The Business Excellence Podcast

Leadership: The Truth About Leadership Insecurity (And How To Fix It) | Thriving in Toxic Culture with Natalie Abou-Alwan Most people think the loudest person in the room is the most confident. Natalie Abou-Alwan has spent her career learning the opposite. In this episode of the Business Growth Podcast, powered by ActionCOACH UK, she explains why "insecurity is loud", how to handle a toxic boss without wrecking your career, and what to do when you realise the insecure leader might be you.Natalie is an Oxford graduate who has worked as general counsel across several businesses, including JPMorgan Chase and BP. She was named a Rising Star on the Legal 500 Powerlist and is the author of How to Navigate Your Career Like a Legend.Her core insight is simple. What looks like ego is usually insecurity, and humility is what separates real legends from bad bosses. Natalie Abou-Alwan is an Oxford-educated lawyer who has worked as general counsel across several businesses, including JPMorgan Chase and BP, and spent more than 20 years working on trading floors. She has been named a Rising Star on the Legal 500 Powerlist. Her first LinkedIn article, on women who don't help women in the workplace, drew tens of thousands of views and is included in her book, How to Navigate Your Career Like a Legend, which uses real-life stories to help people handle toxic cultures and build resilience. If You Haven't Started: Take Natalie's first action. Find a quiet moment, take the noise out and have an honest look at yourself. Ask what is worrying you and which parts of it you can actually control. If You're Already Leading A Team: In your next meeting, listen for the quieter voice with the smart idea and credit them publicly. If you've handled something badly, go back to the person and say so. For Everyone: Build your personal boardroom. Pick a handful of people who will tell you the truth, not just cheer you on, and check feedback with them before you take it to heart. Whether you're dealing with a toxic boss, leading a team or working on your own insecurities, this conversation will help you lead with more humility. Subscribe for weekly conversations. This episode is sponsored by Initium Corporate Finance: Initium is a specialist sell-side corporate finance advisory, providing valuation, consultancy, and business sale transaction services. Find out how Initium can help you at www.initium.com

Business Growth Isn't About Sales, It's About Empathy | Jason and Nicola Threadgold Funeral Directors Interview Most businesses say their service is what sets them apart. Very few get publicly recognised for it. Jason and Nicola Threadgold did, in an industry where trust is hard to earn and every family arrives at the worst moment of their lives. In this episode of the Business Growth Podcast, powered by ActionCOACH UK, the husband-and-wife funeral directors explain how they grew from one funeral home to five in 12 years, built a team of 30 and won a customer service award. Their answer is simple and hard to live by: stop selling and start solving people's problems. What You'll Learn: - Communication Starts With Listening: Nicola breaks trust down into listening, caring, understanding and going beyond what people expect. - Be Impeccable With Your Word: Jason explains why doing what you said you'd do, on time, is where trust is won or lost. - Solve the Problem, Don't Sell the Product: Why every customer arrives with a problem, and why treating it as a challenge to exceed turns clients into lifelong friends. - Working as a Husband-and-Wife Team: How one comment in the wrong tone taught them to work as equals, not manager and employee. - Scaling With Research: Census data, age demographics and getting the model right before opening a new location. - Knock on the Door: How asking owners directly landed them 3 buildings, including one that took nearly a year to come through. - Cross-Training Your Team: Why everyone learns everyone else's role, and why an administrator has stepped in as a hearse driver. - The COVID Cashflow Lesson: Why even a funeral business felt the pinch, and why you need to know your numbers inside and out.For Everyone: Audit the promises your business makes and keep every one of them. Then send one team member to spend a day in another department and see what changes when they come back. Whether you're running a family business, leading a team or planning your next location, this episode shows why care and trust are the foundations of growth. Subscribe for weekly conversations with business owners who've done it.This episode is sponsored by Yes Foundation UK, helping 12 to 22 year olds build confidence, understand money and develop real entrepreneurial thinking. Find out more at yesfoundation.org.uk.

