The Good Listening To Show: Stories of Distinction & Genius

Leadership Reflections: Business HorsePower & Learning through Nature with Julia Felton, on Leadership-Lessons-Learned from a Horse Herd! A Toast: "To Your Unbridled Success!" in the Year of the Fire Horse!

• Chris Grimes - Facilitator. Coach. Motivational Comedian

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Your Team can tell when you’re not really there and horses can tell even faster! Leadership Strategist, Speaker, Author & Equine-guided Coach Julia Felton, joins me to unpack “Business HorsePower”: the practical Leadership lessons that we can borrow from nature and horse-herd-dynamics to build trust, presence, and stronger Teams in the 21st century. We talk candidly about burnout that hides behind adrenaline, the identity wobble that shows up when the job title disappears, and why reinvention is no longer a one-off event but a constant Leadership capability.

Julia shares how time in the African bush sharpened her ability to be present and how that same discipline translates into psychological safety at work. When leaders are distracted, inconsistent, or living in the future, teams feel unsafe and performance suffers. We explore the ripple effect leaders leave behind them, the difference between doing and being, and why sustainable pace matters more than perpetual drive.

We also dig into technology and AI: the gift of lifelong learning, the curse of FOMO, and the growing trust problem when it’s hard to know what’s real. Julia introduces her diamond model of leadership for navigating uncertainty, built around attention, direction, energy, and congruence with belonging at the centre, and explains why equine-guided experiences create embodied learning that sticks long after the workshop ends.

If you enjoy leadership development, team performance, reinvention, and human-centred communication, you’ll take away clear ideas you can apply immediately. Subscribe for more stories from The Clearing, share this with a leader who needs a reset, and leave a review telling us what builds trust fastest in your workplace.

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! 

What Reinvention Means For Leaders

Chris Grimes

Welcome to another episode of the Good Listening Two Show. Your life and time is with me, Chris Crimes. Storytelling shows the features of the clearing. They're all good questions come to get answered. And all good stories come to be told. And 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 free, a juicy storytelling exercise called 54321, some alchemy, some gold, a cheeky bit of Shakespeare, and a cake. Title to play for. So, yes, welcome to the Good Listening2 Show, the life and times with me, Chris Grimes. Are you sitting comfortably? Then we shall begin. And as I like to say, boom, a welcome to the show, the Good Listening To Show. As the world turns to doo-doo, how wonderful to be in a show, which is like an oasis of kindness, where you get a day spar for your brain. And today is a very, very wonderful day where we're going to do a leadership reflections episode, where we're going to find out all about Julia Felton, who is a speaker, author, coach. And she's just told me she wants to particularly talk about being a reinvention practitioner. But this is about business horsepower. And I love your metaphors and your analogies to do with all things horse herd and how we can apply that to leadership. So welcome to the show. This is Julia Felton. I'm Chris Grimes. What's your story? Welcome to the show, Julia Felton.

Julia Felton

Chris, thank you so much for having me on the show. I'm so excited to be here and uh just love talking about what we can learn to improve businesses from the natural world and particularly from what I've learned from my herd of horses. Because I think, you know, as you said today, we are in a world of absolute chaos as we record this today.

Chris Grimes

We certainly are.

Julia Felton

Yeah, stuff going out on in the Middle East that's crazy beyond words. And, you know, in a world that's so chaotic, it's actually so nice to come back to something that is so grounded as nature is. And you know, nature's been in existence for millennia, right? It's always been here. So I've always been passionate about well, what can we learn from nature to make things better in our lives and in our world and in business?

Chris Grimes

And as Mother Nature herself would say, not my first rodeo, whatever we can do to conspire to sort of F things up monumentally. And the best ideas happen outdoors. We know that. That's the Nietzsche quote. Um, not every quote from Nietzsche is really worth quoting, but I'm delighted to have you here. And also I love the fact that you're an author and I and also the riffing you do on when you first got in touch with me, you said to your unbridled success. And I thought, well, there we are. This is, you know, I love an analogy and a metaphor myself. And and this this show is suffused with storytelling and metaphor. Absolutely. Uh and if you haven't seen the show before, I know you have, Julie, you've been doing wonderful research to get to this point. But uh, where have you been, if you've not seen it before, for those just tuning in for the first time, it's the show in which I invite movers, makers, shakers, mavericks, influencers, and also personal heroes into a clearing or serious, happy place of my guests' choosing as we all arrive to share with us their stories of distinction and genius. And this is where we're going to take a happy gallop through the clearing because this is all about horsepower and business horsepower in the company of Julia Felton. But also, as we know, this is perfect timing because it's the advent of the year of the fire horse. Yep. So if people don't have a frame of reference for you, Julia, what's your favorite way of saying or describing, and by all means go into reinvention practitioning at this point? But what's your favorite way of saying, you know, hello, what do you do? What's Julia Felton all about?

Julia Felton

I describe myself really as a leadership and teamship strategist and advisor. And I'm really all about how do we reinvent the way that we run and lead businesses to make them fit for purpose of the 21st century. I think we've the bit the world, I think we can all agree, has evolved and changed and more rapidly in the last five years than ever. You know, technology infrastructure is, you know, on an exponential curve. And there is a need for us to continually reinvent to stay current. And we've seen all the businesses that have failed to reinvent that have fallen by the wayside. And, you know, when we look at the number of businesses in either the FTSE 100 or the standard and pause, you know, that number is, I think last time I looked, it was something like only 20% of the businesses that existed something like 50 or 60 years ago. So there's so much change going on here. And businesses that don't reinvent and stay current are the ones that are going to fall by the wayside, you know. Think blockbuster videos, you know, Kobak, Nokia. You know, we all had a Nokia phone, right? And everyone thought they'd last forever. And, you know, now they're a bit of an antique, and you could probably get a bit of money at an auction house for them.

Chris Grimes

Well, indeed. And also there's that lovely story of Nokia's technology equivalent of the time, was how they landed on the moon using the equivalent technology. So, as you say, there is an exponential acceleration of everything. And of course, the conceit of what I'm up to also is to keep it human, to keep it warm, to keep it kind, and keep it connecting. And I love the fact that you're talking about horse herd mentality. I know you're doing it literally in some of your team development, but also you're using the analogy and the metaphor in how you write about how to use the herd mentality for leadership as well.

Julia Felton

Absolutely. Yeah, because I think there's just so much we can learn from the natural world. And yeah, you're exactly right. I curate leadership experiences and teamwork experiences and bring people out to partner with my horses in order to learn from them. Because the horses never sugarcoat the feedback, right? They just call it as it is. And as I've discovered, your team are a lot more polite and don't really say that. But yeah, all the same analogies exist back in business. You know, we look to nature, nature is totally interconnected and interdependent, and exactly so is our business. And I think so many of us in business just think it's all about me, and they forget that actually it's all about we, and nature does that so beautifully, and you know, nature really understands about the ebbs and flows. You know, everything in nature is cyclical. Yeah. And as leaders, what do we see leaders do all the time? Put their foot to the metal, driving fast, fast, fast, and then they burn out. And you know, I think it's really interesting, you know, if you think about your heart rhythm, right? It flatlines when it's time to say goodbye. And yet most leaders, yes, most leaders are trying to do that all the time, and they wonder why they're burning out because they haven't adopted all these natural rhythms that exist and think about well, I need times of peak performance and times of rest and recalibration.

