My Husband Lost £72,000 on Michael McIntyre’s The Wheel - Here’s What It Taught Us About Mindset

On paper, it sounds brutal:

“My husband lost £72,000 on Michael McIntyre’s The Wheel.”

Every time I say it out loud, people wince. “Seventy two GRAND?!” “You must have been fuming!”

However the truth is:

Yes, Anth lost £72,000 on Michael McIntyre’s The Wheel. No, I didn’t divorce him. And weirdly, it ended up being one of the biggest mindset lessons we’ve ever lived through.

This isn’t just a story about a BBC game show. It’s a story about control, gratitude, and using disappointment as fuel - in life, in business, and when things don’t go the way you’d pinned your hopes on.

Why Anth Even Applied for The Wheel

If you’ve listened to our Unstuckable podcast, you’ll know the backdrop.

Last year (May 2024) Anth was diagnosed with bladder cancer.

We’re not going down a doom-and-gloom rabbit hole here, but that moment changed everything. It was one of those “fork in the road” times:

• Lie on the sofa, spiral, and let fear run the show 

  or

• Decide, “We can’t control this diagnosis… but we can control how we respond to it.”

  
  

We chose the second one.

We carried on living. Made memories with Alfie. Got support from Maggie’s (an incredible cancer charity). Anth chose surgery, got his bladder removed, got a stoma, and decided he was going to give himself the best shot at seeing our little boy grow up.

Out of that shift in mindset came this thought:

“You know what? I’m going to start saying yes to things.”

He’s always loved Michael McIntyre’s The Wheel. We’d sit on the sofa and shout answers at the telly like everyone else.

More than once he’d said, “I think I could have a shot at this.”

(Spoiler: he could not. 😂)

After the cancer diagnosis, he stopped saying “one day” and actually applied. Sent an audition tape. Ripped the piss out of himself. Hit send.

And then… they actually replied.

• 41,000 people had applied.

• 27 got through to film.

• Anth was one of them.

• Unbelievable odds

  
  

Already, we were in “this is wild” territory.

The Week Before: Anxiety, Money and the Circle of Control

In the week running up to filming The Wheel, Anth was a bag of nerves.

Not because of the cameras. Not because of Michael McIntyre. Because of the money.

We’re a young(ish) family. I’d not long quit my job to build Expansions Coaching. Anth works as an Instructional Designer. £72,000 (or more) would have been a serious boost.

He kept saying:

“I really want to win this. It would change so much for us. Imagine what we could do for the business with that money.”

And that’s when his brain started chewing him up.

Because here’s the thing with shows like Michael McIntyre’s The Wheel:

• There’s a huge chance you don’t win.

• There’s a chance you don’t even get picked to play.

• A lot of it is pure luck.

• 
  

He realised he was pinning all his hopes on something completely outside his control.

So he did what he’s learned to do since the cancer diagnosis.

He came back to his circle of control.

He literally asked himself:

“What can I absolutely control about this day… that has nothing to do with whether I win the jackpot?”

He landed on two things:

1. Talk about Maggie’s - the cancer support centre that helped us through the hardest moments.

2. Say out loud that he’s married to a life coach - get my name and the business out there, even for a second.

   
   

Once he’d decided that, something shifted.

Winning the money went from “this MUST happen ”to “this would be an incredible bonus - but it’s not the only win available.”

That’s mindset work in real time. Not a quote on Instagram. Actual nervous, sweaty, about-to-go-on-telly mindset work.

What It’s Really Like Sitting on The Wheel

From my side, it was completely surreal.

We got to go and look around the set, and it is exactly what you see on TV. 

Then Anth got taken backstage with the other contestants. I get shoved into a little room with a telly to watch it all unfold.

He said later:

“Every time I came up through that smoke I just thought… What is my life? Michael McIntyre is stood right there. There are celebs all around me. How is this real?”

The game plays out. Questions get answered. The prize pot grows.

And then, exactly like we’ve joked about at home - Anth gets called up at that moment. The dream moment. Right near the end. One question. Massive jackpot on the line.

