The founder of 4Networking lost a £2 million business in an afternoon, then spent four years being smeared online by a woman he had met for 30 seconds.

In an unflinching conversation with Richard Alvin, he describes the four seconds that nearly ended it all, and the platform failures he now wants the next Secretary of State to put right.

There is a moment, about twenty minutes into our conversation, when Brad Burton goes very still. We are talking about the period in 2022 when his business had collapsed, his stalker was posting fifteen lies a day across LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and X, and the platforms were responding to his complaints with cut-and-paste boilerplate. He is sitting at his desk in Somerset, the same desk he sat at then.

“Four seconds,” he says. “For four seconds, I thought I can’t do this anymore.” He pauses. “Luckily those four seconds happened when I was sat at my desk, as in another setting the outcome might have been different, either way it motivated me to go to the doctors and get some antidepressants. Hadn’t done them for 25 years. That just shows you how severe this was.”

It is a remark, delivered in the matter-of-fact Salford cadence familiar to anyone who has ever booked Burton for a keynote, that reframes the whole interview. Britain’s self-styled “number one motivational speaker”, the man who built 4Networking from a £25,000 debt and a pile of pizza delivery sheets in 2006 into the country’s largest face-to-face business network — was, on his own admission, four seconds from a very different ending.

We had sat down for the latest edition of the ‘In Conversation Podcast’ to talk about three things, all of them, in his view, urgent for anyone running a small business in 2026: how you rebuild when turnover goes to zero with no playbook; what happens when the professional platform you have anchored your reputation to stops protecting you; and what resilience, mental, financial, reputational, actually looks like on the other side. They proved to be the same story.

From £2.3 million to nought in a single afternoon

The first collapse was televised. On 20 March 2020, with 4Networking turning over £2.3 million a year at its peak and running 5,000 face-to-face breakfast meetings in Premier Inns and Brewers Fayre up and down the country, Boris Johnson told the country to stay at home.

“When you’re running 5,000 networking meetings in Brewers Fayres and Holiday Inn Expresses up and down the land, that’s a problem,” Burton says, with characteristic understatement. The original assumption that “this will be a short pause, we’ll be back”, turned into a “dance of the seven veils”, a fortnightly extension that he believes did more damage than honesty would have.

Burton’s response was to invoke what he calls his 24/24/24 framework. “If I can’t make a decision in 24 seconds, revisit in 24 minutes. If after 24 minutes I can’t make a decision, I revisit in 24 hours. If after 24 hours I can’t make a decision, I’ve just made a decision, it’s not important. Next.” Within days, 4Networking had become the first network in the country to move wholesale onto Zoom, under the banner 4N Online. He calls it “drawing a picture of a sandwich when you’re hungry”, a holding measure rather than a substitute. He exited the company in 2022.

That should have been the story: a textbook British SME pivot, a clean founder exit, a man in his early fifties moving on to keynotes and books. It was not.

Thirty seconds at Aston Villa

In January 2019, at one of Burton’s personal development events at Aston Villa Football Club, a woman in an audience of around 200 was introduced to him by a mutual contact and asked for a selfie. The exchange lasted less than a minute. Her name was Sam Wall.

A year later, with Britain locked down and Burton’s identity as the country’s networking-in-chief evaporating in real time, Wall began posting on social media. The first post was vague; the second referenced “a high-profile speaker”; the third named him. Within days she had 30,000 LinkedIn followers, more than Burton’s own, and was alleging he had given her death threats, poisoned her cat, slashed her tyres and put a tracker on her car. Burton was 200 miles away in Somerset throughout lockdown.

“I was 200 miles away in lockdown and being accused of poisoning her cat — and Linkedin did nothing”

“People don’t do checks and measures on social media,” he says. “It was a modern-day witch hunt. I was guilty until proven innocent.” A cease-and-desist letter, served at a cost of £3,000, was promptly photographed and posted to her feed beneath the caption: “I’m not allowing this guy to bully me into submission.” Supporters cheered her on. Speaking engagements began to be quietly cancelled. Family members were drawn in.

The legal road, when he finally took it, was as slow as it was bruising. A statement given at Taunton police station vanished from the system. Wall was arrested, bailed for 30 days, “30 days of peace”, and resumed her campaign, in Burton’s recollection, “30 days and 10 minutes later”. She forged what purported to be a stalker protection order against him and posted it online. She wrote a 22,000-word article about him on LinkedIn. By his own count, she made roughly 500 posts about him across the major platforms over four years.

In March 2025, the case finally reached a national audience. BBC Panorama broadcast My Online Stalker, presented by Darragh MacIntyre, with Burton and the Manchester tech entrepreneur Naomi Timperley as its central voices. Channel 4’s Social Media Monsters followed with a second-episode treatment of the same case. ITV covered the sentencing. In October 2025, at Minshull Street Crown Court, Sam Wall was jailed for 28 months for what Judge Neil Usher described as a “prolonged, deliberate and calculated” campaign and an “unrelenting barrage” that was “breathtaking” in its scope.

Burton’s case is one of the fewer than two per cent of stalking complaints in this country that result in a conviction.

“There is no leadership at LinkedIn”

It is the response of the platforms, and one platform in particular, that animates him now. Wall’s LinkedIn account, as of publication, remains live, and so does much of the content she posted about him. Business Matters has previously reported on the mounting pressure on LinkedIn to act.

“We contacted LinkedIn legals. We contacted support. We tagged in everybody,” Burton says. “Not a single piece of content came down. We had people from America come on Zoom calls, they wouldn’t even turn the cameras on, saying, ‘She’s not doing anything illegal.’ I said, ‘What happens if she gets convicted?’ They said, ‘If she gets convicted, do let us know and we’ll see what we can do.’ So guess what? We let them know. They did nothing about it.”

Top-tier legal advice, he says, surfaced a structural problem: LinkedIn hides behind European law jurisdictionally rooted in Ireland and corporate decision-making rooted in California. “They’ve got this double moat. Nobody wanted to champion it.” Reporting Wall’s account, by design, blocked the reporter from her output rather than removing it. “That’s not a solution.”

If he had ten minutes with the Secretary of State and LinkedIn’s UK MD, what would he ask for? “Imagine if on your platform, I called you this, and I said this about your family. Would you ignore it and block me? Or would you make some changes and get me off the platform? That is exactly what should have happened here. Your business is people, and that’s the bit that’s been lost.” He goes further: there is, he says, “no leadership” at the UK level. “Nobody stepped forward and said, ‘I’m the UK managing director. I’m going to sort this crap.'”

It is a critique that lands at a moment when the regulatory tide is turning. The Online Safety Act is reshaping platform obligations in the UK, and stalking prosecutions, although still woefully low against a high base of reported offences, are at a record high. Burton’s case is the gap between the law and its enforcement made flesh.

Building the antidote

What Burton always does, and is doing again, is build. His new venture, Motivational Business Network, has opened for paid membership at £75 a month, vetted, deliberately slow, and capped at the kind of room size where, as he puts it, “you go and put yourself in a room with 50 people who are on side and positive, and tell me that’s a waste of time.”

The product cue is something called Shine: every member receives 100 daily “Shine points” they can award to others for genuine help, the awards visible on a member’s profile as social proof. “When everyone’s shouting, no one’s listening,” he says. “We’ve got to start getting quieter. We’ve got to start talking again. Less AI, more human.”

He pauses, the Salford grin back in place. “When I built 4Networking, it was a wobbly Jenga tower. This time we’re building it slow, methodical. No rush. Let’s get it right, not right now, which goes 100 per cent against everything I’ve ever done.”

For a man who came within four seconds of a different outcome, “right, not right now” sounds less like a strapline and more like a hard-won operating principle. British business, and the platforms that profess to serve it, would do well to take the note.

Read more:
Brad Burton interview: how the UK’s no.1 motivational speaker rebuilt after lockdown wiped out 4Networking, and survived a four-year online stalking campaign

For nearly four decades, The Sunday Times Rich List has been the closest thing Britain has to a national league table of money. This year’s edition reads less like a celebration of enterprise and more like a departures board.

Revolut chief executive Nik Storonsky and the publicity-shy quant trader Alex Gerko have broken into the top 10 for the first time. But the headline story, according to the list’s compiler Robert Watts, is not who has arrived, it is who has gone.

As many as one in six of the individuals and families who appeared on the 2024 ranking are missing from this year’s edition, with the compiler warning that the figures lay bare the scale of Britain’s wealth exodus.

“Many foreign billionaires who have been living in the UK have… dropped out because they have moved away,” Mr Watts said.

The top of the table holds, but the cracks are widening

Sanjay and Dheeraj Hinduja, the British-Indian brothers behind the Mumbai-headquartered Hinduja Group, kept top spot with a combined fortune of £38bn. The rest of the podium was likewise unchanged, with the famously secretive property magnates David and Simon Reuben and Ukrainian-born industrialist Sir Leonard Blavatnik both still sitting on fortunes north of £25bn.

The most dramatic faller was Sir James Dyson. The inventor’s eponymous engineering empire was hit hard by Donald Trump’s swingeing tariff regime, and his estimated net worth nearly halved over the year from £20bn to £12bn, enough to send him tumbling from fourth to 13th. It is not the first time Sir James has tangled with policy: he has been one of the most vocal critics of Rachel Reeves’s inheritance tax changes, branding them “spiteful” and warning of the consequences for British family businesses.

City money muscles into the top 10

If old money is having a wobble, the new money minted in the City of London is flexing. Mr Storonsky cracked the top 10 in the same year his fintech juggernaut was finally granted a UK banking licence and clinched a $75bn valuation in a November funding round.

A place behind him in eighth sat Mr Gerko, the cerebral force behind XTX Markets, the quantitative trading shop that has quietly become one of the City’s biggest tax payers. His estimated fortune sits north of £16bn.

Both men were born in Russia, and both have renounced their citizenship in protest at Vladimir Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine — a reminder that the City’s talent pool is global, and mobile.

A tale of two exoduses

The list’s real story, however, is in the gaps.

For the first two decades of this century, Britain’s super-rich enjoyed a near-uninterrupted bull run. Rich List wealth grew by close to 600 per cent between 2000 and 2022, according to The Sunday Times. That run is now over. The number of sterling billionaires in the UK peaked at 177 in 2022; this year’s tally of 157 was barely up on 2025.

Under the survey’s rules, foreign-born residents who leave automatically fall out of the rankings, while British citizens who emigrate remain. Both groups are now visibly thinning. Mr Watts said he had seen a “sharp rise in the number of British nationals now resident in Dubai, Switzerland and Monaco”, warning the “twin exoduses” represented a worrying development for the British economy and the public finances.

His unease is echoed by international data. The Henley Private Wealth Migration Report has the United Kingdom haemorrhaging high-net-worth residents at a faster clip than any other major economy, with the UAE, Italy and Switzerland the biggest beneficiaries.

“Will more of the wealthy now set up or grow their ventures overseas and in doing so create fewer jobs here?” Mr Watts asked. “How much tax – if any – will Rachel Reeves’ Treasury be able to extract from those affluent Brits who have now left the country?”

The Reeves effect

Critics increasingly point the finger at Whitehall. The Chancellor has been accused of accelerating departures with a string of measures aimed at ultra-high-net-worth residents and their assets.

In her first Budget in October 2024, Ms Reeves pressed ahead with the abolition of the non-domicile tax regime, slapped VAT on private school fees, raised capital gains tax and tightened several inheritance tax carve-outs. Her 2025 intervention added a so-called mansion tax on properties worth more than £2m and further narrowed the inheritance tax net.

Advisers say the cumulative effect has been a stampede. Research from consultancy Chamberlain Walker, cited by Business Matters, suggests around 1,800 non-doms left Britain in the months after April’s tax changes — 50 per cent more than the Treasury had pencilled in.

The casualties include some of the City’s biggest names: former Goldman Sachs International chief Richard Gnodde and steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal, both long-standing Rich List fixtures, have moved on. Only one billionaire is recorded as having moved the other way in the past year — the new US ambassador to the Court of St James’s, Warren Stephens.

What it means for SME Britain

For the small and medium-sized businesses that read this magazine, the implications run deeper than schadenfreude over a few moving vans full of Old Master paintings.

Wealthy entrepreneurs are typically the angel investors, family-office backers and growth-stage cheque writers that smaller firms rely on when banks turn cautious. If they decamp to Dubai or Lugano, that capital tends to follow them. The same goes for the philanthropic giving, board memberships and mentoring that often anchor a city’s business community.

The harder question for the Chancellor, and for the firms that depend on a healthy ecosystem of British-based capital, is whether the additional tax raised from those who stay can outweigh the receipts and investment lost from those who leave. On the evidence of this year’s Rich List, that calculation is starting to look uncomfortable.

Read more:
Britain’s billionaires are voting with their feet – and the rich list proves it

After years of boardroom whispers, palace-intrigue rumours and one alleged attempted coup, the question of who will inherit Britain’s most famous yellow-painted family business has finally been settled, and it is not the son the City had been quietly pencilling in.

Lord Bamford, the 80-year-old chairman of JCB, has confirmed that his younger son George, not his elder son Joseph (known as Jo), will eventually take the wheel of the Staffordshire-headquartered digger maker. The disclosure, made in an interview with the Daily Telegraph, brings to an end one of the longest-running succession sagas in British family enterprise and reshapes the future of a group that turns over £6.5bn, operates 22 factories across four continents and employs 19,000 people worldwide.

“In terms of us remaining a family business, that is very important, and we do have plans,” Lord Bamford said. “I’m very lucky and highly privileged to be in charge of this business at the moment. I don’t intend to be forever. I am 80, for heaven’s sake.” Asked directly who would step into his shoes, he replied: “It will be George.”

From heir apparent to outsider

For the best part of two decades, Westminster watchers and the wider engineering community had assumed Jo Bamford was being groomed to take over. He joined the family firm in 2004, was appointed to the board in 2006 and rose through a succession of senior roles, including head of major contracts, a brief widely read in the industry as a finishing-school posting for a future chairman.

What changed, according to people familiar with the boardroom, was an episode in which Jo is said to have pressed his father to step aside. Lord Bamford, by all accounts, viewed the approach as an attempted coup rather than a constructive nudge. The fallout has been swift and unambiguous: George, the family’s third child, has since been installed as deputy chairman, a clear public signal that the line of succession had quietly been redrawn.

The succession is yet to be formally rubber-stamped at board level, but few in the sector now doubt the trajectory. For a privately held company of JCB’s scale, the choice of chairman is not merely a question of family harmony; it shapes capital allocation, factory footprints, R&D priorities and the firm’s political voice for a generation.

Who is George Bamford?

If Jo was the obvious candidate, George has been the unconventional one. Best known outside engineering circles for the Bamford watch brand, which he founded and which built a cult following customising Rolex, TAG Heuer and other luxury timepieces, he has spent the past two decades building his own commercial reputation in the lifestyle and luxury goods market.

He will retain ownership of the Bamford watch business, but JCB is now becoming his full-time job. Those who have worked with him describe a brand-builder with an instinctive grasp of design and marketing, attributes that may prove useful as the digger maker leans further into electrification, hydrogen power and the premiumisation of construction equipment.

The inheritance-tax backdrop

The Bamford succession is playing out against a tax backdrop that has rattled family businesses across the United Kingdom. From 6 April 2026, the Treasury’s reforms to agricultural and business property reliefs have introduced a £2.5m 100 per cent relief allowance, with qualifying assets above that threshold attracting an effective 20 per cent inheritance tax charge rather than full exemption.

For the United Kingdom’s 5.3 million family firms, the change has been seismic. As the House of Commons Library has set out, the reforms close what ministers regard as a loophole exploited by the ultra-wealthy, but critics argue that they catch ordinary trading businesses in the same net as estate-planning vehicles.

Speaking at a business conference in April, Jo Bamford warned that the new regime could push the family’s empire abroad. “The family tax… is a real problem,” he said. “It could quite easily become an American business. I love being in Britain. But I would say to a political party of any stripe, look, there’s only so much you can ultimately do.” Lord Bamford, a long-time Conservative donor who has also written cheques to Reform UK, has been similarly vocal about Whitehall’s direction of travel, concerns explored in our recent piece on Lord Bamford’s £300m family windfall and the wealth-tax debate.

A sector-wide reckoning

JCB is far from alone. From Dyson to Global Brands, blue-chip family-controlled firms have warned that the new regime could force restructurings, share sales or outright relocations to safeguard jobs and intergenerational ownership. Business Matters has tracked the broader fallout in its analysis of how the £2.5m cap is reshaping family-business planning, with more than half of surveyed firms already pausing investment.

For Lord Bamford, the calculation has long been about more than tax. JCB’s ownership structure, headquartered in Rocester since 1945, is the bedrock on which the company’s long-term capital expenditure programme rests — including the recent decision to double its Texas plant in response to United States tariffs. A clean succession line gives lenders, customers and 19,000 employees a clearer view of the next chapter.

The lessons for other founders

The Bamford story is unusual in scale but not in shape. Even the most polished succession plans can be derailed by sibling rivalry, mismatched ambitions and an incumbent who is reluctant to let go. As Business Matters has previously explored in our five steps to successful business succession planning, early, candid conversations with successors, ideally years before any handover, remain the single biggest predictor of whether a family firm survives the generational baton change.

For Jo Bamford, life outside the JCB chair is unlikely to be quiet. He has built a substantial second career in clean energy, founding the hydrogen fuel firm Ryze Power and stepping in to rescue Northern Ireland’s Wrightbus from collapse. Few City observers expect him to disappear from the FTSE conversation.

For George, the in-tray is daunting but enviable: a globally respected brand, a balance sheet that has weathered tariffs, war in Ukraine and a cooling construction market, and a workforce that has known only one family at the helm. The yellow JCB livery has carried the Bamford name for three generations. On the strength of his father’s words this week, it is on course to do so for a fourth.

Read more:
JCB succession: Lord Bamford anoints younger son George as heir to £6.5bn digger empire

For Fiona McCoss, business is not about hustle culture or rigid corporate structures, it’s about creating sustainable success through intuition, connection, and embodied leadership.

As founder of Wild Feminine Retreats and creator of the Wild Feminine Facilitator Training, she has built a thriving international community supporting women to reconnect with themselves, their bodies, and their creativity. From transformational retreats in Greece and Ibiza to mentoring female entrepreneurs around the world, McCoss has developed a business model rooted in what she calls “feminine business”, one that values nervous system regulation, pleasure, flexibility, and authentic human connection over burnout and one-size-fits-all formulas.

What do you currently do at your business?

My core offerings are my signature Wild Feminine Facilitator Training, one-to-one mentorship, and immersive retreats. Right now, I’m supporting 16 women through the current training cohort while preparing to host retreats in Crete and my online Wild Feminine Solstice Festival, which reaches over a thousand women globally.

No two days are ever the same. One day I may be teaching a masterclass, another focused on strategy, marketing, or client mentorship. What matters most to me is intimacy and genuine connection. I don’t see clients as names on a spreadsheet, I know their stories, their families, their dreams, and often even their pets’ names.

Together, we work on everything from nervous system healing and feminine leadership to pleasure, emotional expression, and business sustainability. My work is centred around helping women reconnect with themselves in a world that often encourages disconnection and over-performance.

Who do you admire?

Honestly, the women I work with who are mothers.

I’m child-free by choice, and I’ve chosen to pour my creative energy into the businesses and communities I’ve built. But I witness every day the depth of work many mothers are doing, not only raising children, but consciously breaking generational patterns and creating emotionally healthier environments for their families.

They’re teaching their children about boundaries, emotional literacy, consent, and self-worth in ways previous generations often didn’t experience. That level of self-awareness, sacrifice, and devotion deserves far more recognition and support than society currently gives it.

Looking back, is there anything you would have done differently?

I probably would have studied business or economics earlier on. When I first started, I had to teach myself everything from scratch and invested heavily in coaches and programmes to understand how to build a sustainable company.

Some of those investments were invaluable. Others weren’t.

What I eventually realised was that many traditional business formulas simply didn’t align with how I wanted to work or live. I had to create my own blueprint, one that balanced success with sustainability and nervous system health.

Personally, I’d also remind myself to enjoy the process more. Entrepreneurship can easily become an endless pursuit of the next milestone. I’m still learning to slow down and appreciate the beautiful moments along the way.

What defines your way of doing business?

The way I run my business is deeply rooted in feminine principles, which looks very different from traditional business culture.

For me, feminine business means working cyclically rather than mechanically. It means understanding energy, nervous system regulation, intuition, pleasure, creativity, and sustainability. I structure my work around what allows me to operate at my best, not around rigid nine-to-five expectations.

It’s also about rejecting performative hustle culture. You won’t find aggressive sales tactics or “bro marketing” here. I believe business can be deeply successful without burnout, urgency, or constant pressure.

My approach blends intuition with strategy. I trust what feels aligned while also applying systems and structure that genuinely support growth. Ultimately, I want to build businesses that support life, not consume it.

What advice would you give to someone starting out?

Get support early and build slowly.

I often describe feminine business as a “slow burn” model. It takes time to build sustainable momentum, but once it’s established, it creates something far more enduring than overnight success culture.

Too many people leave corporate seeking freedom and accidentally recreate the same stress and burnout patterns inside their own businesses. That’s why structure, systems, and support matter so much.

I’d also ask people to be honest with themselves: do you truly have the resilience and vision to build something long-term? Entrepreneurship is incredibly rewarding, but it’s also deeply challenging. Without a strong “why,” it becomes very difficult to stay committed when things get hard.

And finally, don’t let fear stop you. Most people regret the opportunities they didn’t take, not the ones they did.

What are your favourite things to do outside of work? How do you maintain a healthy work/life balance?

Pleasure and spaciousness are priorities in my life, not rewards I “earn” after overworking.

I’ve intentionally designed my business to support balance. I don’t check my phone before 8am or after 7pm, I avoid client calls on Mondays, and I don’t start desk work before 10am. These boundaries allow me to stay regulated, creative, and present.

Outside work, I love gardening, dancing, redecorating our home in Somerset, and spending time outdoors. Earlier this year, my partner and I bought a house in Frome, so I’ve been planting flowers and creating a space that feels nourishing and grounding.

