We Are Power Podcast
The We Are PoWEr podcast spotlights voices and perspectives that need to be heard. Our weekly podcast, with listeners in over 60 countries, delivers PoWErful conversations that inspire, challenge, and empower... from personal life stories to business insights and leadership lessons.
We share diverse experiences, bold discussions, and real solutions. Whether you're looking for career advice, topical themes, or stories of resilience and success - this is where voices spark change.
We Are Power Podcast
"I Am Still Learning About Being An Entrepreneur" - James Carss
The brilliant James Carss joins the We Are PoWEr Podcast – this time sharing a story of trauma, transformation, and finding poWEr through purpose, discipline, and inclusion.
In this episode, James opens up about training daily as a teenager to moving to Hong Kong with just a suitcase, James’s journey is packed with resilience, humour, and heart. He shares the life-changing mentorship he found with a Chinese martial arts master, his unexpected stint in the movie industry, and how those experiences now guide his work as Chief Exec of Castle Peak Group.
From the dojo to the boardroom, James brings a poWErful message of mindfulness, integrity, and the impact of creating space for others to thrive.
In this episode:
Turning childhood trauma into a lifelong mission
Why martial arts became his anchor
Life in Hong Kong and mentorship that transcended language
From martial arts films to Geordie “Russian” lines
Founding Castle Peak Group and leading with fairness
Building inclusive workplaces that value difference
The importance of staying present
Find out more about We Are PoWEr here. 💫
Hello, hello and welcome to the we Are Power podcast. If this is your first time here, the we Are Power podcast is the podcast for you, your career and your life. We release an episode every single Monday with listeners in over 60 countries worldwide, where you'll hear personal life stories, top-notch industry advice and key leadership insight from amazing role models. As we Are Power is the umbrella brand to Northern Power Women Awards, which celebrates hundreds of female role models and advocates every year. This is where you can hear stories from all of our awards alumni and stay up to date with everything. Mpw Awards and we Are Power Never imitated, never replicated singularly wonderful, everybody's wonder girl. Well, hello and welcome to this week's podcast. I am delighted today to be joined on our teal lovely teal, isn't it? Our teal sofas by James Carrs one R2S's, by the way. Who?
Speaker 2:is the chief exec of Castle Peak.
Speaker 1:Welcome. Welcome to Liverpool, Welcome to the studio.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much, simone.
Speaker 1:Lovely to be here on the teal sofa Now we met probably only just more than six months ago at a rooftop bar in Newcastle, didn't we, when we were up?
Speaker 2:there on tour, man, we did, yeah, you know what I love, what you do.
Speaker 1:I want to partner with you guys. It was, yeah, probably like you said the easiest sale ever.
Speaker 2:I know, I know, I know the thing I mean. The ironic thing is it's it's difficult for me, and what I do, to close deals and I gave you the easiest close to do, didn't I?
Speaker 1:I was waiting. I was waiting for the camera to come out. I'm like what's going on here?
Speaker 2:It's a setup, it's a joke. It was a great decision and I didn't have any doubt in my mind. I mean, that was the, that was the thing and it was. That was the first time I met you guys in person, but you were all so great and authentic and the conversations and so welcoming to me because that was the first time that I'd been at one of your events and it was quite. It was quite a small event, but the quality of people that you had there and the conversation that was going on, I was like, yeah, this will be good.
Speaker 1:And you'd been nominated also at that point because I think this was just before Christmas time. I didn't know that, though. No, and you've been nominated for the Northern Power Women Awards advocacy list as well, and you are on the 2025 advocacy list, so congratulations. We'll get into all of that, we'll unpack all of that in a second. But how would you describe yourself? I always like to say in one word, but I think that's flipping impossible for Northerners at the best of times. But give us a sentence or three words, and how would you? How?
Speaker 2:would you say who you are? If it was going to be one word, I would just say a friend. If it was going to be three words friend, supporter, ally.
