's not just the, obviously physically then in regards of, you struggle with, because your eyelashes keep out dust and everything, do you struggle with your eyes a lot then with that as well?
speaker-1: I do. Yeah. Yeah. I get, um, I get, I get dry eyes a lot, you know, probably not helpful. The fact that I'm always on my laptop doing my work pretty much. And so I get gritty eyes, dry eyes. My eyes are sensitive to light more than they would be. Yeah. If it's a hot day or, um, you know, I'm working out, which is rare nowadays. Um, just expecting some of the laughing background there. It's just a chance that without eyebrows, when you're sweating. The eyebrows, although subtle for many people, they have a way of diverting sweat away from your eyes. So I've had experiences when I used to run a lot back in, back a few years ago. Yeah. It was always just like getting into my eyes, stinging my eyes, and having my glasses slip down my nose a lot and stuff like this. So it's surprisingly, and no kind of nose hair as well means that, and people might love that, you know, cosmetically it's great not to have any nose hair, but biologically, suppose. If your immune system is compromised because alopecia, you know, it kind of has an effect on that. Then the last thing you need to dispose of are other means of defense is not being present. So like the fact that you might not have a nose here means that you're probably more prone to like, like dust and other issues getting into your airways that then can cause ENT problems. you know, so it's, it's kind of subtle. It's not something I was aware of straight away. But now it can be more educated, more self aware. Those are certainly new years that mean that allocation does have a greater effect than just around identity and how you look.
speaker-0: When you were 18 years of age and you went through that period, well not period, of that incident where you got attacked and stuff like that and then you lost your hair then after as well, what was your emotional reaction to actually knowing that the alopecia was a lot more prominent and then you started losing your hair? How did that make you feel emotionally?
speaker-1: Well, there were times where, you know, I've had to do a lot of, I wanted to do a lot of work on myself since I was attacked, you know, and the first thing he did, I think was going to receive some counseling. So it made me very aware of how ⁓ the attack affected my psychological right from the word go, which I was very grateful for. have that support around me. What I didn't have much of an inclination for, course, was the fact that my name was going to start folding out a few months later. Where I became a bit more aware around, you know, that it's okay to like still go around the local village when it's dark and it's okay to leave the house that, you know, not everyone's out to attack you. know, I, I developed the rationale around that pretty quickly and recognized myself that it was an isolated incident. It could be lot worse. There was a kind of a resolution there for me, but when my hair started falling out there, when I was trying to get beyond that, it did kind of feel like a reminder of the, of the incident and how as much as I did the work to loosen the grip, I suppose, the trauma, ⁓ it presented itself then in my hair. So I went through this very like the hell's going on kind of thing. ⁓ this is still. signs of the attack happening. Like I thought I was working on myself to get beyond this. So it really kind of opened up a lot of self loathing really. You know, I thought I was better than this. Why is my hair falling out now? ⁓ they've still got to hold me, et cetera. know, so it was, was constant reminders of the trauma that every time I lost my hair, that I was still back in that picking state.
speaker-0: Yeah, did you have, I was gonna say, I'm glad you mentioned that word victim as well then, because with the fact of losing hair and then mentally then linking that to the attack didn't help, did you grow a lot of resentment and anger then towards the people who done that because it's the effect that it's had?
speaker-1: In a sense, yeah, you know, mean, the two guys, ⁓ they were arrested and they were punished for it. ⁓ so I didn't feel like they had a, ⁓ how can I put it? Like, it didn't, they didn't pose a constant threat in my life. Right. But I think what, what it colors though, and this is why I thought it's important that we often check ourselves, ⁓ as to what lens are we looking at life through? I became. quite paranoid, suppose, not so much like be attacked again, like they're violating actions really, that led to that physical assault. Started to become in my mind, ⁓ more present in the looks that I thought people were giving me. ⁓ or the words that they were saying, or, ⁓ the apprehensions of people that have, you know, just the subtleties of ⁓ negative, probably unintended negative behavior. would make me feel like you're just like them, you know? And that would, in some regards, color my view on when people were actually just genuinely curious, you know? Or were actually decent people who aren't there to take the mickey or make you feel bad about yourself. So I think the legacy of that form is very much how it affected the way I perceived myself and others.
speaker-0: Yeah, that's, that's really interesting because last week on our episode with Chloe last week, we talked about like normality as well about trying to fit in and then worrying about other people's perceptions of what we see ourselves. Like again, everyone knows that we're on a mental health podcast and I suffer mental health and so have you, but we'll get at that later on as well. But you can't see mental health. So it's not one of the things visually people and it can be very annoying sometimes because people say to me, ⁓ there's nothing wrong with you. I'm like, yeah, but just because you can't see it doesn't mean that it's not there. But again, then with yourself, when people are looking at you and you know, you've had that negative experience of what happened in the attack, it always leaves that error of doubt then in the back of your mind that are they doing it? Are they doing it because they're curious? Are they doing it? So you're constantly assessing the room. when you're in there as well, so you're always on guard. But I think that comes with, as we go into ⁓ male confidence, being confident in yourself. It'd be really interesting, I'll ask you a question from a societal point of view. How do you think that society frame male confidence?
speaker-1: We can, think, it's an interesting one, isn't it? We've got to be checking in on our own life experiences, on our own prejudgments and subtle discriminations we hold on ourselves as to what that answer might be. A societal view on masculinity, if you break it down, my view on masculinity might be different than yours for different reasons. It is an interesting topic that we've got to look at, especially when there's perception that toxic masculinity is rife right now and it's causing a lot of division. Um, I would say looking at my own life experience and what hasn't worked for me is that I've just a couple of quick examples, suppose. would say about, uh, in my life so far, I've had a mixed set of, uh, male role models, you know, some good, some also good. And. You know, the, in no particular order then, you know, I'll jump straight to the. the viewer on sports and physical strength. Right. So, ⁓ I was always like the youngest in my year, right. I'm oldest born. in school, I was always seemingly to be the less, ⁓ strong or less athletic. I was quite young in my age group. ⁓ but equally, I didn't really have a lean in towards sporting us because I had a very aggressive dominant, older brother, ⁓ living in the house for me who just like was a bully basically. And, and, know, he was very strong and into his rugby and into his football. So, and he would just like, yeah, he would attack them as well. He'd get quite physical and, you know, we're talking about an age gap where I was 10 and he was 18, right? But he had his behavioral issues. My parents perhaps weren't the best equipped to understand how to navigate parenting him. But they did their best for they could. So he started to represent everything then that I felt masculinity was. So I kind of had a natural aversion into anything that seemed close to that. So he was into rugby, therefore I'm not going to be into rugby because that's for mean men. know, or he's into football, I'm not going to be into football because that's where the muppets are. So I developed this snobbery, I suppose, and this aversion because I associate metaskillinity with making people feel bad. You know, this alpha, this dominant, this strength. didn't necessarily align masculinity with other qualities. Even now I may be struggling to articulate as I'm able to revisit my own relationship with masculinity, especially now I've got two teenage boys myself. It's a very complex topic. So I try and believe, I suppose, that actually there isn't a strong unifying societal sense of what masculinity is. It just means that there perhaps are some common views around what it's believed to be. So with that in mind, I would say that like, just got to look at ourselves as human beings really. And I know people can talk about masculine and feminine behaviors and quality that can sit in males and females and, and, ⁓ whether it's in between that definition. ⁓ so I just say like, you know, let's just look at the, the human behavior, the human characteristics. Because when we try and polarize too much, naturally then you're going to bring through things that encourage division. So I felt that you could be a real man if you were sporty, if you were physically strong and you were able to fight. That was my view on masculinity and those were all of the things I was not. But just to finish off the point though. where I've reconciled a number of differences within myself that make me feel a bit more comfortable in my own skin. It's the fact that masculinity in healthier forms can be found in lots of places. And that's where I found it in music. You know, like even Rage Against the Machine, for example, right? Very shouty, very aggressive, you could argue, very dialed up on the masculinity. But actually the lyrics that they talk about are about breaking down patriarchal toxic systems. You know, the Manic Street Preachers, you know, I grew up on them a lot. And they've got this very androgynous sort of aesthetic about them. But by and large, they present themselves as heterosexual white Welsh men. But they talk about love and romance and they talk about trying to reconcile the human condition with trying to make the world a better place, even though some of the lyrics are ⁓ intentionally quite dark and disruptive. And then in more recent times, Radiohead. You know, I love Radiohead. But they don't present like robust, strong men shouting down a microphone with huge guitars. you know, they're very melancholic, melodic, but perhaps invite us to look within ourselves. So a lot of these things transcend masculinity and femininity. think we need to do a lot of work to ensure that we don't polarize ourselves. into either camp because that's when we just dwell on the differences rather than really looking at what connects us.
speaker-0: I think that's really, really strong because when we look at, when we look at like society, for me anyway, when we look at society, you see like men's health magazines of what a man should look like. You've got the thing from women as well, what women should look like in the fitness magazines and models. So we're constantly comparing ourselves to a societal narrative of what it should be. So for me, As long as you are happy, it doesn't matter what you do. Nothing should be classified as what's man and what's woman. If you look at, especially we've both brought up in the valleys as well, the old nuclear family is disappearing at a vast rate. So the reason like the man goes out, he does a manly job, the woman stays at home and does the dishes and everything like that, that's not a thing anymore. So I think even though it was something that was very, very big in the back in the 60s or earlier than that, 70s and 80s and everything. We're now transferring to this time where equality is a big, big thing now. So it doesn't matter that if you've got a ⁓ boy who doesn't want to do sport, it doesn't mean that he's less, he's less sporty because he can take up another activity. And I say that with my son, my son is, played, I tried to start him off with football. He was playing football, my youngest one now, ⁓ and he didn't like it. but then he's into his music and everything. My older son, he's sport mad. Sport, football, rugby, plays football twice on the weekend. But my middle son is drama. So he's a drama student and he goes acting and stuff like that. So there's a wide variety within this house in my household. I've got different tasks and it's not the same around. And I've had comments said to me about my middle son, oh, he's going drama and all that kind of stuff. And I'm thinking, Why would you associate him doing a drama activity with being less efficient than someone who's doing sport? It makes no difference at all. It's all to do with the activity you do with and as long as you enjoy it, it doesn't matter. It really, really doesn't. So, yeah, it's one of the things that I'm quite passionate about because we get ourselves so lost in social media of what... a person is deemed to look like. And that then again, as we talk about leads to mental health ailments where you start having identity crisis, you start to have anxiety, social anxiety. There's so many different aspects that follow on then from us perceiving what we are told, what we actually believe we should be inside.
speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if I could just add to that, Sam, absolutely. You know, when it comes to like the arts and culture and, and the, the, the, view that that's a more feminine space. I mean, God, you know, look at Idris Elba, look at Tom Hardy, you know, look at those kinds of actors that present in a very masculine way, but, also present in a way that's very, ⁓ very engaging, like when they're in interviews and things and they only talk very broadly around humanity and, and sometimes spirituality and things like that. So it's a funny thing that still people want to put these interests into particular ⁓ pigeon holes because it's like as if they're obsessed with finding out who's heterosexual and who's homosexual, for example. it's just like, you know, we're in 2026 now, like what's going on? I've always found it really important for us to find our tribe, know, find our like-minded people. And that can be a very diverse group. I like nothing more than a group of people that present a diversity of thought into a conversation. I mean, if you go back ⁓ when we were like very much in our tribes around the campfire, I guarantee you that, you know, yeah, we were part of the same tribe. We probably looked a little bit different, but not massively, but we all had different strengths. all had different things to bring to the campfire, different stories, different abilities, different strengths. I think this over obsession around compartmentalizing people's interests. ⁓ well, if you play music, then you're probably not into rugby. You, well, I mean, play rugby and they create the piano like, you know, people are a wonderful mix of all sorts of stuff. And I love bringing people together who actually create time and space for our fellow human being before activities, interests and hobbies. So we have conversations side by side and explore. our understanding of the life that we live in and how we can be of better service to our fellow humans and to ourselves. And then everything else is after that. That's what helped me build my confidence was the fact that I was able to, in my 20s, find a fantastic group of people that brought all sorts of different stories and interests to the table.
speaker-0: Yeah, definitely. I think when I talk about mental health, people, normally go and say, ⁓ what childhood trauma did you have? What have you experienced? I talk about PTSD. And then they say that you went to work, you went with you in the forces and stuff. And I was like, well, no, haven't. But I think when we talk about mental health in trauma terms, it's a big part of it. But what we don't talk about is identity erosion is also trauma too. That's something that we don't talk about enough. think of what happened previously. We don't talk about the person you've lost. for a long period of time, and I've said it last year, I believe before I went to Thailand, even though I had a lot of things going on, there's a different Sam to who went to Thailand before and then the Sam will come after. Because then I literally for a long period of time until I would say to the last year, when I've done an awful lot of work and now in doing this, where I didn't know who Sam was. I didn't understand who I was inside. Very, very negative about myself. I think doing a lot of work the last year, speaking to a lot of people, doing the book, doing the podcast, you start realizing that that person's always been there. And I was identifying that that was a traumatic period of identifying who I was inside as well.
speaker-1: Yeah, definitely. You know, I think there's a lot to be said around, you know, the inner child kind of work. There's, what we don't always recognize is that life experiences are compounded on top of each other to the point where we forget what our purest form was like, you know, and probably even predates conscious memory as to who we are. But who we are really, suppose, in another way, is how we... go through life, navigate an adversity and opportunity and trauma and joy, all of the stuff. And I think it's remarkable where people are at when you meet them. If you meet them where they're at, then you get to understand, okay, now this is Sam, he's been through these life experiences. And what I'm witnessing now is a snapshot of Sam where a lot of this version of Sam may exist for years to come. Fast forward 20 years and you may feel even more... like Sam, whatever that is, know, because you're on that journey of constant self discovery and that mission to help ⁓ as humans heal. So I think it is important to reflect, but it's also important not to ruminate. I know my mum had a telepathy childhood and a lot of trauma with that at the hands of her mother who basically had bipolar, know, and medicated and treated. alienated, isolated, et cetera. So there's a lot of generational trauma going on there, but it pays her no benefit at all to revisit those memories because cognitively she knows them. She hasn't bottled anything down or suppressed anything, but what it has done though, it's led to some present day behaviors that don't serve it too well. So just like chronic pain, for example, even the physiological stuff, where perhaps some... inner work still needs to happen, not by revisiting the past, but revisiting her relationship with the past. You know, I think that's something that we can always work on. Because at the end of the day, the longer you get to live, the more life experience you're to pick up. And we need the tools, you've developed with the Forge, you need the tools to be able to recognize that, okay, you are going to go through some stuff. And that's the beauty and tragedy of life all in one. but it's how we navigate it and stay human and stay giving and stay wholesome. I think these life experiences are very important to us.
