The Grown UP Business Podcast

What if the thing you've been outrunning in your life is the same thing driving your business, and it's finally time to stop and look at it? In this episode, Paul Avins sits down with Pete Cohen, one of the UK's top performance coaches, author of 21 books, former resident life coach on ITV's GMTV, and creator of the Stop to Think philosophy. Pete left school with one O-level, became one of the UK's first personal trainers, then built and sold a weight loss and fitness business to Bupa. He has worked with Arsenal, Pfizer, Ronnie O'Sullivan, Roger Black and Sally Gunnell. Paul and Pete go deep on self-awareness, addiction and identity: why knowing your own weaknesses means avoiding the things that could hijack you, why many entrepreneurs are built on proving someone wrong, and why the bigger the stage lights, the bigger the shadow. They explore why celebrating other people's wins builds community, why every founder needs a coach, and how Paul's mastermind and retreat model grew from building something he wanted to attend himself. Both share the hardest moments of their lives. Pete talks about burning out with chronic fatigue at the height of his TV fame, losing his parents, and supporting his wife Hannah through a brain tumour diagnosis, treatment in America and Germany, and her passing in 2023. He explains how his coach helped him find a way to celebrate his suffering, leading to the award-winning documentary Team Hannah, which won at the Cannes World Film Festival. Paul tells the story of his 2014 cardiac arrest, his wife Sue's brain injury and 21-day coma, and how he trained trauma out of his body after years of living in fight or flight. They close on resilience (not bouncing back, but moving through), why ideas are perishable and need action within 72 hours, the difference between procrastination and creative procrastination, and why stopping is where growth happens. What you'll learn: Why self-awareness and self-audit matter more than hustle. Why addiction, including dopamine addiction, is something many entrepreneurs fight without realising. Why identity shifts drive growth, and why refusing a label others put on you can change your life. How to build a community and mastermind where people feel accepted whatever their results. Why celebrating everyone's success beats a winners-and-losers model. How the Napoleon Hill principles still apply to modern business. Why ideas are perishable and need action within 72 hours. The difference between avoidance procrastination and creative procrastination. How trauma stored in the body can quietly shape your performance, and why working with a professional matters. Why resilience means moving through adversity, not bouncing back. The Chinese saying that life is lived forwards and understood backwards. Apply this: Audit where you are right now: sleep, mood, energy, health, relationships, wealth, work. Know your triggers and avoid the ones that could hijack you. Get a coach or mentor. Nobody climbs a mountain alone. Act on ideas within 72 hours, or let them go. Learn to regulate your nervous system daily through journaling, meditation, walking or cold plunges. When life gets hard, just win today. Define what winning looks like and get on with it. Take time to stop and reflect. You can't make sense of it while you're running. About Pete Cohen Pete Cohen is one of the UK's leading performance coaches and the author of 21 books. He was the resident life coach on GMTV, built and sold a successful weight loss and fitness business, and has coached elite athletes and major corporates. He created Stop to Think, a philosophy focused on pausing to think differently, and produced the award-winning documentary Team Hannah. Watch Team Hannah: https://teamhannah.com Stop to Think: Https://www.stop2think.co.uk/ More from Pete: https://petecohen.com Scale with Paul Avins Connect: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulavins/ Book a call: https://www.paulavins.com/book-a-call Newsletter: https://www.paulavins.com/newsletter-opt-in Level Up. Team Up. Scale Up. Fire Up.

