The Good Listening To Show: Stories of Distinction & Genius

Founder Story: Happiness is an Inside Job and a Spreadsheet! How to Achieve Sustainable Success in the Training Industry, with Murray Cowell, aka 'The Grizzled Veteran of the Training World!' & Founder of Accelerando

• Chris Grimes - Facilitator. Coach. Motivational Comedian

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Murray Cowell, aka 'The Grizzled Veteran of the Training World!' is an extraordinarily lovely man and this is a wonderful rich episode, suffused with great storytelling, life reflection and wisdom. He is a seasoned Trainer and a very strong advocate indeed for helping fellow Trainers, Coaches & Training Consultancies to both succeed & sustain in all their endeavours, through his company Accelerando. 

Murray shares his transformative journey from overcoming early setbacks to building a successful career in coaching and training. His insights into personal happiness, community engagement, and the critical importance of mental health advocacy inspire listeners to reflect on their paths to fulfilment and growth.

• Murray's early move to Somerset ignited a desire for a sense of belonging 
• Emphasizes the importance of understanding different levels within organizations 
• Discusses happiness as an internal journey shaped by life experiences 
• Shares creativity and passion for food and music as vital elements of life 
• Introduces the Client Find Club for fostering connections in the training industry 
• Advocates for mental health discussions through suicide prevention efforts

What if you could break free from the feast and famine cycle of the Training industry? Join us as we sit down with Murray Cowell, a revered figure in the training world and founder of Accelerando, to uncover the secrets behind scaling and growing training businesses sustainably. With over 27 years of experience, Murray shares his journey from his formative years in Somerset, how his background shaped his unique ability to spot potential in both people and businesses, and the impactful stories that have defined his career. 

Murray's passion extends beyond the boardroom, and in this episode, we explore the vibrant tapestry of his interests outside professional pursuits. From his affinity for composing music and performing at legendary venues to his love for camping and outdoor adventures, Murray’s life is a testament to the harmony between work and play. He also shares his admiration for the band Fontaines DC and recounts his connection to Somerset traditions, offering listeners a glimpse into the personal experiences that have fueled his relentless pursuit of excellence.

The conversation takes a delightful turn as we discuss the synergy found in coaching calls and the unexpected connection between spreadsheet skills and collaboration. Murray’s signature Caramel Tres Leches cake becomes an emblem of how personal passions can enrich professional endeavors. We reflect on wisdom from Roosevelt's "Man in the Arena" and consider the alignment of business objectives with personal and professional growth. Whether you're a training industry veteran or just starting out, Murray's insights promise to inspi

Tune in next week for more stories of 'Distinction & Genius' from The Good Listening To Show 'Clearing'. If you would like to be my Guest too then you can find out HOW via the different 'series strands' at 'The Good Listening To Show' website.

Don't forget to SUBSCRIBE & REVIEW wherever you get your Podcasts :)

Thanks for listening!

Chris Grimes:

Welcome to another episode of the Good Listening To Show your life and times with me, chris Grimes, the storytelling show that features the Clearing, where all good questions come to get asked and all good stories come to be told, and where all my guests have two things in common they're all creative individuals and all with an interesting story to tell. There are some lovely storytelling metaphors a clearing, a tree, a juicy storytelling exercise called 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, some alchemy, some gold, a cheeky bit of Shakespeare and a cake. So it's all to play for. So, yes, welcome to the Good Listening To Show your life and times with me. Chris Grimes, are you sitting comfortably? Then we shall begin.

Chris Grimes:

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to a glorious and auspicious occasion here in the Good Listening To Show and podcast. This is Stories of Distinction and Genius, and I'm delighted today to be doing a special Brand Strand and Founder Story episode with none other than Murray Cowell, otherwise known as the grizzled veteran of the training world. He is the founder of Accelerando. Accelerando I think you'll find I've said it better the second time, which made me think of that magical island of Fernando Fernando, which used to be in that program, but I can't remember what it was called now. But yes, welcome Murray to the show. It's lovely to see you and lovely to have you here. Thank you, chris.

Murray Cowell:

Wonderful. It's a great pleasure to be here too, and what would you say is your SOD?

Chris Grimes:

which is your story of the day, please?

Murray Cowell:

Well, my story of the day is that how busy the start of the year has been for me, as we sit here in the middle of January, because I started running the program that I run to help trainers to grow and scale their businesses at the beginning of 2024. And so sorry, at the beginning of 2023, I should say so December 2023, because my background is in training. I'm used to December and January being quiet times, so I was expecting December 23 to be quiet, and it never occurred to me that now I'm providing a service to trainers, I'm going to be busiest when they are least busy, and so it took me a little bit by surprise and I wasn't quite prepared for the onslaught of interest, and so this year I was, and I had things much better set up, and that means that I've spent really the first couple of weeks of this year just in back to back calls and meetings. So it's been a very busy, very exciting time.

Chris Grimes:

Yes, and, if I may just position you further by blowing a bit of oxygenated happy smoke at you, I want you to unpack Grizzled Veteran in a minute, because it's a very clever sort of operator series of words as to what it is you're doing. So you're a veteran trainer with 25 plus years of experience specialising in helping trainers and training companies to scale and grow their businesses. And this is great, this happy smoke. You're known for blending deep experience with genuine care for other success. You have helped countless trainers escape the feast and famine cycle to build sustainable premium rate practices. And your gift, thank you is in spotting potential in people and their businesses that they often can't see for themselves. And then what I really enjoyed about what you sent me when you're not weaving that particular magic, you're often found cooking up a feast in your kitchen. And then this is the lovely bit making music badly, with great enthusiasm yes, more enthusiasm than talent. Lovely, but your cooking's better than your music.