speaker-0: I think that's where acceptance for me and accountability come into consideration. The bullying when I was younger, Riffey Bullying instance from six to 11 years of age, the identity crisis of, yeah, achieving so much within sport, but doing it from a perspective of I wanted to prove people wrong and then what happened in Thailand. All of those things until recently and the work that I'd done from 2018 to 2025. was down to the fact of I had to accept those things that happened to me, they don't define me going forward. And then accountability then is I've said it before on podcast, I was accountable for not telling my mother when I was younger I was being bullied. I was accountable for not talking about my mental health and what I was actually feeling was playing badminton and I didn't have to go to Thailand, but I chose to, so I put myself in that situation. So once you start looking at them, those kind of factors then you're then able then to get a really good understanding of it doesn't define me, I can now move forward. But as long as I stay in this present moment, then we can just work with that. So yeah, I really do. As you articulated that then, it really does make me think in regards of yeah, the acceptance and accountability of your past when we talk about trauma is very, very, it's an important key strategy that we need to use and then talking as well, like we're talking about it today. The more we talk about it, the more we understand it, the more we accept it. If we don't talk about it, then you're running away from it. You put in a box and locked it to the back of your mind. And unfortunately what happens during traumatic experiences or when your identity or where the mask just falls off, I've said before, the mask has no volume and sometimes it'll just leave and then you're left bare. So you need to be able to be prepared and comfortable with yourself, revenge comes down to self worth then. So I'm currently in a situation where I'm very comfortable in myself. I know who I am, what I'm doing. I've had people even say to me what I'm doing at the moment. They say, why do you want to go and tell everyone your story for? Why are you sharing your story? Are you looking for personal gratification? No, it's all about me healing as a person first and foremost. And then secondly, giving other people the platforms to come and talk openly and share what I'm doing. That's all it is. But from a mental health impact then in regards of the self-worth, the masculinity and the alpica as well, how did it affect your self-worth?
speaker-1: ⁓ so yeah, I mean, I was a very introverted teenager, I'll start there, suppose. And I believe the part of that was down to the, the treatment I had from my, brother when I was preteen. So I was very, ⁓ I don't know, I carried this weight, I suppose, with me for a long time. And even when I was like eight years old, I was on the phone, I was always given the phone when my mentally ill nan would call. Because she was essentially estranged from the family. So if anyone else had answered the phone, they'd be like, oh, you speak to her. And so from the age of eight years old, then I'm like listening to my nan on like making a call from the... corridors of witchish mental hospital, know, where she was sectioned. So I was very much introduced to, know, having the people please very early on. to avoid my brother's attention for a day where I can feel perhaps invisible, but comfortably so, because that means I'm not going to be humiliated that day, I'm not going to be hurt. So then taking a call off my net in the evening where it's like, she's telling me like, you know, she wants to not live anymore. And I mean, he's all trying to live. Trying to understand that. So by the time I became a teenager, ⁓ I found myself hypersensitive, I suppose, to a lot of people's emotions and life experiences and challenges where I became an overactive people pleaser or I just retreated because I couldn't cope with it. So I had very, going into my adulthood, then I had very little sense of self-worth. Anyway, ⁓ before alopecia struck. So when alopecia struck and then, you know, going to the hairdressers, was the only time I would come out from under my rock, suppose, and, and get my head done. So I felt better about myself to then have that place, that sacred space, violated by alopecia and hair loss and the trauma that preceded that was, was quite devastating for me, really. It was the only place where I feel like good. comfortably be seen and cared for and not be burdened with the emotional trauma that others would bring. So when I, when that was disrupted, you know, I would often fall back into my music, but I would be very insular and introverted about that. So self-worth to me, think from a very young age, I didn't have within me. You know, and it's curious because it was a lot of love around, know, my parents in some ways and grandparents, my uncles, you know, whether I was born with a predisposition to be a certain way, perhaps I was. ⁓ but when alopecia hit then it just kind of like, don't know, was in a very strange way, but it was like the, the, the cherry on the cake. So therefore, my lowest then, there is only one direction to go in for me. I was never suicidal. There were moments where I felt... What's the point? What's the point in me living? I don't really know my place. You know, I'm constantly feeling a particular way. then as I said, you know, to find music that would speak of similar things actually brought some kind of comfort, uh, rather than bringing me down even lower because it made me feel less alone. So when my hair started falling out, then I'd already applied for a pub job beforehand and I just started the pub job and, was carrying suddenly this very visible condition I didn't have in my interview a few months prior. So working in a pub job when I was 18 with my hair falling out in Cuffilly, had to fast track me to a place of self-acceptance and start to recognize actually that there are people who look you in the eye and they don't look at the patches on your head. And from there, I started to rebuild my sense of self because I was not hiding away in my bedroom. I was, I was not trying to avoid building relationships because I've only ever really known this relationships to deplete me. was suddenly building up a fantastic network, network of friends who saw me for being me. So as I say, you you get to a point where you're so low. course there are a lot of people that make certain decisions, which is tragic. But for me, I, I, that wasn't my life path. My life path was clearly to find a place to rebuild from. So yeah, it did erode the tiny bit of software that I had, but really to the point where I was able to use as a catalyst really for rediscovering myself.
speaker-0: It's really interesting because there's a growing trend at the moment when I'm speaking to people on the podcast every week is that when they are faced at the moment where they're in great struggle or great identity of trying to work out themselves, they choose another path where they go, right, okay, I need to put something in place in order to get me from where I am to going forward. Obviously that can't be said for everyone tragically, people have taken their lives as a result. But it kind of shows that yes, and again, if you're looking at that kind of forged method as well, the acknowledgement state, you're in denial about it, say for instance. And when you're in denial of, you've locked yourself away, you're not talking, you're introverted, withdrawn, say for instance, in order to move to the next stage to be to... acknowledge issue, it's really difficult and it's uncomfortable. It's the flame. really does spark that kind of, I don't really want to be you. You didn't want to be in that pub having all them people looking at you and talking. But what it did, even though it was very difficult, it allowed you to develop, like you said, increased level of self-worth where you could turn around and go, well, no, actually I can do this. And everyone knows when you're in a pub, you've got people who are drunk and stuff like that, right? Things are said, they're throwing insults or they're throwing gestures and you have got to toughen up. It's like working on a building site as well. Do you mean, you work in a building site, you've got the poor laborers get, the amount of abuse the laborer gets is incredible. But what it does, it kind of develops that kind of real strong fundamental blocks of, no, actually I am strong. It's not for everyone. I can understand that, but it does show, it really does show that If you transition through that uncomfortable stage and then you go through into that accountability and acceptance, then you're able to do that. You're then able to move on to what you're doing now. And it's the same with the guests, whoever previously they're now doing incredible things because they've put the hard work in. It's not going to be easy. And you've said that, if we're looking at your situation, losing your hair, being ⁓ attacked when you were 18 years of age, having that identity crisis as well of understanding why people are looking at me, why is this all these big why questions to actually put yourself in a situation going right, okay, I'm going to put myself right in the frying pan and see what happens and then coming out the other side like, wow, okay, I can do this. It's incredible, Dan. It really is because I don't think I would have been able to do it. I really don't think I, I know it's easy to say that. Well, if you're in my shoes, you'll able to do it. But I think it just shows the strength of character for you to go through that period when a lot of people struggle with Alpecia. it kind of, for me, solidifies the fact of how much of a role model you are and why Bodilocks is so important to people. Because they want to follow in your shoes, that there's going to be people who are currently struggling with that denial acknowledgement stage and by hearing your story of how you transitioned through that, they are then able to move on through their lives and start making impacts as well. So kudos to you. really do appreciate them. really do. I really do think an awful lot of you for for doing that and you're in more about that kind of side of how you the adversity stage.
speaker-1: I'm grateful for that, Thanks. It does mean a lot. I find it incredible that I get to spend every day building the Baldylocks business, knowing that it's the basis of Baldylocks comes from a place of pain, but also then purpose. We get to see the impact on a very frequent basis. Just as such on a few things you mentioned there, which I think wonderfully bring in a few. points we explored earlier on masculinity and leadership and what it's like in construction, cetera. I've always, and this kind of tracks, I suppose, my own acceptance of, I'm better understanding of what masculinity is. I'm going to use a particular example like Gordon Ramsay. So when I first started watching Gordon Ramsay, was like, I don't like this guy. He's like a bully, right? He's very dominant. It's very like all of the things that I dislike about masculinity. ⁓ looked a little bit closer, there's always a moment where he kind of seeks someone out in that environment and then demonstrates a very nurturing aspect to his personality. To the point where you'll see that someone is struggling to express their skills or their talent and he'll do some incredible things in supporting the career path from that because he sees them. So what he does, he disrupts, he disrupts people's mindset because people adapt. create a new normal sometimes in a situation that actually doesn't serve them too well at all. I totally get the idea of restart, reset, rebirth, that kind of stuff. But if you're just adapting to what you've always known, then you're always going to cultivate ⁓ anything that's just always happened and you suddenly become the victor then, creating victims, unless someone disrupts it and makes it visible and brings in accountability. So I think for me, Gordon Ramsay is an interesting symbol of masculinity because masculinity can invite compassion. And I think in construction, you know, there is disruptive culture there around banter and things. when I think the actual bully is a few and far between. I think there's a nuance though. think if you can combine that kind of disruptive banter to try and break someone through to a different confidence level within themselves that they can build resilience and, you know, take themselves more lightly about stuff. Then actually get to see a door open through proper coaching, compassion, inclusivity. So there are nuances in these things that make this human experience a wonderfully fascinating topic. really does. And when it comes to, suppose, you know, the perceived self-indulgence of talking about your story. I don't know if it's a British cultural thing. Oh, we don't talk about ourselves, sniff up a lip and all that kind of stuff. You know, the way that you and I talk about our stories doesn't necessarily, how can I put it? During our experience that it built up to the stories that we share, we were having to go through a lot of pain and anguish and uncertainty. and things that we couldn't figure out, but we had to live it. Now, what greater gift can pain bring you than for you to be able to be of service to others so they haven't got to go through the depths of the pain or the length of time that it took you to get to a place of self acceptance and inner peace. So why wouldn't you finally now be in a place where you can feel like you can articulate your life's journey? express it in such a way that helps people navigate those adversities in a much quicker way than you ever could. Be the support to others that you couldn't find for yourself. So we need to talk more, we need to share more, we need to co-design more, need to be shoulder to shoulder more, not finger wagging and lecturing and making people all empathy fatigue because we keep going on about the doom all the time. How can we look at accountability and moving away from being a victim? you know, and, and re-empowering ourselves so we can then nurture our fellow man or woman or next generation to be living a better life. You know, it's, it's a powerful life mission to unlock in yourself and you do it very well, Sam. You know, I, I'm very grateful that, that we have met and that you're doing what you're doing because if you can make, if you can positively affect in a very minute way, the trajectory of someone's life, that definitely is a life and death situation. And so, you're saving lives out there doing what you're doing. And I think it's remarkable. There's no bigger gift in life than being able to do that for people.
speaker-0: No, I think I really appreciate that because I think that's one of the things that I struggled with when I first started was that kind of identity crisis of trying to understand, I know like a bit of an imposter syndrome. Why would anyone want to hear my story? Why would, what would people gain from my story? And it's not until I've actually started speaking to people that they've then discovered that actually I've been there, I can understand that. And that's why this podcast for me is that the forged method in the book is so important, but this podcast is starting to develop into something I'm extremely passionate about because the amount of messages I have back from people saying that not only are you impacting that person who's coming on to talk, we've got people who've never spoken podcasts before, don't talk about their mental health, but the impact that's had not just on them, but them as a family unit. They're coming back as better people, they're coming back as better individuals. You look at the forged method and how people now are looking at themselves within the method of understanding simple words and they don't have to go wait on like 18 months waiting list to go and see psychotherapists and counselors and everything. Yes, it's an incredible thing when you're able to articulate, like you said, your life experience to help people. And when we do this, you only ever do it to help one person. And that's all I do. listens to it, doesn't matter if it's one, it doesn't matter if it's a thousand. You just use your life experience and what you have learned to help other people. Because when you look at all these big textbooks, psychology textbooks and stuff, they are all based off people like me and you. That's all it is. the difference is between then and now. is that there were people who could speak about it from an educational point of view to put it into data, to share with people. But now we're living in an age where lived experience is big, where these people who those books are actually written about were able to come forward and talk about it. And it's causing this kind of shift now where people are getting more experience and more educational learning and needs from people like me and yourself and other people who are talking about their mental health because We've been there, we understand it and we're able to be sometimes, especially me, too brutally honest in what happens and how to talk about it. But people will look at that and be able to go, I can trust that person because they've been there and they've done it. I'm not saying that psychotherapists and counselors and stuff don't do that because they do. I spoke with someone in the week and they said that ⁓ They are all struggling as well. They're all going through the same process. They're human. They're in that industry because they have been there. But I think there's a big push at the moment again in that reliance of listening to people who have actually been there, experienced it, been in through a renders trauma or identity or self-worth or anything and then able to speak about that. Yeah, I think that's a big thing for me as well, why I do the podcast, why I do the books and stuff. And it'll never get to the point where I go, it's a bit too much for me, I don't want to be doing this anymore because every day I get to do this, I'm healing myself as well. ⁓
speaker-1: Yeah, definitely. I can relate to that. think a lot of the talks I've given since I started at Volgogh. I've just had me very emotional in the moment doing these talks and I managed to keep it on track, thankfully. But it's a very authentic experience of expressing your pain, but also the journey through to a place of healing, you know, and it's difficult to broaden out of a camera. We do not use a lot of buzzwords that seem to be flying around in the well-being space, but at end of the day. I don't think you'll ever get well-being saturation because a lot of our fellow human beings need a lot of different kinds of support. Some clinical, some not so formal, some through speaking and some through doing. Yeah, it's, you teach it once, sorry, what's the phrase? You teach it once, you learn it twice. That's something I picked up a long time ago. So when I get to do like do talks to young adults around purpose and direction and self-esteem. It's kind of, I'm also speaking to my younger self, that perhaps I wasn't the most caring for, you know, so it definitely does create that kind of 360, not just positive energy, but very much a reconciliation between you and your past selves that needs to always come into alignment, you know, because we do carry a lot of great stuff from the past, but a lot of issues too that we need to be aware of.
