
Sign up to save your podcasts
Or


For the first show of 2025, we have a life-affirming story about the power of ‘forums’ in transforming the lives of entrepreneurs and leaders from a very human standpoint.
Mo Fathelbab talks to our host Phil Rose about his journey and what led him to found the International Facilitators Organisation. A renowned speaker and author, Mo outlines how forums work, why purpose is prosperity, and what it is about the model that’s so powerful.
A few of the points they cover:
· The nature of the forum methodology that creates a safe environment for peers to share openly and honestly about what’s going on in their lives.
· Why it’s good for business (and his clients include Google and Harvard Business School). It’s no secret that when people feel safe, supported, seen and loved for who they are they perform at their best.
· How meeting Scaling Up and Young Entrepreneurs Organisation founder Verne Harnish, over 30 years ago, changed the direction of his life and career.
· What he’s learned about the benefits of the emotionally connected hive mind – in particular the powerful role of continuous learning together in leadership development.
· His ambitious plans to train enough facilitators to give at least 1 billion people access to forums and the wide-reaching benefits beyond the workplace.
· The power of sharing stories rather than giving advice in shedding judgment and finding commonality.
· How taking the first step into courageous vulnerability creates a safe space for others.
Centred around Mo’s moving personal story and the focus that led him to where he is today, it’s a convincing manifesto for prosperity through honest, genuine human connection.
We hope you enjoy the conversation as much as we did. To get our message out to a wider audience who can benefit from the words of wisdom, please share this episode with someone you think could benefit from it. Thank you.
Books mentioned:
Forum: The Secret Advantage of Successful Leaders – Mo Fathelbab
The Friendship Advantage – Mo Fathelbab
Main Points for Listeners:
Quotes and Highlights:
Learn More:
Connect with the Guest:
Books and Articles Referenced:
Keywords in this episode: Real Relationships, Vulnerability, Peer Groups, Forum Process, YPO, Leadership, Empathy, Communication, Trust, Connection
Download Links:
A vital component of scaling a business successfully is getting the right people on board – and making sure they love coming to work. Performance is intrinsically linked with how well your team gels and communicates as problems are dealt with and new ideas are brought to life.
So join us for another insight-rich discussion with Eric Stone, veteran exec of Enterprise Holdings as he and host Phil Rose dig deeper into the five factors of employee engagement. (Find episode 1 here).
As Eric lifts each one off the page, we get some invaluable and practical tips on implementation for maximum impact.
Listen to the five tried-and-tested elements behind his success:
Bonus takeaways from the conversation:
Another episode crammed with tangible advice and instantly implementable micro-strategies, we hope you found it as useful and inspiring as we did.
Learn More:
Connect with Eric Stone:
In the first of two episodes with author and speaker Eric Stone, our host Phil Rose discovers practical answers to the issues many businesses struggle with while scaling up. They draw on Eric’s 26 years with Enterprise Holdings which led him from its infancy to being one of the most decorated Regional VPs in the company’s history.
It’s a value-packed conversation covering:
‘You don’t have to be the smartest guy in the room, you just have to be able to use the room’ Eric says. This sums it up well. Handing over the reins is probably the most harrowing part of taking a business to the next level but Eric’s quiet confidence and human-focused mindset is as reassuring as it is inspiring.
We hope you enjoy listening to this idea-a-minute podcast as much as we enjoyed recording it.
As always, please feel free to get in touch or comment if you have something to add and share – you never know who will benefit from listening too.
Learn More: ye
Connect with Eric Stone:
In this episode of Sparks by Ignium, Phil Rose sits down with Chantal Cornelius, founder of Appletree Marketing, to dive deep into marketing strategies that help businesses stand out. With over two decades of experience, Chantal is known for guiding clients with her unique "standout strategies" designed to ensure authentic and effective marketing. From sharing her journey to explaining how purpose and emotional connection fuel client engagement, Chantal provides insights for businesses to connect with customers in ways that make a lasting impact. Get ready to discover actionable advice on making your brand resonate.
