This week Nick talks to Charles Skinner

Charles Skinner is a leading authority on Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition (ETA). As CEO, he transformed a £3m business into a £100m exit and grew another company’s value 30-fold to £300m, earning AIM Company of the Year in 2016. He is currently the CEO of Restore PLC, and the author of Buy, Run, Build: A Guide to Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition. Charles also advises the ETA search fund Mentmore Associates and chairs four private companies. 

Nick and Charles discuss Charles Skinner’s unconventional career path, beginning in investment banking before moving into venture capital, journalism and ultimately discovering his strengths in running and improving real businesses. Charles reflects on how he gradually shifted away from finance-led roles towards hands-on leadership, realising he was far more interested in building companies than simply analysing them. He and Nick explore the early stages of his journey, including lessons learned from missteps, the appeal of smaller operational businesses, and the importance of understanding people, staying humble and learning from failure.

They then turn to the rise, challenges and rebuilding of Restore, the company most associated with Charles’s leadership. Nick and Charles also explore themes such as entrepreneurship through acquisition, decentralised leadership, motivating teams, and managing crises with transparency and decisiveness. Charles illustrates these ideas with candid stories about leadership errors, boardroom politics and the importance of “running towards the gunfire” when problems arise.

Charles’s book choices were:
The Practice of Management by Peter F Drucker
https://www.worldofbooks.com/en-gb/products/practice-of-management-the-book-peter-f-drucker-9780434903894

Parkinson's Law by C Northcote Parkinson
https://www.worldofbooks.com/en-gb/products/parkinson-s-law-book-c-northcote-parkinson-9780140023664

Charles’s music choice was:
Bach: The Goldberg Variations played by Glenn Gould
https://open.spotify.com/album/1aCpHSQE5ghxibsQ5gkBe0

Charles' Book - Buy, Run, Build: A Guide to Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition - is available here

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