Business Leader

How do you turn a bold idea into reality? How do you deliver when things get really hard? Mark Beaumont might be the expert on this. Anyone can come up with an idea and anyone can talk about performing at a high level. But Mark Beaumont has delivered on both. He holds the world-record for cycling around the world and has now turned his considerable skills to being a venture capital investor. But that is only part of his remarkable story, which also includes capsizing in the Atlantic Ocean, making documentaries for the BBC and writing books. This episode of Business Leader is a story about endurance, setting new standards and getting things done...Join the Business Leader community at Business Leader Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 2017 Tom Leathes decided it was time to give the second-hand car market a digital update. With his two best friends and long-time business collaborators, Alex Buttle and Harry Jones, he co-founded Motorway. Investors spotted the potential and by 2021 the company was another British unicorn, valued at more than $1bn. The platform handled £2.2bn worth of transactions in 2023, helping customers sell their second-hand vehicles to a network of more than 5,000 verified car dealers. The three co-founders have a shared history as a team of serial entrepreneurs. They've set up more than five companies. Failures and setbacks, it turns out, have taught them as much as the successes.Join the Business Leader community at Business Leader Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Lord Mark Price spent more than 30 years working for the John Lewis Partnership, including eight years as the boss of Waitrose. He then joined the government as trade minister before founding his own business, WorkL, which tracks the happiness of employees. In this episode of Business Leader we explore what he has learned about running a business as well as the past, present and future of the John Lewis Partnership, and why businesses are underestimating the importance of their staff being happy. Plus, we explore what it was like trying to do post-Brexit trade deals and how he initially wanted to be a professional golfer...Join the Business Leader community at Business Leader Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The story behind Manchester-based travel company Travel Counsellors and why it might be the company with the best reviews in the UK. Steve Byrne, the long-serving chief executive, explains why customers and staff rate it so highly, why you may not have heard about the company until now, and why it has ambitious plans for the future.Join the Business Leader community at Business Leader Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 1989, Mark Dixon had an idea - the traditional office didn’t work for many businesses and they needed something more flexible. More than 30 years later, he has been proved right. IWG, the business he founded, is now worth more than £2 billion and runs 4,000 serviced offices around the world, which millions of people use to do their jobs as flexible working has taken off. But it has been a challenging and sometimes lonely battle to get IWG to this point. This is a story that involves rapid growth, Chapter 11 bankruptcy and flashy new rivals…Join the Business Leader community at Business Leader Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Josh Bayliss was appointed as the chief executive of Virgin Group by Sir Richard Branson in 2011. He works with an array of Virgin branded-businesses, 70,000 employees but just one shareholder - the Branson family. It is a unique job with unique challenges and unique opportunities. This is the story behind the Virgin brand and how Josh Bayliss ended up running it…Join the Business Leader community at Business Leader Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Kevin McCabe tells the story of how he built a property empire and then ended up running Sheffield United, his beloved football club. It is a story that has highs, lows, controversial goals and legal battles.Join the Business Leader community at Business Leader Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 2018 the founder of Tide, George Bevis, stood aside as chief executive and was succeeded by Oliver Prill. Since then Tide has grown rapidly. It has gone from being a promising financial technology start-up to a company whose online banking services are used by one in 10 small and medium-sized businesses in the UK. In this episode of Business Leader, Oliver Prill discusses the challenges of becoming chief executive, how to disrupt the financial services industry and why regulators may hold back innovation in the UK.Join the Business Leader community at Business Leader Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Wizz Air has emerged as one of the biggest airlines in Europe and a new low-cost rival to Ryanair and EasyJet. Its first flight was in May 2004, travelling from Katowice in Poland to Luton in the UK. Today it carries more than 60 million passengers every year and is valued at well over £2 billion after floating on the stock market in London. In this episode of Business Leader, Jozsef Varadi, the founder and chief executive of Wizz Air, discusses how he founded and built the airline, the challenges he has faced and his fascinating views on what it is like running a UK-listed business.Join the Business Leader community at Business Leader Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How does a business survive for 250 years and still be controlled by the same family? Rankin Brothers & Sons was founded in 1774 and is celebrating its 250th birthday in 2024. It has seen the creation of the United States of America, two World Wars, and the Covid-19 crisis. Jim Rankin is the sixth generation of the family to lead the business, which supplies corks and caps for beer, wine and spirits. He has been in the business for 30 years, but when he was younger he didn’t want to join it and feared he would fall-out with the rest of his family…Join the Business Leader community at