And when I travel for retreats, I always stay a few extra days, preferably near a beach.

Read more:
Getting to Know You: Fiona McCoss, founder of Wild Feminine Retreats

Few retailers wear their politics quite so visibly as Alan Roper. Stand the managing director of Blue Diamond, the UK’s leading garden centre group, with 54 destination sites across Britain and the Channel Islands, in front of a microphone and the easy West Country charm gives way to something rather more pointed.

In recent weeks Roper has gone on the record claiming that successive minimum wage rises, layered on top of higher employers’ national insurance, have stripped £12.6m from Blue Diamond’s bottom line, money, he says, that would otherwise have been reinvested in stores, suppliers and people.

“I’m not against the minimum wage,” he insists, in the office above one of his flagship centres. “But you have to recognise that prior to Labour, it was the Conservatives who increased it by ten per cent for two years in succession. Then Labour came in with another 6.7 per cent, plus the 3.5 per cent employers’ NI rise. That is a major hit. I don’t know anyone who has not seen a pub go under recently because of these costs. Sometimes I wonder if politicians realise the level of impact this has.”

The £12.6m figure, he is at pains to stress, is not back-of-an-envelope. Blue Diamond benchmarks profit per employee across the group and Roper can trace the number precisely. It also reflects his own choices as an employer. “It is not just the people on the minimum wage. The colleagues who were earning a pound or one-fifty above it, as a good employer, I chose to maintain that gap. When their pay moved up, the department managers’ salaries moved up. That is where the 12.6 million comes from. I wish it had happened over eight years; instead, it happened in three.”

The consequence has been a quietly ruthless review of full-time equivalent hours, first across the garden retail estate and now in the restaurants. “We benchmarked the most efficient centres against the rest and got everybody working on the same page in terms of hours recruited per day,” he says. “Restaurants are naturally trickier because we won’t compromise service. But we have reduced man-hours, and we’re not the only retailer doing it.”

He is sceptical of those who claim artificial intelligence will fill the gap. “In this format I don’t think AI is going to have a big impact on man-hour reduction. Although I am trialling a full-size salesman avatar in one of our centres this year, I saw one at the Retail Tech Show in London and thought, well, that’s novel, give it a go.”

Such pragmatism has guided 27 years of growth at Blue Diamond, which has now completed its fifty-fourth deal. Yet for every acquisition there is a much larger pile of opportunities Roper has walked away from, something he attributes, only half-jokingly, to the cautionary tale of Wyevale, the once-mighty chain whose collapse he watched at uncomfortably close quarters.

“Wyevale at one point was close to £300m of turnover from about 130 sites,” he says. “That is barely £2m per centre, and at that size you are going to struggle to make money. They got into this mindset of: we want to be national, we’ll just buy centres. Small, large, the demographics didn’t matter. There was no filter on their judgement. It had a garden centre on the tin, so they bought it. The problem was in their DNA from very early doors. Private equity may have finished it off, but the issue was already there.”

Blue Diamond’s filter has remained narrow: demographics, footprint, location, and what Roper calls the “shape” of the opportunity. “I have never said, where’s my fifty-fifth centre,” he says. “That megalomaniac approach is a disaster. It is about the quality of the opportunity, growing sustainably, with low debt on the balance sheet.” Asked where Blue Diamond will be in five years, however, he answers without theatre: “If the right opportunities come, we could easily double in size.”

The most striking strategic shift in the wider sector is one Roper saw coming long before his rivals. In February last year, catering sales overtook live plant sales across the UK garden centre industry for the first time in four years. Blue Diamond’s restaurant arm grew faster than its retail business in 2025. Walk into a busy Blue Diamond at lunch on a Saturday and the queue for breakfast, cake and afternoon tea can resemble that of a casual dining group.

Roper bridles, mildly, at the suggestion that his stores have drifted into hospitality. “Catering goes back 30 years here. I had a large restaurant in a garden centre 30 years ago. What is happening is that other operators have belatedly caught up. Garden centres are a destination, a day out. Customers expect a nice restaurant where they can have breakfast or afternoon tea. It is a prerequisite. Without a restaurant, I think you would lose half your customers.”

The catering footprint, he points out, is far smaller than the planteria and almost always sits at the end of the customer’s natural route through the store. “It is part of the heartbeat. The pressure on us is always to find more space to grow the restaurants. Increasingly, customers demonstrate an insatiable desire for them.”

The same instinct for the local sits behind one of the more counter-intuitive parts of Blue Diamond’s playbook: a refusal to slap a single masterbrand on every site. Acquisitions at Wilton House, the Chatsworth Estate, the Grosvenor Estate and others have all retained their original names, with Blue Diamond co-branded.

“Wilton was my first big move, back in 2001,” he says. “People came there because it was the Wilton House Estate. You couldn’t simply call it Blue Diamond. So we kept the name and put Blue Diamond on it. The same is true at Chatsworth, at Grosvenor, and at the new centre we are building on Lord Iveagh’s Elveden Estate, which will be Elveden Garden Centre.” He bats away the standard corporate playbook. “Customers see their garden centre as part of their local community. Over the years the Blue Diamond brand has caught up alongside the local brand. We’re now in a sweet spot where they see it as both. When we rebadged three of the former Dobbies sites as Huntingdon Garden Centre last year, we were getting emails saying ‘glad you’re coming’ before we had even opened.”

Equally distinctive is Blue Diamond’s commitment to British growers. Unusually for a retailer of its scale, the group will exhibit at the National Horticulture Trade Association plant show at Stoneleigh in June with the explicit aim of meeting smaller suppliers it does not yet stock. “A lot of growers don’t approach groups because they assume we won’t be interested,” Roper says. “We will be. The challenge is volume. Where we can’t take a grower nationally, we’ll regionalise them, the south-west or the north-west. Knowing the family that grows the fuchsias is a strong USP. It’s a win for the grower, a win for us, and it’s something the customer really wants.”

Underpinning everything is data. Two decades ago Roper built what he calls his Best Practice Indicator, or BPI, an internal benchmarking engine that ranks every centre, department, category and individual line on its conversion of footfall into profit. A weekly league table places the 54 centres in order, one to 54. Where a centre underperforms, a BPI calculator now being rebuilt with artificial intelligence will tell the team exactly which lines were missed and why.

“It is the eighty-twenty rule,” he says. “Twenty per cent of your product does most of the work – hydrangeas, salvias, the genuses you cannot get wrong. The right plant, the right product, in the right place at the right time, at the right price. If you get all of that right, conversion goes up. If you don’t, customers feel it is hard work and they switch off.” It is, he argues, what makes growth safe. “I wrote my own retail ethos. I tell my team to define their church and then write their religion. Once everyone is on the same page, you can give people ownership. But you can only give them ownership if you can measure their decisions. BPI does that.”

On consumer demand, Roper concedes the macro picture is hard to read while weather still dominates. “We are up against a very hot, very dry March and April last year. So it is hard to tell what is real.” At the high-ticket end, suites of garden furniture at £2,000 and pergolas at £4,000, he says he is not yet seeing softness, “but I am not stupid enough to think it isn’t coming. I’m introducing an easy-payment system because I think recalibration is coming.” Last year’s business rates reform was, he says, a marginal win: smaller stores benefited, larger sites took six-figure increases, “but if it helps small businesses, I’m all for it.”

What would he do with a day in Number 11? He pauses, then offers something close to a manifesto. “I understand the need to get debt down. But instead of punitive solutions that suppress growth, this government needs to consult the business community on creating a more Thatcherite environment – or, to use a horticultural analogy, a growing environment where businesses can prosper, employ more people and pay more tax. At the moment, reactions feel knee-jerk and we end up on the back foot, repairing profitability.” He sighs, briefly. “Some days I look at it all and think it would be easier to retire.” Then a grin. “I won’t be doing that.”

Read more:
Alan Roper: ‘wage and tax policy has stripped £12.6m out of our profits’

Leonid Radvinsky, the billionaire owner of OnlyFans, has died at the age of 43 after a long battle with cancer, the company has confirmed.

Radvinsky, who was born in Ukraine and raised in Chicago, acquired OnlyFans in 2018 from its UK-based founders and oversaw a period of explosive growth that transformed the platform into one of the most influential businesses in the creator economy.

In a statement, OnlyFans said he had “passed away peacefully” and asked for privacy for his family.

Founded in 2016, OnlyFans allows creators to share content, ranging from fitness and cooking to adult material, directly with subscribers, who pay monthly fees or tips. The platform takes a 20 per cent commission on transactions.

Under Radvinsky’s ownership, the company’s growth accelerated dramatically, particularly during the Covid-19 pandemic, when lockdowns drove a surge in both creators and subscribers. Within three years, he had joined Forbes’ list of billionaires.

By 2024, OnlyFans had generated $1.4 billion in annual revenue from more than $7 billion in transactions, according to its latest filings. The platform hosted around 4.6 million creators and attracted more than 377 million registered users globally.

Radvinsky’s net worth was estimated at $4.7 billion.

The platform’s rapid expansion was accompanied by significant regulatory and political scrutiny, particularly around its association with adult content.

UK regulator Ofcom launched an investigation in 2024 into concerns that underage users may have accessed explicit material. While the probe was later dropped, OnlyFans was fined around £1 million for providing inaccurate information about its age verification systems.

The company has also faced criticism over its handling of illegal content and accusations that some user interactions were managed by third-party operators rather than the creators themselves — claims that have led to legal challenges, though none have been successful to date.

In 2021, OnlyFans briefly announced plans to ban explicit content in response to pressure from payment providers and regulators, before reversing the decision within days following backlash from users and creators.

Beyond OnlyFans, Radvinsky invested in technology ventures through his Florida-based firm Leo.com and supported philanthropic causes, including donations to cancer research institutions such as Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

A graduate of Northwestern University with a degree in economics, he had also reportedly explored a potential sale of OnlyFans in recent years as the business matured.

Radvinsky’s tenure at OnlyFans reshaped the economics of online content creation, enabling millions of individuals to monetise their work directly and challenging traditional media and entertainment models.

While the platform remains controversial, its impact on the digital economy is widely acknowledged, particularly in how it redefined the relationship between creators and audiences.

His death marks the end of a pivotal chapter for one of the internet’s most disruptive platforms, with questions now turning to the future direction of the business he helped transform into a global phenomenon.

Read more:
Onlyfans owner Leonid Radvinsky dies aged 43

At just 26, Doménique Wissink is redefining what luxury travel looks like. As founder of Extra Ibiza, he has built a fast-growing, high-end travel company that goes far beyond villas and yachts—using psychological insight to curate deeply personalised experiences for discerning clients.

What started as a teenage side hustle has evolved into a business delivering 5,100% growth in just four years, all without external funding. Driven by instinct, creativity, and a refusal to follow the traditional path, Wissink represents a new generation of entrepreneur, one that blends lifestyle, data, and human connection to create something entirely different in the luxury travel space.

What do you currently do at Extra Ibiza?

At Extra Ibiza I focus on building and growing the ecosystem around the company while protecting it’s human and creative soul. On one side that means developing partnerships with yacht owners, villa owners and other asset partners so we can offer a strong portfolio of experiences that are curated and fit our clients desires. On the other side I spend a lot of time on strategy, marketing and brand development, making sure Extra keeps evolving as a platform for curated holidays and experiences in Ibiza and beyond.

A big part of my role is connecting the different pieces of the business. I work with partners, oversee new collaborations, guide the direction of the brand with the team and help shape the long term vision of the company. At the same time I stay close to the day to day reality of the business, whether that is developing new products, improving the sales process or expanding our network, and from time to time hopping back on a client request which still brings me the joy it did when we just started.

Ultimately my job is to keep pushing Extra forward, building the relationships, structure and ideas that allow the company to grow while continuing to work with our excellent team to create memorable experiences for the people who come to Ibiza.

What was the inspiration behind your business?

The inspiration came from a contrast I experienced while living in Switzerland. From the outside everything looked extremely polished and luxurious, but very often it felt a bit hollow. It made me realize that what is presented as luxury is sometimes just a facade. That experience pushed me to rethink what luxury actually means.

For me, real luxury is not about status or appearances. It is about time, curation and the people you share moments with. It is the ability to bring people together, create environments where they can disconnect from the noise and simply enjoy being present with the people they care about. In the end, no matter how successful someone becomes, we all sit around the same table playing Monopoly with family or friends. Those moments are the real luxury.

A big part of the inspiration also came from my girlfriend and partner, Jiel Dassen. Many of the ideas behind Extra grew from conversations between us about creating something of our own. We wanted to build a brand and a company that reflects the way we see the world and allows us to design the kind of life and experiences we believe in. Ibiza gave us the space to turn that vision into reality.

Who do you admire?

I’ve always admired people who build something with their bare hands and refuse to let go of it, no matter how hard it gets. The first people that come to mind are my grandparents. They were incredible business people who gave everything they had to what they were building. 

No shortcuts, no illusions, just work, risk and persistence. Hearing those stories growing up left a deep mark on how I think about business.

Beyond that, I’m drawn to people who step completely outside the box and follow their own path, even when it makes others uncomfortable. The people who change industries or create new ones rarely fit neatly into expectations. They tend to be a little stubborn, a ‘little’ rebellious and very convinced of their own vision.

Those kinds of people interest me far more than anyone who simply follows the script. The world moves forward because of the ones who ignore the script altogether. 

Looking back, is there anything you would have done differently?

Looking back, I would have invested earlier in the right people and in better structure around the team. When you build something from scratch you tend to focus on the idea, the deals and the growth, but the real strength of a company always comes down to the people and how well they are guided. Better onboarding, clearer management and stronger internal systems are things I would prioritize sooner if I could start again.

I would probably also listen more to my partner, Jiel. Having someone close to you who can challenge your thinking and bring a different perspective is incredibly valuable, especially when you are moving fast.

And on a more personal level, I would remind myself more often to be aware of the beautiful moments along the way. When you are building a company it’s easy to always look at the next step and forget to enjoy the journey itself. That said, I’m still only 26, so I like to think I still have plenty of time to make mistakes, learn from them and do things differently many more times.

What defines your way of doing business?

I tend to do business like a rocket. Fast, instinctive and always moving. I like connecting dots, meeting people, spotting opportunities and turning ideas into something real before most people have even finished talking about it.

I’ve never been very good at sitting still or waiting for the “perfect” moment. A lot of my approach is built around momentum. If there’s an opportunity, I’d rather move on it, learn along the way and adjust while flying.

At the core of it all is people. Almost everything in business comes down to relationships, trust and energy. The right conversation at the right moment can open doors you didn’t even know existed. My role is often just to keep that momentum going and keep connecting the right people, ideas and opportunities together.

What advice would you give to someone starting out?

Find the right partners. Business is rarely a solo journey (Even though we sometimes feel like it), and the people you build with will shape both the outcome and the experience along the way. Surround yourself with people who complement you, challenge you and genuinely enjoy building something together. It has to work both ways, be smart on who you work with and why!

Don’t be afraid to take risks either. Most people wait for certainty, but certainty almost never comes, and when it comes you can be certain it’s too late. If you believe in something, move on it, learn as you go and adjust along the way.

And keep some perspective. We’re literally floating on a rock through space, so the idea that everything has to be perfectly controlled is a bit of an illusion. Take things seriously, but not so seriously that you stop yourself from trying. The biggest regret for most people is usually not the things they did, but the things they never dared to do.

Read more:
Getting To Know You: Doménique Wissink, founder of Extra Ibiza

Stepping away from a long and successful career in Big Four and national accountancy firms is no small decision, yet that is exactly what Greg McNally did when he founded VITA.

Today, he leads one of the UK’s largest independent VAT and indirect tax advisory businesses, built on a simple but powerful principle: understanding clients first, then delivering real value. With more than two decades of experience, McNally has seen the profession evolve dramatically, and set out to challenge the status quo with a consultancy that prioritises relationships, authenticity, and commercially focused advice in an increasingly complex tax landscape.

McNally is Managing Partner and founder of VITA, a Glasgow-headquartered specialist firm of VAT and indirect tax advisors. With a combined 85+ years of experience across the team, VITA is now the largest independent VAT and indirect tax consultancy in Scotland and one of the largest in the UK.

Rather than focusing purely on compliance, VITA specialises in high-value advisory work, helping businesses navigate complex tax strategy, transactions, and commercial decision-making. The firm works closely with clients at the earliest possible stage of projects, ensuring tax is considered proactively rather than retrospectively.

That said, the team is equally adept at stepping in when challenges arise, whether that’s limited options late in a deal cycle or managing HMRC enquiries. Known for its pragmatic, commercially minded approach, VITA combines deep technical expertise with a problem-solving mindset to deliver clarity, confidence, and value.

What was the inspiration behind VITA?

I founded VITA in 2019 after a 20-year career with Big Four and a national accountancy firm, where I reached partner level.

Over that time, I saw the profession change significantly. Accountancy services have increasingly become commoditised, and in many cases, the depth of client relationships has diminished. Earlier in my career, accountants were often trusted advisers, people who genuinely understood their clients’ businesses and were part of their wider journey.

VITA was created in response to that shift. The goal was to build a firm that prioritises understanding—understanding our clients’ motivations, challenges, and ambitions—and then adding value through insight, not just process. That ethos still underpins everything we do today.

Who do you admire?

The clients I’ve worked with over the past 25 years.

Particularly those who’ve built something from nothin, who identified a gap in the market, challenged convention, and had the belief to bring their vision to life. I’ve always found their origin stories fascinating. There’s something incredibly powerful about that combination of resilience, creativity, and determination.

Looking back, is there anything you would have done differently?

No. Every mistake is a learning point, and I wouldn’t wish any of them away.

Life is a process of joining the dots, you can always look back and understand how you got to where you are. Looking forward is a different story. Plans rarely unfold exactly as expected, so the real skill lies in being agile, adapting quickly, and responding to what’s in front of you.

What defines your way of doing business?

Traditional values in a modern, fast-paced environment.

At its core, business is quite simple: listen to your clients, understand what they actually need, not what you want to sell them—and then deliver exactly what you promised, on time and on budget.

The challenge lies in scoping work properly and communicating clearly throughout the process. Don’t overpromise. Don’t overcommit. Be honest, be authentic, and do the right thing.

At VITA, we live by two mantras:
“Say what you do and do what you say” and “Do the right thing.”

What advice would you give to someone starting out?

You can’t learn experience—you have to live through it.

Early in my career, I focused heavily on learning—building knowledge, developing skills, and growing my network. That phase takes time, and there are no shortcuts. But the rewards come later.

Put the work in early, stay curious, and be patient. The return on that investment will follow.

Read more:
Getting To Know You: Greg McNally, managing partner, Vita

A significant ownership shift has taken place at The Economist Group after Canadian billionaire Stephen Smith agreed to acquire a 26.9 per cent stake from Lynn Forester, Lady de Rothschild, marking the first major change in the publisher’s shareholder structure in more than a decade.

Smith, 74, is purchasing the stake through his family investment vehicle, Smith Financial, in a deal that underscores continued global investor confidence in one of the world’s most influential media brands. While financial terms have not been disclosed, the transaction represents a notable reshaping of the group’s ownership, with the Rothschild family exiting a long-held position.

The move follows the last major ownership change in 2015, when Pearson sold the majority of its 50 per cent holding to the Agnelli family’s investment company, Exor, which today remains the largest shareholder with a 43.4 per cent stake. Smith’s investment now positions him as one of the most significant minority shareholders alongside Exor, reinforcing a shareholder base that blends long-term strategic investors with a commitment to editorial independence.

Founded in 1843, The Economist Group has built its reputation on championing free trade, liberal economics and independent journalism. That editorial positioning has historically shaped its ownership model, with shareholders often selected not only for financial backing but for alignment with the publication’s values and governance principles.

A spokesperson for Smith confirmed that the investment reflects his “full support for The Economist’s longstanding tradition of rigorous editorial independence”, a key consideration in any change of ownership at the publication. Maintaining that independence is central to the group’s structure, with safeguards embedded in its governance to ensure editorial decisions remain insulated from shareholder influence.

Lady de Rothschild’s decision to sell is understood to be part of a broader reorganisation of her family’s investment portfolio. A prominent figure in international finance and philanthropy, she co-founded telecoms business FirstMark Communications and has held senior roles including a position on the board of Estée Lauder. Alongside her late husband, Sir Evelyn de Rothschild, she also built EL Rothschild, a family office with interests spanning private equity, public markets and real estate.

Smith, meanwhile, brings deep experience in financial services and investment. He co-founded First National Financial Corporation in 1988, building it into one of Canada’s largest non-bank mortgage lenders, and stepped down from its board in 2025. His wider portfolio includes chairmanship roles at Peloton Capital Management, proxy advisory firm Glass, Lewis & Co, and Fairstone Bank of Canada, a major consumer lending institution.

Beyond business, Smith is also known for his philanthropic activity, particularly in education, heritage and the arts, areas that align with The Economist Group’s broader intellectual and cultural influence.

The Economist Group confirmed the agreement, noting that completion remains subject to standard closing conditions. The company did not comment on valuation but emphasised continuity in its strategic direction and governance framework.

The transaction comes at a time when premium media brands continue to attract high-net-worth investors seeking exposure to trusted global content platforms with diversified revenue streams, including subscriptions, events and specialist research services.

For The Economist, the arrival of a new cornerstone investor signals stability rather than disruption. With its ownership model designed to prioritise long-term stewardship over short-term returns, the addition of Smith Financial is expected to reinforce the group’s financial resilience while preserving the editorial principles that have defined it for more than 180 years.

Read more:
Canadian billionaire Stephen Smith takes 27% stake in economist group

More than half of young Britons are unable to name a single entrepreneur, according to new research that campaigners say highlights a worrying disconnect between the UK’s startup culture and the next generation.

A YouGov survey conducted for Enterprise Britain found that 56 per cent of 18 to 25-year-olds could not name an entrepreneur, founder or chief executive. Among those who could, Richard Branson was the most frequently cited, named by 16 per cent of respondents in that age group.