What if there's a simple seven-letter framework hiding inside your business that could add a million pounds to your bottom line, and you're already sitting on most of the pieces? In this episode, Paul Avins sits down with Stephen Jones, an expert on people, performance and profitability who was part of the team that scaled Fitness First from one club to the largest independent health club business in the world in seven years. Stephen was also called on by the UK government to chair a task force on employee engagement, and is the author of Turning On Your Profits Tap, the model at the centre of this conversation. Stephen walks through the Profits Tap framework: Purpose, Relevance, Outclass the Crowd, Find, Inspire, Time and Service. He explains why most owners never define their personal vision before their business one, why relevance is under constant threat from AI, and why positioning means deliberately choosing where you sit on product, market, service and price, the way Fitness First combined David Lloyd's quality with leisure-centre affordability. Paul and Stephen dig into winning referral partners without paying for them, the five fears stopping a professional referring their best client, and the five benefits that get them to say yes. They cover a proven sales meeting structure, why "can you make a decision today" is one of the worst questions in sales, and why pressure selling signals a weak pipeline. Stephen shares how Fitness First recruited and trained whole teams before a club had even opened, and the study that first got him noticed, proving a corporate gym paid for itself three times over in reduced sickness. The conversation moves into culture and motivation: the nine drivers behind why people really show up to work, why money is only a short-term motivator, and the barrister who quietly retrained as a landscape gardener after realising he was working from resilience, not energy. They close on AI, why the IKEA case study turned an 8,500-person cost saving into a $1.3 billion opportunity by repurposing staff, and why the businesses that win will use AI to elevate people rather than replace them. What you'll learn: Why personal vision should come before business vision. Why relevance is a moving target with AI reshaping industries. How to use product, market, service, price to position deliberately. How to build referral partnerships without paying fees, using the five fears and five benefits that decide whether someone refers you their best client. A proven sales meeting structure: agenda, positioning, fact-find, presentation, close. Why pressure selling signals a weak pipeline, not strong closing skills. How Fitness First trained entire teams before a club had even finished being built. Why the best salesperson is usually the worst sales manager. The nine motivational drivers behind engagement, and why money rarely tops the list. Why performing from resilience instead of energy is a warning sign. How to build an employer-of-choice wheel around story, vision, engaged managers, coaching, employee voice and lived values. Why AI should follow your strategy, not set it. Apply this: Map your business against the Profits Tap and score each area to find your bottleneck. Before asking a referral partner for their best client, ask what their biggest fear is in giving it to you, then address it directly. Move high-stakes sales conversations to a two-meeting model: discovery first, tailored solution second. Audit what worked in your first year of winning clients that you've quietly stopped doing. Run a motivational assessment on your team rather than assuming everyone's driven by money. Before promoting your best salesperson into management, check whether they actually want to manage people. Use AI to free up capacity, then reinvest it in higher-value, more human work. About Stephen Jones Stephen Jones is an expert on people, performance and profitability, and author of three books including Turning On Your Profits Tap. He was part of the team that scaled Fitness First into the world's largest independent health club business within seven years, and was later invited by the UK government to co-chair a task force on employee engagement. He now helps businesses scale profitably through positioning, sales and genuinely engaged teams. Get Stephen’s book here: Turning on Your P.R.O.F.I.T.S. Tap in an AI Era Connect with Stephen: [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) Scale with Paul Avins Connect: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulavins/ Book a call: https://www.paulavins.com/book-a-call Newsletter: https://www.paulavins.com/newsletter-opt-in Level Up. Team Up. Scale Up. Fire Up.

What if the biggest thing missing from your business plan isn't a strategy, a funnel, or a hire, but a clear answer to where you're actually trying to go? In this episode, Paul Avins sits down with Will Polston, best-selling author of North Star Thinking, entrepreneur, NLP practitioner and one of the UK's top business strategy and performance coaches. Will shares his journey from believing money equalled happiness, chasing it hard through a career as a city broker, to the moment at a Tony Robbins event that revealed his real driver had nothing to do with cash. Will and Paul unpack what a North Star actually is: not a purpose, but a life mission you'll never fully achieve but keep working towards, the business equivalent of trying to empty the sea with a spoon. They explore why entrepreneurs hit a scale-up ceiling between £500k and £1.5m, why beliefs like "I don't have the time or money" get baked in during underfunded start-up years, and how to break a limiting belief by introducing doubt through other people's references. The conversation goes deep on identity: why exited business owners often spiral into feelings of depression from losing the "business owner" identity without a life-after-exit plan, why peak performance is potential minus interference, and why "it needs to be done, but I don't need to do it" was the belief that kept Will stuck longest even after success. They also cover recovery, why sleep quality now trumps everything else in his routine, his self-love list for staying recharged, and 22, the mushroom supplement business he built to run on one to two hours a week. What you'll learn: Why a North Star differs from a purpose, and why most businesses have a vision and values while most people never define their own. Why the money-equals-happiness belief gets embedded early. Why entrepreneurs hit a scale-up ceiling around £500k to £1.5m, and why hustle gets you there but framework gets you further. How to break any limiting belief by introducing doubt through other people's references. Why exiting without a life-after-exit plan often triggers depression through identity loss. Why peak performance is a subtraction game, not addition. The difference between guilt and shame, and why "work guilt" keeps founders chained to their desks. Why multiple identities protect you through major transitions. Why sleep quality became Will's single biggest performance lever. What a self-love list is and how it drives active accountability. Why Will built 22 to prove a company can grow on one to two hours a week. Why reviewing your net worth, including your business valuation, quarterly changes how you treat the business. Apply this: Get clarity on your North Star before your next goal. Ask what you're actually doing this for, long term. Interrogate your beliefs about time and money. Find people who've proven them wrong. Build a life-after-exit plan before you exit, not after the deal closes. Treat recovery as part of performance. Track sleep quality and build in genuine off-season time. Get your business valued every quarter. Treating it as an asset, not just income, changes your decisions. Create a self-love list of things that recharge you, and use it to check in on yourself weekly. Ask "how can I do this and have fun?" instead of forcing yourself through what you resent. About Will Polston Will Polston is a best-selling author, entrepreneur and one of the UK's top business strategy and performance coaches. A former city broker turned NLP practitioner and psychologist, he's the author of North Star Thinking: Master Your Mindset and Live a Life You Love. He's also built 22, a functional mushroom supplement company, and is working to build a 6,000-seater ice arena and develop the junior academy of the ice hockey club he played for over 23 years. Find out more: https://willpolston.com Scale with Paul Avins Connect: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulavins/ Book a call: https://www.paulavins.com/book-a-call Newsletter: https://www.paulavins.com/newsletter-opt-in Level Up. Team Up. Scale Up. Fire Up.

