Beyond the Numbers with Bev Wakefield

At 24, Barbara Baker was told she had just 12 months to live.

What followed was not simply a story of survival. That diagnosis shaped how Barbara approached risk, leadership, business and life for decades to come. Barbara went from nurse to entrepreneur, building a workplace nursery business that grew to ten locations across the UK.

Along the way, she raised a family as a single parent, fought to be taken seriously by investors, survived a devastating fraud and eventually faced the unexpected emotional cost of selling the business she had spent 16 years building.

In this episode of Beyond the Numbers, Bev and Barbara explore the difference between surviving and truly thriving, how our experiences shape the way we lead, and why resilience is often less about one dramatic act of courage and more about simply taking the next step.

Barbara is a Chartered Director, leadership coach and author of From Claudia to Cruella: A Tale of Grit, Growth and the Audacity to Thrive.

Find out more about Barbara Baker: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/barbarabaker/

Buy From Claudia to Cruella: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Claudia-Cruella-Barbara-Baker/dp/183628554X

Beyond the Numbers is Hosted by Bev Wakefield, founder of Vibrant Accountancy.

Beyond the Numbers explores the conversations that help business owners build stronger, more resilient businesses.

Each episode features practical insights from experienced leaders, entrepreneurs and experts, focusing on the decisions, mindset and ideas that create long-term success.

What happens when the business you built starts becoming the beast you serve?

Martin Sandhu has scaled a business from three people to 80, generated six-figure monthly revenues and lost £250,000 on an idea he now calls the best education he ever had.

In this honest conversation with Bev Wakefield, Martin shares what growth really looks like behind the numbers: inadequate systems, constant firefighting, difficult decisions and the pressure founders rarely discuss openly.

Martin is a product and technology strategist, fractional CTO and co-founder of a health-tech consultancy. Having experienced both success and failure, his definition of wealth has changed dramatically. Today, it is less about turnover or status and more about time, family and contentment.

About Beyond the Numbers Hosted by Bev Wakefield, business owner, business investor, Chartered Accountant and Chartered Tax Adviser, Beyond the Numbers explores the decisions, mindset and human stories behind long-term business success.

It’s for business owners who want better numbers, better decisions and a business that supports them - not the other way around.

Find out more about Vibrant Accountancy: https://vibrantaccountancy.co.uk/

Podcast produced by Briight Studios, B2B podcast specialists for expert-led brands. 

Failure is easy to call a lesson once the sting has gone. In the moment, it can feel like proof that you are the failure.

Baasit Siddiqui is known from Channel 4’s Gogglebox, but television is only one part of his story. He is an educator, keynote speaker, founder of the Let’s Thrive education programme, creator of the 7Cs to Thrive framework and author of the forthcoming book Not My Finest Lesson.

In this episode of Beyond the Numbers, Bev and Baasit explore the mistakes, unexpected opportunities and moments of reflection that have shaped his journey through education, television and business.

They discuss why burnout is often a trickle rather than a big bang, how failure becomes tangled with our identity, why vulnerability can build trust and what business leaders can learn from great educators.

Whether you’re building a business, leading a team or simply trying to work out what comes next, this is an honest and uplifting conversation about learning, resilience and finding the people who help you thrive.

In this episode:

How Baasit unexpectedly found his way into teaching and television

Why burnout rarely arrives as one dramatic moment

What educators can teach business owners about sales and leadership

Why sales becomes easier when you see it as service

The 7Cs to Thrive and why compromise matters

The mistakes behind Baasit’s forthcoming book

How to separate failure from your identity

Why vulnerability, accountability and trust belong together

The importance of community and finding your people

Find out more about Baasit Siddiqui:

About Beyond the Numbers

Hosted by Bev Wakefield, founder of Vibrant Accountancy, Beyond the Numbers explores the conversations that help business owners build stronger, more resilient businesses.

Each episode features practical insights from experienced leaders, entrepreneurs and experts, focusing on the decisions, mindset and ideas that create long-term success.

Find out more about Vibrant Accountancy and upcoming events:

Richard Gerver has spent his career challenging the way we think about leadership, change and human potential. But one of his biggest lessons is simple: the moment we become too comfortable protecting what already works, we risk getting left behind.

After transforming a struggling Derbyshire primary school into an internationally recognised learning environment, Richard went on to become a bestselling author and global speaker, working with leaders and organisations around the world.

In this episode of Beyond the Numbers, Bev and Richard explore why successful leaders can become resistant to change, why curiosity is one of the most important skills in business, and why leadership isn’t about having all the answers.