Lord Sugar was identified by 6 per cent, while just 2 per cent mentioned Steven Bartlett, the Dragons’ Den investor and host of The Diary of a CEO podcast. Across all age groups, 33 per cent of UK adults named Branson, while 32 per cent could not name any entrepreneur at all.

The findings come as youth unemployment has climbed to its highest level in more than a decade and as the Treasury finalises a consultation on how entrepreneurs are taxed.

Enterprise Britain, a lobby group founded by business leaders including Stephen Fitzpatrick, founder of Ovo Energy, and Brent Hoberman, co-founder of Lastminute.com, has launched a campaign titled “Time to Act” urging stronger government support for entrepreneurship.

Baroness Lane Fox, co-founder of Lastminute.com and a member of the group, said the term “entrepreneur” may feel remote to many people. “It has taken on a grandeur,” she said. “People think you have to build a global giant to count. Entrepreneurship can take many forms and can be economically rewarding for individuals and communities.”

The survey also found that 74 per cent of respondents believe the UK’s position in the global economy is in decline, underscoring broader concerns about growth and competitiveness.

Enterprise Britain is calling for the creation of a dedicated minister for entrepreneurship and for policies to broaden access to capital, including expanded employee share ownership schemes and greater pension fund investment in high-growth UK companies.

Fitzpatrick said: “Britain has a great economic engine. But while we have one foot on the accelerator, the other is on the brake. We need to take the brakes off so ambitious businesses can drive the country forward.”

The campaign reflects growing debate over how to foster entrepreneurial ambition at a time when economic uncertainty and rising employment costs are reshaping the labour market for younger Britons.

Read more:
Most young Britons cannot name a single entrepreneur, survey finds

We sit down with James Doyle, Managing Director of Endeavour Group, a building safety consultancy and training provider supporting duty holders responsible for some of the UK’s most complex and high-risk buildings.

Based in the North West and operating nationally, Endeavour Group brings an evidence-led, engineering discipline to the built environment as regulatory scrutiny continues to increase.

With more than two decades of experience spanning offshore oil and gas, process safety and fire engineering, Doyle applies high-hazard industry methodologies to residential and commercial settings, helping organisations work through the requirements of the Building Safety Act with a clearer understanding of their responsibilities.

His team works with clients to strengthen building safety through intrusive assessments, safety case support and accredited training. As an approved ProQual training centre since 2018, the business delivers nationally recognised qualifications across fire safety, passive fire protection and health and safety, and is currently launching three new Fire Risk Assessment qualifications at Levels 3, 4 and 5.

Alongside its UK work, Endeavour has delivered UK-standard training internationally through remote delivery for several years. More recently, this has developed into direct conversations with overseas organisations, including engagement in Dubai, who are seeking to better understand how competence, evidence and decision making translate into live, occupied buildings.

In this interview, Doyle discusses the challenges duty holders face under the Building Safety Act, why evidential rigour matters, and the principles guiding decision making in a sector where the stakes are high.

What is the main problem you solve for your customers?

The single biggest issue our clients face is a lack of reliable information at a time when the expectations placed on duty holders have never been higher.

The Building Safety Act has transformed the regulatory landscape, yet many assessments across the UK are still carried out through visual surveys or templated reports that do not meet the level of evidence the legislation requires. That gap creates legal, financial and operational risk.

At Endeavour Group, our role is to give clients a clear picture. We carry out intrusive compartmentation surveys, fire risk assessments, building risk reviews, safety case reports, resident engagement support, remedial action planning and ongoing compliance management, all underpinned by photographic evidence, technical justification and structured reasoning. Every finding is linked back to fire strategy intent and the statutory definition of a relevant defect so there is no ambiguity about what the issue is or why it matters.

Through our partnership with Riskflag, we also support clients with a digital golden thread that organises their evidence, actions and decision making in an auditable way. When people work with us, they gain confidence and a route to compliance.

What made you start your business?

Endeavour Group began in 2018 after I moved from more than two decades working in offshore oil and gas, process safety and fire engineering. In high-hazard environments, assessment quality, intrusiveness and evidential strength are not optional. You learn very quickly that reassurance means nothing if it is not supported by facts.

When I stepped further into the built environment, I could see an increasing gap between what the legislation would ultimately demand and what was being delivered on the ground. Many reports were non-intrusive. Many conclusions were based on assumptions rather than evidence. Organisations responsible for buildings were making important decisions without the technical understanding to identify risk properly.

I created Endeavour because the sector needed a consultancy that applied engineering discipline, communicated clearly and delivered assessments that could stand up to legal and regulatory challenge. What began as a specialist consultancy has grown into a national capability supporting high-rise residential, supported living, student accommodation, retail, commercial, education and transport.

What are your brand values?

For us, competence, clarity and integrity are not marketing terms. They are the foundations of how we work.

Competence means having the technical depth to interpret fire strategy, identify relevant defects, challenge assumptions and build evidence that supports decisive action. Clarity means presenting findings in a way that duty holders, residents and regulators can understand without ambiguity. Integrity means reporting what the evidence shows rather than what people hope to hear.

These values guide how we approach every survey, every safety case and every piece of advice we give.

Do your values define your decision making process?

Yes, completely. We always ask ourselves: would this stand up to regulatory, legal or third-party scrutiny? If the answer is no, we refine it.

Through years of working with the regulator we understand their role in asking the ‘what if’ question, and we ensure that our reports comprehensively satisfy this requirement with appropriate mitigation. We test our findings and their failure modes adapted from offshore safety case methodology, which ensures every conclusion is traced back to justification.

The same standard applies to our training centre, where evidential discipline underpins everything we deliver.

Is team culture integral to your business?

It is essential. Our team is our strength.

The work we do spans high-rise residential, student living, supported living, care environments, commercial and educational settings. Each brings its own challenges, and our ability to deliver depends on a culture built on openness, technical curiosity and shared accountability.

That collaborative approach also supports our international conversations, where the emphasis is on sharing experience and understanding how similar challenges are managed in different operating environments.

In terms of your messaging, do you communicate clearly with your audience?

Clarity is central to everything we do. Building safety is technical, but communication should not be.

Our reports explain the issue, the evidence, the risk and the action required in straightforward language. We avoid jargon and prioritise giving duty holders information they can use immediately. The same approach shapes our training, where real-world examples help learners understand how legislation applies in practice.

What is your attitude to competitors?

There are organisations in the sector that deliver excellent work, but there is still significant variation in standards.

We regularly see surveys that lack intrusive inspection or fail to link findings back to the definition of a relevant defect. These reports may reassure people in the moment, but they do not provide the level of evidence required under the Act.

What we do is driven by quality, not comparison. We know our methodology is robust because our evidence has already changed outcomes, including cases where developers have accepted responsibility for defects once they reviewed our findings. Strong evidence drives accountability.

What advice would you give to anyone starting a business?

Focus on building deep expertise and do not compromise your standards. Consistency, honesty and high-quality work are far more valuable than volume.

Surround yourself with people who share your approach and invest in their development. If you concentrate on doing things properly, reputation and growth will follow naturally.

What three things do you hope to have in place within the next twelve months?

First, the full launch of our Building Safety Masterclass to help duty holders understand relevant defects, liability pathways and evidential requirements under the Act.

Secondly, increasing the portfolio of higher-risk buildings being managed and achieving successful Building Assessment Certificate approvals.

And third, continuing to explore international conversations, including recent engagement in Dubai, where organisations operating complex, occupied buildings are asking similar questions around competence, accountability and how UK-standard training and assessment translate into real-world decision making.

Read more:
Getting To Know You: James Doyle, Managing Director of Endeavour Group

Mark Dixon, the billionaire founder of IWG and architect of the Regus empire, has dismissed calls to ban working from home as “idiotic”, arguing that the future of productivity lies in better management, not compulsory office attendance.

Speaking to The Times, Dixon responded to remarks by Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, who recently declared that people are not more productive at home and pledged to scrap the practice if his party ever came to power. For Dixon, such thinking belongs to another era. “The idea that the only place you can work is in an office is idiotic,” he said. Advocates of five days a week in the office, he added, are “naive” and “Luddites”.

As chief executive and largest shareholder of IWG, the £2.2bn group behind the Regus and Spaces brands, Dixon is hardly neutral. The company promotes hybrid working as a core proposition and operates more than 4,400 locations across 122 countries. Yet his view is informed by scale and data as much as ideology. “Work can be done absolutely anywhere today,” he said. “The whole notion of offices has completely changed.”

The interview took place at Spaces Liverpool Street in the City, a recently refurbished location where corporate suits and start-up hoodies share communal tables. Dixon, 66, is softly spoken rather than bombastic, but unequivocal in his beliefs. “The key problem with work and productivity is how you manage people,” he said. “It’s not whether they’re at home or in an office.”

His approach is to manage outputs rather than presence. For his roughly 1,000 head-office staff, part of a global workforce of around 9,000, the emphasis is on delivery rather than surveillance. As for the oft-cited “water cooler moments” supposedly lost in remote working, Dixon believes they must be deliberately curated rather than left to chance. “You’ve got to schedule creative periods,” he said. “You can’t just rely on random encounters.”

Dixon’s own career has been anything but conventional. Born in Essex to a car mechanic, he began his entrepreneurial life selling topsoil to neighbours at the age of 12. After leaving school at 16 and travelling the world, he launched a sandwich delivery business in the 1980s before selling his bakery venture for £800,000. That capital financed his move to Brussels in 1989, where he spotted businesspeople conducting meetings in cafés, and identified a market for flexible office space. The first Regus centre opened later that year.

Expansion followed rapidly through Latin America, China and the United States. Regus listed in London in 2000 but narrowly avoided collapse during the dotcom crash. More recently, IWG has outlasted high-profile rival WeWork, which filed for bankruptcy protection in 2023 after a spectacular fall from a $47bn valuation.

Despite persistent speculation about shifting its listing to the US, Dixon said such a move is not imminent. While about half of IWG’s business is American, he cautioned that scale is essential before any transatlantic switch. “It’s important to be big there; you don’t want to be a minnow,” he said, suggesting annual earnings would need to exceed £1bn before the company could justify the effort.

On UK politics, Dixon was less restrained. He questioned whether successive governments have truly prioritised business competitiveness, arguing that long-term economic success depends on fostering strong companies and industries.

Now based in Monaco, Dixon retains a 27 per cent stake in IWG. Asked about succession, he acknowledged the inevitability of change. “The challenge for any chief executive-founder is succession,” he said. “This is a young man’s business.” He insisted he has no ego-driven attachment to the role, only to the company’s success.

For the time being, however, he remains focused on growth, and on demonstrating that hybrid working can deliver results. The day before our conversation, he had taken his team to a nearby pub after a long meeting. “We got quite a lot done in two pints,” he said with a smile. “It was very productive.”

Read more:
Mark Dixon: ‘Banning working from home is idiotic’

The founder of Starling Bank has reduced her shareholding in the fintech, as new filings reveal that Anne Boden has cut her stake during a secondary share sale that valued the business at up to £4 billion.

Boden, who launched Starling in 2014 after senior roles at Allied Irish Banks and Lloyds, has lowered her holding to around 2.7 per cent from a previous 4.3 per cent, according to the disclosures.

The move follows a secondary share sale launched by Starling last year, aimed at allowing existing shareholders to sell down stakes while creating opportunities for new investors. At the time, the bank was targeting a valuation of between £3.5 billion and £4 billion, according to the Financial Times.

The filings show that Chrysalis Investments, which counts Starling as 53 per cent of its portfolio, retained a stake of more than 10 per cent. The Guernsey-based investment trust has been a long-term backer of Starling, leading a £30 million funding round in 2019 and investing a further £20 million in 2023.

Starling’s largest shareholder remains billionaire Harald McPike, who continues to hold more than 40 per cent of the company through his investment vehicle JTC Holdings.

The secondary sale comes amid a shift in tone from Starling’s leadership on a potential stock market listing. Over the past year, the bank’s senior team has signalled increased openness to a US flotation, marking a departure from earlier commitments to London.

Declan Ferguson, Starling’s chief financial officer, has said the bank has not yet formed a “concrete view” on the most suitable market for a listing, describing the decision as “in flux”. That contrasts with comments made in 2024 by former interim chief executive John Mountain, who said the fintech was “very committed” to a London listing and described the City as its “natural home”.

Mountain succeeded Boden as chief executive in May 2023. Her departure followed reports of tensions with investors after fund manager Jupiter sold its stake in Starling at a price below its previous valuation. Boden later said her decision to step down reflected concerns that her role as chief executive was being unduly influenced by her position as a shareholder.

When asked about her reduced stake, Boden declined to comment.

A spokesperson for Starling said: “During the last year, one of our shareholders agreed to sell some of their shares to another of our shareholders in a private, bilateral transaction. This was done with the company’s full knowledge and support.”

Read more:
Starling founder Anne Boden cuts stake in £4bn fintech

Fresh from his nerve-shredding run on BBC hit The Traitors, Brian Davidson has swapped the infamous roundtable for the photographer’s studio, and the move has paid off handsomely.

Davidson, a professional photographer and owner of Glasgow-based Studio Snap, is celebrating his strongest trading year to date, with revenues up more than 70 per cent in 2025. The surge follows his memorable appearance on series two of The Traitors, which turned him into a familiar face for millions of viewers, and, unexpectedly, a powerful brand amplifier for his business.

Studio Snap, which specialises in wedding, family and event photography, has benefited from what Davidson describes as the “Traitors effect”. Since the show aired, he has built a substantial social media following by offering sharp, insider analysis of subsequent series, with his commentary striking a chord among the programme’s highly engaged fanbase.

That digital momentum has translated into commercial success. Davidson’s platforms have become a go-to destination for fans dissecting each episode, helping him grow his audience far beyond traditional photography clients. The expanded reach has led to collaborations with a number of high-profile brands, positioning Davidson as a content creator as well as a business owner, all while continuing to scale Studio Snap.

“The experience on The Traitors was intense and surreal,” Davidson said. “Coming out of that environment gave me a fresh perspective. I went from one of the most stressful roundtables imaginable straight back into the studio, and I’ve poured that energy into the business. To see Studio Snap deliver a record year is the ultimate win.”

While his online presence has opened new doors, Davidson is clear that photography remains at the heart of his ambitions. “I love that I can keep one foot in the world of The Traitors through my analysis videos, the fans are incredible,” he said. “The brand work has been exciting, but photography will always be my main passion.”

The business has also been buoyed by a string of industry awards, further reinforcing Studio Snap’s reputation for relaxed, professional photography across Scotland and beyond.

With bookings already stacking up for the year ahead and his digital following continuing to grow, Davidson is entering 2026 with momentum on multiple fronts, proof that reality TV exposure, when paired with a strong core business, can deliver more than fleeting fame.

Read more:
From roundtable to the camera: The Traitors’ Brian Davidson celebrates record-breaking year for Studio Snap

Gary Neville has sold a majority stake in his fast-growing media business The Overlap to radio giant Global, in a deal designed to turn the platform into a world-leading sports network.

The former Manchester United and England defender will continue to co-chair the business alongside Global Group chief executive Simon Pitts, after Global acquired the stake from previous investors Miroma Group.

The deal paves the way for a significant expansion in output, with The Overlap expected to produce a broader slate of shows and digital content while maintaining its core focus on football. Funds from the transaction will be reinvested directly into the business to accelerate growth.

Launched as a fan-first football platform, The Overlap has become one of the UK’s most successful sports media brands. Its flagship show, Stick to Football, is broadcast weekly on YouTube and features Neville alongside Jamie Carragher, Roy Keane, Ian Wright and Jill Scott. The programme has helped drive more than 38 million monthly views across The Overlap’s YouTube channels.

Beyond football, the business has already begun diversifying into other sports, producing fan-led debate formats, long-form interviews and podcasts covering cricket and rugby union. Under Global’s ownership, that remit is expected to widen further as the business evolves into what is being billed internally as “The Overlap Network”.

Neville said the growth of the platform had exceeded all expectations.

“The Overlap started as an idea that we thought people might like, and we went for it,” he said. “What has happened since then has been a great journey. We never thought of it as a business — we just wanted to create something people loved and would come back to every week.

“We see huge growth potential for The Overlap and are delighted to have found the perfect partner in Global to power us forward and create The Overlap Network, with the aim of becoming a world-leading football and sports media platform.”

Global is Europe’s largest commercial radio group, owning brands including Capital, LBC, Heart and Classic FM, alongside a major advertising and digital audio business. The company is expected to bring significant commercial, production and distribution expertise to The Overlap as it scales.

Simon Pitts said the acquisition reflected Global’s ambition to grow premium digital content brands beyond traditional radio.

“The Overlap is one of the UK’s most successful and dynamic sports entertainment brands, with a hugely exciting growth plan,” he said. “Gary and Scott have done an extraordinary job building the business, and we’re thrilled to be working together as we enter this next phase of growth.”

Scott Melvin will remain lead executive director of the business as The Overlap accelerates its expansion across platforms and formats.

Read more:
Gary Neville sells majority stake in The Overlap as media brand targets global expansion

Beyoncé has officially become a billionaire, according to Forbes, cementing her status as one of the most commercially successful musicians of all time.

The American superstar is now the fifth musician to be recognised by Forbes as having amassed a ten-figure fortune, joining an elite group that includes Taylor Swift, Rihanna, Bruce Springsteen, and her husband Jay-Z, whose net worth Forbes estimates at $2.5bn (£1.85bn).

Earlier this month, Forbes valued Beyoncé at $800m (£593m), but a series of lucrative projects has since pushed her wealth beyond the billion-dollar mark.

A major driver has been her 2023 Renaissance World Tour, which grossed nearly $600m, making it one of the highest-earning tours of the decade. Beyoncé further increased profits by producing and distributing the accompanying concert film herself through a direct deal with AMC Theatres, securing almost half of the film’s $44m (£33m) global box office takings.

Her momentum continued in 2024 with the release of Cowboy Carter, an album celebrating the Black roots of country music. The project received widespread critical acclaim and won Album of the Year at the Grammy Awards, the first time Beyoncé has claimed the top prize, despite four previous nominations.

The accompanying Cowboy Carter tour generated more than $400m in ticket sales, alongside an estimated $50m in merchandise revenue, Forbes said. The tour featured appearances from Jay-Z, two of the couple’s three children, and former Destiny’s Child bandmates.

While the tour broke ticket records at London’s Tottenham Hotspur Stadium and the Stade de France in Paris, it also faced uneven demand, with some promoters cutting prices to fill seats. Even so, Beyoncé commanded the highest top-priced ticket of any UK artist in 2025, with premium seats reaching £950, while entry-level tickets started at £71.

Additional income streams included a high-profile Netflix halftime show on Christmas Day, estimated to have earned $50m, alongside a further $10m from a series of Levi’s advertising campaigns.

Elsewhere, Bloomberg has listed Selena Gomez as a billionaire, citing a net worth of $1.3bn (£962m). Forbes disputes that assessment, instead valuing Gomez at around $700m (£518m).

For Beyoncé, however, the numbers are now beyond dispute, placing her firmly among the world’s wealthiest entertainers and underscoring the growing power of artists who control not just their music, but their tours, films and brands.

Read more:
Beyoncé declared a billionaire by Forbes after record tours and brand deals

A British parcel entrepreneur forged documents as part of a failed attempt to seize control of Yodel, according to a damning High Court judgment that brings fresh clarity to one of the most chaotic corporate battles in the UK logistics sector.

Mr Justice Fancourt ruled that Jacob Corlett conspired with his mother, Tamara Gregory, to falsify share warrant documents in an effort to overturn Yodel’s sale to Polish courier group InPost. The judge said the signatures on the disputed documents were “suspicious”, bore “many signs of forgery” and were “probably forged”, based on expert handwriting evidence.

In a strongly worded ruling published on Friday, the judge concluded that both Mr Corlett and his mother had lied to the court about how the documents were produced. He described Mr Corlett as “a most unsatisfactory witness” and said the evidence pointed decisively to fabrication.

The judgment is a significant victory for InPost, which agreed a £106m deal to acquire Yodel earlier this year, following months of uncertainty over the company’s ownership and financial stability. Mr Corlett had sought to derail the takeover by claiming he held warrant instruments entitling him to purchase more than 60 per cent of Yodel’s shares, effectively restoring him as majority owner.

The High Court rejected that argument, ruling the warrants invalid because they were forged. As a result, Mr Corlett’s attempt to reclaim control of the business has collapsed.

Michael Rouse, chief executive of InPost International, said the ruling was an “extraordinary judgment” that fully vindicated InPost’s position. He accused Mr Corlett of going to extreme lengths to extract money from Yodel and said the decision protected the integrity of the company and its shareholders. InPost is now considering further legal action in light of the court’s findings.

The ruling addresses only one strand of a wider legal saga. Mr Corlett is also accused of siphoning off millions of pounds from Yodel during a brief period of ownership last year, allegations he strongly denies. Those claims, including accusations of asset stripping and the diversion of funds to companies linked to him and his mother, are due to be examined in a separate High Court trial next year.

Yodel, which employs around 10,000 people, was previously owned by the Barclay family and was sold for £1 to Mr Corlett in 2024 in a last-ditch effort to avoid insolvency. At the time, the 31-year-old entrepreneur was portrayed as a white knight who would stabilise the Liverpool-based parcel firm and merge it with his start-up, Shift Group.

However, relations quickly deteriorated after Yodel’s lenders and advisers alleged that company funds had been misappropriated, including payments totalling more than £4m made to businesses linked to Mr Corlett. Court filings also allege that funds were routed offshore to an Isle of Man company owned by his mother.

Mr Corlett has denied any wrongdoing and says he was unaware of the payments. A spokesperson for him said he was disappointed by the outcome of the ruling and that his legal team is reviewing the judgment as he considers next steps.

For Yodel and InPost, the decision removes a major cloud hanging over the business and clears the way for the Polish group to press ahead with its plans for the UK delivery firm, following a period of turmoil that threatened its very survival.

Read more:
Entrepreneur forged documents in failed bid to seize control of Yodel, High Court rules

Denise Coates, the billionaire founder and chief executive of Bet365, received at least £280m in salary and dividends in the year to March 2025, despite a sharp fall in the company’s pre-tax profits.

