The Sticky From The Inside Podcast

Ultra States: Earthquakes, Hijacked Minds and the Boardroom

Deri Llewellyn-Davies · October 22, 2026

Entrepreneur · Author · Leadership · Life Coach · Executive Coachin

Interview with Deri Llewellyn-Davies

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Podcast: The Sticky From The Inside Podcast

October 22, 2026 · 52 min

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Ultra States: Earthquakes, Hijacked Minds and the Boardroom

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Key topicsThe hidden cost of coming home stuck in work modeMany high-driven fathers walk through the front door still carrying the pace, edge, and urgency of the day. Presence then gets framed as a character flaw - “I should be more patient” - rather than a physiological state that hasn’t shifted yet. From lived experience, Deri speaks to how intensity leaks into family life, and why good intentions alone don’t create calm, connection, or attention at home. Boards don’t fail on strategy - they fail when pressure locks them into one stateIn high-stakes environments, leadership pressure narrows perception and quietly reshapes how risk, dissent, and uncertainty are processed. Boards often respond by adding controls, data, and oversight, which can further entrench rigidity rather than restore clarity. From decades of boardroom observation, Deri highlights how unmanaged states distort collective judgment long before strategy visibly breaks. Founders burn out by living in one neurological state for too longMany founders operate in a prolonged high-urgency state, mistaking constant cognitive arousal for effectiveness until judgment, sleep, and creativity quietly erode. The common assumption is that burnout comes from weak discipline or poor time management, when the deeper issue is overexposure to a single performance state. Ultra States reframes founder burnout as a systems failure caused by mis-sequenced states, not personal inadequacy. View all topics →

About Deri Llewellyn-Davies

Boardroom Strategist and Creator of Ultra States Examining How Humans Actually Perform Under Pressure

30+ years Boardroom advisory experience330+ Boards advised or served on6 World’s highest mountains climbedTEDx Spoke at TEDxUniversityofEdinburgh

Deri Llewellyn-Davies grew up in a small rural village in Wales, where community wasn’t a concept, it was how life worked. That early sense of shared responsibility shaped how he later approached leadership, decision-making, and pressure, long before he entered boardrooms and high-stakes environments. Over three decades, Deri has advised and sat on more than 330 boards, becoming known for spotting the real constraint beneath the noise and helping organisations think clearly when the stakes are high. His signature Strategy on a Page methodology is a no 1 best seller and has inspired thousands of founders to scale with purpose.

Outside business, Deri has spent years testing human limits in extreme environments — climbing six of the world’s highest mountains, completing the Marathon des Sables, and racing the infamous Ironman. Those experiences became a lab for understanding how people actually perform under pressure, and why so many high-achievers quietly collapse when the adrenaline wears off.

That intersection of boardroom pattern recognition and extreme performance thinking led to the creation of Ultra States, a framework that reframes performance as state selection rather than motivation. Instead of treating focus, flow, connection, recovery, and peak intensity as accidents or personality traits, Ultra States examines them as distinct neurological and physiological conditions, each with trade-offs when misused or overextended.

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About this episode

Who’s choosing the state you’re in?

When the ground moved beneathDeri Llewellyn-Davieson Everest, his response drew on years of practice. In this episode of Sticky From The Inside, Andy Goram explores what that experience can teach us about how we respond to pressure, and how much of our everyday state we leave to habit, technology and other people’s demands.

Deri introduces Ultra States and the six states explored in the conversation: flow, focus, peak, recovery, reboot and connection. Together, they examine how to regain agency in manageable steps, prepare for what a situation needs and make space to transition between tasks.

They also explore why purpose gives our choices direction, why recovery belongs in the performance plan, and how leaders influence the conditions in which their teams can exercise choice.

Key Takeaways

Recognise the hijack. Notice when demands, distractions and unhelpful habits are determining how you show up.

Reclaim your agency. Start small: protect part of your morning, reclaim time for focused work, or bring deliberate intent to a conversation.

Choose your state, practise the shift. Consider what the next situation needs, then build your ability to access that state rather than carrying the previous one forward.

Give your choices purpose, and your performance recovery. Let what matters guide your effort, and build in the recovery that helps you remain able to focus, perform and connect.

Key Moments

The key moments in this episode are:

00:00 Welcome to Sticky From The Inside

01:10 When the plan disappears and the state takes over

03:49 Meet Der Llewellyn-Davies

04:49 When the mountain moved

09:18 What training makes possible

12:07 Bringing pressure into the boardroom

15:09 What state are we actually in

18:57 The state that enters the room with you

21:25 More than one way to perform

24:45 Why recovery belongs in the plan