In this episode of Coach Class, I sit down with Ted Bradshaw — cognitive behavioural therapist, coach, and educator — to explore the space where psychology meets coaching.

Ted shares his journey from being a nervous, anxious teenager to working in NHS mental health services, and how his early curiosity about people — combined with a love of problem-solving — led him into CBT. Along the way, he reflects on a simple but powerful question that still drives his work today:
why aren’t we taught the tools to understand our minds earlier in life?

The conversation explores:

• The relationship between therapy and coaching, and where the boundaries lie
• How CBT works in practice — combining empathy with structured thinking
• The role of thought patterns and self-beliefs in shaping behaviour
• Why understanding anxiety can make it feel less overwhelming and more manageable

Ted and I also discuss how our understanding of mental health has evolved:

• Previous generations often lacked the language to describe anxiety, sometimes appearing withdrawn rather than “anxious”
• Today, we’re better at naming mental health experiences, but still learning how to live with them
• The impact of Covid on young people, including increased worries around safety, germs, and social situations

A key theme throughout is Ted’s idea of helping people move from being the subject of their thoughts to observing them — a shift that can create space, perspective, and choice.

The episode also touches on:

• The importance of accessible, practical psychological tools
• How people learn differently — and why coaching and teaching need to adapt
• Ted’s growing body of work, including his Substack and podcast, Things I Want My Kids to Know, where he explores topics like social anxiety, panic attacks, and overthinking

Ultimately, this is a conversation about making sense of how we think and feel, and equipping ourselves — and the next generation — with the tools to navigate life with greater awareness and resilience.

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In this episode I sat down with Karl Martin, a highly respected commercial leader whose career spans some of the UK’s biggest retailers, including Asda and Sainsbury's.

Karl reflects on the moments that shaped his leadership — from his early days finding his way into retail to leading high-pressure commercial roles, and the lessons he carries from a career built on instinct, experience, and backing himself.

The conversation explores leadership through influence, the importance of direct feedback, career-defining moments, and why success is ultimately about building a life on your own terms.

Early influences and finding retail

Karl didn’t set out with a grand plan to work in retail.

While studying at Manchester Metropolitan University, he took a placement at Sainsbury's and discovered he loved working in stores — particularly in fresh produce.

A decisive moment came at a company event, where he made a beeline for the most senior director in the room, sat next to him, and started a conversation. That led to an opportunity in buying — and set him on his path.

Careers often begin not with a plan, but with a decision to put yourself forward.

Creating your own opportunities

Karl’s early career is full of moments where he stepped forward rather than waited. From pushing himself into conversations to taking on roles he didn’t fully understand, he learned that confidence follows action.

His advice today is clear:

• Don’t just send emails.
• Get yourself in the room.

Leadership happens in the gaps

One of Karl’s most powerful insights is simple:

Organisations have structure, but the real work happens in between it.

As leaders become more senior, success depends less on hierarchy and more on influence — working across teams and getting things done without direct authority.

The power of direct feedback

Karl is known for being direct. He reflects on the importance of honest, timely feedback — even when it’s uncomfortable. In Rebecca’s case, what felt like a tough conversation became a defining moment in her leadership journey.

The best leaders don’t avoid difficult conversations — they use them to help others grow.

Backing yourself

A recurring theme in Karl’s story is trusting your own judgement. From stepping into buying roles to navigating complex challenges, he learned to back himself — even when the path wasn’t clear.

You can’t connect the dots looking forward. You have to take opportunities as they come and make sense of them later.

Learning from others

Karl has been shaped by mentors, colleagues, and a core set of books, including:

• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
• Man’s Search for Meaning
• Who Moved My Cheese
• The First 90 Days

At one point, he created his own “Desert Island Discs” — a record of the people and lessons that shaped his career.

Work, life and perspective

Perhaps most distinctive is Karl’s relationship with work. He has always worked to live. Sport, music, and family come first — with work sitting alongside them, not above them.

Even after senior roles, his career has been shaped by choice: stepping back, exploring new ventures, and deciding what comes next on his own terms.

Advice to the next generation

Karl’s advice is straightforward:

• Push yourself.
• Put yourself out there.
• Don’t rely on sending messages and hoping something comes back.

Because careers are built through action, relationships, and the willingness to step i

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In this episode I sat down with Rebecca Passmore, Group Chief Operating Officer at PureGym, one of the UK’s largest and fastest-growing fitness businesses.

Rebecca reflects on the formative moments that shaped her leadership philosophy — from growing up around a family business, to her early career at Aldi and Asda, and the lessons she carries into leading a fast-moving international organisation today.

