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Jazz Shaper: Floyd Woodrow

Posted on 21 September 2024

Leading Quantum’s expert team, Floyd has exceptional experience in the fintech and security space. Floyd served with Special Air Service for 24 years, working with COBR and as Head of the UK Counter Terrorist Wing, before leaving the military and founding Quantum Group with Peter Malmstrom.

Floyd Woodrow

Elliot Moss                      

Welcome to Jazz Shapers with me, Elliot Moss, bringing the shapers of the business world together with the musicians shaping jazz, soul and blues.  My guest today is Floyd Woodrow MBE DCM –  in case you didn’t know, Distinguished Conduct Medal – ex-SAS soldier – I’m on my guard – founder of Quantum Group, a fintech and security investment incubator and creator of coaching and development programme, Compass For Life.  After four years as a soldier in the Parachute Regiment, Floyd became, aged 22, one of the youngest soldiers ever to have been selected for the elite SAS, serving in Iraq and Afghanistan and later, leading the UK Counter Terrorist wing, Floyd left the military in 2008 and launched Chrysalis Worldwide, a leadership development company.  In 2015 he co-founded with Peter Malmstrom, Quantum Group, a growing family of cutting-edge technology companies.  and as a renowned speaker on leadership, Floyd created Compass For Life, offering leadership and elite performance training to executives of the some of the UK’s biggest companies as well as the NHS, the Police and First Response agencies, and his Compass For Life Foundation aims to help disadvantaged children and young people to reach their full potential.  27 years in the military, I’m staring at this, this fine specimen of a human as you would imagine.  I don’t think I’ve interviewed someone who has served in the SAS and then gone into business.  27 years, what does it do for the way you think about life and the universe, Floyd?  How has it shaped you?

Floyd Woodrow MBE DCM

Oh it’s a great question.  I think it gave me a massive foundation in adaptability.  You’re in an environment that is changing all the time and when I joined the military in ’81, it was the time of the Falklands, although I was in 1 Para so we went to Northern Ireland, so we missed out on the Falklands but my desire was always to go into the Special Air Service, I was very clear on that and I think when you go into an organisation that is immensely entrepreneurial, it’s almost ahead of its time, it’s survived through decades because the people there are innovative, creative, disciplined, they follow a code and they’re very fit but they’re looking ahead all the time, they’re looking to the future and it developed people to think, it’s one of those things I always smile when people say the military is about one specific way of thinking, it’s not, it wants debate, it wants to have constructive conflict where people are passionate about they believe but they’re trying to find solutions and because it’s a solution orientated place, it always tries to get ahead and it is looking decades ahead, the things that we were doing in the ‘80s enabled us to do great work in the ‘90s and consequent we keep growing.  You’re also given responsibility to lead at a really early age, so I’ve literally been I think a leader from the moment I actually joined the military and certainly in the Special Air Service by the time I was 24, 25 I was leading large groups of people so I think all of those things develop you at an advanced state so that going into business later and being aware of what’s happening in the world, I think gives you a massive edge because you’re constantly realising that the world’s changing dramatically, economically, socially, politically, environmentally, so you’re already on that, that world of growth, if I would say so and I think that is the, was the key for me within the military, I was always growing which is why I loved every moment I was in the military and when I realised I wasn’t growing anymore because I’d done all the great jobs, that’s when I decided I was going to, going to leave, so I’d say it gave me a great foundation, great mentors, so people who I could learn from who were tough and the environment that they create is definitely a high support, high challenge environment without threat and I say without threat because there were, there are real clear consequences for not performing well but what I would say is they’re encouraging you to grow and they’re not scared of failure so they don’t mind you making mistakes, they just expect you to learn from them and they set the bar immensely high, so everybody when they come in, they virtually put you an A, and if you pass selection you’re an A therefore don’t drop below an A.  So because they set the bar at that height even though most, a lot of people within the group probably struggled at school, what they come with is an attitude is that “I’m not going to fail.  I am going to work exceptionally hard” so they all raise their levels and that potential then grows in everybody I was around, I was surrounded by talented people, so I’d say that’s probably what it gave us. 

Elliot Moss

And how long was the training in your life for in the pre-military phase?  How long was that going on to enable you to be the A that got in?

