Working With Trust: Fiona Campbell Arrand on Leadership, Coaching and Building Real Confidence

In this episode of It’s Your Business, Kath is joined by Fiona Campbell Arrand from The Professional Growth Company for a fascinating conversation about coaching, communication, leadership and the power of trust in business.

Fiona shares the remarkable journey that shaped her work, from starting out in the civil service and becoming one of the youngest air traffic control assistants in the UK, to working in sales across the Middle East with major companies including Xerox and Yellow Pages, before eventually building her own coaching and leadership development business. With decades of experience behind her, Fiona brings both depth and honesty to the conversation, along with a clear sense of what truly helps people grow in business. 

Kath and Fiona talk openly about the modern coaching world, the difference between real expertise and surface-level labels, and why effective coaching in a business setting often needs more than just questions. Fiona explains how her work combines coaching, mentoring and training, supported by over 35 years of experience in NLP, to help people communicate better, lead more effectively and build stronger teams. 

A big theme of this episode is trust. Fiona shares how the idea for her book Working With Trust grew from conversations with her late husband Duncan, whose leadership style deeply influenced her. Together, Kath and Fiona explore why trust is at the heart of effective leadership, what breaks it, what builds it, and why things like truthfulness, respect, support and timeliness matter so much in teams and organisations. 

This is a thoughtful and inspiring episode for leaders, coaches, managers and business owners who want to grow their confidence, strengthen their communication and lead in a way that creates trust, not just compliance. Fiona’s story is rich with experience, and her insight is both practical and deeply human.

Here is Fiona's website https://www.theprofessionalgrowthcompany.com/

Buy the book here:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Working-Trust-compassionate-empathic-leadership

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hello and welcome to It's Your Business with Me, KLG, your fairy podmother. This is the podcast that shines a spotlight on inspiring UK businesses, the mindset behind their success, and the practical tips that could help you too on your business journey. Let's get started. Hello and welcome to this episode of It's Your Business with me, KLG, your fairy podmother. And today I'm delighted to have in my studio Fiona Campbell Arand, and she is from the Professional Growth Company. Welcome, Fiona. Hello, Katherine. Thank you very much for inviting me on. This is fabulous. Very welcome. I'm excited to talk to you because we do hear about coaches, leadership coaches, trainers, and I like talking to people that have been in this world for a while, built a reputation, you've even got a book. So it's nice to talk to somebody who knows what they're talking about. Do you not find? I'm already going off at a time, Fiona. Do you not find that there's so many coaches and consultants nowadays? And I think they just go, I'm a coach, I'm a consultant. And apologies to some of them, but there's no substance behind a lot of these people, unfortunately, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_01 1:29

And you're right. Coaching is not controlled, it's not an accredited profession. So anyone can call themselves a coach. So we're very much self-acca, you know, we're self-governing, if you like. I come from a corporate background. I come from 25 years of sales working for companies like Xerox, Yellow Pages. I worked out in the Middle East. I was one of the first employees for Xerox in the Middle East. I have got a lot of experience that I'm able to translate into the work that I do in coaching. And I think you have to have, you don't have, as a coach, you don't have to know the profession. You don't have to know what the people that you're coaching do. You don't have to be in the same profession. However, I believe coaching in a business environment involves coaching, mentoring, and training. Yes. And I know this is quite controversial to some people because pure coaching is asking questions and waiting for your client to answer.

SPEAKER_02 2:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:35

When you're in a business environment, especially if a company is bringing you in to coach their managers or management team or leadership team, you're on time and you're on budget and you're expected to get results. And you cannot coach someone to know what they don't know. Yes. So I really believe you have to have some experience to get back to your original question. You have to have some experience in how business works, the pressures that people are under, and what the clients who you're working with are facing. Yeah. So just coming out, you know, going away and sort of doing a very short coaching course, and then going in and expecting to get incredible results with people. No, there's a lot, there's a lot more behind that. And that's there's lots of layers, and everyone has got to start somewhere. But this is where I bring a lot of my language skills of neurolinguistic programming into the coaching that I do.

SPEAKER_00 3:39

So you trained in NLP as well. Yep. So when did you do that and why did you do that?

