In this introductory episode, I share with you my vision to inspire and enable millions of ambitious leaders of SMEs to scale with purpose, through the ScaleX™ Insider podcast, and hopefully one of those will be you.

Every week, I will be speaking with business leaders, industry experts and authorities on one or more of the 10 Principles of Scaling to support you on your Scaleup journey.

I believe passionately in both business scale up and personal scale up and, most importantly, the wellbeing of you: the aspirational Scaleup leader.

Having spent 25 years in martial arts, and more recently in triathlon and embarking on becoming a Wim Hof Method instructor, I recognise the value of physical and mental wellbeing in underpinning your Scaleup success.

To this, we aim to bring you insights to scaleup success from a host of different perspectives.

I’m really looking forward to sharing the ScaleX™ Insider Podcast with you every week.

You can find us on your favourite podcast apps and platforms including Spotify, Amazon Audible and Apple Podcasts.

About Brendan:

With a background in Finance, my first scaleup leadership role came in the technology sector during the Dot.com boom. The now infamous boom and bust of the dot com bubble led me to engineering and manufacturing joining a small Northern Irish company, then with revenues of £3m and a Team of 15 people. I had the privilege of leading the company as CEO for 12 years and being immersed in Scale Ups for 20 years.

During this time, we scaled the company successfully to lead our industry growing from small to medium to becoming a large company. Establishing offices across 6 continents, from Australia and India through to North and South America, we employed almost 700 people, exporting to more than 100 countries achieving profitable revenue growth of almost £100m.

Our success was acknowledged by Deloitte (becoming a best-managed company for 11 consecutive years), the London Stock Exchange in their Companies to Inspire Europe series, The Sunday Times fast-track awards where we were listed across various categories and I was honoured to receive the overall UK Director of the Year award in 2016 where our success was recognised by the prestigious Institute of Directors.

We became a very successful SME who achieved the elusive status of having Scaled Up but sadly as I came to realise, only 2-4% of SMEs ever achieve scale up. Inspired to change this my business Partner Claire and I co-founded Simple Scaling in 2019.

To find out more, head over to:

https://simplescaling.com/

Our debut episode features Adam Hale, Chair of The Board of Directors for the ScaleUp Institute and author of the online blog Lobster Tales who joined us for a fascinating discussion on:

• The Five Key Areas of focus for a scaling business
• How to discover the Why and the What of your company
• Why talking to customers is critical for success
• The important characteristics of scaleups
• The secrets to staying positive even in challenging times
• How to nurture the next generation of scaleups.

You can listen to this podcast on Apple, Amazon Audible, Spotify and Google.  New episodes on Wednesdays. You can also subscribe via the show’s RSS feed. Please rate, review, subscribe and share the podcast if you enjoy it and have gained value from listening.

In the meantime, grab a pen, notepad and a cup of tea and make yourself at home for this insightful and engaging chat with Adam.

To find out more head over to:

https://simplescaling.com/ 

When scaling a business, what does it mean to become a liquid thinker?

In this episode of the ScaleX™ Insider podcast, I’m speaking with international speaker and best-selling author, Damian Hughes.

In our chat, we discuss the fundamentals of great leadership, which behaviours are non-negotiable, and how exceptional cultures are characterised.

Damian shares how he has combined his practical and academic experience in development and change psychology; revealing how he supports leaders to create a high performing team culture in scaling organisations.

His innovative and exciting approach has been praised by Sir Richard Branson and Tiger Woods and he’s one of the smartest and most humble people I know.

We cover many insights and topics in this episode including:

• What Damian has learned from working with elite sports professionals
• 5 different types of culture and what defines a high performing culture
• How success leaves clues
• Why not to leave the conversation at values
• What to do when fear and anxiety grips you

To learn more head on over to:

https://simplescaling.com/