Speaker 1:Wow, okay, and you've had such an interesting life. You've lived over in hong kong. You've lived a short period of time in canada I think as well in vancouver um, but it's safe to say that martial arts has been fundamental to who you are. Yeah, and the path that you have trodden take us through some of those like life lessons that you've learned, and across those different continents as well yeah, I mean it has.
Speaker 2:It has been centric to my life. It's also been centric to the decision making on the places that I've gone to, the places I've gone to live and the the paths that I've taken and the decisions and it's. But it's. It's actually very centric to what I'm doing now and a lot of people don't know this. Actually, I think I've talked about it once before, but I was involved in a race attack when I was about 10 years old. So myself and an Asian friend were badly beaten up, as in, like put in hospital, beaten up, and there's a bit of a story behind that. But it was in the late 80s kind of at that time when, you know, when racism was a lot more overt than it is now still here now, but but, but it was, it was more violent from from some perspectives and uh, and I was very young, so think events like that to happen, a violent event at that at that age, kind of shapes you and what you do. So so, um, so that that took me into the martial arts, first of all because I was like I'm never gonna let that happen again, um, and and started to to train in multiple disciplines from a really young age which led to an absolute obsession and I mean obsession that you know, at the age of 12, 13 I was. I was training four or five hours a day, every evening, and my whole life revolved around it, and I knew very quickly at that point that I needed to go out to the Orient and train and that's what I wanted to, and I became obsessed with the movies and Bruce Lee was my hero growing up, which still is my hero now, who was, you know, somebody who faced massive discrimination in his life, in, especially when he was in america, when he was in hollywood, on trying to get into, uh, the movie industry, and everything that he achieved and went through and and and did so. There's massive story about him and also being part of a mixed race family and stuff, so, um, so yeah, so it determined many things, of course now.
Speaker 2:Now, I suppose the the type of martial arts that I do, which is predominantly Chinese martial arts. We call it the internal school, things like Tai Chi, et cetera. It's about mindfulness, about being in the moment, and that does help you develop deep levels of concentration, connection between your mind and your body, and things like that, and I've I'm still learning about being an entrepreneur and a business owner. It's only 18 months in right. I've got a long background in doing what I've done in recruitment and executive search, but actually running it as a business for myself.
Speaker 2:I'm a white belt, right, and that's one thing I do. Love is the white belt mentality in everything I do, that you should never think like a black belt or a 10th dan. You should always think like what have you got to learn? What do you need to do? And life is all about learning. So no matter how experienced you are, no matter how good you might think you are at something or a set of skills you've developed, you're always a white belt and in our martial art we don't wear any belts anyway have any gradings.
Speaker 1:So so you had this awful, traumatic incident that you witnessed at the age of 10 by the age of 12. This you're training four times a week.
Speaker 2:You're committed, you're all hours a day four hours a day.
Speaker 1:Sorry, four hours a day, uh. At what point did you then take yourselves over?
Speaker 2:take yourself over with your family to yeah, well, I went by myself first, so what age were you then? I was in my late 20s so I studied sports science university. So it took me academically through that route.
Speaker 2:I wasn't very good at doing GCSEs and A levels and things like that because I just didn't have an interest level in doing that. So I ended up kind of through the vocational qualifications, did a BTEC in leisure and that took me through clearing to get into a university which wasn't a good university from uh, academic point of view it was a. It was the university of um. Luton, which is now Bedfordshire, was the first year they'd been a university but they were running a really good sport course. So that was life-changing for me to get away from home for the first time as well at the age of sort of 18, 19 and uh, and be in a town like luton which has got it's. It's a, it's a, it's a brilliant town, but it's got its own unique characteristics as well. If you've ever been, that's very different from where I grew up in north townside, um.
Speaker 2:So, and then that took me to london, which I worked in executive search for a few years and I was trying to find my opportunity to get out to Hong Kong. So I knew it was going to be Hong Kong. So I managed to get a role in banking recruitment. I started in finance first because I knew banking would be the easiest route. Once I had that experience, hong Kong being a big financial services hub, that would make me more employable over there. So everything was kind of set out from that point of view. Eventually eventually managed to get out there when I was yeah, I was in my late 20s at the time. I went out with literally with one suitcase by myself. I didn't have any kind of relocation help or anything like that. I had secured a role out there but on a local package, not not as an expat or anything like that.