Murray Cowell:

By the sound of it, enthusiasm and talent Lovely, but your cooking's better than your music. By the sound of it, oh, yes, definitely. Yeah, that's enthusiasm, and I don't know if it's talent, because it wasn't innate. There was a time when I couldn't cook, but I've kind of learned how to do it over the years. And can I ask you what your signature dish is, please? My signature dish comes from Mada Jafri's book, which I can't remember what it's called, and there is a recipe in there called hydra baddy lamb, where you take a whole, uh leg of lamb and you put a pot, roast it in a or on on top of it. You put it in a in a vessel and slow, slow cook it, and before you do that you put papaya on it, which is a meat tenderizer, and so by the time you finish cooking it, the meat just all falls off the bone. It's absolutely delicious.

Chris Grimes:

Wow, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, if I may say so, sounds quite Moroccan in its flavor. Is that right, or have I made up the wrong?

Murray Cowell:

country. It's not a super hot curry, but it is very spicy and flavorsome.

Chris Grimes:

Wow. So one of the things you can do post this episode is share the episode, the recipe, the recipe on LinkedIn, which is great. So just going back a step, just unpack. You know Murray Cowell, grizzled veteran of the training world, grizzly bear it's making me think of. So you're a bear of a man, but just unpack, grizzled veteran for us.

Murray Cowell:

Well, one of my clients actually looked up the word grizzled and revealed that it actually means gray head, and, as you can see, I don't actually have a lot of hair at all, but the sort of stubble that grows on the sides has turned gray.

Murray Cowell:

So it's an accurate description.

Murray Cowell:

And the reason I refer to myself as a grizzled veteran of the training world is that I've been knocking about the training world, as you mentioned in the introduction, for 27 years.

Murray Cowell:

It is now that I've been running a training business, and my first job in L&D was actually even earlier than that, in 1990.

Murray Cowell:

So I know the industry as an L&D professional, as an associate trainer working on other people's training businesses, as part of the senior leadership team on some larger training businesses and also as the owner of my own training business and now for the last few years, helping other training business owners to become more successful by finding more clients, raising their rates and reducing their working hours. And so part of it is the veteran part, and the grizzled part is that I've been around the industry for a long time and the reason I kind of adopted that as my strap line is because I'm also very old, chris. I'm nearly as old as you. I'm that old and I thought, as you get old, you're either an old fart or you're the village elder and I'm trying'm trying to be the the kind of wise guide for other trainers, because they're treading the path that I have trod before and I can help them to avoid some of the pitfalls and, um, booby traps along the way.

Chris Grimes:

There is a third way you could be the village elder who farts a lot, rather than the village old farting village elder, yeah, why not?

Chris Grimes:

combine, aka farty pants. We won't give you that one, but that's great, lovely. And your email trail, which is how I started to tune into you. You have a really efficient email generating machine and you started to seep under my door in a really good way and it is very hooky content and it's genuinely very good. And then when we reconnect, when we properly connected, we had certain other individuals in common. But also, um, you used to go to the blue school, which I didn't, but I used to know the teaching department very well at the blue school in wells in somerset.

Murray Cowell:

That's right, yeah so uh, yeah, so my family moved to somerset when I was 11. Yes and um so. So yeah, I went. Yeah, I went to Wells Blue School and continued to live in Somerset until I moved to Southampton in the late 80s, just after I got married.

Chris Grimes:

Yes, so that's where you're speaking from today, then the Knowles of Southampton is where you're speaking from.

Murray Cowell:

No, I have returned. My wife and I always said that when our sons were old enough and they'd left home and set up on their own, we would trek back to Somerset. So that occasion came around three years ago, so we moved back to Somerset three years ago. So I now live in a little village called Colford, which is about 10 miles south of Bath in the middle of the city, that old chestnut of when they've flown the nest.

Chris Grimes:

you change the locks and move somewhere else.

Murray Cowell:

Well, I always used to joke that when our youngest son left, I'd be following him up the path with a for sale sign, and it wasn't much later than that.

Chris Grimes:

Lovely and obviously I expect they know exactly where you live and they've got a bedroom. They can always come back to you and they visit regularly.

Murray Cowell:

We're a very close family yes.

Chris Grimes:

So, as we're already doing, this is about getting the story behind, the story of you, the grizzle veteran, and accelerando and this is a special brand, strand and founder story episode where we're going to get into the who, the what, the why and the how you do what you do and then, crucially, we're going to find out exactly where we can come and find you to then get more help from you and to book your services as well. So, murray Cowell, it's my great pleasure and privilege to be able to curate you through the story scape of the Good Listening To show and, if you've not seen it before, where you been not you, but I'm talking to the audience here and there's going to be a clearing a tree, a lovely juicy storytelling exercise called five, four, three, two, one. There's going to be some alchemy, some gold, a couple of random squirrels, a cheeky bit of shakespeare, a golden baton and a cake hurrah. So it's all to play for. So should we get on the open road of curating you through the journey of this?

Chris Grimes:

And the invitation to you, murray, is to go where you like, how you like, when you like, as deep as you like into the following construct at the end, there's going to be a very funky bit, which is show us your qr code please. I'm going to be able to point people to exactly where we we look at your qr code. If you'll pardon that particular expression, I love it great. So you're, you're, you're looking lovely. We don't know what your real background is, which is quite interesting because you've got a lovely on-brand, Accelerando bit of iconography there. So, murray Cowell, grizzled veteran of the training world, where is what is a clearing or serious happy place for you? Where do you go to get clutter-free, inspirational and able to think?

Murray Cowell:

for you?

Murray Cowell:

Where do you go to get clutter-free, inspirational and able to think, yeah?

Murray Cowell:

There's two places that springs mind, and one is walking in the countryside, because, as I mentioned just now, I live in a very rural part of Somerset and I'm very lucky to be able to walk for two minutes from my front door and be in open countryside and it's not just open countryside, but it's open countryside that you can walk through for hours without arriving at another town or village.

