Monkey Business Podcast

Her unique methodology is loved by a range of corporations including Facebook, Uber, Intuit, Cisco, Ericsson, Nokia, as well as thousands of actors.  Sharing secrets from her bestselling book, The Billie Shepard Presentation Method she shares her key methods so that after a short entertaining listen you too can hold that stage like a pro!

I was delighted to be joined by Billie for my latest episode and we discuss topics including:

· Her background in TV, theatre and training including a Masters of Theatre Arts and how her M.A. thesis, entitled The Actor Within led her to offer the key techniques of acting and stage presence to corporate clients

· Why most people fear public speaking and what to do about it

· Why presenting in present moment awareness is a game-changer

· If appearance is important on virtual presentations and meetings

· Using your Zoom camera like a pro!

· How to be concise and eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak

· Knowing your intention

· How to answer impromptu questions

· Techniques to assure your audience understands your message correctly and

· Participant success stories

Plus, why we discovered that we are only 1 degree of separation, who we know in common and what books and shows we ended up recommending to each other!

The conversation that turned into a webinar!  So much to say to a man with a unique name, and maverick coaching views!

Dax Moy is an incredible coach who positions himself as ‘not for everyone’ and he is certainly not for the fainthearted.  

He works with royalty, CEOs, elite sports people, celebrities, and yet has a CV that starts with how at, 15, he stabbed his father and then joined the Armed Forces.

We discuss topics including:

· Formative years with a violent, alcoholic, Glaswegian gangster for a father. Waking up to his mother screaming, Dax ended up stabbing him through the heart but also was the one to keep him alive before the paramedics arrived.

· Dropping out of school early before running up and down mountains in Wales for six months to get fit and ready to join The Parachute regiment.

· The Armed Forces, with time with the Marines and then the Reservists before becoming a personal trainer.

· Achieving the glory of being the UK's highest paid personal trainer led to, in his words, him becoming a ‘bit of a dick’.  We both share our ‘being a dick’ moments!

· Realising that his great training results often didn’t last led him to investigate the psychology of training and with the added ‘gift’ of PTSD from being in the Tsunami in Thailand he went down the rabbit hole of all things mindset. Going from a guy with everything to a guy who felt like he couldn’t leave his room, Dax had to resist the urge to ‘come out fighting’ and instead go within.

· Digging deeper into the neuroscience of mindset and overcoming his PTSD gave him clarity and purpose.  This is reflected in his work today where clients attest to him changing their lives in one call.  How does Dax do this?  “I ignore most of the things they think they're on the call for. Then deconstruct what is really going on and design a system that is true to them”.

· How it is different coaching Royalty and celebrities to other coaches

· Coaching secrets - including how he has helped coaches make a lot of money by a focus on them, not their businesses. He is not a saviour coach. Nor a sales coach.  Dax is the third type: a servant coach.  The one that says: ‘You tell me what you want, and I'll help you to get it.’.

· Finally, he shares how he has evolved over 20 years yet taken many with him along the way.  Resisting the urge to jump on the trendy bandwagons along the way and staying true to himself and his values.

Dax can be contacted at -

My guest on this episode is Gemma Went: introvert, deep thinker, sage, and maverick. She is an award-winning online business mentor, certified mindset coach, hypnotherapist, and founder of the Lighthouse Business Academy. And behind that are over two decades of very high-level business experience in PR and branding and marketing.

We discuss topics including:

· How she loves the online world, creating courses, scaling with programmes etc. A world that gives us so many opportunities and - especially for women - to grow, to make money, to break down paradigms around wealth.

· Yet it is a world that can pull you into what she calls ‘the online race’. And it's a race that you don't really want to be in. As women get dragged into it and it makes them come from a place of comparison that triggers unhealthy thoughts and imposter syndrome.

· That in 2019 she got caught up in this race and nothing was ever enough. This constant pressure took its toll on her nervous system, resulting in stress and feeling ‘out of sorts’. So, she cancelled her profitable revenue streams, took time, stepped back, and worked out what was right for her. Then the pandemic hit so she dived even deeper via journaling, working with therapists and nutritionists to get back in balance.

· Gemma’s big realisation was that she was the boss. That what she had learned was expected from the boss – from her high adrenalin agency days – wasn’t how she wanted her life to look anymore. So, she set about redesigning her business to give her joy and to help other women who fall into the same trap.