What if the biggest thing holding your business back isn't your product or your marketing, but the fact that you're still doing all the selling yourself, and you have no idea how to build a team that can do it without you? In this episode of The Grown Up Business Podcast, Paul Avins sits down with Adam Davies, founder of Sales Chief, a fractional sales management company that runs sales teams for established agencies, service professionals and scale-up businesses. Adam shares the unfiltered truth about why most entrepreneurs give up on salespeople too early, why "fix the system, not the team" beats another hiring round every time, and why the businesses that struggle most with sales are the ones that never properly documented what actually works. Adam unpacks his own path into sales, from a self-employed, commission-only start in a boiler-room environment in his late teens, to building Sales Chief into a business that interviews over 70 candidates for every single role it fills. He explains why most business owners only ever interview three people and then wonder why their sales team underperforms, why hiring the right people matters more than volume of outreach, and why a salesperson who's good but in a rut usually just needs the system fixed around them, not replacing. Paul and Adam dig into the mechanics of a proper sales process: acknowledge, isolate, handle, re-close. They talk through why "I need to think about it" is rarely the real objection, why two-call closes can lift conversion from 8% to 27.5%, why tracking cost-per-lead and offers-per-day matters more than gut feel, and how AI-trained call analysis is changing the way sales teams get coached. Adam also opens up on the emotional side of sales: why buyers are liars (not deliberately), why salespeople need to be matched to the income level and demographic of who they're selling to, and why the best sales managers are often the mediocre salespeople, not the top performers. What you'll learn: Why stepping away from the phones without a documented process can cost you 60% of your sales overnight. Why the average business only interviews three people per sales role, and why Sales Chief interviews over 70. Why hiring mums on flexible contracts, or matching a salesperson's income level to their buyer's, changes conversion rates. How a two-call close process took one client from 8% to 27.5% conversion. Why "I need to think about it" is a smokescreen, and how to acknowledge, isolate, handle and re-close a real objection. Why cost-per-offer and offers-per-day are the metrics most businesses never track. Why listening back to your own best sales calls breaks a slump faster than any pep talk. Why the best sales manager is rarely your top-performing salesperson. Why documenting your own sales process is step one before you ever hire. Why recruiting two salespeople at once beats recruiting one. Why "fix the system, not the team" should come before another round of hiring. Apply this: Document your own sales process before you hire anyone. Ask AI to interview you about what you do well, then turn it into a playbook. Don't judge a salesperson on one bad month. Track daily data and look for patterns before making any decision. Handle objections in sequence: acknowledge, isolate, handle, re-close. Most reps skip the isolate step and lose the sale. Get your team listening to their own best calls, not generic training content, to rebuild confidence and momentum. Match your salesperson to your buyer. Income level, demographic and life experience all affect whether they can build trust. Hire two salespeople at once if you can. The training cost barely rises and you get built-in redundancy and competition. Know your numbers inside out. A grown-up sales team can define a good month, a bad month, and find its bottlenecks within days. About Adam Davies Adam Davies is the founder of Sales Chief, a fractional sales management company that builds and runs remote and fractional sales teams for agencies, service professionals and scale-up businesses. He started out in commission-only sales in his late teens and has spent over two decades in sales and sales leadership, including as head of sales for Andy Harrington, before launching Sales Chief to help entrepreneurs fix their sales systems rather than just their headcount. Connect with Adam on Instagram: @adamdaviessales Connect with Adam on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-davies-b95a52b1/ Visit Sales Chief: https://saleschief.co Scale with Paul Avins Connect with Paul: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulavins/ Book a call with Paul: https://www.paulavins.com/book-a-call Subscribe to the Scale Up Newsletter: https://www.paulavins.com/newsletter-opt-in Level Up. Team Up. Scale Up. Fire Up.