Murray Cowell:

So there's lots of options for walking around here, and sometimes I go walking listening to podcasts, but on other occasions I don't, I deliberately don't take my headphones with me or my phone and I just walk in the walk in the open, because I find that that is a place where I can really free up my mind and do some really clear thinking. The other place that springs to mind is going on holiday, because I find that when I'm on holiday it brings a different perspective to the rest of my life and I can sort of look at myself and my situation a little bit more objectively, and I find that that's a great place to sort of free my mind from the day-to-day trials and tribulations of being a human and just think a little bit more clearly. So those are my two kind of happy clearings.

Chris Grimes:

So there's a lot of sort of outdoor flavour and texture to all of that. So I'm'm going to write tree now in your clearing to shake your tree. So we'll have to decide do you want to be on holiday mode or do you want to be just sort of if in doubt, walking out mode?

Murray Cowell:

Oh, I think if there's a tree involved, then it would have to be walking in the English countryside and it would be a giant hundreds years old oak. Oh lovely.

Chris Grimes:

So that's the tree within which there are some storytelling apples. How do you like these apples? And we're going to shake your tree now to see which apples fall out. And this is where you've been kind enough to have thought about before we started. It's five minutes to have thought about four things that have shaped you, grizzled veteran Murray Cowell, three things that inspire you, two things that never fail to grab your attention, and that's when the oh squirrels are going to come in. Borrow from the film Up where the dog goes. Oh squirrels, that's also known as shiny object syndrome, what never fails to distract you. And then one is a quirky or unusual fact about you. We couldn't possibly know about you until you tell us it's not a memory test. So now over to you to interpret the shaking of the canopy of your tree as you see fit.

Murray Cowell:

Thank you, chris. Yeah, and it's a nice thought to have an apple-bearing oak and this being Somerset, it is the county of apples, so there's apples everywhere. And in fact that's the first thing that I think really shaped me was the move to Somerset, because I was born in Kingston-on-Thames and, as I mentioned earlier, I moved to Somerset when I was 11. And my memory of that is that I was. Kingston-on-thames is quite a nice place, but as a child I was quite bored there and it's kind of stockbroke belt or commute belt. I live near Richmond Park, which is happy memories of being there Again, the outdoor part of it but I was getting close to the end of primary school and I was. I passed my 11 plus. That's how long ago it was. I was just about to move.

Chris Grimes:

You could be older than me.

Murray Cowell:

Now you're saying that I was about to move to a grammar school and my brother had been bullied at the grammar school, so I wasn't really looking forward to it. And then my parents announced that we were making this move to Somerset and I thought, well, that sounds interesting. And my earliest memory is that when we arrived. My earliest memory of Somerset is that when we arrived here, my mother said to me there's a boy your age living next door. Go and make friends with him. It was an instruction go and make friends with the boy next door, which another way of saying get out of my way.

Murray Cowell:

So I went and called for the boy next door and he said uh well, why don't you come down to the fair on friday? And I said well, what fair, where is it? And he said, oh, there's a fair in the marketplace. And I was like, what here? And he's yeah, it comes here twice a year. We have a big fair in the marketplace. And I remember just thinking that that was absolutely wonderful. And when I actually went around to call for him to go to the fair together, his dad had a big barrel of cider on the sideboard and he said do you want a glass of cider, young'un? To which, obviously as an 11 year old who'd never been offered any alcohol before my, my response was yes, oh, yes, please, mr parfit, and uh, yeah. He then came and gave me a half pint of cider. Uh, and I remember thinking I think I'm gonna like it around here yes, great induction.

Murray Cowell:

Yeah, it was. It was absolutely fantastic and the the living in a going coming from somewhere that's a suburb of a big city to living in a what is well. This is wells in somerset, which is technically a city because it's got this enormous beautiful cathedral in the middle of it, but, uh, it's more culturally it's more like a medium-sized market town, and so that was a really big change in environment for me and it meant that all my friends were easily in reach, whereas previously in kingston they'd been spread across a much wider area. Yeah and um, so it I I really feel it feels like somerset is my spiritual home, and that's why my wife is from somerset, for going back for centuries if you follow her family tree all the way back to Cheddar man, I think and so it feels very much like home coming back here. I'm also very fond of Southampton, having lived there for 35 years, but Somerset is really where I feel like my roots are.

Chris Grimes:

Are you still in touch with Parfit Jr, by the way, the son of the dad that offered you the alcohol, are you?

Murray Cowell:

still in touch with Parfit Jr, by the way, the son of the dad that offered you the alcohol. I haven't seen him for probably 30-odd years. I know that he did very well. He was a very keen tinkerer of electronics and in fact we rigged up a sort of tannoy system from his house to my house so that we could chat with each other in the evenings when this was in the time when your dad wouldn't let you use the phone because it was too expensive. Yeah, so I remember he did that and then he went on to to found an alarm business and did very well out of it. So, um, yeah, so I I haven't uh had any contact with him uh since then, but I know that he did very well and what was his name?

Chris Grimes:

I know he's called perfect, but what's his first name? Anthony anthony anthony, perfect, yeah, lovely, perfect, yeah, that's a great, that's a perfect. Uh, first, uh, shapeage, uh, next, shapeage oh well.

Murray Cowell:

Well, the next one is a bit of a strange one really, because I I very much went off the rails in my teens so I made a mess of my A-levels. It was the cider, wasn't it? Sorry, it was the cider. Well, it may have played a role, yes, indeed. So I didn't do as well in my A-levels as I had expected to, and that meant I didn't get into the university that I wanted to go to. So I had to take a year out. I got a job as what was then called a computer programmer. Yeah, I was a computer programmer for a year.

Murray Cowell:

Then I went to the Camborne School of Mines and I really didn't like it and I really felt like I'd got out of the habit of learning. So I left there after only a few weeks and there followed a period of kind of rapid decline that ended up with me living basically homeless, homeless, living in squads in London. Wow, and I did that for a couple of years. And the reason I think that that has shaped me is because, rather than kind of going to university and doing graduate level entry into some large corporation, I had to find really start again and I had to start at the bottom and work my way up like a trainee proctologist and um. That meant, I think that that meant that I was um, that that really I can.

