The ActionCOACH Podcast

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

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

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

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

The Only Way To Beat Fear Of Rejection | Amelia Sordell Klowt Founder Interview Most people avoid sharing their story because they're terrified of being rejected or judged. Amelia Sordell knows better. In this episode of the Business Growth Podcast, powered by ActionCOACH UK, she reveals why courage, not confidence, is the only real way through that fear. Amelia is the founder of Klowt, the personal branding training and consultancy company she built to 2 million pounds in annual recurring revenue by year three. She grew her own LinkedIn following from 1,500 connections to 8,000 followers in four months, and now sits at nearly 300,000 followers as one of the UK's leading voices on personal branding. She is also the author of The Personal Branding Playbook. Her core message: a strong personal brand isn't a fabricated persona. It's a scalable extension of who you already are. What You'll Learn: - Courage Over Confidence: Why you have to do the thing you're unconfident in and suck at it long enough to get good, rather than waiting to feel ready. - Authenticity As Alignment: How turning down a Necker Island invite from Richard Branson to keep a promise to her kids defines what authenticity means to her. - The Power Of Being Known: Why the opportunities that come from being known are tenfold what you get from simply being the best at what you do. - Building In Public: How her friend Melissa took 2,000 pounds in sales for her Pilates studio before it opened, using honest, unpolished content. - Virality Versus Leads: What happened when Amelia chased viral content for six weeks, and why it cost her business a 72% drop in leads. - Storytelling As A Business Skill: Why Amelia, an undiagnosed dyslexic once told not to pursue writing, now says 90% of her job is writing. - Finding Your North Star: The simple exercise Amelia uses with clients to define their positioning beyond their job title. - The AI Referral Shift: How ChatGPT and Claude now drive 20 to 30% of Klowt's leads. If You Haven't Started: Write down what your ideal day looks like, not your revenue target, and let that shape your next move. Post the thing you've been putting off. If You're Already Creating: Audit your last 30 days of content. If it leans toward chasing views over your core message, pull it back before your leads suffer. For Everyone: Ask a recent client what they actually get from working with you, then build your positioning statement from their words, not your job title. Whether you're building your first personal brand or just trying to tell your story with more courage, this episode gives you a clear place to start. Subscribe to the Business Growth Podcast for weekly conversations with the people actually doing it. Sponsored by Constant Contact Constant Contact is a powerful, yet easy to use marketing platform designed for small business, helping you build relationships and drive business with email, social media, and event marketing. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.