Main Points for Listeners:
Quotes and Highlights:
Biography: Since founding Appletree Marketing in 2000, Chantal Cornelius has spent the last two decades helping hundreds of coaches, consultants, and speakers grow their businesses and achieve their goals through making strong emotional connections with their clients. Her mission is to help business owners realize that the path to success doesn’t have to involve churning out endless social media content. Chantal knows that the key to standing out from competitors is to build long-lasting client relationships, and she has developed several Stand Out Strategies that businesses can use to incorporate more empathy into their work, stand out from the crowd, and form the best possible emotional connection with their clients.
Learn More:
Connect with Chantal Cornelius:
Books and Articles Referenced:
Keywords in this episode: Marketing mentor, purpose-driven business, emotional engagement, standout strategies, customer experience, brand loyalty
Download Links:
This episode is packed with insights for entrepreneurs looking to create meaningful connections with their audience. Listen in to uncover the secrets to standing out and driving sustainable growth!
Internationally renowned speaker, author, peacekeeper and coach Urs Koenig introduced us to the phrase in his first conversation with Phil Rose.
In his second round on the Sparks by Ignium Podcast, Urs uses stories and experiences to show what this principle looks like in real life and how you can embed it into your leadership development.
We learn about:
Full of storytelling: from his peacekeeping missions to his life as a coach and father, this upbeat conversation is full of ‘pause and grab a notepad’ ideas for leadership development sure to inspire anyone.
We hope you enjoy the conversation as much as we did.
Texts mentioned:
Radical Humility – Be a Badass Leader and a Good Human – Urs Koenig.
Shackleton’s Way – Lessons in Leadership from the Great Antarctic Explorer – Stephanie Capparell and Margot Morrell.
JA Africa
Does humility belong in leadership?
In this episode, Phil Rose talks to author, international speaker, UN peacekeeper and performance athlete Urs Koenig who presents a compelling argument for staying humble while driving results.
A tricky line to walk but thankfully Urs has plenty of practical information on how to do it taken from his life journey so far and his book Radical Humility. He takes Phil through his experiences as a UN peacekeeping commander, coach, leader, and family man to highlight his points of learning and how he’s used each one to impact the course of his life and that of countless others.
Things we loved:
Phil wraps this first conversation by asking Urs about the best feedback he’s been given recently and how he dealt with it. His answers will resonate with everyone.
We hope you enjoy this episode as much as we did and as you listen, make time to jot down the points you found useful, you never know when they might come in handy. Share and like too, it helps to get our message out there to those who also want to scale their business, life and impact
Learn More: visit the Ignium https://www.igniumconsult.com
Subscribe for more exclusive content in the Ignium Spark Tank https://www.igniumconsult.com/the-spark-tank
Listen to the show: https://sparksbyignium.transistor.fm/episodes
Connect with today’s guest
Learn more about Scaling Up: https://scalingup.com/
Sign Up to our Ignium Bi Monthly Newsletter https://sparksbyignium.transistor.fm/subscribe
Connect on LinkedIn with Phil Rose https://www.linkedin.com/in/coachphilrose/
Welcome back to part 2 of the discussion with renowned behavioural finance strategist Hugh Massie. In this episode, we learn more about the man behind DNA Behavior International. Losing your father when you’re a year old might set some people back in life. Instead, Hugh Massie turned his difficult childhood experiences into an international success story – as well as founding an organisation for young men in a similar situation to maximise their potential today.
How did he do it? Listen in as a story emerges of how we all can leverage our hardwired behaviours to achieve meaningful outcomes.
What’s in store:
· What we can learn from Hugh’s journey from chartered accountant to Money Energy Pioneer.
· How measuring your success by what you have in the bank could be setting yourself up for failure.
· Why being comfortable and genuinely fulfilled aren’t necessarily the same thing.
· What’s behind the connection between impacting a billion people and making money.
· How to avoid drama but thrive through stress.
· A dive into how his childhood affected him and how understanding his Initiator type has allowed him to impact the lives of the fatherless boys he works with today.
· Why your hardwiring isn’t an excuse, it’s your superpower (when you learn how to adapt and use it).
Finally, Hugh shares his life motto and why it has driven his success so far.
We hope you enjoy this episode. As always, please feel free to get in touch or comment if you have something to add and share – you never know who will benefit from listening too.