Speaker 2:It was a really interesting time in Hong Kong at that point because they just got over SARS and they'd been through this terrible pandemic which was I mean, covid was awful here, but SARS was, I think, fair to say, a more serious disease. To get the. The rate of fatalities from it was was was much higher. That had decimated their economy and, uh, and also the recruitment industry, because people wouldn't get together and have interviews and have meetings. There was no teams or zoom or anything. There was skype, but if you remember what skype calls were like, you know, trying to trying to get a connection and stuff on that. So so I went out at this really interesting time, which was fortuitous timing for me because the economy was going like that and recovering from it very fast and so, yeah, but I was at that point, I was by myself.
Speaker 1:But then I think that's something I read. Was that you a mentor? And it was your martial arts mentor who became you're like your Chinese dad, I think if I read yeah, that's what I call him, and you became part of the family. So you're there locally on the local package. So you haven't got all the trimmings, trimmings of an ex-fight.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I wasn't living up on the peak or anything like that.
Speaker 1:But the power of that mentorship must have made all that difference.
Speaker 2:It did. It's a very, very strong bond and relationship that we've got and when I first went out to Hong Kong, I wanted to. I was almost like a kid at a sweet shop.
Speaker 2:I wanted to test out every martial arts school, every teacher. I had a very loose recommendation for this one school that didn't advertise anywhere, didn't have any website, so it was all in Chinese. It was really hard to find and it was in a. It was in a rundown building in the middle of Mong Kok, um, and. But I found it in the in the first week and this teacher was in there who was teaching it, and straight away I felt like I probably wasn't that welcome.
Speaker 2:Uh, more from an inconvenience point of view, because here's this guy who's just turned up from England. This Westerner doesn't speak Chinese. We've got this well-run class here. We don't really want to send him away. He's probably not going to stay. They don't like Kung Fu tourists over there who come for a couple of weeks and then disappear, kind of thing. So he kind of ignored me for the first couple of weeks and just sort of looked at me and gave me a couple of corrections and shook his head and then thought, wow, this is going to be a bit of a waste of time. And then after probably a month he realized that I wasn't going anywhere and I was going to come back.
Speaker 2:But there was a bit of an issue, because my Cantonese at that point I speak a little bit now was pretty much non-existent and so was his English was pretty much non-existent and so was his English. So, unbeknown to me, I didn't know this he bought himself a load of books in English to teach himself English. And I was like, when I found that out and we joke about it now because I say to him Sifu, which is the Chinese term for master, I said Sifu, you know, all those years ago, 20 years ago, you were learning English, teach me Kung Fu. Now my Kung Fu is still not very good. You speak perfect english. So actually what's happened here if I've been your english teacher over that period of time and that and that kind of? And he does speak good english now. So that kind of like sums up our relationship.
Speaker 2:And you know, when I got married, we got married over in tandy, came up to the wedding. I was at his family wedding. I get invites for his kind of family events and things like that and uh, it's a, it's a really a really close bond. Probably the most, I would say, almost heartwarming thing anyone's ever said to me from him was what I was at his son's wedding. And we were. We sat at the same table together like chinese banquet kind of style and um, and it was, it was after the wedding. We're on the table and he's talking to his son and his son speaks good English Cause he's um, he's a fireman. He was and Sifu was saying you know, it's one of my biggest regrets that you, I'm really happy and proud. If you change your mind in the future at any point and I'm too old you need to go to him. And I was like for him to say that to his son was like yeah, yeah yeah, it was a big thing and I've brought him now to.
