After starting life as a City lawyer, Jim moved in-house to become International Legal Counsel at ICL (now Fujitsu) before founding the cultural change consultancy Optimise, which is now Taming Tigers Group, where Jim is Managing Director.
In 2003, an audience member bet Jim £1 that he could not prove the power of his Ten Rules for Taming Tigers - by becoming a jockey and riding in his first televised race within 12 months. It was a good challenge as he was 3 stone too heavy to be a jockey and couldn’t ride a horse. Working with the Ten Rules as his guide, he took delivery of his pound on 22 November 2004 on returning to unsaddle from the 12.00 race at Southwell. On becoming a jockey Jim says “it took many years, but at last I have found a place where being short is an advantage.”
Jim writes regularly for a range of publications including Finance Week and Personnel Today, and is a columnist for the Institute of Leadership and Management’s periodical “The Edge”.
Jim’s entertaining and practical speeches and workshops give his audiences a new set of possibilities and responsibilities, change their ideas about what they can achieve and send them out excited about making a difference. He will inspire peak performance - at work or at home and he brings a fresh approach to personal and business communications.
He has great credibility with audiences having not only achieved his sporting goal, but also having worked at board level in business and sales and as a current advisor to several major UK and international companies.
Jim is also the author of the book “Taming Tigers”, the antidote to ‘self-help’ and a highly practical approach to overcoming fear and doing things you never though you could do. It is also a searingly honest and inspiring account of his year becoming a jockey.