Business Leader Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Floyd Woodrow and Peter Malmstrom had illustrious military careers in the SAS, the special forces unit of the British Army. Now they are using what they learned about leadership, team-building, and negotiating to build a business. That business - Quantum Group - is already worth hundreds of millions of pounds, and they have ambitions to make it much bigger. This episode of Business Leader is the story of what the military taught them about how to build and scale-up a business. And it includes the key points from the elite coaching courses that Floyd Woodrow gives to professional sports teams and businesses.Join the Business Leader community at Business Leader Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Duncan Clark was an environmental journalist at The Guardian, pioneering a new way of telling stories through data visualisation and graphics. Now he is at the centre of one of the fastest-growing tech companies in the world - Canva, which offers free online tools for graphic design and has been valued at $40 billion (£32 billion). This is the story of how he built a business, sold it to Canva, and is now leading the company’s ambitious expansion plans in EuropeJoin the Business Leader community at Business Leader Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Robinhood is one of the fastest-growing companies in America and claims it is helping to democratise finance by offering commission-free share trading for all. Now it is coming to the UK. Jordan Sinclair, the president of Robinhood UK, explains how it is approaching a UK launch, the story behind the business and the challenges it has faced along the way…Join the Business Leader community at Business Leader Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A failed athletics career and an unfulfilled Olympics dream. A successful business. A failed business. Another successful business and a redemption story. This podcast episode could be four stories in one. But remarkably it is one story, which is why it is slightly longer episode of Business Leader than normal. This is the story of John Stapleton.He co-founded the New Covent Garden Soup Company and Little Dish, two successful food businesses. But in between those success stories he suffered a big failure with Glencoe Foods, which he had to close. And before all of that he had dreams of competing in the triple jump at the Olympics. This is a story about how failure can teach you more than success. And how luck - good and bad - will always play a role…Join the Business Leader community at Business Leader Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ophelia Brown is the founder of Blossom Capital, a venture capital firm which has raised around $1 billion (£789 million) from investors since she launched it in the UK in 2018. Blossom uses the money it has raised to invest in promising businesses in Europe. Blossom is a rare success story - it is a female-led start-up and venture capital firm but is also thriving away from the traditional heart of this industry in Silicon Valley. This is the story of how Ophelia Brown founded the business, raised the money, and what she has learned along the way.Join the Business Leader community at Business Leader Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It’s time for the second episode in our story about how B&M went from a small discount chain in the north of England to one of the biggest retailers in the UK. In part two we look at B&M’s transition from a promising medium-sized business to a FTSE 100 giant. This is a transition that many businesses fail to make. For B&M, it was about keeping your focus despite constant distractions. But it was also about learning and evolving - in terms of strategy and people. At the end of the episode we speak to Simon Arora about why he stood down as B&M’s chief executive and what may come next for him and the business.Join the Business Leader community at Business Leader Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The story behind how Simon Arora and his brothers Bobby and Robin turned B&M from a small discount chain in the north of England into one of the biggest retailers in the UK. In part one, we speak to Simon Arora about how he found B&M, the strategy behind building the business, and how it nearly all ended after less than a year…Join the Business Leader community at Business Leader Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Marc Allera explains how EE went from being an upstart mobile phone brand to a key part of BT and a business with big ambitions for the future. Plus he explains what he learned from launching Sega’s Dreamcast games console and mobile phone brand Three in the early 2000s, which had mixed success.Join the Business Leader community at Business Leader Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It is nearly 30 years since Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou founded easyJet in the mid-1990s and helped to transform air travel in Europe. In this episode of Business Leader, Sir Stelios discusses how he built the airline, how he used distinctive marketing to fight fierce competition, how the fly-on-the-wall documentary Airline became one of the most popular shows on television, and why he has launched a new award for young entrepreneurs.Join the Business Leader community at Business Leader Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How do you get to the top of the venture capital industry? Why should CEOs be concerned about burning out? And what does a promising business actually look like? Suranga Chandratillake, general partner at Balderton Capital and one of the leading venture capital investors in Europe, explains all of that and more in our latest episode. He tells the story of his journey from working at Autonomy to being the founder and chief executive of a promising technology company and then leaving all that behind to become a venture capital investor…Join the Business Leader community at Business Leader Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tom