SPEAKER_01 3:45

Okay, that this is an interesting story. I read Richard Bandler, one of the co-founders of NLP. I read his book, Frogs into Princes, in 1989. Wow. And I was in sales working out in Abu Dhabi in the Middle East with Xerox. And I remember reading that book and laughing. And I couldn't stop laughing when I was reading it because I realized that problems didn't have to be a problem. There was always a different way of looking at things. I then came back from the Middle East because I knew there was something I wanted to train in. I had no idea what it was, but something was drawing me back. At that time out in Abu Dhabi in Dubai, I mean I was involved in the setup of the first college out there through Xerox. Wow. So there was no, there was nothing above higher education. And I just knew it my sales career I still continued with for 10 years after I came back. But within two weeks of coming back to Scotland, I was introduced to the director of clinical hypnosis for the London College of Clinical Hypnosis up in Scotland. Went on a hypnotherapy course and went, hang on a minute, this is fitting into the book that I've just read, the year, a couple of years before, The Frogs into Prince's book. And then a few years after that, Paul McKenna brought Richard Bandler over to the UK. I went on the as part of my hypnotherapy training, I learned a little bit about NLP. So I decided to become an NLP practitioner. I then went on to do master practitioner and actually became an assistant with Paul's company for about eight years, assisting on that training. I then did my trainer and I became an NLP coach trainer. So for 35 years, I've really been specializing in NLP skills for business and coaching.

SPEAKER_00 5:40

That's incredible because many, many years ago I went on a training course around, I think it was introduction to NLP, and it was in Glasgow, and I paid for this course, and it was all about this sort of stuff. And years later, I did an NLP training course, the basic stuff. But it is very useful, isn't it? So did you find that you've used it in your whole life?

SPEAKER_01 6:09

Well, to explain what NLP is, according to me, NLP is the methodology of how we create behavior. It's a set of skills that you learn that help you understand the verbal and non-verbal communication. So according to me, it's highly advanced communication skills. They can be used in all sorts of different ways, but the way I use these skills for business, so yes, it's language, it's basically how our language impacts on our behavior. So these skills are they're transferable skills of for life, and they're skills that you can use, but for coaching, it really allows you to break down behind, you're not analyzing people, you're just breaking down what's behind the language so that you're able to then craft the questions to get more information about what's going on with someone. So, yes, the uh I couldn't live my life without using these skills.

SPEAKER_00 7:10

I think once you've got them and you use them every day, you stop thinking you're using them.

SPEAKER_02 7:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:16

Yeah. So your business at the moment, let's go back to the start. You've talked about Abu Dhabi, whatever. What did you want to be when you left school?

SPEAKER_01 7:28

I had no idea what I wanted to be when I left school. I knew I didn't want to be a nurse or a teacher because when I left school, that was a job, nurse or teacher, or wife, or nurse and teacher until you became a wife. That was because I went to school in the 50s, and very much a case of I really didn't know what I wanted to do, but I became the youngest air traffic control assistant in the UK. Left school at 16 with university level qualifications, but no one went to university. Well, women didn't go to university at that time, and I didn't come from a sort of type of family where there was any university involved. I joined the civil service as a clerical officer, and a year in I saw this advert and I had the qualifications, went along and got accepted and became an air traffic control assistant from the age of 17 till 19 and a half when I left and went hitchhiking to Mikanos.

SPEAKER_00 8:27

I didn't expect you to say you were the youngest air traffic controller.

SPEAKER_01 8:32

That is well, not controller, controller, assist assistant, air traffic control assistant. And I knew that because they had to get a big rule book out and look to see because I had to have my parents' written permission to do night shift.

SPEAKER_00 8:45

Wow. You did that, and your first job really was a civil servant. Yes. So was mine. Yeah. I was as I was an admin assistant, but don't you think that being in the civil service many years ago, it taught me all my admin skills, it taught me all my time management skills, everything I ever needed to know was from that job.

SPEAKER_01 9:09

Yes, yeah. I did, I was on tele sales, I was involved with the installation of the telephone system. So that's when the GPO, as it was called then before British Telecom, was actually, we didn't have enough telephone lines. So we were putting in what was known as party lines, which was basically an extension into someone else's house. So one had two houses shared the one telephone line with two extensions.

