The Business Leader Podcast with Sir Richard Harpin

Eva Alexandridis is the co-founder of 111SKIN, the luxury clinical skincare brand favoured by Lady Gaga, Margot Robbie, and Victoria Beckham, and stocked at Harrods, Selfridges, and Bergdorf Goodman. In this episode, Alexandridis joins Sir Richard Harpin to trace her journey from growing up behind the Iron Curtain in Bulgaria, to working at Silicon Valley startups during the dot-com boom, to co-founding 111SKIN, the doctor-driven skincare brand, with her husband plastic surgeon Dr. Yannis Alexandridis, in London. Alexandridis reveals why she refused to sell 111SKIN anywhere but her husband's Harley Street clinic for the first few years , and what changed her mind after years of resisting outside investment , leading her to agree to Estée Lauder taking a minority stake. She shares her advice for founders on patience, scaling, and avoiding the "fast beauty" trap and reflects on treating every failure as a learning opportunity. Alexandridis also explains why she deliberately avoided over-extending the luxury brand into too many stores or too large a product range, focusing instead on experiential treatments in luxury hotel spas. Alexandridis learns from her mentor Angela Ahrendts, mentors other beauty founders, including Aman Essentials' Kristina Romanova, and believes mentorship is a two-way street. Subscribe to the Business Leader Podcast for weekly entrepreneur stories from founders and CEOs who’ve built and scaled great businesses. Join the Business Leader community for coaching, peer to peer forums and exclusive learning events. Sign up to our free weekly newsletter at businessleader.co.uk/newsletters . Business Leader is a membership community for ambitious CEOs and founders of mid-sized UK companies, designed to help them grow with purpose through strategic support, peer-to-peer learning, expert coaching, and high-impact events. Sign up for our Business Leader newsletter here . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Shamil Thakrar, co-founder and Executive Chair of Dishoom, talks to Sir Richard Harpin about building one of Britain's best-loved restaurant groups with no restaurant experience, while friends and family thought he was bananas. Thakrar believes in the power of storytelling and explains how invented backstories shape every Dishoom restaurant. He shares his mantra, "deepen, don't dilute", his father's advice that success needs "a little poetry at the heart of it", and how he learnt to put quality before profit. After handing the CEO role to long-serving colleague Brian Trollip, and following years of bootstrapping the business with family backing, Thakrar brought in private equity investor L Catterton. Having compared starting a restaurant to "the first ten minutes of Saving Private Ryan", he explains why he is now braving a second beach landing in New York, and where future international expansion could take the business. Subscribe to the Business Leader Podcast for weekly entrepreneur stories from founders and CEOs who’ve built and scaled great businesses. Join the Business Leader community for coaching, peer to peer forums and exclusive learning events. Sign up to our free weekly newsletter at businessleader.co.uk/newsletters . Business Leader is a membership community for ambitious CEOs and founders of mid-sized UK companies, designed to help them grow with purpose through strategic support, peer-to-peer learning, expert coaching, and high-impact events. Sign up for our Business Leader newsletter here . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Helen Cannon had five children and wanted a sixth. Instead, she decided her next baby would be a company. In 2013 she founded ISON Travel and built a corporate travel management company from scratch that now turns over around £70 million. Sir Richard Harpin talks to Cannon about bootstrapping ISON Travel without ever taking on external funding. When Covid grounded the travel industry and competitors cut back, she chose to hire and expand. Revenue grew from around £4 million in 2020 to £32 million by 2022. Cannon explains how she has scaled internationally through India, the Philippines, Dubai and a US acquisition. She covers how she builds culture across a fully remote team, why 70% of her staff are women and a quarter are over 55, how to deal with imposter syndrome and why every entrepreneur should be "10% braver." She also speaks openly about leading the business after the death of her husband, who was also a key member of the management team, and about her push towards a £100 million revenue goal. This episode is for founders, CEOs and female entrepreneurs who want to scale a business, lead while raising a family, and turn a crisis into an opportunity. Subscribe to the Business Leader Podcast for weekly entrepreneur stories from founders and CEOs who’ve built and scaled great businesses. Join the Business Leader community for coaching, peer to peer forums and exclusive learning events. Sign up to our free weekly newsletter at businessleader.co.uk/newsletters . Business Leader is a membership community for ambitious CEOs and founders of mid-sized UK companies, designed to help them grow with purpose through strategic support, peer-to-peer learning, expert coaching, and high-impact events. Sign up for our Business Leader newsletter here . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Simon Mellin, founder and CEO of Modern Milkman, grew up working in his dad's butcher's shop in Colne, rural Lancashire. By trying to move the business online, he was shocked to find just how disconnected food supply chains had become across the UK. In 2018, inspired by Blue Planet, he bought a real, working milk round for £2,000 to find out why the dairy industry was dying – and what could be done to save it. From that cart, he has delivered Modern Milkman: a returnable-packaging grocery delivery business that has since raised tens of millions in funding, expanded into five US states, and is aiming for its first full year of profit. In this episode, Mellin tells Sir Richard Harpin about his experience as the modern milkman, as well as the strange coincidence that led him to merge with a US rival – and what he got wrong trying to run it 'the UK way'. Plus, his frank advice for founders: If you don’t try you don’t know, just get on with it! Subscribe to the Business Leader Podcast for weekly entrepreneur stories from founders and CEOs who’ve built and scaled great businesses. Join the Business Leader community for coaching, peer to peer forums and exclusive learning events. Sign up to our free weekly newsletter at businessleader.co.uk/newsletters . Business Leader is a membership community for ambitious CEOs and founders of mid-sized UK companies, designed to help them grow with purpose through strategic support, peer-to-peer learning, expert coaching, and high-impact events. Sign up for our Business Leader newsletter here . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Kate Prince, founder and CEO of Ancient + Brave, walked away from a career as a lawyer, including years spent drafting contracts for Big Brother, to build one of the UK's fastest-growing wellness brands. Her collagen and supplements are now stocked in Selfridges, Harrods, online and in over 20 countries worldwide. In one twelve-month period, the business grew from £1 million to £10 million in revenue, and last year it surpassed £54 million. Now, Prince has her sights set on £100 million within two years. Prince talks to Sir Richard Harpin about building a brand from nothing, bootstrapping before securing outside investment, scaling fast without losing control, finding communities of female founders and never losing sight of the company’s mission, purpose, principles and value system. Subscribe to the Business Leader Podcast for weekly entrepreneur stories from founders and CEOs who’ve built and scaled great businesses. Join the Business Leader community for coaching, peer to peer forums and exclusive learning events. Sign up to our free weekly newsletter at businessleader.co.uk/newsletters . Business Leader is a membership community for ambitious CEOs and founders of mid-sized UK companies, designed to help them grow with purpose through strategic support, peer-to-peer learning, expert coaching, and high-impact events. Sign up for our Business Leader newsletter here . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Adrian Blair talks to Sir Richard Harpin about taking over from Trustpilot's founder in 2023 and how discipline turned a loss-making EBITDA position into a business now targeting 30% margins by 2030. Drawing on lessons from Just Eat and running Dext as a non-founder CEO, Blair reflects on what it takes to succeed a founder — respecting their ambition while building on the culture they left behind. He explains how Trustpilot has become one of the biggest beneficiaries of the AI search era and why "genuine human feedback" has become essential to AI answer-engine strategies. Blair also lives by the mantra "never let a good crisis go to waste": he rebuilt confidence after a short-seller report wiped 30% off the share price in a single day, and he shares his hiring philosophy for senior teams — including why you should always meet a candidate in person before hiring them. Subscribe to the Business Leader Podcast for weekly entrepreneur stories from founders and CEOs who’ve built and scaled great businesses. Join the Business Leader community for coaching, peer to peer forums and exclusive learning events. Sign up to our free weekly newsletter at businessleader.co.uk/newsletters . Business Leader is a membership community for ambitious CEOs and founders of mid-sized UK companies, designed to help them grow with purpose through strategic support, peer-to-peer learning, expert coaching, and high-impact events. Sign up for our Business Leader newsletter here . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Eric Ries, author of the bestselling The Lean Startup which sold over 2 million copies, joins Sir Richard Harpin to discuss his new book Incorruptible . Fifteen years after redefining entrepreneurship with concepts like the MVP and the pivot, Ries turns his attention to a different threat: what he calls "financial gravity" - the corporate governance norms and regulatory standards that can erode a founder's integrity and long-term vision even after early success. They discuss why pivoting is a change in strategy without a change in vision, how founders like Costco's Jim Sinegal built "governance fortresses" to protect long-term thinking, and why Ries founded the Long-Term Stock Exchange to reward companies that resist short-term pressure. Ries shares advice on when startups should take investment, the benefits of employee ownership and explains how trust is the most valuable asset that an organization can have. Also, his tips on how to harness AI in a better way that allows the human and the AI to be much closer to collaborators than to delegators. Subscribe to the Business Leader Podcast for weekly entrepreneur stories from founders and CEOs who’ve built and scaled great businesses. Join the Business Leader community for coaching, peer to peer forums and exclusive learning events. Sign up to our free weekly newsletter at businessleader.co.uk/newsletters . Business Leader is a membership community for ambitious CEOs and founders of mid-sized UK companies, designed to help them grow with purpose through strategic support, peer-to-peer learning, expert coaching, and high-impact events. Sign up for our Business Leader newsletter here . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the second part of our interview with Sharmadean Reid MBE, we chart the rise and fall of beauty tech platform Beautystack, what it really takes to secure venture capital investment, and the launch of her latest venture – luxury bathing brand 39BC. Reid tells Sir Richard Harpin how she "collects people" and turns her network into her greatest business asset, why she swears by a paid business coach, and what she wishes she'd done differently at Beautystack. She also makes the case for storytelling as the single most important skill any entrepreneur can have — and explains why failing to document your playbook could be the most expensive mistake you ever make. Subscribe to the Business Leader Podcast for weekly entrepreneur stories from founders and CEOs who’ve built and scaled great businesses. Join the Business Leader community for coaching, peer to peer forums and exclusive learning events. Sign up to our free weekly newsletter at businessleader.co.uk/newsletters . Business Leader is a membership community for ambitious CEOs and founders of mid-sized UK companies, designed to help them grow with purpose through strategic support, peer-to-peer learning, expert coaching, and high-impact events. Sign up for our Business Leader newsletter here . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sharmadean Reid MBE started working as a hotel chambermaid in Wolverhampton when she was 14 years old, before learning the lingo of business while waiting tables at the business Rotary Club of the hotel. Her career has been driven by the 'two wolves' inside of her – artistic and business. Reid has spent twenty years at the intersection of beauty, technology and women's empowerment. With a real talent for spotting trends, she founded a cult nail salon in Dalston called WAH Nails, before creating the tech platform Beautystack, a women's business community The Stack World, and most recently the luxury bathing brand 39BC. In the first part of the interview with Sir Richard Harpin, she talks about what it takes to build a business from scratch, learning to ask for anything and overcoming fear of “no” as well as learning to “never split the difference”. She also shares her views on why aren’t there more successful female entrepreneurs in the UK and how domestic cognitive load can lead to burnout. Stay tuned for part two, next week. Subscribe to the Business Leader Podcast for weekly entrepreneur stories from founders and CEOs who’ve built and scaled great businesses. Join the Business Leader community for coaching, peer to peer forums and exclusive learning events. Sign up to our free weekly newsletter at businessleader.co.uk/newsletters . Business Leader is a membership community for ambitious CEOs and founders of mid-sized UK companies, designed to help them grow with purpose through strategic support, peer-to-peer learning, expert coaching, and high-impact events. Sign up for our Business Leader newsletter here . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When Paula MacKenzie took over as CEO in 2022, PizzaExpress had been through seven CEOs in eleven years, a billion-pound debt restructuring, 73 restaurant closures, and a pandemic that decimated the casual dining sector. Four years on, she has refurbished three quarters of the estate, grown a loyalty app to four million members, and is targeting 1,000 restaurants worldwide by 2030. In this episode, Sir Richard Harpin, the host of the Business Leader podcast, delves into the numbers, the decisions, and the leadership thinking behind the business turnaround — including why profits fell even as revenue rose, what a refurbishment actually does to a restaurant's economics, and how MacKenzie is expanding PizzaExpress into new formats and new markets.They also cover her career journey — from Ernst & Young auditor to Diageo, GSK, Innocent Drinks and eleven years at KFC — what it takes to go cross-functional and make yourself the obvious CEO candidate, and the leadership lessons she has taken from four years running one of Britain's most scrutinised businesses. And, her advice to the new Chancellor of the Exchequer. In this episode: What PizzaExpress actually looked like when MacKenzie walked in — and the one thing the business needed most Why she changed much of the leadership team in her first months, and what a CEO transition coach told her before she even started How the loyalty app grew to four million members The refurbishment programme — and why underinvested restaurants are delivering 5–10% revenue uplifts The 1,000 restaurant target — and the new formats, franchise markets and US ambitions behind it Her four-stage playbook for any new CEO: arrive, assimilate, articulate, accelerate Why she believes you cannot overcommunicate — and how she mystery shops her own restaurants Subscribe to the Business Leader Podcast for weekly entrepreneur stories from founders and CEOs who’ve built and scaled great businesses. Join the Business Leader community for coaching, peer to peer forums and exclusive learning events. Sign up to our free weekly newsletter at businessleader.co.uk/newsletters . Business Leader is a membership community for ambitious CEOs and founders of mid-sized UK companies, designed to help them grow with purpose through strategic support, peer-to-peer learning, expert coaching, and high-impact events. Sign up for our Business Leader newsletter here . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sir Richard Harpin talks to Stephen Johnson, Managing Director of Quooker UK & Ireland, about how to scale a business to a £100m turnover without sacrificing culture. Stephen Johnson spent 26 years in his father's fitted furniture and kitchen business, Neville Johnson, then couldn't get hired anywhere else. Rejected by employer after employer who saw no value in "just working for your father," he eventually talked Quooker's Dutch owners into a six-month trial. With a hire car and 40 taps, he sold 999 hot water taps in his first year and that was the start of Quooker in the UK. Now he’s running a business with 750,000 customers, Johnson tells Sir Richard how he grew the business from his home office to £100m turnover, and why he's employed a full-time psychologist and a Premier League performance coach along the way. Also, the rationale behind his mantra of doing better than yesterday. Subscribe to the Business Leader Podcast for weekly entrepreneur stories from founders and CEOs who’ve built and scaled great businesses. Join the Business Leader community for coaching, peer to peer forums and exclusive learning events. Sign up to our free weekly newsletter at businessleader.co.uk/newsletters . Business Leader is a membership community for ambitious CEOs and founders of mid-sized UK companies, designed to help them grow with purpose through strategic support, peer-to-peer learning, expert coaching, and high-impact events. Sign up for our Business Leader newsletter here . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Emmie Faust founded 11 businesses - some of them failed and some of them succeeded - one sold for £7 million. She now runs Female Founders Rise, a 12,000-strong community helping women build, grow and scale their businesses. Faust talks to Sir Richard Harpin, host of the Business Leader Podcast, about the advantages of bootstrapping and scaling a business without outside investment, the real story behind her Dragons' Den investment from Theo Paphitis and why it ultimately failed, and how a personal health crisis during the pandemic led her to build a community for female founders - backed by Google, Shoosmiths, and the British Business Bank. Faust explains how she is supporting women in business at the early stages, through 127 angel investments in women-led businesses, and gives advice for founders preparing to pitch for investment. Subscribe to the Business Leader Podcast for weekly entrepreneur stories from founders and CEOs who’ve built and scaled great businesses. Join the Business Leader community for coaching, peer to peer forums and exclusive learning events. Sign up to our free weekly newsletter at businessleader.co.uk/newsletters . Business Leader is a membership community for ambitious CEOs and founders of mid-sized UK companies, designed to help them grow with purpose through strategic support, peer-to-peer learning, expert coaching, and high-impact events. Sign up for our Business Leader newsletter here . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mehma Bridgen co-founded The Fuel Store with her husband Jamie after leaving the police force — where she was working on a covert operation at just 22. Starting with nothing but cold calling and a small Birmingham office, she helped build a fuel card and fleet management business turning over more than £100 million. Bridgen talks to the host of the Business Leader Podcast, Sir Richard Harpin, about scaling a business from zero — the discipline, the mistakes, the moment they knew they needed an external CEO, her sales philosophy, and what working with your spouse is really like when the pressure mounts. Subscribe to the Business Leader Podcast for weekly entrepreneur stories from founders and CEOs who’ve built and scaled great businesses. Join the Business Leader community for coaching, peer to peer forums and exclusive learning events. Sign up to our free weekly newsletter at businessleader.co.uk/newsletters . Business Leader is a membership community for ambitious CEOs and founders of mid-sized UK companies, designed to help them grow with purpose through strategic support, peer-to-peer learning, expert coaching, and high-impact events. Sign up for our Business Leader newsletter here . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Nick Jenkins, founder of Moonpig, former Dragons' Den investor, and now a prolific angel investor with over 38 investments to his name, talks to Sir Richard Harpin on the Business Leader Podcast about the lessons he has learned along the way. Jenkins reveals how the business nearly collapsed several times and how a single comment from an investor director (raising the price of a card from £1.99 to £2.99) turned Moonpig from a business on the brink into a survivable, scalable company — and how a bold £50k TV advertising bet snowballed into £1.2 million a month in spend, taking turnover from £3 million to £45 million in three years. Also, how the money on the table in Dragons’ Den is not all real. Subscribe to the Business Leader Podcast and sign up to our free weekly newsletter at businessleader.co.uk/newsletters . Business Leader is a membership community for ambitious CEOs and founders of mid-sized UK companies, designed to help them grow with purpose through strategic support, peer-to-peer learning, expert coaching, and high-impact events. Sign up for our Business Leader newsletter here . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 1980, a young couple opened a travel agency in the back of a baby-wear shop in County Durham. Forty-six years later, Hays Travel is the UK’s largest independent travel agency with over 500 branches and more than £3 billion in annual turnover. It has never taken on a penny of debt. Dame Irene Hays talks to Sir Richard Harpin, the host of the Business Leader Podcast, about acquiring the entire retail estate of collapsed travel giant Thomas Cook in a matter of days, saving nearly 3,000 jobs with little due diligence and no safety net. Then the covid pandemic hit and her husband died suddenly — leaving Dame Irene as sole leader of a company haemorrhaging £1million a day. She didn't just hold it together. She built it into something bigger. Dame Irene explains what the golden thread of the business looks like — putting her staff at the heart and how nearly half of Hays Travel's senior managers started as apprentices. Also, she reflects on her success as part owner of Sunderland FC and the importance of sport for young people. Subscribe to the Business Leader Podcast and sign up to our free weekly newsletter at businessleader.co.uk/newsletters . Business Leader is a membership community for ambitious CEOs and founders of mid-sized UK companies, designed to help them grow with purpose through strategic support, peer-to-peer learning, expert coaching, and high-impact events. Sign up for our Business Leader newsletter here . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

£6,000, 399 meetings and one idea. Mia Drennan, founder and CEO of GLAS, turned a gap in bank-led loan administration into a global platform for servicing institutional debt that manages over $850 billion assets under management. GLAS, Global Loan Agency Services Limited, is now valued at over £1 billion. On this episode of the Business Leader Podcast, host Sir Richard Harpin unpacks how she bootstrapped her way to a successful business without giving up a single share until 2022, how she scaled it internationally and how to encourage more female-founded unicorns. Subscribe to the Business Leader Podcast and sign up to our free weekly newsletter at businessleader.co.uk/newsletters . Business Leader is a membership community for ambitious CEOs and founders of mid-sized UK companies, designed to help them grow with purpose through strategic support, peer-to-peer learning, expert coaching, and high-impact events. Sign up for our Business Leader newsletter here . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Donat Rétif joined Loveholidays in December 2019 — just three months before Covid shut down global travel. In this episode of the Business Leader Podcast, the CEO of the UK's largest online travel agent for package holidays talks to Sir Richard Harpin about how he not only survived that crisis but used it to triple the size of the business, build one of Britain's most impressive tech-driven growth stories, and put Loveholidays on course for an IPO. Also, what it's really like to run a private equity-backed business — and he advises CEOs to never deviate from your North Star. Subscribe to the Business Leader Podcast and sign up to our free weekly newsletter at businessleader.co.uk/newsletters . Business Leader is a membership community for ambitious CEOs and founders of mid-sized UK companies, designed to help them grow with purpose through strategic support, peer-to-peer learning, expert coaching, and high-impact events. Sign up for our Business Leader newsletter here . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

C.S. Venkatakrishnan — known as Venkat — took over as Barclays CEO in 2021, inheriting a bank with a share price under pressure and no shortage of sceptics. Four years on, profits are up, returns are up, and Barclays has committed to returning over £15 billion to shareholders by 2028. In this episode of the Business Leader Podcast, host Sir Richard Harpin asks the Barclays chief executive to unpack the strategy behind one of the UK's most closely-watched banking turnarounds. Venkat shares his lessons from 22 years at JP Morgan and working with Jamie Dimon, the inside story of Barclays' 2024 restructuring, why he believes the UK's Consumer Credit Act of 1973 is holding back consumer lending, and what banks should — and shouldn't — be liable for when it comes to motor finance, heat pumps and solar panels. He also opens up about being diagnosed with cancer four months into the top job, working through treatment, and the leadership lessons that got him — and Barclays — through it. Subscribe to the Business Leader Podcast and sign up to our free weekly newsletter at businessleader.co.uk/newsletters . Business Leader is a membership community for ambitious CEOs and founders of mid-sized UK companies, designed to help them grow with purpose through strategic support, peer-to-peer learning, expert coaching, and high-impact events. Sign up for our Business Leader newsletter here . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Manchester-based Nadine Merabi played Hockey professionally for England, bought a £250 sewing machine from Argos and taught herself how to sew. With no formal training she sold a collection to Selfridges and from there she stitched together a £40 million luxury fashion business. She talks candidly with host Sir Richard Harpin about the resilience needed to build a business from scratch —the only thing standing in entrepreneurs’ way is themselves. Merabi pivoted during covid into a Darcie pyjama line, which was worn by celebrities and still makes up a significant proportion of sales, but she draws the line at loungewear. She reveals why growing 800% in a year was her biggest mistake and what it taught her about culture and leadership. And her why her mantra has shifted from "pressure makes diamonds" to "planning makes profit". Also, she explains how her decision to hire a CEO frees her up to focus on what she does best: giving women confidence. Subscribe to the Business Leader Podcast and sign up to our free weekly newsletter at businessleader.co.uk/newsletters Business Leader is a membership community for ambitious CEOs and founders of mid-sized UK companies, designed to help them grow with purpose through strategic support, peer-to-peer learning, expert coaching, and high-impact events. Sign up for our Business Leader newsletter here . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Alidad Moghaddam, CEO of Blue Light Card the UK's leading discount platform for frontline and emergency service workers, talks to Sir Richard Harpin about what he's learned on his journey as a first-time chief executive and from his experiences in a private equity environment. Blue Light Card has grown from a small startup founded by a serving police officer into a platform supporting more than six million frontline workers. From expanding into Australia, to building a high-performance culture rooted in radical candour and mission-driven hiring, Alidad offers tips for any business leader scaling a business. He shares the lessons he learned helping grow Trainline and taking it to a successful IPO, what the perspective of an angel investor taught him, and why culture matters most during periods of mergers and acquisitions. He explains why being clear about the strategy and vision, defining the operating model and making the difficult calls early are key to success. Subscribe to the Business Leader Podcast and sign up to our free weekly newsletter at businessleader.co.uk/newsletters Business Leader is a membership community for ambitious CEOs and founders of mid-sized UK companies, designed to help them grow with purpose through strategic support, peer-to-peer learning, expert coaching, and high-impact events. Sign up for our Business Leader newsletter here . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.