Floyd Woodrow MBE DCM

I would say probably really early.  The family that I had was very competitive and headed up by a phenomenal mum who was unbelievably competitive, driven, entrepreneurial, she ran the first nightclub in Bradford, Heartbeat.

Elliot Moss

What kind of music?  Music is very important to me.

Floyd Woodrow MBE DCM

Oh, it was all pop, so again, classic coming into that stage of pop and but actually, my dad was a singer, so my dad was a brilliant singer and he could sing, very similar to Perry Como, very similar to Nat King Cole, he had that kind of a wonderful voice, never passed it on to any of us at all, any of his sons, however, every Sunday morning we were listening to music right across the board but I think the toughness of the family, my dad actually was the, worked in a touch market, wholesale fruit and veg market, tough environment but was the gentlest man as well so he was the one that was always the balance, mum was very focussed, very driven, she was about making sure you grew, you had all the right skillsets but she wanted you to perform so there was a definite desire that “you are going out to work when you’re sixteen, be clear you need to take accountability for your journey” but made us very independent, very political, so I was involved in politics at a really early age, they have a real strong opinion about the world but every one of my brothers is different, so what I also love about that environment was it was that discussion, it wasn’t “you will just follow this philosophy, you’ve got different philosophies” so our engagement is, has always been, even to this day and there’s still really good discussions on what we think the world should be like, yeah, really interesting. 

Elliot Moss

And before we go into how you got into this business, just tell me a little bit about what the Quantum Group is today, right now. 

Floyd Woodrow MBE DCM

Sure.  We’re a leading fintech incubator and we’ve got some great companies underneath us.  Volopa is probably a preeminent account management platform, where we just make it really easy for CFOs to have everything on one platform, which is our proprietary platform, where you have all your expenses, you can do FX hedging, you, we’ve got a prepaid multicurrency card so it allow you to save time, still allows you to connect with any other group so your banks and everything like that but it just sets the tone for you to be able to manage things, organise things to make sure your company is organised in the best financial way possible. 

Elliot Moss

And your model is that you, you invest in these businesses or you buy these businesses, is that?

Floyd Woodrow MBE DCM

Yeah, we bought Volopa and one of the first…

Elliot Moss

You bought Volopa and there’s a few others as well, is that right?

Floyd Woodrow MBE DCM

Yeah, there is.  So we’ve got Verve now, that’s just transferred from Tail which is a cashback facility, so what we are tied into is groups like Monzo and Starling and our money where we’re able to just make sure we facilitate cashback to customers so they can make some great savings and again both of those groups are backed with some phenomenal tech behind them but also worldclass people that lead them that come from all these sort of different industries, we’ve got you know great groups from Amex and all the key, key groups, very youthful people that are innovative, very creative in this environment and more importantly, we’re very unique because we can tailor things for our customers.  Our customer service is absolutely world-class.

Elliot Moss

You would say that though!

Floyd Woodrow MBE DCM

That to me, no but honestly and I agree, of course we would.

Elliot Moss

Yeah.

Floyd Woodrow MBE DCM

But we do it on a real personal touch so I can honestly guarantee you will speak to a human being if you have a problem and they will sort the thing out very, very quickly and I think that to me is the one of the great things that we do plus because we, we have no external debt, you know our borrowing is nil, it just enables us to be very, very entrepreneurial in what we’re doing.

Elliot Moss

And how did this all come about?  I know there’s a few other businesses but just going back to 2015 because you, what happened with Peter and how did you decide that this was going to be the big play for you businesswise?

Floyd Woodrow MBE DCM

I think the entrepreneurial nature of things.  We were, we had Valkyrie which is our security company.  Valkyrie again is a real, a jewel in our crown as well, so we do tonnes of different things.  I was smiling when you were talking about doing your tax surveillance and counter measures where you debug different areas and things, well we’ve got that as a, a capacity but we’ve also got an investigative group, we do training, we do cybersecurity but we do it in a way that is probably all the top end, so we’re working with high net worth individuals, we’re working with organisations that really require things to be done at the highest levels and the team that we’ve got behind that are literally the best in their field.  We did some experiential learning and training through a group who are going out to some difficult areas and that surveillance training was again just phenomenal, where we are able to take them from quite a low level to where they’re going to operate in some difficult areas and produce some phenomenal work.

