Jennifer: 0:25

Welcome to another episode of Behind the Dreamers. I'm your host, jennifer Loading, and we are talking to the achievers, the creators, the magic makers and the dreamers. These are our friends, these are your friends and they are living the extraordinary. I'm excited about my guest today. He has a passion for pushing boundaries and doing good. Over the past 25 years, he and his co-founder have initiated, expanded and successfully exited nine businesses, two of which reached NASDAQ listed status On the boardroom. He's an enthusiastic runner with a love for yoga and music making. I found out a fun fact about him that he used to be a drummer for an indie rock band, which is kind of fun. So I went through your profile and looked at all that. So we are going to be in for a treat today. But before I welcome him on, I do need to do a quick shout out to our sponsors.

Jennifer: 1:12

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Jennifer: 1:52

Okay, so now that we got all that done, we can get our guests on the show. I'm excited. It's going to be fun. So, kieran, it's going to be fun, kieran James. He's the visionary CEO and founder of wonderful, a company revolutionizing instant bank payment technology with its commitment to simplicity, speed and security. With three decades entrepreneurial experience, kieran is not only shaping the fintech landscape, but also serving as a non-executive director at the fundraising regulator. He's passion-wise and fostering positive social impact, supporting charitable causes and empowering fundraisers for maximum impact. His mission is to establish wonderful payment as the foremost instant bank payment provider in the UK and beyond. So, kieran, welcome to the show. Super glad to have you here today.

Kieron: 2:37

Thank you for having me, Jenny, for my pleasure it's going to be fun.

Jennifer: 2:40

I had to get all that out. It's like so much to talk about in the first few minutes of this podcast.

Kieron: 2:44

Yeah, I feel like you've really set me up there now. I've got a lot to live up to, so fingers crossed.

Jennifer: 2:49

That's good. I know I love these bios. I always have fun with them and you know we probably said this the other day I love AI too, because it takes that content and it makes it all worded really well for me, so it makes my job easy. You know, before AI came out, I'd have to sit and I'd have to, like, craft these bios up. And that's my favorite part really is how do I showcase you guys and shine the light right, like, how do I make you look really good here? I would have fun creating these, but I would spend so much time trying to make sure I got the right words and I didn't mess this up and now I'm like copy paste, put it in. Let's reword it the way Jennifer would say it a little bit change the words so they sound like Jennifer. We got it, we're good.

Kieron: 3:22

Yeah, yeah, no, it's amazing. I mean, some of the advances in AI. We're using it for some of the support services on our website and it frankly has saved us an absolute fortune in terms of time and resources Brilliant.

Jennifer: 3:33

Yeah, I'm with you. Sometimes it's just good because you've got the, you know you'll have the message, but you don't quite have the vernacular right, Like you just don't quite have the wording, and it can help you with that, just that little bit of that wording.

Kieron: 3:45

Exactly.

Jennifer: 3:46

All right. Well, I'm excited. Let's talk about what you got going on. So let's talk about, first of all, wonderful. Let's talk about what this is, so our audience knows what it is that you're doing here.

Kieron: 3:55

Okay, yeah, so laterally we're in payments, but it's been a very securitist route into payment. So I'll share a little bit of the story, if that's okay. We kicked off in 2016 and at the time you mentioned running in the intro and thanks for the mention on that. I was doing the New York marathon I think the second time for a charity called Mind in the UK, raising money for Mind and basically using a fundraising platform in the UK a very prominent one and, I think, just a little concerned by the amount of money that was leaking from that platform into various different directions, whether that was the cost of payment processing or deductions from Gift Aid, which is a tax incentive that really is in place to benefit charities, or elsewhere. So what we did at the time was we thought can we set up an alternative fundraising platform and see whether we can get 100% of the donations to go to charity? This was a completely philanthropic project. So I was running a telecoms business at the time, spoke to my colleagues in the business and said look, lunch breaks coffee. I always do fancy having you go up building a fundraising platform. Odd thing to suggest, but they loved it. Everyone got really excited about it, I think because it was tech for good in a genuine sense.