The conversation explores work ethic, leadership style, mentorship, and why kindness and fairness remain central to how Rebecca leads.

Early influences and work ethic

Rebecca credits her early outlook on work to watching her father and grandfather run their own business.

Saturday mornings often meant her father heading to the office to deal with whatever needed doing — sometimes Rebecca got to tag along with colouring books while the adults worked.

Seeing first-hand the commitment required to run a business shaped her attitude to leadership and effort.

Today she describes herself as “all in” when it comes to work — not separating career and life into neat compartments but seeing them as part of the same journey.

Lessons from Aldi and Asda

Rebecca began her career on the graduate programme at Aldi before joining Asda, where several defining moments helped shape her leadership style.

One pivotal experience came during a difficult conversation with a senior leader who challenged her “command and control” approach when she moved from field operations into a central leadership role.

The feedback was direct and uncomfortable — but it forced Rebecca to recognise that leadership in a collaborative environment requires influence and relationships, not authority.

She still credits that moment as one of the most valuable pieces of feedback she ever received.

Backing your own judgement

Another turning point came when Rebecca organised visits to Aldi stores while helping develop Asda’s smaller supermarket format.

At the time, discount competitors were not always openly discussed inside the organisation.

Although the initiative drew criticism internally, it was the first moment Rebecca clearly remembers backing her own judgement — trusting that she was doing the right thing even when others disagreed.

It was an early lesson in leadership courage.

Kindness as a leadership principle

A third experience had the opposite effect.

After being dismissed by a senior leader during an introduction in the corridor, Rebecca remembers feeling the moment as unnecessarily unkind.

It became a personal promise: she would never treat people that way as a leader.

For Rebecca, kindness is not weakness — it means being fair, thoughtful, and adapting your leadership style to bring out the best in others.

The responsibility of leadership

Rebecca believes leaders must recognise the influence they have on those around them.

In organisations where teams are young and ambitious, particularly between the ages of 25 and 35, people are actively learning how to lead by watching others.

That means leaders must be conscious of how they show up — because behaviours and attitudes are often copied.

Advice to her younger self

Looking back, Rebecca’s advice to her younger self is simple:

Enjoy life more.

While academic grades are important, they only take you so far. Experiences, relationships, and becoming an interesting person are just as valuable when building a career.

Her message to young people today is to

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Why Is This Happening For Me?

In this episode of Coach Class, I’m joined by former Asda colleague Alastair Islip, now European Managing Director at Nulo Pet Food.

Alastair’s career journey is anything but linear. He began on the Woolworths graduate scheme, moved into buying almost by accident, and after a formative year in America and a spell working as a distributor into Asda, found himself joining the business that would shape him for the next 13 years. From there, he went on to senior leadership at Pets at Home, stepped out on his own into consulting, and now leads Nulo’s expansion across Europe.

What makes this conversation compelling isn’t just the career moves — it’s the values underpinning them.

Alastair speaks warmly about his time at Asda and the culture at its best: respect for the individual, all colleagues one team, striving for excellence. He reflects on the influence of leaders like Duncan Cross, whose energy and will to win left a lasting mark. The idea of visible leadership — managing by walking around, setting standards through presence — clearly shaped how Alastair thinks about leading today.

Importantly, he didn’t leave Asda because he fell out of love with retail. He left because he felt some of those values had faded, and he knew he wanted to work somewhere that still embodied them. That search for purpose and alignment led him to Pets at Home — and into a high-growth environment delivering double-digit growth year after year.

It was also where imposter syndrome showed up loudly.

Alastair talks openly about that feeling — wondering if he’d be found out — and about the reassurance he received early on: “Take three months.” Over time, he realised imposter syndrome isn’t something to eliminate, but something to manage. It can be healthy, as long as you recognise that you do know some stuff.

After Pets at Home, he made the deliberate decision to go solo. Consulting brought early success — stronger and faster than expected — but it didn’t remove uncertainty. He still woke up worrying: what if it all disappears? That period led to one of the most powerful reframes in the episode:

“Why is this happening for me, not why is this happening to me?”

That shift in perspective changed how he viewed pressure, risk and opportunity. It’s also what ultimately led him full circle — one of his first consulting clients became his next role. Today, as European MD at Nulo, he’s building the brand across the UK, Italy and Spain, with further expansion underway. He’s scaling a team across countries, navigating hybrid working across time zones, and shaping culture from the ground up — without pretending to have all the answers.

Throughout the episode, one theme keeps resurfacing: relationships.

