Episode #633: ScaleUp Radio Shorts: AI, Hidden Costs and Getting Back to Your Zone of Genius
Release Date: 07/24/2026
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_outlineWhat do artificial intelligence and cost optimisation have in common?
At first glance, not much.
But when Kevin Brent and Louise Blunt compare two recent ScaleUp Radio interviews, a clear theme emerges. Whether you're using AI to remove administration or reviewing supplier contracts to eliminate unnecessary costs, the goal is exactly the same:
Freeing founders to spend more time doing what only they can do.
In this ScaleUp Radio Shorts episode, Kevin and Louise explore the practical lessons from conversations with Julie Begbie, founder of the AI Confidence Club, and Ryan Olson from ERA Group, uncovering how better systems create more time, more profit and better businesses.
In this episode you'll discover:
- Why most business owners still aren't getting the best from AI
- How to create an AI "Business Brain" that produces content in your own voice
- Why AI should replace admin, not the work you genuinely love doing
- How to identify your own Zone of Genius and spend more time there
- The million-dollar donut story and what it teaches about supplier relationships
- A simple three-step framework for finding hidden profit in your business
- Why delegation without monitoring quickly becomes abdication
- How unconscious bias affects recruitment and limits growth
- Why scaling successfully starts with recognising your own limitations
One standout message
Scaling isn't about doing more. It's about removing everything that stops you doing what matters most.
Key takeaway
The biggest opportunities to improve your business are often already there. AI can give you back valuable time, while reviewing operational costs can release cash that's already inside your business. Together, they allow founders to focus on the work that creates the greatest value.
Resources mentioned
- AI Confidence Club
- Julie Begbie's AI Super Sheet
- ERA Group
- Gallup StrengthsFinder
- Greg McKeown's Essentialism
About Smart90
Most founders I 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 where we work through everything competing for your attention, identify the three to five priorities that matter over the next 90 days, then build the accountability and execution system to make sure they happen.
Quarterly, virtual, £97 per seat.
Visit Smart90.co.uk/summit to find out more.
ScaleUp Radio Shorts is hosted by Kevin Brent and Louise Blunt and is brought to you by Smart90.
This episode was produced with the aid of AI, with final editing and review by the ScaleUp Radio team.