SPEAKER_00 9:34

I remember being little and picking up the phone, and you could hear your neighbor if somebody was on the phone, you go and quickly put it down. You're like, so so's on the phone. Then you go, I'll pick it up quietly so I can listen in and they say, Is there somebody on the other line?

SPEAKER_01 9:51

It was a different world, but that what what I learned more than the admin skills, I learned customer service skills and sales skills, and didn't really know I was learning that, but that's what I learned at that time. Yeah. So from there, what was next? I went traveling for many years and ran bars, and then eventually I was invited to come and run a bar in Abu Dhabi in the early 80s in a hotel. So I went out and did that for a year. It was a bit dangerous, can't we say? I was gonna say, what was that like? It was an oil field bar. Wow. So it was all your Texans and all your guys from Aberdeen, all your Scots and the Texans together. And as the manager, I was responsible. You couldn't call the police if there was a problem. I would have been if there was a problem, I would have been taken to jail. And after a year, I realized no, I'm not very I'm not very keen on this. I left, and at the same time, Xerox was coming into the Middle East, and I got introduced. It was all sponsorship then. You didn't have the companies all had a local sponsor, and it was the same local sponsor that was sponsoring Xerox. And a wonderful guy called Dennis Coustage hired me on the spot. Literally, I went to see him at seven o'clock in the morning, and I was hired by quarter past seven to help with the launch of Xerox. And he offered me a sales position, which I refused. And he said to me, because I wanted just to go back, I'd go back to the UK. He said, Go and think about it. And I flew back to the UK in November, and by February I was on the phone to him saying, Is that job still open? So I then came back out to Dubai at that point in time and started my career in sales with Xerox. So, how long were you in Dubai for? I was there for eight years in total at that time.

SPEAKER_00 11:48

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 11:49

Yeah, 1982 to 1990.

SPEAKER_00 11:52

Even up to that point, you've had quite a varied career.

SPEAKER_01 11:58

That's when I came back. Um, 1990 was when I came back to the UK.

SPEAKER_00 12:04

But all of that, that tapestry of sales, customer services, different countries dealing with different types of people, yeah, all of that, and and your NLP stuff, all of that sets you up for everything you're doing. Once you came back in 1990, what happened next? Where were you then? I eventually went to work.

SPEAKER_01 12:27

I work, had a few different sales jobs, and eventually ended up in Yellow Pages for seven years. And I was outbound terry sales for Yellow Pages, and we were on 11 sales a day. And I I ran that while I was developing my hypnotherapy in NLP. So I was seeing clients in evenings, weekends, and holidays, and I was taking days off to run leadership development courses. So I had to wait until I was in a financial position to be able to go off on my own. And meanwhile, I met my husband during that time as well. So that was it was you I really believe anyone who's setting up a their business, you have to wait until you're in a financial position that your business will sustain you, or your circumstances are you've got support while you're doing that.

SPEAKER_00 13:19

Yeah, absolutely. There are many, many people that I've worked with in the past in radio in the commercial side who all had their grounding in yellow pages.

SPEAKER_01 13:31

Oh, the the tremendous training, absolutely tremendous training. And they put you through what was known as spin selling, but Xerox put you through spin selling. Oh. I also joined a company called Sensormatic Chimera, which put me through spin selling. I was in Thomson's Directories, they put me through spin selling and then yellow pages. And spin sales is a four-week residential training. Then you have an exam at the end of each week to decide whether you've got your job or not. Oh, that's pretty intense. So it's very intense. So I became a bit of an expert on professional selling. So what's spin selling? Why have I never heard of that? Spin selling, it's all to do with it, it's customer-focused selling. It's working to it's working with needs, it's working with the classic the customer needs, so that you're actually working towards what a customer requires from you, working to the optimum, and then you can you know negotiate down to what they can afford. But it's uh it was a very uh very interesting way of learning because it was very coaching question oriented, and it was all about discovering really before you can put any proposal in, you have to really find out exactly what the problem someone has, and then the impact of that problem in their business, and what will happen if they don't solve that problem. So there was a lot of psychology behind it, yeah, and a lot of NLP behind it that I found out at a later stage. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:08

So everything was actually coming together nicely, like this little Fiona jigsaw, if you will. Oh, yeah. That was bringing you to where you are now because every piece of that has just added up to this amazing company that you have now, where you coach, leadership, train, develop people. So, how long have you been doing that?