Kieron: 5:11

So we set about building this platform and then essentially what happened was it took us a little while to get the charities to understand that our motivations were entirely philanthropic. They were a little nervous about getting on board and once they did, we have a gain of sight in the UK called the money saving expert, apparently one of the top 100 most trafficked websites in the UK. They endorsed the platform and said this was a fabulous thing and suddenly that kind of skepticism and nervousness amongst the charities just evaporated and they came on board in really big numbers. That then created a success paradox. So we were running this platform completely free, funded through corporate sponsorship.

Kieron: 5:53

After about a year we got a bank onboard to try and cover some of the costs and they helped us out. But essentially as we grew, those costs of processing payments just grew along with the platform. So we found that was creating a really low ceiling on our impact and reach and we thought what can we do to solve this problem? And just in time, along came a new technology open banking. So we adopted that, we moved away from card processing for donations and suddenly we got a solution to the problem. So that is probably a slightly longer winded way of explaining how we got to what we're doing today, but that's the route.

Jennifer: 6:30

That's awesome. Yeah, no, and it's interesting. I think that we may have talked about this off camera when we met, but I think it's interesting how companies come about. I always feel like the best way is, when you're trying to solve a problem, you figure out where the bottleneck is in something. And it was somebody I don't know who it was Somebody I was talking to recently even said that he said he was trying to determine who his client was and he said I was the client. I was trying to figure out the solution. When I tried to figure out the solution then it became about there's got to be other people out there that need what I have because it was a problem for me. So I think that sometimes that's what we have to do, right, Like that's what we do in business.

Kieron: 7:09

That's exactly what happened. I mean, in solving that problem for the cherishes and the fundraising platform, we thought, well, this cost of moving money from a donor's account to a charity's account is exactly the same problem that retailers face in getting the money from the customer's account to the retailers account. I think that was again that second light bulb moment of well, if we solve this problem here, let's adapt and create an FCA authorized payments business in the UK and serve the commercial sector too.

Jennifer: 7:37

Yeah Well, I mentioned early on. I'm pulling the paper back up here. I'm like what do I do with the notes that I just had? I feel like I'm shuffling papers today. You've brought I mean had several different companies here and you brought them up. What do we count? Nine, was that right Nine?

Kieron: 7:53

It's nine with the co-founder. We've been working together since 2000,. Actually slightly before then, probably 1998, I think we first started working together. So yeah, a long time now. Yeah 25 years in fact.

Jennifer: 8:05

Yeah, you've had quite the journey then. I'm sure seen a lot of things coming and going in that yeah.

Kieron: 8:10

Yeah.

Jennifer: 8:10

In that. So I would love to know maybe some of you talked about the challenge when you're bringing this and finding the need, but maybe even back this up because I would love to know just what you've learned being in this space, being an entrepreneur, maybe some of the challenges you've had that you've had to learn to overcome, Because I think a lot of times people coming into this space that we know because we're entrepreneurs and we know as building businesses, but people that are getting in often look at the end result. They see you at the end and they go, okay, this just happened, right. They don't know the journey that's transpired from here to here and all the hurdles and so, looking back, what were maybe some of the bigger challenges and it may be working with a co-founder, it may have been going into entrepreneur space, Anything that comes to mind- yeah for sure.

Kieron: 8:55

I mean again, I started this in an odd way, going back to 1998. I was actually started life as a teacher on my professional life as a teacher and I went out to the Middle East to run a training institute over there back in about 97, 98. And they were looking for an expansion to other countries within the Middle East and said, can I put together a PDF marketing brochure? And this was as the internet was really starting to explode and I thought that's probably not the best route into marketing internationally. So I ended up putting together a website for them and that was really what sparked the interest in running my first business. So the first business was a small loan from the bank for an Apple Mac computer, working from the bedroom and starting to build up a client list. And you know, genuinely, that's how we started.

Kieron: 9:47

I remember again, some of the kind of highlights from that are the lowlights and highlights the point of how do I reach my customers? So I know how to use the technology, but how do I get out there? Very different landscape in terms of search engine optimization, as you can imagine. In fact, I famously talked to people about how we essentially gained Google as they first started, which was as simple back in the very early days as putting the keywords in white letters on a white background and repeating them multiple times on the page, and you could probably manage to stay on Google for a day or two before they cottoned onto that Obviously much more different these days.

Jennifer: 10:23

Right right.