Elliot Moss

And the interest in, and the interest in security and surveillance is, is it coincidence that you’re doing this?  I mean because the fintech piece is obviously your background is not fintech but I would say obviously from looking at the word ‘security’ and how that might…

Floyd Woodrow MBE DCM

Yeah, the word ‘security’ is an interesting one.  I, I’m always a bit, it’s, it’s something I do, my hackles sometimes come with that word ‘security’ because your, your tendency is to think of it in a number of different ways which are generally people guarding things and things like that.  Because this is very, very innovative and because we’re doing things where actually we’ve got some great technology that assists us in doing that, I think it’s a different level and we when we set this up because that was an area I was very familiar with, the training, the development and being able to, again just make sure people are safe, they’re in a great space to be safe, we developed that and started to move into different areas which again opens up opportunities and that for me was always the key thing, it opens up other opportunities because you’re providing safety, security and environment where you can do lots of things and we’ve done some great investigations for organisations, we’ve helped them out across safety and security for their families and as I’ve said we’ve worked with some really large organisations on a multinational basis.

Elliot Moss

But the group and the way you sit in it, obviously these businesses I assume they run, they have management teams, they run themselves and all that to a point, where do you, how does it work in terms of identifying?

Floyd Woodrow MBE DCM

So Quantum Group itself sits above them all.

Elliot Moss

Yeah.

Floyd Woodrow MBE DCM

And what we provide is, is an umbrella of all the key facilities you need behind it, the finance, the RND, all of those different elements sort of sit under that umbrella and then we make sure the organisations can run themselves, so you have a managing director of each of the organisations, CEOs that, that organise it and run it because they are the best at doing that.  For me, I’m a novice in some of these areas, Peter less so, significantly less so, so we’re able to still make the right decisions, still guide them, still have our super north star, what I term as a super north star, of where we want to be but what we’ve got beneath that is as I said, I mean some worldclass people from, from all the best sectors.  They come to us because they’re not constrained, so they’re allowed to have their ideas, their, that creativity and again we’ve just allowed them to grow and I think set us apart from nearly every other organisation.

Elliot Moss

We’re going to come back to a bit more about that, I’m really interested in how this thing works.  Stay with me for much more, it’s Floyd Woodrow, he’s my Business Shaper today, he’ll be back in a couple of minutes.  Right now though, we’re going to hear a taster from the Mishcon Innovation Sessions which can be found on all the major podcast platforms.  Lydia Kellett invites business founders to share their industry insights and practical advice for those of you thinking about getting into an industry and starting your very own thing.  In this clip focussed on the edtech industry, we hear from Chris Kahler, co-founder and CEO of Kinnu, a gamified learning app designed to increase the rate of knowledge acquisition.  Sounds very good. 

You can enjoy all our former Business Shapers on the Jazz Shapers podcast and you can hear this very programme again with Floyd if you pop ‘Jazz Shapers’ into your podcast platform of choice.  My guest is indeed Floyd Woodrow MBE DCM, I love that one.  I say it as if it’s like just a, a thing and Floyd’s looking at me going “Do you know what it takes to get one of those?”.  He’s ex-SAS soldier, founder of Quantum Group, a fintech and security investment incubator and creator of coaching and development programme Compass For Life.  The serious side of you sitting at the top of this organisation which you’ve created is that I’ve read a lot about your focus on practice and discipline and if you practice hard then when you come to the high pressure moment, well you’re just doing your best and that’s probably going to be pretty cool.  When you’re there with these very smart people who are domain experts and they’re not quite delivering, not on the technical stuff but they’re not quite delivering to the standards that you know they need to deliver to, whether it’s around dealing with a strategic debate, whether it’s around dealing with a problem with a person, how do you help them?