SPEAKER_01 15:35

Well, I said I basically set up as a sole trader uh 2001. Yeah, so it's been since 2001. I'm still a soul trader because 25 years. Yeah, I'm I'm still a soul trader because I work very much the associate model, so any help I need is all outsourced to other people that tend to be soul traders, and also a lot of the work because when I met my husband, uh Duncan, we went to I moved down from Glasgow down to the Midlands, and I was doing a little bit of coaching, more of the hypnotherapy at that point of time, and then Duncan got he decided to get uh move to India, he got offered a job in India, so we went out to Mumbai for two years. So I was able to do meanwhile, I started doing my NLP training, so I was qualifying NLP business practitioners, master practitioners, and coaches. So I was able to do my NLP training out in India, then we came back to the UK, then we moved out to Dubai, and that's when things changed for me because in Dubai I then joined two, I think it was three different companies, an associate trainer, and I got really hothoused very quickly into leadership, developing leadership development training. Yeah, so I got encouraged to pull everything together and came back from there with a suite of about 25 different leadership development programs that had all been developed out in the Middle East.

SPEAKER_00 17:16

Wow. So what type of businesses do you work with then?

SPEAKER_01 17:20

I work with um all types of businesses. I've worked with banks, insurance companies, financial companies, manufacturing companies. And also I do quite a lot of one-to-one coaching with small business owners. So whether it's a micro business, people just working their own, I help them get clear on what it is they want to achieve. I also have been working, there's a couple of manufacturing companies I've been working with for a few years down south, where every year they put about five or six of their managers through a coaching program with me. And we work for it's four 90-minute sessions they get. But that particular these particular programs are are designed to help team leaders and managers give them the skills, the confidence, and a structure for them to coach their teams, right? So although I'm coaching them, I'm coaching them the outcome that they take what they're learning from me and then apply it in their own teams.

SPEAKER_00 18:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:25

And I love doing that. I love doing that because if after a few years with a company, you see the change in culture. Yeah, you start to see because I get people come to me maybe as a team leader that were on the shop floor that had been coached by their team leader that I had worked with. Ah, you start to see the the the cascading of the skills happening, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:50

You're seeing it develop through and through through everybody. Yeah, so how did the book come about then?

SPEAKER_01 18:56

The book is working with trust, and the book came about because I actually lost my husband last year. Oh thank you. Duncan was a fabulous leader, yeah. He was one of the best leaders I've ever seen, and I was very, very privileged when we were in India because part of one of his projects in India was Mumbai Airport. He was in construction. That was just one of the projects. I watched him with his managers, I watched how he led, and because we were all sort of expats there, I watched how he he integrated his Indian managers. They got given the same value as the expat managers, both financially and with his time. And Duncan had this incredible theory of leading into idleness. He spoke about leading into idleness. In other words, his his theory was uh a CEO or a general manager shouldn't be involved in tasks. Yeah, they should be idling over, ready to jump in and help anyone, anything they need, but being the support, being the conductor, and also being the strategist, actually working on future future problems.

SPEAKER_02 20:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:11

So one day, about uh two or three, it was about three, four months before Duncan passed, I asked him, I said, What's the biggest quality? What's the best quality you've ever found in a leader? And he didn't even take a breath, he went, trust.