Chris Grimes

And if I may, I know in your own founder stroke DNA source work story, you got going on the open road of galloping alongside horses metaphorically, because of a corporate burnout of your own. So I hope that you'll cover some of that in the fact, as I say, you've you've you've not just an expert in this, you've also got the t-shirt because you've directly lived it.

Julia Felton

Yeah, and I didn't even know I was burnt out until I stopped. You know, I think this is sometimes the thing. You're running on so much adrenaline. And it was only when I stopped, and I'm sure we'll put talk about it later, when I took a sabbatical from corporate, and I remember that first morning swing on a ranch in uh in Colorado at the time, and I was like, I'm just burnt out. And but the other thing that was really interesting was the fact that when we are on this kind of corporate rap race, we're in so much structure, and all of a sudden, there I was in the middle of America with nothing to do for a year. You know, I could just do what I wanted to do. And I I was on this ranch and I was helping at a horse rescue, that's what I went to do. And I said to them, Well, what time do I need to get up in the morning to feed the horses? They're like, whatever. And that whole structure was just stripped away. And then I was like, Who am I? What's my identity? Who am I? So, really interesting when you take away the container that you're in, what happens and how things show up differently.

Chris Grimes

And I love the fact that your inner genius on the day and the point of burnout had you on a swing at a ranch because you just knew that you're going to travel towards horses in order to acknowledge the burnout.

Julia Felton

Yeah, absolutely.

Chris Grimes

And then your future, in terms of, you know, we are where we are because of choices that we make as to what vista we contemplate. There you are, your future begins as you look out onto the ranch. Absolutely. Yeah. So shall we get you on the open road of the structure?

Julia Felton

Absolutely. Let's go.

Chris Grimes

It's going to involve a clearing, a tree, a lovely juicy storytelling exercise called 54321. 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. So it's absolutely all to play for. And of course, alongside the squirrels, there's definitely going to be some horses. We know that.

Julia Felton

Absolutely.

Chris Grimes

So, first of all, it's all energetically uh takes place in a clearing or serious happy place of you, Julia Felton, my guests clearing. So, where is what is your clearing or serious happy place, Julia Felton?

Julia Felton

So this was really difficult actually to come up with, Chris, because there's two and they're they're different but the same. So the first one is Africa. I love to be out on the African plains. Uh, one of my favorite places is Okavanga Delta, right in the middle of nature. And the second is just being with my herd of horses. I mean, ideally, I'd have my horses in the middle of the Okavanga Delta, but probably not a safe place for them to live, right?

Chris Grimes

So Well, I love the fact you've gone for two. And why don't we do the perfect hybrid? Let's have the say the name of the gorgeous valley again.

Julia Felton

It's the Okavanga Delta in Botswana.

Chris Grimes

Lovely. And there you are with your herd of horses. I have experienced horse whispering before where a practitioner called Andrew McFarland used to turn up and just be attributed horses to work with, and he'd select them out from the herd to work with them. Or do you prefer to work with your own trusted squad, your trusted advisor squad?

Julia Felton

Yeah, so I do know Andrew, and I have worked with Andrew as well. Like Andrew, I can go and work with horses anywhere all over the world, but it's always more fun doing them with mine, right? Um, that's why that's why I invested, that's why I built up my little herd of horses. I did have four until the end of the last year, because unfortunately, two passed away. But I loved it because I had, and people listening might be familiar with profiling and disc profiling, and I had one of each type. And I love having my own herd when you can have that dynamic of having different types. And I had two boys and two girls very deliberately, because I think clients are drawn to different energies of horses and different personalities, and it was always fun to see which clients, based on their profile, who which horse they chose, because often we take we gravitate to somebody or something that is very similar to us, and of course, that's one of the problems in recruitment in business. We hire people like us, that's not necessarily the right person for the job.

Chris Grimes

Wonderful stuff. So we're gonna go for both then. I love the fact that you're with your own herd. And have you have you redisced, if you'll pardon that particular expression, your herd? Were you still down a couple?

Julia Felton

We are still unfortunately just down to two after the two passed away last year. They were they were old, but they were very trusted advisors to me, and the reasons I set up the business. So, no, down to two. But I I've got to tell you, Chris, I'm always on my phone going, mmm, and I'm keep getting drawn to get some more. So we'll we'll just see.

Chris Grimes

And I love the the notion of teamwork to make the dream work and the cogs of rapport. You're actually two horses down at the moment, which is a classic metaphor and analogy for how you know what teams do as they're you know, forming, norming, storming, performing, but then this disforming, what happens when you know the nature of change? Shit happens, things move on, and the world changes.

Julia Felton

Yeah, no, and you know, as I think I shared with you off there before, you know, I've actually been exploring ways of or how do how can I partner and leverage with other establishments that have got horses? So if I only have two for the time being, then there's other venues I can work in. So I've just formed, I think, a really great strategic partnership with another venue that's got a wealth of horses I can partner with. So, and that's what we have to do in business, isn't it, isn't it? It's a bit like, oh, this is the new freelancer or contractor I need to get in to cover a gap in the business. And you might have them short term, you might have them long term, depending on what it is. So, you know, we've always got to be really innovative and think, well, how do how do we cover all bases?

Chris Grimes

And in its nutshell, my sort of interpretation, this is people whispering through horse whispering.

Julia Felton

Yeah, absolutely. And I I want to be it's really clear. I don't typically work with horse people. This is all about how can the horses help leaders become better at developing their teams and their own leadership skills.

Chris Grimes

Yes.

Julia Felton

Horses are the the vehicle that we do it with. I just think it's a lot more fun than sitting in a classroom doing a whole load of PowerPoint stuff. So I'm always trying to bring material to life, literally through the experiences with the horses, but also through any, like you said, the analogies and the metaphors I'm using are always driving back to that as well.

Chris Grimes

And I'm just remembering I ought to um mention somebody called Kate Roberts, who first introduced me to Andrew McFarlane, who gave me my first experience. And I would love to revisit a horse arena with you, Julia, because I've just done I'm just sort of saying it out loud. Oh, I'd like to invite myself on to experience it then. Yeah, please do. Wonderful. So uh again, just to deliberately reincorporate, where again in Africa are we?

Julia Felton

It's the beautiful Oka Vanga Delta in Botswana. And for anyone who's watching, what's it, Big Cats 24-7 on BBC, that's where it's filmed.

Chris Grimes

And and Gordon Buchanan, who may or may not be that particular presenter, has been in my show before as well.

Julia Felton

He is indeed in the show, yes.

Burnout Identity And The Ranch Reset

Chris Grimes

Wonderful. So there we are. Now I'm going to arrive with a tree in your clearing, which I hope that won't disrupt the horses too much. And I'm going to shake your tree to see which storytelling apples fall out. I've got a comedy, a couple of comedy props. Here are me apples. How'd you like these apples? And this is where you've been kind enough to have interpreted four things that have shaped you, three things that inspire you, two things that never fail to grab your attention, Julia Felton. That's where I'll talk about squirrels. And then the one is a quirky or unusual fict about you. We couldn't possibly know about you until you tell us. The invitation is to go where you like, how you like, as deep as you like, wherever you like, into this structure as we uh unpack the exciting world of business horsepower and horse whispering, if you like. So over to you to interpret the shaking of the canopy of your tree as you see fit. So, first of all, four things that have shaped you, Julia.