Kieron: 10:25

So you know again, actually, just thinking about the challenges over the last 25 years, that's been a significant one, just the changing landscape in technology. So we found SEO and content creation to gain positions on and good rankings on Google Much, much easier, say, 15 years ago than it is now. Right, right, so you've got to, you know, you've got to approach them up. I mean, I said when I was first doing SEO, clearly, and there was no social media, it was a completely different approach to marketing. Yeah, so.

Kieron: 10:56

I think Just being aware of how that digital landscape is changing all the time and trying to keep on top of it Is probably one of the biggest challenges.

Jennifer: 11:04

Yeah, well, interesting that you say that, because I you know, when you were talking about like in 90, you know 90s of whatever year you were talking about, when we didn't really have the internet Was kind of like okay.

Jennifer: 11:13

So I go back to like when I started, because I started my entrepreneur journey around 1998, 97 98. My youngest was a baby at that time and I went into Mary Kay at that time. Network marketing Jason, I shared with you. I was with him for 22 years.

Jennifer: 11:28

But back then I I mean agreements when we would have people come in. We would have to fill them out and I was in Houston at the time Houston Texas that the corporate office was in Dallas. So you're talking a good four hour, three, four hour drive to transport. We would have to get things in at the end of the month and we would have to fill the these applications out and somebody we'd have to get a Director to take all the applications and hurry up and over, drive them like drive to Dallas to drop them off. You know we didn't have all this submit online thing.

Jennifer: 11:55

And even when I, when you mentioned you know how do you attract your market, I remember actually making cold calls, like actually getting lists of people in the area and calling people. I couldn't even imagine really doing that now, like doing that kind of a way of building because it would like can you even get phone numbers? I don't know. I mean, I guess maybe you can, but I bought list leads. You know, since this time and it's hard to get all that information anymore like back then you had everybody's home phone Because people had landlines and you could call the landline. We didn't call cells, you know. So you're right, it has changed so much and we and for those of us that have been in long enough, whatever industry we're in right is entrepreneurs, business We've had to sort of evolve the way we conduct our own businesses, even even like a camera. We had to evolve again, right.

Kieron: 12:42

Completely, I mean in terms of that evolution. One of the stats that I heard recently is kind of dwell time on home pages is down to 18 seconds. You know the time. They're talking about the forms and so on and filling those in. With one of the early businesses after the web design was doing company Formation so again, I think probably 99, we were the first online company formation agent and that form, I think, about people's attention span now online. It was literally the form to create a company was all the directors, all of their dresses, all of the dates of birth, registered office, and it was literally one form. It wasn't going through several screens, it was one form. So you either completed it or you started again. And it really makes me giggle now thinking about how you know how long people stay on a page and you think 18 seconds. I'm gonna have to cover a lot of grounding, though, like yeah, yeah, people.

Jennifer: 13:31

I feel like people don't have Attention span anymore. People are just like. I can't see it fast. We ain't looking at it, I'm not even gonna read all that you gotta be short.

Jennifer: 13:39

Sweet to the point where I was just talking to somebody. I met with a Marketing guy today and we were talking about, like, content creation. I was specifically talking about the podcast and he's like, yeah, you know, like you got to put out light and he was giving me some advice. Like try to put out like eight pieces of content. They got to be short to get people. I'm like, first, mom stock, hold on eight, eight, eight things for one, eight, eight. I'm like you want me to do eight? I can barely get one. It takes me that long to get that ready. And I got to do this short enough to keep people's attention span and make sure it's good to keep their attention span. That you're asking a lot now. Like I mean, we had dial up, you know.

Kieron: 14:14

And the problem we're gonna get is course, everyone using gay. I should generate those eight pieces of content, oh my god. I'm not talking to each other.

Jennifer: 14:21

Yeah, I think we should bring dial up back Just for a short period of time to show everybody what it was like to have to wait for the internet to connect, and they'll maybe They'll appreciate waiting for a few minutes to read something you know.

Kieron: 14:31

Absolutely. Do you know what's funny? When you mentioned that, I think back to my students and I remember being blown away the first time I was showing any of them the internet and these are business study students and I typed in a query and and he went. It's really. We were on dial up, so you heard the boat I'm kicking off in the background, but when the results came back, it's really good but takes a bit of time, doesn't? I'm just thinking it's you know, that's teenagers. They're still the same these days and I'm thinking this is searching God knows how many millions of pages and coming back was. I'm blown away and the students are going so a little bit slow.