SPEAKER_00 20:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:26

And I went, so what is it about trust? And he started to tell me. So I went off and had a wee look in the internet. I did a bit because I was thinking of writing a book. I felt it was getting time to start pulling some of my ideas and strategies. And I'd already developed two models that I'd been working with, the the splatter model and the raft model. And when I started researching, what I noticed was there were loads of business books that mentioned trust, but I couldn't find anything that actually took you through a framework to develop the behavior of trust. Ah so I created the trust framework for building trust and the circle framework for sustaining trust. And just to share the trust framework, the trust framework is all about truthfulness and transparency, respect, understanding others, support. But what we mean by support within that framework is coaching. Getting people, asking people the questions. For example, if someone comes to you with a problem, many, many leaders jump in to solve that problem because it's easier. But just asking what needs to happen to resolve this and giving someone the time and space to answer that question, that gets them engaged. Because I was watching what Duncan was doing, he was doing all this. Yeah. So that became the book. And then when I did my We Domain setting. I realized I was working with Trust Circle. That was the name that was coming. I thought, no, that doesn't say what it does. So I looked, I went suddenly working with trust, looked that up. The domain was available, both.com.co.uk. And then a few weeks later, I suddenly woke up and went, right, hang on, let me go and search. I searched for the domain name of working with NLP. And then that was available. And also I went, I'll never get the hat trick. And the hat trick was available, working with coaching. So working with NLP is coming out next year, and working with coaching will come out the year after that. Brilliant. So it just became an umbrella that pulled together everything I was doing. And since then, I've now pulled all my NLP business practitioner and business coaching training under the Working with Trust Framework NLP Leadership Program. So it just from Duncan saying that word trust, he gave me the most incredible gifts. And unfortunately, he didn't live to see it published. But I met locally, I met a fabulous girl in I live in a town, Sewarton, small town outside of Glasgow. I met this girl, Suzanne Oath, who happened to be a book coach, and told her I had a book, and she asked to see the manuscript. And then we had an I swee lunch and a chat about it. And she said, Well, if you're wanting to write a really good workbook, you've done a really good job. But are you wanting to write a workbook or do you want to produce a business book? And I said, I want to produce a business book. She said, Well, we've got a lot of work to do. And she encouraged me to bring in all the stories, my stories, examples of coaching people all over the world, a lot of Duncan's stories, and launched in March, March 26. Brilliant. So there you go.

SPEAKER_00 24:00

I love that it's brought in everything about you, but you've also got Duncan in there as well, with his leadership, your leadership, and both your knowledge in that. And I think you really you're so right about the trust and working with trust, it's very hard to develop once you've got that with someone, and then if someone breaks that, we know that in relationships, in work, in whatever, it's catastrophic when that happens. But you can build that trust amongst people, and having that book is great.

SPEAKER_01 24:36

Well, it was it was the behavior. I wanted to show the behaviors and also help people because NL, if we look at just NLP as a as a framework, NLP skills are a way of helping you become conscious of what you're doing, probably really well automatically. Yeah, now if you're doing something automatically really well, you won't know when there's been a shift in that, when all of a sudden something doesn't work, you will not know what's gone wrong.

SPEAKER_00 25:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:13

So this is what I want you to do with the framework because a lot of things people are doing automatically to build trust, they're not even thinking about it. But when you start to consciously think about it, and one of the big things that again, when I did the research, that doesn't get mentioned a lot is one of the most strongest things about building trust is timeliness.

SPEAKER_00 25:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:34

If people don't do what they say they're going to do when they're going to do it, people are not going to trust you.

SPEAKER_00 25:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:41

And that that has hardly been mentioned in in books previously.

SPEAKER_00 25:46

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 25:46

That's something that came out as quite a unique point of this. So people can be doing stuff really automatically, but all of a sudden there's this trust broken and they don't know why. Hopefully, with this book, they can look and see that's exactly what I've done wrong. Yeah. Or that's what I'm doing right. That's why I'm building trust. That's why I find it easy to build with trust people because that's that's exactly what I do. So it's it's the book works on two levels. One, to teach people things they don't know, but two, to actually help people become aware of things they're doing and help them understand. Yeah, this is perfect, this is brilliant that you're doing this, but become conscious of what they're doing.

SPEAKER_00 26:29

Exactly. And those who are not doing it, they get an idea of what they should be doing and could be doing, and a very simple framework. In a very simple way.

SPEAKER_01 26:39

I I love keeping things simple, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:44

Simple and easy, yeah. I think I think that is the way that if something's presented too complicated, too technical, too intricate, puts people off.

SPEAKER_01 26:55

And unfortunately, there's a lot of people think that simple eco's stupid are and it doesn't, because the way our brains work, if something is too complicated, you're not gonna do it. No, and that I spend all my time saying to people, yeah, it is as simple as that. They'll say, easy, and I'll go, yep, that's exactly because we know that all behavior comes from a thought. Yep, whatever you're telling yourself, if you say this is going to be difficult, it doesn't matter what you're saying after it's difficult. Your brain has already created the chemicals in your body, taking you into a state of difficulty, which causes your prefrontal cortex to close down a little bit, which means you don't think as effectively, just with setting up that's difficult. Yeah, so change it to this is new or I'm learning, and all of a sudden you're in a different chemical state, and your brain works a lot better.

