Iron Men – Going the Extra Mile
Normally in Glasgow or in fact anywhere in Scotland, when someone mentions Iron they are normally referring to the bru, That famous, aggressively orange fizzy drink. Made in Scotland. From girders. Whether that particular claim would survive modern advertising standards is, perhaps, a question best left unanswered.
Our media is full of reports that Gen Z are disengaged, distracted, doing the bare minimum, probably drinking irn-bru whilst gaming in their bedroom, communicating in memes, resistant to effort and oblivious of the world around them.
But I would respectfully like to offer a different perspective.
Because this past weekend, two of our own, crossed the finish line of Ironman 70.3 in Warsaw. Bryce and Lewis completed a 1.9km open-water swim, a 90km cycle and a half marathon. Both finished comfortably inside their target times. Warsaw did not know what was coming.
The team at Wellington Wealth were not surprised.
When you hire someone young, someone in their first real role and full of quiet potential, you invest in the possibility of who they might become. You watch for the signs. Do they care for clients the way you do? Will they go the extra mile without being asked? Will they lean in when things get hard, rather than step back when no one is watching?
These are not qualities that can be manufactured in a job description or developed during a training afternoon. They are built long before anyone reaches a workplace. Forged through repetition, discipline and the private decision to hold yourself to a higher standard even when there is no audience, no applause and no visible finish line.
The parallels between endurance sport and financial planning are not accidental. Both demand preparation over performance. Both require patience in the middle miles, when progress is invisible and the goal feels impossibly distant. Both test your ability to hold your nerve, to resist the temptation to cut corners and to keep showing up, not because someone told you to, but because you decided to.
We have watched Bryce and Lewis build that stamina at the desk as surely as they have built it on the road. Patient on the phone to providers. Methodical when chasing complex plan details. Composed when given incorrect information, which in financial planning happens rather more often than it should. They break large challenges into manageable stages. They plan. They prepare. They finish what they start.
That is not a generation disengaged from effort. That is a generation that sets its own targets and refuses to accept anything less.
The media rarely bothers to report on that version of young people. The quiet version. The one that rises before dawn, trains through discomfort, logs the miles and still turns up to work ready to give their clients the best of themselves. It does not make for a particularly dramatic headline. But it is happening, everywhere, in offices and on start lines, in cities and small towns across this country.
We are proud of Bryce and Lewis. Not only for Warsaw, though Warsaw was magnificent. We are proud of who they are proving themselves to be, day by day, in the work that does not always get seen.
The future of Wellington Wealth is in very good hands.