He had no idea how much was actually at stake until he got up there. 

I did.

I remember thinking:

“He has no clue that if he gets this right, he could be in with a chance at winning the money.”

Stars align. Heart is pounding. Classic Saturday night telly. Full on anxiety.

And then… with the help of Lucy Beaumont…

He gets the final question wrong.

Just like that, £72,000 vanishes.

The Corridor Moment (and why it wasn't all over yet)

Straight after he lost, one of the runners popped her head into the room I was in.

“He’s going to come down the corridor in a second. We’ll take you into another room so you can have a moment together.”

I’m not really sure what they were expecting? Tears, drama, upset? 

I just looked at her and said:

“Can we go back in and watch what happens? The other contestants are still playing. One of them could still win. Anth will want to see it.”

She looked at me as if to say “Are you sure?”.

But this is exactly how his, and my mindset had been the whole way through:

Before they even started filming, he’d said:

“Us three contestants are a team really. It’s better if one of us wins than if the BBC keeps the money.”

So we went back in. We watched the other contestants carry on. One of them did go on to win £36,000. And Anth was genuinely buzzing for her.

Was he gutted in that first moment? Of course. He’s human. But was he destroyed? No.

And that’s the bit people struggle to get their heads around.

“I’m So Sorry I Lost You the Money”

When he walked down that corridor towards me, the first words out of his mouth were:

“I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

As if he’d let me down.

As if we’d had £72,000 and he’d somehow taken it out of our bank and set fire to it.

I just laughed and said:

“Are you joking? I’m so proud of you. We didn’t have that money. You’ve just gone on national telly, sat in the middle of a massive spinning wheel, and handled yourself brilliantly.”

Here’s what I was genuinely grateful for in that moment:

• He got picked out of 41,000 applicants.

• He actually got to sit in that chair on Michael McIntyre’s The Wheel.

• I got to see the whole thing play out live in the studio.

• We got home to our little boy the next day.

• He walked off that set as the same man who’d decided, after cancer, to squeeze the most out of life.

  
  

Did I fancy the idea of £72k dropping into the business? Absolutely. I’d already mentally spent half of it on systems, support, a holiday and probably some new makeup and clothes (haha joking).

But losing it didn’t make our life any worse.

We were in the exact same place we’d been in the day before filming - just with one hell of a story, a big lesson, and a deeper belief in the work we do.

Plus now I have something epic to wind him up with for the rest of our lives.

Confidence Through Action (Not Waiting to “Feel Ready”)

One thing Anth said about the whole Wheel process really stuck with me.

From the first audition video to the last interview, at every stage he thought:

“I’m not sure I can do this. I’ll just see if I get through to the next stage… then I’ll decide.”

And every time they came back and said, “We’d like you at the next round,” he thought:

“Right. I’ll just do this one bit. I’ll decide about the rest later.”

That is literally how confidence is built.

Not by waiting to “feel ready”. Not by needing a 5-year plan. But by:

• Taking one small step

• Letting your brain see: “Oh, I didn’t die, that went OK”

• Using that as evidence to take the next step

  
  

It’s the same thing I do with clients in coaching:

Break it down. Do the next doable step. Let your nervous system realise you can handle more than you think.

He might say he’s “thick as mince”, but he accidentally demonstrated my entire confidence-through-action framework on prime-time BBC One.

Rude, but handy. 😂

Turning a £72,000 Loss Into Fuel

On the train home the next morning, we talked about what it all meant.

If he’d won the full £72,000, the plan was:

• Donate a chunk to Maggie’s

• Take Alfie on a proper holiday

• Invest the rest into growing Expansions Coaching

• 
  

It would have been a massive shortcut.

But here’s where we landed:

There’s a different level of pride and fulfilment that comes from earning it the long way round.

When we do take Alfie on that dream holiday…When the business is consistently bringing in the kind of money that would have replaced that jackpot…When we’re sat on a beach or Disney Land knowing we’ve built it from scratch, through graft, resilience and a lot of mindset work…

That feeling will be unreal.

