What if the challenge in front of you isn't here to break you, but to bring you back to who you really are? In this episode of the Leading Visionaries, host Anjel B. Hartwell sits down with Felicity Ashley, mother of three, former corporate marketer, ocean rower, cancer survivor, motivational speaker and #1 bestselling author of Stronger Than the Storm.

If you've been feeling the nudge to start something bigger, this episode will invite you to trust your "why," ask for help, and lead yourself into a life that feels truly your own.

What You Will Learn:

How early life experiences and family dynamics quietly shape leadership of self.

Why challenging expectations and doing things differently is a powerful leadership trait.

The difference between being inspired by someone and feeling personally called to a challenge.

Why knowing your “why” is essential for staying committed when obstacles arise.

How physical setbacks or adversity can reconnect you with your core identity.

Why opportunities that create a full-body “pull” are worth paying attention to.

How shared challenges can strengthen relationships and deepen personal connection.

What parts of a corporate career can become assets when starting a new business.

How to navigate the financial uncertainty of entrepreneurship with courage and clarity.

Why founders must seek expertise instead of trying to do everything themselves.

How asking for help becomes a strength that accelerates growth and resilience.

What it looks like to build a personal “support crew” for business and life.

Why most regret comes from missed opportunities rather than failed attempts.

How personal struggles can evolve into platforms for service and inspiration.

Why long-term goals require emotional endurance, structure, and self-leadership.

How to reclaim parts of your identity that were set aside during challenging seasons.

Resource:

Felicity Ashley

Website

Book: Stronger than the Storm

Leading Visionaries Podcast

Join the Leading Visionaries Community

Make a Donation to Support the Show

Creative Age Consulting Group

LVP 111 Felicitty Ashley

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Now here's your host, Anjel b Hartwell.

Welcome to another episode of the Leading Visionaries Podcast, where we celebrate the ingenious, insightful, innovative, and inspired leading visionaries of our time, and provide our listeners with world-class examples of the kind of courage. Clarity and confidence it takes to bring visions into reality.

She has recently marked the three year anniversary of her diagnosis by completing the world's highest marathon at Everest Base Camp. Today she's an award-winning motivational speaker and a number one bestselling author, inspiring audiences to dream big. Overcome challenges and thrive through change.

She lives near Oxford in the UK with her husband, Paul, and their three young children, and I am so excited to bring you to the show today. Welcome, Felicity. Thank you very much. It's, it's brilliant to be here. Well, this show is called Leading Visionaries and for sure you are a leader in your own life.

I think I learned through various experiences through the formative years. To become a leader of my, you know, my own life leader of self. I'm the middle child of three children and I think that gives you a level of kind of resilience and an understanding of kind of healthy competition. And I think that taught me a lot actually about, you know, staying one step ahead of my younger sister.

And those are definitely traits that I've, I've built upon and taken into my adult life. Mm-hmm. And that's very much what I do now. You know, it's all about. I suppose just challenging those perceptions about what midlife women, midlife moms can do. Mm-hmm. And challenging my own perceptions about what I can do.

Mm-hmm. And I think that's, you know, one of the core foundations of leading yourself is to understand yourself and push yourself outside your comfort zone because that is how we develop and we grow. Mm. Beautiful. I love it. Well, it's also called Leading Visionaries. So I'd love to have you share your visionary journey.

Yeah, I mean at its very core, it's really simple. For me, it's about making a difference, making a positive impact on people's lives in any way that I can. And so, you know, as a speaker, I have a platform to be able to influence people through sharing my story and my experiences and. I genuinely think that it does, you know, it, it helps people, it makes people think differently, feel differently about their own lives and their own challenges.

And what's really rewarding about it is hearing from audience members afterwards, or people that have read my book to say that they've done, they've changed, they've made change in their lives in some way because it's impacted them. And I think. For me, it's a lesson that, you know, our stories have impact and, and most people don't have the opportunity to share them like I do now, but it really does make a difference.

You know, we all have these self doubts and the nagging voices in our heads telling us that we can't do something. And it's about encouraging people to silence those voices and to push themselves and challenge themselves to see how capable they are. And quite often in life, it's only when we are forced.

To tackle a challenge, for example, a health challenge that, that we get an appreciation of our inner strength. But I want to use my experiences to encourage people to test, test their own limits without having to go through those things. Yeah. Beautiful. So, let's talk about testing your limits by rowing an ocean.