Murray Cowell:

It was a humbling experience and it but what it's enabled, enabled me to do in my work life and the corporations I then later worked in was that I had a really good understanding of what it's like at all these different levels in the organization and that's been very, very useful in my training business as well, being able to relate to people at C-suite level. I didn't actually quite make it into the C-suite, but I was a C-suite reporter at IBM so I kind of understand what the C-suite environment is like all the way to the shop floor. So I'm equally as comfortable speaking to people who are actually delivering the service at the cold face directly to a customer as I am in the boardroom, and really I think that's as a result of my sort of poor start to my working career.

Chris Grimes:

And can I just commend you for the storytelling prowess in like a trainee proctologist, I started at the bottom and worked my way out. That's fantastic, and hitting rock bottom as well just on a more serious point is a really good way to really work your way up. So to reboot almost.

Murray Cowell:

Yeah, it is. And the other thing that it's done is that it means that I'm not afraid. I'm not really afraid of failure as much as I think I might've been without that experience, because I've been very poor and I knew that when I was very poor I had some very happy memories of those times. So I know that you can be poor and be happy and I think that really helps that I don't really worry. I do worry a bit about failure and things not working out, but not very much, because I know that even if I had this kind of catastrophic collapse, sort of financially, that I would still be able to pull myself back out of that and that it wouldn't really affect how happy I feel. I think happiness is more of a an internal thing than related to.

Chris Grimes:

I mean, circumstances can affect how happy you are, but happiness is an inside job which I really like and, yeah, humility and simplicity and what you've described about a factory default setting of innate happiness yes, yeah, shaping so far.

Murray Cowell:

Um. So the third thing that shaped me is my, my wife and my two sons. My, my wife and I met when we were very young she was 18, I was 20. We moved in together. After we'd been together for six weeks, she turned up and stopped going home. Really is what happened?

Chris Grimes:

and this is this is post squat era.

Murray Cowell:

I'm assuming it's yeah, this is post squat and I was back in somerset. So, back in somerset, um, we, we, we'd known each other for a few years anyway. She was a friend of my brother's at school, yeah, so so we'd known who each other were and we were in the same kind of circle of friends. But very, very soon after we got together. But we, we lived in a flat and she moved into the flat that I was living in uh, that was that was in shepton mallet and uh, we've been together ever since. It's 40 years this year, so, um, so she's been a really major influence on me during my life um, mischievous, very mischievous, and, uh, I'm easily led into mischief. So that's been a fun relationship from that perspective, a perfect match. Lovely, yes, indeed yes.

Murray Cowell:

And then my two sons.

Murray Cowell:

They've been I'd expected before I, before I was a parent, I knew that as a parent, you have to teach your things to your children. What I was less prepared for and less expecting was how much I've learned from them, and really mostly about love and humor, and so they've been like a very significant part of my life and my values and what I wanted to accomplish in life massively changed the split second that my other son was born. It was really as soon as I saw his little face looking like he looked like an alien, uh, when he was born, and um, I, I just knew that my, what I wanted out of life really changed at that moment and and it became less about kind of climbing the corporate greasy pole to get into a senior position and much more about how can I free up more time to spend with my um, with my, with my wife, my two sons, so that's that was quite a strong factor that led to me taking the plunge, becoming self-employed as a trainer, because because it's a much more flexible lifestyle and it meant that when they were at school, I was at every coffee morning, I was at every sports day, I was at every carol service, to the extent that my other son's teacher said to him what does your dad actually do for a living? To which my son replied he's a diamond cutter. Good answer.

Chris Grimes:

Very witty, as you said. Yeah, yeah, I have heard it said that true wealth is how much time to yourself you have in your life. That's the nature of true wealth.

Murray Cowell:

Yes, yes, and I can't remember who it was, but some wise philosophical type said that the true cost of something is how much life you have to give up to yes to obtain it.

Chris Grimes:

there's a bit story just arrived which is probably may or may not cause a bit of noise pollution. But hey, life is going on around us, which is great. These are great shapages so far, and I think that's all four. Is that correct, or is that?

Murray Cowell:

well, I think that's three.

Murray Cowell:

So the fourth one is 27 years in the training business.

Murray Cowell:

Yes, because working as a trainer and I, when I first started doing it, I was quite unreconstructed really as a trainer and my understanding of how to get the best out of people in the training room has evolved massively over the years.

Murray Cowell:

And to do that effectively you've really got to work on yourself first. So there's been a lot of self-reflection, a lot of self development and, and that's all about getting your own stuff out of the way and and to make sure that your own stuff is out the way, you first have to really understand what your own stuff is and why you're like, how you are and what your good and bad points are and uh, and to develop yourself in a way that kind of limits the impact that it can otherwise have on the work that you do in the training room. So I've developed, deliberately developed and cultivated really a non-judgmental attitude which I think is quite fundamental to the kind of work that I do and I'm transformed beyond recognition from the angry young man that I used to be Lovely, make me think of the adage of I used to be lovely.

Chris Grimes:

I want to think of that. The adage of in order to lead from without, you need to lead from within, and I loved how you talked about getting out of your own way. Yeah, and links to that lovely quote just to which it made me immediately think of is the best resource a good facilitator can bring into the room is themselves that's very true to enable and curate the gathering that you have in front of you.

Murray Cowell:

Yes, great shaping, if I may say, mari. So now we're on to three things that inspire you. Well, the first thing that really inspires me is music, to the extent that the conspicuous lack of talent still hasn't put me off from attempting to play music. I started with the violin when I was very young and I played guitar in my teens. I was in a band which was much less common then than it is now. Everybody's in a band now. I made electronic music, used to make trance techno with a friend of mine during the 90s, and I learned to play the saxophone. I've got various sets of keyboards, other instruments knocking around. So music really inspires me. I love listening to music, I love going to gigs.