speaker-0: Yeah, and what I want to do now, I think this is perfect opportunity now, is that people understand where you've been, how you've transitioned, how you've put yourself in a situation to grow as a person when you're facing adversity in regards of your self-worth and identity. So I want to talk into the amazing thing that you've created alongside your wife as well, and that is Baldy Locks. So tell me what sparked Baldy Locks?
speaker-1: Okay. So a couple of things that spark quality locks, I often talk about. So, you know, we talked a lot already about the personal kind of motivate that to, be able to bring some to the world that can have my pain become my purpose, et cetera. Right. ⁓ But there were particular key moments that came up in recent times that really brought this all together for me. So number one, I was, I was going to a local pizza place and there was a guy there probably in his early twenties. He was serving. He was quiet otherwise, it only me and him really in that space. And I could see patches all over his head, right? So yeah, alopecia and very much the way it looked to me when I was around his age. And whenever I see someone with alopecia, I can spot them a mile off, right? Even if it's not that obvious to others. So I get this moment of like, oh, it's one of me. But like I keep that in inside. hope anyway, I don't think it comes out. But with this guy, I approached him with bit of caution and sensitivity. So when I ordered my pizza, I looked at him and I said, ⁓ you've got alopecia, like me. Now in my head, was thinking it would go in way of like, ⁓ yeah, yeah, all right, so we could talk it through. But what happened in reality, so he actually caved in, he just said something under his breath that I couldn't quite catch. And he just retreated. ⁓ his teammates, suppose, were kind of back cooking. And I was like, bloody hell, what happened there? And I kind of realized that, yeah, right, okay. I forgot what it was like to be that age, dealing with that condition and how deluded I think I would have to be to think that I didn't have a visible condition because that's what would enable me to leave the house. So I kind of called him out really, like unintentionally for having something that he was trying to ignore. So that for me then reminded me, empathy is important here. Even though I wasn't insulting, the guy wasn't ready. So I don't pass that off as, well that's a him problem. think, well, there's an opportunity now for me to recognize that I am in a place where I need my peace and other people need that help. So it just kind of sat with me. I didn't quite unlock anything at that point. It was just kind of sat with me. And there was another moment then where I was walking down the high street in Bridgend where I live now. And I saw a barbershop, right? And they got this lovely, like old school, aesthetic going on with the big chairs. And I was like, I love a bit of that. Then I kind of found myself in like, I'm a sort of like a dog set outside of Butchers. You know, I was looking through the window thinking, ⁓ how amazing would that be to go in there? And I was like, ⁓ well, but I can't. And of course, you know, I made my peace with my condition. So I'm not like a little violin time. I don't spiral into all this kind of stuff that I used to. just sort of. ⁓ it's bugging me a bit now. How can I, what can I fix that? How can I reconnect people with places? Again, no real solution. I was just trying to figure it out. And then there's a third moment there, which seems daft, right? But it's an important part of what really unlocked it all for me. And it was quite simply, right? My son was on the phone to his friend, right? They're about 12 years old at this point. And whenever Matthew comes on the speakerphone, his voice just catches my ear, right? So... I banter with him gently. I'm a guy in his forties bantering with a 12 year old, right? How immature. But it is what it is. So I say something to him, quite harmless and jokey, but bantery. And he quips back in a heartbeat and goes, shut up, Baldy Locks. And in that moment I thought, that's some good. I thought he's won that one. He's won that one. It reminds me of a time when I beat my dad at Scrabble, right? When I was like 13 years old. It was like, ⁓ I got to give it to you. That was really, really fast. Quite funny. Cause there's no spiked in it. Right. So he won that one. So I thought, well, I'm always quite entrepreneurial minded. I always like to try and think of ideas. Most of them are not worth talking about. Let's just put them in a bin. But this one I was thinking, right, empathy. was thinking of connection. was thinking humor and those keywords now become our values of Goldilocks. So I think, you know, I've got my lived experience. I've got the story. I've got the mission, you know, how can I bring people to a sense of self-exceptance from this condition that we can't cure right now? What does that mean as a business though? So I, that's when I went a bit of an exploration. And so I went to a barber shop and I said, look, I'd love to have that experience, but I haven't got any hair. Just something that we can do where I can go in and have a treatment because You know, COVID lockdown, you know, everyone felt the disconnect, ⁓ to different places. So I wanted to be able to tap into that shared psychology, that shared empathy that even if you don't have alopecia or, or, or some stigma around hair loss, we have a human experience that we can all tap into around what isolation disconnection feels like. So I went to the barber shop and said, how can I solve this for people like me? And they said, well, They said, all right, well, come in, have a hot towel, cold towel, have a close shave because even if you don't have hair, that's a great exfoliating process anyway. I was like, ⁓ okay, cool. And it's on my Instagram, My wife was filming me kind of building up the confidence to go into the barbershop to the point where I actually ended up taking the seat and going through all sorts of intense emotions and memories. And by the end of it, after Katharina, who is the barber at this place. After we have this conversation and she's given me the treatments, I came out like glowing, like floating almost. It was amazing. There was a moment of curiosity then of thinking, ⁓ how can I develop this further? This is setting our path now of trying to be quite business-minded around saying to the barber, every bald head that goes past your door now could be a customer if you take on the baldy lux experience or whatever it is. But anyway, I parked there for a moment and I thought, but what does this look like for women then? know, because I go to an Alapisha UK support group and there's a lot of women there. A of shops are not really going to unlock that for them. So I looked at salons, I looked at spas. I spoke to Carter from the Vale College about an idea and a few weeks later then we got four ladies of Alapisha enjoying a spa experience where in the three minute video again that you'll see on my social media. They go in with their hair systems on, they seem a little bit uncertain by the end of it. After a course of treatment of like getting their nails done, having massages, they're sat in a restaurant then by the end of it with their hair systems off, just glowing in that kind of, in that experience of being connected again, not just to a place, but to themselves and to others. You know, the feedback I had from a couple of the women like Deborah, for example, she said to me afterwards, said, look, if I saw a ball, lock sticker on the window, the spiral salmon, I know I'd feel understood and welcomed. And I thought, wow, you know, so I have unlocked something now that the genies are at the bottom of it. So, um, this for me really brings, uh, brings something to the planet, to humanity that I can, I can, uh, formulate. Um, And since then, you know, I've been developing other services and experiences to help raise awareness about Alapetia, ⁓ but also to help people with their general wellbeing, especially around the nervous system. So nowadays when you see Baldy Locks doing whilst we get to a place eventually where we can be that sticker on the window of high street locations, you will find us at events, will find us at workplaces. We've done experiences at the NHS, we've done it on construction sites. where I have my team of baldettes, my freelance massage therapist, and they will be given 15 minutes seated massages to help people in it that you find some time and space to attend to their wellbeing. It doesn't take hours, it doesn't cost you, and it can be done where they're at. And we've had some great feedback from physiotherapists, occupational therapists, nurses who are like, you your baldettes are fantastic. They know how to speak to you. They know how to... treat you and this concept that you could just be in my canteen while I'm back to back seeing patients. mean, there's nothing more rewarding than trying to give care to people who are constantly giving care to others. So Baldy Locks as an enterprise is constantly expanding its offerings of service and products. So we're now at a place where we're actually presenting the concept called the dome zone. So with the name Baldy Locks perhaps might. ⁓ be confusing for some, like how can Baldy Locks do something to me when I'm not got a bald head? Well, the dome zone is a place that we create that you step into to make sure you get the treatment you deserve to calm the nervous system and to perhaps unlock awareness for you to be able to tackle new other wellbeing experiences that we can connect you to through our network of baldettes who have their own businesses on the side. So we're really cultivating a wellbeing ecosystem. It's not just about mental health talks, which I've done. It's not just about massages, but it's about making sure that people introduce really effective, efficient, expensive means of attending to your wellbeing. Because unless that's in the right place, then nothing else will be. yeah, Baldy Lux, we're into our second year now. We've been finalists of a couple of different entrepreneurial awards. And as I say, you know, working with social value managers and construction, we're doing a lot of wonderful stuff, but ultimately, 50 % of our profits go to Alopecia UK. And that charity is doing great things that I can't step into right now, is supporting clinical research, know, and running different kinds of events. So we are a formal social enterprise, but I'm glad to say we're bringing a lot of glow into people's lives. And that's essentially the essence of what we're doing.
speaker-0: I honestly, listening to everything you just said, I had a massive smile on my face because being able to give someone that experience of, how can I say it? Just pure heightened sensitivity of joy and happiness. It reminds me an awful lot of the film with Will Smith, The Pursuit of Happiness. he comes out and he's like buzzing and. For you in such a short period of time, for someone who feels so self-conscious, these people now will go into the salons to actually be in a public place around a dinner table without their hair pieces on or their hair systems. That's incredible. What an incredible achievement to give people that. that's not only just touching the surface of what Bouldie Locks is doing. It's an incredible... incredible achievement and I think what it does beautifully is that it highlights the importance of a safe space. I think safe spaces are so so important whether that's online forums, that's your mental health social groups or walking groups, anywhere where you don't feel judged and The joy of it is as well is when people are in there and they're all like-minded and they understand because you look at some groups, say for instance, a lot of the groups that I've seen, you go in there and there's always negative aspects to it. And if you go into that identity scenario, people go into these groups because they have a low self-identity. When they go in there, they feel that they're not understood. And that they just want to be loved. So they stay there from a negative point of view. But that's why what you're doing is beautiful because you're allowing people that safe space where people understand it's not full of people who will judge, who will do things. It's to allow people just to feel comfortable. And I think that's an incredible, an incredible gift to give to people. I really do. think that's incredible gift.
speaker-1: Thank you. It's, uh, it's incredible to see as well. You know, I, I love, um, being at events when our bald heads are working their magic. And oftentimes it's important that I'm not there because I just kind of get in the way. Um, but, uh, you know, it's, uh, it's, it's remarkable to see people. There'll be three different types of people, I suppose, really that we come across. One will be like, Oh yeah, I'm up for this. And I have a massage great. There'll be those who are like, I'm not so sure. only have a massage when there's a, an intense sports massage, you know, like this kind of. Especially on the construction sites that we've been at, there is a certain like, oh, not sure about this. And then there is something that you never see, right? And that is what it is. It's just not their thing or whatever. But I think that the fact that we invite a space for people to engage, I think it's really important that that is created because I know what it's like to feel withdrawn and disconnected. I know how comfortable or falsely comfortable that can feel when your bed rotting or sofa rotting. and until eventually you get sick of that state and then you come out of it. I think like home is for rest, know, home is for rest, whereas out in the world that's for growth, you know, and I think when you balance the two nicely, that's when you kind of create the sense of reconciliation within yourself, that inner peace that I often talk about. yeah, like wherever people congregate, whether it be, I don't know, I'm not a religious person, but I respect that the church is a hub for many, a pub can be, a rugby clubhouse, know, a spa or a salon is also those kinds of spaces. There's nothing worse, I don't think, that when something happens in someone's life and it takes them away from those spaces, that they perhaps even took for granted as to how much benefit they were getting from. mean, we need to look at the spa a bit. And this is certainly much more noticeable in this space. You you're looking at women there who have lost their hair through no fault of their own, who have suddenly had this disruption and this disconnection and this shame and all the stuff that they carry. And I've got to say, know, the reason I say women in this place, pain knows no gender, A woman's pain is no worse than a man's pain. But what I will say when it comes to societal expectations, You know, when you look at the Baldy Locks icon, you do you see a man or a woman with alopecia? You you might think, oh, it's clearly a bloke because he kind of looks like me. But there's a lot of women with bald heads and glasses out there, you know. So therefore, do men lose a sense of masculinity when they lose their hair? Do women lose a sense of femininity when they lose their hair? And I would say the latter is probably more prominent. But what I got to see in the smile experience was the practitioners who were there, um, have also come up. become our baldettes because I was really struck by their caring and candid way of making sure that that person felt no different just because they've got a condition that some people don't have. When you saw a moment where they have their bald scalps touched for the first time, where the top of their own head has been a huge stigma for them that they've got to cover with hats or wigs and they want to be lucky, God forbid anyone touches it. For the practitioners there who are now, like I say, the baldettes. just to get straight on it. It's like, it was almost kind of like, I observed a sort of a moment of uncertainty with the women who suffer from alopecia, but then an instant relaxation and acceptance. No, that shift that I got to observe was so profound that to a point, and we talk, you mentioned imposter syndrome earlier, I'll just touch on something quick. The first kind of public talk I did about Goldilocks. ⁓ this is imposter syndrome ramped up, right? ⁓ it was an award ceremony called the female boss awards. And it was run by a brilliant woman called Angie Monroe's based in, ⁓ in the Midlands. And she invited me to do a talk there because she liked what I was trying to share with, with salon owners around creating more inclusive spaces for those who feel disconnected. So I'm there. met like tonight Josephine's in Birmingham, which is like super camped up and all bright and lovely colors, et cetera. And I'm dressed in my, intentionally kind of black cap, black t-shirt, Baldy locks logo. And it's like a love Island after party, right? Aesthetics are off the chart. know, everyone looks amazing. And I'm like, Oh my God, what am I doing here? I mean, I got, I eventually got to my place where I was talking at the end of the whole ceremony. And the feedback I had really, when I was talking about my experience at the salon, the Spar experience that we run, there was just silence. I was told by the host that whilst I was in my own head, in my own flow of sharing, they said like, other speakers came before you, people are chatting amongst themselves, not really creating much space or respect for the people who were talking. But when you started talking about the topic, your... really promoting, everyone just shut up when they were listening. But the biggest thing I pushed to them, said, look, it's all about dignity. I said, there is no way that anyone should be leaving your place feeling less. And I said, you're all gods, right? Guardians of dignity. That's what we call you in the Baldy verse. was getting, you know, so please, like whenever anyone comes in, make sure they leave with their confidence, not without it. And I said, I'd love nothing more for you guys. I have a Baldi Lock stick on the window. So people actually know that you are welcome to those who do feel uncomfortable going to those places where they could just have a coffee and a chat. And I had so many salon owners come in to me at end, some in Scotland, so many of them just saying like, how do we make this happen? Very early on there's been arms wide open for what Baldi Locks can do to... create more connections in communities and be enterprising at the same time. So it's a lot of fun. There's a lot of momentum and I'm so grateful that people have adopted the brand in such a loving way.