Speaker 2:He's come to the UK um three or four times, which which he loves to teach seminars. So he's now the seag Gong, which means like the grandmaster in Chinese. I have unofficially have a Sifu title and so when he comes over here my students call him Si Gong and he loves that and he's had a fantastic time. So he needs to come here because he's also a massive Liverpool Football Club fan. So I've been telling him I think next year he'll be coming back over again. We'll go to Anfield, we'll go to Anfield. I took him for the St James' part too, but his face was a bit like when he saw my Kung Fu the first time. It was a bit like.
Speaker 1:Let's get him in. We'll get him in on the couch.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:We'll do the reverse follow-up story. That would be great. Then we'll get all. If I remember rightly reading, you also had some bit parts in movies. You wanted to be a movie star.
Speaker 2:Your research goes deep. Well, yeah, I mean it was kind of good timing. It wasn't something planned on my side. I won't say that I didn't want to be a movie star I mean, who wouldn't want to be a movie star? But I got the opportunity to do a couple and I would say, very, very small parts in movies. Like you know, blink, blink and you'd miss, and I was. I was in um two, two main ones One was a, a Hong Kong movie called True Master Um, and one was an American movie called Lady Blood Fight, which was a remake of Bloodsport with a female cast, and of course, I was a bad guy in both of them.
Speaker 1:A face like this.
Speaker 2:I'm not going to be like a leading hero kind of a guy, right. I mean Lady Bloodsport. It's on Amazon so you can see it on there. It's like a 6.5 out of 10 kind of a movie, right. The other one, even by Chinese standards, is so bad, like literally, if you, you wouldn't have to pay to go to the cinema and watch that, but you'd probably have to pay to leave. It's that bad, um, but the interesting thing about that is I play a Russian boxer in the movie, so it's a period movie set in the 1800s and.
Speaker 2:I play this Russian boxer and I've got like kind of the black tie and tux on and stuff like that. I get killed fairly early in the movie. But I've got a few um, a few lines in it and it's that movie's been released in a lot of different languages and they use somebody else to dub my English lines, like in America. So it's really weird to watch a movie where you're speaking, it's the English version but it isn't actually me with the who's saying the words. That's odd, um, but the funniest thing about that was it was a whole chinese cast in chinese um director and they said to me in the beginning can you do a russian accent? And of course I'm like, well, yeah, I mean what's a russian accent? But but I realized they also probably didn't really know what a russian accent was.
Speaker 2:So me being a little bit mischievous at the time, I thought I'm gonna do my lines in really broad geordie. So I did, and this is one scene. So I've got a horse it's a period movie and I've got a horse and I need to run out of this temple, right, I need to shout, look at the camera and shout and go who's killed my horse? But in a Russian accent. So I run out the temple and I go who's killed my horse? Like that? And it's uh, it didn't make it in the movie, but I've got, I've got an outtake of it, which is quite funny.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you need that. I need to see that on. Linkedin what did you learn most about failing at being a movie star?
Speaker 2:I. I learned it's really hard work, especially doing fight scenes, especially doing number of takes. I thought people would pull punches and kicks At that time. I was competitively fighting and I had to go to China to film that Real Master one. It was a few days in China and I literally it was harder than any fight I've ever done, because all the Chinese stuntmen want to beat up the Western guy. So all these scenes you could see them all like no, yeah, it's your turn next, it's your turn next. So it was incredibly painful. I was black and blue afterwards and I was like I'm never going to do that again. I'm never going to do that again.
Speaker 2:It's boring because you're on film set a lot of the time, so it's not like um, kind of high rolling and and and you know, looking like it's going to be um, an amazing day and you're going to get treated like gold when you do it. So it's, it's arduous, it's tough. So I think it gave me respect for anybody who works in that sector globally. Um, and obviously you learn all of the different roles that people do and and and the size of a cast it is to, to, to make, to make. You just don't know, when you watch a movie, it's like kind of eating in a restaurant. You don't know what's going on in the kitchen in the background and on how many people have worked together to produce that meal that you're eating. So it was a lot of fun.