Floyd Woodrow MBE DCM

I think this is where my ability to coach comes in, I think one of the great things about all of these things is generally this is just about coaching and communication, it’s about negotiating, it’s about coming back to always come back to the purpose and I would say that probably in everything I ever do, the thing that I come back to is what are we trying to achieve?  What’s our super north star?  How do we make sure and what I talk about is having a Number 1 team, so this is really important.  With all the different disciplines that we’ve got what each of the heads have to realise is that we are part of a team, so I call that a Number 1 Team.  The team they lead is their Number 2 Team, so they’re not thinking oh this is my team, we’re just a strategy alliance, I don’t really need to bother about these other groups.  What I want them to realise is, you have to realise that everything is a cross reference, we all can support one another, we all have good ideas and all the people that we’ve got here are very talented so it’s about listening to them, so it’s about having trust first of all, creating an environment of trust where we can be comfortable talking about our weaknesses, mistakes, fears and behaviours.  What I need them to realise is that I am not the perfect leader, I make mistakes but I’m not scared to make mistakes.  I need everything on the table because even though I may not be technically the best, I still understand what a good idea is, I still know what the direction should be and actually it’s for me then to look at it and work out what more information do I need to make the right decision or the same with Peter, we come up with our ideas and then we can see where there are gaps and then we go right, this is what we’re looking for.  When you have conflict, it is exactly the same.  Let’s come back, what are we trying to achieve, what do I need to do to support or challenge a team to move into a different area?  So for me those high expectations, that high achievement, that ability to be empowered comes with rights and responsibilities. 

Elliot Moss

And when it goes right, how do you feel?  When you see this happening?

Floyd Woodrow MBE DCM

Oh it’s magical.  This is like a different energy.  This is like any environment you’ve ever been in where you walk in and you just know this is the place to be, the receptionist, there’s something about the energy and you can’t quite, it’s not something you’d go oh it’s this, there’s just something intuitively you feel, I can walk into environments and I can tell you really quickly what the energy is like.

Elliot Moss

Let’s just say you and I, I’m working for you now and you have helped me and you see me, Elliot, improving, that in that moment where the coaching has been positive because that, what you’ve just described is the result if you like of the environment working, when you’ve actually solved the problem where you’ve helped me identify a problem and solve it for myself, what do you the coach, you Floyd, feel like?

Floyd Woodrow MBE DCM

No, I feel unbelievable because the thing is for me it’s that magic of seeing somebody’s potential unlock and that’s about super strength, so I’d be saying the same straight away, the minute I see it, I’d be telling you why I see it, so I’d say the same to you Elliot, when you walked in this morning, your energy, your ability to communicate and connect was instantaneous, I mean that’s without doubt your super strength, it’s about your ability to listen, to unlock, to be innovative and lead straight away, you don’t need to prep that, that’s your, that’s a natural super strength that you’ve got, keep working on that because that’s why you’re here probably.

Elliot Moss

I’m not paying him for this by they way, this is great, keep going.  I want to take this away.  Don’t go anywhere, Floyd.  No, go on, carry on. 

Floyd Woodrow MBE DCM

No but again that it isn’t it, that wonderful thing of seeing somebody and realising actually that’s where you sit and our self-esteem being listened to and realising actually, somebody thinks I’m significant, that I’m included, that I have control, that’s all human beings need.  From being a child, right the way through, if you don’t feel you’ve got worth you will struggle in any environment, no matter how good you are, you won’t be feeling in a great place.  This is about realising that’s the reason that I want you to know that is because that’s what I see and this, and this is areas you can improve in, that just allows me to have another great bit of feedback doesn’t it when I tell you oh this is why you’re really good but that one thing might change, don’t work on all your weaknesses, you’d be mediocre, we work on one weakness at a time and that’s the weakness that’s holding you back, you work on your super strengths all the time. 

Elliot Moss

We’re talking about super skills, super strengths and for you obviously as a leader from a very early age, you were told you were a good leader, you felt you were a good leader I imagine and we can talk about obviously no one’s perfect and you said that, so I caveat that quickly because you’re going to say “oh Elliot, I’m not perfect”, I know you’re not, I know you’re not Floyd but that identification by you of your own super strength, when did that happen?

Floyd Woodrow MBE DCM

Oh it’s an interesting one on leadership, I don’t think the word…

Elliot Moss

Or rather as a coach.  Actually as a coach specifically. 