My sister's husband rode the Atlantic two years before I rode the Atlantic, and when he initially said he was doing it, I thought he was absolutely mad. I just couldn't understand why you would choose to put yourself in a tiny rowing boat in a massive ocean, you know, facing enormous waves. But it was watching him finish the race that really.

At that point, I knew I wanted to do it. And then the opportunity to do it came up through my sister who got the use of their boat and one thing led to another and I said, yes. And that's that. Yeah. And that really changed the course of my life. But for me it was about seizing an opportunity.

And I'm a huge believer that life gives us opportunities and they're there to be taken and. We very rarely regret the things that we do. We look back and we regret the things that we haven't done. We don't tend to regret the things that we do. And I thought also it's an incredible opportunity to share something so extraordinary with my sister.

Because we have seven children between us and when we get together, normally as families, we don't tend to have a word. You know, there's not five minutes to have a profit conversation, so what an amazing opportunity to spend that length of time. Just getting to know her again, you know, really, you know, as we are underneath all the layers of life.

Whereas the hip replacement had taken away all of that pain and it opened the door to this amazing opportunity. So for me, it was about seeing. Really what I was still capable of doing with, with a hit, with a ceramic hit. And it sort of, it really gave me the determination to go and prove that, you know, these stumbling blocks in life don't have to stop you.

And what's interesting. When you talked about seeing your brother-in-law and getting tingles all over, for many people, you know, watching from the sidelines. Is enough. You know, watching from the sidelines is like, oh my God, that was so exciting. You know, clapping for my brother-in-law, whatever. That's, that, that's an exciting thing that just happened.

That said, I got to step away from being the audience member and being, you know, the one in the boat myself. Yeah. I, I mean, there's, there's definitely a distinction, you know, and it's not that I throw myself into absolutely anything these days. I think it comes down to your motivation. You know, I firmly believe that most people could row an ocean if they wanted to, but you have to want to.

You have to be motivated to do it, and I think that's what makes the difference. And if you don't have that desire and that motivation, then yes, you can still appreciate the experience on somebody else's behalf. It won't make you, you know, pick up an awe or I don't know, do whatever el do whatever it is.

And you have to have your why. You have to understand why you are doing it. That level of motivation to help you get through those setbacks without it, you just never get there. So yeah, for me it really does boil down to your motivation and your why. And if you don't have that and you don't understand it.

Then in all likelihood, you're not gonna do it. Yeah. So tell me, what was the why for doing the row? I think the why really was challenging myself. It was this opportunity to go, okay, look, I've had, you know, I've had a period of not being able to do very much with a, with a dodgy hit. Now I've got a new hip and I've, and I can do stuff again.

And the row for me was an opportunity to reconnect with that. To go back to doing challenges, albeit on a much bigger scale. So that it, it was really about getting back to who I really am. Yeah. Beautiful. I love it. That's a great why. Alright, we're gonna take a quick break. When we come back, we're gonna let our listeners know where they can find out more about you right now though, listeners, are you a leading visionary or in the role of leading other visionaries?

By clicking the Connect with Anjel button on the website, be sure to share this show in your own spirals of influence with the people who you think might benefit from our content. I wanna say a huge thank you to all of our listeners who are downloading, rating and reviewing. We're welcoming thousands and thousands of downloads from all over the world.

We're now downloading in 63 countries. So I wanna shout out this week to our new listeners from Iraq, and we might as well also shout out to our listeners in the uk. And The Bahamas, and we'll be right back with Felicity Ashley.

Your word is your wand. And as the leader, your ability to articulate and communicate your vision is essential to its materialization and monetization. Please enjoy with our compliments, a free copy of the book, be Heard By Millions, and Live Your Destiny, which was a number one new release in three categories.

And we are back with Felicity Ashley, before we went to the break, I had told you I'd let you know where you can find out more about her. You can go to felicity ashley.com. And we will have that for you in the show notes. So Felicity, are you still in your marketing career and speaking and doing all of these challenges?

Or did you leave behind your marketing career and start your own business with the motivational speaking piece here? Yeah, the latter. I left behind my marketing career and to become a professional speaker. I have an all in or not in approach to life, and I think to set up your own business, you really need to be a hundred percent committed.

And so, you know, my 20 year career in marketing has actually been incredibly. Useful for setting up a business because I just have an understanding of what you need to do of developing a brand, how to put yourself, put your best foot forward, but also just a general understanding of how businesses operate and work.