Speaker 2:But it's funny that you say failing at movies, because I did essentially fail and I remember, after we filmed the first one and the, the director saying to me oh, you know, you've done a really great job and I've got all your contact details and we'll be in touch for the next one. What do you like? On these dates? I was like, yeah, yeah, that's fine, phone never ran, never, never, never happened, never happened. So but you know, I was really lucky to have that experience and, um, you know, I may not have changed cinematic history or or kind of um started anything that was famous, but it. But for me, growing up and being obsessed with that and watching those movies, then getting the opportunity to be in for it, from a personal point of view, that's good enough and you taught the ways of Geordie Russian right absolutely, absolutely immortal of Geordie Russian right.
Speaker 1:Absolutely Immortalized Geordie Russian. Yeah, there you go, that's a whole.
Speaker 2:Duolingo, it could be you could release it as an app, yeah.
Speaker 1:So talk to me. How did you get from being the movie star to being the Chinese sun?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Like back over into the Northeast.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Oh, and, by the way, you were doing a job in financial recruitment as well.
Speaker 2:So I was, I was, I was, I was working for um, an organization across that big company called Hudson, and uh ended up ended up sort of um running a practice there, running an office and then getting a big. I was you know what in recruitment, sometimes if you just don't move jobs too many times and you're half good you, you will do quite well. So I stayed in one company for about eight years, which people don't normally do. So I ended up being a consultant, going up to being general manager and overseeing a few offices, which was really good at a very young age. I think there's a lot of that I didn't do very well. If I was doing that now I would have done it. I would have done it much better. So I was learning on the job a lot of the time, but that was still the day job and I was very committed to that and really enjoyed doing that. Well, of course, family happened. So met my wife out there and we worked for the same company initially. But that didn't last too long.
Speaker 2:It lasted longer than the relationship until she decided to go and work somewhere else and then pretty realized the age we were getting to. At that point we better start a family, which we did. And then, when we were two kids in started to think Hong Kong, living in apartments, not much space, pretty expensive place for kids and stuff like that as much as we loved it, we probably should start to think about another place that's going to be more suitable for us as a family. Loved Hong Kong, still do, and it was not an easy decision to make. But it was literally because of family logistics at the time that we did that.
Speaker 2:And so there was a stint in Canada, first in Vancouver, which I would say was all right, good and bad things about that, great, great as a city. It was a difficult personal time because, as we were moving, found out my wife was pregnant with number three. So not the best time to do that when you're in an international move and moving everything across Didn't have a lot of support out there as well. So I'd settled into a role there and then received a phone call from an organization that I knew very well, that was based in the Northeast, called NRG, um, uh, from their founder, who'd asked me to? Would I? Would I consider coming back to Newcastle? And and the interesting thing is, when I left and I went to London, then I went to Hong Kong, it was never to get away from Newcastle, it was just to get other experiences and follow like goals and aspirations in life and stuff like that.
Speaker 2:And when I actually did come back to Newcastle, it's amazing the amount of people who say why did you come back? And it's like, well, I didn't go to get away. I thought I could have been away when I was in Hong Kong. I could have been there for a year. I didn't have any kind of plan on how that was going to pan out and end up stay for more than 12 years, come back with a wife and family and all this kind of Chinese dad Uh, you know, I did. I did not have that plan or even have any idea around that. It's just sometimes the way life goes.
Speaker 2:So this opportunity to come back to the Northeast was a great one. Um, my parents still being around, not in great health, the chance to have my kids around their grandparents and things like that. So there was a number of reasons. It was a bit of a sell to my wife, if I'm honest to you, because she'd only been back to the Northeast a few times with me, normally at Christmas time, not great weather, then dark pubs, meeting mates, things like that Hadn't really seen the best of it. So it was a little bit of a sell to her. But I tell you what, from a location point of view and a life and kind of what happened afterwards, it's on a par with going to Hong Kong. It's the best decision I did, one going to Hong Kong and one coming back to the Northeast.
Speaker 1:And I know that Northeast is so key to who you are and I know as much as your martial arts. One of the things that you love is family time, food eating out and walks with Bella.
Speaker 2:Bella, yeah, of course.