Floyd Woodrow MBE DCM

So therefore that’s a great, that’s much better.  I think what I understood was when I was with different teams, I was able to see that different people needed different motivations.

Elliot Moss

And how did you see that out of interest?

Floyd Woodrow MBE DCM

I think it was down to being in some really tough, difficult situations where different people react differently, some people act very calmly and some people are upset, some people are scared and being able to realise they each need a different approach. 

Elliot Moss

Is this life and death stuff or is this business stuff or is it both?

Floyd Woodrow MBE DCM

Erm both.

Elliot Moss

Because obviously people say oh life and death is much more serious than a business thing but actually…

Floyd Woodrow MBE DCM

You say that but I’ll come back because I was involved, it’s a really interesting one, when I was in the military because I think I was really well trained, the teams around me were really well trained, we were doing jobs that we thought had real purpose, I never thought that that was going to happen to me, so I never thought I was going to lose my life, so even though I was in very difficult situations I just felt that as long as we do our job and we’re really good, we’ll be okay.  What was interesting is when I went into business, I had a really interesting time when we were, we were attacked by another group and there was a consortium that tried to close us down and every Machiavellian trick they could possibly use legally and we had to deal with this on a Monday morning.  I can honestly say I was probably more scared that moment than before because this was, I was out my comfort zone here so I had to fall back on all the things and the behaviours that I knew that I had, the super strengths that I had which was about staying calm, facts, figures, detail, analysis, just making sure that you take a step back to think because actually we had the right way forward but that moment I would say was quite significant because you could have lost a whole company, imagine ten years, fifteen years of work goes in a moment, forty people lose their job, all that your, it’s a lifechanging moment so I think you’ve got to remember that even though you can say there’s a specific that is a life and death moment in the military, there’s loads of other consequences for not doing well in business and that’s why you look at suicide rates in all these different areas, there’s probably as many in business as there are in most areas because of the affect that it has, so it is life and death, you have a complete collapse, there’s lots of things that can happen, so I think you’ve got to be careful on that, so leadership and coaching for me is always about providing the right resilience strategies, the right focus, there is a science to doing all of that, the art is understanding the person, the art is realising how do I capture somebody’s motivation, how do I get a team to work together, how do I them to point in the right direction but then it’s backfilling that with circumstances that we all need at different times. 

Elliot Moss

But you knew when that you could put all of that together because that in, that’s three dimensional, it’s iterative, it’s changing, literally you look in someone’s eyes and you see the change in their emotion when they’ve heard something, we all do it, we see that moment.  How did you work out that you were bloomin’ good at helping that person?

Floyd Woodrow MBE DCM

I think probably when I started when I did the Special Forces selection, UKSF selection, which is the SAS and the SBS selection, when again I’ve now got the most talented trainers around me and you’ve got some of the trainers are hard right, some of the trainers are hard left, bit too empathetic, some too tough, some perfectly in the middle and you’re dealing with that group of very talented soldiers, so they’re already you know some of the best soldiers of that particular generation and having to adapt to them and realising really early on that I know what I need to do, I think that was probably when I thought I’m learning but that was, what I would say there, there was a bit of intuitive skill beforehand but because I’m studying psychology now, a lot of these things made more sense and I’m building a better repertoire of skillsets and I’m learning how to get them to learn first of all so I’m not telling them, what I’m doing is showing them, I’m asking them the right question, I’m showing them things about their own profiles that allow them to get to the point where they realise I’m being a bit too tough here or a bit too soft or whatever I wanted to get across, you’re doing it through an educative perspective rather than I’m going to tell you you need to do this, I’m going to show you and get you to think about what you may want to do differently and I think that probably is what was important as well as when you’ve got the student, you’re looking at how you adapt to different students and trying to get the best out of them, so I think that’s probably when I felt I’m getting better at this but I can honestly say it’s still a work in progress.

Elliot Moss

Of course it is.  I knew you were going to say that. 

Floyd Woodrow MBE DCM

I’m still studying things now…

Elliot Moss

Of course you are.  Of course he is. 

Floyd Woodrow MBE DCM

…where I look at it and go oh yeah, that’s definitely going to be better to be do it that way and I, again I’m smiling because even this week there were some things that happened and I thought oh I just need to do that slightly differently. 