· Why two of her core values are integrity and intimacy and what this means in business.

· We look back nine years to the start of her business when she had nothing, was pregnant, jobless, and working from a friend’s kitchen table and the lessons learned along the way.

· What success on her terms today, drawing on her spiritual side and using self-compassion as her guide, looks like and also why the spirited and rebellious side of her personality means that she gives herself permission to do other things or make mistakes without guilt.

· That a ‘six-month bucket’ spreadsheet allows her to capture her maverick ideas without losing focus, becoming overwhelmed or fearful that the fun and spontaneity will go out of her work.

· To end the interview, we look at why there is often so much negative and toxic messaging on social media, especially from women to women, and how this could be healed for all our good.

· Finally, Gemma leaves us with this gem of advice: That the only mentor you really need to really help you navigate this online world is you. If you start with you for everything and drown out all the other noise that surrounds you, get to know your own inner wisdom and make decisions from that space then everything changes for the best.

Tosh Brittan is a thought changer for divorce, supporting women and men to have a calmer and clearer, more confident, and emotionally healing experience.

As a divorce life coach, qualified mindfulness teacher and Reiki master teacher Tosh is passionate about supporting those going through separation and divorce to grow their awareness, manage their emotions and change their mindset.

She started her blog in 2014 attracting over 100k hits and in 2019 began the Divorce Goddess podcast which ranked #41 in the US and #16 UK Relationship charts after 12 episodes.

In the revelation of an interview Tosh shares:

·  How her work has moved beyond divorce coaching to an openness about healing and her ability to be a healer as healing through the divorce process – for all in the family - is key.

·  That these aspects to her work and life were formerly ‘brushed under the carpet’ as she put a more corporate spin on her image, mostly due to the fear of being judged harshly.

·  That seeing so many clients, friends and family members holding on to bitterness and anger have made her champion co-parenting protocols and self-healing.

·  That the question of: “what can I do to make my life easier?” starts with inner work and helping oneself.

·  How the last 18 months has taught us that we can’t control everything and so we must deal with uncertainly in our lives every day.

·  How more men are reaching out to her, and men and boys are more open to healing modalities that may have seemed rather ‘woo woo’ previously.

·  Plus, some big questions for our times such as ‘what is my purpose?’

·  Oh, and why she is a committed cold-water swimmer and what tattoo we both have in common!

Natalie describes herself as a vessel for life and business guidance. While this may sound rather woo woo it is grounded by a mindset that draws on a corporate career in the fast lane in San Francisco to New York City which was increasingly interrupted by her understanding that the strongest voice she had to follow was that of her intuition and higher self.

Gems and insights from our conversation include:

· That when we tap into the energetic connections between us, we become whole as people's life and their business are never separated

· How she was always an intuitive corporate agency person but categorized it as being a game changer and creative and highly right brain rather than embracing it

· Understanding that it was not her, but the hierarchical structures in which she was trying to survive rather than thrive that were wrong

· How a women's conference, in New York City, with Mama Gina opened her up to a whole new world.  It was the catalyst for her leaving her six figure job for a life in the mountains and being CEO of her own life

· That this was not easy and being an entrepreneur, creating a new life and identity was challenging

· How the healing between her soul and body created certainly that she was on the right path. A path that led to some of her family and former friends feeling that they no longer understood her but a path that led to meeting her husband

· That the world is inverted.  We doubt the true voices in our heads and discount our inner magic and instead sublimate our true selves to the structures we find ourselves in

· That she is her to lead through example and to shock and disrupt people into an awakening and then guide them to their unique gifts. This can create a wave of good energy that will have a ripple effect and someone's life could be saved because of you staying on your true path, being consistent and showing up.

· Why the world needs a massive disruption now to enable an unplugging from all the things that do not serve us so we can stand in our truth and be a vessel of life and business guidance

Milly Johnson is the ‘Queen of Feelgood Fiction, with 18 bestselling novels and over two million sales worldwide amongst her many accolades.  Catching up with Milly during her whirlwind PR activity for latest book ‘The Woman in the Middle’ I was able to dig deep into the thinking behind this phenomenal success and discover how she remains so relatable and grounded.

