Business Leader

In this episode, Lucy Macloud reveals the unexpected story behind Hair Syrup’s meteoric rise—from a homemade solution shared on TikTok to a multi-million-pound beauty brand. In this episode of the Business Leader podcast, she joins Lucy McPhee and Josh Dornbrack to talk about battling self-doubt, navigating Dragons’ Den, handling explosive growth and learning how to lead long before she felt ready.

Thea Green, the founder of Nails.INC, is one of the UK’s most successful entrepreneurs in the beauty and self-care space. Her early background was in journalism, but she spotted a gap in the fashion market back in the late 1990s – and grabbed the opportunity. When the world was crazy about everything “dot com” and coffee shops, she saw that the UK hadn’t caught up yet with the American trend for getting a regular manicure at nail bars. She first built her beauty empire around nail bars on the high street and in department stores. These days she presides over a multi-million-pound retail business that is based on innovative nail products like varnish, art packs and polishes. Last year Nails.INC was acquired by a private equity firm in a reported £30m deal. Thea Green remains at the top of the company she founded. Dougal Shaw went to her HQ in Mayfair, London to learn how she has evolved as a leader and what others can learn from her experience...

Iwoca is one of the UK's most promising new businesses. It has a fascinating mission - to finance one-million small businesses. Christoph Rieche and James Dear founded Iwoca in 2011 to solve one of the biggest problems facing the UK economy - how to get more funding to small and medium-sized businesses to help them grow. As Christoph Rieche tells Graham Ruddick, they are making real progress, but this is just the start...

Most people measure success in likes and views — but not Amelia Sordell. In this unfiltered discussion, she sits down with Lucy McPhee and Josh Dornbrack to explain why virality is meaningless without credibility and connection. Sordell shares the frameworks she uses with CEOs, founders and global enterprises to turn content into clients. She also demystifies what actually works on platforms like LinkedIn and reveals why leaders must stop outsourcing their voice. Learn how to build a brand that survives algorithm changes, drives revenue and resonates long after the scroll stops.

Jack Zhang founded Airwallex in 2015 in Melbourne, Australia. It has now gone global and is valued at more than $6bn by investors. Zhang has moved to London in order to help Airwallex scale globally. He tells Dougal Shaw why there was a unique window of opportunity to build his fintech platform and why traditional banks still have a lot of catching up to do if they want to capitalise on the new revolution in artificial intelligence.Airwallex is a tech-first financial operating system helping businesses scale across borders faster, by doing things like processing international payments. Zhang was born and raised in China but moved to Australia aged 16, without his family, to pursue his education. While working for several large companies as a computer programmer, he also ran multiple side hustles. It was a coffee shop venture that led to the idea for Airwallex, as he encountered the high costs associated with global payments between currencies...

Former England scrum-half, British & Irish Lion and Rugby World Cup winner Matt Dawson joins host Josh Dornbrack for an honest and inspiring conversation about performance, leadership and reinvention. The conversation goes far beyond rugby. Dawson shares how the values forged on the field - discipline, communication, accountability and the idea of “borrowing the shirt” - have shaped his life in the corporate world. Now working with global real-estate firm JLL, he reveals how elite sporting principles can transform businesses, strengthen team culture and help leaders unlock performance in fast-moving environments.

James Reed is the chairman and chief executive of Reed, the recruitment business, which was founded by his father. He has also written a new book called Karma Capitalism, in which he says capitalism needs to change. In this podcast episode, James Reed speaks to Graham Ruddick about building a family business with annual revenues of more than £1 billion and his big ideas about the future of capitalism...

Aron Gelbard is a founder and CEO obsessed with feedback. The business he has built is Bloom & Wild, which made its name with flower delivery but has now expanded into other gifts, such as brownies and whisky. It pioneered the idea of letterbox delivery, where flowers are packaged in flat boxes that can be assembled into bouquets at home. Gelbard tells Dougal Shaw how an obsession with feedback, including A/B Testing and NPS (Net Promoter Score), has been the secret to growing his business, which is now international and has annual revenues of more than £110m. If you truly embrace feedback you can turn disappointed customers into your greatest fans...