About TNE About TNE About TNE About TNE About TNE About TNE
The Natural Edge was forged in one of the most intense training environments on Earth - the UK Special Forces
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I combine real-world experience in Special Forces with cutting-edge neuroscience...
The System™ is for Founders and CEOs who demand more from themselves and their lives.
My mission is to help leaders escape the exhausting highs and lows of inconsistent performance.
I get results because I’ve been there.
I know what works––and what doesn’t.
In Special Forces, I experienced the relentless pace of combat operations...
You train until high performance is hard-wired.
This is how you stay confident, in control, and stress-resistant.
Working in London I saw leaders who were successful but still:
Outside of the military and sport, mental performance is left to chance.
Relying on self-help books or random podcasts.
I coach Founders & CEOs to forge elite mental fitness.
It is a military-grade system to hard-wire high performance.
On the 24th March 2008, I walked through the gates of Commando Training Centre...
Becoming a Royal Marine Commando was the fulfilment of a lifelong dream.
Four years later I passed Special Forces selection to serve with the SBS.
Their motto is 'by strength and guile'.
It reflects the need for physical capacity and mental capability.
On game day, your mindset must be as strong as your body.
This is where I learned the power of mental conditioning to make high performance instinctive.
It is this foundation that sets The Natural Edge apart.
In 2015, I hung up my kit and joined a consultancy in London...
My life looked great from the outside.
But inside, stress and struggle drove my success—and drained me.
I felt overwhelmed at work and unfulfilled outside of it.
I lost myself.
Trying to solve it with self-help books, podcasts, or ‘bio-hacks’ did not work.
Elite military training rewires mental models to forge a high-performance mindset.
But I had not adapted this to my new life.
As soon as I did, everything changed.
In 2017, I left the city with nothing more than an idea...
‘Revolutionise mindset training.’
Outside of the military and elite sports, no one intentionally trains their mental models.
This internal programming drives the way you think, feel and perform.
Most people go through life running on default settings they didn’t choose.
Without training, the mind remains unconditioned—running on old patterns.
From a dining room table I started The Natural Edge to change this.
Deconstructing my training and experience in Special Forces.
Combining it with cutting edge neuroscience.
And testing it with companies, teams and individuals.
To create a military-grade system that hard-wires high performance.
The System is a cheat code for high performance...
Clients come to me with stress, self-doubt, poor focus, and low motivation.
They look for solutions in books and podcasts.
But passive self-help will not rewire years worth of negative patterns.
After coaching they see dramatic changes within weeks.
This is not magic.
It is years of trial and error refined through coaching 1,800+ clients to success.
To create a military-grade system that hard-wires high performance.
And we are only just getting started.
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John
Sykes-Popham
Co-Founder
David Tilston
Coach
Ben Timpson
Marketing
Amy Gardner
Business Operations
Greg Poole
Coach
James Malone
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Hard-wire high performance
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