Episode #527 - Leading Change Through People, Not Just Process - with Uzma Aitqad
Release Date: 10/13/2025
Episode #651: Transforming Chaos into Calm: The Boutique Housekeeping Revolution - with Caroline Chilly and Harriet Greenmount
ScaleUp Radio
In this episode of ScaleUp Radio, Kevin Brent is joined by Caroline Chilley and Harriet, co-founders of Boutique Housekeeping, a business that is changing the way busy families think about support in the home. Boutique Housekeeping sits in the space between a traditional cleaning service and employing full-time household staff. Its house managers provide a much broader service, helping with housekeeping, tidying, laundry, shopping, meal preparation, errands and PA-style tasks. But this conversation is about far more than housekeeping. It is a fascinating ScaleUp story about finding the right...
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Episode #650: The Art of Leadership: Empowering Founders to Scale Their Businesses - with Tom Van Dyke
ScaleUp Radio
What happens when the thing that got your business growing becomes the very thing stopping it from scaling? In this episode of ScaleUp Radio, Kevin Brent is joined by Thom Van Dycke to explore a challenge that will be familiar to many founder led businesses: growth initially comes because of the founder’s network, relationships, energy and ability to sell. But eventually, there are only so many people the founder knows and only so many hours in the day. At that point, the founder can become the bottleneck. Thom’s own journey into business is unusual. After spending around 20 years as a...
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Episode #649: Building A Business That Can Run Without You
ScaleUp Radio
In this episode of ScaleUp Radio, host Kevin Brent is joined by entrepreneur Rachel Hill, whose journey takes us from building and selling a multi site childcare business to breathing new life into a closed model village and launching a new consumer brand almost by accident. Rachel started Hillside Childcare at just 26, converting a granny flat into a 16 place nursery as a way of helping to pay a new mortgage. That first nursery eventually became a four site operation looking after 299 children. What makes Rachel’s story particularly interesting is not simply the growth. It is what she...
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Episode #648: Focus, Data and Building a Business That Can Scale - with John Readman
ScaleUp Radio
In this episode of ScaleUp Radio, host Kevin Brent is joined by John Readman, founder of ASK BOSCO and Modo25, to explore what it really takes to turn a big idea into a focused, scalable business. John's journey offers a particularly useful lesson for founders: sometimes scaling isn't about doing more. It's about narrowing your focus. ASK BOSCO was created to tackle a problem familiar to many e-commerce businesses. Marketing teams can see return on ad spend, finance teams can see profitability, and platforms such as Google, Meta and TikTok all report their own versions of performance. But...
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Episode #647: How to Codify Your Company’s Genius and Escape Commoditisation - with Simon Bowen
ScaleUp Radio
What makes your business genuinely different? And, more importantly, could your team explain it without you in the room? In this episode of ScaleUp Radio, Kevin Brent talks with Simon Bowen about the Models Method, the power of visual thinking, and why growing businesses need to codify the distinctive thinking that sits behind what they do. Simon argues that many founder-led businesses have something genuinely special, but much of it remains locked inside the founder’s head. As the business grows, that thinking can become diluted internally. The result is that customers increasingly struggle...
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Episode #646: ScaleUp Club - Aligning Personal & Business Goals - with James West
ScaleUp Radio
This episode of ScaleUp Radio is a little different. We’re taking you inside one of our monthly ScaleUp Club sessions, where members get the opportunity to explore some of the challenges that come with building and scaling a business, share their experiences and put questions to our guest. This month, our main theme was Aligning Personal & Business Goals, and we welcomed back James West, co-founder of ONLE, for a Q&A about building a business that supports the life you actually want to lead. We also had an AI Pulse update from Tim Winstanley, looking at AI watermarking, the...
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Episode #645: Scaling Through Change: Leadership, Diversification and Building a Stronger Manufacturing Business - with Suzie Siddall
ScaleUp Radio
In this episode of ScaleUp Radio, host Kevin Brent is joined by Suzie Siddall, CEO of Opus International Products, a Warwickshire-based precision engineering and manufacturing business working across automotive, aerospace, defence, industrial and medical sectors. Suzie’s story is one of leadership through significant change. Having moved from Managing Director to CEO following the death of the company’s founder in 2024, she has had to balance continuity with the need to reshape the business for its next stage of growth. Today, Opus has a team of around 33 people and significant UK...
