Speaking on the Murphy Wealth Human First podcast, Mr Beaumont – who holds the record for cycling round the world and has authored five books – described how his upbringing on a farm in central Scotland gave him the independence and determination that helped him with the challenges he took on later in his life.

The comments come as the most recent figures available show the number of children being homeschooled in Scotland has surged. More than 2,200 kids were educated at home in 2023/24, up 40% in just two years and over double where it was seven years ago.

Mr Beaumont said: “I wouldn’t choose to homeschool my kids… They have just an incredibly sociable life compared to the one I had growing up. But I have to credit the childhood I had with a lot of the independence and determination that it took for me to very much plough my own furrow from a pretty early age.

“The fact I have a public profile now and spend so much of my life in front of people and on stage, is deeply ironic for a guy who might as well have grown up in an Enid Blyton book, sort of in the middle of nowhere, and my pals were my sisters and the goats and the chickens… comparing it to the childhood that my children are having, it was very different – small, organics, farming, homeschooling, homoeopathy. Wonderful, but quite alternative.”

After becoming the first person to complete a circumnavigational bike tour of the world in under 200 days, Mr Beaumont smashed his own record in 2017 by finishing the 18,000-mile journey in just 78 days and 14 hours. He also holds the world record for the fastest solo ride from Cairo to Cape Town, in just 42 days and eight hours.

Mr Beaumont’s other expeditions have included cycling the length of the Americas, attempting to row the Atlantic, and rowing to the 1996 location of the Magnetic North Pole – each of which were captured for BBC documentaries. He is currently a partner at Eos Advisory, an impact investment firm based in St Andrews.

Asked by Murphy Wealth CEO Adrian Murphy about how you can develop and test for the traits that lend themselves to accomplishing those types of feats, Mr Beaumont said: “I think growing up on the farm is usually useful because you’re very physical… It’s very useful for children to learn physical chores, to do stuff, whether it’s peeling a bag of potatoes, mucking out a horse’s box, or building a dry stone dyke.

“Having chores and completing them… I think a work ethic and completing a task, especially one which is repetitive – because life is full of things which are quite repetitive – and you’ve got to be able to think it through. We live in a very distracted world with screens and social media. And for young people to learn the skill of sticking with a task is one part of resilience, which is not often talked about, because resilience is normally about how good you are at doing hard stuff. But part of it is actually monotony and routine.”

The Human First podcast is a series from Murphy Wealth, in which Adrian Murphy discusses life, money, motivation, and family with some of the most prominent and recognisable faces in Scottish business. Previous guests include Scotland and Glasgow Warriors international turned entrepreneur Adam Ashe, Sub Club founder and legend of the Scottish nightclub scene Mike Grieve, and former Dyson and Volvo Cars CEO Jim Rowan.