An episode full of moments of reflection, it asks deep questions but in a way that makes so much sense. Why shouldn’t we show up as ourselves in our business? Why shouldn’t we prioritise our health and spend time with the people we love? That’s why we set up business for ourselves in the first place. Own your business rather than it owning you to improve your chances of living a long and happy life.
If you’ve enjoyed this episode, do you know someone else who would enjoy it too? And please remember to leave us a comment, a review and subscribe for further episodes. Thank you.
(Some of) The main points for listeners:
Main Points for Listeners:
· Hugh's Early Career and his forming of his Purpose
· Hugh discusses how his background as a Chartered Accountant shaped his purpose of helping people optimize their talents and financial behaviors.
· The Impact of Life Experiences on Identity
· Learn how Hugh’s early life experiences, including growing up without a father, influenced his identity and approach to leadership and business.
· Boys Without Fathers Initiative
· Hugh shares the origins and goals of Boys Without Fathers, an initiative close to his heart, aimed at helping boys grow into influential men despite the absence of a father figure.
· The Power of Living Without Regrets
· Hugh reflects on the importance of living life aligned with your unique design, embracing your strengths, and minimizing regrets.
· Behavioral DNA and Personal Growth
· Discover how understanding your behavioral DNA can enhance both personal and professional life, leading to reduced stress and increased success.
About Hugh
Hugh Massie is the Executive Chairman and Founder of DNA Behavior International – the Behavior and Money Insights Company.
As a Titan 100 CEO and widely recognized Behavioral Solutions Architect, Hugh Massie helps growth-minded leaders create an Exponential Future by developing a “ten to the power of 9” Quantum Leap Growth Mindset and by building plans for over 1 billion people impact. With that framework and his pioneering and results-driven DNA Initiator style, Hugh addresses every opportunity and challenge through a behavioral lens.
Hugh’s purpose is to empower people worldwide to optimize their natural “hard-wired” talents and financial behaviors which drives quantum leap capacity, reduces stress, and enables greater happiness, more success, and improved health for longer. Further, Hugh empowers organizations and teams to build “category king” people-centered businesses, and in the process, enhance decision-making, culture, and performance.
Applying the pioneering behavioral finance research Hugh has undertaken since 2001, his moonshot goal is to implement an AI-driven BeSci Tech Platform that by 2030 fully informs 1 billion people annually on how to enhance their decision-making and relationships for increasing life, financial and business longevity by 30 or more years.
Hugh partners with clients to create an Exponential Future by developing trail-blazing financial behavior apps for building the “New BeFi Economy” impacting all key areas of life, finance and business.
Learn More: visit the Ignium https://www.igniumconsult.com
Subscribe for more exclusive content in the Ignium Spark Tank https://www.igniumconsult.com/the-spark-tank
Listen to the show: https://sparksbyignium.transistor.fm/episodes
Connect with today’s guest
Learn more about Scaling Up: https://scalingup.com/
Sign Up to our Ignium Bi Monthly Newsletter https://sparksbyignium.transistor.fm/subscribe
Connect on LinkedIn Phil Rose https://www.linkedin.com/in/coachphilrose/
In the first of a 2-part episode, Founder of DNA Behaviour International Hugh Massie and podcast host Phil Rose explore where the spheres of money and human behaviour meet. In particular, they look at human behaviour and how it drives business outcomes, particularly in financial contexts.
Hugh shares his insights as a Behavioural Solutions Architect and explains how understanding, measuring and then adapting behaviours removes stubborn barriers to personal and business growth.
Key points:
· If money drives business but the results come about through the actions of people, how do you actively create an environment where people can express their unique talents and do their best work?
· ‘Behind every business problem is a human behaviour – problems don’t just happen.’ Find the behavioural issues and you’ve likely found your solution.
· What are the Engager and Initiator types, what are their advantages and how does DNA Behavior sit apart from other profiling tools?
· Ensuring all bases are covered with different leadership styles can cause friction but it can also give birth to a robust and profitable culture.
· Strengths if overplayed become a struggle but by gaining clarity, adapting or learning how to delegate we save our energy to create first-class outcomes.
· Where financial behaviour fits into the mix. If two people can look at the same transaction differently what implications does this have for your business growth?
