Mark Sowerby is out for revenge

Mark Sowerby is back, haunting the podcast circuit to promote his new documentary, Don't Be Prey. The film follows the Blue Sky Alternative Investments founder's conquest of Oceans Seven – the world's most punishing open water swims. But it's about so much more than that.

"Swimming is just a metaphor," he said on The Shaun McCambridge Podcast early last month.[[No we hadn’t heard of him either. Turns out McCambridge is a managing director of Starr Recruitment on the Gold Coast and an old acquaintance of Sowerby's.]] It's really about people with "no talent" finding ways to do something that "changes theirs and others' lives."

Sowerby could have been talking about his business career where he applied his talents to changing the lives of Blue Sky's shareholders. The company was worth almost $1.2 billion at its peak in 2017, just after Sowerby retired, but entered receivership in May 2019. 

But the McCambridge pod is not a forum for self-awareness; think LinkedIn in audio form.[["For over 20 years, Shaun McCambridge has been inquisitive, learning and experimenting with different ways to leverage our greatest asset…..  our minds, to work for us rather than against us."]] So Sowerby ploughed on. 

"Now, the reality is, unfortunately, everyone's going to have trauma in their life," he said. The film is a "toolkit" for us on how to deal with it, "seeing that there's still hope". 

Among Sowerby's many traumas is "the loss of shareholder wealth". But, unlike anyone unfortunate enough to ride Blue Sky to the bottom, Sowerby pocketed $26.9 million selling shares in 2016 and another $7.4 million in late 2017 (he owned 4.4 million shares when Blue Sky hit the wall).