Episode #638: ScaleUp Club - Seeds, Nets and Spears: Building Predictable Lead Generation
Release Date: 08/10/2026
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...
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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...
info_outlineGrowing a business beyond founder-led sales is one of the biggest challenges many SMEs face.
In this special ScaleUp Club edition of ScaleUp Radio, Kevin Brent is joined once again by returning guest Dhanushka Tennakoon from RE24 for an interactive Q&A session exploring one of the biggest questions facing growing businesses:
How do you create a predictable flow of new opportunities instead of relying on referrals and hope?
Alongside the discussion, Kevin also shares this month's AI Pulse update, covering one of the most talked about AI stories of recent weeks and what it means for business leaders.
Whether you're approaching your first £1 million in turnover or looking to build a more scalable commercial engine, this session is packed with practical ideas you can implement immediately.
In this episode
- AI Pulse: What happened when Anthropic's latest language model was reportedly withdrawn shortly after launch and what founders should take from the rapid pace of AI development.
- Why so many businesses become trapped by founder dependency.
- Understanding Aaron Ross's Seeds, Nets and Spears framework for predictable lead generation.
- Why referrals alone rarely create a scalable business.
- How targeted outreach can open entirely new markets.
- The importance of balancing new customer acquisition with growing existing client relationships.
- Why choosing the right niche can transform growth.
- How RE24 pivoted from multiple industries to becoming specialists in data centres.
- Practical advice for reducing reliance on founder-led sales.
- Live coaching with ScaleUp Club members on applying the framework to their own businesses.
Key discussion points
AI Pulse
Kevin shares the latest developments from the AI world, including the reported security concerns surrounding Anthropic's latest model and what this tells us about the extraordinary pace of AI capability.
Rather than simply chasing every new tool, founders should focus on understanding where AI can genuinely improve decision making, productivity and business performance.
Seeds, Nets and Spears
The central discussion explores Aaron Ross's well-known framework:
Seeds
High trust opportunities generated through referrals, introductions and existing relationships.
Nets
Scalable marketing activities including content, SEO, social media and broader awareness campaigns.
Spears
Highly targeted outreach aimed at carefully researched organisations where there is a strong strategic fit.
The key message is that healthy businesses develop all three rather than relying on a single source of leads.
Why niche matters
Dhanushka shares RE24's journey from trying to serve multiple industries to focusing specifically on data centres.
That decision created:
- a clearly defined customer profile
- faster buying decisions
- stronger market positioning
- more effective sales conversations
- predictable growth opportunities
Rather than chasing every opportunity, focusing on one market allowed the business to build genuine expertise and competitive advantage.
Live ScaleUp Club coaching
A highlight of the session is the discussion with Paul Rhodes from Green Gorilla Automation.
Like many growing businesses, sales currently depend heavily on the founder and warm introductions.
Together, the group explores how carefully researched "Spears" could help create a more repeatable sales process while reducing founder dependency.
Practical actions
After listening, consider these three actions:
- Review where every lead has come from over the last six months.
- Categorise your activities into Seeds, Nets and Spears.
- Identify one repeatable activity within each category and commit to executing it consistently.
One standout message
Predictable growth doesn't come from doing more marketing. It comes from building a balanced system that consistently creates new opportunities.
The one key thing
If your pipeline depends mainly on referrals or the founder, your business isn't yet scalable. Creating a deliberate mix of Seeds, Nets and Spears is one of the fastest ways to build predictable growth.
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