The Stoke-on-Trent-based gambling group reported turnover of £4bn for the year, up from £3.7bn in the previous 12 months. Pre-tax profits, however, fell to £349m from £627m a year earlier, reflecting a significant rise in costs as the business reshaped its global operations.

Accounts filed on Tuesday show that Coates was paid a salary of £104m. As the company’s majority shareholder, she is also entitled to at least half of a £353.6m dividend, taking her total remuneration from the group to a minimum of £280m.

While this represents a substantial increase on the £150m she received last year, it remains well below her record £469m payout in 2021. Over her career, Coates has now extracted more than £2.5bn in pay and dividends from Bet365, which she famously began building from a portable cabin in a car park in Stoke.

The fall in profits was driven largely by a £325m increase in expenses as Bet365 expanded its presence in the US and South America while withdrawing from China, where online betting is illegal. The company incurred £59m in one-off restructuring and reorganisation costs linked to its exit from “certain markets”.

Bet365 has long faced scrutiny over its activities in China, although it has always insisted it complied with local laws. The company did not fully cease taking bets from Chinese customers until the end of March, meaning further costs associated with the withdrawal may fall into the current financial year.

Despite criticism over the scale of Coates’s pay, industry figures often note that she does not use complex structures to minimise tax and is among the UK’s largest individual taxpayers. During the year, Bet365 also donated £130m to the Denise Coates Foundation, which supports a range of charitable causes.

During the year, Bet365 also waived loans to Stoke City, which was demerged from the group and is now controlled by Coates’s brother, John.

The accounts make no reference to earlier reports of exploratory talks over a potential £9bn sale of the business. Instead, they underline Bet365’s strategic focus on regulated markets, particularly the United States, where it now operates licensed betting services in 16 states after entering five new ones during the year.

The US expansion follows the Supreme Court’s 2018 decision to overturn the federal ban on sports betting, triggering a rapid state-by-state liberalisation that has transformed the American gambling market.

Read more:
Bet365 boss Denise Coates pockets at least £280m despite profit slump

Tom Pellereau, the first winner of The Apprentice to secure an equity investment from Lord Sugar, has regained full ownership of his business after buying out Lord Sugar’s 50 per cent stake.

The deal, agreed 14 years after the original investment, returns Styl Pro to 100 per cent founder ownership and marks the end of one of the show’s longest-running business partnerships. Financial terms of the buyout have not been disclosed.

Pellereau founded Styl Pro in 2011 after winning The Apprentice, when Lord Sugar invested £250,000 for a half share in the company. The deal was a landmark moment for the BBC series, which had previously offered winners a salaried role in Lord Sugar’s organisation before shifting to an investment-and-partnership model.

Since its launch, Styl Pro has grown into one of the UK’s fastest-selling electrical beauty-tech brands, known for products such as automated makeup brush cleaners and skincare devices. The company will continue to operate under Pellereau’s leadership, with him remaining founder and chief executive.

Lord Sugar said the timing was right to step away and allow Pellereau to take the business forward independently. “Fourteen years after investing in Tom, I have agreed with Tom’s decision to purchase back my shares and return sole ownership to him,” he said. “When I first met Tom, he was a naïve inventor with ideas and drive, but he desperately needed my business help. He has gone on to build one of the UK’s fastest-selling electrical beauty-tech brands. It’s now the right time to part ways and allow Tom and his team to take the company to new heights.”

Pellereau described the move as a natural next step in the evolution of the business, while paying tribute to Lord Sugar’s role in its success. “I will always be so grateful for the investment Lord Sugar made, and the potential he saw in me and my inventions,” he said. “His time, knowledge and guidance have been invaluable. While now is the right time to regain full ownership of my business, I look back on the amazing journey we’ve taken together over the last 14 years with deep gratitude and happy memories.”

The buyout brings to a close one of The Apprentice’s most high-profile success stories and positions Styl Pro for its next phase of growth as a fully founder-led company.

Read more:
Apprentice winner Tom Pellereau buys out Lord Sugar to regain full control of Styl Pro

Greg Lawson has spent more than 35 years shaping packaging strategies for some of the world’s biggest brands and retailers, from Amazon and Walmart to ALDI. Today, he is focused on one of the industry’s most pressing challenges: helping organisations transition to sustainable packaging and a circular economy.

As Founder and Managing Director of specialist consultancy Aura, Lawson advises businesses globally on packaging sustainability, regulation and compliance – an area that has shifted rapidly from “nice to have” to business critical.

What was the inspiration behind Aura?

Sustainable packaging isn’t optional it’s essential. It’s vital for protecting the planet, meeting the expectations of increasingly eco-conscious consumers, and avoiding the growing financial penalties attached to non-compliance.

Back in the late 2000s, when I was running The Less Packaging Company, the world was far less motivated. We were trying to convince businesses that sustainability mattered, but the regulatory pressure simply wasn’t there and the technology didn’t exist to drive change at scale.

Aura was created to continue that mission, but in a very different landscape. Today, legislation such as Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) has put sustainability firmly on the agenda. Brands and retailers no longer have a choice.

Technology is now the key enabler. Aura helps organisations track packaging materials, coatings, substrates and labels across hundreds of thousands of product lines, allowing them to make informed decisions at scale. That’s how meaningful, global change happens.

Who do you admire?

Sir Richard Branson stands out for me. He, and Virgin, are fearless. Virgin has never behaved like a conventional challenger brand; it does things differently, and that mindset comes directly from Sir Richard’s leadership.

He celebrates diversity, isn’t afraid to tackle big problems, and understands that failure is often a stepping stone to success. That philosophy has heavily influenced how I try to lead at Aura.

Looking back, is there anything you would have done differently?

I would have invested in technology much earlier. Given the sheer complexity and scale of global packaging, digital tools are essential if you want to drive sustainability at pace.

I’d also advise my younger self to look beyond immediate commercial conversations and consider the wider ecosystem. Retailers and brand owners play a critical role, but real change is often shaped by governing bodies and NGOs who set the regulatory framework.

The most effective approach is balance, working closely with brands and retailers while also engaging policymakers and regulators to create the right conditions for long-term progress.

What defines your way of doing business?

Data is central to everything we do. We encourage our clients to base decisions on logic rather than emotion, and we apply the same principle internally.

Alongside that, I believe in creating an environment that’s enlightening, enriching and empowering. People need safe spaces to innovate — and to fail. I’m very clear that “my way” is not always the right way.

If you give people the confidence to challenge the status quo, you don’t just get better ideas, you build a stronger, more resilient business.

What advice would you give to someone starting out?

When I was starting out, a close family friend and fellow entrepreneur told me to “be brave and go for it”. That advice still holds true.

I’d also stress the importance of finding the right partner, ideally someone who isn’t like you. Diversity of thought and complementary skill sets at the top of a business are invaluable.

I was fortunate to work with a partner who was strong in all the areas where I wasn’t, and that made the business far better than it could ever have been otherwise.

Read more:
Challenging the status quo – Greg Lawson on sustainable packaging and building businesses that drive change

Mobbie Nazir has spent more than three decades helping organisations anticipate change and navigate transformation. From publishing foresight reports in the early internet era to spearheading global strategy at one of the world’s most influential social-first agencies, her career has been defined by agility, curiosity and an ability to see around corners.

As Chief Strategy & Growth Officer at We Are Social, Nazir leads global strategy, media, research, insights and business development, a role that places her at the intersection of culture and commercial growth. Here, she shares what drives her, who inspires her and the leadership lessons she lives by.

What defines your way of doing business?

I thrive on change and adaptation. I started my career back in 1993 at a research consultancy, helping large enterprises plan for emerging shifts in business and technology. At that time, the internet was in its dial-up era, broadband hadn’t even arrived, yet we were already publishing reports on how the web would transform the way companies operate.

That early experience taught me to anticipate what’s next, and I’ve ridden every wave of digital transformation since. Today, I bring that same forward-thinking mindset to my role at We Are Social. I’m responsible for driving global business growth while overseeing strategy, media, research, insights and business development across our network.

Working with talented teams around the world means I get to translate cultural insight into real business impact every day. No two days are ever the same — the work constantly evolves, and that keeps me engaged, curious and energised.

Ultimately, what defines my way of working is agility. I stay ahead of cultural and technological change, embrace new ideas quickly and build teams that see innovation as an opportunity, not an obstacle.

Who do you admire most in business, and why?

I’m a big fan of Rihanna – not just as a cultural icon, but as a business leader. As founder and CEO of Fenty Beauty and Savage x Fenty, she redefined entire industries.

When Fenty Beauty launched with 40 foundation shades, a move that was groundbreaking at the time, she filled a real gap in the market. That ripple effect, often referred to as the ‘Fenty Effect’, pushed other global beauty brands to expand their shade ranges and fundamentally rethink inclusivity.

What I admire most is how she merges pop culture, social media and inclusivity to create brand movements, not just products. As she has said: “I’m not here to play it safe. I’m here to change the rules.” That fearlessness has built billion-dollar businesses by seeing who was being left out and putting them at the centre. She’s a powerful example of visionary leadership that leaves a lasting mark.

What advice would you give to someone starting out?

Don’t be afraid to ask for help.

Early in my career, I mistakenly saw asking questions as a weakness. I tried to pretend I had all the answers – and that only added unnecessary pressure. Now I know that asking for help shows strength, curiosity and confidence.

No one has all the answers. Asking for help opens you up to perspectives and insights you simply can’t access on your own. The smartest people I know are those who surround themselves with thinkers who challenge and complement their own ideas.

So build that network early and use it often. Be willing to show vulnerability – it’s not a weakness. People connect with authenticity, not perfection. And the more honest you are about not knowing everything, the more you’ll learn and grow.

Read more:
Getting to know you: Mobbie Nazir, chief strategy & growth officer, We Are Social

For a quarter of a century, Russell Wardrop has been in the same line of work—creating rainmakers.

As co‑founder and chief executive of KWC Global, based in Glasgow and London, Wardrop has made a career of helping lawyers, accountants and financiers learn the commercial skills business school often forgets: how to sell, lead and grow. His thesis is disarmingly simple: if learning and development is designed correctly and linked to tangible outcomes, it stops being an overhead and starts paying for itself.

‘Too much L&D is treated as a discretionary cost,’ he says. ‘It’s not quite entertainment, but it’s rarely embedded in strategy or measured against the top line. That’s a big miss—so we made it our mission.’

The spark: from lecture theatre to marketplace

Wardrop and his co‑founder—and wife—Sharon (pictured) began in academia. He had trained as an architect and developed a parallel career as a speaker; she studied law, relished the detail and, by his account, ‘loved a spreadsheet’. Between them they had deep experience in building and validating degree and postgraduate programmes. What they could see, and what many firms could not, was the chasm between technical excellence and commercial impact.

‘There are so many brilliant professionals who are never taught how to sell or influence,’ Wardrop says. ‘We built programmes that gave them those tools—and the rest is history.’

At the outset they chose a name you couldn’t ignore: Kissing with Confidence. They were not theatre coaches but business people with a promise of ‘fiercely direct feedback’ and practical drills. The offering has since matured into KWC Global and the Rainmaker Series, delivered worldwide to blue‑chip firms across law, accountancy and financial services.

Profit centre, not cost centre

The KWC method starts with the end in mind. ‘We have ROI front and centre from first client contact,’ Wardrop says. That’s not a vague aspiration but a design principle: define the behaviours that will move revenue, build the learning around them, and measure both the qualitative and quantitative shifts.

‘Training only works when it changes behaviour and boosts performance,’ he adds. ‘If what we do doesn’t achieve that, we fix it—or we stop doing it.’ The discipline extends to client service: KWC prides itself on a ‘relentless’ focus there, and on maintaining what Wardrop calls a world‑class Net Promoter Score.

The rainmaker’s toolkit

So what, in KWC parlance, makes a rainmaker? The firm’s curriculum blends leadership, sales and influence. Participants practise framing value, running tough conversations, navigating politics without losing their edge, and moving stakeholders from ‘maybe’ to ‘yes’. The constant refrain: outcomes.

‘We always ask: how does this move the needle?’ Wardrop says. ‘That’s the difference between an overhead and an investment.’

Missteps, momentum and the Zoom moment

Wardrop is candid about what he would change. ‘Plenty,’ he laughs. ‘But every misstep taught us something vital.’ If he has a single do‑over, it might be technology: ‘Had I embraced it sooner we’d be further ahead. Zoom was an unexpected lifeline in lockdown that took us global overnight.’ The lesson, delivered with trademark bluntness, is not to over‑analyse the past. ‘When you’ve longer to look back than forward it’s tempting to dissect everything. That’s not my thang. If I’d known more about business earlier we might be bigger—or bust.’

Who he admires

Two names come quickly. First, Dr Brian Williamson, the Stirling‑based serial entrepreneur. ‘He changed the way I think about business,’ Wardrop says. ‘Growth comes from clarity of vision and relentless focus on outcomes.’ The second is Gordon Ramsay—for reasons you can guess. ‘Unflinching honesty and high standards. A bit of fire never hurt anyone.’

The KWC way: straight talking, action, evidence

Wardrop’s own style is baked into the firm’s culture: plain‑speaking, action‑oriented and allergic to theatre for theatre’s sake. ‘Designed correctly,’ he repeats, ‘training becomes a profit centre, not a cost centre.’ That design is the difference between a day out of the office and a commercial intervention.

Advice for founders and professionals

Pressed for counsel to those starting out, Wardrop offers a terse checklist:
• Find your focus. Face the wall. ‘Get brilliant at something specific.’
• Learn to sell. Market yourself. Be visible. Technical mastery isn’t enough if no one knows.
• Build resilience. ‘It’s forged in the tough times. If you meet me, ask what my favourite recession was.’
• Be distinctive. ‘Find an angle and be, in some way, unique.’ The original Kissing with Confidence brand, and the promise of direct feedback, was precisely that.
• Flip the frame. ‘If you can turn what others see as a cost into a growth lever—like reframing L&D—you’ll build a business that lasts. Or, as Gordon Ramsay would say, you have a chance.’

On being outcomes‑obsessed

Wardrop bristles at the idea that training is soft. For him, the soft stuff is the hard edge of growth: the ability to win work, hold your price, lead teams and motivate colleagues. What matters is to prove impact. KWC’s engagements begin by agreeing the metrics that matter—new pipeline created, conversion rates improved, average fee uplift, client retention, cross‑sell, leadership scores—and end by reporting back against them.

This outcomes obsession is what clients remember. It’s also what has kept KWC relevant across cycles. Markets change, sectors consolidate, tastes in learning come and go; the need to grow never does.

If there is a unifying thread it is directness. Wardrop is the first to concede he doesn’t do corporate euphemism. But clients don’t hire him for euphemism. They hire him for momentum—and for the programme architecture, coaching and accountability that sustain it after the workshop high has faded.

The architecture looks simple because it is simple: focus, practise, apply, measure, iterate. Do the important things consistently and watch the scoreboard.

Wardrop has spent 25 years turning sceptics into salespeople and technicians into leaders. The formula is not secret, just rarely applied with rigour. ‘Find the behaviours that move revenue and embed them,’ he says. ‘Everything else is commentary.’

For firms wondering whether to spend on training this year, that’s the challenge: don’t spend—invest. Put ROI at the beginning, not the end. Design for outcomes. Measure what matters. And insist that everyone who touches a client can sell, influence and lead.

If you do all that, Wardrop suggests, you won’t be debating whether L&D is an overhead for long.

Read more:
From ‘Kissing with Confidence’ to KWC Global: how Russell Wardrop turns training into a profit centre

Stepping away from a successful career in technology to pursue a long-held creative ambition is no small leap, yet that is precisely what Sarah Haran did.

Today, she heads the British luxury accessories brand that bears her name, celebrated for workmanship, colour and a modular design concept that gives customers “one bag, endless looks”.

From her studio to the atelier in Istanbul where each piece is crafted by hand from Italian leather, Haran has created a label defined not just by design but by purpose: handbags that bring joy to women’s lives, offering both style and versatility. With a loyal following across the UK and US, she has carved out a niche rooted in quality, creativity and customer connection.

What do you currently do at Sarah Haran Accessories?

As Founder and CEO, Haran occupies the unusual space where corporate discipline meets creative freedom. She continues to design every collection, guide the brand’s creative direction and oversee marketing, ensuring that each touchpoint reflects the central values of joy, versatility and craftsmanship.

“No two days are the same,” she says. “I might be reviewing new samples in the morning and hosting a live styling session in the afternoon. That blend of communication and creativity is what energises me.”

Her focus, she explains, is unwavering: to make handbags that are as functional as they are beautiful. From leather quality to colour palette to how each piece adapts to a customer’s day, Haran is closely involved in every detail. “Everything comes back to one idea — making women’s lives easier, while bringing them joy.”

What was the inspiration behind your business?

The spark came from a personal frustration: the struggle to find a handbag that was luxurious yet practical, stylish yet adaptable. “I wanted something that could evolve with my day without needing to change bags,” Haran says. This desire became the foundation of her modular handbag system, enabling women to customise their look with interchangeable accessories.

Two years of development followed, working with expert craftspeople to refine every element until function and elegance sat perfectly in balance. The result is a collection designed not only to suit any occasion but to empower its wearer.

Her purpose remains clear. “We talk about bringing women ‘bags of joy’ — and that comes from listening to our customers. Their stories, how the bags fit into their lives, inspire me constantly. It’s about much more than handbags — it’s about helping women feel confident, organised and joyful every day.”

Who do you admire?

Haran’s influences are wide-ranging, anchored in respect for women who embody resilience, ambition and kindness. “My mother showed me that drive and compassion can absolutely go hand-in-hand,” she reflects.

She cites admiration for the Queen’s quiet loyalty and sense of duty, Victoria Beckham’s reinvention and work ethic, and Katie Piper’s extraordinary courage and optimism. She also acknowledges broadcaster Anthea Turner for her generous support of the brand and her ability to remain relevant with grace.

Closer to home, Haran praises Lynne Kennedy of Business Women Scotland for her work championing female entrepreneurs. But it is her own customers who, she says, inspire her most deeply. “Some have been with us since the very beginning. Their loyalty and encouragement are a constant source of motivation.”

Looking back, is there anything you would have done differently?

“If anything, I’d have started sooner,” Haran admits. “Building a brand takes far longer than people expect — it’s years of learning, refining and staying resilient.”

Yet she is quick to acknowledge the value of her previous career. Her years in technology taught her discipline, strategic thinking and the structural foundations needed to scale a business sustainably. “So while an earlier start might have accelerated growth, I’m grateful for what those corporate years gave me.”

If she could advise her younger self, she’d keep it simple: be patient, learn constantly, and recognise that each challenge strengthens the path ahead. “Every day really is a school day — the journey is longer and harder than you imagine, but every lesson counts.”

What defines your way of doing business?

One word, Haran says, sums it up: joy. It runs through her designs, her brand communications and her approach to customer relationships. “Luxury shouldn’t feel cold or distant,” she explains. “It should feel uplifting, thoughtful and genuinely personal.”

She places strong emphasis on fairness, kindness and creativity, prioritising long-term relationships over quick wins. Whether working with her team, suppliers or customers, the goal is to build a brand that people enjoy being part of.

“The business was founded on the idea of joy, and that continues to guide every decision. When you lead with joy, it changes the way you design, work and grow.”

What advice would you give to someone starting out?

Her first piece of advice is deceptively simple: begin before you feel ready. “There’s no perfect moment,” she says. “Progress comes from taking action, not waiting.”

She recommends finding a clear sense of purpose, something steady to return to on difficult days. For Haran, that purpose is helping women feel confident through design.

She also stresses the importance of surrounding yourself with people who share your values, who challenge you in the right ways, and who believe in your vision. “Listen to advice, but trust your instincts. Stay curious. Building a business is constant learning — and you simply don’t know what you don’t know. Forgive yourself as you go.”

Read more:
Getting to Know You: Sarah Haran, Founder & CEO, Sarah Haran Accessories

Fawn and India Rose James, the granddaughters of late property and publishing magnate Paul Raymond, have received £23 million in dividends from the family’s billion-pound Soho property empire following another record year of rental income.

The sisters inherited Soho Estates, which owns much of London’s West End, including bars, offices and restaurants, after Raymond’s death in 2008. Their combined wealth was estimated at £718 million in this year’s Sunday Times Rich List. Their mother, Debbie—Raymond’s daughter—died of a heroin overdose in 1992, when India Rose was a baby.

Accounts for the year to March 2025 show rental income rose 8 per cent to £43.84 million, surpassing last year’s record of £40.71 million. The increase was driven by full occupancy at Ilona Rose House, the flagship mixed-use building named after the sisters’ middle names, which houses tenants such as Warner Bros and Skyscanner.

Soho Estates said in its annual report that it had “benefited from stronger trading in Soho” as footfall and spending rebounded across the West End. Vacancies were “re-let quickly, typically on equal or improved terms,” the company added. New tenants during the year included Korean beauty brand Skin Cupid, “luxury” chip shop Frites Atelier, and the upcoming Market Place Food Hall in Leicester Square.

The company narrowed its pre-tax losses to £5.97 million, down from nearly £20 million the previous year, largely due to a smaller reduction in the value of its property portfolio, now valued at just under £1.1 billion.

Commercial property values have been under pressure since interest rates began to rise in 2022, but falling borrowing costs this year have led to tentative signs of recovery.

“With occupancy strong and cash flow stabilised, the board judged it an appropriate time to make a shareholder return,” Soho Estates said. The resulting £23.18 million dividend—the company’s first in two years—was distributed mainly to Fawn and India Rose James, the principal shareholders.

Paul Raymond, once dubbed “the King of Soho”, built his empire from the Raymond Revuebar, the strip club he opened in 1958 and whose profits he used to acquire freehold buildings across Soho. In the property slump of the 1970s, he bought aggressively—reportedly at one stage acquiring more than one freehold a week.

Today, Soho Estates owns some of the district’s most famous addresses, including Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club, Kettner’s restaurant and hotel, and the original Soho House private members’ club.

Fawn James, 39, took over as chief executive earlier this year, succeeding her father, John James. Her half-sister, India Rose, 33, is not involved in the business but remains a major shareholder.