Elliot Moss

But if we weren’t learning then we’d be bored anyway.  Final chat with my guest, Floyd Woodrow coming up very shortly and we’ve got some Ezra Collective for you too, one of my son’s favourites, that’s in just a moment, don’t go anywhere. 

Floyd Woodrow is my Business Shaper.  We’ve been talking about a whole bunch of stuff, really a lot of it to do with the philosophy of coaching and leadership and the importance of psychology actually, a lot of it around that.  When are you at your happiest?  Is it when you’re writing the number of books you’ve written?  Is it when you’re speaking to people?  Is it when you’re in the business?  Is it when you’re coaching an individual?  When genuinely is Floyd Woodrow in his sweet spot? 

Floyd Woodrow MBE DCM

When I’m under pressure, I’m doing something that is this means something, when I’m working with people and unlocking their potential, so when I’m training and when I’m doing operations, I’d say both those elements is where I go into flow because I’m able to really immerse myself into that moment in time, so training people I love, I love doing that adaptability, putting them under pressure, teaching them and then allowing them to fly, then testing them to see how that works, that’s when I, so that experiential part of training I love.

Elliot Moss

And can I just ask what does under pressure feel like to you? 

Floyd Woodrow MBE DCM

Under pressure is where…

Elliot Moss

Because some people go “I don’t want to be under pressure.” 

Floyd Woodrow MBE DCM

The thing is you’re always going to come across pressure and you’ll always have mechanisms to deal with it, it’s just realising that stress, anxiety, worry comes when we perceive, and I mean perceive that we don’t have the right psychological or physiological resources to deal with the situation, and I mean perceive.  My belief is human beings can withstand anything and history suggests I’m correct.  As long as you have the right tools and there are some simple tools if you could get people to realise let’s just pack them so you’ve got them to call upon, which you do have but you really need to realise that if you’re going to operate at the highest levels you need to do that consistently which means you have to practice them, so mental resilience is not just born, you have to practice that skill.  So what are the tools that use?  So the classic thing for me is breathing deeply to calm myself, positive self-talk, positive anchors, visualisations and doing it, so that to me is I can, so I can quote straight away, I can also see what I need to do, I’ve got the right framework so I’ll probably be okay.

Elliot Moss

Okay.

Floyd Woodrow MBE DCM

But what I’m also not scared of is failure, so in all of those things, all I need is to be incrementally better, failure is irrelevant to me because I’ll learn from it, so again when you’ve got that mentality, it just helps it makes you slightly more robust, so for me being in those elements helps me.  Now when I’m doing that operationally, so big business deals, this means something, we’re now in a difficult situation, again I’ll come alive because I need to be on point and what that means is, as you, we spoke earlier about flow, when you have the right skillset, the situation is difficult and just out of your comfort zone is when you’re probably going to flow.  That to me is when I would be at my best. 

Elliot Moss

And do you find you’re proving yourself to yourself or have you gone, are you post proving?  Have you gone into a post-proof state?

Floyd Woodrow MBE DCM

Oh it’s a really good one.  No, I think there’s an element of where I would probably smile a lot more now so I understand when I’m under that pressure, I’m less cross with myself when things go wrong and I think the key thing for me is, it’s my ability to recover from those things, I compete against my son a lot on sport, he’s unbelievably talented, he’s the one that I probably compete against the most. 

Elliot Moss

Is he bigger, better, V2 basically?

Floyd Woodrow MBE DCM

Oh without any shadow of doubt. 

Elliot Moss

Good.  Mine are too. 

Floyd Woodrow MBE DCM

He passed that a long time ago but we’re close on a lot of things but he has the edge in some of them. 

Elliot Moss

I love it, we’re close on a lot of… how old is your son?

Floyd Woodrow MBE DCM

Oh my son’s half my age.

Elliot Moss

Exactly.  We’re close on…

Floyd Woodrow MBE DCM

We’re close enough.  We’re close enough for me to go…

Elliot Moss

That’s what you think.  He doesn’t say that, he says he’s winning.