Julia Felton

Okay, so first thing that shaped me, of course, is my horses. And I think most people assume when they meet me that I've had horses all my life, and that was never actually the case. I first went riding quite a young age. My mum took me, and then I helped at a riding stables, but then I got sent off to boarding school. So they kind of disappeared from my life for a long time. Then one of my early jobs was at Glen Eagles Hotel, and they had an equestrian center there, so I got back into riding. And then again, I didn't really ride until a friend of mine said, Well, let's go on a ranching holiday in America.

Chris Grimes

Was this before the burnout? Or now you're mentioning the before just before the burnout, actually, just before the speaking of the connection of Colorado and this holiday. And what a great friend to give you that nudge to go on that holiday.

Julia Felton

I I'd always wanted to go on a ranching holiday, and so we came up and we went two years, first year Wyoming, second year Montana. And yeah, it was just amazing. But as a result of going on the second experience to Montana, we were going up into the hills to bring down the cattle for the winter. So it was going to be quite cold and I needed a lot of equipment. And I went to a riding shop to buy some kind of, you know, I was gonna say rubber gloves, but you know, neoprene gloves in order to ride and keep myself dry. And I met a girl there and I was asking about where I could go riding because I'm conscious I hadn't ridden for about 10 years at this point. I'm about to go to America and I ride like 10, 12 hours a day. I'm like, well, I'm a bit unfit and I need a bit of practice. And she said for me, you can come and ride my horse. And I was like, really? And I still remembered Chris, even to this day, quaking, you know, calling her the next morning. Were you serious about that offer? And I went and she let me ride one of her retired horses to begin with. And then I graduated. And she had this horse there called Toby that she didn't really get on with. And I definitely think there's horse people combinations and people-people combinations as well. So she didn't really match with this horse, but I really gelled with him. And in the end, I purchased him from her, and he became my first horse, and he was the founder and the reason that we set up business horsepower. And it was interesting because at the time I didn't realize how much my horses were teaching me about becoming a better leader. And it was only later on, once I'd left the corporate world and I discovered leadership development through horses, I was like, oh my God, I started to get the manual of, oh, that's what they were teaching me that I didn't understand at the time.

Chris Grimes

So there's a delicious irony in the adage you can lead a horse to water, but actually not everybody can.

Julia Felton

So I mean it's it was just really interesting that, you know, reflecting back on it, you know, the good old Steve Jobs, you know, you only know about stuff when you reflect back on it. My horses were teaching me the best leadership and teamwork and communication lessons that I ever needed, but I didn't know them at the time. And in fact, a lot of those are distilled into my first book, Unbridled Success, where I talk about the leadership lessons that the horses have taught me, and Toby in particular taught me. So I think my horses would be the first thing that's really shaped me. And I think like so many things in life.

Chris Grimes

May I ask about the gender of your perfect horse herd? Because you've got Toby, and it sounds like you probably need, I'm just making an assumption here, it might be two male, two female horses. I don't know.

Julia Felton

So Toby was my first horse, and he unfortunately got a bit of an illness and I couldn't ride him. He just arthritis, it was a kind of arthritis-related thing. So then I got another horse called Charlie, who was a boy, an ex-race horse, had Charlie and he was going to be my riding horse. And then unfortunately, turned out he was massively arthritic as well. We didn't know that at the time. He he didn't appear because he was so arthritic on all legs, he looked like he was what we call stable level. Um, in fact, you know, the vet said no, he's got a lot of arthritis, and so I ended up purchasing from him for a pound because otherwise, unfortunately, he was going to get a bullet because he couldn't be ridden. And then I thought, well, it would be kind of nice for my clients. I've now got two male horses, two geldings, to have some female energy. And I said to the universe, oh, well, how can we achieve that? And then the same friend who I bought Toby from was running a halfway house to look after horses that had been rescued. And these particular ponies were actually found on the motorway in Kent. There was a group of eight of them. She didn't have enough space to look after them, so I ended up taking on Bracken and Thistle, and that was in 2011, and they are still with me today. They eventually got gifted to me, and they were called Bracken and Thistle because they were rescued on Burns night. So they everything had a Scottish name.

Chris Grimes

Lovely story. I'm so glad I asked you that extra question. Lovely. So we're in the canopy talking about shapage. So um, anything else you want to say about the there are three other possible shapages as well.

Africa Presence And The Leadership Ripple

Julia Felton

Yeah, so I think Africa, I was Africa, I've always been drawn to wildlife, and I'd always wanted to go. We'd never gone on a family holiday to Africa while I was growing up. So for my 30th, I did my first ever overland trip to Kenya and Tanzania. So you go on, you know, one of these big trucks with, you know, the dozen of other people. And I was a bit reticent, if I'm honest, Chris. You know, I was at uh Arthur Anderson at the time, and you know, I've got my corporate job, and I was a bit of a hairdryer, you know, I preferred the first finer things in life. I'd never really been camping before. I wasn't quite sure how I'd get on, but I absolutely loved it. So I first went there and then subsequently went back to Africa a few other times. I did a trip the whole of way from um from Cape Town all the way up to Vic Falls. So that was like a month on an overland truck going through Namibia, Botswana, Zambia. Absolutely incredible. Love that. And then have spent, as we'll discover a little bit later on, other times in the bush just outside of Johannesburg as well. But yeah, I I love being out in the African bush, and I think it it teaches you so much about resilience. And for me, my real aha moment came out in the African bush. And I don't know if you want me to share that now or later or sure. Okay. So there I am in Africa, and I went to Africa as part of my sabbatical after I'd been at this horse rescue in Colorado. I was in Namibia at the Elephant Human Relations Association, and what we did, we spent one week building stone walls to protect all the um water pumps so that the elephants didn't come and knock them over and the locals still had access to water. And then next week we went on elephant. And I remember one night we're sitting outside a campfire and we're all chatting. And one of the girls there says to me, Who's been swimming with dolphins? And I went, Yeah, I have. And then that's this was the question that really changed my life. She said, Tell me about the experience. What was it like? No idea. No idea. I know I went. I went for my friend's 30th birthday. We went to Mexico. We swam with dolphins. But I can't tell you how I felt, what the experience was like, even really what we did there. And it was a real wake-up call for me because I realized I was going through life with this tick list, you know, this is on my bucket list. Do this, do this, do this. And I was doing it all, but I wasn't present to what was going on around me. And that's what prompted me then to spend more time in Africa because I figured if I wanted to get really present in my life, I need to go and live in the bush. So I went to live in the African bush for three months and had to learn to be present because if I wasn't, I was going to be some lion's dinner, right? So I think you know, Africa's really told me the importance of being grounding, being present, really paying attention to everything that's going on and really having appreciation for everything. You know, when you're out in the bush, every single sound matters, and everything's there for a purpose. And you know, the birds will start tweeping because you know they're giving you a warning sign that maybe a lion's coming or a leopard's coming. And everything in nature happens for a reason, and there's no wasted time, energy, or resources in nature. How opposite is that to the business world where we waste time, energy, and resources day in, day out, and none of us really appreciate the impact that we have on everything else about us. So I often talk about the ripple impact because you know, in nature, everything's happening for a reason, it's interconnected and interdependent. And yet, in the workplace, each of us as a leader is leaving what I call a leadership wake behind us, a leadership ripple. And we're either creating a positive one or a negative one. But most people are unaware of the you know, people we've seen people, haven't we, that just walk through an office and leave a train of destruction behind them and they're oblivious to it.

