Philip Wride specialises in personal development and helping people identify and break the invisible chains holding them back so they can find more freedom in life and business. After breaking his neck playing sport at the start of 2020 and not being able to afford surgery, struggling to keep his business alive during COVID lockdowns, and starting a personal development journey in 2021 he has since launched a book, podcast and membership community focused on helping others. Philip is the host of the Unchained – Finally Find Freedom podcast, creator of the 12 chains framework, the Freedom Hunters Club, and the Chained To Champion challenge.
Philip Wride, Life & Business Coach
Introduce yourself! Please tell us about you and your life, so we can get to know you better.
After a life-changing experience at the start of 2020 my focus is now on helping people find the freedom they want in their life but that’s a very different path from the one I was on before.
Since 2001 I’ve been involved in the videogames industry – I set up events, consulted on strategy for global brands, ran projects for governments and built technology platforms. I’m still doing some of that but it’s now something in the background. My experience and what I’ve done over the past 20 or so years still enables me to add value to projects like earlier this year when I planned and delivered some gaming competitions for schools as part of a government-owned festival in Dubai.
I’ve been an entrepreneur since the age of 16 and freedom has always been one of my highest-level values. The freedom to choose, the freedom to say no, the freedom to manage my time. Even when working in corporate roles and for companies, I’ve still been an entrepreneur at heart with side projects and other things going on.
Since 2020 there have been some major changes I’ve made in my own life, and milestones that I’ve achieved, that have combined to act as a catalyst for creating the Freedom Hunters Club and writing my second book. I’ve experienced different types of freedom and I want to enable people who feel stuck and frustrated with their current situation to break free.
On the personal side, I enjoy scuba diving and paddleboarding on the water, snowboarding and skiing on the snow, and mark these down as some of my freedom activities. Freedom activities are the things that make me feel good and that I enjoy doing. I try to do them regularly so that I always have something to look forward to and encourage everyone to do the same – identify your freedom activities and work to make them a regular thing!
Can you tell me about the inspiration behind starting Freedom Hunters Club and the mission or purpose of your business?
Freedom Hunters Club, or FHC for short, came about in a strange way. In June 2023 I was creating the slides for a 4-day online training I was doing for parents about managing their children’s screen time and online safety.
While writing the slides I created a model and framework – 12 hidden things that impact parents and their ability to manage screen time and safety. After I delivered the training I couldn’t shake the feeling that the “12 hidden things” model was a model for life. The more I looked at it the more it became clear and that’s how the 12 chains model was born. The 12 invisible chains that hold us back in life.
I realised that over the past few years, I’ve broken a number of the chains in my own life and continue to work through others. I’ve given up alcohol, worked through fear to write and publish a book, launched a podcast, done more public speaking and am just about to publish another book, which is about the 12 chains model.
I’ve always been a big fan of community, partly from my previous industry roles, and partly because of the value I’ve gained from being part of a community. That’s what has led to me creating the Freedom Hunters Club which is centred around community. The goal is to be a community of people on a similar journey, with the 12 chains model as the foundation, where we support each other in breaking the chains and finding our own personal freedom. It’s for those who have a vision for their life but feel stuck and frustrated in their current situation.
Who is your target audience or customer base, and how do you reach and engage with them?
We come into contact with all different types of people. Those who want to break free of the 9-5 and set up their own business to gain freedom. Those who are already running their own business but feel stuck because the business isn’t as stable as they’d like. Those who want to move country or be able to travel regularly. Those who just want to find ways to spend more time with family.
The 12 chains cover several areas and freedom means different things to different people so we support a diverse audience.
In terms of reaching and engaging an audience and inviting them to join the community, we’re putting in place avenues and signposts to support them. If we go into marketing speak it would be different touchpoints, channels and platforms. The book is one of those, the podcast, videos on YouTube and other social media platforms, speaking at events and so on.
We aim to provide value in each place so people can benefit and then have the community as a central resource where they can get additional support and guidance like training courses and coaching.
What are your future plans or goals for the business, and how do you envision its growth and development?
The goal is to build a community of people who support each other in finding their personal freedom whether that’s breaking free of the 9-5, living on a desert island or having more time to spend with family. Everyone is different and has different visions for how they want their life to look. That’s why one of the first exercises we do with people is about asking them about the TALE of their life – how they want to spend their time, the activities they want to do, where they want to be located, and what experiences they want to have.
The new book will act as one method of supporting people, and the business, because it guides readers through the same steps and framework we take people through inside the community. The community is a space where they can get more support and guidance on making changes in their life and making progress towards their goals and dreams.
So the book will act as a resource for the readers, and as a guide to bring people to the community, the podcast will do the same. Over time I’d like to run 1-day live events in cities around the world to support people in changing their lives and breaking free of the chains.
When I used to travel round the world to events in my younger years it was always airport, hotel, convention centre, airport. I never really got to spend any time experiencing the city, country or culture. So that’s something I’d like to do – have physical events that support people and then be able to spend a few days experiencing the city and the culture. And the events would almost be mini-festivals, not day-long seminars that become a hard slog to get through. I’ve been to enough of those in my life, and spoken at some, so I definitely want to do it differently.
The ultimate goal is to help people find their freedom, whatever that means for them while helping those around me also find freedom.
Tell us about a pivotal moment in your life that brought you to where you are today.
I would say that breaking my neck playing rugby in January 2020 was the pivotal moment that brought me to where I am today. I couldn’t afford the surgery and left it to heal naturally with the belief that my body was strong enough.
This was the start of a tough 2020 with COVID-19 then locking everything down and my agency business struggling because 50% of it was focused on events. Thankfully my neck has healed and when I got a new set of scans 18 months later, about halfway through 2021, the consultant told me it was a miracle. He’d never seen a case like it because people only wait about 3 weeks before having surgery and I’d gone 18 months without surgery.
These combined experiences changed my whole perspective on life because I survived something that could have been the end for me. They also led me to a path of personal development which I started around April 2021.
That journey of personal development asked me a tough question about what impact and contribution I’d made to the world and from that point I’ve continually been looking at ways to add more value and support more people. This led to me writing my first book about how to effectively manage children’s screen time and online safety, and how to use videogames to improve math skills. It led me to hosting workshops and seminars with parents on the same topic and creating courses and resources for them to use.
And to go full circle – that path led me to writing the slides for the 4-day online training which is when I created the “12 chains” model.
With everything that’s happened over the past few years I now believe the universe has a plan for me. It might not always be plain sailing or easy but there’s a plan for me and how I can contribute to the world and I’m looking forward to seeing how that plays out.