Beahon, the co-founder of Castore, explains how he and his brother Phil built a sportswear brand in North West England that is taking on Nike and Adidas. The story begins with Beahon failing to make it as a professional football with his beloved Tranmere Rovers. Castore is now worth nearly £1 billion and makes kits for the England cricket team, Newcastle United and other high-profile teams and athletes. But the journey for this British success story has taken twists and turns…Join the Business Leader community at Business Leader Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth,” Mike Tyson, the boxer, once said. So what does a business leader do when life doesn’t turn out as expected? That is the question behind this episode of Business Leader. A sharp drop in passenger numbers, strikes by workers, an accounting scandal, a row with the government and a takeover bid.That is what Christian Schreyer faced after taking over as chief executive of Go-Ahead Group, one of the UK’s largest rail and bus companies. He stood down two years later after a whirlwind period in charge. “Life is what happens when you have other plans,” he says…Join the Business Leader community at Business Leader Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The story behind Peloton and how it has tried to change the way people exercise. Peloton has enjoyed big success but also faced big challenges. Amanda Gilmore, Peloton’s general manager for the UK and expansion, discusses how the company has built a community of loyal users around the world and changed how people keep fit, as well as how to improve diversity in the business worldJoin the Business Leader community at Business Leader Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jeff Kelisky, the chief executive of Seedrs, the crowdfunding platform, tells the story of what it is like to succeed a founder as boss of their own company and how crowdfunding is helping businesses scale-upJoin the Business Leader community at Business Leader Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The story behind why a company based in King’s Cross in London, not Silicon Valley or Detroit in the US, may hold the answer to self-driving cars being on our roadsJoin the Business Leader community at Business Leader Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What skills does it take to run one of the UK’s biggest companies for a decade? What does a business leader do when an activist investor demands you change your strategy? How is the UK really doing with its net-zero ambitions? And why should a leader be concerned about wet paint? All of that and more are covered in the latest episode of Business Leader as we speak to Alistair Phillips-Davies, one of the longest-serving chief executives in the FTSE 100…Join the Business Leader community at Business Leader Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The story of how Metro became the most-read daily newspaper in the UK after launching in 1999. How did this newspaper - which is free - disrupt a highly competitive industry and then survive a string of big challenges? We speak to Deborah Arthurs, the editor-in-chief, and Richard Thomson, the managing director…Join the Business Leader community at Business Leader Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The story of how Sydney-born Dan Labbad rose through the property industry to become chief executive of the Crown Estate and be tasked with the extraordinary challenge of “creating lasting and shared prosperity” for the UK. This episode explores the history of that unique organisation, its £16 billion collection of assets that range from Regent Street in London to the seabed around the UK, and how Labbad’s approach to management has been shaped by the discrimination his Egyptian father suffered in Australia, a disregard for hierarchies and a belief that you need to nudge the world in the right direction rather than change it…Join the Business Leader community at Business Leader Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Why does a business that was previously thriving end up failing? What tips a struggling business into insolvency? Find out all that and more in the new episode of Business Studies. Retail boss Ian Shepherd discusses what it was like being chief executive of video game retailer Game when it collapsed into administration and what his experience and the demise of discount chain Wilko tells us about why businesses collapse. A summary of our discussion: “Gradually, then suddenly.” Ian Shepherd now writes the superb Moving Tribes newsletter on business strategy which you can read hereJoin the Business Leader community at Business Leader Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Andrew Brem, the general manager for Uber in the UK, discusses the growth of the taxi app, the controversies it has faced, and why London and electric cars are key to its futureJoin the Business Leader community at Business Leader Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Garry Wilson, the co-founder and managing partner of Endless, explains how he built one of the UK’s largest private equity firms and why his journey from Belfast to Leeds helps to explain why the private equity industry does not deserve its controversial reputationJoin the Business Leader community at Business Leader Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Former Google and Stripe executive Claire Hughes Johnson tells the inside story of how those two companies went from promising tech start-ups to big businesses, and how it was often chaos behind-the-scenes…Join the Business Leader community at Business Leader Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Richard Price, the managing director for clothing and home at Marks & Spencer, explains how he is trying to put the spark back into one of the UK’s leading fashion brands and how, after years of false dawns, success should be sustained this time. Plus he discusses a career in retail that has spanned Next, Sir Philip Green and Tesco. And why Brian Clough is such