Speaker 1:And that beautiful northeast landscapes. It's a fantastic place and free right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's got some similarities to Hong Kong. It's a little bit colder and a little bit wetter, but the convenience because you've got no matter where you live, you've got. You've got beaches, you've got beautiful coastline within 10, 15 minutes. You've got world-class city shopping center, you've got fantastic people. You've got a very mixed diversity of of, of different groups of people as well, with different backgrounds. You've got a friendliness there that is quite unique to, I think, to the Northeast.
Speaker 2:I'm not going to say Newcastle, I'm going to say the Northeast because we use Newcastle as a centric point. But you know there's many great cities there as well Sunderland, durham, middlesbrough and that they've all got different characteristics, but I love the Northeast, so I'm from newcastle, but, um, it's it. It's just an amazing place, and then you'd never speak to anyone who'd visit there and go. I wouldn't go back there again and people are horrible and or anything else. You'll always get a very unique experience and as a place to bring up a family, it's first class because of, um, what you've got around you and the environment, um, the schools and everything else. So it was, it was a, it was a really great decision. I didn't quite know how it was going to pan out um, but I'm certainly glad I came back and talked to us 18 months ago.
Speaker 1:Uh, you set up castle peak right, and I think of the, the story we've chatted through today and your experience of inclusion is the heart of what you do. You go back to that awful experience when you were 10 years old and what you witnessed, that stayed with you. It did. It enabled you and motivated you to take on that real commitment around martial arts to make the big move. But where did Castle Peak? At what point did you go? I'm going to do this my way because I'm so good, passionate about inclusion and fairness and equity.
Speaker 1:I'm going to do this myself.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it was like a perfect storm of different things coming together at one point and I'd achieved quite a few things in recruitment. One of the things I wanted to do was be involved in a business that got sold and had been through that. I'd then taken on an MD role again, which was in the same company for a few years, and we'd gone through the pandemic and all that type of stuff and I was approaching 50. So it's that kind of honestly like midlife crisis, starting to go on thinking where am I going with this? And as a let's be honest an older dad, because my kids are quite young there's three between 12 and 8, and I've got, you know, mates I went to university with and in school with. My kids are quite young. There's three between 12 and 8. Um, and I've got, you know, mates I went to university with and in school with. The kids are all growing up and left home and stuff. Now, because we had them late, I'm in a slightly different position. That means, first of all, I need to work until I'm probably about 110, the way kids stay at home now and all that kind of stuff, but, but, but it does map out what, what's in front of you and what you want to be doing and where you're comfortable and where you can add value.
Speaker 2:And I did feel at that point unfulfilled, I would say, in what I was doing In recruitment. It's very difficult to give back because you can provide a great service in what you do. You can get somebody a great job, but they've earned that role, they would have got it anyway. You're just the person to make the introduction, but somebody else could have introduced them. And likewise to a, to an organization, you can find them a great person, but if it's a great job, they, they would have got it anyway. So you're not really, you're not really making a difference to the world and challenging things. So I was. I was just thinking like what, what do I want to do? It might not make business sense, but how? How can I put together everything that I feel passionate about into my skills and experience, which are pretty much either in well, they're in two areas, aren't they? They're in martial arts and recruitment, and I wasn't going to be a full-time martial arts teacher. I didn't fancy that. So that really got me thinking.
Speaker 2:And it was coming up to my birthday, literally towards the end of the year, in 2023. And it was at the point of being away on half term with the kids being a little bit dissatisfied in the role I was going, not in at that time, not, I would say, aligned with the values of the organization I was working with as well, which is a massive thing. You put up with that when you're younger. When you get a bit older, you just think, nah, um, so so that was the catalyst to, to, to set everything up and uh, then, of course, in january 2024, so it's 18 months ago um, there, it was first time ever, at the age of 50, starting a business on my own. Uh, not a clue what to do, um, and in it and I had just done so, it went down pretty quick actually and what have you learned most about being an entrepreneur and being your own?
Speaker 1:well, I'm still learning.