Floyd Woodrow MBE DCM

But what it allows me to do is, is also recover quickly and I think that’s the key thing is, it’s not being disappointed because it’s gone wrong, it’s now going why did it go wrong and now get back on track with how you can perform a bit better.

Elliot Moss

And Floyd let me ask you, I’ve got two quick things.  Firstly, how have you become less angry at yourself because I think I’m a highly competitive person, I get the person that I’m upset with most in most situations is me inevitably.  How have you mellowed?  What’s the secret on that one?

Floyd Woodrow MBE DCM

Oh no, I’d still say my competitiveness is as strong as it’s always been, so that I’ll never lose.  What I’m better at now is being able to recover to make sure that I can perform at the highest levels still, so I think that to me is, I can smile at myself a bit more.

Elliot Moss

Quicker. 

Floyd Woodrow MBE DCM

Oh a lot quicker. 

Elliot Moss

Last question.  You remain excited about all the things you’re doing.  If I was chatting to you in ten years, what’s, what are you going to be doing, Floyd?

Floyd Woodrow MBE DCM

We’ll have taken Quantum Group into another level, we would have floated it, we would have done all the things that we expected to do, we’d have probably made a transition I think in ten, ten years’ time, it will be another generation coming through that will be taking it onto another level and I’d like to be looking at that company, in that organisation in twenty years and it’s still doing something magical in this industry.  I will be running an international charity which will be about helping bridge the disadvantaged gap with children, that will be something that will be renowned worldwide for doing exactly that. 

Elliot Moss

Good luck.  I think you will be, I can see, it’s amazing looking at someone who’s had your background that says these things, I go, yep, I’m in, I think I’ll just sit on the bus and off we go.  Just before I do let you disappear though, thank you so much for everything, what’s your song choice and why have you chosen it?

Floyd Woodrow MBE DCM

I chose this, What a Wonderful World, simply because it is.  I think we lose sight of it so much, people should just reflect that when you are looking around, you get inundated with negativity but the world’s a great place and statistically, if you really look at the evidence, there’s much more good news than there is bad, unfortunately the diet that we’re fed is wrong, step back, look at it because that’s what will fulfil you and that’s what will make doing all the tough things that you do magical. 

Elliot Moss

The iconic Wonderful World from Louis Armstrong, the song choice of my Business Shaper today, Floyd Woodrow.  He talked about adaptability and how important that is, about the importance of growth, we all have to grow and ideally, we don’t stop growing and when we feel like we have, we’ve got shift and do something else.  He focussed on purpose and making sure that people understand their purpose and organisations too.  “Human beings can withstand anything” he said and I got to tell you, I believe him.  And finally, “Focus on your super strengths more than your weaknesses.”  That’s going to be the key to success.  Great stuff.  That’s it from me and Jazz Shapers, have a lovely weekend.

We hope you enjoyed that edition of Jazz Shapers. You’ll find hundreds more guests available for you to listen to in our archive, to find out more just search Jazz Shapers in iTunes or your favourite podcast platform or head over to mishcon.com/jazzshapers.

Floyd has an excellent track record of success as a military leader, company director and negotiator — working with government agencies and police forces throughout the UK and overseas — and was named a Top 50 Fintech Founder by leading industry publication The Financial Technologist. Through his philanthropic foundation, Compass for Life, Floyd delivers elite performance training to executives of some of the UK’s biggest companies, as well as the UK National Health Service, the Police and First Response Agencies. 

Highlights

You’re constantly realising that the world’s changing dramatically, economically, socially, politically, environmentally.

They’re not scared of failure, so they don’t mind you making mistakes, they just expect you to learn from them.

They set the bar immensely high, so everybody when they come in, they virtually put you an A, and if you pass selection you’re an A therefore don’t drop below an A.

I was involved in politics at a really early age, they have a real strong opinion about the world but every one of my brothers is different.

We’re very unique because we can tailor things for our customers. Our customer service is absolutely world-class.

We have no external debt, you know our borrowing is nil, it just enables us to be very, very entrepreneurial in what we’re doing.

You have to realise that everything is a cross reference, we all can support one another, we all have good ideas.

Even though I may not be technically the best, I still understand what a good idea is.

Don’t work on all your weaknesses, you’d be mediocre.

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