Chris Grimes:

So you can actually pick up any instrument and learn how to play it by the sound of it.

Murray Cowell:

I was at a party once and there was an accordion there, so I picked it up and started playing it. One of my friends at the party said so how long have you been playing the accordion, then? To which my reply was about three minutes.

Chris Grimes:

So you're part of a musical civil. It would seem like.

Murray Cowell:

Yeah, it seems to me that I can pick any instrument up and play it. But it seems to me that I can pick any instrument up and play it, but I'm not so good at becoming good at it and I think partly it's because I just simply because I don't put in the practice.

Chris Grimes:

Yes, so you've not done the 20,000 hours, as they say on one particular instrument.

Murray Cowell:

Yeah, exactly, and then when I got interested in making electronic music, you don't need a high level of skill at playing musical instruments, it's a different skill. It's really a skill at operating computers.

Chris Grimes:

And were you singing alongside this?

Murray Cowell:

so, being a vocalist as well, I have done some singing, yes, so in the band that I was in as a teenager, our greatest moment was that we played the 100 Club in London and supporting the Anti-Nolan League.

Chris Grimes:

Oh, the Anti-Nolan League. Did you say the Anti-Nowhere League? Anti-nowhere, I didn't think there was an Anti-Nolan. The Nolan Sisters are a league, no.

Murray Cowell:

And we also played Worthy Farm. There was a private party up there that we played one time. So those were the kind of sort of career highlights. Lovely, that was while I was still in my teens, so that hasn't been anything since, but it's more of a hobby and an interest. Yeah, lovely. I take inspiration from the music I listen to. I try to keep my musical taste as wide as possible.

Chris Grimes:

Yes, there's very little that I really can't stand listening to. And what's the music?

Murray Cowell:

of the moment that you're most enjoying. Um well, the back the bands that I'm enjoying the most at the moment. At the moment is Fontaines DC, a Dublin based rock band that have come in the name again. They're called Fontaines's dc. Yeah, brilliant, absolutely fantastic uh band and they've they're on about their third or third or fourth album now, I think what's your favorite track from that?

Murray Cowell:

because my podcast editor, dan, is brilliant at texturing in when somebody happens to mention a piece of music well, funnily enough, the track that I've been listening to most recently of theirs is called favorite, so that'll be an easy one for dan to remember over you, dad, you'll know what to do, so marvelous, okay, uh, next a bit of shaping.

Chris Grimes:

Sorry, this is.

Murray Cowell:

The next thing that inspires me is camping. I love uh, you know, as I've mentioned previously, I love the outdoors and being outside, and I quite like going to campsites, pitching a tent, cooking in the, cooking in the outdoors and the, the feeling of it being cold at night and having to snuggle down to get warm and then feeling the fresh air kind of blowing in through the, through the tents that's just, I'm thinking of a grizzled veteran with a billy can.

Chris Grimes:

Now, this is lovely, very nice that's it.

Murray Cowell:

Yes, it conjures up that kind of image, doesn't it? And and then the third area of inspiration is being amongst other people. I'm actually, um, capable of being a bit of a hermit and bit reclusive sometimes, and not I'm not great at keeping up a visiting schedule and going to see people, but when I feel really inspired is when there's a group of us together. So, so mostly I see my friends at gatherings and house parties and gigs, and and and obviously these three things come together being with people, camping and music at music festivals.

Murray Cowell:

So I'm a great festival goer, uh, and, living in somerset, I've been going to since 1981. I've only missed a few in that time. And it's funny because I kind of the sort of most common way that people think about festivals is that they're this kind of fake environment, sort of fantasy environment that's away from the real world, where people go to escape. But when I'm there, I realized that it's the other way around, that the festival is the real environment and it's the rest of society and this civilization that we've had built around us that is the fake yes, oh wow.

Chris Grimes:

Yes, you're going very profoundly into sort of gatherings, gathering clan, the gathering which is quite primeval.

Murray Cowell:

Yeah, exactly Because I think that the human species has been lighting big fires, dancing around them, playing the drums and getting shit-faced for tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years. So when you go and do that, it really does tap into something really primeval and it feels like this is where we're supposed to, where, this is where we're supposed to be and this is what we're supposed to be doing and the one we all want to be invited to is Beltane, which is where you get to do some shagging as well.

Chris Grimes:

I'm remembering my history there. There's a brilliant book called Mists of Avalon, where all of that is wonderful. It's like the Arthurian legend book, right? Yeah, yes, sounds wonderful. And about the gathering it is is. I love that because I'm all about that too, because even the clearing is is a place you know energetically where the best questions, the best stories. I can imagine a fire, very definitely at the center of the clearing, yeah, yeah, lovely. So now we're on to two. Oh squirrels, you know what are your? That's borrowed from the film up whether, as I mentioned, the dog goes. You know what are your? That's borrowed from the film Up where, as I mentioned, the dog goes. Oh squirrels, so what are your shiny objects that never fail to distract you? Murray Cowell.

Murray Cowell:

Yeah. So the first one is spreadsheets. Any excuse to create a spreadsheet and I'm off and I can lose hours and hours doing spreadsheets. My son's even bought me a mug that says I love spreadsheets on it and then I broke it. And they bought me another one and I broke that one as well, so that finally they they bought me a mug that I had specially made that says I love breaking my I love spreadsheets mugs because I was getting through them at such a rate.

Chris Grimes:

Your sons sound awesome and I love that recurring rule of three they've, they've given you. Finally, that can keep on giving, which is lovely.

Murray Cowell:

Also being very careful not to break it, because we could get into an infinite regression of I love breaking my mug.

Chris Grimes:

You'll end up producing your own spreadsheet on the number of mugs that you buy.