an inspiration…Join the Business Leader community at Business Leader Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We look at the story of how Yorkshireman Richard Harpin built Homeserve into a £4.1 billion company despite the business nearly failing twice in its early years. It is a story that involves unexpected twists, setbacks and lessons about how you really build a business that Harpin now wants to share with other entrepreneurs and leaders.Join the Business Leader community at Business Leader Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The remarkable story of how Arm became one of the most successful and talked-about technology companies that Britain has ever produced. What does Arm actually do so well? Why is Apple so key to this story? And should the £24 billion sale of the company to Japanese investor Softbank and its charismatic founder Masayoshi Son have been stopped in 2016?All of these questions and more are explored with James Ashton, author of a new book on Arm called The Everything Blueprint: The Microchip Design that Changed the World.Join the Business Leader community at Business Leader Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The story of how Teach First became the biggest graduate recruiter in the UK, the legacy it has left, the controversies it faced, and why Brett Wigdortz, the founder, is now focused on improving pre-school childcare in the UKJoin the Business Leader community at Business Leader Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Oxford Nanopore Technologies is one of the most promising and exciting companies operating in the UK today. Its handheld devices read genomes and mark a new era for how easily and quickly DNA can be sequenced, which should have significant benefits for health and fitness. In this episode of Business Studies we speak to Gordon Sanghera, the chief executive and co-founder, about how the company was built, how it was inspired by the Arctic Monkeys, Brian Clough and Rinus Michels, and why he is unlike most other FTSE bosses…Join the Business Leader community at Business Leader Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What can businesses really learn from elite sport? How to sustain performance over a long period of time, according to Catherine Baker, author of a new book called Staying the Distance: The lessons from sport that business leaders have been missing. We speak to Catherine Baker about her new book and the lessons that matter from sport, including insights from the New Zealand rugby union team, Dame Jessica Ennis-Hill, Sir Chris Hoy, and Mel Marshall, coach of Olympic gold medalist swimmer Adam Peaty…Join the Business Leader community at Business Leader Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Will Shu founded Deliveroo with his childhood friend Greg Orlowski in 2013. Ten years on, Deliveroo is listed in London and worth nearly £2 billion. But a lot has happened in-between. In this episode of Business Studies, Shu discusses the story behind how Deliveroo was founded, how he built the business as CEO, its difficult IPO and the future for the online food delivery service… This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit offtolunch.substack.comJoin the Business Leader community at Business Leader Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Women were first allowed access to the London Stock Exchange only 50 years ago. There has been progress since then, but men continue to dominate the City, as well as the world of start-ups and venture capital. That makes Clara Melia a pretty rare success story. She worked in the City and then set up her own business, Equitory, which helps companies with investor relations. In this episode of Business Studies we look at how she built her business, why women are still under-represented in the City and start-ups, and how she came to represent Great Britain in skydiving.Join the Business Leader community at Business Leader Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the year 2000 the Dot-com bubble burst. The stock market value of internet-based companies had surged in the previous months and years. Suddenly their world collapsed. Many went bust and disappeared. In this episode of Business Studies we explore what happened, why it happened and what lessons can be learned and applied to the modern-day, when public and private markets are recovering from another sharp drop in the value of tech-based businesses. To do that we speak to Rob Hornby, the managing director for AlixPartners, the consultancy firm, in London…Join the Business Leader community at Business Leader Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Miles Roberts has transformed DS Smith since becoming chief executive in 2010 and made cardboard boxes interesting. Today, DS Smith is a FTSE 100 company that makes recyclable packaging and paper, spanning 34 countries with 30,000 staff, including 36 sites and 4,300 employees in the UK.In the latest episode of Business Studies, Roberts, the sixth longest-serving boss in the FTSE 100, explains why packaging is way more interesting than you might think, how DS Smith got caught-up in the chaos around Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-Budget, how he became a FTSE 100 chief executive after leaving school at 16 and why longevity is an underrated asset at the top of a business.Join the Business Leader community at Business Leader Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Rishi Khosla, the co-founder and chief executive of OakNorth, tells the story of how OakNorth bid for Silicon Valley Bank UK during a frantic weekend in March 2023 and why the eventual deal with HSBC could be bad for innovation and start-ups.Aside from recent events, Khosla talks about building OakNorth into the most valuable fintech in the UK, the challenges it has faced since then, and his concerns about listing in London. Finally, the OakNorth boss sets the record straight on whether he is a donor to the Conservative Party or not…Join the Business Leader community at Business