Chris Grimes

In personal impact terms, I call that the afterburn.

Julia Felton

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Chris Grimes

And that can be good, bad, crap, or indifferent, actually.

Julia Felton

Absolutely.

Chris Grimes

So some people celebrate when leaders leave the room rather than celebrate when they enter the room.

Julia Felton

Absolutely, yeah. So I think that that's you know, Africa taught me a lot of these lessons about nature. And of course, being out in the bush, really understanding a lot about the natural medicines, you know, the bushmen know what herbs to eat for different illnesses and how to treat things. And I became really fascinated with that and actually studied zoo pharmacognosi, which is you know, treating I treat my horses with you know natural oils and stuff like that, and natural remedies that they could get, and really understanding the importance of how nature actually has the solution to everything if we're just brave enough to look for it.

Chris Grimes

And and the bushcraft sort of way of operating, then winding forward to the idea of horses actually force you to be present because if you are elsewhere, they'll just zone out. So that there's this it's it's about empathy, isn't it? They they are true empaths to what you bring into the arena in which you're working with them.

Mentors Trust And Intrapreneurship

Julia Felton

Well, absolutely. And you know, they're masters at reading energy, and you know, as a prey animal, particularly for the horses, they will follow you, they will follow anyone, but only if you're paying enough attention. Because if they're looking to me, they need to know that I know where the mountain lion is. Uh, fortunately, there's no mountain lions in Yorkshire, but you know, the analogy is still the same. You know, that they're like, where is the mountain lion that's about to kill me? And if Julia's on her mobile phone or Julia's thoughts are in the future or in the past and doesn't know what's happening, how can she keep me safe? She can't, so I'm not going to be a follower of hers. But again, we have a similar kind of dynamic going on in the workplace where actually our team members want to feel safe with us and they want us, they want to know that we've got their backs and we know what's going on so that they can follow us effectively in the workplace, because otherwise they they don't have that level of psychological safety.

Chris Grimes

And then I was going to mention that that's exactly what that is describing. It's the true nature of proper psychological safety, not just as a buzzword, but as a testament to being able to be truly present and and you know have people's backs and keep people safe. Yes. Great shapage so far. So next shapage.

Julia Felton

Number three, kind of related to Africa. It's about travel. I've always been really fortunate when I was younger. We traveled a lot on holiday, and I've always been fascinated by different countries and different cultures. So I think travel is something that's really shaped me. But along with that, was the travel actually helped me decide to take a career in the hospitality industry. And I think my hospitality experience is also something that's really shaped me. I love to be a mind host and entertain people, and I love going on traveling to different trips. And I'm just really passionate about the hotel sector. And even now, I still do some work in that sector because it's it's such a great place to meet people, it's vibrant, it's it's a little bit addictive, actually. And I know people that have worked in the hospitality sector and then stepped away, and they're like, there's a buzz and an adrenaline about being in that space and creating amazing experiences for people that I just love. So I think my whole career in the hospitality industry has also really shaped me. And I think being in an industry that is, let's face it, not hugely well paid, but early on in your career, they give you huge levels of responsibility. So I was really fortunate. You know, my first role out of uni was I went to the Caribbean, to St. John's Island in the US Virgin Islands. I'm deputy front of house manager. We're reopening the hotel after Hurricane Hugo. I mean, who gets that opportunity at sort of 21 to do that, right? So the hospitality industry has been really great in terms of giving me lots of opportunities to learn leadership at a really young age because they just pretty much drop you in there, get on with it. But that was amazing and it gave me some great opportunities.

Chris Grimes

Of course, the the catering uh whole sector reminds me of the notion herding cats, you know, keeping customers happy can be a bit like herding cats. Oh, absolutely. Wonderful, and now shapage number four, please. And I've got a bell somewhere. All right, if I keep talking too long, sorry. No, no, no, not at all. That just me a bit of comedy value of keeping the structure going. Shapage number four, please.

Julia Felton

Well, and number four, ringing the bell. How appropriate that? Because I think the fourth thing I would like to share that shaped me has been my school and my schooling. And you know, obviously the bell rings at the end of lessons and stuff like that, or at least uh in the era I was in school, did we used to have the school bell to signal the end of a lesson? And you know, I I actually feel myself very fortunate. Some people say perhaps I wasn't, but you know, I was actually sent to boarding school just before my 11th birthday, and actually boarding school was great for me. I absolutely loved it. I think one of the things it really taught me was massive independence. So I'm fiercely independent nowadays, perhaps too much so at times, but it's made me really resourceful to just get on with things. You know, when you're put into that environment at a young age, you just need to get on and get, you know, make friends, get on with people. You know, you've not really got that much of a support network around you per se, because your family aren't directly there. And the other thing I loved about boarding school was the comradery. And, you know, talking about the teamwork, I was in all the school teams, and I really, really love that community of getting people together. So I think that was that was really instrumental for me as well in in being part of the country or the uh globe where you're at boarding school? In Hertfordshire in the UK, and a girls' boarding school. So that's always interesting when you start there, single sex. And then I went to a boys' boarding school for the sixth one for the last two years in Essex, in Falstead, and yeah, loved both of those experiences. And I think that opened up opportunities for me personally that perhaps I wouldn't have if I'd been at a day school because you know, obviously, we went to school six days a week. We used to have to do Saturday morning work, but you know, there was so much opportunity to get involved in sport and all the sporting teams, and they're all there. And, you know, I was also in the drama club and did drama O-level, and all of these things that were just kind of on your doorstep. So I feel really fortunate and blessed that I had that opportunity to do that.

Chris Grimes

May I ask you if you have siblings as well, Julia?

Julia Felton

Yeah, I have a brother and he was at Fausted, so I joined him in the sixth form, and he had been there. You know, the only downside for me was it meant that I had thought I had just persuaded my dad to take a share for me in a pony called Fudge that summer, just before I went to boarding school. And instead I got sent to boarding school, and unfortunately, I didn't get my horse, and that's why I didn't have horses all my life, right?

Chris Grimes

Ironically, that that fudged that idea. See what I did there.

Julia Felton

It did fudge that idea, yeah. So yeah, that would that was the only downside of it from my perspective.

Chris Grimes

But um But again, a deep lesson in adaptability, and if a plot twist happens, how do you adapt? Which is a testament to resilience as well.