speaker-0: I was beautifully put, but I'm incredibly proud of you for doing what you're doing and what you've created for people. It's really important to know that there are places out there and people out there who are making these changes and putting these things in place to allow people to feel again, dignified. I think that's a really, ⁓ I didn't even think of that, the guardians of... of dignity that they really are to a lot of people and in your scenario they are too. They give people that feeling and I'm just trying to, even when I go in, I don't normally have a shave often. I try to keep my beard. Otherwise I got a double chin. I know and yeah, it looks, it's not the best look for me. So the wife don't like it either. So I got to keep it between just long enough and quite too short. But yeah, I know that I... I can imagine that feeling must be incredible. really do. And I think as we start looking out towards the back end of the podcast now, I really want to start looking at, I tend to ask people every time they come on there about their reflection, basically, all their life and what they've learned and then how people can take that in. And for you, it's going to be really important because You've overcome so many things and you've not only done that, you've built something that allows people, as I've said over and over, to feel dignified, to feel happy and embrace that in ourselves as well and feel beautiful on the outside, which is incredibly important. What I want to do is I'll ask you just a few questions and then just let me know what you think then. What did rebuilding confidence actually look like to you?
speaker-1: Rebuilding confidence, what it looked like to me, getting on my own head was critical. Getting out of my own head. I spent too many months or seeming years in a self-imposed sense of isolation. I don't think I'm wrong, my guitar playing ability really kind of improved during that time. you know, there's, there is a need for us to. Be kind to ourselves, also being self-aware enough to recognize, right, okay, am I resting or am I depressed? You am I resting or am I avoiding? And you've got to find a way to push yourself. You've got to find a way to make yourself uncomfortable because that's where the growth is. You know, and trust that the people are out there who can... You can become your greatest allies that you just haven't met yet. I always say to people as well that do what you do for a purpose until you find your own purpose. Because it is so important, I think, for us human beings to feel like we are of value. Not just to ourselves, but our communities. And there's nothing like the demons of depression, for example, or other moments of diversity that come your way. does its best to take your sense of self-worth and take your value to keep you in bed. Like I'm not knocking people who are in pain and need to experience that pain, suppose, because there is an ill to suppressing and avoiding. But it does come a point where it's like, okay, I was a victim in the attack, but really Baldy Locks was born from a place when I stopped becoming a victim. So reflections around confidence rebuilding is very much about. recognizing that you are of worth, you are of value and anything that you choose to do is basically driven by a need to be connected to others. So be self-aware, be accountable and open yourself up to love as well. I know what it felt like to be so embroiled in self-hate for no real reason, you know? But it was as a consequence of being surrounded by influences that weren't particularly nurturing and, and, and always loving. But that doesn't mean I've got to imitate that. You know, I had no choice but to experience it, but I certainly had a choice to figure out, figure out how I could respond to it. But that only come really from some inner reflections, some comfort in music, but ultimately through friendships that I definitely wouldn't have made if I just stayed in my house all the time, you know. So yeah, you've got to find a way of making peace with yourself, getting out there and remembering what it is to be human.
speaker-0: Yeah just to build off the back of that then, is for you is real strength pretending nothing bothers you or being honest that it does?
speaker-1: I mean, you know, there's a comfort and avoidance, but it by too near. know, ⁓ it is painful. It is painful to. It is painful to reveal the truth that sits within you. Because a lot of the truth that sits within you comes from memories of pain and trauma. know, people self medicate with alcohol or other sorts of mediums. But really all that does, it just keeps, keeps the pain there and it may numb it temporarily. You know, there's this strength and there's a need, but it's painful. to dig deep, but do it in such a way where you, if you've got to descend down that well of self discovery, stay tethered to someone you trust. And my trusted person, my best friend and my wife, who supported me to look within and to navigate the past, but in a way that still made me feel safe and connected. It is painful. Don't do it alone. But definitely be aware when you're choosing a more comfortable path of self numbing because at the end of the day, pain brings feeling and feelings can bring joy and can bring healing. ⁓ ultimately you end up bettering yourself and other fellow humans. So yeah, that's how I'd answer that.
speaker-0: very well said, really do, was an excellent answer. If someone is listening to this now and they are suffering with alpicia or their appearance and they feel ashamed, what would your message be and what do need to hear?
speaker-1: You are going through something that is presenting itself as a visible difference, but we're all different. know, the fact that people are able to see a visible difference suggests that you're actually being out there to be seen. You may feel, you may believe that people are looking at you, but actually they're curious about you because you've been able to leave the house carrying a condition that would probably shake them to the core if they had to go through it. So I would say that present yourself in a way that people see you, but don't look at your condition. You know, stand tall, make eye contact and visit your pain, but don't be overwhelmed by it. By and large, people are out there to support you, but they can't support you if you isolate yourself. If you don't connect with people, be kind to yourself as well. You your experience is something you didn't ask for. You know, it's not necessarily a body attack and you, haven't got to get wrapped up into this self-loathing. Just recognize that you're being presented here with an adversity in life that you can learn from. And there's nothing more attractive sometimes in fact, you know, where you might feel particularly ugly or hard to look at because you've got patches over your head. But there's nothing more attractive than eye contact and a genuine smile. And just because your hair's falling out doesn't mean you can't achieve that.
speaker-0: Dan this episode has been a remarkable one because to see your strength and not only battling that adversity of where you've come from with ⁓ losing your hair through alpica but it's the strength of character for you to use that as a catalyst to project yourself going forward to better those around you who have suffered from it and that is a pure example for me of someone who is a role model, a hero and an advocate for such a powerful cause. And I really do believe that what you're doing for people is an incredible achievement for you and your family. And I know ultimately that it is going to help so much. It has, it has helped people and it's going to continue to help people. And it's going to come with a lot of success because these safe spaces that ultimately you have created to allow people to seen, heard, understood, all of these things. It cannot be undervalued, the importance of it in society. It really can't. And I think this for me is what The Forge Within is all about. And it's not just
speaker-1: Thank you.
speaker-0: the big dramatic stories of massive childhood trauma and everything. It's the quiet battles that shape our identity. And your story reminds myself and us that hearing begins when we stop pretending we're fine and start telling the truth about what it's actually really like. And that's the message I've taken. back from that and I know if anyone's listened to this and the conversation has resonated with you then just share it, listen to it, embrace it, take notes in it. If you want to follow the podcast, fab, if you want to write a review, fab, but most importantly listen to Dan's words and what he's been through and if you want more information as well, Dan's on LinkedIn, he's on other things as well. Do you want to talk more about Dan, before you finish off about how people can get in contact with you or how they can, if they are something with Alpecia and they want to visit oldy locked places and safe spaces, can you just give us a bit more data understanding of where they can contact you?
speaker-1: Absolutely. So you can find me on LinkedIn where I'm quite active there because I'm appealing to employers to bring us into their workspaces to provide wellness experiences for their people. I'm quite active on LinkedIn. Name on LinkedIn is Dan Newman, but you should also be able to find me by typing in Danny Baldy. That should actually bring up my profile as well. If you're not on LinkedIn, you can look at my Instagram, which I will be giving more time and attention to shortly. And you can see some of the videos here that I talk about on the spa and the barbershop days. And that is at baldylocks.me. And we do have a website currently being built, but right now at least you can put information in there if you need to connect. And again, the website there is www.baldylocks.me. And I'd welcome anyone to come forward. You need some support. As I say, if it steps out of my specialism, I would happily signpost you to whether bodies that can give you that kind of help along the way as well, such as Alapis UK, they're a fantastic charity. So yeah, please get in touch.
speaker-0: Fab, thank you Dan and thank you. It's a Sunday, we're recording this as well. So giving your Sunday up as well to ⁓ come and speak on here to share your story. I really do appreciate it. And we're going to be in contact a lot going forward anyway, but I just want to wish you all the best for you, your family, the boldettes, everything that you are doing. ⁓ Yeah, I can't thank you enough because I know the importance of creating these safe spaces for people and the impact it has and it's going to continue to do that. So thank you so much.
speaker-1: And that's all Sam, as I say, thanks for the opportunity. You're doing great work. I'm so honored to be able to know you and to be on your podcast so early on. Thank you so much.
speaker-0: no problem at all. And again, I think this just identifies the more we talk honestly, the less people feel alone. And this has been the Forged Within podcast where we talk about stories and relationships around mental health and how it's impacted our lives. And as you can tell from today, we are changing the stigma around mental health. So until next time, I shall see you soon. Okay, thank you. Bye, bye.
speaker-1: Thanks Sam for the opportunity. I appreciate it. You're doing great work. So it's great to be alongside you in this space.
speaker-0: So before you get into it, what I want to do is just give you the opportunity just to open the show, tell us a bit more about yourself and then we can get into your story.
speaker-1: Yeah, great. So, okay. So I'm on a more human level, I guess, as to who I am. So I'm Dan, as you say, I'm 44 years old, first time founder, but coming to this kind of social enterprise space with a fair amount of life experience in lots of different ways. So it feels like a new era really for me. But as a man in my 40s, I am a dad to two teenage boys. and they're great lads. No two are the same, you know. And they've got great heads of hair, thank God. So that's positive. Mind you, as did I back then. So let's hope that Alopecia's not completely genetic. And for my wife as well, Kath, 20 years married now in September this year. Friends for years beforehand, so clearly it wasn't love at first sight. You know, I eventually caved into her advances. ⁓ Where Kath is the co-founder of Abolvilux, it totally makes sense in respect to her being alongside my journey right through my twenties when I was losing my game, you know. So she's very well placed to be a service like me to those who are affected by visible differences through illness or disease. Because she was alongside me, as I say, when I was going through my own journey of ⁓ rediscovery really through that period. So yeah, I love music. I love making music, listening to music. Babylon the piano played it with a guitar and I recently started drums. So I don't do it to perform. My God, no one would want to ever listen to that. I probably do it for me when I just need to express the emotions I can't find words for. So I think music for me from a very young age was a great outlet. And yeah, and that's essentially my intro, I suppose.
speaker-0: I love that. It's nice to hear that you've got that kind of network as well at home with the boys. And then you've also got your wife then who's alongside you as well. I know the importance of having that strong network, especially someone who understands where it started. Because sometimes you come into the journey and people don't understand where you've come from. And then that can cause an awful lot of, why is he doing it? What's your drive? There's no reason. Why do you want to keep pushing? Whereas obviously your wife has seeing that and then she can understand then the importance of how important this is to you.
speaker-1: Absolutely. it does help a lot, you say, because a lot of the things that we have to go through really bank on you having a strong sense of self-awareness or at least having people around you that you trust to bring things to your attention when, like in my case, for example, I don't ⁓ outwardly display toxic tricks. I'm not a big drinker, I'm not particularly addictive or ⁓ destructive, but she'll tend to know when I go in on myself or when my confidence is lacking, you my posture changes, I become more non-verbal. So, you know, this is important to have that support network around you that creates space, know, and creates ⁓ a sense of trust because sometimes I think when you're going through a low period, low mood or low energy, whatever that is. ⁓ it is, there's a chance, suppose, and you, you don't really trust yourself. ⁓ so my response to that is I kind of hibernate, kind of isolate. ⁓ but I know if I do that for too long, it brings on a deeper level of, of depression. ⁓ so yeah, it's, really, it's, it's great to have that support available to me where, ⁓ things can be brought to my attention when I'm not fully aware of them.
speaker-0: You suffer with alpecia, that's right, yeah? Do you want to just tell us a bit more about what alpecia is?
speaker-1: Yes, definitely. Yeah. It seems to be that a lot of people are affected by alopecia than I originally thought. know, the conversations that I've started having on the awareness that I'm raising around this condition, a lot of people are coming to me saying, my granddad had alopecia or my auntie has had or my friend has had, et cetera. So it's interesting to see that it's perhaps sadly more popular condition than I initially thought because it'd be great if it didn't exist. But it's essentially what it is. It's a hair loss condition. We are led to believe, I suppose, that There are a couple of, ⁓ activators that go on really that lead to the follicles failing in the way that they do. Now, the reason I speak quite broadly is because I'm not an expert. I talked about my lived experience, but also I would, I believe that there's a lack of clinical research when it comes to alopecia because it has just been labeled as cosmetic before. And I think that's probably hindered ⁓ a lot of progress to really understand what causes it. So I'll give you what I'm aware of with it all. So I was told very early on that your white blood cells, when they are around your body trying to kill off infections and things like this, there is something that goes wrong with people who suffer alopecia in the sense that the white blood cells go after the hair follicles. Because there's something going on where they believe that the hair is like a ⁓ like a, like a foreign body, you know, so they, they, they kill off the follicles because they think they're doing the right thing for you, you know? And, and this, this then leads to the assumption, I suppose that because the white blood cells are, acting in a very haywire like way that it must be stress activated. So therefore, you know, if you're stressed, it's likely that this could be an effect. And a lot of people do say, ⁓ you know, yeah, I went through a bereavement, my hair started falling out, for example. ⁓ But then a lot people say about gut health and how poor gut health can lead to a lot of physiological symptoms. So like that can often turn out to be psoriasis or eczema or something like that. I would really sum it up and say like alopecia is a hair loss condition where something's going on in your body and it's making your particles not work as they ought to. that leads to sometimes an immediate total loss, which brings its own shock really to the individual. Or it can lead to a more of a taunting sporadic ⁓ pattern of loss and then regrowth to the point where you're thinking, ⁓ know, my hair's coming back great. ⁓ no, it's gone again. So it's like this constant prolonged agony of like, am I going to be normal again? So it's, and it's distinctly visible because You've got patches all over your head, you know, and it's not so easy to disguise when you're in that kind of lost transition. It's not easy to disguise with hair toppers or hair systems or anything like this. So you kind of got this visible difference that you can't really hide, which again presents his own sort of psychological challenges. So essentially that's what alopecia is. It's a toward-in condition led by the failing of your follicles for reasons that we're not fully aware of apart from your perhaps being down to... your immune system, you get health and stress and trauma.