Murray Cowell:

Yes, I can imagine some kind of it's almost completely alien to me.

Chris Grimes:

So this is really about where you begin, where I end, because I just don't live in a spreadsheet, I just can't do it.

Murray Cowell:

Yeah, and I have to be careful, because in the past I have suffered from what I call spreadsheet millionaire syndrome, which is that if you have a business idea, if you create a spreadsheet, it's really easy to keep tweaking the numbers until it makes you a millionaire this time next year. So that's something that I think is a note of caution to other spreadsheet lovers, and they can get very involved and very technical. Actually, one of my sons is quite an accomplished chess player. He's captain of his county team and he asked me to collaborate with him recently to help him produce a spreadsheet that would analyse his results, which openings he'd used, what kind of opponent he'd been playing, whether he was white or black, did he win or lose, and so we've had a lot of fun doing some deep analysis in a very kind of geeky, nerdy sort of way.

Chris Grimes:

Great, the meeting of true minds. That's phenomenal. The Queen's Gambit, but the sun's, the sun's gambit. Love that, yes, yeah, spreadsheets. No one has ever said their shiny object syndrome thing. Oh, squirrels, it's a spreadsheet. Yeah, yes. That either makes you just fascinating or deeply dull in my mind. So your second squirrel, please.

Murray Cowell:

The other distraction is irrelevant tangents, and anybody who knows me even moderately well will tell you that during a conversation I can go off at a tangent and then I can go off at a tangent from the tangent and a tangent from that tangent and end up quite a long way away from the original conversation. And it's because, uh, as I mentioned earlier, I listen to a lot of podcasts, I read a lot, um, and and so I I know I know a little bit about a lot of things, which means that and and also I think one of my skills is seeing things from unusual angles, so my relevant tangents are often taking the conversation in an unusual direction. Yes, which which um can be, it for me is very seductive, and I get distracted like that very easily, for, for the person I'm in conversation with, it depends on the circumstances, because sometimes people sort of enjoy the strange convolutions that the conversation takes, but if we're supposed to be doing something else, it can be really irritating for people I love that, because I am captain tangent too.

Chris Grimes:

I love that. It's a bit like, um, the idea of throwing a pebble on a frozen pond's surface and it goes and bounces off and then ends up miles away from where you thought you'd put it. I love that yeah, yeah.

Murray Cowell:

And so one of my, one of my catchphrases is backtrack, backtrack, backtrack, because I'm kind of desperately trying to think where did we? Because I kind of become aware that we're not where we're supposed to be yes, Primarily in business conversations and then I'm thinking okay, so what were we talking about before that, before that, before that, oh yeah, that's the topic of the conversation. I love that backtrack backtrack, backtrack.

Chris Grimes:

So I'm delighted I'm doing quite a good job at keeping you to the structure here, which is great, even though I'm enjoying any sort of tangents. We do, it's because I feel secure in my own structure now. Well, I structure too, as a spreadsheet, you must do, yes, as a mr spreadsheet, geek, backtrack, backtrack, backtrack. Um, and now a quirky or unusual fact about you that you, we couldn't possibly know about you, murray, until you tell us.

Murray Cowell:

Yeah, well, I discovered that this is unusual. I didn't know this was unusual, but I own a gospel hall, so I've got a gospel hall in my garden and it turns out that not everybody has one of those, so I think it's a quirky, unusual fact. Tell me more. Tell me more.

Murray Cowell:

Yeah, so the village that I live in, colford, an evangelist in 1915 decided that he wanted to bring more people godliness, into the village, and so he went and bought a military hut from the, the military camp in devises, and brought it here and had it erected so that he could hold gospel services here. And we've got a great photograph it's available online somewhere actually of a shower bank outside of the gospel hall in the early 1900s, with one of those open-top shower banks full of all of the faithful on their way to a trip to the seaside, and so it's wonderful. It's wonderful history that's associated with it. And in the 1980s the members of the gospel community clubbed together and raised enough money to build a brick gospel hall, which is just the other side of the road, and so they sold to the old gospel hall, to the people who owned the house before we bought it.

Chris Grimes:

So when we bought the house, the gospel hall came with it, so I'm now the proud owner of a gospel hall and I think I love that, and and is is the acoustic phenomenal within it, because it would require quite a good acoustic to be able to sing well, no, bear in mind it's an ex-military hut, not designed for its for its acoustic properties.

Murray Cowell:

um, so it's. It's a timber frame building. The regrettable fact about it is that it's rotting away, so all the timbers have rotted away. It's covered in corrugated iron and that's all rusted, so it's not in the best of shape. It's been standing here for over 100 years and I always joke that it's only the echoes of a century of hallelujahs. That's really holding it up. What a great bit of storytelling that is when they fade away, it will collapse collapse.

Chris Grimes:

I've never met anybody who has a gospel hall in their back garden. I've met somebody that got a shell grotto, but that's a proper um, what's it called? If it's a quirk, if it's a totally unique building, it's called a. Uh, what's the word? I've got it. Yes, thank you, brought to you by. It's a folly in your back garden. Nice, yeah, love that. What a great, brilliant, unique, quirky or unusual fact. We've shaken your tree. Murray, cowell, hurrah. Now we stay in the You're having it shaken Big problem.

Murray Cowell:

I've enjoyed having it shaken.

Chris Grimes:

You're very welcome. Now we're going to stay in the clearing. Move away from the tree. Next we talk about alchemy and gold. So when you're at purpose and in flow, murray Cowell, what are you absolutely happiest doing in what you're here to reveal to the world?

Murray Cowell:

Yeah, well, I'm capable of real hyper-focus. I can lose hours and hours, as I mentioned, with the spreadsheets, but when I'm really in flow is I love the work that I do and I particularly like designing training programs and bringing them to life and the creativity that's involved in that, particularly if I'm collaborating with somebody else in doing that. Yeah, and, and that's when I when I really feel like I'm I'm doing the thing that I do best. Yes, so, so, and it can be a really creative process where it might be quite a mundane idea that needs to be communicated and it's thinking about how do you make that interesting? How do you make it engaging?

