Second Nature

What if the best leaders stopped giving orders altogether?

David Marquet — former US Navy submarine commander and author of Turn the Ship Around! — took command of the worst-performing crew in the fleet and transformed them into one of the best. His breakthrough wasn’t about charisma, authority, or discipline. It was about letting go.

By replacing command and control with intent and trust, Marquet built a culture where everyone thought like a leader and acted with ownership. It wasn’t theory — it was survival, forged in the pressure of life underwater. Ten of his crew went on to become submarine captains themselves, proof that true leadership multiplies, not manages.

In this conversation, Rich Stockdale and David dive into the hidden costs of bad leadership, the power of language in shaping culture, and why our obsession with control is killing creativity. They talk about burnout, vulnerability, the strange beauty of uncertainty, and the coming wave of AI that will force leaders to evolve again — this time faster than ever.

This is not another management chat. It’s a challenge to rethink what leading really means — and to ask yourself the hardest question of all: would your team still thrive if you stopped giving orders?

James Shepherd’s journey began in a family boatyard in South Staffordshire, but his path was never straightforward. Growing up with challenges at home, he learned responsibility far earlier than most, lessons that shaped both his resilience and his ambition.

From Cambridge to Knight Frank, from shaping land to shaping a family, James shares how he’s navigated the shift from son to father, and what it means to leave behind more than just a career: a legacy of love, adventure, and trust.

This conversation is raw, reflective, and deeply human - an exploration of childhood, aspiration, and the kind of parent we hope to become.

What does “scale” really mean when you’re talking about saving the planet?

For Carl Atkin-House — Head of Natural Capital Strategy at Climate Asset Management — it’s projects measured in tens of millions of dollars and thousands of hectares. Regenerative agriculture. Sustainable forestry. Environmental assets that prove nature can deliver institutional-grade returns.

In this conversation, we go deep into the billion-dollar frontier of natural capital: where finance meets farmland, and impact has to perform at scale.

Carl doesn’t deal in pilots or press releases — he deals in transformation. From Australia to the Pacific Northwest to the UK’s fragmented landscape, he’s building proof that investing in nature isn’t philanthropy — it’s strategy.

We talk scalability, risk, regulation, and why natural capital could become the next major asset class — the one that defines the next decade of institutional portfolios.

This isn’t a theory of change. It’s a business plan for the planet.

Andy Creak isn’t here to talk about sustainability — he’s here to rewire finance itself.

After decades building fintech platforms and taking on titans like Fidelity, Andy turned his attention to the one market still stuck in the dark ages: natural capital. With his company Kana, he’s creating the digital infrastructure to make investing in nature as easy — and as powerful — as buying stocks or bonds.

We go deep into the friction points no one wants to face: the absence of reliable data, the chaos of carbon pricing, and the urgent need for a valuation model that actually works. Andy explains why the real bottleneck isn’t interest, it’s investability — and why hitting $500 million of scale could trigger a financial chain reaction that transforms the entire sector.

He also unveils his Guide to Investing in Natural Capital, built alongside some of the UK’s largest asset managers — a blueprint for mainstreaming nature-based investment and helping capital finally flow where it matters.

Alex Godfrey left a career in high finance to rebuild the rules of investment around the only capital that matters: nature. From the Bolivian Amazon to UK estates, he’s seen firsthand how regenerative agriculture, biodiversity credits, and carbon markets can reshape not just land—but entire economies.

This conversation cuts through the noise on ESG and digs into the real questions: How do we make natural capital investable? What happens when carbon, water, and biodiversity become mainstream revenue streams? And should pension funds be forced to put skin in the game—1% of every portfolio—into projects that restore the planet?

If you care about resilient businesses, regenerative economics, or the future of food and finance, this episode will challenge how you think about money, soil, and survival.

Alex’s journey now continues with Great Yellow — a new venture built on the same vision: turning natural capital into real impact.

Guy Hayler doesn’t just talk about business as a force for good — he’s building the ecosystem to prove it.

As co-founder of Blue Earth, Guy has raised £155 million for 60+ purpose-led companies and is connecting founders, corporates, and investors who actually want to change the system, not just tick a sustainability box.

From the BE100 campaign filtering 1,000+ startups into the top 100, to BE Ventures backing companies reshaping energy, food, and finance, this is about moving capital at scale — and fast.

We dive into why collaboration beats competition, why politics keeps failing the planet, and why the real battle is making sustainable business commercially unstoppable.

This isn’t theory. It’s money, momentum, and a movement that could transform industries — and maybe the world.

Julia Armstrong D’Agnese isn’t selling software. She’s building Earth Knowledge — digital twins of the planet that Fortune 500s, governments, and insurers use to see the future before it hits.

From hurricanes to droughts, supply chain shocks to financial collapse — the risks are here, but most of us are still blind to them. Julia and her team fuse climate, weather, and nature data into something more valuable than oil or gold: foresight.

We talk about scaling a company that partners with Microsoft and NASDAQ, the brutal truths of climate risk, and the personal conviction it takes to build a mission this ambitious.

This isn’t a story about tech.

It’s a story about Earth’s… knowledge.

And whether we’re smart enough to use it.

Peter Stein has spent his life proving that conservation isn’t about nostalgia—it’s about power, money, and strategy.

From building urban parks in the South Bronx to managing Lyme Timber’s $900 million portfolio of forests, Peter has been at the intersection of land, finance, and community for decades. He’s seen how conservation easements can outlast politics, and how private capital can scale nature protection faster than government ever could.

In this conversation we go deep into conservation finance, collaboration across unlikely partners, and the future of land stewardship in a world where natural capital is finally being priced in.

This isn’t just about saving trees—it’s about re-engineering the relationship between money and the natural world.

Anika Staccone has always lived at the edge of forests and frontiers. From watching pine beetles devastate her childhood landscapes in Colorado, to leading research on nitrogen-fixing trees at Columbia, her path has been shaped by the question of how we truly understand nature. Today, as Product Owner at Earthshot Labs, she is fusing AI, geospatial data and field science into tools that don’t just measure trees, but unlock new ways of protecting them.

This conversation is about why ground truth matters more than satellite snapshots, why conservation must be designed with people as much as with pixels, and why the future of carbon and restoration isn’t about billion-dollar projects but smallholders finally having access to global markets. We explore the role of ecotourism, the promise of AI, and the stubborn reality that nature will not be saved by numbers alone.

Can markets really bring ecosystems back to life?

Tripp Wall thinks so — and he’s putting capital where most only put campaigns. As founder of Trailhead Capital and Pantheon Regeneration, he’s scaling restoration projects that don’t just conserve nature, but rebuild it: rivers, forests, biodiversity, and the communities that depend on them.

We dive into the economics of regeneration — from voluntary carbon and regulated water markets to the AI tools tracking ecosystem health in real time. Tripp explains why environmental inflation is already warping balance sheets, why insurers and investors are starting to wake up, and how soil carbon, biochar, and even enhanced rock weathering could change the game.

This is more than climate chat. It’s a blueprint for turning restoration into an investable, durable, trillion-dollar market — and a reminder that the future of finance may just depend on the health of the land beneath our feet.