Leader Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Not so long ago Waitrose and John Lewis were lauded as model retailers. They had enjoyed years of rising sales and profits and, as part of the John Lewis Partnership, were owned by their employees. But now Waitrose is battling to turnaround falling sales and the partnership is losing money. Is being owned by staff part of the problem? Has it meant that Waitrose has been too slow to react to changes in how we shop? James Bailey, the boss of Waitrose, addresses those questions in the latest episode of Business Studies. It is an issue that is even more important after reports emerged following the interview that the John Lewis Partnership could sell a minority stake to an external investor and dilute its ownership model. Bailey also discusses the status of the Waitrose brand, the future of food, what he learned from his mentor Mike Coupe, and why he nearly got fired by Sainsbury’s for promoting flexible working… This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit offtolunch.substack.comJoin the Business Leader community at Business Leader Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Andre Lacroix thinks that just about every major crisis in the 21st century was caused by a failure of leadership. He is so concerned about the quality of leadership that he has written a book about it - Leadership with Soul. Why is understanding risk so important for leaders? What can be learned from Ayrton Senna? Why is Toyota such an incredible organisation? Why did Lacroix go from wanting to being a surgeon to wanting to be a CEO? And why is London still the perfect place to base an international business? Find out all of that and more in the last episode of Business Studies as we speak to Lacroix, who has been chief executive of FTSE 100 company Intertek since 2015 and before that was at car dealer Inchcape, Disneyland Paris, Burger King and PepsiCo.Join the Business Leader community at Business Leader Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Does Northern Gritstone, an organisation investing in promising start-ups coming out of Manchester, Leeds and Sheffield, hold the key to levelling up the UK economy? In this episode of Business Studies we speak to Duncan Johnson, chief executive of Northern Gritstone, about his ambitions to build a new Silicon Valley in northern England, why businesses in the north haven’t been supported enough, the terrible state of the transport network, and how to spot a promising business…Join the Business Leader community at Business Leader Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“Who holds back the electric car?” sang the Stonecutters in a 1995 Simpsons episode. You could ask the same question in 2023 Britain. The electric car revolution still feels a long way off for many people - cars are too expensive and it is difficult to find a working point charging point.But in this episode of Business Studies, Erik Fairbairn, the founder and chief executive of Pod Point, one of the largest providers of electric car charging points in the UK, explains why we all be buying electric vehicles by 2030, why criticism about the reliability and lack of charging points is unfair, and how he created the business more than a decade ago when the prospect of any electric vehicles on the road was just a dream.Join the Business Leader community at Business Leader Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

James Daunt founded his own independent book shop and then rescued two nationwide chains that were heading for oblivion - Waterstones in the UK and Barnes & Noble in the United States. He has arguably done more than anyone else to ensure the survival of the local bookshop despite the rise of Amazon and e-reading. He is also one of the few business leaders to have enjoyed success on both sides of the Atlantic. In this episode of Business Studies Daunt explains with remarkable clarity how he did it and why he quit a successful career in banking to run bookshops.Join the Business Leader community at Business Leader Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The UK has world-leading universities. It is one area where the country really can claim to be world-leading. But Britain’s universities have not been as good as their international rivals at turning brilliant ideas into brilliant businesses. That may be about to change though. The University of Oxford is thinking more than ever before about how to turn its ideas and research into businesses. In this episode of Business Studies we look at how. We speak to three people at the centre of a collaboration between the university and the private sector. They are: Professor Chas Bountra, pro vice-chancellor for innovation at the University of Oxford, Baroness Nicola Blackwood, previously the minister for innovation and now chair of Oxford University Innovation, which manages the university’s intellectual property portfolio, and Alexis Dormandy, the chief executive of Oxford Science Enterprises, which invests in ideas spun out of the university and helps turn them into businesses…Join the Business Leader community at Business Leader Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Roger Madelin led the transformation of King’s Cross in London over the last 20 years, one of the largest regeneration projects in Europe. An area once renowned for crime, prostitution and an ageing train station has been transformed into a modern, vibrant ecosystem that is home to offices, shops, bars, restaurants and families. It is a project with lessons for the rest of the UK as the country looks to boost areas that have been deprived of investment for years. How does a project like this happen? What was the vision at the heart of the scheme? Why was London 2012 so important? What were the big challenges? Why was luck so important? And why is Madelin now so excited about Canada Water? Find out all of that and more in the latest episode of Business Studies as we speak to Madelin…Join the Business Leader community at Business Leader Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.