Episode #635: Can we still trust a CV in the age of AI? - with Lee Nazari
Release Date: 07/29/2026
Episode #655: From Acquisition to Focus: Scaling NBR - with Michaela Cusack
ScaleUp Radio
In this episode of ScaleUp Radio, host Kevin Brent is joined by Michaela Cusack, solicitor and co-owner of NBR, to explore what really happens when you acquire an established business and then set about changing its direction. Michaela and her business partner Matt acquired NBR in 2020. They were stepping into an unfamiliar intellectual property sector, taking responsibility for a long-established team and, almost immediately, dealing with the impact of Covid. Their rationale for the acquisition was compelling. Through Matt’s work in mergers and acquisitions, they had seen how businesses...
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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...
info_outlineArtificial Intelligence has made applying for jobs easier than ever. It has also made it much harder for employers to identify the best candidates.
In this episode of ScaleUp Radio, Kevin Brent speaks with entrepreneur Lee Nazari, founder of Interviewa, a platform using conversational AI and on camera interviews to help recruiters, universities and job seekers cut through the growing noise created by AI generated CVs.
Following a life changing personal tragedy, Lee chose to build something with genuine purpose. The result is Interviewa, a business focused on creating fairer, faster and more authentic recruitment and admissions processes while helping candidates prepare for interviews with confidence.
One standout message from this conversation is:
"The CV is becoming less valuable. The conversation is becoming more valuable."
Lee explains why businesses need to rethink how they assess talent and why execution, partnerships and data are becoming the real competitive advantages in an AI powered world.
In this episode we discuss:
- Why AI generated CVs are creating huge challenges for recruiters
- How Interviewa uses conversational AI to screen every candidate through video interviews
- The importance of follow up questions and authentic conversations
- How anti cheat technology helps maintain interview integrity
- Why transparency builds trust when candidates know they are speaking with AI
- How universities are using Interviewa to improve admissions and student employability
- The new AI Job Consultant helping people identify career opportunities they may never have considered
- How one recruitment agency achieved a 25 times return on investment using Interviewa
- Why execution is now a stronger competitive advantage than simply having a good idea
- Building defensibility through partnerships, proprietary data and compliance
- Lessons in leadership, delegation and trusting great people
- Why every business owner now needs AI literacy
About Lee Nazari
Lee Nazari is the Founder of Interviewa, an AI powered interview platform transforming recruitment, university admissions and interview preparation.
Interviewa combines conversational AI, intelligent screening and personalised interview summaries to help organisations make better hiring decisions while giving candidates a fairer opportunity to demonstrate their potential.
The one key thing
The businesses that win with AI will not simply automate existing processes. They will redesign them around better conversations, faster decisions and stronger human outcomes.
Smart90
Most founders I speak to feel busy but stuck. Plenty is happening but it is not always clear what genuinely matters most this quarter.
If that sounds familiar, the G90 Summit is worth a look.
It is a structured half day virtual workshop where we work through everything competing for your attention, identify the three to five priorities that will have the biggest impact over the next 90 days, then build the system to make sure they actually happen.
Quarterly, virtual and just £97 per seat.
Find out more at Smart90.co.uk/summit.
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.
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https://bizsmarts.co.uk/scaleupradio/kevin
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