Jennifer: 15:01

Yeah right, I know it's good.

Jennifer: 15:02

Well, and that's, I think that's the great thing. Those you get to see this transformation of all and I think the business is it really do good. They do learn to Keep evolving and stay with the times and don't get so set on. This is the way we've always done it. This is the way it has to be. We're gonna can. I mean there's certain things I think you know, your principles or your values, whatever is important to you. Those should stay grounded. But I think you can evolve that to where you can keep. You know, with technology and all of those things that are going, I mean I think you know we just have to keep, or else we would you get Weed it out. You're not gonna be able to keep up with everything that's going on out there. You know absolutely.

Kieron: 15:35

Absolutely good stuff, Good stuff so.

Jennifer: 15:39

Yeah, you got a lot of stuff going on. I like I was, like I said, reading your bio, bio, which the running stuff we talked about that, and they the yoga, a little bit about that. I had another question. I totally drew a blank on what I wanted to ask you, a really good one. It's gonna come back to me in a few minutes, but I would love to know we'll get on to another one, I'll come back to that I would love to know, you know, aside from all these other things we just talked about, all the you know evolving, what have you learned about yourself specifically through this whole journey, as you know, moving from the, maybe even moving from the teaching, to the entrepreneur space?

Kieron: 16:10

Patience, I think, and to have more of it, I think, genuinely. You know one of the things I learned from yoga and it was fantastic my first yoga teacher saying you know it is a lifetime journey. I do Ash Tango and I think he was saying you know, to get through the whole of series A, probably set aside 10 years and you just think you're 10 years as a timeframe seems a really really long time. But it's the same with the business. You know, people set up and they expect instantly to be generating revenue and profit and it does take time and that first couple of years can be really really hard and just being in for the long play I think is very important. So patience has become super important to me. Times when it's really really tough. I think you've just got to sit back and say you know, if it's meant to happen, it will happen. If it isn't, it won't. But that sounds very trite, but it is fundamentally the case. There are things over which you've got control and things you really don't.

Jennifer: 17:04

Yeah, no, and I think that that even goes along.

Jennifer: 17:06

I think we can extend on that and even say and just really learning also how to relish in the moment of the things that are going on, right, like having finding some wins in those things that are happening, so that it makes that patience a little bit easier.

Jennifer: 17:20

I mean, patience is something you do have to work on it, right, like not everybody's just boring going. Okay, I'm paid, especially, I think, with achievers, because I think we're so driven to succeed all the time that it's hard to go, oh, like I'm not seeing it happening. And oh, you know, like in all areas I mean, I still do that, even, you know, as a coach, and I'm telling people, I still all get up some days and I'm like, okay, I've had it, like this is not doing what I want it to do, and I put in all this energy and I'm like okay, and then usually when that happens, I have to just say I need a break, I need to pause for a few minutes. I want to. You know I don't like to make big decisions that are big, without sleeping on it and really thinking, but it usually means I need to pause, you know.

Kieron: 17:57

So yeah, I think, learning to find gratitude in that middle is important. I think that's really really critical. And even today, just on the training to the office, you just get a link, 10 posts from somebody saying how great the service is and that sets you up. It just changes your view on the day I was coming into the office thinking got loads on. Today it's going to be really hectic and that pops up and, as you say, it's taking some pleasure in those little things.

Jennifer: 19:24

Yeah, every day. Well, and I think the more you do that, the better you get at doing that. I know, when I first started I always say it's cliche, because I try to talk to my you know my clients about gratitude and it's like, oh, they've heard this everywhere and I'm like it's not really about just, sometimes you just got to do things to do things. Sometimes you just got to do it to build the discipline. And you know, and for me I'm a very disciplined person when I started doing a lot of gratitude work, that for me, was really just about doing the discipline in that, because I could not.

