James Woodfall built and sold a wealth management business, wrote two books with Rethink Press, and now runs Raise Your EI, helping professional services firms build emotional intelligence into their leadership and client relationships.
In this episode, James and host Joe Gregory dig into:
- Why writing a book forces you to “stress test” your own thinking
- The health scare (aneurysms discovered via a full-body MRI) that led him to sell his business
- How his master’s dissertation on financial advisors and emotional intelligence became his second book, The Heart of Finance
- Why he believes AI is a great thinking tool but a dangerous writing crutch
- The identity shift from “entrepreneur with a book” to “author and authority”
- Where professional services still beat AI — and where they don’t
Connect with James: raiseyourei.co.uk
Chapters
00:00 — Introduction to James Woodfall
01:39 — Why he decided to write his first book
03:07 — How writing forces “thinking time” and articulation
04:58 — Realizing how much of his thinking was “borrowed”
07:00 — The real subject of Financial Planning for Entrepreneurs
11:11 — The health scare: aneurysms discovered during a preventative MRI
12:37 — Deciding to sell the business, with his wife pregnant
13:33 — The master’s dissertation that became The Heart of Finance
16:45 — Co-authoring with Dr. Cliff Lansley
17:40 — How the book changed his speaking opportunities
18:49 — The “author identity threshold” conversation
21:35 — Why self-published books without an editor miss the mark
23:23 — On using AI to write books: “You’re only cheating yourself”
25:16 — Why emotional intelligence matters more as AI commoditizes knowledge work
29:36 — What his current business, Raise Your EI, actually does day to day
33:22 — How the book functions as a business development tool
34:26 — Expanding beyond financial planning into new sectors
36:36 — The meaning behind The Heart of Finance title and cover
37:51 — Where to find James and get the book
Joe Gregory
An entrepreneur at heart, Joe Gregory started his first business at just 19 and has spent the years since building, scaling, acquiring and selling companies across a range of industries. Today, he is a publisher and Authority Strategist at Advantage | The Authority Company, home of Forbes Books and Entrepreneur Books, where he is responsible for the UK and international markets. That early drive to build led him into publishing in 2006, when he launched…
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