· Gems from the interview include:

· How being told: ‘Oh, aren’t you ordinary!’ was the loveliest compliment she ever received.

· There’s no barrier between her writings and her readers as she sees and negotiates the world as an ordinary woman with kids and parents etc.

· That she’s a fan of Peter Kay and observational humour and brings this ordinary gift of observing people into the tapestry of her writing.

· Being unable to remember a time when she didn’t want to write, it took a while to find her authentic voice and write the kind of relatable books she loves to read.

· Once she tapped into her voice, how she drew on what she lived including the experience from her 20s of being fired from a job due to her Yorkshire accent and being told she was more suited to ‘the textile industry’ than selling luxury goods.

· Drawing on the coincidence of her being pregnant at the same time as two close friends led to her first book being published.  Other lightbulb real-life moments have led to books that draw on her divorce and throwing out clutter into a skip; cross-generational friendships and a woman caught ‘in the middle’ between her children and aging parents.

· That her books are dark and light, taking readers to the bottom of the of the well and then bouncing back stronger than they imagined possible.  This leads to great responsibility as so many of her fans have been woken up to the realities of their own lives.

· New ideas are always queuing up in her brain and when she starts to write it is like candy floss: when you put the stick into the machine the sugar of ideas starts to weave around it.

· Her parting shot: that no dream is too high and that if Mr. Spielberg would like to discuss the film rights to any of her books, she is available for his call.

Ram has a portfolio of interests in his ‘retirement’.  He chairs a social enterprise helping farmers sell organic cotton. He is chair of Allia, which has helped hundreds of start-ups, small businesses and impact ventures to develop and grow, creating thousands of employment opportunities, and transforming communities; a non-executive board member of the Parliamentary Ombudsman;  and other boards and vice president ships in the UK, US and Israel.

Ram shares with me what prompted him, age 37, to quit his super successful job, overseeing 7000 people across 15 countries, with a $200 million turnover, family business.

We discuss topics including:

• How his faith and experience of growing up in one faith, being surrounded by another and converting to the one he felt called to has changed everything

• That his close family, together with his faith, is his guiding star

• What coming to the UK as a refugee was like

• How the Bombay slum, filmed for Slumdog Millionaire years later, broke his heart wide open to helping the poor and disaffected

• How he turned a ‘beggars banquet’ small fundraising project into charity Christmas Cracker which raised over £4 million and mobilised over 50,000 teenagers

• Having six Asian sisters growing up in the UK he became acutely aware of culture clashes, prompting him to write his first book ‘Sari and Chips’ (subsequent ones include Chapatis for Tea, Reaching your Sikh Neighbour and Reaching your Hindu Neighbour – all to encourage greater multi-cultural understanding )

• His faith journey from growing up in the Hindu faith surrounded by the Islamic faith and Sikh faith and then finding Christ.

• Why he ran for Major of London in 2000 and 2004 when his manifesto; of six principles was voted on the public pre-election website as the No 1 for real policy change

• Plus, his feelings about the plight of today’s refugees and poor

• How he is now helping those in India affected by Covid and what YOU can do to help  because his mantra is: “Don’t let what you cannot do stop you from doing what you can do”

Today I’m joined by the indefatigable Robin Farmanfarmaian

Robin is a Professional Speaker, serial entrepreneur, and angel investor in nanotech and cutting-edge AI software for pharma, creating a better future for our health. Her passion is patient empowerment as expressed in her first book: The Patient as CEO; How Technology Empowers the Healthcare Customer.

In this no-holds barred interview, Robin reveals how the tipping low point of her life - when due to ill health and medical misdiagnosis she was a shut-in her mid 20s on high levels of opioids – led her to wean herself off enough methadone to bring down a horse and take charge of her own health and life finding new pain doctors and a correct diagnosis of Crohn’s disease.

Candid at all times, Robin shares how she achieved thought leadership status in a traditionally male-dominated world.

We also learn how she:

• can say no and set healthy boundaries (including positive ways to switch off and sleep soundly at night even when immersed in the world in which we live or planning for the future one dominated by A.I.).

• went beyond being a shut-in to live life to the full, playing ice hockey for Boston University before joining the first consumer facing genetic testing company where she wrote the algorithms scientifically read your genes to allow correct preventive medicine.

• trod a path to become an angel investor: co-founding companies in tissue engineering and cryopreservation.