SPEAKER_00 27:55

Wow. I can see how all the NLP training and has all gone into that as well. Because words are important, words are huge, and the words you tell yourself. Yeah. Talking to someone the other day, and it's about we we're always very negative to ourselves, aren't we? Never negative self-talk is very big right now and has been for a while. If you change that to positive, the difference that has on you is incredible.

SPEAKER_01 28:28

And it's I this is something that I'm always like to bring in. I take personally, and this is always according to me. Personally, I don't like to use negative or positive. Right. Because we talk about positive self-talk. Positive, conscious self-talk is the most difficult thing to do in the world.

SPEAKER_00 28:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:50

Because most of what's happening with ourselves is unconscious. If you're trying to be positive on a conscious level, it's it you're fighting a losing battle. Yeah. I talk about resourceful and unresourceful. I talk about your inner critic and your inner coach. Right. So what's your inner critic saying to you? What tone of voice is your inner critic doing? Who is your inner critic? Whose voice is your inner critic? Because sometimes it's not your voice. Sometimes it's someone that's told you something that's maybe a load of rubbish that they told you years ago, but you're still believing it. So sometimes you've got to listen to who's that from. And you just listen to you. So so accepting the inner the inner critic can be good because the inner critic can be very it can stop you doing things, but sometimes it can stop you doing things in a good way. Oh, yeah. So it's not always negative. So it's just it's maybe not resourceful for what you want to achieve, but then you've got your inner coach, and this is the one we don't talk about. The inner coach, especially women.

SPEAKER_00 29:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:59

Women tend not to, because I do a lot of talks on overcoming imposter syndrome. And imposter syndrome is just something that it's a name, there's not actually a medical syndrome called imposter syndrome. No, and it's uh it's just a label that has gone out, and it it's self-doubt. Yeah, all it is is doubting yourself. Now, if you're challenging yourself to move into a new position or maybe challenge yourself to do something new, of course you're going to be doubting yourself. That's okay. Yeah, but you've also got to be able to have your inner champion and your inner coach there talking about what you've done well previously, to be able to say, you've done stuff like this before. Yeah. So once you start listening to both, you get a balance.

SPEAKER_00 30:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:48

And it tends to put the critic, stops the critic's, your inner critic's voice becoming the only voice. In other words, your reality.

SPEAKER_00 30:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:00

Of I'll never be able to do this. Well, of course you will. There's other times you're, you know, and it I what for your inner coach, it's always look at look at your own resources, look at the times that you've done something well, and own that. Because women don't own their successes in general. We see that happening a lot.

SPEAKER_00 31:19

I know. I speak to lots and lots of women, especially women of a certain age, especially women who've gone through, gone through menopause, and they just feel like I don't know, they just don't believe in themselves anymore.

SPEAKER_02 31:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:36

And then they start listening to that in a critic more than the what the reality is. And that's when you you the balance tips, doesn't it?

unknown 31:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:46

And again, I really believe that post-menopause, women get a power, they get an incredible power because we are not slaves to our bodies' hormones every month anymore. And once everything has started sort of calm down, you get a clarity of thought. And you can choose to be invisible or you can choose to make yourself very visible.

SPEAKER_00 32:07

I know it's funny, isn't it? Because years ago, when I was slimmer, fitter, all of those things, I wouldn't have dreamt not in a month of Sundays of going to the gym on a very hot day with shorts on. Not a chance because I was so what people are gonna think about me. Now I'm a certain age. The other day I went to the gym and I even said to the PT and I said, Do you know what? I've rocked up in shorts. This is the first time in my whole life, and I've always done uh fitness gym stuff, whatever that I've ever worn. He said, Well, it is boiling. I said, No, it's not about I said, it's not about the heat, it's not about that. No matter what the weather was like, I still wouldn't have as a younger woman. Now I don't care. I don't care if there's people in the gym going looking at look at her in her shorts. Well, actually, they're not because they're so involved in themselves. They're not, you know, wearing- They're not even looking, but when you're younger, I'm thinking, I shouldn't go out in shorts. Oh my goodness, I can't be doing that, or I can't be doing that. And I could really at that time because I was young fitting, I would have probably looked 20 times better in my shorts.