What if the difference between a business that stalls and one that scales past $100M isn't talent or budget, but whether you build your team the way elite sports teams build theirs? In this episode, Paul Avins sits down with Kevin Mark-Watts, author of The 10 Ten-Minute Rules, a specialist in peak performance, and a leader with over 30 years across retail, HR, and commercial leadership, including seven years as Commercial Director of Crystal Palace Football Club. His work has been published in CEO World, and his framework takes the principles of elite sports performance science and applies them directly to business. Kevin's own story starts a long way from boardrooms. Dropped from his school football team as a ten-year-old for a cheeky comment to his coach, he spiralled into failing his exams and left college before finishing his A-levels. A retail job selling made-to-measure suits changed everything: within weeks he'd found he was a natural salesman, and by his early twenties he was running stores, then managing areas, then leading HR for a 700-store, 7,000-employee retail chain. A redundancy led him to Simon Jordan's fast-growing mobile phone business, which scaled past $300M in turnover, and from there into Crystal Palace, where he helped run the club through promotion, relegation, and one of English football's more chaotic dressing rooms. Paul and Kevin get into the moment a Crystal Palace manager assaulted a player, refused to admit the mistake, and lost the entire dressing room within weeks. They talk about the ProZone data system that helped get Palace promoted through marginal gains most clubs weren't tracking yet. Kevin explains the $400K ceiling he hit as an entrepreneur, why second and third generation hires are rarely as invested as the founding team, and why only 7% of businesses ever break past the $1M mark. He also makes the case for treating founders like athletes: pre-season kickoffs, recovery, and reinvesting 10% of income back into yourself. What you'll learn: Why a school coach dropping him at ten years old shaped how Kevin leads teams today. How a redundancy from a corporate HR role led to running a $300M mobile phone business. The Crystal Palace story: a manager who assaulted a player, never admitted the mistake, and lost the dressing room within weeks. Why leaders must get their key influencers on side before they can fix a culture problem. How ProZone's match data and marginal gains helped get Crystal Palace promoted. Why he built a "seat avatar" to track whether the right people are in the right seats as a business grows. Why the team that gets you promoted isn't always the team that keeps you there. Why he hit a $400K ceiling, and how second and third generation hires are rarely as invested as the founders. Why only 7% of businesses ever break past the $1M mark. Why meeting rhythms have to change as a team grows past five or six people. Why he treats entrepreneurship as a full contact sport, with no off-season unless you build one in. Why he spends 10% of what he earns on his own personal development. Why he's proud of being made redundant twice, because it proved his teams were self-sufficient. His definition of a grown-up business: when the person at the end of the chain talks about your values as passionately as you do. Apply this: Get your key influencers on side before trying to fix a culture problem, they carry your message further than you can alone. Track the data on your team the way elite sports teams do, not just how people feel about their performance. Reassess whether the people who got you to your last milestone are the right people for your next one. Build a pre-season into your year, a kickoff, a half-year review, don't assume a team performs at full speed from day one. Put 10% of what you earn back into your own development. Have the uncomfortable conversation and admit the mistake before it costs you your best people. About Kevin Mark-Watts Kevin is the author of The 10 Ten-Minute Rules and a specialist in applying elite sports performance science to business teams. With over 30 years across retail, HR, and commercial leadership, including seven years as commercial director of Crystal Palace Football Club, his work has been featured in CEO World magazine. He now works as a coach and advisor to founders and leadership teams building high-performing cultures. Connect with Kevin on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-mark-watts-13123822/ Scale with Paul Avins If this episode resonated, Paul's work focuses on helping founders step out of the day to day and scale with structure and confidence. Connect with Paul: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulavins/ Book a call with Paul: https://www.paulavins.com/book-a-call Subscribe to the Scale Up Newsletter: https://www.paulavins.com/newsletter-opt-in Level Up. Team Up. Scale Up. Fire Up.