Not “we got lucky on a game show once”,

but “we ran through walls for this”.

The Wheel could have been a shortcut.

Instead, it became a kick up the arse to double down on the path we’re already on.

The Three Biggest Mindset Lessons from Losing £72,000

If you’ve stuck with me this far (hi, you’re my kind of person), here’s what I want you to take away - whether you’re running a business, changing career, or just trying to get through a hard season without losing yourself.

1. Obsess over your circle of control

There is always a chunk of your situation you can’t control:

• Whether the wheel lands on your name

• Which question comes up

• What diagnosis you get

• Whether a client signs today or next month

  
  

You can’t strategy your way out of that.

What you can control is:

• How you prepare

• The decisions you make

• How you show up

• How you speak to yourself

• What you do with the result

  
  

Anth couldn’t control the question on The Wheel. (It was a hard one, I mean he won’t ever look at a squirrel in the same way again).

He could control talking about Maggie’s and shouting me out as his wife and life coach.

You can’t control the job market.

You can control sending the application, asking for feedback, building your skills and network.

When you stop pinning all your hopes on the uncontrollable bit, the pressure lifts. You create wins that are yours regardless of the outcome.

2. Gratitude isn’t about pretending everything’s fine

We’re not robots. Losing out on £72k stings. Cancer is terrifying. Life sometimes knocks you clean off your feet.

Gratitude, the way we practice it, isn’t about bypassing that.

It’s about asking:

“What can I still be grateful for in this exact situation?”

For Anth it was:

• Being selected at all

• The experience of filming Michael McIntyre’s The Wheel

• Meeting brilliant people

• Coming home to us the next day

• Realising he’d handled something way outside his comfort zone

  
  

Gratitude doesn’t erase disappointment.

But it stops disappointment becoming your entire story.

3. You always have more choice than you think

This is the big one.

You might not choose:

• The diagnosis

• The redundancy

• The client that ghosts you

• The game show question that comes up

  
  

But you do have choices:

• Do I ask for help or isolate?

• Do I keep going or give up on myself?

• Do I apply again, launch again, speak up again?

• Do I let this moment define me, or refine me?

  
  

Most people hand that choice away without even realising.

Anth didn’t.

He chose to apply.

He chose to keep saying yes at every stage.

He chose to frame the loss as fuel, not proof that he “shouldn’t have bothered”.

You have that choice too - in your career, your business, your life.

So… What Does This Have to Do With You?

You probably haven’t lost £72,000 on Michael McIntyre’s The Wheel.

(If you have, we should definitely talk. 😂)

But I’m willing to bet you’ve had your own version of:

• The opportunity that didn’t work out

• The “this will change everything” moment that flopped

• The “if this doesn’t happen, I’m done” feeling

  
  

Here’s what I want you to hear:

You are allowed to be gutted.

You are allowed to want more.

And you are absolutely capable of building a mindset that can handle both without breaking you.

That’s literally the work I do every day with my clients:

• Getting clear on what actually matters

• Breaking the big scary thing into doable steps

• Building confidence through action, not waiting to “feel ready”

• Using setbacks as data, not evidence that you’re not good enough

  
  

If you’re reading this thinking:

“I know I’m capable of more… I just keep getting in my own way,”

then this is your nudge.

Not to go on a game show (unless you really want to).

But to stop waiting for some magic moment and start taking the next step you can control.

Because whether it’s The Wheel, your business, or your life…

You don’t get ready and then start.

You get ready by starting.

If you want support with this the mindset, the accountability, the “stop faffing and let’s actually do the thing” energy - you can:

• Book a free 30 min 1:1 discovery call with me

• Or drop me a message on Instagram @expansionscoaching with the word WHEEL and we’ll chat about what you need.

• Or head over to YouTube or where you normally listen to your podcasts and listen to me winding Anth up on our podcast UNSTUCKABLE

  
  

We might not have £72,000 in the bank from the BBC.

But we are building something bigger:

A life and business we’re genuinely proud of - one decision, one “yes”, one bold step at a time.