“Our financial performance reflects sustained demand for high-quality space across our portfolio,” said Fawn James. “As a family business, our focus is on long-term stewardship—continuing to invest in buildings and public spaces, supporting our tenants, and ensuring Soho can evolve while keeping its character.”

Read more:
Paul Raymond’s granddaughters receive £23m as Soho Estates profits surge

Steven Bartlett, the entrepreneur and Diary of a CEO host, has revealed his business empire has been valued at $425 million (£320 million) following a major eight-figure investment — a deal that cements his position as one of the richest entrepreneurs ever to appear on Dragons’ Den.

The 33-year-old investor, who joined the BBC show in 2022, announced the new valuation through a press statement this week. The deal sees venture capital firms Slow Ventures and Apeiron Investment acquire a minority stake in his umbrella company Steven.com, which now houses Bartlett’s rapidly expanding portfolio, including Flight Story, Flight Cast, Flight Fund, and online shopping platform Stan Store.

Bartlett said the capital injection will help him “build the Disney of the creator economy”, positioning his ventures at the centre of the multi-billion-dollar influencer and creator marketplace.

“For the last century, companies like Disney demonstrated the power of intellectual property,” Bartlett said. “In today’s world, creators are the new franchises — and with my team, we’re building the modern version of that model.”

Despite the investment, Bartlett said he still retains more than 90% ownership of Steven.com.

The valuation marks another major milestone for Bartlett, who has evolved from startup founder to multimedia mogul. His media and technology portfolio now spans content production, venture investment, and e-commerce infrastructure for digital creators.

Steven.com integrates all of his ventures, including:
• Flight Story – a marketing and communications agency powering The Diary of a CEO and Davina McCall’s Begin Again podcast.
• Flight Cast – a creative production division.
• Flight Fund – Bartlett’s venture capital arm investing in tech and consumer brands.
• Stan Store – an e-commerce platform competing with Shopify and Linktree.

Bartlett claims the investment is the largest ever made in a European company specialising in social media creators.

Born in Botswana to a Nigerian mother and English father, Bartlett grew up in Plymouth and dropped out of university at 18 before launching his first business.

He co-founded Social Chain in 2014 with Dominic McGregor, building it into one of Europe’s fastest-growing social media agencies. However, the company attracted criticism for plagiarising social media content and overstating valuations.

In his biography, Bartlett claimed to have taken Social Chain public at a valuation of $600 million, though the firm’s 2019 merger with German retailer Lumaland placed its true value closer to $186 million. The company later reached $620 million after Bartlett’s exit and was eventually sold for just £7.7 million.

Bartlett left Social Chain in 2020, later establishing Flight Story and the Diary of a CEO podcast — both now key drivers of his wealth and influence.

While Bartlett’s business success has been widely celebrated, his ventures have not been without controversy.

A BBC investigation in late 2024 found that his Diary of a CEO podcast had featured guests promoting unverified health claims, including that a keto diet could treat cancer and COVID-19 was “biologically engineered”, without challenge from Bartlett. Critics accused him of giving a platform to harmful misinformation.

In 2022, Bartlett also faced backlash for investing in Ear Seeds — a product pitched on Dragons’ Den that claimed to help cure ME/chronic fatigue syndrome. Following complaints, the BBC added a disclaimer clarifying that the treatment was not medically verified.

He was later admonished by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) in 2024 for failing to disclose his financial interests while promoting Huel and Zoe on social media.

Despite the controversies, Bartlett’s influence continues to grow. His Diary of a CEO podcast — featuring guests including Richard Branson, Simon Cowell, and Boris Johnson — won Best International Podcast at the iHeart Radio Podcast Awards earlier this year.

With his latest valuation, Bartlett joins the upper echelon of UK entrepreneurs under 35. Industry observers say his empire demonstrates both the economic power and volatility of the creator economy, where brand, authenticity, and influence are the new assets of value.

“Steven Bartlett is the embodiment of the modern business model,” said Dr. Harriet Mason, professor of media entrepreneurship at the University of Leeds. “He’s part content creator, part venture capitalist — a hybrid we’ll see far more of in the next decade.”

For Bartlett, however, the focus remains clear: scaling Steven.com into a global creative media ecosystem.

“Creators are the studios of the future,” he said. “Our goal is to empower them — and build something enduring around their stories.”

Read more:
Steven Bartlett’s fortune soars as new $425m valuation cements his status among richest Dragons

The Tide everywoman Entrepreneur Awards, in association with BGF, have revealed a powerhouse lineup of female founders shortlisted for the UK’s leading awards celebrating women in business.

Now in their 22nd year, the awards have championed women transforming industries and communities since 2003. This year’s finalists — selected from nearly 1,000 entries nationwide — span every sector from healthcare and technology to hospitality, manufacturing and creative industries, representing the full breadth of the UK’s entrepreneurial talent.

The 2025 finalists include pioneering start-ups, established leaders running multimillion-pound companies, and purpose-driven entrepreneurs using business as a force for good.

The awards do more than celebrate achievement — they aim to create tangible growth opportunities for women-led businesses. Winners gain access to a network of mentors, investors and commercial partners designed to help scale operations and secure funding.

This year, headline sponsor Tide will also award a £20,000 grant to one outstanding female-founded SME, selected from the finalists by an expert judging panel.

Nicole Goodwin and Sophie Catto, joint managing directors of AllBright everywoman, said: “Access to funding continues to be one of the greatest challenges faced by women starting and scaling their businesses.
These awards exist to change that — building a powerful ecosystem of role models, mentors and investors who champion female founders. They don’t just celebrate success stories, they help create them.”

Despite growing awareness of gender inequality in entrepreneurship, female-founded businesses receive only 2p of every £1 of UK equity investment. Closing that gap could add an estimated £250 billion to the UK economy, according to industry research.

Heather Cobb, UK managing director at Tide, said: “We’re proud to celebrate the resilience, optimism and innovation of women transforming industries across the UK.
Recognition is important, but tangible support is vital — that’s why we’re awarding a £20,000 grant to help one exceptional founder accelerate her business growth.”

Andy Gregory, CEO of BGF, added: “The everywoman Awards play a vital role in championing female founders. We’re committing £300 million to female-powered businesses over the next five years to ensure talented women have access to the capital and strategic support they need to thrive.”

2025 finalists announced

Finalists span nine award categories, including the Balance Award, Entrepreneur for Good, International Expansion, Scale Up, and Tech Innovator awards.

THE BALANCE AWARD:

• Rana Righton, managing director of The Gluten Free Bakery, from London

• Abi Selby, founder of Spabreaks.com, from Brighton

• Zoe Williams, founder of Aegle’s, from London

ENTREPRENEUR FOR GOOD AWARD – sponsored by Specsavers:

• Maya Amangeldiyeva, founder of Mayas Community C.I.C, from Herne Bay

• Gillian Ashcroft, founder of Exceptional Care, from Ormskirk

• Alex Head, founder & CEO of Social Pantry, from London

• Ruby Raut, CEO of WUKA Ltd, from Welwyn Garden City

INTERNATIONAL EXPANSION AWARD – sponsored by Rathbone Financial Planning:

• Hinna Azeem, founder & creative director of H.AZEEM London, from London

• Karen Hewitt, chief of retail at Character.com, from Swansea

THE NEXT LEVEL AWARD:

• Toria Chan & Jules Shiel-Boulger, co-founders of STEPS, from Sheffield

• Amy Knight, co-founder & director of Must Have Ideas, from Maidstone

• Jessica Lancaster & Charlotte Stagg, co-founders & CEOs of Coconut Lane UK/Cocopup London, from Witney

SCALE UP AWARD – sponsored by BGF:

• Olivia Bishop, co-founder of Toco Swim Limited, from London

• Julie Collison, director of Clear Strategy Limited, from Dublin

• Niamh Murdock, chief executive officer of The Avoca Clinic, from Dublin

SOCIAL STAR AWARD:

• Claudia Bish, director of The Blogger Agent, from Brighton

• Daisy Kelly, founder & CEO of Glow For It, from Hammersmith

• Melissa Neill, founder & CEO of Body By Bikini, from Bristol

SOLOPRENEUR AWARD:

• Katy Fridman, founder of Flexible Working People, from London

• Emma Harper, CEO of Core Plus Tuition Limited, from Banbury

• Leah Rendall, owner & CEO of Callander K9, from Callander

• Erika Tranfield, CEO of Pride Angel, from West Kirby

SMALL ENTERPRISE AWARD – sponsored by Tide

• Dina Jahina, director of ETO, from London

• Lucie Macleod, founder of Hair Syrup, from Goodwick

• Sylvia Oates, CEO of Six Till Six, from Nottingham

• Rosie Skuse, founder & CEO of Molto Music Group, from London

TECH INNOVATOR AWARD

• Amber Michelle Hill, founder & CEO of Research Grid, from Norwich

• Katya Linossi, co-founder & CEO of ClearPeople Limited, from London

• Emma O’Brien, founder & CEO of Embridge Consulting, from Kent

This year’s judging panel includes some of Britain’s most successful business leaders and investors, such as Chrissie Rucker (The White Company), Susan Allen (Here We Flo), Sarah Anderson CBE (The Listening Place), and Nell Daly (Revenge Capital).

The winners will be announced at a gala ceremony at The Londoner, Leicester Square, on 2 December 2025.

For ticket information, visit www.everywoman.com/entrepreneur-awards.

Read more:
Finalists announced for 2025 Tide everywoman Entrepreneur Awards

In online spaces overflowing with formulaic copywriting, posting for the sake of posting, and polished strategy – the perfect Instagram feeds – audiences have grown weary of perfection.

In this Business Matters interview with Marco Robinson, award-winning entrepreneur, coach, property investor, and the man behind Channel 4’s Get a House for Free, we explore how many UK companies could benefit from showing their real side in marketing. By sharing the stories of their people — and how they overcame challenges to become the businesses they are today — companies can more effectively capture audiences and gain truly invested customers.

All businesses could benefit from leaning more into showing the real life of its founders and business story.

The New Norm of Gaining Custom

The fact is according to Marco and many of his peers… “Personal Brand” is your greatest asset and business strategy.

The serious growth of AI has made traditional life and work redundant. You, the individual is now the company, the business, the face of your life… and the only way to grow is by embracing this technology as your asset by learning how to do it.

People ask… but what business do I go into? You choose a personal brand business or a faceless brand business.

You are front and centre or you own a business asset that you can invest in and get a return……

You don’t have the capital?

Go earn it. Everything is earned, nothing comes for free. Save up . Learn how to start and run a business.

But please, don’t ever think school or Universities will ever give you those skills… because they will not unless you are a doctor , a lawyer or a trade.

If you want to be front and centre you must own your narrative, the good, the bad and the ugly. People don’t want polish, they want truth, and they want courage.

They want to associate with people and brands that help them overcome their problems. Plain and simple, if you can share in your story you can help them overcome the problem they are in now, you will win… if they like you… that’s your personal brand.

And being authentic is all about saying what you are going to do and actually doing it.

Marco Robinson on Being Your Own Hero

No stranger to an underdog story is Marco Robinson. His business journey is one of grit, pain, growth, and transformation — one which resonates deeply with his peers and those he coaches when he tells it. Growing up with a devoted mother, a father that was a gambling addict. A father that had so many debts his mum had to leave that marriage…

A mother that was sexually abused from the age of four years old by the patriarch in the 1970’s.

When he made the Channel 4 TV show “Get a house for free” the backstory came out of how her stepfather intervened and would not let them come into the house… the reason for this is because at 12 years old her step father put his hand on her breast and said : “I didn’t marry your mum for your mum, I married your mum to get to you…”

You can imagine how terrified she was… all her life of this predator…

He spent nights sleeping on park benches and enduring the harsh realities of homelessness. At school, he was bullied and burdened by the difficult environments of the 1980s, moving schools many times. Marco Robinson once felt he had no hope or future.

But at 16, Marco made a decision that changed everything — he left school and began hustling his way through the business world. Through relentless effort, countless setbacks, and unshakable belief, Marco Robinson built what he calls his own business empire.

Today, Marco Robinson is a highly successful business coach, bestselling author, TV personality, film producer, actor, and UK property developer. His rise from homelessness to business excellence became the heart of his public mission — using his success to give back, even giving away homes to families in need for free on his Channel 4 show Get a House for Free. His charitable work in Malaysia saw him receive the title of Dato’ Seri (Sir Marco Robinson). He also executed charitable work as an Official Advisor with the Homeless Entrepreneur charity (see here). Marco also delivers coaching, inspired by life story, via The Undisputed Success Formula and The Start Over Movement.

Marco’s story stands as a testament that no matter how dark your beginnings, you can rewrite your future through resilience, courage, and purpose.

And this is where Marco Robinson focuses his attention when working with businesses and coaching them on social media marketing — showing the real people behind the success, their colourful personalities, and the challenges they’ve overcome. People engage with people. People buy from people. That’s a philosophy Marco Robinson lives and teaches.

Marco Robinson on Focusing on More Real Marketing

The most powerful marketing no longer comes from faceless taglines but from the genuine human stories behind a brand.

Marco Robinson says, “Real creative marketing that will actually move the needle for many firms is something often out of reach, as they focus too much on direct marketing or hard sales techniques and promotions. They quickly schedule basic, non-engaging social media or email content about their services or industry changes — but hardly ever share their real people on screen, or the heartbeat behind their company.”

Companies that dare to reveal more – their people, founding stories, challenges, flawed beginnings, and human side — create a bond that can’t be bought with marketing dollars. Some of this stuff is natural and free, and can be the most converting content you have. It doesn’t always have to be a wave of inspiration but showcasing the story of a person behind your brand. According to Marco Robinson, this is the future of business storytelling: real people, real emotions, real connections. Don’t miss this wisdom with your marketing, it will leave you in good stature.

Showing a Business with People and Purpose

Every company has its scars: moments of failure, hard decisions, and lessons learned the hard way. Instead of hiding these struggles, forward-thinking brands are realizing that vulnerability is a strength. Sharing stories of staff who’ve faced setbacks, founders who’ve nearly quit, and teams who’ve battled through uncertainty doesn’t weaken a company’s image – it humanizes it.

As Marco Robinson often says, “Your audience doesn’t want to see perfection — they want to see perseverance, they want to see courage, they want to see you evolve in front of their eyes… they want to be in your chapter, that’s why they hire you.”

When a company highlights its people – the employees who overcame personal challenges, or the founder who turned rejection into innovation – it moves from being a brand to being a story that so compelling people are magnetised to your brand… and if you have yet the right offer suite which solves their problems they will never stop buying from you… .

These narratives spark emotional resonance, which drives loyalty far more effectively than discount codes ever could.

A tale of transformation – from adversity to achievement – taps into something universal: the human instinct to root for perseverance. Marco Robinson teaches that authenticity always wins over advertising.

Moreover, authenticity cuts through the clutter of modern media. While competitors shout louder, the honest brand simply speaks truth. Transparency builds trust, and trust builds advocacy. Customers don’t just buy a product; they buy into a purpose. When they see the imperfect journey behind success, they relate to it — and that relatability turns audiences into communities, and communities into champions.

Marco Robinson on Warts & All Approach to Storytelling

Marco Robinson says, “In the end, showing your warts isn’t about oversharing; it’s about being courageously real. The most compelling marketing strategy in today’s noisy world is the one that says, ‘Here’s who we really are — the good, the bad, and the becoming.’ Because when people see that your company’s story is built not on perfection but on persistence, they’ll believe not just in what you sell, but in why you exist.”

He continues, “People don’t just buy products or services anymore – they buy into stories, values, and the people behind the brand. Showing the nitty-gritty of your business – the real, unpolished moments, the behind-the-scenes processes, the challenges, and the personalities that drive your company – humanizes your brand and builds trust. Social media is saturated with polished ads and generic content; what cuts through the clutter is authenticity.”

When Marco Robinson coaches his clients, he often reminds them that when you share genuine stories – like how a product idea was born, the struggles your team faced during a tough week, or the laughter that fills your workspace – you invite your audience to become part of your journey. This emotional connection turns casual followers into loyal fans, which helps print loyalty and is a sign of success.

As Marco Robinson concludes, “Storytelling gives your brand dimension and purpose. It transforms marketing from promotion into relationship-building. It’s the difference between being noticed and being remembered. Focus on this and watch what happens. So, instead of striving for perfection, show the reality – the heart, hustle, and humanity behind what you do. In doing so, you not only attract customers who resonate with your story but also build a community that believes in it, and access true connection and fantastic inspiration between you.”

Find Out More About Marco Robinson Coaching

For information on Marco’s business, any advice, and social media coaching masterclasses, please visit his website at MarcoRobinson.com. Marco Robinson is listed on IMDb as a media producer, actor, media investor, and property investor, and has also published several book series on property investment and financial freedom.

Read more:
Real storytelling as a business strategy: Marco Robinson on crafting your company’s hero story

Pete Mills, founder and chief executive of Crysp Ltd, has been named a ‘One to Watch’ in the prestigious LDC Top 50 Most Ambitious Business Leaders 2025, following a year of exceptional growth and innovation for the Bradford-based technology firm.

The annual list, compiled by LDC, the private equity arm of Lloyds Banking Group, in partnership with The Times, celebrates the UK’s most dynamic entrepreneurs and high-growth business leaders. The ‘Ones to Watch’ category highlights emerging leaders and scale-ups making rapid progress and showing strong potential for national and international success.

Founded in 2020, Crysp has grown into one of the UK’s leading providers of safety and compliance management software, working across both public and private sectors. The company combines cutting-edge technology with professional auditing and advisory services to help organisations manage complex regulatory requirements more efficiently.

Based in Saltaire, Shipley, the company employs a team of auditors, operations specialists and software developers, with revenues increasing by more than 50% year-on-year. Crysp’s growth has been fuelled by a deliberate strategy of collaboration, innovation, and strong advisory partnerships.

Among its major clients are EDF Energy, Showcase Cinemas, and hundreds of schools, aesthetic clinics and healthcare providers across the UK.

Crysp’s partnership with Azets, the international accounting and advisory firm with offices in Leeds, Bradford and York, has been central to its financial strategy and expansion plans.

“Building Crysp has been an incredible journey so far,” said Mills, who attended the LDC awards ceremony at BAFTA in London. “To be named among the LDC Top 50 and recognised as One to Watch is a huge honour. It’s a testament to our team, partners and customers who believe in our mission to make safety and compliance management simpler, smarter and more effective.”

He credited early guidance from Victoria Wainwright and Simon Roberts of Azets Bradford for helping Crysp establish solid financial frameworks during its scale-up phase.

“Surrounding yourself with the right advisors is key,” Mills added. “Azets has supported us through financial planning, taxation, and our upcoming expansion into the US, helping us build a sustainable capital growth plan.”

In 2023, Crysp secured investment from Twinkl Hive, the accelerator founded by Jon and Susie Seaton, which has further accelerated its development and market reach.

The company recently won a significant contract with the Catawba Nation, a Native American tribe in the US, supporting major real estate data projects — marking its first major international milestone.

Victoria Wainwright, Managing Partner at Azets Bradford, said the recognition was a “powerful endorsement” of Crysp’s vision and ambition.

“Warmest congratulations go to Pete and the Crysp team for this richly deserved recognition,” she said. “We consider it a privilege to have supported their journey and look forward to the next phase of their growth in the UK and internationally.”

John Garner, Managing Partner at LDC, praised the calibre of this year’s nominees.

“It’s been eight years since we launched the Top 50, and every year we meet exceptional people,” Garner said. “This year’s Ones to Watch have already achieved incredible success — and we can’t wait to see what the future holds for them.”

Looking ahead, Crysp plans to continue expanding internationally while maintaining its core mission: simplifying and improving safety and compliance for organisations of all sizes. The company’s leadership team is focused on sustainable scaling, ensuring its technology and advisory services remain reliable and accessible as it grows.

“Our next chapter is about scaling responsibly,” Mills said. “We’re building for the long term — combining innovation, people and partnerships to deliver better compliance solutions for businesses across the UK and beyond.”

Read more:
Crysp founder named ‘One to Watch’ in LDC Top 50 Most Ambitious Business Leaders

A healthy energy drink brand that secured investment on the BBC’s Dragons’ Den just two years ago has become the show’s most lucrative success story, reaching a valuation of £140 million.

PerfectTed, founded by Marisa Poster and Teddie Levenfiche, has grown from a student start-up into Europe’s leading matcha-based energy drink company — and now stands as the largest supplier of matcha products in the region.

The company’s valuation soared following new investment from venture capital firm Felix Capital, taking the business from a 2023 Dragons’ Den debut to a global brand stocked in over 30,000 stores across 50 countries.

When Poster and Levenfiche appeared on Dragons’ Den in 2023, both were just 25 years old. Their pitch impressed the investors, with Steven Bartlett and Peter Jones jointly taking a 5% stake for £50,000.

At the time, the business had already raised £125,000 from family and invested £250,000 of their own savings to get started. Their all-natural, matcha-based energy drinks were positioned as a clean alternative to caffeine-heavy brands like Red Bull — a fast-growing niche in the wellness drinks market.

Two years on, PerfectTed has exceeded even the dragons’ expectations, delivering the best returns in the show’s 20-year history. The company reported £30 million in projected annual revenue earlier this year, and is now targeting £100 million in the near term.

“This is more than just an investment — it’s fuel for our mission to make matcha accessible to everyone,” co-founder Marisa Poster told The Grocer.

PerfectTed’s rapid ascent has been fuelled in part by Bartlett’s own venture fund, Flight Fund, which helped the business scale production and secure international distribution deals.

Since appearing on the show, PerfectTed has launched an expanded range including matcha lattes, flavoured powders and coffee machine pods, establishing itself as a multi-category beverage brand.

The brand’s drinks are now stocked in major retailers including Waitrose, Holland & Barrett, Whole Foods, and Tesco, and are served through high street café chains such as Caffè Nero and Joe & The Juice.

The company’s 2024 recognition on the FEBE Growth 100 list — highlighting businesses achieving over 500% year-on-year growth — confirmed its position among Britain’s fastest-growing start-ups.