• found herself side-lined by the men in Silicon Valley, drew on her inner steel and the tenacity of an upbringing by strong women and decided to change the game to become a professional speaker, author and thought leader so no one could ignore her anymore.

• leads by example, hones her entrepreneurial mindset, stays at peak physical and mental fitness and creates a living space that is perfect for her. And how she helps other women and pays it forward and can help you become the CEO of your own amazing life.

• can help you extend your life as she is an expert on life extension and longevity

My guest today is Andrea Gontkovicova.  She is a leader as CEO of Philip Morris International across three Central European countries: Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia. She is also Slovakian Woman of the Year 2019, an experienced speaker, published author in two books, a wife and a mother to two sons.

Andrea joins me from her home in Prague where she has been homeworking for much of this year, although now the operation is starting to return to some office-based locations.  She shares the learnings and challenges of this experience.

Don't be fooled by Andrea's humble demeanour.  Behind it is an absolute tenacity and somebody who shares with us how she came from a humble country upbringing in Slovakia, a country behind the Iron Curtain where even a fruit for Christmas was a luxury.  It was a childhood where a girl was not expected to amount to much and in which she couldn’t not even start to imagine the roles she plays today or the world in which she now lives.

We discuss topics including:

• How she developed a thirst for knowledge and a desire to truly understand people and that speaking seven languages (to varying degrees of fluency) allows her to understand the culture, minds and hearts of diverse people.

• What it is like to manage a business in a changing market across three different countries and cultures.  Also, as only the first female CEO in such a role across all three countries.

• Andrea also shares with us how she has managed to succeed in a largely male dominated world while keeping her sense of femininity, self and becoming a mother who finds time for her family.

• She gives us insight into how her discipline and drive is balanced by her ‘inner voice’ so that she stays well in both mind, body and soul in order to achieve all she does.  She shares her best mind hacks and physical regimens

• What the key points of her book about Conscious Leadership are

• What the details of the radical moves by Philip Morris International to move away from cigarettes to develop new, less harmful ways to deliver nicotine are

• What being Slovakian Woman of the Year means.

Wanda Goldwag, an English girl with a strange name resisted being ‘normalized’ in her teens & now is an empathetic chair or ‘corporate referee’ as she likes to refer to it. This is a special conversation with someone I’ve held in high regard for over 25 years.

Wanda specialising in chairing entrepreneurial businesses, governance and regulation. She is an advisor to Smedvig Venture Capital, a member of the QC appointments panel and a Non-Executive Director of the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust and associate non-exec of the Whittington Hospital. 

Recently Interim Chair of LEASE - the Leasehold Advisory Service and Chair of the Financial Services Consumer Panel and Chair of the Independent Uniform Network Code Modification Panel in the Gas Industry. She is an in-demand public speaker and can draw on so much more including her experience in the 90s when I first met her. Firstly, as Head of the DMA (Direct Marketing Association) and then as MD of BA subsidiary Air Miles.

We discuss topics including:

• How the daughter of a survivor of the Holocaust grew up an English girl with a strange name yet experienced early discrimination and learned that she was ‘different’ and this instilled grit and determination in her.

• How coming out at age 14 was seen to be so unusual that people tried to ‘fix’ her for her own good and how she held onto her truth and true identity.

• Why transparency in business is so important and a value she will never compromise on.

• What data teaches you about making good decisions and why being in the non-glamourous ‘poor relation’ industry of direct marketing - at a time when all the ad execs were flying to exciting places for photoshoots - was the making of her.

• Why she spent a weekend in Bristol going through mailing bags to find all the deceased recipients despite it not being her mess up but because she believes in doing the right thing.

• What chairing such difficult meetings as those at the Performing Rights Association have taught her about being getting over her personal feelings to be a fair referee, able to balance out such disparate interests as senior lawyers and commercial people vs the poets and maniacs who wrote some of the greatest music of all time.

• How you recruit for senior roles - such as to the Queen’s Council – when you are trying to differentiate between the brightest barristers there are; people with brains the size of planets and all quite different.

Michael O’Brien shifted a near death experience to being his ‘last bad day’ & got off the ‘do more to be more’ hamster wheel that was the hallmark of his life as a successful sales professional and Marketing Director. Despite outward success he was burdened by much of the same stress that you and your team feel every day. He was doing more and more to chase happiness and this depleted him of energy, enthusiasm, and inspiration.