Business Vision - From Nursery Fire To Empire | Andy Nimmo Muddy Boots Nurseries Interview Most business owners get so buried in the day to day that they can't see where the business is actually heading. Andy Nimmo built Muddy Boots Nurseries by learning that lesson the hard way, more than once. Andy co-founded Muddy Boots Nurseries with his wife Anna 15 years ago, starting from a combined household income of £18,000 and a dream of reaching £60,000 a year. Today the business runs multiple sites shaped around outdoor adventure and childcare, after surviving a building budget that ballooned from £450,000 to £1.2 million, a 3am fire that shut a nursery down overnight, and a near-bankruptcy caused by not understanding the difference between profit and cash. What You'll Learn: - The £18k To £60k Vision: How a back of a napkin income goal became the founding plan, and why having any clear number beat having none at all. - Why Vision Gets Bigger As You Grow: How the plan evolved from pure survival to a 10-nursery ambition, using Gino Wickman's Traction and EOS to set a 10-year target. - Purpose From The Infinite Game: How Simon Sinek's book reframed growth as an ongoing standard to keep raising rather than a race against competitors. - The £450k Build That Became £1.2m: What happened when the first nursery build blew its budget and nearly got shut down by the bank. - Profit Versus Cash: How acquiring a second site without understanding profit versus cash nearly bankrupted the business. - The Five Pillars Of Systemised Growth: Team, customers, quality of care, environments, and finances - the framework Andy uses to scale. - The Hire That Changed Everything: Why bringing in a dedicated finance director, years later than he should have, was the most transformational decision Andy made. - Daily Numbers Beat Annual Numbers: How moving from once-a-year account reviews to daily habits let Andy course-correct before problems became crises. Whether you're weighing up your first hire, wrestling with cash flow, or trying to work on your business instead of in it, Andy's story is proof that setbacks don't disqualify you from building something exceptional. Sponsored by YESS Foundation UK: this episode is sponsored by YESS Foundation UK, helping 12 to 22 year olds build confidence, understand money, and develop real entrepreneurial thinking. Find out more at yesfoundation.org.uk.

Lead Forensics - The Five Building Blocks Behind A $50 Million Business | Henry Braithwaite Most founders think a big business needs a big city, deep pockets or a genius idea. Henry Braithwaite proves otherwise. In this episode of the Business Growth Podcast, powered by ActionCOACH UK, he breaks down the five building blocks he used to scale a business from zero to $50 million, out of Portsmouth, with no outside investment.Henry's first business, a student magazine, folded within six months because he and his business partner forgot to sell any advertising. They spent two and a half years in telesales before building a marketing agency that grew to 330 staff and sold in 2017. Henry has spent the 15 years since building Lead Forensics into a business with around 400 staff, roughly $50 million in turnover and about 5,000 clients worldwide.Henry Braithwaite's Background:Henry Braithwaite co-founded Lead Forensics, a Portsmouth-based software business now around 400 staff, close to $50 million in turnover and about 5,000 clients across the UK and US, with a plan to reach $100 million next. He built and sold a 330-staff marketing agency in 2017 after cutting his teeth in telesales, and now calls on outside advisors to see what the next stage of growth looks like. Four of his team have been with the business for 20 years, and 60 for over a decade.f You Haven't Started: List every lead channel your business could use and test each one properly before ruling it out. Write down the playbook for your busiest process so it doesn't live only in your head.If You're Already Scaling: Set a three to five year target, break it into a 12-month plan, quarterly goals and weekly actions, and run a short weekly all-hands so nobody spends a week working on the wrong thing.For Everyone: Coach your team on self-management and clean to-do lists, and build a culture where problems get reported the moment they're spotted.Whether you're finding your first customers or working out what comes after $50 million, Henry's five building blocks apply at every stage. Subscribe for weekly conversations with the entrepreneurs building the UK's best businesses.Powered By ActionCOACH Business Coaching: The Help You Need to Grow Your Business: https://business.actioncoach.co.uk/