speaker-0: Fair play. ⁓ You've sounded that perfectly there. I think that gives a really good idea of what Alpecia is for the people who don't know, understand what Alpecia is. But how old was you when you started noticing that hair loss? Because again, I think there's an awful lot of men who lose hair at young age and it is their identity as well. And it doesn't matter what age you are, when you do lose your hair. then obviously, like you said, you become very self-conscious. But when it comes to Alpecia, and it's sporadic sometimes, and you can lose bits and it comes back, it's leading you into a false sense of security. So you think that you're getting better, then ⁓ God, it's not again. So mentally that's got to really exhausting. But it'd be interesting to find out bit more about how old you were and when did you first notice that the hair loss was happening.
speaker-1: Well, interestingly, I was never the first to notice when my hair started falling out. And it happened on three occasions really. So I only recently found out that when I was about six years old and my mom told me this, she said, was first aware that you had an issue with your hair when you're about six years old and you walked past me in the house or whatever. And I ruffled up your hair as you were walking through. Because I had this like really dense thick hair, right? That I often complained about. a lesson learned there. But anyway, so she kind of ruffled up my hair and she said, it kind of lifted up like as if you were wearing like a toupee. So her response to that was, of course we didn't have Google back then, right? We didn't have smartphones and nothing you're about in the mid 80s, you know? And so her response to that was essentially to pack my hair back down and then just see me on my way. So like, nothing was really investigated or really looked at, you know, to see what was going on with that. ⁓ and then fast forward, maybe about eight years later, when I was kind of preteen, I guess, ⁓ or early teens. And, you know, we, then, maybe, maybe it still happens now, really on the playground, you know, that you used to get picked on if you were a bit poorer than others, if you didn't have the right shoes or the right kind of logos and stuff. And one of the other indicators that you may have been from a poor household was a bad haircut. Right. so. There was some truth to this, my parents went through a bit of a tricky patch financially. A friend of theirs with best intentions cut my hair and it came out not looking so great, but ultimately it wasn't down to a lack of skill, it was down to the fact that I also had another bout of alopecia, which showed itself this time ⁓ along the hairline at the back of my head and down the bottom. So it just looked like someone had really screwed up a haircut like Edward Scissorhands, but getting it wrong, you know. ⁓ so nothing really came with that either. No, no kind of research, just like a slight acknowledgement. ⁓ well, it is what it is. ⁓ and then the third and final bout that Bala Pishva had then was activated really, believe anyway, ⁓ by, ⁓ an attack I experienced when I was about 18. ⁓ so I was, I was assaulted by two guys and, ⁓ you know, shortly after that then Uh, I, uh, I will, was trying to rebuild my, my confidence off the back of that traumatic incident. I was in the hairdressers in Cuffelia town where I grew up and, uh, and the hairdresser at the time, uh, basically he said, Oh, you've got a hole in your head. And I was like, what do mean? Like I was totally thrown by what he said. So I was thinking that's something literal. Like I was there to hold my head and I'm getting it. The only hole you want in your head, your eyes and your mouth, your nostrils. So just throw and he said, I know you've got a hole in your head. So he like actually pressed the back of my head. Where there was a patch under my crown. This is always like the size of a 10 pence coin. You might want to see a doctor about that. So this was like, say six months after I was attacked, that I developed my first patch of this bout of alopecia. And that was when I was 18 and I'm 44 now. Right through my twenties, it was patchy all over. And I eventually got to a stage in my late twenties where I felt like, okay, it is what it is. Let's just surrender to this. So I started shaving it down. And now in my early forties, you barely notice really that I've got alopecia. It just looks like just, just a bald head. But what you don't see beyond my glasses, I suppose, is the fact that I don't have any eyebrows or eyelashes. So it affects me, you know, all over. So yeah, so most of my life I haven't had hair, but I think what we shouldn't do really is diminish the effect that it has on your sense of self, your sense of identity, because it can affect your confidence, whether it's male pattern baldness or alopecia, because, you know, we, maybe as a society in the way that we see masculinity, for example, ⁓ it's, it's, it seems important to have hair. ⁓ and. But I would say though, with alfisha, you know, you don't really see it coming. Some people experience clumps of hair loss in the shower on their pillow. couldn't really experience that. And apart from what I just told you there, I suppose the male pattern baldness, there's a chance that like, you know, you might look at your dad, your uncle, your granddad and say, ⁓ bloody hell, they lost their hair in the 20s. It looks like I'm going that way. So you do get some kind of advance, note this, I suppose. of potentially facing that. But it's, yeah, with alopecia, it's particularly taunting, like I say, because it can often be aligned with a traumatic episode, not always, and you just don't know how to respond to it in the instant, really. So that's kind of my life experience of alopecia so far.
speaker-0: Yeah, no, and it's interesting because I, before I went to Thailand when was 18, the boys were messing about. had a leaving party before I went and they went, the boys went and cut my hair for a laugh and they shaved it right down. And I already had a really high receding hairline and I've got a very large head. So that makes even things just hands out. So since I was about 18 years of age then I haven't, I've never had hair. I've always shaved it back. Okay. But, but I... But what's interesting to me is that I wear hats a lot. So I wear, I've got so many hats. Even the wife said to me last week, said, why have you got so many hats for? And I'm just like, well, it's the only fashion statement I can have. Dreaming when I go out of my head, that's what I wear. But I think that's a self-confidence thing as well, dreaming. And I don't suffer with that, P.S. But being bold enough having hair, I still feel conscious of when I go out, people make sly remarks upside down head because I can grow a beard, problem at all. but I can't grow hair on my head. So that has an impact on identity as well. But if we go one step further from what you're experiencing, where you have no hair at all, no eyebrows and no eyelashes, it's not just the, obviously physically then in regards of, you struggle with, because your eyelashes keep out dust and everything, do you struggle with your eyes a lot then with that as well?
speaker-1: I do. Yeah. Yeah. I get, um, I get, I get dry eyes a lot, you know, probably not helpful. The fact that I'm always on my laptop doing my work pretty much. And so I get gritty eyes, dry eyes. My eyes are sensitive to light more than they would be. Yeah. If it's a hot day or, um, you know, I'm working out, which is rare nowadays. Um, just expecting some of the laughing background there. It's just a chance that without eyebrows, when you're sweating. The eyebrows, although subtle for many people, they have a way of diverting sweat away from your eyes. So I've had experiences when I used to run a lot back in, back a few years ago. Yeah. It was always just like getting into my eyes, stinging my eyes, and having my glasses slip down my nose a lot and stuff like this. So it's surprisingly, and no kind of nose hair as well means that, and people might love that, you know, cosmetically it's great not to have any nose hair, but biologically, suppose. If your immune system is compromised because alopecia, you know, it kind of has an effect on that. Then the last thing you need to dispose of are other means of defense is not being present. So like the fact that you might not have a nose here means that you're probably more prone to like, like dust and other issues getting into your airways that then can cause ENT problems. you know, so it's, it's kind of subtle. It's not something I was aware of straight away. But now it can be more educated, more self aware. Those are certainly new years that mean that allocation does have a greater effect than just around identity and how you look.
speaker-0: When you were 18 years of age and you went through that period, well not period, of that incident where you got attacked and stuff like that and then you lost your hair then after as well, what was your emotional reaction to actually knowing that the alopecia was a lot more prominent and then you started losing your hair? How did that make you feel emotionally?
speaker-1: Well, there were times where, you know, I've had to do a lot of, I wanted to do a lot of work on myself since I was attacked, you know, and the first thing he did, I think was going to receive some counseling. So it made me very aware of how ⁓ the attack affected my psychological right from the word go, which I was very grateful for. have that support around me. What I didn't have much of an inclination for, course, was the fact that my name was going to start folding out a few months later. Where I became a bit more aware around, you know, that it's okay to like still go around the local village when it's dark and it's okay to leave the house that, you know, not everyone's out to attack you. know, I, I developed the rationale around that pretty quickly and recognized myself that it was an isolated incident. It could be lot worse. There was a kind of a resolution there for me, but when my hair started falling out there, when I was trying to get beyond that, it did kind of feel like a reminder of the, of the incident and how as much as I did the work to loosen the grip, I suppose, the trauma, ⁓ it presented itself then in my hair. So I went through this very like the hell's going on kind of thing. ⁓ this is still. signs of the attack happening. Like I thought I was working on myself to get beyond this. So it really kind of opened up a lot of self loathing really. You know, I thought I was better than this. Why is my hair falling out now? ⁓ they've still got to hold me, et cetera. know, so it was, was constant reminders of the trauma that every time I lost my hair, that I was still back in that picking state.
speaker-0: Yeah, did you have, I was gonna say, I'm glad you mentioned that word victim as well then, because with the fact of losing hair and then mentally then linking that to the attack didn't help, did you grow a lot of resentment and anger then towards the people who done that because it's the effect that it's had?
speaker-1: In a sense, yeah, you know, mean, the two guys, ⁓ they were arrested and they were punished for it. ⁓ so I didn't feel like they had a, ⁓ how can I put it? Like, it didn't, they didn't pose a constant threat in my life. Right. But I think what, what it colors though, and this is why I thought it's important that we often check ourselves, ⁓ as to what lens are we looking at life through? I became. quite paranoid, suppose, not so much like be attacked again, like they're violating actions really, that led to that physical assault. Started to become in my mind, ⁓ more present in the looks that I thought people were giving me. ⁓ or the words that they were saying, or, ⁓ the apprehensions of people that have, you know, just the subtleties of ⁓ negative, probably unintended negative behavior. would make me feel like you're just like them, you know? And that would, in some regards, color my view on when people were actually just genuinely curious, you know? Or were actually decent people who aren't there to take the mickey or make you feel bad about yourself. So I think the legacy of that form is very much how it affected the way I perceived myself and others.
speaker-0: Yeah, that's, that's really interesting because last week on our episode with Chloe last week, we talked about like normality as well about trying to fit in and then worrying about other people's perceptions of what we see ourselves. Like again, everyone knows that we're on a mental health podcast and I suffer mental health and so have you, but we'll get at that later on as well. But you can't see mental health. So it's not one of the things visually people and it can be very annoying sometimes because people say to me, ⁓ there's nothing wrong with you. I'm like, yeah, but just because you can't see it doesn't mean that it's not there. But again, then with yourself, when people are looking at you and you know, you've had that negative experience of what happened in the attack, it always leaves that error of doubt then in the back of your mind that are they doing it? Are they doing it because they're curious? Are they doing it? So you're constantly assessing the room. when you're in there as well, so you're always on guard. But I think that comes with, as we go into ⁓ male confidence, being confident in yourself. It'd be really interesting, I'll ask you a question from a societal point of view. How do you think that society frame male confidence?
speaker-1: We can, think, it's an interesting one, isn't it? We've got to be checking in on our own life experiences, on our own prejudgments and subtle discriminations we hold on ourselves as to what that answer might be. A societal view on masculinity, if you break it down, my view on masculinity might be different than yours for different reasons. It is an interesting topic that we've got to look at, especially when there's perception that toxic masculinity is rife right now and it's causing a lot of division. Um, I would say looking at my own life experience and what hasn't worked for me is that I've just a couple of quick examples, suppose. would say about, uh, in my life so far, I've had a mixed set of, uh, male role models, you know, some good, some also good. And. You know, the, in no particular order then, you know, I'll jump straight to the. the viewer on sports and physical strength. Right. So, ⁓ I was always like the youngest in my year, right. I'm oldest born. in school, I was always seemingly to be the less, ⁓ strong or less athletic. I was quite young in my age group. ⁓ but equally, I didn't really have a lean in towards sporting us because I had a very aggressive dominant, older brother, ⁓ living in the house for me who just like was a bully basically. And, and, know, he was very strong and into his rugby and into his football. So, and he would just like, yeah, he would attack them as well. He'd get quite physical and, you know, we're talking about an age gap where I was 10 and he was 18, right? But he had his behavioral issues. My parents perhaps weren't the best equipped to understand how to navigate parenting him. But they did their best for they could. So he started to represent everything then that I felt masculinity was. So I kind of had a natural aversion into anything that seemed close to that. So he was into rugby, therefore I'm not going to be into rugby because that's for mean men. know, or he's into football, I'm not going to be into football because that's where the muppets are. So I developed this snobbery, I suppose, and this aversion because I associate metaskillinity with making people feel bad. You know, this alpha, this dominant, this strength. didn't necessarily align masculinity with other qualities. Even now I may be struggling to articulate as I'm able to revisit my own relationship with masculinity, especially now I've got two teenage boys myself. It's a very complex topic. So I try and believe, I suppose, that actually there isn't a strong unifying societal sense of what masculinity is. It just means that there perhaps are some common views around what it's believed to be. So with that in mind, I would say that like, just got to look at ourselves as human beings really. And I know people can talk about masculine and feminine behaviors and quality that can sit in males and females and, and, ⁓ whether it's in between that definition. ⁓ so I just say like, you know, let's just look at the, the human behavior, the human characteristics. Because when we try and polarize too much, naturally then you're going to bring through things that encourage division. So I felt that you could be a real man if you were sporty, if you were physically strong and you were able to fight. That was my view on masculinity and those were all of the things I was not. But just to finish off the point though. where I've reconciled a number of differences within myself that make me feel a bit more comfortable in my own skin. It's the fact that masculinity in healthier forms can be found in lots of places. And that's where I found it in music. You know, like even Rage Against the Machine, for example, right? Very shouty, very aggressive, you could argue, very dialed up on the masculinity. But actually the lyrics that they talk about are about breaking down patriarchal toxic systems. You know, the Manic Street Preachers, you know, I grew up on them a lot. And they've got this very androgynous sort of aesthetic about them. But by and large, they present themselves as heterosexual white Welsh men. But they talk about love and romance and they talk about trying to reconcile the human condition with trying to make the world a better place, even though some of the lyrics are ⁓ intentionally quite dark and disruptive. And then in more recent times, Radiohead. You know, I love Radiohead. But they don't present like robust, strong men shouting down a microphone with huge guitars. you know, they're very melancholic, melodic, but perhaps invite us to look within ourselves. So a lot of these things transcend masculinity and femininity. think we need to do a lot of work to ensure that we don't polarize ourselves. into either camp because that's when we just dwell on the differences rather than really looking at what connects us.
