Episode #648: Focus, Data and Building a Business That Can Scale - with John Readman

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 those numbers don't necessarily add up to a clear answer to the question that really matters:

Where should we spend our next pound to generate the most profit?

ASK BOSCO brings those disparate sources together, de-duplicates the data and helps businesses connect marketing activity with commercial performance.

But the technology is only part of John's ScaleUp story.

One of the standout moments in our conversation is John's account of being told that ASK BOSCO's original strategy was simply too broad. Rather than defending the original plan, the team listened, narrowed its focus and rebuilt the proposition around the Shopify ecosystem.

That decision created a much clearer route to market and helped underpin a £4.1 million investment from Gresham House Ventures.

The standout message

Focus can be a growth strategy.

The temptation when building an ambitious business is to serve more markets, add more features and pursue more opportunities. John's experience suggests the opposite can sometimes create far greater value: choose the market where you can win, remove friction and execute relentlessly.

We also explore the people and culture behind the businesses.

John talks about creating a high-performance environment based on trust, transparency and accountability. That includes a four-day working week on full-time pay, measuring people on outputs rather than hours, monthly visibility of KPIs and even creating a deliberate "not-to-do" list.

There's an interesting influence from military discipline too: punctuality, clear processes, teamwork and people knowing what's expected of them.

In this episode, we discuss:

• Why marketing ROAS and actual business profitability can tell very different stories

• How ASK BOSCO creates a clearer view of marketing performance

• Why linking product profitability to individual campaigns matters

• The decision to pivot from a broad analytics proposition to a Shopify-first strategy

• Why external advice can be invaluable when it challenges your assumptions

• Raising £4.1 million in venture capital and what investors bring beyond money

• Building a scalable SaaS model through the Shopify ecosystem

• Why human onboarding and support can be a competitive advantage in an increasingly AI-driven market

• Using a four-day week to focus on outputs rather than inputs

• Creating a "not-to-do" list to protect strategic focus

• Using a small number of annual "Big Rocks" to create alignment

• How transparency, discipline and trust shape company culture

• John's longer-term ambition for ASK BOSCO

The one key thing...

Scaling often means having the confidence to choose less.

ASK BOSCO became more investable and potentially more scalable when the team stopped trying to solve the problem for everybody and committed to a clearly defined ecosystem.

For founders facing dozens of apparently good opportunities, John's story is a reminder that the question isn't simply "What could we do?"

It's "What should we deliberately choose not to do so we can execute the things that matter?"

From more, to less, to done

Most founders I speak to feel busy but frustrated. Plenty is happening, but they're not moving forward at the rate they want to.

Often that's because success creates more options, pulling founders and their teams in different directions.

More than 500 interviews on ScaleUp Radio have reinforced something important: the founders who scale choose less, and deliver all of it.

That's what the G90 Summit is for.

It's a structured half-day where we cut through everything competing for your attention, agree the three to five things that must happen in the next 90 days, and build the rhythm to make sure they do.

From the frustration and chaos of more, through the discipline of less, to the rhythm of done.

Quarterly. Virtual. £97 a seat.

Smart90.co.uk/summit

Listen to the full episode to hear John's ScaleUp journey and the lessons he's learned from building, focusing, funding and leading growing businesses.

 

Resources:

Black Box Thinking – Matthew Syed (World of Books website)

The One Minute Manager – Kenneth Blanchard (World of Books website)

Who Moved My Cheese – Spencer Johnson (World of Books website)

Fish – Stephen C. Lundin (World of Books website)

PODCASTS

Leaders on Shopify (John Readman’s own podcast.)
Built to Sell – John Warrillow

The Prof G podcast with Scott Galloway
Acquired.fm

 

 CONTACT

 

[email protected]

 

LinkedIn.com - John Readman