This conversation is an intersection of so many themes: personal and business; behaviour and financial; and leadership and cultural. Where each meets is a place for pause, consideration, clarity and possibly redirection – but always at the heart, there is purpose.
Main Recording Points for Listeners:
Quotes and Highlights:
Learn More:
Connect with Hugh Massie:
Books and Articles Referenced:
Keywords in this episode: Behavioural solutions, financial behaviour, leadership styles, identity, purpose, DNA Behaviour, business success
Download Links:
‘When someone is working for a greater mission, it fuels all of our work.’ In this episode of Sparks by Ignium, Phil Rose talks to strategic speaking expert Blair Bryant Nichols about ensuring our message is heard loud and clear.
It’s not just what we say that makes the magic, it’s how we purposefully connect it to our audience. We’re not all public speakers but we are all business owners so we need to get our message out there in a way that makes sense. How else are we going to achieve our aims or drive growth?
Whether speaking is part of your business model, a sideline or not even on your radar, this podcast is full of takeaways about authenticity, story and the uplifting power of communication.
Key points:
· Why speaking isn’t just a vocation, it’s an advocation. Purpose fuels success.
· Get over the butterflies by remembering you’re there to give your unique gift to the audience.
· The expansive nature of diverse voices – and not just when discussing diversity.
· The pitfalls of not rehearsing enough – and being over-scripted.
· Why speaking is an effective business tool you might not have thought of.
· How to convert from the spoken word to personal connections (and sales).
· Be aspirational but seek to close the gap between you and your audience.
· Authentic, personal, relatable stories build the strongest connections.
· Tips on how to use slides. Hint: don’t read them to your audience.
There are times when the pressure is on to speak to everyone in the room – and it doesn’t matter if we’re a keynote speaker at a conference or delivering a pitch to our peers. Then there are the times when we’re reaching out to our ideal clients and feel less than confident about it.
So there’s something for everyone here.
The Sparks by Ignium podcast is all about you, the listener. That’s why we love it when you get involved. So if there’s something you’d like us to cover, please get in touch – and remember to comment, like and subscribe so that we can help as many people as possible. Thank you.
About Blair
Strategic speaking expert Blair Bryant Nichols advocates for diverse and purposeful success in the speaking industry. He’s the founder of BBN Creative Management, developing speakers for corporate events, conferences and other opportunities so they can stand up and build engagement with their voices.
At the heart of his work is the strategy behind speaking events – in particular, how we leverage stories to engage the minds and hearts of the audience to transform them into clients. He loves new and distant places, reading, creating and being at home with his husband and Shepherd-mix Aspen.
Learn more: visit the Ignium https://www.igniumconsult.com
Subscribe for more exclusive content in the Ignium Spark Tank https://www.igniumconsult.com/the-spark-tank
Connect with today’s guest: https://www.bbncreativemanagement.com/about
Learn more about Scaling Up: https://scalingup.com
Sign up to our Ignium bi-monthly Newsletter https://sparksbyignium.transistor.fm/subscribe
Connect on LinkedIn Phil Rose https://www.linkedin.com/in/coachphilrose/
Sometimes sorry seems to be the hardest word. How much time and energy could we save if we owned up and apologised more often? We discover that it’s only the right thing to do but it’s the best thing to do if you’re trying to build a team that will expand your business.
Welcome to round two with the ego. This is the second podcast discussion between leadership coach, speaker and author Christie Garcia, and our host, Phil Rose.
They talk about:
If boardroom disjoint and frayed nerves are frustrating your progress, this episode will give you a new perspective on how to build unity, trust and a shared vision – no matter how diverse your team is.
For more context on Christie Garcia’s approach and the three types of ego at play, the first episode available here is a must-listen. Make some time in your diary to come back to it later.
The Sparks by Ignium podcast is all about you, the listener. That’s why we love it when you get involved. So if there’s something you’d like us to cover, please get in touch – and remember to comment, like and subscribe so that we can help as many people as possible. Thank you.
https://www.igniumconsult.com/lets-talk/
Ego management expert Christie is the founder of the Mindful Choice Leadership Academy, an organisation dedicated to developing established and emerging leaders along with entrepreneurs and teams. The focus is on lasting change at a human level.
From the publisher's feed