Having sat on both sides of the desk, Alastair is clear about what makes a strong supplier–retailer partnership. Treat people how you want to be treated. Be honest about what’s possible. Do what you say you will. Don’t screw anybody over. Whether buying toilet rolls or selling pet food, the fundamentals don’t change.

This conversation is a reminder that careers are built on people and principles, that culture matters deeply, and that perspective can transform pressure into progress.

When I asked Alastair what advice he’d give himself on day one at Asda, his answer was simple:

“Smile and enjoy it.”

Because even through the pressure, the uncertainty and the imposter syndrom

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Today’s conversation feels less like an interview and more like an arrival.

Recorded on site in Nina Hunter’s riverside studio overlooking the weir at Hirst Wood — with the River Aire flowing just beyond the garden — this episode is an intimate exploration of creativity, feminine energy, and what it means to live in full alignment with your purpose.

Nina is a painter, illustrator, and founder of Saltaire Art Gallery. Her work explores “soft power”: an unassuming energy of tenderness that is unbreakable. In this conversation, she shares the long, quiet arc of her becoming — from a bohemian seaside town in Poland, through years of classical piano training and an MA at the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk, to a successful international illustration career… and finally, back to her first love: painting.

Nina speaks candidly about the years spent putting herself last — building a career, raising her son, and prioritising everyone else — before reaching the moment where she decided she would no longer compromise. Painting became more than a practice. It became ritual. Healing. A way of standing before a blank canvas and contemplating life itself.

Along the way, Nina reflects on the power of words and intention, and how her belief in manifestation — shaped by Dr. Joe Dispenza’s work — has influenced not only her mindset, but the reality she has built. She shares how Saltaire has shaped her pace of life and her creative world: a place filled with artists, philosophical conversations, daily walks, and time in nature. A place where happiness isn’t a reward, but a discipline.

A turning point comes when Nina describes how, in 2019, she knew what she wanted to convey — but didn’t yet have the vocabulary to express it. Years of experimentation, persistence, and failure followed. Then last year, something shifted. The work began to land with a new truthfulness — and collectors felt it. In 2025, Nina sold fifteen paintings, receiving messages from art lovers who told her they could feel the energy in the work.

Nina also shares a refreshingly open view of AI, describing it not as a threat to creativity but as a tool — a collaborator — and even a new kind of art director or photographer, enabling artists to create at a new level.

The conversation leads to a threshold moment: Nina is reopening Saltaire Art Gallery — this time as herself — with the launch of Nina Hunter Gallery & Collectors Lounge, and her solo show, “Thy Will Be Done”, on International Women’s Day.

As Nina says: the painting process is a roller coaster — sometimes torture — but when it ends with a “hell yes”, it’s ecstasy.

“Thy Will Be Done”
📅 8 March (International Women’s Day)
📍 Saltaire, West Yorkshire

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In this episode of Coach Class, I was joined by Ieva Eksts (PCC) — a career and leadership coach based in Kotka, Finland, who supports international leaders, teams and individuals navigating change across cultures, countries and identities.

Ieva shares her journey into coaching, from supporting international students at Durham University Business School, to moving to Finland, building a coaching practice, and developing her skills through Barefoot Coaching. Along the way, she reflects on the role of supervision, what motivates her most, and why coaching face-to-face gives her energy.

This is a thoughtful conversation about clarity, confidence, leadership, and the subtle cultural differences that shape how people work, communicate and collaborate.

Through ievolution coaching, she supports professionals, leaders and expat partners to gain clarity, build confidence, and stay motivated through career growth, leadership development and international transitions.

Her work includes:

• 1:1 coaching
• Group and team coaching
• Workshop design and facilitation
• Leadership development and communication support

What you’ll hear in this episode

• How Ieva arrived in coaching — and why moving to Finland became the “kick” to begin
• Why she wishes she’d had career coaching when she was younger
• How her international career shaped her coaching style
• The value of supervision — especially for independent coaches
• Why face-to-face coaching gives her energy (and what it’s like to witness life-changing moments)
• The difference between coaching individuals vs teams — and why teams are more challenging
• Working cross-culturally: leadership expectations, communication styles, and subtle differences
• A brilliant reflection on culture through sauna, equality, and shared human connection
• Where Ieva wants to head next: more team coaching and collaborations

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In this episode of Coach Class, I’m joined by Michele Martin, Senior Director of Global Brand and Integrated Marketing at Ticketmaster, to explore how careers are really shaped — not by straight lines or perfect plans, but by curiosity, community, mentorship, and a willingness to say yes before you feel ready.

