Episode #630: ScaleUp Radio Shorts - Humaning, Tech, and True Focus: Lessons from Melissa Thornley and Vicki Ayton
Release Date: 07/17/2026
Episode #654: ScaleUp Club: Brand Promises. Say It, Mean It, Live It - with Jake Young
ScaleUp Radio
What does your business really promise its customers – and would your team, your suppliers and your customers all give the same answer? This special edition of ScaleUp Radio was recorded live at our latest ScaleUp Club, where we explored the theme “Brand Promise: Say it, mean it, live it.” Rather than our usual one-to-one conversation, this episode brings together three parts of the ScaleUp Club session: an AI Pulse update from Paul Rhodes of Green Gorilla Software, some thoughts from Kevin Brent on why brand promise is a strategic issue rather than simply a marketing one, and a...
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Episode #653: From Kitchen Table to Entrepreneurship - with Carole Duck
ScaleUp Radio
What happens when you spot a problem in your own life, create a solution at home, and gradually discover there could be a much bigger business hiding inside it? In this episode of ScaleUp Radio, Kevin Brent talks to Carole Duck, founder of Duxanall Dogbedz, about building a product-led business from the kitchen table, bootstrapping its growth and finding opportunities to move from a handmade product towards a more scalable and potentially higher-margin business. Carole’s original product came from a very practical problem: a puppy that kept chewing expensive dog beds. Her solution was a...
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Episode #652: Is Command and Control Holding Your Business Back? - with Peter Laughter
ScaleUp Radio
In this episode of ScaleUp Radio, Kevin Brent is joined by Peter Laughter for a fascinating discussion about distributed leadership, why traditional command and control management is increasingly becoming a constraint on growing businesses, and what leaders can do instead. Peter knows the command and control model from experience. He grew a staffing business from around $500,000 to $12 million in revenue in five years. But that success eventually exposed a problem familiar to many growing businesses: when too many decisions and too much responsibility sit with the person at the top, the leader...
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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...
info_outlineIn this edition of ScaleUp Radio Shorts, Kevin Brent and Louise Blunt reflect on two fascinating conversations with leadership expert Melissa Thornley and social entrepreneur Vicki Ayton.
Although their businesses couldn't be more different, both guests arrive at remarkably similar conclusions. Sustainable growth isn't driven by working harder or adopting the latest technology. It's built by developing better leaders, creating resilient teams, maintaining genuine human connection, and focusing attention on what matters most.
From emotional intelligence and feedback cultures to AI, climate resilience and practical productivity systems, this episode explores what founders should really be investing in as they scale.
In this episode
You'll discover:
- Why trying to do everything yourself is one of the biggest barriers to scaling
- The importance of emotional intelligence alongside artificial intelligence
- Why managing your attention is far more important than managing your time
- How resilient businesses are built through resilient people
- Practical ways to build accountability without creating blame
- Why community, collaboration and purpose create stronger organisations
- How technology should support human judgement rather than replace it
- Why writing things down can still outperform another productivity app
- The role of kindness and self-compassion in high-performing teams
One standout message
"Wherever your AI skills are, your emotional intelligence needs to be at the same level."
It's a simple reminder that as technology accelerates, the businesses that thrive will still be the ones that communicate well, build trust and genuinely understand people.
The one key takeaway
Technology may improve efficiency, but people create sustainable growth. Invest in leadership, relationships and focus first.
About our guests
Melissa Thornley is a leadership and emotional intelligence consultant who helps organisations develop resilient leaders, stronger communication and healthier workplace cultures across industries ranging from manufacturing to emergency services.
Vicki Ayton is the founder of BizEd Projects, a Community Interest Company helping communities improve digital inclusion, employability, environmental resilience and local skills development.
Resources mentioned
- Emotional Intelligence (EI)
- Artificial Intelligence tools including ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini
- Focused Space virtual co-working
- Smart90
- G90 Summit
Smart90
Most founders we speak to feel busy but stuck. Plenty is happening, but it's not always clear what genuinely matters most this quarter.
If that's you, the G90 Summit is worth a look.
It's a structured half-day session where we work through everything competing for your attention, identify the three to five priorities that will move your business forward over the next 90 days, then build the systems and accountability to make sure they actually happen.
Quarterly, virtual and just £97 per seat.
Find out more at Smart90.co.uk/summit.
Produced with the aid of AI
This episode of ScaleUp Radio Shorts was researched, structured and produced with the aid of artificial intelligence, with editorial review and final approval by the ScaleUp Radio team.