From learning to trust your instincts and empowering people to challenge you, to vulnerability, experimentation and finding opportunity when all you can see is the problem, this is a conversation about what it really takes to keep moving forward.

In this episode:

About Beyond the Numbers

Hosted by Bev Wakefield, founder of Vibrant Accountancy, Beyond the Numbers explores the conversations that help business owners build stronger, more resilient businesses. Each episode features practical insights from experienced leaders, entrepreneurs and experts, focusing on the decisions, mindset and ideas that create long-term success.

Find out more about Vibrant Accountancy and upcoming events:

AI is changing business faster than most leaders realise. But according to AI strategist and The Human Business author Ben Afia, the biggest risk isn't being replaced by AI – it's becoming indistinguishable because of it.

Ben is currently helping align hundreds of marketers across a Fortune 500 organisation on AI adoption, giving him a front-row seat to how businesses are embracing the technology, where they're getting it wrong, and what separates those creating real competitive advantage.

In this episode of Beyond the Numbers, Bev and Ben explore why AI is fundamentally a human challenge rather than a technology one, how generic AI can slowly erode your brand, and why the businesses that thrive will be those that combine technology with genuinely human thinking.

Whether you're already using AI every day or wondering where to begin, this conversation offers a refreshingly practical perspective on one of the biggest shifts facing business today.

In this episode:

About Beyond the Numbers

Hosted by Bev Wakefield, founder of Vibrant Accountancy, Beyond the Numbers explores the conversations that help business owners build stronger, more resilient businesses. Each episode features practical insights from experienced leaders, entrepreneurs and experts, focusing on the decisions, mindset and ideas that create long-term success.

Find out more about Vibrant Accountancy and upcoming events:

Bev Wakefield is joined by Paul McAnulty, CEO of Rebuild East Midlands, to explore lived experience, leadership, purpose and the role business owners can play in rebuilding lives.

Paul shares his own journey through exploitation, homelessness, policing, charity work and ethical business, and explains why Rebuild focuses on survivors’ futures, not their past.

This is a powerful conversation about hope, community, purpose, and why there is no such thing as “just” a business.

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Beyond the Numbers is hosted by Bev Wakefield, founder and owner of Vibrant Accountancy.

At Vibrant, Bev and the team help business owners make sense of their numbers, understand their business more clearly, and build with confidence.

To find out more, search Vibrant Accountancy.

Season 4 opens with a big one.

In this first episode, Bev is joined by executive coach and Tough Talk Mentor Cheryl Thompson for a bumper conversation for business owners who need their people at their best if they want to scale, grow and stop carrying everything themselves.

Cheryl shares why leadership is not about being liked, why being clear can be kinder than being comfortable, and why the conversations leaders avoid often become the problems their teams have to carry.

From founder bottlenecks and unclear expectations to high performers with poor behaviours, values, communication, accountability and the pressure on women in leadership, this episode explores what it really takes to build a team that can perform without everything depending on the business owner.

Because growth does not just need more clients, more revenue or more staff. It needs people who understand what good looks like, leaders who are willing to have honest conversations, and a culture strong enough to support the next stage of the business.

Great teams are not built by avoiding the hard bits. They are built through clarity, trust and conversations that move people forward.

“I’ll sort that later.”

In this final episode of the series, Bev shares the shift that changed everything for her: moving from building to sell to building for freedom now.

She breaks down the three layers of real financial security, your Enough Number, your Freedom layer and business value, and explains why relying on a future sale is not a strategy. From paying yourself properly to investing early and building a business that can run without you, this episode is about protecting both Present You and Future You.

Because freedom is not one big exit moment. It is built in small decisions, month after month.

More clients. More revenue. More staff. More pressure.

In this episode of Beyond the Numbers, Bev challenges the idea that bigger automatically means better. She shares why most businesses don’t hit a revenue ceiling, they hit a capacity ceiling, and how chasing growth without intention can quietly erode your profit, energy and freedom.

Through the Visionary, Deliverer and Generalist model, she breaks down where most founders get stuck and what it really takes to grow sustainably. Because the goal is not expansion at any cost. It is building better margins, better systems and better capacity so your business supports your life.

Growth on your terms is not about doing more. It is about designing smarter.

What happens when you stop waiting to be promoted and start building your own table?

In this episode of Beyond the Numbers, Bev sits down with Kavita Oberoi OBE, founder of Oberoi Consulting and the Oberoi Business Hub, to talk about resilience, cultural expectation and backing yourself when no one else will.

From being passed over for promotion to landing a half-million-pound contract with no team in place, Kavita shares how passion, courage and sheer determination built a multi-million-pound business. This is a story about refusing to shrink, leading with purpose and proving that success follows belief.