Speaker 2:I'm still I'm still learning. I had lots of advice and I still get lots of advice, which is brilliant, and you have to always validate that advice on where it comes from as well. I found that a lot of people gave me advice who hadn't had their own business, and that was interesting. And then, of course, you speak to other people who've run successful businesses, but also you want to speak to people who've run unsuccessful businesses and failed a few times, because often you'll get the best advice there.
Speaker 2:Best piece of advice I ever had in the beginning was hold your nerve, because that is really tough when you feel that kind of pressure, when you know you're not going to get the paycheck at the end of the month. Where's the next meeting coming from, where's next job, where's the next invoice, etc. Etc. That is really really tough in the beginning. So, um, I would reiterate that piece of advice that you have you have to hold your nerve and stick to your guns and not make rash decisions on things. Um, from that point of view, um, it's never going to be an easy life the hours that you put in, and I probably didn't realize how lucky I was before in terms of the lifestyle I had and the time that I had around from having a corporate job, from having an exec corporate job, that you could, uh, offload a lot of people, a lot of things, to other people to support you and to help you as you do. When you're doing everything by yourself, it's, it's really, really tough. Um, you know it finance, back office, marketing, all these kind of things that you'd have great people to work with before and so. So you have to learn, but you also have to identify when you need help as well and realize that you can't possibly do everything. Um, so I had a, uh, you know, a tough few months when I was getting going.
Speaker 2:Darkest point for me was probably about six weeks in when my email got hacked, uh, which was just unbelievable. It was off a, a cv attachment of a candidate that had opened up, they had been hacked and it just deleted everything off across my system. I was like six weeks in to try and build a business. It then went out to all my client base at the same. Now I had a high level of security as well, but once you open one of these things, you know, you, you, you and especially it was a CV. I thought it was pretty safe, so that that was absolutely awful.
Speaker 2:I had to contact all my clients who I'd been telling them you know, this is this, know this is what we're doing, this is the organization we're going to be in working with and, yeah, we're a small boutique, et cetera. We can do this and suddenly that happened, so embarrassing, and so that was a massive learning as well, and you can't turn that into a positive. I mean, I had a good level of security at the time. Now I've literally got SWAT teams standing around my computer like that for anything that comes in. So you are safe. Now if you're dealing with but, but, but, but, uh, you know it, it can happen to anybody. But obviously that sort of situation where that goes down, you're in a corporation, you call up your head of IT or whatever everything gets dealt with really quickly.
Speaker 1:Resilience. I didn't have that. Yeah, I didn't have that yet.
Speaker 2:I need a lot of resilience.
Speaker 1:You're all in the business about finding exceptional people. What makes an exceptional person?
Speaker 2:Oh, wow, what a question. Many, many different things, I think, unique skills within a particular area. The market's always changing, so the market will always look for different things at different times. An exceptional person is somebody who's got um a skill set. That's the top of the game on on what they do, but also they can um put that across and they can communicate around it as well, to bring things to life, to help other people up. And you see a lot of people who are either very strong on the communication side and they're good at business, partnering and things like that a lot of people that are very technical, but then you put the two things together, um, I think that's what makes somebody exceptional and where, where, where people can stand out, but but but also in terms of values and and being able to um feel the good in somebody as well, in terms of what they do and what their aspirations are and who they want to work with and trying to get that fit. So there's an exceptional quality around that as well.
Speaker 1:One of the things I really comes across about you, james, is everything that you've learned from your Chinese dad, and your. Chinese dad is passing over the baton to his son. Chinese dad is is passing over the baton to his son.
Speaker 2:But I saw a beautiful post about you training with your daughter and you've got two boys and a girl, and I loved it.