SPEAKER_01 33:22

I'm sure you look fine now.

SPEAKER_00 33:25

But you know what? It's funny when you reach a certain age now, I don't care what people say about me or think about me or what I'm past all that.

SPEAKER_01 33:34

Yeah, and I think it's wonderful you're doing things like going to the gym because I think that's so important. Looking after yourself, getting out there, getting exercise. I I'm in the gym at least twice a week.

SPEAKER_00 33:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:46

Saunas, swimming, moving, and you know, eating healthily, all these things are so important. Really important. Because we really now have got the opportunity to live a lot longer and a lot healthier by looking after ourselves. Absolutely. I'm only warming up.

SPEAKER_00 34:05

There's plenty of life in you, yeah. Oh my goodness. What is next for you, then, Fiona? What's next? Apparently, the book's coming, another book's coming out next year, and then another we'll have the well then the next book, working with the NLP, that's half written, so that's well on its way.

SPEAKER_01 34:24

What is it? I've got a membership club that I've been running for six years, and that's it's the NLP Business Circle Club, and that is a club for business professionals, coaches, and uh NLP professionals. You don't have to be NLP trained, but it's all around using language and um nonverbal communication and coaching and advanced communication skills. So we're building a community, and we're building this community that really supports each other. We do two masterclasses, two live masterclasses every month, plus we have four 45-minute unrecorded live sessions that we go on to our community to support each other, and that is something we're starting to see. I set it up just at the beginning of COVID. It was set up, it's grown organically. Because Duncan was ill for a couple of years, that that community really sustained me. It was incredible, but I wasn't growing it at all. But now we're starting to talk. Well, I don't I want it to organically grow. It's we're getting a lovely community of people that are all helping each other, moving within the coaching and leadership sphere, and working with, especially in today's world with AI.

SPEAKER_00 35:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:43

So leaders now have to be able to learn, unlearn, relearn, yeah, work with uncertainty, work with flexible changing, with changing goalposts all the time, uh, work with goals that they never reach because by the time they go to reach them, there's a completely new goal in place. So this is all what we're working around. We're we're looking to get this community of people with real flexible thinking and using our skills in sort of leadership and coaching with flexible skills. So that's the one that I can see whatever that will be my legacy because it will eventually not need me.

SPEAKER_00 36:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:31

And it will still run. Yeah. But it's online, it's an online community, and already my members are are some of the members are running some of the small 45-minute sessions, which is lovely. Awesome.

SPEAKER_00 36:44

So if anyone wants to get in touch with you, Fiona, or buy the book or join this membership, tell us about how they can do that, and also I will link all of that in the shows.

SPEAKER_01 36:57

That's lovely. Well, if you go to theprofessional growth company.com and you'll see the business uh community up at the top of there. The book's available on Amazon. We have just managed to get it as paperback in India, and I'm hoping the next week or so it will now it will also be in paperback in the Middle East, the whole of the Middle East. So it's now it's available. We know it's worldwide, but there were a few areas that I've been personally involved in that it wasn't available there, so it's now available. So Amazon's the best place for the book, and it's working with trust. And I am the only Fiona Campbell Aaron on LinkedIn.

SPEAKER_00 37:39

I'm only Cast Lord Green is great.

SPEAKER_01 37:42

There you go. So it's A-R-R A-R-R-A-N-D, and uh it just that makes it easy. We don't even so just Fiona Campbell Aaron, and that's it. So LinkedIn is my my social. I I don't really do a little bit of Facebook, I don't really do Instagram at the moment, and that may change. Yeah, but the professional growth company, the everything is there because we also have a range of self-learning courses on there as well for people who want to learn on their own.

SPEAKER_00 38:11

Oh, brilliant! So people can go and have a look round there. Well, Fiona, it's been fascinating speaking to you. I've loved every minute. Thank you for being my guest today. It's my pleasure and thank you for your time. Thank you for listening to It's Your Business. If you want help with podcast training, podcast production, or support with your show, visit www.fairypodmother.co.uk. And if you've enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, follow, and leave a review. It makes a huge difference and helps other businesses just like you find us. See you next time.