Julia Felton

Yeah, absolutely. And I think I'm really resilient and adapt. And I I actually love and embrace change, whereas you know, some people are just like, oh my god. And you know, I remember when I moved to Yorkshire and my friends going, why are you moving up there? I'm like, well, if it doesn't work, I can just come back, right? I'm I'm quite happy to, you know, I got on a plane in my second year of university and got a scholarship to an American university. And I'm like, amazing. Everyone's like, Oh, you're going to America for 18 months. I was like, Yeah, happy days. So I've always been one to be a bit of an adventurer and go exploring and try these opportunities when they present themselves.

Chris Grimes

And again, it's bushcraft that's really set you up really well subsequently. It's just going in the bush and being hyper, hyper aware and hyper-sensitive to being present. Yeah, it's the lovely through line that I'm definitely hearing. Okay, now we're on to three things that inspire you, uh, Julia Felton, uh, managing director of of course business horsepower.

Julia Felton

Okay, things that inspire me. How do you want to think about this? I've I found this quite tricky. I am I think my mentors, I've been really fortunate to have some amazing mentors and bosses in my life. An amazing gentleman called Frank Croston, who was um probably my first real mentor, and he saw the potential in me. And we were working at a consultancy firm that unfortunately the Frank and the other partners did try to do a management buy-out and it didn't work. Frank ended up at Arthur Anderson and then bought me in and gave me the opportunity to set up my own business division within Arthur Anderson. So I became an entrepreneur within Arthur Anderson, creating a really specialist hospitality data analytics team.

Chris Grimes

Yeah.

Julia Felton

I was collecting data from hotels across the world and analyzing it, creating reports back for the industry on what would now really, Chris, nowadays be called big data.

Chris Grimes

Yeah.

Julia Felton

In the days before big data and in the days before the internet. So I think Frank gave me that opportunity to create a business unit from an idea on a piece of paper and grow it to the market leader. And alongside him was his boss, who was our big visionary called Alex Kiriakides. And Alex, and working for Alex was amazing because I'd sit in meetings and he'd just go, oh, Julia will just sort that out for you. And Julia sorting that out for you was, oh, Julia will take all our data analytics online onto the internet. And this, you know, you've got to think this is like 97, 98. And I remember us, you know, I had no idea what the internet was. You know, we're building these websites, and in those days, to publish something took six hours. You'd make one change on your website. We had to wait six hours for it to process before it went up. I remember doing a launch for our new platform in Vienna on dial up, you know, internet. So, you know, Alex really pushed me out of my comfort zone because did I think I could do any of that? Absolutely not. And Alex is just like, oh yeah, Julia will do it. So I was always problem solving to get things done. And, you know, really fortunate because all of that led to me creating this incredible business unit for them, 35 people in my team across the globe, you know, working in a complex matrix instruct uh structure.

Chris Grimes

Yeah.

Julia Felton

And yeah, so I think, you know, Alex and Frank for, you know, almost giving giving me the reins to just get on and do it, right?

Chris Grimes

Trusted advisor, which of course you um invoke within the horsehead mentality as well. How can you become a truly present trusted advisor to the herd that you're in amongst? Also, thank you for the word intrapreneur that I've forgotten. It's a wonderful description of how to do something entrepreneurial within a much bigger entity that's already established.

Julia Felton

And it's great because you've got that support, right? We all know that being a business owner by ourselves is really tough. You know, it's really lonely. Whereas, you know, there I was, I've got the structure, I've got a lot of the infrastructure around me, I've got team, I've got people, you know, I've got sounding boards. So yeah, really, a really a great opportunity there.

Chris Grimes

Wonderful. Uh second inspiration.

Julia Felton

Second information. I think I'd still go back to horses and nature again. I know we've already spoken a lot about them, but I think the more that I get connected to nature and understand about nature and understand the ebbs and flows of nature and how nature works, I just think there's so much we can learn from nature to run business differently. So, you know, in nature, there aren't really any hierarchies, you know, we've not really got this kind of going on. Everything is is working cooperation and collaboration. You know, you think about the trees, we talk about the worldwide web, you know, but the web of roots, you know, the root system of how all the trees join together and work together. And I think nature's just such a great example of how we need to collaborate together to get stuff done. Yeah. And it's something that's so missing in a lot of businesses today, and you know, in politics, in globally, around the world, people everyone's still, it's all about me. There's a very ego mindset out there. And you know, I think when I look to nature, I see it's how do we all collaborate to make this work together? And I was about to say there's no competition in nature, but you know, there's a natural order in nature, but there's not really competition in in the same way that we have it in in the business world.

Chris Grimes

Well, there's the parallel on the food chain competition, and of course, that's what corporates end up doing. They're all in they're all in the sort of Red Sea or the Blue Sea, either competing for the same trophies, prizes, cash pot, whatever it might be. So again, great analogies here.

Julia Felton

And and you know, nature's just full of abundance, right? You know, there isn't this scarcity mindset of this needs to be my client. The lion doesn't, you know, the lion doesn't kill that impala. Well, there'll be another one, right? And we know that lions only get, I think it's what, less than 50% of their kill, 30% of their kill. So, you know, they keep trying and trying again until they get to the resolution they want. Whereas I think in the human world, we tend to give up with things way too easily and we've not got that tenacity and resilience that we see.

Chris Grimes

In all of your love and joy of nature, it's very interesting that of all the species, it is the horse that has become the main conduit for you. Because I know there are lots of analogies of how animals behave.

Julia Felton

Yeah, and I think the horses, because they were obviously a natural passion of mine. I bought my first horse, Toby, from my friend Joe during that Enron crisis. So for people listening that don't know, Arthur Anderson, one of the top five accountancy firms in the world, 120,000 people got embroiled in a uh scandal with a company called Enron, a big oil giant in uh in Texas. And as a result of that, the whole company imploded. And it's such an interesting example of the loss of trust, right, Chris? And you know, trust is something I talk all a lot about in my work. Because in the Enron example, you know, why would a company let us audit their accounts when we had just been indicted for being irresponsible with another company's account? So that's really what happened. The whole company fell apart because all of our clients lost trust with us and moved to other auditors.

Chris Grimes

And in terms of reinvention practitioning, trust is the currency of everything at the moment because there's so much, there's so much competition and so much information out there with AI accelerating all of that. Trust is the absolute, you know, premium imperative.

Julia Felton

Yeah, you know, if we look at work of Patrick Lezione and others, you know, trust underpins everything. Trust, all our relationships in the office or in life are based on trust. And without trust, nothing else happens. And it's really interesting that for me right now, we have such low levels of trust. You know, you only have to look on the internet, is something true or is it fake? You know, we just don't know. So having things that are really genuine, and you spoke in the intro about kind of the human connection, right? This is what we need more than ever because that's when we trust people, when we get to know like, know like and trust them for a reason. Yes. And we see genuine, this is this is genuine Julia and genuine Chris, not AI Julia and AI Chris today.

Chris Grimes

And and to to know, uh, trust and follow is the really important thing as well when you're talking about the analogy of horse herd mentality as well.