speaker-0: I think that's really, really strong because when we look at, when we look at like society, for me anyway, when we look at society, you see like men's health magazines of what a man should look like. You've got the thing from women as well, what women should look like in the fitness magazines and models. So we're constantly comparing ourselves to a societal narrative of what it should be. So for me, As long as you are happy, it doesn't matter what you do. Nothing should be classified as what's man and what's woman. If you look at, especially we've both brought up in the valleys as well, the old nuclear family is disappearing at a vast rate. So the reason like the man goes out, he does a manly job, the woman stays at home and does the dishes and everything like that, that's not a thing anymore. So I think even though it was something that was very, very big in the back in the 60s or earlier than that, 70s and 80s and everything. We're now transferring to this time where equality is a big, big thing now. So it doesn't matter that if you've got a ⁓ boy who doesn't want to do sport, it doesn't mean that he's less, he's less sporty because he can take up another activity. And I say that with my son, my son is, played, I tried to start him off with football. He was playing football, my youngest one now, ⁓ and he didn't like it. but then he's into his music and everything. My older son, he's sport mad. Sport, football, rugby, plays football twice on the weekend. But my middle son is drama. So he's a drama student and he goes acting and stuff like that. So there's a wide variety within this house in my household. I've got different tasks and it's not the same around. And I've had comments said to me about my middle son, oh, he's going drama and all that kind of stuff. And I'm thinking, Why would you associate him doing a drama activity with being less efficient than someone who's doing sport? It makes no difference at all. It's all to do with the activity you do with and as long as you enjoy it, it doesn't matter. It really, really doesn't. So, yeah, it's one of the things that I'm quite passionate about because we get ourselves so lost in social media of what... a person is deemed to look like. And that then again, as we talk about leads to mental health ailments where you start having identity crisis, you start to have anxiety, social anxiety. There's so many different aspects that follow on then from us perceiving what we are told, what we actually believe we should be inside.
speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if I could just add to that, Sam, absolutely. You know, when it comes to like the arts and culture and, and the, the, the, view that that's a more feminine space. I mean, God, you know, look at Idris Elba, look at Tom Hardy, you know, look at those kinds of actors that present in a very masculine way, but, also present in a way that's very, ⁓ very engaging, like when they're in interviews and things and they only talk very broadly around humanity and, and sometimes spirituality and things like that. So it's a funny thing that still people want to put these interests into particular ⁓ pigeon holes because it's like as if they're obsessed with finding out who's heterosexual and who's homosexual, for example. it's just like, you know, we're in 2026 now, like what's going on? I've always found it really important for us to find our tribe, know, find our like-minded people. And that can be a very diverse group. I like nothing more than a group of people that present a diversity of thought into a conversation. I mean, if you go back ⁓ when we were like very much in our tribes around the campfire, I guarantee you that, you know, yeah, we were part of the same tribe. We probably looked a little bit different, but not massively, but we all had different strengths. all had different things to bring to the campfire, different stories, different abilities, different strengths. I think this over obsession around compartmentalizing people's interests. ⁓ well, if you play music, then you're probably not into rugby. You, well, I mean, play rugby and they create the piano like, you know, people are a wonderful mix of all sorts of stuff. And I love bringing people together who actually create time and space for our fellow human being before activities, interests and hobbies. So we have conversations side by side and explore. our understanding of the life that we live in and how we can be of better service to our fellow humans and to ourselves. And then everything else is after that. That's what helped me build my confidence was the fact that I was able to, in my 20s, find a fantastic group of people that brought all sorts of different stories and interests to the table.
speaker-0: Yeah, definitely. I think when I talk about mental health, people, normally go and say, ⁓ what childhood trauma did you have? What have you experienced? I talk about PTSD. And then they say that you went to work, you went with you in the forces and stuff. And I was like, well, no, haven't. But I think when we talk about mental health in trauma terms, it's a big part of it. But what we don't talk about is identity erosion is also trauma too. That's something that we don't talk about enough. think of what happened previously. We don't talk about the person you've lost. for a long period of time, and I've said it last year, I believe before I went to Thailand, even though I had a lot of things going on, there's a different Sam to who went to Thailand before and then the Sam will come after. Because then I literally for a long period of time until I would say to the last year, when I've done an awful lot of work and now in doing this, where I didn't know who Sam was. I didn't understand who I was inside. Very, very negative about myself. I think doing a lot of work the last year, speaking to a lot of people, doing the book, doing the podcast, you start realizing that that person's always been there. And I was identifying that that was a traumatic period of identifying who I was inside as well.
speaker-1: Yeah, definitely. You know, I think there's a lot to be said around, you know, the inner child kind of work. There's, what we don't always recognize is that life experiences are compounded on top of each other to the point where we forget what our purest form was like, you know, and probably even predates conscious memory as to who we are. But who we are really, suppose, in another way, is how we... go through life, navigate an adversity and opportunity and trauma and joy, all of the stuff. And I think it's remarkable where people are at when you meet them. If you meet them where they're at, then you get to understand, okay, now this is Sam, he's been through these life experiences. And what I'm witnessing now is a snapshot of Sam where a lot of this version of Sam may exist for years to come. Fast forward 20 years and you may feel even more... like Sam, whatever that is, know, because you're on that journey of constant self discovery and that mission to help ⁓ as humans heal. So I think it is important to reflect, but it's also important not to ruminate. I know my mum had a telepathy childhood and a lot of trauma with that at the hands of her mother who basically had bipolar, know, and medicated and treated. alienated, isolated, et cetera. So there's a lot of generational trauma going on there, but it pays her no benefit at all to revisit those memories because cognitively she knows them. She hasn't bottled anything down or suppressed anything, but what it has done though, it's led to some present day behaviors that don't serve it too well. So just like chronic pain, for example, even the physiological stuff, where perhaps some... inner work still needs to happen, not by revisiting the past, but revisiting her relationship with the past. You know, I think that's something that we can always work on. Because at the end of the day, the longer you get to live, the more life experience you're to pick up. And we need the tools, you've developed with the Forge, you need the tools to be able to recognize that, okay, you are going to go through some stuff. And that's the beauty and tragedy of life all in one. but it's how we navigate it and stay human and stay giving and stay wholesome. I think these life experiences are very important to us.
speaker-0: I think that's where acceptance for me and accountability come into consideration. The bullying when I was younger, Riffey Bullying instance from six to 11 years of age, the identity crisis of, yeah, achieving so much within sport, but doing it from a perspective of I wanted to prove people wrong and then what happened in Thailand. All of those things until recently and the work that I'd done from 2018 to 2025. was down to the fact of I had to accept those things that happened to me, they don't define me going forward. And then accountability then is I've said it before on podcast, I was accountable for not telling my mother when I was younger I was being bullied. I was accountable for not talking about my mental health and what I was actually feeling was playing badminton and I didn't have to go to Thailand, but I chose to, so I put myself in that situation. So once you start looking at them, those kind of factors then you're then able then to get a really good understanding of it doesn't define me, I can now move forward. But as long as I stay in this present moment, then we can just work with that. So yeah, I really do. As you articulated that then, it really does make me think in regards of yeah, the acceptance and accountability of your past when we talk about trauma is very, very, it's an important key strategy that we need to use and then talking as well, like we're talking about it today. The more we talk about it, the more we understand it, the more we accept it. If we don't talk about it, then you're running away from it. You put in a box and locked it to the back of your mind. And unfortunately what happens during traumatic experiences or when your identity or where the mask just falls off, I've said before, the mask has no volume and sometimes it'll just leave and then you're left bare. So you need to be able to be prepared and comfortable with yourself, revenge comes down to self worth then. So I'm currently in a situation where I'm very comfortable in myself. I know who I am, what I'm doing. I've had people even say to me what I'm doing at the moment. They say, why do you want to go and tell everyone your story for? Why are you sharing your story? Are you looking for personal gratification? No, it's all about me healing as a person first and foremost. And then secondly, giving other people the platforms to come and talk openly and share what I'm doing. That's all it is. But from a mental health impact then in regards of the self-worth, the masculinity and the alpica as well, how did it affect your self-worth?
speaker-1: ⁓ so yeah, I mean, I was a very introverted teenager, I'll start there, suppose. And I believe the part of that was down to the, the treatment I had from my, brother when I was preteen. So I was very, ⁓ I don't know, I carried this weight, I suppose, with me for a long time. And even when I was like eight years old, I was on the phone, I was always given the phone when my mentally ill nan would call. Because she was essentially estranged from the family. So if anyone else had answered the phone, they'd be like, oh, you speak to her. And so from the age of eight years old, then I'm like listening to my nan on like making a call from the... corridors of witchish mental hospital, know, where she was sectioned. So I was very much introduced to, know, having the people please very early on. to avoid my brother's attention for a day where I can feel perhaps invisible, but comfortably so, because that means I'm not going to be humiliated that day, I'm not going to be hurt. So then taking a call off my net in the evening where it's like, she's telling me like, you know, she wants to not live anymore. And I mean, he's all trying to live. Trying to understand that. So by the time I became a teenager, ⁓ I found myself hypersensitive, I suppose, to a lot of people's emotions and life experiences and challenges where I became an overactive people pleaser or I just retreated because I couldn't cope with it. So I had very, going into my adulthood, then I had very little sense of self-worth. Anyway, ⁓ before alopecia struck. So when alopecia struck and then, you know, going to the hairdressers, was the only time I would come out from under my rock, suppose, and, and get my head done. So I felt better about myself to then have that place, that sacred space, violated by alopecia and hair loss and the trauma that preceded that was, was quite devastating for me, really. It was the only place where I feel like good. comfortably be seen and cared for and not be burdened with the emotional trauma that others would bring. So when I, when that was disrupted, you know, I would often fall back into my music, but I would be very insular and introverted about that. So self-worth to me, think from a very young age, I didn't have within me. You know, and it's curious because it was a lot of love around, know, my parents in some ways and grandparents, my uncles, you know, whether I was born with a predisposition to be a certain way, perhaps I was. ⁓ but when alopecia hit then it just kind of like, don't know, was in a very strange way, but it was like the, the, the cherry on the cake. So therefore, my lowest then, there is only one direction to go in for me. I was never suicidal. There were moments where I felt... What's the point? What's the point in me living? I don't really know my place. You know, I'm constantly feeling a particular way. then as I said, you know, to find music that would speak of similar things actually brought some kind of comfort, uh, rather than bringing me down even lower because it made me feel less alone. So when my hair started falling out, then I'd already applied for a pub job beforehand and I just started the pub job and, was carrying suddenly this very visible condition I didn't have in my interview a few months prior. So working in a pub job when I was 18 with my hair falling out in Cuffilly, had to fast track me to a place of self-acceptance and start to recognize actually that there are people who look you in the eye and they don't look at the patches on your head. And from there, I started to rebuild my sense of self because I was not hiding away in my bedroom. I was, I was not trying to avoid building relationships because I've only ever really known this relationships to deplete me. was suddenly building up a fantastic network, network of friends who saw me for being me. So as I say, you you get to a point where you're so low. course there are a lot of people that make certain decisions, which is tragic. But for me, I, I, that wasn't my life path. My life path was clearly to find a place to rebuild from. So yeah, it did erode the tiny bit of software that I had, but really to the point where I was able to use as a catalyst really for rediscovering myself.
speaker-0: It's really interesting because there's a growing trend at the moment when I'm speaking to people on the podcast every week is that when they are faced at the moment where they're in great struggle or great identity of trying to work out themselves, they choose another path where they go, right, okay, I need to put something in place in order to get me from where I am to going forward. Obviously that can't be said for everyone tragically, people have taken their lives as a result. But it kind of shows that yes, and again, if you're looking at that kind of forged method as well, the acknowledgement state, you're in denial about it, say for instance. And when you're in denial of, you've locked yourself away, you're not talking, you're introverted, withdrawn, say for instance, in order to move to the next stage to be to... acknowledge issue, it's really difficult and it's uncomfortable. It's the flame. really does spark that kind of, I don't really want to be you. You didn't want to be in that pub having all them people looking at you and talking. But what it did, even though it was very difficult, it allowed you to develop, like you said, increased level of self-worth where you could turn around and go, well, no, actually I can do this. And everyone knows when you're in a pub, you've got people who are drunk and stuff like that, right? Things are said, they're throwing insults or they're throwing gestures and you have got to toughen up. It's like working on a building site as well. Do you mean, you work in a building site, you've got the poor laborers get, the amount of abuse the laborer gets is incredible. But what it does, it kind of develops that kind of real strong fundamental blocks of, no, actually I am strong. It's not for everyone. I can understand that, but it does show, it really does show that If you transition through that uncomfortable stage and then you go through into that accountability and acceptance, then you're able to do that. You're then able to move on to what you're doing now. And it's the same with the guests, whoever previously they're now doing incredible things because they've put the hard work in. It's not going to be easy. And you've said that, if we're looking at your situation, losing your hair, being ⁓ attacked when you were 18 years of age, having that identity crisis as well of understanding why people are looking at me, why is this all these big why questions to actually put yourself in a situation going right, okay, I'm going to put myself right in the frying pan and see what happens and then coming out the other side like, wow, okay, I can do this. It's incredible, Dan. It really is because I don't think I would have been able to do it. I really don't think I, I know it's easy to say that. Well, if you're in my shoes, you'll able to do it. But I think it just shows the strength of character for you to go through that period when a lot of people struggle with Alpecia. it kind of, for me, solidifies the fact of how much of a role model you are and why Bodilocks is so important to people. Because they want to follow in your shoes, that there's going to be people who are currently struggling with that denial acknowledgement stage and by hearing your story of how you transitioned through that, they are then able to move on through their lives and start making impacts as well. So kudos to you. really do appreciate them. really do. I really do think an awful lot of you for for doing that and you're in more about that kind of side of how you the adversity stage.