Michele grew up in Maine and stayed. She reflects on how growing up in a place that feels like “one big small town” instilled a deep sense of community — something that has quietly influenced every stage of her career. Combined with being a first-generation college student, this grounding created both responsibility and drive.

Her career began in journalism as a student newspaper reporter, before she realised it wasn’t writing that lit her up, but the commercial and advertising side of storytelling. An early agency internship proved formative, particularly because she was treated as a professional from day one — an experience that stayed with her.

A defining chapter unfolds at TD Bank, where she spent a decade across marketing, partnerships, sales strategy, and customer experience. It was here that mentor Matt Chevalier introduced the idea that careers are lattices, not ladders — and that sideways moves are development, not distraction.

That mindset led Michele into call centre and customer experience roles she hadn’t planned, but which became some of the most formative of her career, eventually opening the door to L.L.Bean. She joined through customer satisfaction before returning to marketing and brand leadership, working on purpose-led campaigns rooted in respect for customers, employees, and place.

From there, Michele made a deliberate leap into the startup world at Mercari, where speed, ambiguity, and ownership stretched her confidence and capability. Today, at Ticketmaster, she finds herself full circle — working again in sports, music, and entertainment, now at global scale, leading teams with curiosity, trust, and belief in people.

One of the most resonant ideas she shares is a traveller’s mindset: building just enough structure to move forward, while leaving room for happenstance. Mentorship and community — especially peer-based — run throughout the conversation.

The episode closes with advice that captures Michele’s approach perfectly: “Get a mitt and get in the game.” Wherever you are, show up fully — or have the courage to move on.

It’s a conversation about careers that meander, mentors who matter, and the quiet power of community — and a reminder that the most meaningful journeys are rarely the most linear ones.

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In this episode of Coach Class, I'm joined by Phil Myerscough — a Lancashire-born digital and e-commerce consultant, music producer, and founder of Bradford Digital — to explore how careers are really built: through curiosity, community, and the courage to ask for help.

Phil traces his journey from growing up in Lancashire to moving to London at 18, where he studied music technology, worked in recording studios, and immersed himself in the creative energy of the 1990s. Those early experiences — from wiring synths to adapting to rapidly changing technology — laid the foundations for his later approach to digital work: fundamentals first, tools second.

A pivotal chapter of the conversation centres on Richer Sounds, where Phil walked in looking for a job to pay the rent and ended up running the website. At a time when e-commerce barely existed, Richer Sounds taught him enduring principles of customer service, trust, accountability, and shared responsibility — lessons he still draws on today. From early marketing emails that accidentally took the website down to learning restraint and judgement, Phil’s digital education was firmly “learning by doing.”

Phil reflects on his move to Bradford at 26, joining catalogue-led retailers as they began their shift online. Across roles at Redcats, Damart, Kaleidoscope and luxury brand N.Peal, he helped teams move from catalogue thinking to a true retail mindset — treating websites as shop windows and focusing on merchandising fundamentals long before AI and automation entered the conversation.

Nine years ago, Phil made the leap into self-employment, initially planning just “12 days of work” — a plan that quietly turned into a long-term consultancy. He speaks candidly about the recurring anxieties of freelance life, the annual moments of doubt, and the realisation that resilience often means simply keeping going.

A major focus of the episode is Bradford Digital, which Phil founded in October 2023 after years of attending digital events in other cities and asking a simple question: why not Bradford? What began as an experiment quickly drew 50 people to the first event, growing into a thriving community with hundreds of attendees, dozens of speakers, and a reputation for being open, practical, and welcoming.

Phil explains how Bradford Digital is intentionally different: no hierarchy, no corporate gloss, and a strong emphasis on culture and community alongside commerce. The meetups have helped reframe perceptions of Bradford, bringing visitors into the city and giving locals confidence in the talent around them.

The conversation also touches on a difficult period earlier this year when Phil’s consultancy faced real financial pressure. He shares how asking for help — openly and honestly — became a turning point, unlocking support, new work, and renewed perspective. For Phil, this experience reinforced a powerful lesson: asking for help isn’t weakness, it’s leadership.

Looking ahead, Phil outlines ambitious plans to scale Bradford Digital into a city-wide digital festival, aligned with UK Tech Week and building toward a larger annual moment that brings together universities, businesses, the council, and community organisations. While the vision is bold, Phil is clear that his role isn’t to be the hero — but the host and catalyst.

The episode closes with a reflection on impact: cities aren’t transformed by strategies or slogans, but by people who quietly connect others, show up consistently, and care deeply about place.

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