Julia Felton

And I think you know, with the horses, what then as I I started to study the more I spent time in America with an amazing mentor called Carolyn Resnick, and she learned all of her lessons about how horses interact from sitting at a water hole and watching the horses there. What's so interesting is when you study them, you see these things about you know, horses, the number one thing they do, they hang out together doing something, and they hang out together doing nothing. So they understand the importance of that nothingness, you know, and I equate that to sitting on the couch with your friend, you know, just watching a movie, not doing anything. But often we're just like do, do, do, do, do. And you know, Carolyn taught me, she said, you need to spend as much time with your horse doing nothing as doing something.

Chris Grimes

So rather than do, do, do, do, do, it's B, B, B, B, B, just B.

Julia Felton

Yeah, absolutely. And you know, that's that was a big lesson that I took away that I need to remember. Because leadership is all right, how do we be as a how do we be a leader, right? It's not about do, do, do, do, do. You know, if we would be to be really pedantic, leaders be, managers do. Um, and managers get things done, but it's the leader sets the context and the shape for everything.

Chris Grimes

It's how they and it reminds me of that delicious Maya Angelou quote about people not remembering what you say, but they remember how you make them feel. So, this is about how how, as a leader, you make others feel, and horses, of course, are deeply empathic. So, yes, all great resonance. Third inspiration.

Julia Felton

Well, I think the third thing that inspires me is technology, but technology to the point that it enables us to become lifelong learners. When I started out my career, we didn't even have email as you know, the internet was just coming into play. And now I think it's great because we can learn whatever we want to learn. And I think that that's amazing. And it, you know, it just makes me become a lifelong learner of everything. So I think that's one thing that inspires me. The ability for everything to become so easily accessible, both a blessing and a curse, as we'll see. But you can just find out and learn whatever you want to learn, and there's no restrictions. When I was doing my university dissertation, there I was going to the library and having to order and research papers and everything else. And now you just sit down and you tap it on your keyboard, or you know, you decide that you want to make a new recipe for dinner tonight, and you just you go in, you find the recipe, you can make a new meal, right?

Chris Grimes

So the the biggest threat, as we know, is about the equivalent of no more map reads anymore because GPS will do it for you. So critical thinking is the big, big threat because why would I need to think when AI can do it for me? That that may be slightly Luddite in what I've just said, but there's something about keeping it human, keeping it warm. And my favorite quote, it's all about the relationship, stupid.

Technology AI And What We Lose

Julia Felton

Yeah. And and and I love what you said there about the GPS because it reminds me when I just moved out and I was living with Carolyn Resnick in Escondido, which is near San Diego, and I had satnav in my hire car for the first time. And I remember using it, and I was like, I hate this because spatially I didn't know if I was going south or north or east or west, right? I was just mindlessly following it. And I think, yeah, that is the challenge with things like sat navs and what a great metaphor for people's lives, right? How many people are mindlessly following a sat nav, not where they want to go. And I think, you know, if I was to be really honest, that's what my life did for a long time. I was following the sat nav that my dad had programmed in, bless him, about what he wanted me to do because I wanted I'd wanted to be a writing instructor when I was younger, and I was told go get a proper job. And so I went. And got a job in the hospitality industry because it was the kind of the only other industry I knew.

Chris Grimes

And I was kind of doing my j my dad's you know version of what would be an amazing GPS as opposed to your own compass pointing true north, which now it is, your own compass is now pointing true north. And you've got the bushcraft credentials to prove it. I love that. Yeah. And now uh we're on to two squirrels. You know, what are your two monsters of distraction? I don't mind at all if they happen to be horses, but they don't have to be. So, what are your two monsters of distraction? This is borrowed from the film Up, where um the dog goes, Oh, squirrels. Now we've all got two monsters of distraction and more, things that never fail to distract us, irrespective of anything else that's going on for us. So, Julia Felton, what would you say your two squirrels might be?

Julia Felton

So, my first squirrel is a bit related to what we've just said, is actually technology and that FOMO, fear of missing out, right? Because I think you know, we've all been guilty of getting sucked into that drinking phone thing for hours on end. So I think that's for me is one of the massive, massive distractions that I can end up with.

Chris Grimes

So the rabbit holes of technology is your squirrel, is what you're saying.

Julia Felton

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Because it, you know, in some ways the squirrel uh the the technology is so perfectly, you know, do you go down one moron and now it goes to another and now it goes to another, and it never stops, right? And you can just keep going and keep going and keep going. So I think that for me is is one of my squirrels, and related to that, we touched on it earlier, is AI, you know, AI as in the fakeness of it. That's the thing that just drives me insane because nowadays it's so difficult to know what is real and what is false.

Chris Grimes

Yeah.

Julia Felton

Interesting, I was talking with a friend last night who was um who was saying somebody they know had bought a very, very expensive villa in Tenerife as a second property. They were in the UK at Christmas and their ring doorbell went. And it's the people at the ring doorbell in Tenerife. Somebody had cloned that whole property in Tenerife and sold it to these poor families for their Christmas vacation. And the guy's like, This is my property, but it's not on Airbnb or booking.com or whatever, and no, you can't stay there. And but the problem is AI is so real nowadays that you just don't know what is fake and what isn't. And I think that's one of my massive bugbears, is is how do you know? Because it's so sophisticated now.

Safari Guide Surprise And Purpose

Chris Grimes

Yes, and that's a caution to us all in what you've just rather profoundly said just there. So again, it the the fakery is what is is the biggest. There's yin-yang, there's there's yeah, there's the equivalent of of the World Wide Web versus the dark web. There's definitely an AI yin-yang uh at play. Great squirrels, great rabbit holes, and now a quirky or unusual fict about you. We couldn't possibly know about you until you tell us, Julia Felton.

Julia Felton

Well, you might have guessed it, but I'm now a qualified safari guide.

Chris Grimes

Boom! I didn't know that.

Julia Felton

No, so I spent I went to Africa and I spent, you know, to figure out how do I get really present. I was like, well, let's learn something about the African bush. So yeah, I spent three and a half, four months in the African bush, and at the same time I trained to be a safari guide. So I've never done it, it was more for my own personal knowledge.

Chris Grimes

But I I've been biting my lip a bit because what's so resonant about what you've been describing about Africa is I grew up in Uganda between my being two and a half and ten.

Julia Felton

Oh wow.

Chris Grimes

And so um it's it's all incredibly relatable geographically, just you never forget going on safari. But you know, as I was only coming up to 10 when Idi Amin overthrew Milton Nabote, I'm pretty sure that my experience is equivalent to your having first swung with dolphins. I I would love to go back, and in fact, I did um in about 2014, I was working for Barclays uh near in Kampala, and I did take a trip with a taxi driver 50 miles to where I was.

Julia Felton

Oh wow.

Chris Grimes

It was absolutely extraordinary, like a ghost of my own past to go and revisit and find the pathways.

Julia Felton

Yeah. I have been to Ugandan and seen the gorillas too, and that's amazing. So yeah, lovely.

Chris Grimes

It's on the border with Congo as well as where the gorillas are. I know. Wonderful. So we have shaken your tree, hurrah! Next, we stay in the clearing, move away from the tree, and now we're going to talk about alchemy and gold, which is really all about your purpose imperative, Julia. You've been giving us gold by the bucket load in any case. But when you're at purpose and in flow, what are you absolutely happiest doing in what you're here to reveal to the world?