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Episode #644: From Generalist to Niche: Scaling Through Focus, Certification and Community - with Janet Tanguay
ScaleUp Radio
What happens when you stop saying yes to everything and commit to the part of your business that customers really want? In this episode of ScaleUp Radio, host Kevin Brent talks to Janet Tanguay, founder of The Hammock Way of Life, about the journey from broad business consulting to building a scalable business around vision boarding, coach certification and a growing global community. Janet's story is a great example of how focus can unlock growth. The turning point came during and after the pandemic. Janet had been using vision boarding to help businesses think creatively about their future,...
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Episode #643: Trust Isn’t a Feeling. It’s a KPI - with Rob McKenna
ScaleUp Radio
What if one of the biggest constraints on your ability to scale is something you’re not measuring at all? In this episode of ScaleUp Radio, Kevin Brent is joined by Rob McKenna for a fascinating discussion about trust: how to measure it, why founders frequently misjudge it, and why building trust isn’t about creating a perfect culture. Rob introduces the WiLD Trust Index, a framework designed to turn trust from something intangible into something leaders can measure, understand and deliberately improve. For founders, there’s a particularly important message here. Delegation and...
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Episode #642: Building to Sell, Starting Again and Where AI Changes Business Value - with Gavin Bell
ScaleUp Radio
What would you do differently if you knew from day one that somebody else would eventually need to run your business? In this episode of ScaleUp Radio, I’m joined by Gavin Bell, entrepreneur and founder of Yatta, the paid media agency he deliberately built to be sellable before its acquisition by Velstar in 2024. Gavin’s story is particularly interesting because selling Yatta wasn’t something that simply happened after years of building the agency. It influenced how he designed the business from the outset. Inspired by Built to Sell, Gavin moved away from building a business around his...
info_outlineIn this episode of ScaleUp Radio, we dive into one of the most underestimated – and most essential – elements of successful business growth: change management.
Our guest, Uzma Aitqad, brings over 25 years of experience in the corporate world and a deep understanding of organisational change. As the founder of Magna People Change Consulting, she now helps SMEs navigate complex digital transformations by focusing on people, not just process.
The episode unfolds in three parts:
- Uzma’s journey from electronics engineering to change consultancy, and the founding of Magna.
- Her practical insights into scaling challenges, the human barriers to change, and why 70% of change initiatives fail.
- A rapid-fire round covering Uzma’s favourite resources, leadership tips, and more.
The one key thing:
Successful change is not about technology – it’s about people. If your team isn’t on board, the transformation won’t stick.
Whether you're an SME founder struggling to let go of control, or a leader trying to build agility into your team, this episode is full of practical strategies to help you scale with confidence.
Make sure you don’t miss any future episodes by subscribing to ScaleUp Radio wherever you like to listen to your podcasts.
For now, continue listening for the full story from Uzma.
Scaling up your business isn't easy, and can be a little daunting. Let ScaleUp Radio make it a little easier for you. With guests who have been where you are now, and can offer their thoughts and advice on several aspects of business. ScaleUp Radio is the business podcast you've been waiting for.
If you would like to be a guest on ScaleUp Radio, please click here:
https://bizsmarts.co.uk/scaleupradio/kevin
You can get in touch with Kevin & Granger here:
Kevin's Latest Book Is Available!
Drawing on BizSmart’s own research and experiences of working with hundreds of owner-managers, Kevin Brent explores the key reasons why most organisations do not scale and how the challenges change as they reach different milestones on the ScaleUp Journey. He then details a practical step by step guide to successfully navigate between the milestones in the form of ESUS - a proven system for entrepreneurs to scale up.
More on the Book HERE - https://www.esusgroup.co.uk/
Uzma can be found here:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/uzma-aitqad/
https://www.magnapeoplechange.com/
Resources:
People-centric Organisational Change By Julie Hodges - https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/people-centric-organizational-change-engaging-employees-with-business-transformation-professor-julie-hodges/df2a1743f3b4d71c?ean=9781398612556&next=t
Atomic Habits by James Clear - https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/atomic-habits-the-life-changing-million-copy-1-bestseller-james-clear/2458373?ean=9781847941831&next=t&next=t
Transformation Talk Podcast - https://samforget.com/podcast/
Manus AI - https://manus.im/
Perplexity - https://www.perplexity.ai/
Napkin AI - https://www.napkin.ai/