Jennifer: 19:50

I was in you know, I always say I didn't really grow up in a home where we were kind of see the bright side of everything, and so I didn't really have that in my in my bones and so I tend to would look at things and always be a pessimist and so and I didn't like that, I really didn't like that about myself. And so I really went to work when I started doing my coaching on how can I change my outlook on things, and so the gratitude was one of the things I had to really work on, but I made it more of like a discipline practice for myself, in that I would write it down on my to-do list every day to purposely go in and try to find things I could be grateful for. And so I'd write it down. And, karen, I'll tell you, it was so cheesy. I would write things like I'm grateful for my cups, I'm grateful for my plates, I'm grateful for forks.

Kieron: 20:34

But that's it.

Jennifer: 20:35

I'm grateful for a front door that locks you know like, but the thing is as cheesy as and cliche as that sounded it got me into the habit of. Really it changed the way I was thinking. It wasn't the only thing that changed them, but it was a piece of the puzzle that helped me to stop getting focused on things I didn't like, things I didn't want, and really start looking at the things in my day that I could find that brought blessing into my life. Right, and then that gets us back to and that's how it helps, I think, for me with the patience on going is that when I'm getting boggled I can go hey, but this happened today and this is why I do what I do.

Kieron: 21:13

And I think you know that's also about objectivity and perspective. I think those are really really key to when we got started with this, we saw a very strong virtuous circle of charities, donors and fundraisers who's you know very being is about doing amazing things. That's what those people get up and do every day, whether they're donating, giving generously, running marathons, baking cakes, and the charities. Clearly, the people operating the charities are going to work every day, making a real difference. So we saw that virtuous circle and thought there's a space in there for a fundraising platform to be equally virtuous and do this 100% free and fund that through another model. It was a model that existed.

Kieron: 21:54

Corporate sponsorship wasn't anything new. But talking about objectivity and perspective, if I ever need a bit of that, all I need to do is visit our fundraising platform and there's 55 stories on there and then you know you read two of them and you go. Okay, you know my life might seem a bit tough today, but look at what these people are doing and what they're achieving and I think that perspective is just so valuable. Yeah.

Jennifer: 22:16

Well and to your point, just to really emphasize and hone in on what you're saying, there is, though, you're taking the proactive step to say, go look that right, like and I think that's where it comes into like taking the step to do something about and not sitting in that you know if you're in that state of mind, right Like doing something completely yourself out of that state of mind. So so many, so many takeaways in all of this I think that are really really good. So good stuff, good stuff, okay. So I'd love to know because you are a runner and we talked about this and everybody knows, follows me, knows that stuff goes on in my house, has been gone for many, many years. I would love to know the pair, some of the parallels, like how that's helped you in with your businesses and with you, know, navigating all the complexities that come with owning businesses and bringing these businesses up and running.

Kieron: 23:02

A couple of really obvious ones. I guess, talking about patients, you've, you've, everyone's heard this, the, the quote it's a marathon, not a sprint. So there's the same thing there, for sure, and I'm definitely not a sprinter. I mean, my kids laugh at me when I run, run, run quickly or try to run quickly. I remember doing, you know, the, the children's sports day, joining with the parents. From there I think I came last, and you know I'm really keen on running but I'm not a fast runner. So for me, I think, a couple of things that are really, really important. One is it takes me out of everything else. Genuinely, I call it my moving meditation. I'm sure I'm not alone in that, but I think just that physicality of it being such a rhythmic thing is really really nice and stopping your brain for a bit. But then, ironically or paradoxically, a lot of the problems that I solve in the business are solved out on a run, because it is giving your mind that space to stop thinking and and actually start thinking, if that makes any sense at all.

Kieron: 23:57

But by not consciously, not consciously dwelling on something I think. Often other solutions come to you because you you're not fixated. So I think that I think the the perseverance you know, done a couple of marathons. I'm certainly not an altar runner and I've not done dozens and dozens of them, but just starting that and knowing that there's no option other than finishing, at least in your own mind, is a really good metaphor for business as well. This is, it's non-negotiable. The gun's gone off and I'm not going to stop until I get to the finish line.

Kieron: 24:28

You got to get to the finish line right, you can't sit down and move the race Exactly, and and again, you know, just going back, it doesn't really matter how long it takes to get there, you're going to get there. So I think that's been really, really important.