So now my client base are typically large corporates and I've worked, I've spent over 20 years working in large corporates, and that gives me such a brilliant understanding of the audiences that. Speak to and their challenges so that I can relate my sort of more recent personal experiences and journey back to those business challenges.

Yeah, the book is called Stronger Than the Storm, and it's really my memoirs of my journey, primarily the rowing across the Atlantic, and then finding out that I had bowel cancer. And it's, it's a very raw and personal account of the cha, those, you know, challenges that I faced, how I dealt with them, and the lessons that I learned as a result.

And. I think the inspiration for writing it was really through my experience as a speaker and, and hearing from audience members about how hearing my story has helped them. And so many people ask me, have you got a book? Have you written a book? And writing a book is something that I never imagined doing.

You know, I thought, can I write a book? Will people want to read my book? But if you don't start, you never know. And sure enough, I'm now a published author and it's something that I'm really, really proud of. Mm, well congratulations, and congratulations on number one, bestselling. That's a thank you.

A lot of times the biggest challenge that most people face when they are looking at founding them, their own business or you know, innovating in their business is the money piece. And, you know. A lot of people stay in their corporate positions or they start their business and they aren't really sure how to navigate the money piece and how to ask for money, how to raise money, how to, you know, manage the money, all of those things.

I'd love to hear your money journey and how that has been for you as you left a, you know, regular paycheck from corporate. Mm-hmm. Obviously, you left with lots of skill and lots of wisdom. That was very, very helpful. Most business owners are not coming into their. Their new business with 20 years of marketing experience.

You know, that's a comfortable place to be. It's uncomfortable stepping outta that when you have to make everything work for your, you know, yourself. And so from somewhere you've got to block up the courage to do it. And I always say, you've just got to take that step. You've got to commit to yourself, take the step and just throw yourself into it.

And to a degree there's an element of, you know, you need, if you know you need the money coming in, you will do what you need to do to make that money come in. And it's, it's, it's a surefire way of focusing the mind and giving you clarity about the steps that you need to take to make sure that, that, that you, you know, that you're earning enough, you know, to cover the ba to cover the basics.

Go and speak to somebody else who's founded a business and find out how they've, how they've done it. And do what you need to do to give yourself that security and that kind of, that, that level of confidence that you'll be able to do it. Mm-hmm. Yeah, but I also think just have a go. You know, one of my favorite quotes is, you don't have to be great to start, but you do have to start to be great.

And if you never start, you'll never know. And it's incredible what we can all achieve if we really do commit and put our minds to something. Hmm. Beautiful. Well, I wanna talk now about, you know, you've done the row, you've then did the world's highest marathon in three years, post-diagnosis at Everest Base Camp.

You know, both through training to do the highest marathon in the world and which, which was, you know, at five and a half out the marathon started at five and a half thousand meters. So that was really extreme altitude and I'd never done anything at altitude before. So I asked for help. I found people who had experience of endurance events at altitude and learned from them what I needed to do to do the right training so that when I did it, I, you know, I had a level of confidence that I was gonna be able to complete it without suffering from altitude sickness.

It's about having a broad and diverse network of people around you that you can ask for help when you need it, because nobody in life achieves anything significant on their own. You know, even solo sports people don't do it on their own. They have massive teams around them. Yet I think sometimes we feel like we need to do it on our own and we feel that asking for help.

Yeah. Beautiful. And you know, just for our listeners, I wanna make sure that you understand listeners, that you wanna invest in your team and that means, you know, yeah. Bringing money to the table to have your best team around you. But it also means investing time and energy and attention into developing the relationship with the team, whoever they are that are, are helping you.

You know, it requires investment. So the last kind of question that I would like to ask you, Felicity, is what's in your vision moving forward from here? Where are you going to lead yourself next? Well my next, my next personal challenge is a return to the world of ocean rowing to row the mid Pacific next.

And this is about bringing that, you know, to a, to a natural conclusion by rowing another ocean and really proving that I am stronger than the storm. And what's lovely about this as well is that. Cancer for me was a catalyst for positive change. It gave me a new purpose and a new why. Which is all about not only proving to myself that I've come through it stronger, but it's about giving hope and inspiration to other people facing their own challenges.

And so I hope that we can raise a significant amount of money to help the fight against cancer. Beautiful. I love it. Well, you are definitely one of those people on the planet who is doing amazing things and time bending, obviously, like you, you're doing the level of training that must go into roaring 2,800 miles must be mind blowing in terms of, you know, just.

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