His recovery after the cycling accident was the catalyst to the seminal shift that changed his perspective, mindset, and actions. It put him on a path to create better tomorrows at work and in life, and sparked an executive career progression, which was instrumental to finding happiness and passion for business leadership development. Plus, a bestselling book about his Last Bad Day that not only shares his story but gives hope and inspiration to everyone else caught up in the trap of do…..

We discuss topics including:

How by making subtle shifts you can avoid the SUV that came for Michael

How to get off the ‘do more to be more’ hamster wheel and find true happiness and peace

That all events in your life are neutral until you label them

How to take the rocks out of your victim backpack and find lightness and joy

What the true burdens that we need to shift in society are today: economic inequality/racial inequality/environmental health/ our health and how Covid is the reminder that we all need to work on this

How current adversities are all about not being able to breathe and what to do about them

How to wake up, make a shift, write a new script for your life and make it happen

Why you need to be mindful about what you are consuming

How crafting a dating ad when in the Ad business let to him meeting his wife

Why we all need a Peloton as shift is a team effort

Pink Billionaire JB Own on lessons from the back of 5,000 km ‘fun’ bike ride, ignoring numbers and a chat with David Bowie. With energy, vision, drive and a feminine flair she has grown multiple businesses while overcoming huge obstacles.

Now as publisher of the highly successful Ignite book series, founder of the Ignite Institute, philanthropist, speaker and inspirational trainer, JB loves to ignite others to their best ever life while uplifting the planet too.

Most recently, she and her husband cycled 5,000 km across Canada to smash through her limiting beliefs about what she could do and how she could get into such good shape that at 50 she could make the cover of Vogue magazine.

We discuss topics including:

• How, despite having life-long hang-ups about not being sporty and with very little training she set off to cycle across Canada on a tandem bicycle to see if her vision and determination would make it possible

• That by mentally preparing for this and visioning it she was able to get buy-in from her body to make the trip, and cycling up to 200km a day in inhospitable terrain, possible and easy at times

Wisdom from the back of her bike, including:

• That a commitment and taking responsibility that you have signed up for something means that you can find the mental and physical strength to make it happen.

• How to love having to pivot and sidebar.

• Her AhHa moment of how much emphasis we put on the numbers. On the numbers on a scale or our bank account or success. And how we forget about the joy of the journey or the achievements along the way and that we give ourselves permission for how we feel.

• Her journey to get over deep feelings of ‘not good enough’.

• The most incredible lesson she gained when working in the movie business and spending lunch on a curbside with David Bowie.

• The future of igniting possibilities for her, her family, new authors and all those who want to sign up to be the most ignited versions of themselves.

Eric Edmedes, WildFit guru shares being spiritual vs esoteric in business & how not to be afraid of your bathroom scales. As well as being the founder of the fast-growing health coaching company, WildFit, Eric is an internationally recognized business speaker and serial entrepreneur. He enjoys helping people scale their businesses while also improving their overall quality of life. He does this through compelling keynotes, intensive training programs, blogging, and online training programs with a focus on business education.

Eric shares with me his approach to helping entrepreneurs on the road to real business freedom; owning businesses that give them both the financial freedom and flexibility to spend more time on what really matters; their families, their health, and their lives. And how that starts with himself.

We discuss topics including:

Cultural identity and his childhood

Balancing the logic and action-oriented personal development skills he honed working with Tony Robbins and others vs a more spiritual and esoteric side. To create a balance between taking action and paying attention to your vibration and focus.

Protecting your energy and keeping it high

Why diets don’t work and people are afraid of their bathroom scales

Overcoming semantic memories and childhood conditioning to create and maintain new healthy behaviours

Covid debates: masks vs not. Injections vs not and what is really important to stay healthy. Plus, why MDs attacked, and then later agreed with, his views on nutrition and stress.

How he created a global business via an incredible two-part discovery

Why it is incumbent upon the teacher to understand the blocks and triggers that stop people learning and embracing change

Whether the ideal that tribal people have a greater wisdom is real or not – based on spending 10 years visiting remote nomadic tribes in Africa

How he finds peace.

What the most important question to ask yourself daily is and how it can change your life.