Jennifer: 24:42

Yeah, that's good too, and I think too you know, I don't know you probably feel this way from from the runner perspective that because you kind of said you know the mindset of you got to finish, I think it's it is all mindset right, because I've told this story several times about how like we would run, you know, like multiple races on a week, and we might do a half marathon on Saturday and turn around to another one on Sunday, or my husband's done like four marathons consecutively over day over, four days over, like a holiday weekend, crazy.

Kieron: 25:09

I know, it's a hundred miles.

Jennifer: 25:10

There you go. You just broke it up. But there would be times like we'd go run like a half and then I'd get up the next day and have to go run like a 5k and I'd be like I can't do this, Like I just can't. But I got to finish, I got to get to the end, right. And then there'd be other days.

Jennifer: 25:24

I'm like I got this, like I've got a marathon, I'm going to have a marathon, I'm going to go run the next one next day, and I got it right, so it really becomes about the mindset, and I always feel like you know how we do one thing is sort of how we do all things, and so I think that I feel like you know, when you do these athletic things on the side, they really do teach you these great life skills that you can really apply to all areas of your life, whether it be your business or personal. You know and in your case you're talking about patience you know learning, that you got to get to the finish line, how long it takes you there, and if you have to carry that same mindset into what you're doing in your business, it's we're going to take it there. Whatever it takes to get it there, we're going to do it.

Kieron: 26:00

And again circling back to what we started talking about and that changing landscapes that we're operating in. You know I'm getting older, so my personal bests are behind me in terms of time. But you just said different personal bests. It's how many miles, or whatever it might be, how many days a week am I going to run? There's always a new personal best, so it's adapting to changing circumstances, to that's good, all right, another question real quick.

Jennifer: 26:23

I'd love to know and this is my favorite question I've been asking everybody it's fun because I just always I get kind of the same thing, just different verbiage around it. I'd love to know in your mind or in your words, what do you feel like a success for you? What does that look like?

Kieron: 26:39

Wow, I'm going to probably miss. Quote Steve Jobs.

Jennifer: 26:44

It's all good We'll be it'll be close enough.

Kieron: 26:48

But I mean, he actually used the word wonderful in the quote that I'm about to use as well. So that was quite nice and I think it went something. Like you know, I don't want to die being the richest man in the cemetery, I just want to kind of finish the day thinking we've done something wonderful and I think that is just so important. It sounds very grandiose, but genuinely, I think when we finish the day today, for example, we've just rolled out one of the services completely free of charge to charities that feels like a great day for me, because there's something that they can use that's going to cost them nothing and helps them generate more revenue. So we won't earn anything from that. We will, certainly in terms of you know I guess kudos is probably the wrong word but in terms of our reputation, it's great for us. But I think much more than that, it's just about thinking well. That might make a difference. So I think that's the most important thing.

Jennifer: 27:34

I love it and I feel like you know I've had several recordings I've done today I feel like we all sort of kind of say the same thing. We just have a different way of expressing, but I think it always ends up coming back to, you know, making impact and being able to do what we love and do it on our terms, so to speak, right, completely Making our day what we want it to be. I love it because I just feel like that question it really gets to the center of what is this for you, because other people are listening to this and they're like why do these people do what they do? Really and that's what we try to show on this show is like why do people do the things that they do and what's moving them to go forward? So really good stuff, really good stuff.

Jennifer: 28:10

Okay Well, this has been awesome. You're doing cool things. I love it. I love that you're doing your workouts and all getting all the good stuff in over there, because I think that is important part to our well-being. It keeps us all together, you know, and makes all this other stuff in life so much easier. But I'd love to ask you a couple of fun questions, because I know you're a drummer and you've got all these other cool things you've done, so that being first Indy Rock Band so I'd love to know where you guys played. Like were you all in these little small gigs? Did y'all get to travel? Tell me a little bit about that real quick.

Kieron: 28:40

Tell you what my proudest moment actually, funny enough, we were watching a documentary about Blondie coming to England and Concord, England, which was on the BBC the last couple of weeks and it was seeing a couple of the venues come up on that documentary that everyone's played and I'm really proud to say we played at the marquee in London and we played at Dingwalls in London. So they're really great venues, Very cool. Funnily enough, the band I was in was a bit of a Blondie sound alike though the singer and guitarist would kill me for saying that because they hated any references to it but it kind of was. You know we had a girl singer, guitar based drums and very much that kind of scene early 90s, late 80s, so a little after Blondie's, probably peak, but great fun, really great fun. That's fun.