speaker-1: I'm grateful for that, Thanks. It does mean a lot. I find it incredible that I get to spend every day building the Baldylocks business, knowing that it's the basis of Baldylocks comes from a place of pain, but also then purpose. We get to see the impact on a very frequent basis. Just as such on a few things you mentioned there, which I think wonderfully bring in a few. points we explored earlier on masculinity and leadership and what it's like in construction, cetera. I've always, and this kind of tracks, I suppose, my own acceptance of, I'm better understanding of what masculinity is. I'm going to use a particular example like Gordon Ramsay. So when I first started watching Gordon Ramsay, was like, I don't like this guy. He's like a bully, right? He's very dominant. It's very like all of the things that I dislike about masculinity. ⁓ looked a little bit closer, there's always a moment where he kind of seeks someone out in that environment and then demonstrates a very nurturing aspect to his personality. To the point where you'll see that someone is struggling to express their skills or their talent and he'll do some incredible things in supporting the career path from that because he sees them. So what he does, he disrupts, he disrupts people's mindset because people adapt. create a new normal sometimes in a situation that actually doesn't serve them too well at all. I totally get the idea of restart, reset, rebirth, that kind of stuff. But if you're just adapting to what you've always known, then you're always going to cultivate ⁓ anything that's just always happened and you suddenly become the victor then, creating victims, unless someone disrupts it and makes it visible and brings in accountability. So I think for me, Gordon Ramsay is an interesting symbol of masculinity because masculinity can invite compassion. And I think in construction, you know, there is disruptive culture there around banter and things. when I think the actual bully is a few and far between. I think there's a nuance though. think if you can combine that kind of disruptive banter to try and break someone through to a different confidence level within themselves that they can build resilience and, you know, take themselves more lightly about stuff. Then actually get to see a door open through proper coaching, compassion, inclusivity. So there are nuances in these things that make this human experience a wonderfully fascinating topic. really does. And when it comes to, suppose, you know, the perceived self-indulgence of talking about your story. I don't know if it's a British cultural thing. Oh, we don't talk about ourselves, sniff up a lip and all that kind of stuff. You know, the way that you and I talk about our stories doesn't necessarily, how can I put it? During our experience that it built up to the stories that we share, we were having to go through a lot of pain and anguish and uncertainty. and things that we couldn't figure out, but we had to live it. Now, what greater gift can pain bring you than for you to be able to be of service to others so they haven't got to go through the depths of the pain or the length of time that it took you to get to a place of self acceptance and inner peace. So why wouldn't you finally now be in a place where you can feel like you can articulate your life's journey? express it in such a way that helps people navigate those adversities in a much quicker way than you ever could. Be the support to others that you couldn't find for yourself. So we need to talk more, we need to share more, we need to co-design more, need to be shoulder to shoulder more, not finger wagging and lecturing and making people all empathy fatigue because we keep going on about the doom all the time. How can we look at accountability and moving away from being a victim? you know, and, and re-empowering ourselves so we can then nurture our fellow man or woman or next generation to be living a better life. You know, it's, it's a powerful life mission to unlock in yourself and you do it very well, Sam. You know, I, I'm very grateful that, that we have met and that you're doing what you're doing because if you can make, if you can positively affect in a very minute way, the trajectory of someone's life, that definitely is a life and death situation. And so, you're saving lives out there doing what you're doing. And I think it's remarkable. There's no bigger gift in life than being able to do that for people.
speaker-0: No, I think I really appreciate that because I think that's one of the things that I struggled with when I first started was that kind of identity crisis of trying to understand, I know like a bit of an imposter syndrome. Why would anyone want to hear my story? Why would, what would people gain from my story? And it's not until I've actually started speaking to people that they've then discovered that actually I've been there, I can understand that. And that's why this podcast for me is that the forged method in the book is so important, but this podcast is starting to develop into something I'm extremely passionate about because the amount of messages I have back from people saying that not only are you impacting that person who's coming on to talk, we've got people who've never spoken podcasts before, don't talk about their mental health, but the impact that's had not just on them, but them as a family unit. They're coming back as better people, they're coming back as better individuals. You look at the forged method and how people now are looking at themselves within the method of understanding simple words and they don't have to go wait on like 18 months waiting list to go and see psychotherapists and counselors and everything. Yes, it's an incredible thing when you're able to articulate, like you said, your life experience to help people. And when we do this, you only ever do it to help one person. And that's all I do. listens to it, doesn't matter if it's one, it doesn't matter if it's a thousand. You just use your life experience and what you have learned to help other people. Because when you look at all these big textbooks, psychology textbooks and stuff, they are all based off people like me and you. That's all it is. the difference is between then and now. is that there were people who could speak about it from an educational point of view to put it into data, to share with people. But now we're living in an age where lived experience is big, where these people who those books are actually written about were able to come forward and talk about it. And it's causing this kind of shift now where people are getting more experience and more educational learning and needs from people like me and yourself and other people who are talking about their mental health because We've been there, we understand it and we're able to be sometimes, especially me, too brutally honest in what happens and how to talk about it. But people will look at that and be able to go, I can trust that person because they've been there and they've done it. I'm not saying that psychotherapists and counselors and stuff don't do that because they do. I spoke with someone in the week and they said that ⁓ They are all struggling as well. They're all going through the same process. They're human. They're in that industry because they have been there. But I think there's a big push at the moment again in that reliance of listening to people who have actually been there, experienced it, been in through a renders trauma or identity or self-worth or anything and then able to speak about that. Yeah, I think that's a big thing for me as well, why I do the podcast, why I do the books and stuff. And it'll never get to the point where I go, it's a bit too much for me, I don't want to be doing this anymore because every day I get to do this, I'm healing myself as well. ⁓
speaker-1: Yeah, definitely. I can relate to that. think a lot of the talks I've given since I started at Volgogh. I've just had me very emotional in the moment doing these talks and I managed to keep it on track, thankfully. But it's a very authentic experience of expressing your pain, but also the journey through to a place of healing, you know, and it's difficult to broaden out of a camera. We do not use a lot of buzzwords that seem to be flying around in the well-being space, but at end of the day. I don't think you'll ever get well-being saturation because a lot of our fellow human beings need a lot of different kinds of support. Some clinical, some not so formal, some through speaking and some through doing. Yeah, it's, you teach it once, sorry, what's the phrase? You teach it once, you learn it twice. That's something I picked up a long time ago. So when I get to do like do talks to young adults around purpose and direction and self-esteem. It's kind of, I'm also speaking to my younger self, that perhaps I wasn't the most caring for, you know, so it definitely does create that kind of 360, not just positive energy, but very much a reconciliation between you and your past selves that needs to always come into alignment, you know, because we do carry a lot of great stuff from the past, but a lot of issues too that we need to be aware of.
speaker-0: Yeah, and what I want to do now, I think this is perfect opportunity now, is that people understand where you've been, how you've transitioned, how you've put yourself in a situation to grow as a person when you're facing adversity in regards of your self-worth and identity. So I want to talk into the amazing thing that you've created alongside your wife as well, and that is Baldy Locks. So tell me what sparked Baldy Locks?
speaker-1: Okay. So a couple of things that spark quality locks, I often talk about. So, you know, we talked a lot already about the personal kind of motivate that to, be able to bring some to the world that can have my pain become my purpose, et cetera. Right. ⁓ But there were particular key moments that came up in recent times that really brought this all together for me. So number one, I was, I was going to a local pizza place and there was a guy there probably in his early twenties. He was serving. He was quiet otherwise, it only me and him really in that space. And I could see patches all over his head, right? So yeah, alopecia and very much the way it looked to me when I was around his age. And whenever I see someone with alopecia, I can spot them a mile off, right? Even if it's not that obvious to others. So I get this moment of like, oh, it's one of me. But like I keep that in inside. hope anyway, I don't think it comes out. But with this guy, I approached him with bit of caution and sensitivity. So when I ordered my pizza, I looked at him and I said, ⁓ you've got alopecia, like me. Now in my head, was thinking it would go in way of like, ⁓ yeah, yeah, all right, so we could talk it through. But what happened in reality, so he actually caved in, he just said something under his breath that I couldn't quite catch. And he just retreated. ⁓ his teammates, suppose, were kind of back cooking. And I was like, bloody hell, what happened there? And I kind of realized that, yeah, right, okay. I forgot what it was like to be that age, dealing with that condition and how deluded I think I would have to be to think that I didn't have a visible condition because that's what would enable me to leave the house. So I kind of called him out really, like unintentionally for having something that he was trying to ignore. So that for me then reminded me, empathy is important here. Even though I wasn't insulting, the guy wasn't ready. So I don't pass that off as, well that's a him problem. think, well, there's an opportunity now for me to recognize that I am in a place where I need my peace and other people need that help. So it just kind of sat with me. I didn't quite unlock anything at that point. It was just kind of sat with me. And there was another moment then where I was walking down the high street in Bridgend where I live now. And I saw a barbershop, right? And they got this lovely, like old school, aesthetic going on with the big chairs. And I was like, I love a bit of that. Then I kind of found myself in like, I'm a sort of like a dog set outside of Butchers. You know, I was looking through the window thinking, ⁓ how amazing would that be to go in there? And I was like, ⁓ well, but I can't. And of course, you know, I made my peace with my condition. So I'm not like a little violin time. I don't spiral into all this kind of stuff that I used to. just sort of. ⁓ it's bugging me a bit now. How can I, what can I fix that? How can I reconnect people with places? Again, no real solution. I was just trying to figure it out. And then there's a third moment there, which seems daft, right? But it's an important part of what really unlocked it all for me. And it was quite simply, right? My son was on the phone to his friend, right? They're about 12 years old at this point. And whenever Matthew comes on the speakerphone, his voice just catches my ear, right? So... I banter with him gently. I'm a guy in his forties bantering with a 12 year old, right? How immature. But it is what it is. So I say something to him, quite harmless and jokey, but bantery. And he quips back in a heartbeat and goes, shut up, Baldy Locks. And in that moment I thought, that's some good. I thought he's won that one. He's won that one. It reminds me of a time when I beat my dad at Scrabble, right? When I was like 13 years old. It was like, ⁓ I got to give it to you. That was really, really fast. Quite funny. Cause there's no spiked in it. Right. So he won that one. So I thought, well, I'm always quite entrepreneurial minded. I always like to try and think of ideas. Most of them are not worth talking about. Let's just put them in a bin. But this one I was thinking, right, empathy. was thinking of connection. was thinking humor and those keywords now become our values of Goldilocks. So I think, you know, I've got my lived experience. I've got the story. I've got the mission, you know, how can I bring people to a sense of self-exceptance from this condition that we can't cure right now? What does that mean as a business though? So I, that's when I went a bit of an exploration. And so I went to a barber shop and I said, look, I'd love to have that experience, but I haven't got any hair. Just something that we can do where I can go in and have a treatment because You know, COVID lockdown, you know, everyone felt the disconnect, ⁓ to different places. So I wanted to be able to tap into that shared psychology, that shared empathy that even if you don't have alopecia or, or, or some stigma around hair loss, we have a human experience that we can all tap into around what isolation disconnection feels like. So I went to the barber shop and said, how can I solve this for people like me? And they said, well, They said, all right, well, come in, have a hot towel, cold towel, have a close shave because even if you don't have hair, that's a great exfoliating process anyway. I was like, ⁓ okay, cool. And it's on my Instagram, My wife was filming me kind of building up the confidence to go into the barbershop to the point where I actually ended up taking the seat and going through all sorts of intense emotions and memories. And by the end of it, after Katharina, who is the barber at this place. After we have this conversation and she's given me the treatments, I came out like glowing, like floating almost. It was amazing. There was a moment of curiosity then of thinking, ⁓ how can I develop this further? This is setting our path now of trying to be quite business-minded around saying to the barber, every bald head that goes past your door now could be a customer if you take on the baldy lux experience or whatever it is. But anyway, I parked there for a moment and I thought, but what does this look like for women then? know, because I go to an Alapisha UK support group and there's a lot of women there. A of shops are not really going to unlock that for them. So I looked at salons, I looked at spas. I spoke to Carter from the Vale College about an idea and a few weeks later then we got four ladies of Alapisha enjoying a spa experience where in the three minute video again that you'll see on my social media. They go in with their hair systems on, they seem a little bit uncertain by the end of it. After a course of treatment of like getting their nails done, having massages, they're sat in a restaurant then by the end of it with their hair systems off, just glowing in that kind of, in that experience of being connected again, not just to a place, but to themselves and to others. You know, the feedback I had from a couple of the women like Deborah, for example, she said to me afterwards, said, look, if I saw a ball, lock sticker on the window, the spiral salmon, I know I'd feel understood and welcomed. And I thought, wow, you know, so I have unlocked something now that the genies are at the bottom of it. So, um, this for me really brings, uh, brings something to the planet, to humanity that I can, I can, uh, formulate. Um, And since then, you know, I've been developing other services and experiences to help raise awareness about Alapetia, ⁓ but also to help people with their general wellbeing, especially around the nervous system. So nowadays when you see Baldy Locks doing whilst we get to a place eventually where we can be that sticker on the window of high street locations, you will find us at events, will find us at workplaces. We've done experiences at the NHS, we've done it on construction sites. where I have my team of baldettes, my freelance massage therapist, and they will be given 15 minutes seated massages to help people in it that you find some time and space to attend to their wellbeing. It doesn't take hours, it doesn't cost you, and it can be done where they're at. And we've had some great feedback from physiotherapists, occupational therapists, nurses who are like, you your baldettes are fantastic. They know how to speak to you. They know how to... treat you and this concept that you could just be in my canteen while I'm back to back seeing patients. mean, there's nothing more rewarding than trying to give care to people who are constantly giving care to others. So Baldy Locks as an enterprise is constantly expanding its offerings of service and products. So we're now at a place where we're actually presenting the concept called the dome zone. So with the name Baldy Locks perhaps might. ⁓ be confusing for some, like how can Baldy Locks do something to me when I'm not got a bald head? Well, the dome zone is a place that we create that you step into to make sure you get the treatment you deserve to calm the nervous system and to perhaps unlock awareness for you to be able to tackle new other wellbeing experiences that we can connect you to through our network of baldettes who have their own businesses on the side. So we're really cultivating a wellbeing ecosystem. It's not just about mental health talks, which I've done. It's not just about massages, but it's about making sure that people introduce really effective, efficient, expensive means of attending to your wellbeing. Because unless that's in the right place, then nothing else will be. yeah, Baldy Lux, we're into our second year now. We've been finalists of a couple of different entrepreneurial awards. And as I say, you know, working with social value managers and construction, we're doing a lot of wonderful stuff, but ultimately, 50 % of our profits go to Alopecia UK. And that charity is doing great things that I can't step into right now, is supporting clinical research, know, and running different kinds of events. So we are a formal social enterprise, but I'm glad to say we're bringing a lot of glow into people's lives. And that's essentially the essence of what we're doing.
