Business Leader

What can a comedy legend teach you about business? Plenty. In this episode, John Cleese reveals how creativity isn’t just for the arts — it’s a vital skill for problem-solving, strategy and innovation in business. Drawing from a fascination with creativity that spans five decades, Cleese shares how “play” and the “tortoise mind” can unlock ground-breaking ideas, why interruptions kill creativity,...

Best-selling author, behavioural scientist and hypnotist Paul McKenna explains the powerful role that manifestation can play in business success and debunks some myths. From Sir Richard Branson's game-changing Virgin Atlantic vision to practical exercises that rewire your brain for achievement, McKenna shows how "manifesting" is simply strategic planning in disguise. In this episode, you will lear...

Docusign made its name in the early 2000s by pioneering the idea of e-signatures in digital contracts. Since then it has grown into a multi-billion dollar tech company. The technology came into its own during the Covid-19 pandemic, helping businesses to keep running when everyone worked remotely. However, that dramatic spike in demand ultimately unsettled the company. Thygesen joined from Google i...

What are the news stories, issues and trends that will matter to businesses in 2025? In this special episode, the Business Leader team - Graham Ruddick, Sarah Vizard, Dougal Shaw and Josh Dornbrack - get together to share what they have been hearing from business leaders, what they are looking forward to in 2025 and what they want businesses to stop doing in the year ahead The episode includes: Wh...

Is being in the details, micro-managing and following your instincts the key to building a business? Has an obsession with professional managers blinded us to what really matters in founding and scaling a business? Welcome to the debate about founder mode v manager mode, which was started by Brian Chesky, the co-founder of Airbnb, and Paul Graham, the co-founder of Y Combinator. Will Shu, the chie...

What will the business world look like in 2025? What do big investors think about the UK and UK businesses? Are they optimistic or pessimistic about 2025 given the fallout from the UK Budget and the election of Donald Trump in the US? Business Leader's editor-in-chief Graham Ruddick gathers three of the biggest investors in UK businesses to discuss these key questions for 2025. The investors are:...

In this special episode of the Business Leader Podcast, Graham Ruddick, Sarah Vizard and Dougal Shaw get together to discuss what they have learned in 2024 and their top business tips. This includes: -The healthy paranoia that drives successful business leaders -How to really be authentic at work and why it matters -Why you should seek to operate below full capacity to perform at your best and why...

Why has Ikea been such a success in the UK? Why did it open its first shop in Warrington, Cheshire? What is "chuck out your chintz" all about? And what does this unique business look for in staff? In part two of our look at how Ikea became one of the biggest retailers in the world, Graham Ruddick speaks to Peter Jelkeby, the chief executive and chief sustainability officer for Ikea in the UK and I...

From humble beginnings in rural Sweden in the 1940s, Ikea has grown into one of the best-known brands in the world. But do you know the story behind it? Over two episodes, Dougal Shaw and Graham Ruddick will look at Ikea from two different perspectives for Business Leader. In this first episode, Dougal speaks to Jesper Brodin, the CEO of Ingka Group, the business behind Ikea's global retail operat...

Fraser Smeaton co-founded MorphCostumes with his brother and a friend in 2009 in Edinburgh. It began as a side-hustle specialising in a particular kind of striking, head-to-toe party costume made of Spandex, the "Morphsuit". An immediate success, the co-founders quit their jobs and the company turned over £1m in its first year. However, by 2014 it was clear the company was becoming a victim of its...

What does it take to run a sport? What does the job involve? And how do you end up in a job like that? Simon Brownell is the chief executive of the World Snooker Tour. He is in charge of running the top snooker events and trying to expand the sport's audience around the world. Snooker is a quirky sport in many ways, but its growth in China is extraordinary and many businesses would love to be able...

Kimberly-Clark was founded in 1872 in Wisconsin in North America. It initially operated paper mills and today owns Andrex, Kleenex, Huggies nappies and other well-known consumer brands. More than 150 years after it was founded, the company is still thriving and relevant to consumers. Kimberly-Clark was one of the companies that featured in Jim Collins' definitive business book Good to Great , whic...