Julia Felton

Yeah, for me, it's facilitating workshops, partnering with the horses to really help leaders get better insight into how to build trust, how to build connection, how to be present, to read body language, right? The horse, you know, the horses can't talk to you. We've got to read the horse's body language. And to really start understanding, I share a model with my clients about how to lead through uncertainty, which is based on how horses operate. It's called the diamond model of leadership because you know, in a horse herd, there's always health, harmony, and unity. Diamond, yep.

Chris Grimes

Yeah.

Julia Felton

So if you actually look at a herd of wild horses, they they move in a diamond model. There's a horse, there's a lead mare at the front, there's a stallion at the back, and then we call them sentinels on the side. So it's all about attention, direction, energy, and congruence. And these are all the attributes we need to be great leaders to lead our teams through uncertainty.

Chris Grimes

Just to deliberately reincorporate that, say those four compass points again.

Julia Felton

Attention, direction, energy, and congruence. And if I put a B in there, you can have belonging in the middle, and now you have A, B, C, D, E. But I think these are all skills that leaders need right nowadays to lead through uncertainty. So, you know, if you ask me sort of what my legacy is and where I'm where I'm happiest, it's out sharing this information because it's so powerful, it's so relevant. Clients get to partner with the horses and experience in the moment what it's like to do something different. So, you know, if you're trying something, you're trying to lead the horse, it doesn't work. Well, what do you need to do differently in order to get a different result? And it's rare in business that in the moment we get to shift something and try something new. But of course, then it becomes embodied learning. And for me, one of the most powerful things is clients then go back to their office and they go, maybe their manager or you know, somebody goes, does something that's a bit bit off and not what they'd expected. And they go, You're having a Toby moment, and they can give feedback based on the experience to what happened. So I had a client, we were working with a horse called Cafe, and the client just went off to try and catch the horse with no equipment, no discussion with his team. And I stood there with his team, it's like, what's going on? It's like he does that all the time, just goes off and does his own thing with no briefing to anyone. And so when he does it now, they go, Steve, you're having a cafe moment, and they can give him that, you know, it's kind of a light-hearted way to give somebody feedback on what's going on based on the experience without being adversarial, you know, it's in a very light-hearted way.

Chris Grimes

So just to check my understanding, I is it always Julia turning up with a herd, or do you go into rooms where you just talk about the analogy and the metaphor and make the connections that way?

Julia Felton

I do both. I prefer it with the horses, but I get that for some people actually coming out to be the horses is quite scary. You know, that's massively out people's comfort zones. So I do work with leaders about how to create high-performing teams based on the principles, but we do it in the in in a classroom area. Yeah.

Chris Grimes

Where I was going there was my awareness of you being a keynote speaker as well. And you can't always get on stage with uh uh no, not always with a horse, no. But I'm sure you can show us great visuals of what it's like to be in amongst the diamond formation as you described. And now I'm gonna award you with a cake, Julia Felton. So um, you're gonna get to put a cherry on the cake because this is the last. I do love a metaphor and an analogy. This is the last suffused with storytelling metaphor. First of all, do you like cake, uh Julia? I love cake. Good answer. What's the cake of choice, please?

Julia Felton

Oh, probably coffee and walnut at the moment.

Chris Grimes

Boom. I like the fact in third there, it can change on the daily basis.

Julia Felton

It can be chocolate, it's but it's either chocolate or coffee and walnut, usually.

Chris Grimes

And I'm sorry it's only a metaphorical cake. You know, once I get a proper sponsor, I'll send you the cake. Excellent. I look forward to that. With a cherry on the cake now, what's a favorite inspirational quote, first of all, that's always given you sucker and pulled you towards your future, Julia?

Julia Felton

Well, in usual fashion, I'm good. I'd like to share two. I think the first one is from Lao Zhu, to know and not to do is not yet to know. So really profound because we can know lots of things, like you know, I know that I'm meant to put these special picks through my teeth every day to, you know, do it. Do I do it? No. Will my teeth get improve their health? No. So I there's lots of things, you know. I know I probably shouldn't eat cake, right? But we do it anyway. So, you know, there's a lot of things that we know that we should do, but we don't do them.

unknown

Yes.

Chris Grimes

Lovely quote.

Julia Felton

And and then the Einstein one, uh, look to nature and you shall know everything.

Reinvention Advice And Living Now

Chris Grimes

And I'm so happy you've picked that one, particularly because of everything you've been speaking about. So just say the Einstein quote once again.

Julia Felton

Look to nature and you shall know the answer to everything.

Chris Grimes

Love that. And it goes right back to Native American Indian sort of philosophy as well. And it is about connecting to nature, which we're so monumentally crap at in this modern day in history.

Julia Felton

Absolutely.

Chris Grimes

Uh, with the gift of hindsight, what notes, help, or advice might you proffer to a younger version of Julia Felton? And you can decide when you go back in time to, I suppose, holographically appear with your arms around your shoulders to whisper the following words into your own ear.

Julia Felton

I think it's gonna be along the lines of be true to yourself and do what you want to do. You know, referencing back that GPS, I realized I was really living my dad's version of where my life should be. And I think the great thing nowadays is, you know, when I was growing up, you were meant to be a lawyer or an accountant or, you know, a doctor or some kind of professional services. And I think what's so great about today and the opportunities for the younger generation is you can have a career and business doing whatever you like. You know, whoever thought they'd be influencers, you know, that's how people could make money. You know, you make runny-running podcasts, you know, there's there's loads of things that you can do. So I think it's it's that be true to yourself and do what you want to do, well, not what everyone tells you to do or is they you feel you should do. Because I think that's when you lose your identity and you forget who you are, and you go back to me sitting on that uh swing on that ranch in Colorado going, Who's Julia? Now I don't have my corporate role. Who am I? I've loved my identity here been you know overtaken by my corporate role, and I didn't know who I was, and it's taken a long time to re find me and who I am. So I think that that's so important that we we remember that you know, there's only one of us. We're put on this earth to do our thing and don't get distracted by what other people think you should be doing on this earth, do what you want to do.

Chris Grimes

That's so resonant with uh an adage about assertiveness, which is control your own destiny or others will control it for you. And also, I've just had a wonderful opportunity in reinvention practitioning. This is about almost like the university of the third age. This is about preparing for retirement as well. Because as we know, when we drop the mic on often how we've been defined by our career, people can sometimes feel almost rudderless with what do I do now? Because I was defined by my job.

Julia Felton

No, absolutely. And I think you know, reinvention is such an important topic right now, because, like you say, there is the age of reinvention when people start their, you know, their final career. And I think reinvention maybe has got a little bit of a bad rap. For me, you know, reinvention is let's take the best of what we had and move that into the future. And this is what I think businesses need to do because you know the average duration of a business now is only three years. In some industries, as low as you know, 12 months, maybe if you're in a tech industry, something like mining maybe eight to 10. But businesses need to continually reinvent, and that means our team members need to continually reinvent. You know, AI has meaning that the roles of team members, I think AI is exciting, by the way, rather than you know, people are worried it's going to take over their job. Well, what does it mean? It means your job gets reinvented. You don't have to do the grunge stuff, putting the widgets in the boxes every day or you know, the boring Excel spreadsheets and plugging numbers in. AI can do that for you. You actually get to do the more fun things with some critical thinking if you remember to do that and don't rely on AI to do the critical thinking for you.

