An interview with Ellis Platten from Away Days

LinkedIn can be a funny place. You accumulate lots of contacts based on your profession, and 9 times out of 10, you'll never have much correspondence with them. I'm also rubbish on LinkedIn, making the process even harder. Working in sports media, I get lots of connection requests, and this was the case with Ellis Platten of Away Days a few years ago. On one of my brief soirees navigating LinkedIn, I decided to explore more of what Ellis was doing, as his work seemed really impressive, and YouTube (where he excels), is an area I want to learn more about. Looking at what he'd been up to (check out his twitter profile BTW), I saw his usual videos about travelling up and down the country to watch football, and these were really great. Super engaging and entertaining, and well presented and edited. I did notice one that particularly stood out to me though, and this was a video where Ellis talks about his mental health.

I was really struck by just how honest he was, and while I feel that mental health with men is being talked about a lot more, you don't always see it with people of Ellis's age. He is doing a lot of things people his age might consider the dream. He's recently left his day job to concentrate on this full time, and I have little doubt he'll be a success. He has gone through some tough times though, and hearing him talk about these in such detail, felt like an incredibly brave step. I reached out to Ellis via the aforementioned LinkedIn about an interview, and to my delight he responded back nearly immediately, and agreed to do it! We had a great chat, where we talked more about his mental health struggles, as well as his work with Away Days, and his future plans. I was pretty nervous throughout, hence why I cut myself out of most of the video, but Ellis was great, and really shared a insight into his troubles, and how he's gotten better over the last couple of years. I also mumble a lot, and have absolutely no aspirations to present anything, but I feel these video interviews are a positive thing, and could really help people. This is the first one of hopefully many, and once again, I want to thank Ellis for taking the time to speak to The Anxious Travel Guy. You can watch the video below, and stay tuned for more exciting interviews coming soon!