speaker-0: I honestly, listening to everything you just said, I had a massive smile on my face because being able to give someone that experience of, how can I say it? Just pure heightened sensitivity of joy and happiness. It reminds me an awful lot of the film with Will Smith, The Pursuit of Happiness. he comes out and he's like buzzing and. For you in such a short period of time, for someone who feels so self-conscious, these people now will go into the salons to actually be in a public place around a dinner table without their hair pieces on or their hair systems. That's incredible. What an incredible achievement to give people that. that's not only just touching the surface of what Bouldie Locks is doing. It's an incredible... incredible achievement and I think what it does beautifully is that it highlights the importance of a safe space. I think safe spaces are so so important whether that's online forums, that's your mental health social groups or walking groups, anywhere where you don't feel judged and The joy of it is as well is when people are in there and they're all like-minded and they understand because you look at some groups, say for instance, a lot of the groups that I've seen, you go in there and there's always negative aspects to it. And if you go into that identity scenario, people go into these groups because they have a low self-identity. When they go in there, they feel that they're not understood. And that they just want to be loved. So they stay there from a negative point of view. But that's why what you're doing is beautiful because you're allowing people that safe space where people understand it's not full of people who will judge, who will do things. It's to allow people just to feel comfortable. And I think that's an incredible, an incredible gift to give to people. I really do. think that's incredible gift.
speaker-1: Thank you. It's, uh, it's incredible to see as well. You know, I, I love, um, being at events when our bald heads are working their magic. And oftentimes it's important that I'm not there because I just kind of get in the way. Um, but, uh, you know, it's, uh, it's, it's remarkable to see people. There'll be three different types of people, I suppose, really that we come across. One will be like, Oh yeah, I'm up for this. And I have a massage great. There'll be those who are like, I'm not so sure. only have a massage when there's a, an intense sports massage, you know, like this kind of. Especially on the construction sites that we've been at, there is a certain like, oh, not sure about this. And then there is something that you never see, right? And that is what it is. It's just not their thing or whatever. But I think that the fact that we invite a space for people to engage, I think it's really important that that is created because I know what it's like to feel withdrawn and disconnected. I know how comfortable or falsely comfortable that can feel when your bed rotting or sofa rotting. and until eventually you get sick of that state and then you come out of it. I think like home is for rest, know, home is for rest, whereas out in the world that's for growth, you know, and I think when you balance the two nicely, that's when you kind of create the sense of reconciliation within yourself, that inner peace that I often talk about. yeah, like wherever people congregate, whether it be, I don't know, I'm not a religious person, but I respect that the church is a hub for many, a pub can be, a rugby clubhouse, know, a spa or a salon is also those kinds of spaces. There's nothing worse, I don't think, that when something happens in someone's life and it takes them away from those spaces, that they perhaps even took for granted as to how much benefit they were getting from. mean, we need to look at the spa a bit. And this is certainly much more noticeable in this space. You you're looking at women there who have lost their hair through no fault of their own, who have suddenly had this disruption and this disconnection and this shame and all the stuff that they carry. And I've got to say, know, the reason I say women in this place, pain knows no gender, A woman's pain is no worse than a man's pain. But what I will say when it comes to societal expectations, You know, when you look at the Baldy Locks icon, you do you see a man or a woman with alopecia? You you might think, oh, it's clearly a bloke because he kind of looks like me. But there's a lot of women with bald heads and glasses out there, you know. So therefore, do men lose a sense of masculinity when they lose their hair? Do women lose a sense of femininity when they lose their hair? And I would say the latter is probably more prominent. But what I got to see in the smile experience was the practitioners who were there, um, have also come up. become our baldettes because I was really struck by their caring and candid way of making sure that that person felt no different just because they've got a condition that some people don't have. When you saw a moment where they have their bald scalps touched for the first time, where the top of their own head has been a huge stigma for them that they've got to cover with hats or wigs and they want to be lucky, God forbid anyone touches it. For the practitioners there who are now, like I say, the baldettes. just to get straight on it. It's like, it was almost kind of like, I observed a sort of a moment of uncertainty with the women who suffer from alopecia, but then an instant relaxation and acceptance. No, that shift that I got to observe was so profound that to a point, and we talk, you mentioned imposter syndrome earlier, I'll just touch on something quick. The first kind of public talk I did about Goldilocks. ⁓ this is imposter syndrome ramped up, right? ⁓ it was an award ceremony called the female boss awards. And it was run by a brilliant woman called Angie Monroe's based in, ⁓ in the Midlands. And she invited me to do a talk there because she liked what I was trying to share with, with salon owners around creating more inclusive spaces for those who feel disconnected. So I'm there. met like tonight Josephine's in Birmingham, which is like super camped up and all bright and lovely colors, et cetera. And I'm dressed in my, intentionally kind of black cap, black t-shirt, Baldy locks logo. And it's like a love Island after party, right? Aesthetics are off the chart. know, everyone looks amazing. And I'm like, Oh my God, what am I doing here? I mean, I got, I eventually got to my place where I was talking at the end of the whole ceremony. And the feedback I had really, when I was talking about my experience at the salon, the Spar experience that we run, there was just silence. I was told by the host that whilst I was in my own head, in my own flow of sharing, they said like, other speakers came before you, people are chatting amongst themselves, not really creating much space or respect for the people who were talking. But when you started talking about the topic, your... really promoting, everyone just shut up when they were listening. But the biggest thing I pushed to them, said, look, it's all about dignity. I said, there is no way that anyone should be leaving your place feeling less. And I said, you're all gods, right? Guardians of dignity. That's what we call you in the Baldy verse. was getting, you know, so please, like whenever anyone comes in, make sure they leave with their confidence, not without it. And I said, I'd love nothing more for you guys. I have a Baldi Lock stick on the window. So people actually know that you are welcome to those who do feel uncomfortable going to those places where they could just have a coffee and a chat. And I had so many salon owners come in to me at end, some in Scotland, so many of them just saying like, how do we make this happen? Very early on there's been arms wide open for what Baldi Locks can do to... create more connections in communities and be enterprising at the same time. So it's a lot of fun. There's a lot of momentum and I'm so grateful that people have adopted the brand in such a loving way.
speaker-0: I was beautifully put, but I'm incredibly proud of you for doing what you're doing and what you've created for people. It's really important to know that there are places out there and people out there who are making these changes and putting these things in place to allow people to feel again, dignified. I think that's a really, ⁓ I didn't even think of that, the guardians of... of dignity that they really are to a lot of people and in your scenario they are too. They give people that feeling and I'm just trying to, even when I go in, I don't normally have a shave often. I try to keep my beard. Otherwise I got a double chin. I know and yeah, it looks, it's not the best look for me. So the wife don't like it either. So I got to keep it between just long enough and quite too short. But yeah, I know that I... I can imagine that feeling must be incredible. really do. And I think as we start looking out towards the back end of the podcast now, I really want to start looking at, I tend to ask people every time they come on there about their reflection, basically, all their life and what they've learned and then how people can take that in. And for you, it's going to be really important because You've overcome so many things and you've not only done that, you've built something that allows people, as I've said over and over, to feel dignified, to feel happy and embrace that in ourselves as well and feel beautiful on the outside, which is incredibly important. What I want to do is I'll ask you just a few questions and then just let me know what you think then. What did rebuilding confidence actually look like to you?
speaker-1: Rebuilding confidence, what it looked like to me, getting on my own head was critical. Getting out of my own head. I spent too many months or seeming years in a self-imposed sense of isolation. I don't think I'm wrong, my guitar playing ability really kind of improved during that time. you know, there's, there is a need for us to. Be kind to ourselves, also being self-aware enough to recognize, right, okay, am I resting or am I depressed? You am I resting or am I avoiding? And you've got to find a way to push yourself. You've got to find a way to make yourself uncomfortable because that's where the growth is. You know, and trust that the people are out there who can... You can become your greatest allies that you just haven't met yet. I always say to people as well that do what you do for a purpose until you find your own purpose. Because it is so important, I think, for us human beings to feel like we are of value. Not just to ourselves, but our communities. And there's nothing like the demons of depression, for example, or other moments of diversity that come your way. does its best to take your sense of self-worth and take your value to keep you in bed. Like I'm not knocking people who are in pain and need to experience that pain, suppose, because there is an ill to suppressing and avoiding. But it does come a point where it's like, okay, I was a victim in the attack, but really Baldy Locks was born from a place when I stopped becoming a victim. So reflections around confidence rebuilding is very much about. recognizing that you are of worth, you are of value and anything that you choose to do is basically driven by a need to be connected to others. So be self-aware, be accountable and open yourself up to love as well. I know what it felt like to be so embroiled in self-hate for no real reason, you know? But it was as a consequence of being surrounded by influences that weren't particularly nurturing and, and, and always loving. But that doesn't mean I've got to imitate that. You know, I had no choice but to experience it, but I certainly had a choice to figure out, figure out how I could respond to it. But that only come really from some inner reflections, some comfort in music, but ultimately through friendships that I definitely wouldn't have made if I just stayed in my house all the time, you know. So yeah, you've got to find a way of making peace with yourself, getting out there and remembering what it is to be human.
speaker-0: Yeah just to build off the back of that then, is for you is real strength pretending nothing bothers you or being honest that it does?
speaker-1: I mean, you know, there's a comfort and avoidance, but it by too near. know, ⁓ it is painful. It is painful to. It is painful to reveal the truth that sits within you. Because a lot of the truth that sits within you comes from memories of pain and trauma. know, people self medicate with alcohol or other sorts of mediums. But really all that does, it just keeps, keeps the pain there and it may numb it temporarily. You know, there's this strength and there's a need, but it's painful. to dig deep, but do it in such a way where you, if you've got to descend down that well of self discovery, stay tethered to someone you trust. And my trusted person, my best friend and my wife, who supported me to look within and to navigate the past, but in a way that still made me feel safe and connected. It is painful. Don't do it alone. But definitely be aware when you're choosing a more comfortable path of self numbing because at the end of the day, pain brings feeling and feelings can bring joy and can bring healing. ⁓ ultimately you end up bettering yourself and other fellow humans. So yeah, that's how I'd answer that.
speaker-0: very well said, really do, was an excellent answer. If someone is listening to this now and they are suffering with alpicia or their appearance and they feel ashamed, what would your message be and what do need to hear?
speaker-1: You are going through something that is presenting itself as a visible difference, but we're all different. know, the fact that people are able to see a visible difference suggests that you're actually being out there to be seen. You may feel, you may believe that people are looking at you, but actually they're curious about you because you've been able to leave the house carrying a condition that would probably shake them to the core if they had to go through it. So I would say that present yourself in a way that people see you, but don't look at your condition. You know, stand tall, make eye contact and visit your pain, but don't be overwhelmed by it. By and large, people are out there to support you, but they can't support you if you isolate yourself. If you don't connect with people, be kind to yourself as well. You your experience is something you didn't ask for. You know, it's not necessarily a body attack and you, haven't got to get wrapped up into this self-loathing. Just recognize that you're being presented here with an adversity in life that you can learn from. And there's nothing more attractive sometimes in fact, you know, where you might feel particularly ugly or hard to look at because you've got patches over your head. But there's nothing more attractive than eye contact and a genuine smile. And just because your hair's falling out doesn't mean you can't achieve that.
speaker-0: Dan this episode has been a remarkable one because to see your strength and not only battling that adversity of where you've come from with ⁓ losing your hair through alpica but it's the strength of character for you to use that as a catalyst to project yourself going forward to better those around you who have suffered from it and that is a pure example for me of someone who is a role model, a hero and an advocate for such a powerful cause. And I really do believe that what you're doing for people is an incredible achievement for you and your family. And I know ultimately that it is going to help so much. It has, it has helped people and it's going to continue to help people. And it's going to come with a lot of success because these safe spaces that ultimately you have created to allow people to seen, heard, understood, all of these things. It cannot be undervalued, the importance of it in society. It really can't. And I think this for me is what The Forge Within is all about. And it's not just
speaker-1: Thank you.
speaker-0: the big dramatic stories of massive childhood trauma and everything. It's the quiet battles that shape our identity. And your story reminds myself and us that hearing begins when we stop pretending we're fine and start telling the truth about what it's actually really like. And that's the message I've taken. back from that and I know if anyone's listened to this and the conversation has resonated with you then just share it, listen to it, embrace it, take notes in it. If you want to follow the podcast, fab, if you want to write a review, fab, but most importantly listen to Dan's words and what he's been through and if you want more information as well, Dan's on LinkedIn, he's on other things as well. Do you want to talk more about Dan, before you finish off about how people can get in contact with you or how they can, if they are something with Alpecia and they want to visit oldy locked places and safe spaces, can you just give us a bit more data understanding of where they can contact you?
speaker-1: Absolutely. So you can find me on LinkedIn where I'm quite active there because I'm appealing to employers to bring us into their workspaces to provide wellness experiences for their people. I'm quite active on LinkedIn. Name on LinkedIn is Dan Newman, but you should also be able to find me by typing in Danny Baldy. That should actually bring up my profile as well. If you're not on LinkedIn, you can look at my Instagram, which I will be giving more time and attention to shortly. And you can see some of the videos here that I talk about on the spa and the barbershop days. And that is at baldylocks.me. And we do have a website currently being built, but right now at least you can put information in there if you need to connect. And again, the website there is www.baldylocks.me. And I'd welcome anyone to come forward. You need some support. As I say, if it steps out of my specialism, I would happily signpost you to whether bodies that can give you that kind of help along the way as well, such as Alapis UK, they're a fantastic charity. So yeah, please get in touch.
speaker-0: Fab, thank you Dan and thank you. It's a Sunday, we're recording this as well. So giving your Sunday up as well to ⁓ come and speak on here to share your story. I really do appreciate it. And we're going to be in contact a lot going forward anyway, but I just want to wish you all the best for you, your family, the boldettes, everything that you are doing. ⁓ Yeah, I can't thank you enough because I know the importance of creating these safe spaces for people and the impact it has and it's going to continue to do that. So thank you so much.
speaker-1: And that's all Sam, as I say, thanks for the opportunity. You're doing great work. I'm so honored to be able to know you and to be on your podcast so early on. Thank you so much.
speaker-0: no problem at all. And again, I think this just identifies the more we talk honestly, the less people feel alone. And this has been the Forged Within podcast where we talk about stories and relationships around mental health and how it's impacted our lives. And as you can tell from today, we are changing the stigma around mental health. So until next time, I shall see you soon. Okay, thank you. Bye, bye.