Founded in 2021, PerfectTed has gone from two friends’ £250,000 savings to an internationally recognised brand in just four years. It now aims to become the world’s first billion-dollar matcha company, leveraging growing consumer demand for natural energy drinks and functional wellness products.

PerfectTed’s founders say their mission is to “modernise energy” by focusing on clean ingredients and authentic matcha sourced from Japan. Their success reflects a wider shift among consumers seeking healthier, plant-based energy alternatives.

PerfectTed’s trajectory sets a new record for Dragons’ Den — surpassing all previous investments in both growth and valuation.

While earlier success stories such as Levi Roots’ Reggae Reggae Sauce (backed in 2007) transformed homegrown entrepreneurs into household names, PerfectTed’s £140m valuation demonstrates the global potential of next-generation wellness brands.

The show has also famously passed on future giants such as BrewDog, Gousto, and Pasta Evangelists, making PerfectTed’s journey a reminder of the unpredictable power of start-up storytelling — and a sign that the next consumer powerhouse can come from anywhere, even a TV pitch.

Read more:
PerfectTed’s £140m success: Dragons’ Den’s biggest-ever payday

Nik Storonsky, the billionaire co-founder and chief executive of Revolut, has moved his official residency from the UK to the United Arab Emirates, according to filings made to Companies House.

Documents lodged on Tuesday for Storonsky’s family holding company confirm that the change took place in October 2024. The move comes less than a month after Revolut pledged to invest £3 billion in Britain over the next five years, a plan announced alongside Chancellor Rachel Reeves at the company’s new global headquarters in Canary Wharf, London.

Storonsky, 41, is the largest shareholder in Revolut and has an estimated fortune of $14 billion (£11.5 billion). While he was born in Russia, he renounced his citizenship following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Revolut declined to comment on the filings, but Storonsky is understood to still maintain a home in the UK.

The move to Dubai is seen as part of Storonsky’s broader international strategy, as Revolut continues to expand its presence in the UAE. The company employs more than 10,000 people globally, including 1,300 staff in London, and is seeking to grow its footprint across the Middle East.

Last month, Storonsky described the UK investment as a “cornerstone” of Revolut’s global growth plan, which aims to invest £10 billion worldwide and create 10,000 jobs over the next five years.

Despite previously stating that he “does not live permanently in Dubai,” the latest filings indicate a formal residency change, which is likely to attract attention given the emirate’s favourable tax regime.

Revolut, founded in 2015 by Storonsky and fellow entrepreneur Vlad Yatsenko, has grown from a currency exchange and payments app into a global fintech platform offering banking, savings, trading and crypto services.

After a three-year wait, the company finally secured its UK banking licence in 2024 and is now pushing for approval to accept larger retail deposits. Storonsky has previously called the rollout of its UK banking services his “number one priority”.

Revolut’s global expansion is continuing alongside its domestic growth. The firm is currently running a secondary share sale expected to value it at around $75 billion (£59 billion), up from $45 billion last year. Among its investors is Mubadala, the Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund.

Storonsky has previously hinted at frustration with UK financial regulation, suggesting delays in securing its banking licence had held back the company’s progress. Reports last year claimed that regulatory uncertainty had been a factor in his decision to spend more time in Dubai, where Revolut has built a growing regional hub.

While the fintech remains committed to its UK operations, Storonsky’s relocation highlights ongoing challenges for Britain’s ambition to retain top technology leaders as global competition for talent and capital intensifies.

Read more:
Revolut co-founder Nik Storonsky shifts residency from UK to Dubai

Piers Morgan’s production company has reported turnover of £17.1 million in 2024, as the broadcaster concluded his lucrative three-year deal with Rupert Murdoch’s News UK and began taking Piers Morgan Uncensored global.

Newly filed accounts for Wake Up Productions, incorporated in July 2021, show cumulative revenues of £50.3 million over the three-year period — matching reports of Morgan’s £50 million contract with Murdoch’s UK media group, which included TV, print and book projects.

Wake Up Productions recorded turnover of £17.5 million in 2022, £15.7 million in 2023, and £17.1 million in 2024, with profit before tax of £7 million, slightly down from £7.2 million the previous year. The company paid £5 million in dividends in 2024.

Morgan owns 94 per cent of the business, alongside company secretary Martin Cruddace (5 per cent) and Dolly Strategic Holdings Ltd (1 per cent).

The company’s revenue is divided between co-production services (£9.7m), licensing and distribution (£5.1m), and branding agreements and other income (£804,880).

The accounts describe Wake Up Productions as focusing on “publishing, television production and broadcasting, generating income primarily through digital channels such as YouTube, Facebook and sponsorships.”

Its flagship show, Piers Morgan Uncensored, launched on TalkTV in April 2022 before transitioning to a digital-only format on YouTube in February 2024 — months before TalkTV’s linear broadcast closure.

Since going fully digital, the show has more than 4.2 million YouTube subscribers, up from two million in late 2023, with clips regularly drawing millions of views globally.

Global ambitions after News UK partnership

Following the end of his News UK contract, Morgan has bought the rights to Piers Morgan Uncensored and is working with US-based Red Seat Ventures to expand the brand internationally.

The partnership will focus on growing sponsorship, advertising and digital revenues, while News UK retains commercial rights through an advertising partnership running until 2029.

Morgan’s previous agreement with News UK also included columns in The Sun and The New York Post, a documentary series, and a book deal. His new book, Woke Is Dead, will be published this month by HarperCollins, part of Murdoch’s News Corp.

Profitable model built on YouTube and sponsorship

Wake Up Productions reported £10.6 million cash reserves at the end of 2024, up from £10.2 million the previous year, with total staff costs of £7.2 million covering Morgan’s remuneration and that of one other employee.

The company’s business model centres on four pillars:
• Content monetisation via YouTube and digital platforms
• Brand partnerships and sponsorships
• Audience engagement through topical and personality-led programming
• Operational efficiency via outsourced finance and audit services

Wake Up said it plans to expand onto additional digital platforms, form strategic partnerships with media agencies, and invest in production quality and analytics to sustain growth.

Morgan’s pivot from traditional broadcasting to digital-first content mirrors a wider trend among media personalities building direct audiences online.

With Piers Morgan Uncensored continuing to perform strongly on YouTube and Facebook, the presenter appears to be positioning his brand as an independent global media business — combining journalistic personality with commercial agility in a fast-evolving content landscape.

Read more:
Piers Morgan’s production company hits £17.1m turnover as TalkTV deal ends

Jamie Oliver and his wife, Jools, have paid themselves £2.5 million in dividends for the second consecutive year, even as pre-tax profits at their core business fell by more than 30%.

Accounts for Jamie Oliver Holdings (JOH) show pre-tax profits dropped from £3.4 million to £2.4 million in 2024, despite a 6% rise in sales to £28.6 million. The results reflect a mixed year for the celebrity chef’s media and restaurant group, which saw strong growth in hospitality offset by lower income from media and brand deals.

JOH encompasses Oliver’s television and publishing ventures, endorsements, cookery school, and restaurant operations, as well as licensing and franchise income from international Jamie’s Italian and Jamie’s Deli outlets. The company also manages his long-running partnership with Tesco, which ended last year, and royalties from branded products.

Restaurant income rebounded sharply, rising to £3.6 million from just £336,000 the year before, following the launch of Oliver’s first directly operated restaurant since the collapse of his UK Jamie’s Italian chain in 2019. Franchise income from overseas restaurants also increased modestly to £3.8 million. However, royalties, endorsements and TV production revenues fell 10% to £19.8 million, reflecting the end of major deals in 2023.

The group, which achieved B Corp certification in 2019, was led by chief executive Kevin Styles until December 2024. No successor has been appointed, and the business is now overseen by its operating board.

A spokesperson said the group plans to open 12 new restaurants internationally this year, including its first sites in Oman and Greece. It has also tripled the capacity of its cookery school through a new partnership with John Lewis, opening its first in-store site on Oxford Street earlier this year.

Sales at the cookery school remained stable at around £1 million before the expansion. Oliver’s Ministry of Food foundation, meanwhile, continues to teach cookery skills in more than 1,150 UK secondary schools.

The company said trading had improved in the second half of the year despite “challenging” conditions for hospitality. The family’s dividend reflects their broader portfolio of licensing and intellectual property ventures, for which separate financial details are not disclosed.

Read more:
Jamie Oliver and wife take £2.5m dividend despite profits slump at chef’s restaurant and media empire

A 31-year-old cryptocurrency entrepreneur has stunned the tech world by raising more than £750m ($1.1bn) to build Britain’s biggest artificial intelligence data centre — despite his company never having completed one before.

Josh Payne’s start-up Nscale, founded just 18 months ago, has secured heavyweight backing from Nvidia, Nokia and Norwegian investment giant Aker. The deal catapults the business into the ranks of Britain’s most valuable AI players, with an implied valuation of $3bn.

The Essex-based project, being developed with Microsoft, has been billed as the UK’s largest AI supercomputer. Nscale is also planning a chain of futuristic “Stargate” AI hubs with OpenAI, starting in Newcastle.

Nscale traces its roots back to Payne’s earlier venture, Arkon Energy, a Bitcoin mining outfit. The company has converted some of its crypto mining facilities in Norway into data centres and claims its leadership team has experience building more than 50 such sites.

The group now intends to spend billions on Nvidia’s cutting-edge AI chips to fuel a global network of facilities. Nvidia boss Jensen Huang has personally endorsed Payne, telling him: “I’ll go on record as to say I’m the best thing that’s ever happened to him,” after gifting him a bottle of Johnnie Walker whisky. Huang predicted Nscale could go from “zero to $50bn” in revenues.

Payne said the investment would “rapidly accelerate the build-out of secure, compliant and energy-efficient AI infrastructure”, adding: “Europe needs a hyperscaler, and Nscale is rising to the challenge.”

Technology minister Kanishka Narayan hailed the deal as proof Britain can compete as a global AI hub: “By attracting global expertise and investment, it is building the essential infrastructure for the UK to compete internationally, drive growth, and create jobs.”

Other backers include Fidelity, Blue Owl, Sandton Capital, G Squared, Point72, T.Capital and Dell.

Read more:
Crypto entrepreneur raises £750m for Britain’s biggest AI data centre

Susie Ma, the former Apprentice finalist who went on to build one of Britain’s biggest independent beauty brands, has rewarded herself with a £20 million payday after a stellar year for her Tropic Skincare business.

The 36-year-old entrepreneur, who bought back Lord Sugar’s 50 per cent stake in 2023, paid herself dividends totalling £18.2 million in 2024, with a further £2 million distributed in April this year.

The bumper payout followed a strong trading performance at Tropic, where pre-tax profits rose by more than 30 per cent to £8.7 million in 2024. Revenues also increased to £68 million from £62.3 million a year earlier, according to newly filed accounts.

Ma’s buyout of Lord Sugar marked one of the most successful outcomes from the BBC TV show. Sugar had initially invested £200,000 for half of the business after Ma appeared as a contestant in 2011. In April 2023, she struck a multimillion-pound deal to regain full control of the company, paying back the billionaire in stages. He resigned as a director shortly after the deal and later collected an £11 million dividend before fully exiting.

The move has allowed Ma to put her own stamp on Tropic’s future. “A cost saving review” improved gross margins last year, while inventories were cut by £1.2 million to £7.4 million. She also strengthened her senior management team to prepare for further expansion in 2025.

Founded in 2004 when Ma was just 15, Tropic began as a stall at Greenwich Market in London selling homemade body scrubs. Two decades on, it has grown into a £68 million turnover enterprise making nearly all its creams, lotions and serums in a purpose-built Croydon facility, where products are manufactured fresh daily.

The brand sells directly online and through more than 20,000 self-employed “ambassadors”, who each pay £198 for a starter kit of products. Ambassadors receive a commission of between 25 and 35 per cent on their sales, plus access to training and an online store.

The model has echoes of Avon’s door-to-door sales approach but is pitched firmly at the eco-conscious beauty market.

Tropic has also established itself as one of the UK’s most socially responsible beauty firms. The company pledges to donate 10 per cent of its profits to good causes, and in 2024 gave £615,000 to charities.

This included almost £300,000 for United World Schools, a charity providing education in some of the world’s poorest communities. The partnership has so far supported more than 160 schools overseas.

Ma, who was estimated to be worth £73 million in the 2024 Sunday Times Rich List, has described Tropic’s dual focus on profitability and purpose as central to its long-term success.

With full ownership now back in her hands and profits climbing, industry insiders expect her to push Tropic into new international markets while maintaining its reputation for fresh, sustainable, and ethically driven skincare.

Read more:
Susie Ma secures £20m payout as Tropic Skincare profits jump 30% after Lord Sugar exit

When Gyve Safavi and Mark Rushmore first met on a speedboat in the south of France — with advertising tycoon Sir Martin Sorrell also on board — few could have predicted that the chance encounter would spark a £24 million sustainable toothbrush business.

Their brand, Suri, now boasts celebrity fans including Sir Jony Ive and the Kardashians, and is stocked by Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop in the US. But behind the glamour lies an unlikely product: an eco-friendly electric toothbrush designed to end the problem of sink-side “gunk”.

“No one likes that gunk,” says Safavi, 42, pointing to the wall-mountable magnet that keeps Suri brushes elevated and clean.

Both men started their careers at Procter & Gamble, working on global consumer brands like Oral-B and Gillette. Years later, Safavi was at WPP and Rushmore running his own events business when the idea of a sustainable health and beauty product began to take shape.

By 2020, with the pandemic derailing Safavi’s travel plans and Rushmore free after selling his first company, the pair reconnected in a London park. Safavi shared a detailed business plan for a toothbrush made from corn starch, castor oil and aluminium — designed to be repaired or recycled, stripped of unnecessary gimmicks like Bluetooth, and priced for everyday use.

Rushmore recalls: “That night I opened the file and it was the most detailed, comprehensive research, with so much thinking behind everything. I could see there really was something that, if we combined our skills, we could take further.”

The pair spent lockdown cold-calling 24 manufacturers across Asia. Most laughed at their vision. “Efficiency and innovation for a factory means making what you already make, faster and cheaper — not taking a risk with two guys who’ve never built hardware,” Safavi says.

Eventually, one factory in China agreed, and they raised £800,000 from angel investors and venture capital firm Salica to fund their first 5,000 brushes. Early prototypes were clunky, but with consumer testing, design tweaks and sheer persistence, Suri began to take shape.

By May 2022, their first run sold out in three days. A second run sold out in two weeks. Instagram ads, glowing press reviews and a £200,000 advertising prize from the Earth Ad Fund amplified demand.

Suri now employs 37 people and has raised further funding rounds — £2 million in 2023 and £6 million in 2024, with backers including JamJar, the venture fund founded by the Innocent smoothies team. Safavi and Rushmore remain the largest shareholders.

But success has not been without challenges. A logistics error early on left 3,000 US orders stranded because couriers refused to ship items containing batteries. “For 72 hours, that really felt existential,” Rushmore admits. “If everyone had demanded refunds, we would have been finished.” Instead, they emailed each customer personally, and most stuck by them.

Key selling points include a long battery life, a quiet motor, and the much-marketed wall-mount magnet. Customers are also encouraged to return brushes for repair or recycling. Safavi says their philosophy is simple: “Focus on what people actually use, and cut the rest.”

Their efforts have been recognised by industry figures, not least design icon Sir Jony Ive, who texted his approval of the brush late one night. “We were giggling like two little kids,” Safavi recalls.

Both founders acknowledge the personal toll of start-up life, crediting their wives as “unsung heroes” who shouldered the family load while they worked 18-hour days without salary.

From a chance meeting on a boat to a fast-growing brand disrupting Oral-B and Philips, Suri’s story shows how two friends tackled the overlooked pain points of toothbrush design and turned them into a multimillion-pound business.

Read more:
Suri founders banish toothbrush “gunk” with sustainable design and build £24m brand

Helena Morrissey is one of the City’s most recognisable figures. Appointed chief executive of Newton Investment Management at 35, she more than doubled assets under management over the following 15 years.

Now chair of Fidelis and of the Eton College endowment, the investor and campaigner joined Wilfred Frost on The Master Investor Podcast. In a conversation that ranged from gilt markets to free speech, she offered a brisk diagnosis of the UK’s competitiveness—and some clear advice for leaders and investors alike.

You made your name as a bond investor before stepping up to run Newton. What’s your snapshot of the G7 bond markets today? Are we flirting with a proper dislocation at the long end?

I worry about complacency. Fiscal room for manoeuvre is thin across the developed world, and the toolkit that helped during the financial crisis—large‑scale QE, in particular—can’t be mobilised in the same way again. Yields have risen sharply but mostly in an orderly fashion; we’ve not had many “cliff‑edge” moments outside Japan. That doesn’t mean we’re safe. If market participants decide they will only finance governments at much higher rates, the spiral can be vicious. We’re vulnerable to that kind of shift in sentiment.

You’ve long argued for central‑bank independence. Is it under threat?

Independence matters precisely because electoral cycles are short and the temptation for political expediency is constant. I was managing gilts in the run‑up to the 1997 election; the day Gordon Brown granted the Bank of England operational independence, the market staged one of its biggest rallies. That said, independence doesn’t mean operating in a vacuum. Treasury, central bank and broader government policy must work in concert—something that’s been lacking at times, notably in the United States.

You’ve spoken about a career‑defining trade in gilts before 1997. What did it teach you?

Contrarian discipline. I began buying long gilts when yields were above 8% because the market had already priced in the worst. For a while I was “wrong”—colleagues told me so daily—but I kept retesting the analysis. We held for years and took profits when yields dipped below 3%. The lesson was to keep your head when all around are losing theirs—apologies to Rudyard Kipling—and to seize those rare moments when the risk‑reward is truly asymmetric.

At 35 you were asked to run Newton, with five young children at home and no formal management training. How did you bridge from portfolio management to leadership?

Some skills translate: bringing people with you, creating space for challenge, focusing the team on the signal not the noise. But fund managers rarely receive any help with management. Firms often assume that if you can run money you can run people. That’s wrong. At Newton we learned to separate responsibilities—keeping investment authority with one person while giving people management to someone more suited to it. The result was better for clients and for culture.

You founded the 30% Club in 2010 to improve gender balance on boards. What problem were you trying to solve—and what did you learn?

After the financial crisis, it was obvious that groupthink was dangerous. Back then, fewer than one in ten UK board seats were held by women. The 30% target wasn’t arbitrary; it reflects “critical mass”—the point at which a minority voice stops feeling token and starts to influence outcomes. Progress since has come mainly through voluntary action, not quotas. But DEI efforts did go awry in some places. Jargon and finger‑pointing made initiatives feel exclusionary. The purpose, always, should be better decisions through cognitive diversity—and equal opportunity for talent.

Free speech is back on the boardroom agenda, often in fraught circumstances. How should leaders navigate it?

By modelling confident civility. You cannot build innovative organisations if people are afraid to ask awkward questions or express an unpopular view. We’ve allowed disagreement to become personalised. Leaders have to restate a simple compact: robust debate is welcome; ad hominem attacks are not. Inclusion should mean everyone with something to contribute has a voice, not that one group is swapped for another.

London’s standing as a financial centre is a perennial concern. Where are we now—and what would you do?

We’re living off stored energy. London still has superb people and a global outlook, but the risk‑reward for challenging the status quo has deteriorated. There’s too much process and too little permission to try, err and improve. Two priorities. In the short term, signal—through both tax and tone—that the UK wants growth‑creators to live and build here. The personal tax burden and everyday frictions push talent abroad. Longer term, make the regulators’ new competitiveness objective real. That doesn’t mean a return to “light touch” but does mean timely, predictable decisions and a culture that enables innovation rather than smothering it.

You were interviewed for the governorship of the Bank of England. Would you do it if asked?

It would be an honour in any era. My broader point, though, is about how we appoint leaders. When selection panels are drawn from the same small circle, you inevitably replicate the status quo. If you want different outcomes, widen the aperture—both in who you consider and how you weigh evidence of leadership.

Technology is powering markets again—and polarising them. Are we in bubble territory?

Some readings feel bubbly: big‑cap moves that imply perfect outcomes, minimal execution risk and no competition. I’m optimistic on innovation and on capitalism’s ability to allocate capital to great ideas. But nothing goes up in a straight line. Geopolitics is fraught; supply chains are being rewired; the cost of capital is no longer near zero. Investors should keep a weather eye on valuation and concentration risk.

You’ve been candid about the obstacles you faced early on—as a woman without City connections, returning from maternity leave, and as the only woman on a 16‑strong team. What changed?

Culture. We no longer think it’s acceptable to entertain clients in ways that exclude colleagues. We talk more openly about money, careers and choices. But progress isn’t guaranteed. We must keep re‑stating the commercial rationale for diversity and the human case for inclusion—and focus on what works inside teams, not on glossy pledges.

What’s your one piece of career advice?

“Leap before you look.” It runs counter to the usual counsel, but too many talented people—particularly women—research the decision to death and never take the chance. At 59 I meet far more peers who regret not trying than those who regret trying and failing. Calculated risk‑taking is part of any fulfilling career.

And for investors?

The Kipling rule: keep your head. Don’t panic into fear or soar into hubris. Build diversified, steady exposure—and then be ready to act decisively in the handful of moments that matter. Those trades don’t come often, but they define careers.

Finally, what do you want Britain’s business community to do differently this year?

Talk less about decline and more about delivery. Hire for potential. Reward intelligent risk. And rebuild the habit of disagreeing well. If we can do that—inside firms and in public life—we’ll make better decisions and grow faster. That, in the end, is the point.

Read more:
‘Leap before you look’: Baroness Morrissey on markets, leadership and free speech

Sir Nick Clegg has never been short of vantage points from which to view power. After five years as Deputy Prime Minister in the coalition government, he spent almost seven at the heart of Big Tech as Meta’s president of global affairs.

Now, in a recent conversation with Wilfred Frost on The Master Investor Podcast, he offered a bracing diagnosis of Britain’s malaise, a withering assessment of Silicon Valley’s culture, and a pragmatic take on how artificial intelligence and free speech should be handled in the years ahead.