Jennifer: 29:25

Well, and Blondie was obviously, you know, did a great job, so it's not necessarily a bad thing right? It would be bad if she was like Last year, 2023, still playing. I know I know Some of these old singers are still going. It's fine, she does, she still goes. I mean, it's fun.

Kieron: 29:43

And there was a couple of spots on the documentary from Glastonbury. I think in Crockett Crackie. She could still belt them out as well. What a voice, Amazing. That's so great.

Jennifer: 29:51

So great, awesome, all right. So I'd love to know. This is Blondie. This is my one question I have to ask you because I know you're a runner and I know you told me that you, you know you have a specific diet that you follow, but I'd let to know, like the one guilty pleasure, like what's the one thing that's like I really like this and I shouldn't eat it.

Kieron: 30:08

I've got a terrible sweet tooth, so if I can find vegan versions of anything sweet, it's that there's a restaurant that whenever I was in New York called Peace Food that does some amazing vegan desserts and of course I shouldn't probably say this, probably offend all the viewers and is but American portions. So really nice big place.

Jennifer: 30:31

There's a place here they have two locations, it's called Spiral Diner that my kids love and it's basically like the vegan vegetarian food. So when we do Thanksgiving we have to kind of do potluck, because I got one kid vegetarian, one's, one's vegan, the other one's not. We're not. So we do sort of a potluck but they always come over and they'll have, like they brought their. They had a pumpkin pie from the Spiral Diner and they had. But then the this is my daughter's husband. He'll make some food too. But they love this Spiral Diner. Like there. It's like a, it's like an old school diner, like the diner diner, you see, but it's got like desserts in the diner thing and they make food and stuff. And my kids, my son, every it's not close to her house and every time his birthday rolls around he's like I want to go to the Spiral Diner, that's the one that eats meat. But he wants to go to the Spiral Diner and I'm like it's not even by our house.

Kieron: 31:18

You know, so you probably would like it. Yep, Sounds good. No, I mean the peace food. I think they do a crumble over there. It's like a apple crumble or a raspberry crumble. It's just fantastic, particularly after a marathon.

Jennifer: 31:30

Yeah, Highly recommend it. Yeah, that's good. I like pie. I'm a. I'm a big, I'm a big cherry pie. I would. That's my favorite cherry pie with ice cream. I like it.

Kieron: 31:37

I don't eat it very often Sounds good.

Jennifer: 31:40

All right, I'd love to know. Maybe a book you have a book that had kind of a maybe a profound effect on you, something you remember reading that was like that's the one.

Kieron: 31:50

Everything by Murakami, essentially, haruki Murakami, a big, big fan. Dance, dance, dance, dance, I think, was the first one that I read. I don't know, I just love his writing. There's so many times that I'll just go back to the beginning of a paragraph and reread a sentence. I think that it's just exquisitely written. So now I really, really love Murakami.

Jennifer: 32:09

Very cool, Okay. One last question I want to ask you, because I know you have your routine. I would love to know are you a morning workout or afternoon workout? When do you do your?

Kieron: 32:17

workouts. That's changed again. Funny how life changes. There was a time when I could never run in the morning. I absolutely hated it. It was just the worst thing for me. And now, bizarrely, I tend to run before breakfast and yoga in the evenings, which, again, for any Ash Tanga, they will howl if they hear that, because it's you're supposed to do it the other way around. Ash Tanga in the morning. Anything else like that that's good.

Jennifer: 32:38

And you know what I used to be like that too. I was not a morning person, so everything I'd have to do it would be reverse. And now, like I have to get my work done, I don't do it necessarily before breakfast, because we do walk dogs and all that, and then I do get my workout in. But, interestingly, I read this book it's called the Power of Wind, by the Sleep Doctor, and he talks about how we operate off circadian rhythm and it's funny because I'm a lion and so my circadian rhythm. It says, basically I should work out like five o'clock in the afternoon, because that's when I have kind of my, my sinking spell. But here's the thing when I'm dressed, I'm dressed. I'm not going to get up, get dressed and then go work out and have to get dressed again and I'm like, no, that's five o'clock in the afternoon. Like I got networking, I got things we not doing. All that it's just doing in the morning. So I like my morning, I get it done, I knock it out and it's over.