Speaker 1:It was the post, was you know? I thought this would be one of the boys, and here's my daughter and it's. It's you doing exactly the same, isn't? It Is passing on that baton.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. And she's developing an obsession, like me as well, which is which is unbelievable. And of course you know I did stereo gender stereotypes. Gonna be honest, always thought be my boys who'd be interested in um training me doing this stuff. Nah, not interested at all. 100 my daughter and she. She's very, very good as well, but she trains by herself. She's got that part of me in her to to go and work on something and develop it and trying to improve that self-improvement all the time and she's very, very dedicated. I send her to other martial arts teachers as well to spend time doing things. But that, as a father, is me. I've got a lot of students. But to have your daughter want to train with you, to come out, interrupt my practice and say, dad, can I do some, can you show me this and me not have to ask her to do it Amazing, it's brilliant.
Speaker 1:And you give back constantly because you do some specific training for sort of I'm not going to misquote this, but I know you do different but you also do training and give back for Over 55's group as well.
Speaker 2:I think as well, isn't it? I teach a group of Over 55's Tai Chi.
Speaker 1:You're part of our mentoring program as part of the NPW Awards for the wonderful Joe Milne, who was only on the podcast a few weeks ago. That feels like an addiction for you, this give back.
Speaker 2:It is, and I kind of fell into it by accident, but I love doing it because you get so much out of it. From the martial arts point of view, I spend time with young athletes who are competitive and who are fighting in professional rings and at the top of the game. That's brilliant.
Speaker 2:Some of them come from disadvantaged backgrounds, and being able to help them and advise and coach them it's nothing like a contact sport to be able to do that to help people boys and girls from that point of view, and then to be able to give something to to people who are aging and not in that category as well, to get them moving, to get the benefit of that. So there's a diversity around martial arts as well. It can be fit for purpose, for different groups, and I and I and I love that. It's fantastic. And also, as you said through my word, to be able to do some coaching. I feel like, because I'm learning so much, it's hard, it's hard to coach around the business, but I can coach around some of the recruitment, around some of the EDI stuff, so I do things around unconscious bias as well.
Speaker 2:So there's a lot of organizations often that can't afford to partner with an executive search firm. So rather than just thinking, oh well, that's not my client base, I always think what, what can I do? Can I do something pro bono to help them? Can I do some coaching? Can I point them in this direction, can I spend some time with them as well, rather than just saying, nah, that's not for me, but, and I and I and I love doing that, it's really, really good. And to see the benefit of that, or or to sometimes connect other people that might be out the realms of an official recruitment introduction. We do that all the time.
Speaker 1:But that's just being thoughtful and intentional, isn't it? What's the big ambition.
Speaker 2:There isn't one. Honestly, there isn't one Since day one, and people don't believe me when I say this, and anyone who's got any business sense goes like that Never worked to a business plan in terms of what I do Never worked to one, the reason being I spent 25 years in the corporate world being rigid, sticking to business plans.
Speaker 2:You never stick to them. They cause more problems around them. You're trying to fit a round peg into a square hole Doesn't work. Being in the moment, trying to seize opportunities when they come out, trying to be really good at what you do, trying to improve people's lives, trying to give people opportunities who wouldn't have opportunities before. See where that goes.
Speaker 2:I don't have an ambition. I'm not thinking about building this business up to be X, y and Z or X headcount, x revenue, I don't know. Just take each day as it comes and put 100% of myself into it. That's it. That is the ambition. And do good stuff. Do good stuff all the time, good stuff behind every interaction, every conversation, every meeting, and try to challenge people in a good way as well. So often I'll sometimes come across organizations that might even reach out to me. They don't realize the EDI stuff that's behind it and I like that because then I can start to sort of suss them out a little bit and see where they're motivated, and that's when you can really evoke change with someone who's actually not on board with things like that and try to push them beyond the limits, but in a subtle way. So I'm a little bit mischievous like that, but I like doing that.
Speaker 1:James, advocate, martial arts mentor, movie star, linguist. Thank you so much for joining us today. We'll put all the information about Castle Peak Group and all of the other good stuff. I even want to put a link to the Geordie Scouse, the Geordie Russian. We need that out.
Speaker 2:Geordie Scouse could be another one. That could be the next stage, couldn't it?
Speaker 1:That could be the next bit. James, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 2:Thank you, really appreciate being here. Thanks for the invite. Great talking to you.
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