Chris Grimes

Yeah, whatever we don't let AI become your GPS because your critical thinking will completely die. And in fact, I I'm I'm going to launch something very soon called acting intelligence, which is AI reframed as acting intelligence using the core skills of relationship building. It's dynamic and adaptive. We're ramping up uh gradually now to talk about Shakespeare and legacy finally, but just before we get there, this is the pass the golden baton moment, please. So now you've experienced this from within, uh, Julia Felton. Who might you most like to pass the golden baton along to in order to keep the golden thread of the storytelling going?

Julia Felton

Oh, who should I pass this to? Oh, there's so many people I could pass it to, but I think I'm gonna pass it to for storytelling, my good friend Tessa Gray, who has amazing stories about her life as a jockey once upon a time, and how she changes that into how she works today. I think it should be fascinating.

Chris Grimes

Thank you. Your mission, choose you choose to accept it, is to furnish an introduction to Tessa Gray, uh, Earthwild jockey. Love that. One question I forgot to ask you before I get onto the Shakespeare. What's the best piece of advice you've ever been given by somebody else?

Julia Felton

I think when I reflect back on my life, and I don't know anyone particularly said at any point, one point in time, but it's it's that realization that life is really short and you need to live it to the full right now. Because I think too often we defer things and we're like, when I'm older, you know, when I've got my house, when I've got my car, when I've got my first horse, whatever it should be, that we just miss the opportunity now. So I'm very much, and you know, having lost a couple of friends in in the last decade, younger than me, you know, I'm like, you never know when the man upstairs says it's time to chop chop, you know. So I think it you know the best piece of advice that I've experienced and witnessed is just live life to the full now, because you just don't know what's round the corner.

Legacy Mainstreaming Equine Leadership Work

Chris Grimes

As I would like to reflect back, beware deferred gratification. Yeah. Absolutely. And now, inspired by Shakespeare, all the worlds of Steedred, all the murdered women merely players, we're borrowing from the seven ages of man's stroke, woman's speech. This is the actual book that I had at the Old Vic Theatre School where I trained as an actor. It says there, Chris Grimes, 16986. So this is a legitimate prop nom. But it's borrowing from the seven ages of man's speech to talk about when all is said and done, Julia Felton, speaker, author, coach, and of course, managing directoress of Horse Business Horsepower. How would you most like to be remembered?

Julia Felton

I think for me, I've always said my legacy and my purpose in life is to make this work with the horses more mainstream. I think that every single business would benefit from having, as we say, a horse on their board and their team members coming to experience this. And this work is a lot more mainstream in the US than it is here in the UK. And I just feel that we know when people come and partner with the horses, how it transforms businesses literally overnight. And if we could just get over our great British skepticism about it, that would be my absolute legacy that I could live, that leave that this work has just become more mainstream and more companies recognize the power of the work and how it could just transform businesses and lives.

Where To Find Julia And Closing Thoughts

Chris Grimes

Which is such a great segue into a lovely, exciting section now, which is called Show Us Your QR code, please. So, first of all, um this is now uh where you can go straight to find out where to get hold of Julia Felton and to book her horse herd. So just talk us through the domain of business horsepower.

Julia Felton

Yeah, so www.businesshorsepower.com, my website, where I share with you a lot of the programs that I do there, and also my speaker website, www.juliafelton.com, which is a bit more about me because you buy me as the person. I am the face of business horsepower. So I just think that there it's so important that as we talked about today, you know, people get to know the face behind a business. It's so, so important. You know, that's what builds know, like, and trust.

Chris Grimes

So and I love on your own websites that it says business on the hoof. I absolutely love all of your to your unbridled success. You're you're you're you're living the horse dream, which is great. A couple of announcements from me. If you'd like to uh have a conversation about guesting in this show, too. This has been a leadership reflections episode, obviously, but there are another selection of other series strands which can help you to uh tell your story and be introduced to a large audience as you tell it, because very excitingly, as a big announcement, this show also now syndicates to two places UK Health Radio, which it's been doing for the last uh couple of years, but also uh to Brushwood Media in the United States as well. So um potentially tens of millions of listeners await you to hear your story as you tell it. If you'd like to connect with me on LinkedIn, please do as well. And then I'd just also finally like to mention a particularly exciting series, Strand, which uses this exact same curated structure, which has been analogized to having a day spar for your brain and an oasis of kindness. It's called Legacy Life Reflections, which is to record either your own life story or the life story of somebody that you love for posterity, lest we forget before it's too late. So check out legacylifereflections.com. Back to you, uh Julia, just to ask you now a final. I hope you really enjoy this because it's a deliberately coachy, coachy, coachy question. Here it comes. As this has been your moment in the sunshine in the good listening to show, stories of distinction and genius. Is there anything else, Julia Felton, that you'd like to say?

Julia Felton

Oh, what would I like to say? I'd just like to encourage everyone to recognize that we've all got hidden potential within ourselves and to go out and find it because we're not defined by what's around us. And, you know, I really know that with the horses. With Coach Toby, there he was. I could no longer ride him. And to all intents and purposes, a lot of people were saying, you know, he's done. He became the most amazing horse coach. So, you know, in my business, I tend to partner with horses that can no longer be ridden. Because I think we've all got something else, some other brilliance within us. So all I'd say to people is, you know, if you feel like a door's been shut, I'm like, what's the other opportunity out there? Because I believe that everything happens in life for a reason. And if one door closes, another better door is probably going to open. And, you know, for Toby, that was amazing. He's had he had an amazing career as an equine guided leadership coach that he hadn't seen in his game plan. The same with Coach Charlie, an ex-racehorse. Now he has an amazing job to do. So, you know, I think for me, it's always realizing that there's so much more that we can do. Sometimes we have to think out of the box in order to find that solution. But when we do, it means that we can just unleash really unhidden potential that we we've got within us.

Chris Grimes

I love the idea that, you know, don't think of old leaders as being arthritic and needing a shot. There's wisdom. There's wisdom and there's gold.

Julia Felton

Absolutely.

Chris Grimes

There's wisdom and there's gold. So I've been Chris Grimes, but most importantly, this has been Julia Felton. We've been listening all about business horsepower. Anything else else you'd find you'd like to say, Julia?

Julia Felton

No, only that I could go on all day, Chris, but I'll save the least. I'll save the listeners for that. They can always just connect me. I'm always open to having a conversation with people and sharing more. I love to do that.

Chris Grimes

Wonderful. Thank you very much indeed for listening and watching. And uh good night. You've been listening to the Good Listening2 Show with me, Chris Grimes. If you'd like to be in the show too, or indeed fifth an episode to capture the story of someone else with me as your host, then you can find out how the serious trends at the goodlistening2.com website. And one of the series trends is called leadership reflections. Opportunity to the next, maybe you're about to stop and you'd like to drop the mic to preserve your leadership legacy, or you may just want to consolidate where you already are as you share your leadership reflections. Tune in next week for more stories from The Clearing. And don't forget to subscribe and review wherever you get your podcasts.