Clegg’s fondness for Britain is undimmed, but his verdict on our current mood is stark. The UK, he argues, is “remarkably creative” for a “soggy, muddy island”, yet something has curdled. “It’s as if the country has fallen out of love with the future,” he says, lamenting a pervasive habit of talking down people and ideas. By contrast, Americans “celebrate success” in a way many Britons find “a bit frothy” — but which, he insists, creates its own momentum.

That cultural divergence is reinforced by economics and geography. When he was in Downing Street, Clegg notes, the GDP of Europe and the US was broadly comparable. Today, he observes, the American economy is perhaps 1.5 to 1.7 times larger — the product of faster rebounds after the financial crisis and the pandemic, stronger demographics, and the structural advantages of a continent‑sized market. Europe, for all its virtues, is a “trickier” neighbourhood.

Silicon Valley’s self‑pity

From Westminster’s rough and tumble to California’s wealth and influence, Clegg was struck by an unexpected phenomenon: thin skins in high places. “There’s this odd culture of very rich, successful men who feel terribly sorry for themselves,” he says of parts of the Valley. Many celebrate their role as disrupters, yet complain when disruption brings criticism. “Either be a disrupter — and take the flak — or don’t,” he shrugs, adding that the recent vogue for conspicuous “bro” bravado sits uneasily with a streak of “simpering self‑pity”.

His discomfort grows when political and corporate power get too cosy. Clegg worries that tech leaders and Washington are binding themselves together around a single idée fixe: beating China in AI. The rhetoric — and the spending — can sound like a reprise of the Cold War, with an assumption that the United States can outspend its rival to a decisive victory. That, he argues, misunderstands both the technology and the geopolitics. “AI is too versatile and too dispersed to deliver a single knockout blow,” he says. China is “far too powerful and technologically adept” to be treated as a foil in a winner‑takes‑all race. For Clegg, the smarter path is renewed partnerships with allies, not tariffs and chest‑beating.

Zuckerberg’s big swings — and AI realism

What of Meta’s own arms race? Clegg defends Mark Zuckerberg’s taste for outsized bets — Instagram and WhatsApp looked expensive at the time, he reminds us, and proved prescient. Even the metaverse, much mocked, may pay off over the long run as we migrate from hand‑held screens to new interfaces. But he injects a note of sobriety into the AI hype cycle. As each new model arrives, the step change can be less than the marketing suggests. “We were told [a next‑generation model] would be the moment we walked through the looking glass,” he says. “It’s a great improvement — but an incremental one.” If the industry is now “squeezing more out of the same paradigm”, he asks, will the revenue ultimately justify the capital outlay?

Meta can fund experimentation because its ads machine keeps humming, Clegg says, but none of the giants can rely forever on growth by capex alone. For their part, the AI specialists have begun to earn real money from enterprise tools and APIs — welcome, but not yet transformative at the scale of investment being made.

Clegg, for his own part, has moved on cleanly. After leaving Meta, he sold his remaining shares — not as a market call, he insists, but as a way of turning the page between distinct chapters of a career that has taken in Brussels, Westminster and Silicon Valley.

Free speech, the law — and a necessary reset

Asked about claims from figures such as Elon Musk and US senator JD Vance that Britain lacks robust free speech, Clegg’s response points in two directions. First, he bristles at lectures from Washington: “Just butt out,” he says, noting what he sees as a striking double standard in the way the current US administration deals with dissent. Yet he also believes the UK has indeed tilted too far towards criminalising online speech. Citing reports that police make dozens of arrests each day for social‑media offences using pre‑digital statutes, he argues that a free society must tolerate “ghastly, offensive” speech unless it incites imminent harm.

The pendulum, he suggests, has swung widely over the past decade. In the late 2010s, he found corporate America “humourless and earnest” about speech — a climate that hardened further under the pressures of the pandemic. With hindsight, he concedes, platforms over‑corrected as they tried to contain harmful misinformation during a period of acute uncertainty. Today the backlash risks going too far the other way, towards an absolutist, “cardboard‑cut‑out” libertarianism that few truly practise. “Free expression becomes ‘free expression for stuff I like’,” he says of some of Musk’s interventions.

Clegg is unapologetic that platforms enforce community standards which go “well beyond” the letter of the law — a reality often overlooked when politicians and commentators complain they are not going further still. Private companies, he points out, are being asked to act as philosopher‑kings in a space where democratic consensus is elusive.

The coming shift, in his view, is even more consequential. For two decades, social networks could plausibly argue they were conduits for speech created by others. Generative AI complicates that defence. Increasingly, users will engage directly with AI agents or avatars — “the sharp arrowhead” of technology built and deployed by the companies themselves. Liability, therefore, will evolve. Clegg worries about interactions between these systems and children, teens and vulnerable adults, and about the sophistication with which AI will impersonate human conversation.

He also observes a strategic realignment at Meta and its peers. The firm’s original advantage was its “social graph” — the map of relationships among friends and family. Now, like TikTok and YouTube, its services are pipelines for algorithmically recommended entertainment, increasingly including synthetic content. In that world, responsibility and risk look different. It may yield a “cleaner” internet if companies are forced to take more direct accountability — but it will also demand more scepticism from users. “One of the ways we will have to live with the online world is by fostering society‑wide scepticism,” Clegg says, especially among the young, because so much more of what we see will be AI‑generated slop.

On the question of past harms, he defers to the coroner’s findings in the Molly Russell case, while stressing that the company changed policies and systems to make a repeat of her experience less likely. It does not make the internet risk‑free, he says soberly, but it is “very, very different” from the era in which she was online.

What leadership really demands

Clegg closes with a defence of politics as a craft. Leadership, he argues, is harder in government than in business: the trade‑offs are “dizzying”, accountability more relentless. British ministers, however senior, face constituents every week — a discipline that keeps them close to the real world. By contrast, he has seen chief executives take umbrage at a critical adjective on page 13 of the FT. The lesson for both spheres is the same: resilience matters, and so does perspective.

If Britain is to regain its optimism, Clegg implies, it will need to rediscover the confidence to build — and the generosity to celebrate those who try. And if Silicon Valley wants to lead responsibly, it must shed its self‑pity, temper its absolutism on speech, and accept that AI’s future will be collaborative, not imperial.

Read more:
Nick Clegg urges Britain to rediscover optimism and tells Silicon Valley to drop the self pity

Lord Alan Sugar has become the latest high-profile business leader to attack remote working, insisting that young people “just want to sit at home” and need to get their “bums back into the office.”

Speaking to the BBC, the 77-year-old entrepreneur and star of The Apprentice said workplace culture had suffered in the years since hybrid and flexible policies were introduced during the pandemic.

“I’m a great advocate of getting them back to work,” Sugar said. “The only way an apprentice is going to learn is from his colleagues. It’s small things, like interaction with your more mature colleagues, that will tell you how to do this, how to do that. That is lacking in this work-from-home, Zoom culture.”

Sugar, whose property group Amsprop owns a large portfolio of central London office buildings, said he recognised that some roles could be exceptions. “Software writers who get up at three o’clock in the morning with some kind of brainstorm,” he noted, might be better off at home, as well as people with disabilities.

His intervention comes as the debate over the future of work continues to divide corporate Britain. Official data from the Office for National Statistics shows that as of October, 28 per cent of the workforce is hybrid – splitting their time between home and the office. Another 44 per cent commute every day, while 13 per cent are fully remote. Many respondents to the ONS survey said hybrid work improved their rest, exercise and wellbeing.

The Labour government is preparing to legislate to make hybrid working a right for employees unless their employer can demonstrate it is unreasonable. The Employment Rights Bill will extend flexible working options across the economy, although many of Britain’s largest firms are already moving in the opposite direction. Amazon, JP Morgan and others have ordered staff back to offices full-time, arguing that face-to-face contact boosts collaboration and productivity.

Landlords have warned that the hybrid trend has made commercial properties harder to lease and less lucrative. Sugar’s comments underline the concerns of those invested in Britain’s office sector.

His intervention follows that of fellow business veteran Lord Stuart Rose, the former chairman of Marks & Spencer and Asda, who earlier this year declared that working from home is not “proper work” and has set the country back “20 years” in productivity and wellbeing.

For Sugar, the problem is most acute for younger workers and apprentices, who he says risk missing out on informal learning opportunities. “They’ve got to get their bums back into the office,” he repeated, warning that Britain’s work culture is at risk of permanent change if remote working becomes the norm.

Read more:
Lord Sugar: young people need to get their ‘bums back into the office’

Britain is “at the edge of a crisis” and Labour must “change tack” to revive the faltering economy, according to one of the country’s most respected business leaders.

Lord Stuart Rose, the former boss of Marks & Spencer and Asda, said “we should all be worried about the state of Britain” and called for “radical action” to restart growth and create jobs.

His stark warning came just a day after Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s Ineos revealed it had stopped investing in Britain altogether in protest at Labour’s tax hikes, diverting billions of pounds of capital to the US instead.

The criticism from two heavyweight figures piles pressure on Chancellor Rachel Reeves, who is already facing accusations that her £40bn programme of tax rises has derailed the economy.

Speaking on Times Radio, Lord Rose declared: “I believe we’re genuinely at the edge of a crisis. If we don’t take some radical action and take notice of what’s going on, we’re going to find ourselves in a very difficult spot.”

Rose said Labour had failed to deliver on its promise of making growth the government’s number one mission. “There isn’t a direction of travel,” he argued. “There is no travel. We’re actually standing still in a lay-by while we decide what to do.”

With the next Budget not due until 26 November, he warned Britain was “stuck for three months waiting with real anxiety” over what level of new taxes Reeves might impose.

Turning to Labour’s flagship Employment Rights Bill, Rose suggested the timing was wrong, saying the legislation would make it harder for firms to hire. “We’ve had a very flexible labour force. Why make it harder now?” he asked.

He also took aim at what he called a “sick note culture” after figures from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development showed UK staff are now taking almost two weeks off ill each year — the highest in 15 years. “We need a little bit of grit around the place,” Rose said. “This nation needs everybody to lean in.”

The intervention echoes growing unease in the business community. Ineos Energy boss Brian Gilvary told The Telegraph this week: “We have stopped investing in Britain. Our future investment will not be in the UK.”

Ineos has already closed its century-old Grangemouth oil refinery in Scotland, cutting more than 400 jobs, and warned its petrochemicals plant there is also at risk. The company operates key North Sea assets, including the Forties Pipeline System which carries 30 per cent of the UK’s oil to shore.

Gilvary cited Labour’s extension of the windfall tax on oil and gas profits, which raised the effective rate on producers to 78 per cent, as proof that Britain has become “one of the most unstable fiscal regimes in the world”. He contrasted that with the United States, where Ineos has ploughed £2.2bn into new projects and where, he said, policy stability underpins energy security.

Sir Jim, whose wealth is estimated at £17bn and who recently became a co-owner of Manchester United, warned earlier this year that Labour was “squeezing the life out of our abundant energy reserves in the North Sea” and that Britain risked increasingly frequent blackouts.

The backdrop has fuelled speculation that Reeves may need to raise another £20bn–£30bn in the autumn to meet her fiscal rules. Economists have even floated comparisons with the Labour government of 1976, when Britain was forced into a bailout by the International Monetary Fund.

The Chancellor has pledged not to raise income tax, VAT or employee national insurance, leaving business levies as her main lever. But business groups, from the British Retail Consortium to the CBI, have warned that piling costs onto employers risks choking off growth just as the economy flatlines.

Conservative critics seized on Rose’s intervention. Claire Coutinho, the shadow energy secretary, said: “Sir Jim Ratcliffe is right — sky-high energy prices and crippling carbon taxes are causing the death of British industry. Labour must put growth and jobs ahead of its obsession with Net Zero.”

With the autumn Budget looming, Labour faces a delicate balancing act: keeping markets calm, meeting its fiscal rules, and responding to mounting anger from both employers and voters who feel squeezed.

As Lord Rose put it bluntly: “If you have no growth, you can’t create wealth. If you can’t create wealth, you can’t provide the services people want. That’s the real problem.”

Read more:
Starmer and Reeves have taken Britain to ‘the edge of a crisis’, warns ex-M&S boss Stuart Rose

From selling denim on market stalls to advising the Gandhi dynasty on political campaigns, Bob Sheard’s path to becoming one of Britain’s most influential brand strategists has been anything but typical.

As the founder and co-owner of FreshBritain—a brand design business with a difference—he’s built his career on disrupting industries, influencing global outdoor giants, and turning purpose into profit.

The spark for his career was lit in a Halifax playground, when a new pair of trainers flipped his social fortunes overnight. That formative moment showed him the power of a brand. What followed was a journey through fashion, marketing, sport, politics—and some punishing ultra-endurance testing along the way. From barefoot grape stomping in his dad’s garage to frostbitten toes on North Pole expeditions for performance brand insight, Bob’s commitment to understanding the end user runs deep.

FreshBritain, co-founded with his wife and business partner Sophie—whose background spans fashion, AI, and computer science—has earned a reputation for “unf*cking brands” by aligning them with long-term strategic, financial, and sustainable goals. As the business pivots toward helping brands accelerate their net-zero ambitions, Bob remains restless, relentlessly curious, and unapologetically mission-driven.

What was the inspiration behind FreshBritain?

It started with a pair of trainers and a moment in a Halifax school playground. That was the first time I truly understood the power of a brand.

After working inside the industry—at Converse, Karrimor, and Levi’s—I saw the performative side of branding up close. When I launched FreshBritain, I wanted to strip that away and focus on truth, impact, and financial return. No lifestyle fluff—just substance, rigour, and real transformation.

We go deep. Sometimes that’s trekking across the desert for Salomon or feeling frostbite for UVU. We believe in “adopting the nature of the prey”—getting as close as possible to the lived experience. That’s how you build brands that matter.

Who do you admire, and why?

James Curleigh, former Global President of Levi’s. He taught me about winning. James knew when to press forward—and when to take the win. His clarity, charisma, and strategic mindset helped us reimagine Salomon’s future together. He also gave us the best testimonial ever: “FreshBritain unf*cks brands.”

Sam Pitroda is another. Known as the father of digital India, Sam once asked me to help write his book, Redesign the World. He told me: “Most people aim within the possible. You and I must aim for the impossible.” It’s hard to say no to that.

Looking back, is there anything you would have done differently?

Of course. Show me someone with no regrets and I’ll show you a liar.

I wish I’d joined the military. The discipline, the exposure to raw human behaviour—it’s invaluable for someone who works in brand psychology.

I wish I’d done an MBA. Our business works closely with private equity, and that qualification could have fast-tracked certain conversations.

And I wish I’d started building collaborative networks earlier. Our open-source work on sustainability tools is something I’m incredibly proud of now, but that mindset came later.

Oh, and I never climbed K2. That stings.

What defines your way of doing business?

A handful of words: Passion. Obsession. Addiction. People. Relationship. Change.

I’m addicted to what I do. It’s the only thing I’ve ever been any good at, and I won’t rest until I’ve found a solution to the problem in front of me.

I believe in people—developing them, backing them, and helping them fly. Whether it’s our team, our clients, or the universities and charities we support, I want to leave people (and the planet) better than I found them.

Now, we’re using our expertise to help brands move toward net zero—and doing it with transparency. That means giving away some of our best tools because progress doesn’t happen in silos.

What advice would you give to someone starting out?

It’s simple.

If you do nothing—nothing happens.

If you do something—something happens.

So, just do something. And see what happens.

Start. Be brave. Make mistakes. And never let fear hold you back—it’s your tailwind.

Read more:
Getting to Know You: Bob Sheard, founder and co-owner of FreshBritain

London-based consultancy Firestarter is helping scale-ups break away from convention, blending creativity and psychology to build bold, distinctive brands.

Founder Mickey Wilson tells us how it started, how it’s evolving, and why authenticity matters more than ever.

What was the inspiration behind Firestarter?

After years running an agency for big corporates, creative strategist Mickey Wilson realised her real passion lay in working with entrepreneurs. “What lit me up was helping founders bring their ideas to life,” she says.

Time and again she noticed brilliant B2B businesses struggling to articulate what made them different. “There’s such pressure in B2B to play it safe – to look the part and follow convention. But I wanted to prove you could be playfully creative and still be taken seriously – in fact, maybe even more so.”

That belief led to the creation of Firestarter and its DARE methodology – Differentiation, Authenticity, Resonance and Expression – a framework to help businesses express what makes them uniquely valuable.

“For me, branding is about freedom,” Wilson adds. “It’s the freedom to be yourself in business, to lead with purpose and to grow something that truly makes a difference.”

How has the business evolved since then?

Firestarter began life as a creative-led brand studio but has since developed into a strategic consultancy sitting at the intersection of branding, psychology, business and innovation.

Wilson teamed up with business psychologist Chris Endersby, who helped elevate Firestarter’s methodology by focusing not just on what brands look and sound like, but how they behave, how they’re experienced internally, and how they adapt over time.

The consultancy now offers a full-service approach, from brand assessments and strategy to marketing and team engagement, with clients spanning tech, consulting, clean energy and professional services across the UK, Europe and beyond. It also runs a thriving design studio in Cape Town, connecting businesses to top creative talent at affordable rates.

Currently, Firestarter is helping entrepreneurs navigate the impact of AI without losing their distinct identity. “In a world flooded with instant, generic content, we give founders the frameworks to carve out brands that feel human and purposeful,” says Wilson. “It’s about using AI to enhance originality – not erase it.”

Who do you admire?

“I admire anyone who dares to do things differently – those who choose originality over approval,” Wilson says.

Creatively, she takes inspiration from the likes of Banksy and Tim Burton, who tell stories in ways that shift perspectives. But her biggest admiration is closer to home. “My daughter is building a community garden project in South London to support people with mental health challenges. Watching her carve her own path is incredible – even if it’s in rebellion to me, the mother who couldn’t see past her talent for illustration!”

Looking back, would you have done anything differently?

Wilson reflects on founding her first agency in the early 1990s. “I thought I had to ‘play the part’ to be taken seriously – learn the lingo, follow the rules, fake it until I made it. It worked in some ways, but deep down it never felt right.”

Over time she realised her real value came from thinking differently, not conforming. “I just wish I’d realised that sooner. That’s why I’m so passionate about authentic differentiation now. When you stop trying to fit in and show up as yourself, with courage and pride, that’s when you make real impact.”

What defines Firestarter’s way of doing business?

Firestarter’s values – ingenuity, courage, authenticity, unity and playfulness – shape every project.

• Ingenuity means finding unexpected solutions to real problems.
• Courage is about pushing beyond the obvious.
• Authenticity is non-negotiable: “We refuse smoke and mirrors – everything we create has to be real and relatable.”
• Unity blends strategy with creativity, logic with emotion.
• And playfulness, Wilson insists, is vital: “Some of the best breakthroughs happen when you get curious and mix all the colours up.”

This ethos, she says, has helped Firestarter build lasting partnerships – and often friendships – with clients.

What advice would you give to new founders?

“Don’t wait to feel ready – clarity comes from doing,” Wilson says. “Start small, start messy, but start with intent.”

She also urges entrepreneurs not to dilute their edge: “Don’t try to be all things to all people. Get unapologetically clear on what makes you different – that’s your competitive advantage.”

And, finally, a reminder that branding is strategic, not cosmetic. “It’s not window dressing. Branding is your chance to frame how the world perceives you. Done well, it saves you money, time and more than a few identity crises.”

Read more:
Firestarter: the London consultancy helping scale-ups build braver B2B brands

Jules White has never been one to follow the traditional sales rulebook. Internationally recognised for her bold “Live it, Love it, Sell it” methodology, she champions authentic, human-centred strategies over pushy tactics.

This is a philosophy that has not only earned her clients worldwide, but also the respect of peers who call her the “Dragon Slayer” for her entrepreneurial courage.

When the pandemic shifted networking and client relationships online, White found a simple yet powerful way to stay connected. She launched Virtual Cuppa with Jules, informal chats that gave her the chance to meet people away from the curated world of social media.

“What started as conversations often sparked on posts became real human connection,” she reflects. “Some meetings have simply led to new friendships or recommendations, while others ended with someone saying, ‘How do I work with you?’ It’s been mind-blowing to see how such a small idea could open so many doors.”

Her message to entrepreneurs who may feel invisible or uncertain in difficult climates is clear: show up. “It’s very easy to retreat when business slows down,” she says. “But if you’re hiding, no one knows about you. Staying visible is crucial. Be present on social media, and most importantly, show up as the real you.”

That visibility, combined with hard work and authenticity, helped White earn recognition at the 2019 Woman Who Achieves Awards. Surrounded by what she describes as “incredibly talented entrepreneurs”, she hadn’t expected to win. “It was a total shock,” she recalls. “I was just proud to be a finalist. But winning made me reflect on my achievements and the fact that I now work all over the world. Who knew?”

For startups and young entrepreneurs eager to carve out their path, White’s advice is rooted in passion and pragmatism. “Do something you love,” she says, “because when you love it, everyone can see it. But don’t underestimate the work it takes. Building a business isn’t about doing a couple of things and waiting for results. It’s hard graft. So love what you do, work hard, and be real.”

Looking back on her own journey, she credits her success not only to resilience but also to her deeply held values. “Integrity has always been huge for me, along with a love of people,” she explains. “Sales is about empathy. I love stepping into someone else’s world and seeing it from their perspective. It’s fascinating, and it creates real connection.”

Resilience, too, has been a defining theme. “I’ve always tried to stay positive,” she adds. “My dad used to tell me, ‘There’s no such word as can’t.’ That’s something I carry with me, and it’s helped me push through the toughest times.”

For Jules White, the formula for success is not complicated. It comes down to visibility, authenticity and a genuine love of people. In an era where businesses are increasingly judged on transparency and purpose, her message resonates: in sales and in leadership, authenticity always wins.

Read more:
Why authenticity wins in business: insights from Jules White

Piers Linney has always been ahead of the curve. A former venture capital lawyer and M&A banker turned entrepreneur, investor and Dragons’ Den panellist, he has built his career on spotting trends before they become mainstream.