Kieron: 33:31

I think one of the handy hints for morning runs that I read a while ago in a runners magazine was get everything laid out by the side of the bed so there's no excuse you can't do that. Oh, I've got to go and find this and I've got to go and find that. I'll just get back into bed. So if you train us and you're short, so they're by the bed, you step into them and, like you know, you just go, that's good.

Jennifer: 33:49

That's good Bad sense that you have that problem getting out the door. You've been doing it for a long time now. You it's like I was telling somebody I maybe it was on the previous side told him I said you know, like I don't know about you, but it's got to be. For me, exercise is really not negotiable, so I don't have to. I don't have that. I really have to tell myself not to do it, like I have to tell myself sometimes, just take a day off, I'm tired, I need to rest, like I'm physically tired. But I will tell you I got a new watch, a new garment and this one's pretty nice because it has a.

Jennifer: 34:15

It's a coach, I like it. The darn thing will tell me, like every time I go run and I don't and I told you the day when we were off I don't really run that long anymore, so I might go out and do like four or five miles it will tell me it'll come back and it'll be like you need 30 hours of recovery. So I'll be like okay, I guess I'd better tell myself we're going to take a day off tomorrow and we have rest. We need to rest.

Kieron: 34:34

The problem is I don't. I don't agree with Garmin's recovery times. I think they're really overstated. They're really lovely excuse to take.

Jennifer: 34:42

I'm not going to follow you. That's my point, but I do look at it sometimes.

Kieron: 34:47

I have finished yoga practice once and it said right K 72 hours until you. I was, and I think it might have even been a restorative practice.

Jennifer: 34:55

so I was kind of yeah, the only time I've seen it do, that is when I've done A longer run. It hasn't done it when I've done like two or three miles or if I do my regular work. It only does that every time I go, but for enough. It'll come back and it'll be like you need to rest. But like you I don't really pay attention. I'm making kind of a joke about because I think it's funny, because it'll tell me I'll come up, you need 72 hours of recovery. I'm like that's five days. I'm not resting that long. I'm going to be a vegetable in five days, you know, but I think it's funny. So my point to that is that every now and then I have to physically tell myself you're tired today, jennifer, just take a breather. You know what I mean like breathe.

Kieron: 35:32

I had somebody stop in front of me on the King's Road in Chelsea when I was running to the office the other week and they just pulled up sharp in front of my end up tearing a muscle in my calf, stopping to avoid running into them. So now my garment is saying I am detraining because I've not been able to run for it for a couple of weeks, killing me. My watch is really beating me up about. It says you detraining, you detraining. I'm not, I'm injured, leave me alone.

Jennifer: 35:55

I don't mind us tell me to move, it'll say get up and move. I'm like we stop being bossy.

Kieron: 36:01

Exactly, I love it.

Jennifer: 36:02

I love it. Well, this has been fun, karen. If our audience wants to get in touch with you, maybe they want to learn a bit a little bit more about your payment processing and what you've got going on running. I don't know. Maybe they want to figure something out. Where would we like to send them?

Kieron: 36:14

Simplest place is wonderful dot code at UK, so very easy domain name to remember, and the charity fundraising platform is at wonderful dot org. You can tell I've been in the web business and domain name registration for a long time.

Jennifer: 36:25

It's all good, it's all whatever works. Hey, right easy to remember easy to get to right. It works so great. We'll make sure when we get this done and we get all the bells and whistles on there, we'll get the websites in there too, so people know where to find you and stuff. So it's been fun. Thank you for sharing with us great. Tell us a little bit about your journey and, yeah, you're doing awesome stuff.

Kieron: 36:46

My pleasure. Thanks again, really really great for the opportunity. Lovely to meet.

Jennifer: 36:50

We do want to say to our audience, of course if you enjoy the show, please be sure you give us a rating over at apple. Check us out on YouTube. You can hit that subscribe button. And, as I always say, in order to live, extraordinary must start, and every start begins with a decision. You guys, take care, be safe, be kind to one another and we will see you next time.