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Unforgiving60 Podcast
The Unforgiving60 is a variety show podcast co-hosted by Ben Pronk, DSC and Tim Curtis, two ex-SAS guys armed with MBAs. The podcast seeks out people leading lives less ordinary, in order to find out how they fill their ‘unforgiving minutes’, and what helps them go, always, a little further. It is published on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and other major sharing platforms.

Inspiration for the Title
The title of the Podcast is inspired by Rudyard Kipling’s poem ‘If’, wherein Kipling challenges us to ‘fill your unforgiving minute with sixty seconds with of distance run’. Or, to take advantage of every single moment - and squeeze time for all it's worth.

The Metrics (Season 1)
Season 1 comprised 52 episodes of guest interviews complemented by reflections episodes and syndicated audio with other podcasts. These episodes have been independently downloaded over 160,000 times.

The listening demographic are young professionals 25-45 years old, with 80% of the downloads being within Australia. In Australia the podcast is most frequently downloaded in NSW, then Queensland, Victoria and Western Australia.

The remainder of the global audience is made up mainly of US and UK downloads, however it is worth noting that the Season 1 listenership extended to 100 countries in total.

Mr Ben Pronk, DSC
Ben is the Managing Partner of Mettle Global, a premium corporate advisory firm specialising in establishing and developing organisational resilience and preparing companies for the volatility and uncertainty of the contemporary world.

Ben has deep leadership experience, as a student, teacher and practitioner. His first career was in the Australian Army, where he served for 24 years. The majority of which was in the Special Air Service (SAS) Regiment, where he finished as the Commanding Officer. Ben’s operational experience with the SAS includes multiple deployments to Timor Leste, Iraq and Afghanistan, where his exemplary leadership skills were recognised with his being awarded a Distinguished Service Cross (DSC) for leadership in combat. Ben was also awarded a Special Operations Commander’s commendation for excellence in command, leadership and management.

Ben is currently an Executive-in-Residence at the University of New South Wales’s Australian Graduate School of Management (AGSM), where he has designed, developed and currently teaches number of leadership programs within Australia’s top-ranked MBA program. Ben has also previously served as the Chief Instructor at the Royal Military College, Duntroon. In this role, he was responsible for oversight of the development and delivery of the entire Australian Army All-Corps Officer Training Continuum.

Ben has significant experience in the design and conduct of training for Leadership, Crisis, Emergency and Business Continuity Management, and has delivered this training for a wide variety of clients across sectors including mining and resources, aviation, government and not-for-profit.

Ben is a highly regarded thought leader and sought-after public speaker on the reduction of risk and leadership in high pressure situations. He is well travelled through the South Pacific, Asia, the Middle East and Europe and has served on exchanges in the United States and the United Kingdom.

Ben holds a Bachelor of Arts, a Master in Defence Studies (with Distinction) from Kings College, London and a Master of Business Administration (with Distinction, dux of his class) from the University of Western Australia. He is also a graduate of the AICD Company Directors Course, a Patron of the Military Arts Program Australia and a director of VGI Partners.

Mr Tim Curtis
Tim is a Partner at Mettle Global with more than twenty years of leadership and management experience including a first career with the Special Air Service (SAS) Regiment. Tim was appointed as Australia’s first principal adviser to the Government of Sierra Leone in 2001 during a protracted period of civil war. Following this, he was personally selected to raise a sensitive and time-critical Australian national counter terrorist capability (2002).

Tim then was a lead planner of the Afghan Parliamentary Elections (2005) for the United Nations in Afghanistan and a subsequent 9 years as the Managing Director of a group of 42 companies based from Dubai with an annual turnover of AUD100m. In this period Tim also raised and led a team providing the crisis management and crisis response capability to a major insurance underwriter. In this capability his specialist team supported 3,600 policyholders globally and responded to up to 40-time critical incidents a year.

In 2018, he co-founded of the Mettle Group of companies with Ben Pronk, DSC.

In 2018-19, Tim provided expert opinion and advice, leadership advice and coaching, led business optimization tasks and change management, facilitated crisis management and delivered broader consulting services in over 25 countries.

Tim holds a Bachelor of Arts (History/ Politics) and a Master of Business Administration. He has formal risk management qualifications and also holds a Graduate Diploma of Operations Management, an Associate Diploma of Personnel Administration, a Graduate Certificate of Project Planning and a Certificate in Vocational Instruction.

Tim is also Adjunct faculty for the Australian Graduate School of Management (AGSM) @UNSW Business School and delivers leadership and other executive education programs on behalf of the AGSM.

He is an Advisory Board Member for the Starlight Children’s Foundation in Australia and a Board Member of the charity Soldier & Sirens Limited. He is also a Company Director of four private companies.