His ventures have spanned cloud computing, AI innovation and leadership, and today, through Implement AI, the company he co-founded, he helps businesses prepare for the new reality of artificial intelligence.

For Linney, the phrase “AI-first” is more than a buzzword. He describes it as part of a continuum that stretches back centuries, when humans were always “first”, using tools to support them but ultimately doing the hard cognitive work themselves. That balance, he argues, is shifting. With the advent of large language models and diffusion models, AI is starting to take the lead role, transforming the way we interact with technology.

“We’ve entered an era of AI-assisted work, where employees and organisations can be supercharged in their productivity,” he says. “Unlike the move to cloud computing, which gave companies years to adapt, this wave of change is happening almost overnight. If you wait, you won’t be disrupted by AI itself – you’ll be disrupted by rivals who know how to use it.”

One of the biggest debates surrounding AI is the question of bias. Because the models are trained on human content, from across the internet and social media, they inevitably carry some of our own prejudices. Linney acknowledges the challenge but sees AI as part of the solution rather than the problem.

“Bias is real, and it’s inherited from the data,” he admits. “But unconscious bias is also a huge factor in human decision-making, particularly in recruitment. Carefully designed AI systems can strip away those prejudices and make choices based on objective data. Over time, AI will evolve into what I call a ‘ruthless optimiser’, making decisions that are more data-driven, transparent and less prone to human flaws.”

Yet AI is not only a tool for innovation. It is also being seized upon by criminals. Linney, who recently addressed a global cybersecurity firm, is clear that the threat is growing more sophisticated by the day.

“We’re moving beyond AI-designed malware to a point where the malware itself is AI,” he warns. “It can adapt, hide and pursue its own objectives autonomously. That raises the stakes dramatically. It’s not the science-fiction scenario of humanoid robots we need to worry about, but AI-enabled cybercrime destabilising economies, draining people’s finances and even targeting governments. The cybersecurity arms race is only just beginning.”

If businesses are to harness the opportunities of AI while guarding against its risks, Linney believes leadership must start with clear governance. Every company, regardless of sector, needs an AI policy — but, he stresses, it cannot sit in isolation.

“AI has to run through the business, touching HR, training, compliance and data security,” he explains. “Industries like healthcare and finance will face stricter rules, but every sector needs boundaries for how staff use AI, how data is managed, and how risks are controlled. The missing piece is training. Research shows that almost a third of employees are already using AI at work without their employer knowing — what we call ‘Shadow AI’. That’s a risk, but with the right framework it’s an enormous opportunity.”

From his vantage point, AI is not a distant future but an immediate revolution. Companies that act decisively will, in his words, be “supercharged” — those that don’t may find themselves overtaken by competitors who understood the AI advantage early.

Read more:
The AI advantage: Piers Linney on how forward-thinking businesses will outpace the rest

Two decades ago, Carl and Jakes arrived in London from South Africa with £800 between them, a shared love of travel, and a dream to make seeing the world affordable for everyone.

Today, that dream is a £40 million global group touring company – Expat Explore – which has guided more than 180,000 people across 50 countries.

Group travel is enjoying a resurgence. According to industry figures, 5.36 million UK adults have taken a group touring or adventure holiday in the past five years, with solo travel also on the rise. One in five UK consumers is interested in travelling alone, and more than a third of those have taken a small group tour in the past year – using it as a way to see the world and meet like-minded people.

Carl’s passion for travel was sparked when he won a return British Airways ticket to anywhere in Europe. “I chose Paris, walked everywhere, spoke terrible French, and came back knowing travel was going to be part of my life,” he recalls. For Jakes, it was a student scholarship to Europe that ignited his wanderlust.

Reconnecting in London in the early 2000s, they spotted a gap in the market: affordable, well-organised group tours that removed the stress of planning, navigating language barriers, and managing complex travel logistics.

“Twenty years ago, travel was out of reach for many people,” says Carl. “We wanted to change that.”

With just £800 in the bank, they bought a second-hand minibus for £500 and ran their first Paris tour in March 2005 for 42 paying guests. “We had no grand business plan,” says Jakes. “Just maps, packed lunches, and an Excel spreadsheet to track who’d paid.”

In their first year, they managed 12 tours to Paris and four to Amsterdam. Carl brought deep knowledge of the destinations, having already led low-cost weekend trips, while Jakes applied his operational and business skills.

Cash flow was tight, and every booking required careful juggling of deposits, vehicle hire, and supplier relationships. “We solved problems in real time,” says Jakes. “But our goal was always to deliver a brilliant experience.”

Back then, an overseas holiday for a family averaged £2,725; their first tours cost just £129 per person. In 2025, the average overseas trip costs over £4,000 – yet Expat Explore still offers international tours from £491 and multi-country adventures from £727.

When the pandemic halted global travel, the company’s hard-earned reputation was put to the test. “We told customers: your money is safe, and we’ll ride this out together,” Jakes says. Flexible booking policies and open communication helped retain loyalty, and post-pandemic review scores rose even higher.

Now celebrating its 20th anniversary, Expat Explore runs more than 85 itineraries in over 50 countries, from Europe’s iconic capitals to lesser-known destinations in Asia, Africa, and South America. The company has also launched TourCademy, a digital training platform opening up tour-leading careers worldwide.

While Carl and Jakes focus on the business today, their motivation remains rooted in traveller experiences. “Some people take their first trip with us, others make lifelong friends – some even meet their partners,” says Jakes. “The last 20 years have been incredible, and we’re excited to keep making the world more accessible.”

Read more:
From £800 and a minibus to a £40m global tour business – how two founders built expat explore

After 25 years building Tasty African Food from a single restaurant in Woolwich to a network of 27 outlets across London and Kent, founders Michael and Abi Olaleye are now setting their sights on a much bigger prize: 100 sites nationwide within the next five years.

The couple, who began serving West African dishes to their church community before opening their first site, have grown the business without taking outside investment, preferring slower, controlled expansion to preserve quality and brand integrity.

“When we started, it was crazy, looking back,” said Michael, who was working in IT while Abi was a teacher. “We went from certainty to uncertainty, but the response to Abi’s cooking was incredible.” Early on, their decision not to sell alcohol, in line with their faith, limited margins. “Most restaurants make profit from alcohol,” he explained. “We resolved that — we don’t consume alcohol ourselves, but there’s nothing wrong with selling it. Once we started, sales increased and people began taking us seriously.”

Four years later, they began expanding, inspired by the likes of McDonald’s. Today, of their 30 restaurants, 12 operate as franchises. The company plans to use the franchise model to grow beyond what Michael describes as a “saturated” London market into Birmingham, other Midlands cities and Scotland.

Alongside its restaurants, Tasty African Food produces ready meals from a Thamesmead factory, supplying Sainsbury’s and its own online store, caters for weddings and parties, and operates its own ordering app alongside listings on Deliveroo and Uber Eats. Revenues have reached £7 million, supported by a workforce of around 250 people.

The company’s signature dish, jollof rice with chicken, remains its bestseller. “It’s very tasty, very spicy, and it’s simple when you look at the ingredients,” said Michael. “But you can have the same ingredients and produce many varieties. We have a special way of cooking ours and it’s always been excellent.” While West African cuisine is not yet as embedded in British food culture as Chinese or Indian dishes, the customer base is broad. “We are setting the trend,” he said. “In Sainsbury’s, it’s people of all ethnicities picking our meals off the shelves.”

The Olayeyes’ commitment to full ownership reflects a cautious approach to growth. “There’s a danger in expanding without control and losing quality,” Michael said. “We want to grow organically, not just go for the boom.” Quality and affordability are cornerstones: “What you cannot eat, you should not sell,” he added. In response to tighter consumer budgets, the company has recently cut the price of jollof rice and chicken from £7 to £5, a move made possible by economies of scale.

Still, the business faces the same pressures as the wider hospitality sector, from higher wages and national insurance costs to rising food and energy prices. To mitigate these, Tasty African Food is sourcing more ingredients directly from producers and automating parts of its production process, including pie filling, ready meal sealing and quality control.

Although two of their sons now work in the business, Michael stresses that the “family” ethos extends to staff and franchisees — three current franchise owners are former employees, and he hopes more will follow. “We have a young, dynamic, passionate team that more or less become family members,” he said. “We’re mentoring them for the next phase of the business.”

The couple still take food to church every Sunday, a tradition they have no intention of abandoning. “That was the starting point of this business,” Michael said, smiling. “It would be very ungrateful for us to stop now that we are bigger.”

Read more:
Tasty African Food plans nationwide expansion to 100 UK restaurants in five years

Meet Stuart Davis, the creative force behind Dubs Universe—an award-winning, sustainable footwear brand on a mission to reinvent how we think about kids’ shoes.

Founded during lockdown and inspired by his young daughter’s fast-growing feet, Dubs is designed not only for comfort and style but with purpose: to reduce landfill waste and teach the next generation that sustainability can look cool.

Built from recycled plastic bottles and planet-friendly materials, Dubs trainers are specially engineered to support developing feet—unlike many kids’ shoes that are simply downsized versions of adult styles. The brand also promotes circularity, offering a resale platform and partnering with Sal’s Shoes to redistribute gently worn pairs to children in need.

Recognised by the British Footwear Association in their Footwear50, Stuart is a first-time founder reshaping the industry from the ground up—one small step at a time.

What was the inspiration behind Dubs?

Dubs was born out of two things: my daughter Leila’s lightning-fast-growing feet and the fact I lost my job during the first lockdown.

She outgrew a new pair of shoes after two wears. I turned them into flowerpots, but it stuck with me—how much waste are we creating? I discovered that six million shoes go to landfill in the UK each week, and kids’ shoes are a big part of that problem.

With no experience in footwear but 37 minutes of naptime each day, I started researching, connecting with experts, and building what became Dubs. I wanted to create stylish, sustainable trainers that kids love wearing—and that parents can feel proud of.

Who do you admire?

Ben Francis, founder of Gymshark. Not just for building a brand from scratch, but for building himself. He stepped away from the CEO role early on to learn every part of the business—packing orders, understanding marketing, mastering operations.

That level of humility, self-awareness, and long-term thinking is rare. He’s a great example of how resilience, curiosity, and grounded leadership can build something truly meaningful.

Looking back, is there anything you would have done differently?

Honestly, not much. I made a lot of mistakes early on, but each one taught me something I couldn’t have skipped. They were part of the process.

If anything, I wish I’d had the courage to start sooner. Losing my job forced me into entrepreneurship—and I didn’t know how much I’d love it. I probably would have stayed in a job that wasn’t fulfilling for far too long if I hadn’t been pushed.

What defines your way of doing business?

Radical honesty, upfront communication, and always putting kids first.

We don’t sugar-coat things—whether it’s pricing, product quality, or our sustainability journey. We want our customers to trust that what we say is what we do.

But above all, we filter every decision through one lens: does this make life better, easier, or more fun for kids? If the answer is no, we rethink it.

What advice would you give to someone starting out?

Just do it.

But also—don’t burn out. Especially if you’re a founder, it’s tempting to spend every spare second on your business. I’ve learned that taking a proper break now and then gives me the energy to be a better dad, husband, and founder.

Give yourself grace. Pace yourself. The business will grow, and so will you.

Read more:
Getting to Know You: Stuart Davis, CEO & co-founder, Dubs Universe

Labour’s former shadow chancellor Anneliese Dodds has called on the Treasury to consider a wealth tax ahead of this autumn’s budget, warning that the government cannot avoid “big decisions” on how to fund growing public spending demands.

Dodds, who served under Keir Starmer and resigned earlier this year over the government’s decision to cut international aid, said Chancellor Rachel Reeves must confront the UK’s fiscal reality—and consider new tax measures, including on wealth, to fill a financial black hole that economists estimate could exceed £20 billion.

In her first interview since stepping down, Dodds told The Guardian that ministers must be open with the public about the scale of the challenge, especially with mounting pressure to increase defence spending while rebuilding underfunded public services.

“It’s important that we have a longer-term approach. That does mean confronting difficult questions around our fiscal position and taxation,” Dodds said. “If we’re honest about the nature of the challenge we face, we cannot duck that.”

Dodds stopped short of calling for specific measures but urged the Treasury to revisit the work of economist Arun Advani, whose 2020 Wealth Tax Commission proposed a one-off levy on millionaire households as a more effective alternative to raising taxes on workers or consumers.

“There needs to be a conversation where those with the broadest shoulders take more responsibility,” she said.

Her comments come as a growing number of Labour MPs—not all from the party’s left—push for wealth tax reforms this autumn. However, not all within government are convinced. Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds has dismissed the idea of an annual 2% tax on assets over £10 million as “daft”, and some Treasury insiders have cast doubt on whether it would generate significant revenue.

Dodds acknowledged the risks and practical complexities, warning against the idea that any single tax change could quickly solve the UK’s fiscal problems.

“There’s no silver bullet here,” she said. “Any significant tax reform will have consequences. But we mustn’t pretend we can keep kicking the can down the road.”

She also argued strongly against further cuts to the UK’s aid budget to meet the government’s pledge to increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2027, with an ambition to reach 3% in the next Parliament.

Having resigned from her ministerial role in protest over the reallocation of aid to defence, Dodds warned of the long-term consequences of withdrawing from soft power diplomacy at a time when Russia and China are expanding their global influence.

“Now isn’t the time to be walking back from those commitments,” she said. “We’ve already seen a reduction in our soft power, and with that comes an impact on global security and migration.”

She pointed to the recent increase in asylum applications from countries like Sudan as an example of how foreign aid cuts can lead to rising population movement and domestic pressure.

Dodds also questioned whether the UK’s current fiscal rules—limiting borrowing even for long-term investment—are fit for purpose in a world of geopolitical instability and AI-driven economic change.

“It’s very difficult for the UK to pivot on fiscal rules in the way Germany has done,” she said. “But there’s no route forward without some risk and without some cost.”

On migration and asylum, Dodds urged ministers to show greater empathy in public messaging, calling for “a full and frank discussion” about the pressures on public services while also being clear that “we are ultimately talking about human beings.”

She declined to criticise Sir Keir Starmer directly over his recent remarks referring to the UK becoming “an island of strangers,” which drew widespread backlash. However, she emphasised the importance of explaining Labour values clearly, particularly as Nigel Farage’s Reform UK gains momentum.

“When I speak with people considering Reform, they say they want politicians to say what they really believe,” she said. “There’s a yearning for authenticity.”

Dodds also took a swipe at former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s new movement, describing it as “a bit like the People’s Front of Judea” from Monty Python’s Life of Brian and warning that further splintering of the left could prove damaging at the ballot box.

As Labour prepares for its most consequential budget in over a decade, the message from one of its senior former figures is clear: tough decisions lie ahead—and avoiding them is not an option.

Read more:
Anneliese Dodds urges Labour to consider wealth tax to plug public finance gap

Robey Warshaw, the elite London advisory boutique that counts former chancellor George Osborne among its five partners, has been acquired by Evercore, the US investment banking giant, in a £146 million cash and shares deal.

The acquisition marks a significant payday for Osborne and his fellow partners at the firm’s Mayfair headquarters, though the precise distribution of proceeds among them has not been disclosed. The deal is expected to bring windfalls for the partners and the firm’s 12 additional staff.

Robey Warshaw has built a formidable reputation over the past decade as a trusted boardroom adviser to some of the UK’s most influential companies, including BP, the London Stock Exchange, and National Grid. The firm played a central role in SABMiller’s $100 billion sale to Anheuser-Busch InBev in 2016 — the largest takeover in British corporate history.

Sir Simon Robey, co-founder of the firm, described the sale as a natural evolution for Robey Warshaw’s business.

“Our clients will continue to get the personal attention and care we have always strived to provide,” he said. “They will also be able to benefit from greater global reach, broad product capabilities and sector expertise. Evercore is the right home for all of us.”

Evercore chairman and chief executive John Weinberg praised Robey Warshaw’s “extraordinary, long-standing relationships,” and said the firm would strengthen Evercore’s global advisory platform.

Founded in 2013 by Robey, Simon Warshaw (a former UBS banker), and Philip Apostolides (ex-Morgan Stanley), Robey Warshaw has remained deliberately lean — known for its discretion, high fees, and direct partner involvement in mandates. It appointed Chetan Singh, formerly of JPMorgan, as its fifth partner last year.

According to accounts filed last November, the firm recorded £70 million in profits in the year to March 2024 — more than double the £31.8 million it posted a year earlier. The firm’s best-paid partner, believed to be Robey, received £40.5 million, while the remaining partners split £29.5 million.

The £146 million deal will be paid in two tranches: an initial payment in Evercore shares, followed by a second instalment on the first anniversary of the deal’s completion.

The sale of Robey Warshaw is a landmark moment not only for its founding partners but also for Osborne, who joined the firm in 2021 after stepping back from politics. With this deal, he now adds a lucrative financial exit to a career that has already spanned Westminster, media, and banking.

Read more:
Payday for George Osborne as Robey Warshaw sold to Evercore for £146 million

Off The Kerb Productions, the talent agency behind a host of the UK’s biggest comedy stars, including Jonathan Ross, Michael McIntyre and Jo Brand, has swung to a loss of £1.8 million for the year ending 30 April 2024, after posting a £5.1 million pre-tax profit in the previous 12 months.

The loss, revealed in delayed accounts filed with Companies House, was attributed primarily to the payment of staff bonuses, which the company said had significantly impacted its profitability for the year. Turnover, however, rose marginally from £51 million to £51.7 million.

In a statement accompanying the results, the board said: “The decrease in profit compared to 2023 primarily reflects staff bonuses paid in the year. Whilst this expenditure has impacted the current year’s profitability, excluding these bonus payments, the underlying financial performance remained stable.”

Founded in 1981, Off The Kerb Productions manages a star-studded roster including Alan Carr, Romesh Ranganathan, Jack Dee, Dara Ó Briain, Jo Brand, Kevin Bridges, Rosie Jones, Tom Allen, Judi Love and Josh Widdicombe.

The company cited a busy touring year, including arena dates and growing overseas income, as key drivers of its increased turnover. While UK income dipped slightly from £47.5 million to £46.1 million, international earnings jumped significantly—from £3.4 million to £5.5 million—signalling the increasing global pull of its talent portfolio.

Management fees, which remain the company’s main income stream, climbed to £51 million, up from £50.5 million, while royalty income also rose by over 40%, from £463,165 to £655,915.

Despite the reported loss, the company remains optimistic about future performance. “We believe 2025 will be a good year with various new contracts and tours scheduled,” the board said, citing the strength of its artist base and long-standing relationships with top talent as major assets.

However, the company also acknowledged potential risks from the ongoing cost-of-living crisis, noting concerns that it “may impact ticket sales.” Still, it played down the severity of any possible downturn, comparing the anticipated drop in demand to the post-pandemic period, which it said the company weathered successfully.

“Income is diversified through the different streams of the artist’s work,” the board added. “The potential fall of ticket sales is not considered to be a significant risk.”

The company’s 2023/24 results were submitted five months later than the Companies House deadline. Its financial results for the current year are expected by January 2026.

Off The Kerb’s mix of artist management, television appearances, live tours, and international expansion continues to position it as one of the UK’s leading entertainment agencies. Despite this year’s loss, insiders suggest the financial dip is unlikely to affect long-term strategic growth—particularly with 2025’s touring calendar already filling up.

Read more:
Bonuses force Jonathan Ross’ talent agency into the red despite revenue growth

Raspberry Pi founder Eben Upton has sold £1.8 million worth of shares in the Cambridge-based microcomputer company, reducing his stake just over a year after its high-profile stock market debut. The sale came as a 365-day lock-up period for directors and senior executives expired this week.

Upton, 47, who launched Raspberry Pi in 2008, was joined by the company’s chief financial officer, Richard Boult, who offloaded £455,000 worth of shares. The transactions were disclosed in filings to the London Stock Exchange and took place on Tuesday. Raspberry Pi confirmed the sales, noting that both executives had acted “for financial planning reasons.”

The sales triggered a modest reaction in the market, with shares falling 14p, or 3 per cent, to 444p on Wednesday. While such disposals are common after IPO lock-up periods end, investor sentiment often sours when senior leaders sell, as it can be interpreted as a lack of confidence in future growth prospects.

In Upton’s case, the shares sold represented around 14 per cent of his holding. He retains a 2.5 million share stake worth approximately £11 million. Boult still owns 476,000 shares, currently valued at just over £2 million, after selling a little more than a fifth of his stake.

Despite a 33 per cent decline in the company’s share price since the start of 2025, early backers remain comfortably ahead. Raspberry Pi floated in June 2024 at 280p, making it London’s biggest IPO in nearly a year at the time, with an initial market value of £541 million. Today, the firm is valued at just under £900 million, enough to qualify for a spot in the FTSE 250 index.

Founded by Upton when he was director of studies at St John’s College, Cambridge, Raspberry Pi was born out of frustration with the dwindling number of computer science applicants. The company began by producing low-cost, credit-card-sized computers designed to help children learn to code, and it has since expanded into industrial applications, supplying its computing boards for use in security systems, ventilation units, and even self-service coffee machines.

While the company has retained its educational roots, its customer base has diversified, helping it generate revenues of $259.5 million in 2024, although this marked a slight decline from the £265.8 million reported in 2023. Pre-tax profit for 2024 stood at $16.3 million, down from $38.2 million the year before, which the company attributed to “industry-wide destocking” following a period of exceptional demand.

Upton is not the only co-founder to have cashed in. His wife, Liz Upton, who co-founded Raspberry Pi and headed up its marketing and communications team until her departure in November, sold £248,000 worth of shares last September and a further £186,000 on New Year’s Eve.

Other directors not bound by the same lock-up conditions began selling shares from September 2024 onwards.

While the recent share disposals may have spooked some investors, Raspberry Pi remains one of the UK tech sector’s more credible public market success stories. The company has managed to scale while maintaining profitability, and its strategic pivot into commercial and industrial sectors suggests room for continued growth.

For now, however, the share sales are a reminder that even the most mission-driven founders eventually choose to realise some of their paper wealth — especially after a strong stock market run.

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Raspberry Pi founder sells shares worth £1.8m after lock-up expiry