Is Your Team Divided? Leading Across Generations In An AI-First World | Dr Paul Redmond Interview Five generations now share the same workplace, and most leaders are still managing them through one lens: their own. Meanwhile, some are quietly handing their leadership to AI, right down to the condolence letters. In this episode of the Business Growth Podcast, powered by ActionCOACH UK, James Vincent sits down with Dr Paul Redmond to find out how to bring every generation to the table and stay fearlessly human while you do it. Paul is one of the UK's leading voices on generations at work. He delivers 70 to 80 keynotes a year on the subject, and organisations including Google, the NHS and Royal London bring him in to help them lead multi-generational teams. His latest book is Leadership in an Age of AI: How to remain fearlessly human. What You'll Learn: - Make Every Generation Feel Wanted: Why the first job is making it safe for everyone, and what walks out the door when your boomers leave with 30 years of undocumented wisdom. - Reverse Mentoring: How pairing a Gen Z mentor with an older leader works, as long as the older person listens and the younger one feels safe enough to speak. - The 3% Problem: Research shows Gen X dominates most meetings, while Gen Z speaks the most in just 3%. Paul's fix is simple: let the youngest person chair. - Learn AI From Your Youngest Employee: Sit with them, let them show you the AI tools they use every day, and say nothing. Blockbuster's rejection of Netflix shows what happens when leaders stop listening. - Why People Quit Managers: The link between losing Gen Z talent and millennial managers avoiding honest conversations, plus the opening words that set the tone for difficult feedback. - The Generational Audit: How to review the way you recruit, engage, support and retain each generation in your team. - Expert Or AI Builder: Paul's view that the future belongs to people who either go deep in one field or learn to build and direct AI. The danger is sitting in the middle. - RQ, Relational Intelligence: Why getting on with people and handling conflict is the one skill AI can't yet replicate. Key Quotes: "From now on, vulnerability is a strength." "Your generation isn't a straitjacket." "IQ has been automated. EQ has been simulated. All that's left is what I call RQ, relational intelligence." "The first 30 minutes are your golden time." Dr Paul Redmond's Background: Dr Paul Redmond has spent his career in education and is one of the UK's leading voices on managing the generations at work. He delivers 70 to 80 keynotes each year and works with organisations such as Google, the NHS and Royal London on how to engage, retain and lead a multi-generational workforce. His latest book, Leadership in an Age of AI: How to remain fearlessly human, explores how leaders are adapting to AI and the human skills, like courage, curiosity and relational intelligence, that we risk losing if we hand too much over to the machines.Whether you're a business owner, a manager with a mixed-age team or a leader working out where AI fits, this conversation will change how you see your people. Subscribe for weekly conversations. This episode is sponsored by Yes Foundation UK, helping 12 to 22 year olds build confidence, understand money and develop real entrepreneurial thinking. Find out more at yesfoundation.org.uk.

What They Don't Tell You About Leadership | Mandy Hickson RAF Top Gun Pilot InterviewMost business leaders only get taught how to lead after they've been promoted. Mandy Hickson learned it the opposite way round, and it might explain why the military still builds better leaders than most companies do.Mandy broke through as one of the first women flying fast jets for the RAF, at a time when women weren't permitted in the cockpit at all. She flew combat missions over Iraq, dodged a live missile mid-air, and was mid-Atlantic refuelling a jet when 9/11 shut down an entire continent. She's since built a 15-year speaking career and has addressed more than 100,000 schoolchildren.On this episode of the ActionCOACH podcast, Mandy explains why the military never makes a lateral hire, and what that forces them to get right about growing leaders from the ground up.What You'll Learn:- Control The Controllables: The mantra that carried Mandy through 9/11, diverted mid-Atlantic, and how focusing only on what's within your control frees up capacity to make decisions under pressure.- Why Nobody Gets A Lateral Hire In The Military: The armed forces train leaders from day one instead of recruiting them ready-made, with real implications for retention and performance.- The DODAR Decision Model: The five-step framework fighter pilots use to make life-or-death calls in seconds - diagnose, options, decide, assign, review - and how it applies to a business crisis.- Real Psychological Safety: Why a junior team member needs to feel safe enough to say "I'm stopping" mid-mission, and how that culture gets built before the pressure hits.- Resilience Is Built Through Failure: Mandy breaks down the catch-22 of wanting resilient people while punishing failure, and why military debriefing turns mistakes into growth.- Find Your Dot Dot Dot: The exercise Mandy uses to identify exactly what's stopping you from taking the next opportunity, in business or in life.- The Power Of Not Yet: The two-word reframe that changed how Mandy approached writing her book, and how it can shift your brain out of "I can't."Action Steps:If You Haven't Started: Write down your "dot dot dot" - the thing stopping you from taking your next opportunity - and identify one action that removes it this week.If You're Already Leading A Team: Stop defaulting to lateral hires. Build a leadership path for people before they're promoted. Use DODAR in your next crisis meeting by asking what the problem actually is before deciding what to do.For Everyone: Define your North Star, then test new opportunities against it before you say yes.Whether you're building a business, leading a team, or finding the courage to take your next opportunity, Mandy's story proves the timing you're waiting for arrives, as long as you've done the work first. Subscribe for weekly conversations that help you grow your business.Sponsored by AdSmart from SkyAdSmart from Sky makes TV advertising affordable, targeted, and effective for businesses of all sizes, with six-week campaigns starting at 3,000 pounds.