In 2017 Tom Leathes decided it was time to give the second-hand car market a digital update. With his two best friends and long-time business collaborators, Alex Buttle and Harry Jones, he co-founded Motorway. Investors spotted the potential and by 2021 the company was another British unicorn, valued at more than $1bn. The platform handled £2.2bn worth of transactions in 2023, helping customers sell their second-hand vehicles to a network of more than 5,000 verified car dealers. The three co-founders have a shared history as a team of serial entrepreneurs. They've set up more than five companies. Failures and setbacks, it turns out, have taught them as much as the successes.

Business Leader is a membership community for ambitious CEOs and founders of mid-sized UK companies, designed to help them grow with purpose through strategic support, peer-to-peer learning, expert coaching, and high-impact events. Join the Business Leader community here and sign up for our newsletter here.

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Lord Mark Price spent more than 30 years working for the John Lewis Partnership, including eight years as the boss of Waitrose. He then joined the government as trade minister before founding his own business, WorkL, which tracks the happiness of employees. In this episode of Business Leader we explore what he has learned about running a business as well as the past, present and future of the John Lewis Partnership, and why businesses are underestimating the importance of their staff being happy. Plus, we explore what it was like trying to do post-Brexit trade deals and how he initially wanted to be a professional golfer...

Business Leader is a membership community for ambitious CEOs and founders of mid-sized UK companies, designed to help them grow with purpose through strategic support, peer-to-peer learning, expert coaching, and high-impact events. Join the Business Leader community here and sign up for our newsletter here.

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The story behind Manchester-based travel company Travel Counsellors and why it might be the company with the best reviews in the UK. Steve Byrne, the long-serving chief executive, explains why customers and staff rate it so highly, why you may not have heard about the company until now, and why it has ambitious plans for the future.

Business Leader is a membership community for ambitious CEOs and founders of mid-sized UK companies, designed to help them grow with purpose through strategic support, peer-to-peer learning, expert coaching, and high-impact events. Join the Business Leader community here and sign up for our newsletter here.

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In 1989, Mark Dixon had an idea - the traditional office didn’t work for many businesses and they needed something more flexible. More than 30 years later, he has been proved right. IWG, the business he founded, is now worth more than £2 billion and runs 4,000 serviced offices around the world, which millions of people use to do their jobs as flexible working has taken off.

But it has been a challenging and sometimes lonely battle to get IWG to this point. This is a story that involves rapid growth, Chapter 11 bankruptcy and flashy new rivals…

Business Leader is a membership community for ambitious CEOs and founders of mid-sized UK companies, designed to help them grow with purpose through strategic support, peer-to-peer learning, expert coaching, and high-impact events. Join the Business Leader community here and sign up for our newsletter here.

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Josh Bayliss was appointed as the chief executive of Virgin Group by Sir Richard Branson in 2011. He works with an array of Virgin branded-businesses, 70,000 employees but just one shareholder - the Branson family. It is a unique job with unique challenges and unique opportunities. This is the story behind the Virgin brand and how Josh Bayliss ended up running it…

Business Leader is a membership community for ambitious CEOs and founders of mid-sized UK companies, designed to help them grow with purpose through strategic support, peer-to-peer learning, expert coaching, and high-impact events. Join the Business Leader community here and sign up for our newsletter here.

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Kevin McCabe tells the story of how he built a property empire and then ended up running Sheffield United, his beloved football club. It is a story that has highs, lows, controversial goals and legal battles.

Business Leader is a membership community for ambitious CEOs and founders of mid-sized UK companies, designed to help them grow with purpose through strategic support, peer-to-peer learning, expert coaching, and high-impact events. Join the Business Leader community here and sign up for our newsletter here.

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In 2018 the founder of Tide, George Bevis, stood aside as chief executive and was succeeded by Oliver Prill. Since then Tide has grown rapidly. It has gone from being a promising financial technology start-up to a company whose online banking services are used by one in 10 small and medium-sized businesses in the UK. In this episode of Business Leader, Oliver Prill discusses the challenges of becoming chief executive, how to disrupt the financial services industry and why regulators may hold back innovation in the UK.

Business Leader is a membership community for ambitious CEOs and founders of mid-sized UK companies, designed to help them grow with purpose through strategic support, peer-to-peer learning, expert coaching, and high-impact events. Join the Business Leader community here and sign up for our newsletter here.

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Wizz Air has emerged as one of the biggest airlines in Europe and a new low-cost rival to Ryanair and EasyJet. Its first flight was in May 2004, travelling from Katowice in Poland to Luton in the UK. Today it carries more than 60 million passengers every year and is valued at well over £2 billion after floating on the stock market in London. In this episode of Business Leader, Jozsef Varadi, the founder and chief executive of Wizz Air, discusses how he founded and built the airline, the challenges he has faced and his fascinating views on what it is like running a UK-listed business.

Business Leader is a membership community for ambitious CEOs and founders of mid-sized UK companies, designed to help them grow with purpose through strategic support, peer-to-peer learning, expert coaching, and high-impact events. Join the Business Leader community here and sign up for our newsletter here.

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How does a business survive for 250 years and still be controlled by the same family? Rankin Brothers & Sons was founded in 1774 and is celebrating its 250th birthday in 2024. It has seen the creation of the United States of America, two World Wars, and the Covid-19 crisis. Jim Rankin is the sixth generation of the family to lead the business, which supplies corks and caps for beer, wine and spirits. He has been in the business for 30 years, but when he was younger he didn’t want to join it and feared he would fall-out with the rest of his family…

Business Leader is a membership community for ambitious CEOs and founders of mid-sized UK companies, designed to help them grow with purpose through strategic support, peer-to-peer learning, expert coaching, and high-impact events. Join the Business Leader community here and sign up for our newsletter here.

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Floyd Woodrow and Peter Malmstrom had illustrious military careers in the SAS, the special forces unit of the British Army. Now they are using what they learned about leadership, team-building, and negotiating to build a business. That business - Quantum Group - is already worth hundreds of millions of pounds, and they have ambitions to make it much bigger.

This episode of Business Leader is the story of what the military taught them about how to build and scale-up a business. And it includes the key points from the elite coaching courses that Floyd Woodrow gives to professional sports teams and businesses.

Business Leader is a membership community for ambitious CEOs and founders of mid-sized UK companies, designed to help them grow with purpose through strategic support, peer-to-peer learning, expert coaching, and high-impact events. Join the Business Leader community here and sign up for our newsletter here.

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