Tough At The Top

Rachael Blackmore is a star of horse racing in Britain & Ireland and one of the world’s highest achieving sportswomen. But it wasn’t always like this - in her own words her amateur career barely got off the ground and she only turned pro at the age of 25 (much later than many other jockeys) in an attempt to kickstart her progress. Even then, her first winner took a while to arrive and she had plenty of opportunities to doubt herself. Rachael's story is one of persistence and patienc...

Sir Nigel Wilson has been the CEO of Legal & General since 2012, having joined the company three years earlier as Finance Director. Prior to that, he had a diverse career, spanning academia & technology at MIT, a spell at McKinsey, retail at the great management school that was Dixons in the 1980s, property at Stanhope and a long stint as the CFO of UBM, the events and exhibitions company. He has also sat on or led a wide variety of governmental and non-profit commissions & adviso...

In this special episode, I focus on the most simple & effective strategies to improve your sleep, based on what I have learned during my training as a Sleep Coach, and also what I have found works in real life with my coaching clients – investors, CEOs, senior professionals, all of whom are living very busy lives and many of whom struggle with insufficient or low quality sleep.I am firmly of the view that sleeping well is the single best way to improve your mood, your energy levels and yo...

Following on from a very successful career in the publishing industry, Jillian has been teaching meditation for almost 20 years and founded both the London and New York Meditation Centres back in 2008. She wrote an excellent book called “Why Meditate?” earlier this year and that is how I first came across her. Her whole approach is very practical and, I think, ideal for busy professional people who are curious about meditation but also a bit sceptical and confused about what the practice actu...

Tristia Harrison is the CEO of TalkTalk, one of the UK’s leading broadband providers with over 4 million consumers and a significant B2B business alongside that. She began her career in PR & marketing before joining Charles Dunstone’s Carphone Warehouse group in 2000, rising quickly through the ranks. When TalkTalk was demerged from Carphone in 2009, she was made Managing Director of its Consumer business. She became CEO of TalkTalk Group in 2017 and is also a Non-Executive Di...

Dame Jayne-Anne is the Founder and Executive Chair of Snoop. From 2007 to 2018 she was the CEO of Virgin Money. She was one of the original founders of Virgin Direct in 1995 and, three years later, she set up the Virgin One account, which was then acquired by the Royal Bank of Scotland in 2001. She subsequently spent five years at RBS before returning to Virgin as CEO of Virgin Money until its acquisition by CYBG in 2018. As such, she is one of very few people to have been recruited by ...

Daphne Zohar is the Founder and CEO of Puretech Health plc. A serial entrepreneur, she has transformed an initial investment of $100,000 into a company now worth £1bn, with stock market listings in both London and New York. She created a unique model to develop and commercialise the scientific IP coming out of Boston's biotech cluster, turning conventional wisdom on its head by starting with unmet medical needs and then bringing the best brains together and letting their creativity run wild i...

Andy Anson is Chief Executive of the British Olympic Association and took time out from the intense and complex preparations for the Summer Games in Tokyo to speak with me. He has worked for and led an amazing variety of organisations across sport, business and media, including Disney, Manchester United, Channel 4 and the ATP tennis tour, and he highlights what he has learned about leadership from the likes of Michael Eisner and Sir Alex Ferguson. We talk about some of the challenges he ...

Pete Redfern is one of the longest-serving CEOs in the FTSE 100, having been the boss of housebuilder Taylor Wimpey since 2007. He is one of the best long-term thinkers I came across in my time as an investor - we discuss where this comes from and how he combines a focus on financial success with a strong moral compass, trying to ensure that the company does the right thing even if this may be at the expense of short-term profitability. Pete talks about how he navigated the company...