Murray Cowell:

How can, how can we vary the, the structure of the training program so it's not all the same thing over and over and over again? How do we even narrative through the, the in, particularly for longer training programs? How do you kind of make this a logical flow throughout the, throughout the session? So that's something I can easily get stuck into. And the other thing is hosting um calls, client calls, particularly because I do like one-to-one coaching as part of my program, but also group calls, and I love both of them, but the group calls are the ones that I like the most, because there's so much synergy that happens between and amongst clients when they're all collaborating together and everybody's working on the same kind of things and the sort of openness and vulnerability that people are willing to show, which I always find incredible to be a part of, and so I really love hosting those calls and facilitating those calls, and when I'm doing that, the time just absolutely whizzes past.

Chris Grimes:

Yes, and indeed that's hooked me in our rapport today, offline later on. I'm intrigued. I think that one of the ideas is to help you, help me, develop an idea, and because of your um spreadsheet prowess, I'm I'm sure that will be exactly the gap that I'm missing. So I know we're looking for opportunities to collaborate, but that's just giving me a bit of an epiphany, which is great, um. So now, brilliant, we're going to award you with a cake now, murray. So do you like cake?

Murray Cowell:

I love cake. Yeah, my, my um. As mentioned, I'm quite good at cooking. My favorite, my signature cake, is called Caramel Tres Leches, and Tres Leches is a Mexican recipe which involves making a very light cake, like an angel cake, and then soaking it in three milks, which is what Tres Leches means. I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. I don't speak Mexican Spanish. So you soak it in a combination of evaporated milk, condensed milk and cream. So this is a very rich cake. It's uh, it's extremely calorific. And then, having done that, you put another layer of cream on top of it and the caramel is added. It's this is actually a turkish variation on the Mexican recipe. You then put a layer of caramel on the top of that and everybody who's ever eaten it is just wildly, fanatically positive about it.

Chris Grimes:

I'm frenetically positive, I'm going. No, no, no. You know what you call lechee cake.

Murray Cowell:

It's a caramel tres leches.

Chris Grimes:

Tres le? No, not yet. What's the Genawati Conlecci cake? It's a caramel. Tres Leches, tres Leches. Love that Brilliant Tres Leches, awesome. And now you get to put a cherry on the Tres Leches cake. And this is stuff. Now, murray, like what's your favourite inspirational quote that's always been stuck out and pulled you towards your future.

Murray Cowell:

My favourite inspirational quote is one I've personally found very helpful because I believe it contains a lot of truth and it's quite lengthy as quotes go, and it's Roosevelt's man in the arena quote, which is a lot of people may recognise it because it's very well quoted. But he said that he was addressing, he was in France in 1910, and he made this speech. And this section of the speech, I think, is very, very relevant for all of us who are in business on our own account, because being in business is very tough and you don't have to look very far to find someone who wants to piss all over your dreams, and so what we need to counteract that is to be able to build our confidence and our belief in ourselves, and I think this quote is really helpful in that respect, and so I'm going to read that. Read it if it's okay. I've got it over here. So what? Because it's quite long and I haven't memorized it.

Murray Cowell:

So what he said was so what? Because it's quite long and I haven't memorized it. So what he said was it's not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or whether the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs, who comes short again and again because there is no effort without error and shortcoming, but who does actually strive to do the deeds, who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions and who spends himself in a worthy cause, who, at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

Chris Grimes:

What do you think of that? How do you like those apples? Phenomenal. Thank you so much for sharing that. That's great.

Murray Cowell:

I found that very inspiring because I don't want to be a cold and timid soul.

Chris Grimes:

That's really clear, and I'm just letting it hang there because that was awesome. What's the best piece of advice you've ever been given, murray?

Murray Cowell:

yeah, it's one, a piece of advice. It really stands out to me was when I first started in L&D and then I went on to work in HR. For 11 years I think I was working in HR and when I first worked in HR I didn't really understand what was going on, because everybody said things like we've got to align the HR agenda with the business agenda and I always found that to be quite a puzzling statement because I used to think, well, where's this HR agenda come from business agenda? And I always found that to be quite a puzzling statement because I couldn't. I I used to think, well, where's, where's this hr agenda come from? Because surely we work for the business, so shouldn't our agenda come from the business agenda? But that didn't seem to be very popular view in hr and I remember that there was a guy who worked at this when I was working with bread.

Murray Cowell:

There was a guy who worked at wherebread's head office called Peter Cayley and he was a Liverpudlian and he had a slight air of menace about him and I noticed that the operational managers were slightly in awe of him, even though he wasn't physically a big presence, but he just had this kind of air about him and in several meetings I was in with him he said you've got to make a commercial decision apologies to any liver puddians, you've got to make a commercial decision. He said it out the side of his mouth like that, like a gangster, um and uh. I can remember saying to him after one such meeting what do you mean by that, peter, when you say we've got to make a commercial decision? And he said well, we've got to think like business people. He said the problem with people in HR is that they think they're always thinking in terms of their values and this kind of thing.

Murray Cowell:

And I really recognize that because my manager at the time used to say we're the conscience of the business and I didn't really like the sound of that. And so him saying you've got to make a commercial decision, he was really saying you've got to think like a business person. Even if you're in HR, you've still got to think like a business person. And that stood me in great stead, particularly when I got into more senior HR positions and I was required to make commercial decisions. The advice that I really got from peter was think commercially first and then think about how, the how, the hr, what's the hr? What? What is the commercial requirement demanding of hr and not the other way around?