What does being purpose-led actually mean? How do you make it a reality? And why do you need to be purpose-led to get the best out of yourself and others? John Blakey is an executive coach for FTSE 100 chief executives, founders and top public sector officials. He has written a new book called  Force for Good: How to Thrive as a Purpose-Driven Leader . In the new episode of Business Leader we...

Philips is the electronics brand behind a host of household appliances and it launched the air fryer, one of the most successful new products of the 21st Century so far. The history of the Philips brand dates back to the 1800s. Today the company that makes Philips products for consumers is called Versuni and the chief executive is Veronique Pauwels. In this episode of the Business Leader podcast w...

Monday.com is a global software giant worth more than $14bn (£11bn) that has emerged from outside Silicon Valley. It lets companies build their own work and project management tools. This approach is often referred to as low code or no code. It gives teams the flexibility to build their own apps and control workflows. Monday.com was founded in Israel in 2012 and went public in the US on Nasdaq in...

Huel is one of the fastest-growing companies in the UK. The food and nutrition business has ambitions to be the next billion-dollar food brand and has already succeeded where many other UK brands have failed by breaking into the US. This is the story behind Huel's unique recruitment, marketing and growth strategy... Business Leader is a membership community for ambitious CEOs and founders of mid-s...

In this episode of Business Leader we speak to not one but four chief executives. They will help you understand housing associations and why they are the biggest organisations you have never heard of, why they left jobs in big business to lead not-for-profit organisations and how to tackle the housing crisis in the UK. We speak to the chief executives of four of the biggest housing associations in...

CMR Surgical is one of the most exciting businesses in the UK, but you probably haven't heard its story. Until now. Dr Mark Slack, the co-founder and chief medical officer, guides us through how CMR built a robot to do keyhole surgery and became a business valued at more than $3bn (£2.3bn), backed by investment giants like SoftBank and Tencent. It is a story that involves a failed athletics career...

Since 2017 Fawn Weaver has been building a new global whisky brand from Tennessee in the US, called Uncle Nearest. It stands out because it is inspired by the first known African American master distiller, Nathan “Nearest” Green. He was a former slave who worked very closely with Jack Daniel. It’s a story that fascinated Weaver when she first learned about it in 2016, so much so that she relocated...

Alex Depledge and Jules Coleman sold their first business Hassle.com for nearly £30m. But instead of taking the opportunity to take a step back and enjoy life, they went again and launched a second start-up - Resi. So, what is it like building a business for the second time? What is different? And why do it all again? Business Leader is a membership community for ambitious CEOs and founders of mid...

James Daunt has turned around Waterstones in the UK and Barnes & Noble in the US. That gives him a unique insight into what it takes to run successful shops on both sides of the Atlantic at a time when many high street businesses are failing. In this podcast episode, we take a detailed look at how Daunt runs his book shops and the strategy that is required to succeed... If you enjoyed this epi...

Monzo is one of the most promising and fastest-growing companies in the UK. But when TS Anil became chief executive of the digital bank in 2020, there were question marks about its business model and whether it could grow beyond its loyal collection of millennial fans. Today it is worth £4bn and has more than 10 million customers. This is the story of how Monzo scaled-up into a big business and to...

In the 1980s and the 1990s, Serie A was the best football league in the world. The Italian league was where players wanted to play and what fans wanted to watch. Diego Maradona, Marco van Basten and Roberto Baggio were superstars and playing in Serie A. But in recent years that has not been the case. Serie A has been overtaken by other leagues, notably the English Premier League. Now, however, Ser...

Sir Rocco Forte has led two businesses worth more than £1 billion. The first, Forte Group, was founded by his father, Charles. It owned hotels and restaurants and was one of the biggest companies in the UK. But in 1996 it was lost. Forte was taken over by Granada after a hostile bid battle and then dismantled. Sir Rocco had to start again. At first he had no properties and couldn't even use the fa...

Andrew Dudum founded Hims & Hers to try to bring healthcare into the digital age. The business is a wellness platform that specialises in treatments for conditions that traditionally have a stigma attached, such as hair loss, acne and erectile dysfunction. It allows people access to over-the-counter drugs and prescriptions following an online consultation with a qualified doctor. The company w...