Chris Grimes:

lovely. It reminds me of that story, about it's quite apocryphal, but the story of uh teams that were always wrestling with decisions and choices, and then this is a Coca-Cola derived story, and then eventually the person that made the decision would say will it sell more Coke? A-cola, not Coke as in? Yes, but just the idea of the binary. It's a business decision. I really like that advice. Yeah, yeah, we're ramping up shortly to talk about Shakespeare and how you'd most like to be remembered, but just before we do that, this is the pass the golden baton moment, please. So who now? You've experienced this from within? Murray Cowell, the griswold veteran of the trading world. Who would you most like to pass the golden baton to? Who you know will most benefit from enjoy, or just like, being given a damn good listening to in this way?

Murray Cowell:

I would like to pass the golden baton to Rose Rokins, who runs an organization called Start the Conversation and she trains people in business to talk about suicide. She's a suicide prevention trainer and her belief, strongly held and amply demonstrated, is that anybody can talk about suicide and that lives can be saved by equipping people with the tools to talk about suicide. So she has 10 tools for talking about suicide that she calls TAS10, talking about suicide 10. And she is somebody who I think is on a really significant mission to get this message out to as many people as possible and she would really benefit from a good listening to, because more people need to hear about what she's doing. And just say her name one more time Rose Rokins, r-o-w-k-i-n-s.

Chris Grimes:

Wonderful. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to introduce me to Rose, thank you so much. It now, now, now, now, now, is to introduce me to rose, thank you so much. And now, that's great, by the way, and sounds very important work, it'd be my pleasure. And now, um shakespeare, inspired by all the world's change and all the better, women merely players. Seven ages of man's speech. How, when all is said and done, would you most like to be remember red?

Murray Cowell:

I would. I'd like people to remember me as someone who always had time for other people and didn't judge people, listened well and did my very best to be an all-round decent human being. That really is how I think I would want people to remember me, and I think of that as a work in in progress.

Chris Grimes:

I may not be completely there yet, but that's my aspiration is to get get to that point before I pop my clogs a worthy legacy, and I'm sure it's already very much in place and obviously, may, may, may that be many, many, many thousands of years off in the distance. Obviously, let's hope so. And now this is the lovely bit which is called show us your QR codes, please. So where can we find out all about you and the work of Accelerando on the old interweb? So, first of all, I'm going to show you this and you're going to complete the dot dot dot. So tell us all about, please, the clientfindclub.

Murray Cowell:

Yes, so that's the internet address. The URL is clientfindclub and that QR code will take you there. The Client Find Club is a club for trainers, facilitators, coaches and consultants, and we all have the same aspiration, which is to build a steady stream of incoming business by finding more new clients, and that's the lifeblood of every business. Even if you've got a good client base of repeat business, at some point some of those clients are going to stop working with you, and so everybody needs new clients coming in. And even if you've got as much work as you can cope with, there's always the possibility of working with better clients, nicer clients, happier clients, clients that are more of a joy to work with.

Murray Cowell:

So the ClientFind Club has been established in order to allow us to collaborate and learn from each other and to network together with the objective of finding more clients for our training, coaching, consultancy businesses, facilitation businesses. So you can come to the Can't Find Club and therein you will find a form where you can join the club and join in various free activities. There's a monthly business boost bulletin packed full of great business building ideas and various other opportunities, and there are also paid levels of membership, but it's free to join and there is a free level and this is a growing community of trainers and coaches and consultants and facilitators and all are welcome.

Chris Grimes:

Beautifully put if you'd like to follow murray on linkedin, here is the qr code for that, but obviously, in any case, if you're just listening and not able to see the qr code at the moment, least of all scan it you can then just look for Murray Cowell, the grizzled veteran of the training world, on LinkedIn. As this has been your moment in the sunshine of the Good Listening 2 show, murray Cowell, is there anything else you'd like to say?

Murray Cowell:

Well, I'd just like to say thank you very much for inviting me to be a guest on the podcast. I'm a big fan of the podcast. Since we first met, I've listened to it and subscribed to it and I think I really love the, the structure. It's a very good, effective way of um getting people to tell their stories and, uh, delightfully. Bonkers, I think was think was the phrase that I used to describe it.

Chris Grimes:

I love that, and thank you for saying delightfully bonkers when you did, because I really do love that and I bank that as being I like being delightfully bonkers, which you're very generous, because that gives me a perfect segue into the next thing. If you'd like a conversation about being my guest, too, on the Good Listening To show. There are several different series strands about how you can go about doing that. This has been a Brandstrand Founders Story episode, obviously, that you've heard Murray Cowell do very articulately, but there are a number of series strands, and the series strand that I'm particularly excited about at the moment that I'd love to talk to you further specifically, murray, is the Legacy Life Reflections one which is using this structure to record the story of somebody near, dear or close to you for posterity before it's too late, and that's my big development this year.

Chris Grimes:

So if you'd like to look at thegoodlisteningtoshowcom, that's where you'll find it. We're already mostly on LinkedIn. We're broadcasting all over the place, but this is my QR code specifically to join me on LinkedIn too Chris Grimes, mojo coach, motivational comedian and broadcaster. That's that. So, ladies and gentlemen, I've been Chris Grimes. Most importantly, this has been Murray Cowell from Accelerando, the grizzled veteran of the trading world. Anything else you'd like to say, murray?

Murray Cowell:

Just that. It's been a wonderful experience to be here today.

Chris Grimes:

Right back at you and thanks for listening and goodbye. You've been listening to the Good Listening To Show with me, chris Grimes. If you'd like to be in the show too, or indeed gift an episode to capture the story of someone else, with me as your host, then you can find out how care of the series strands at the goodlisteningtoshowcom website, and one of these series strands is called Brand Strand founder stories for business owners like you to be able to tell your company story, talk about your purpose and amplify your brand together. We get into the who, the what, the how, the why you do what you do and then, crucially, we find out exactly where we can come and find you, to work with you and to book your services. Tune in next week for more stories from the Clearing and don't forget to subscribe and review wherever you get your podcasts.