Stake & Soul

In this episode of Stake & Soul, Barry speaks with Andrew Lane, Chairman and former Managing Director of Union Industries, the Leeds-based manufacturer of high-speed industrial doors that transitioned to an Employee Ownership Trust in 2014. Andrew joined Union in 2014 to lead the transition itself and has just handed over the MD role to Neil after a three-year, deliberately-staged succession, a rare example of an EO business getting both the ownership transition and the leadership transition right. This episode is an honest tour of what that decade has actually looked like: the fire that destroyed the manufacturing building the year before COVID, the war chest that carried them through both, and the forklift driver called Flocky who is now in the top five shareholders in the company.

What's covered in this episode:

• The origin of Union Industries: from tarpaulins for lorries in 1972 to the Igidor the patented high-speed freezer door now used in major UK supermarket distribution centres
• Mr and Mrs S, the founders, and why they chose EO over a trade sale they had almost signed after the buyer started using words like "rationalisation" and "integration"
• Andrew's 200-applicant interview process, the eight-stage stress test, and the moment Mrs S walked into a sales meeting and said "this has gone on quite long enough, I'm offering you the job"
• The engagement approach that got Union through the transition: town halls, small groups of six, and the single most powerful tool - walking the shop floor three or four times a week
• The four pillars of ongoing communication: weekly "Quicklook" financials, bi-monthly "Grapevine" updates, twice-yearly half-day whole-company meetings, and the director in a sequined gold jacket running "Play Your Cards Right" on the year's numbers
• The 2018 fire that destroyed the entire manufacturing building, and the "war chest" of cash reserves that let the business keep hitting delivery targets from the car park without waiting for insurance payouts
• The governance triangle: a trust board with two employee trustees, two vetted independents and a former owner as chairman, a council that runs the charitable giving and the socials, and Andrew's rule that none of it should ever become adversarial
• The 30/10 profit split (bonus, dividend), the SIP alongside the trust, and the deliberate decision to keep new shares scarce so they actually feel meaningful
• Flocky the forklift truck driver 30+ years in the business, ex-pitman, and now a top-five shareholder alongside a housekeeper and a sales guy
• The three-year handover to new MD Neil, and Andrew's honest reflection that hobbies are easy, finding a new sense of purpose is harder

Quickfire highlights:

• Employee ownership is: the best business model that has ever been.
• Biggest EO surprise: how good my people were.
• Book recommendation: Who Moved My Cheese? Andrew's go-to from the one-minute manager series.
• Confessional: a moment of honesty. Andrew's struggles are people-related, specifically the redundancies where the people affected have done nothing to deserve them. "Still got to be done for the greater good," he says, "but those ones I struggle with personally."

Barry and Andrew also discuss why sharing full financials with the whole business has no real downsides once you build the "ambient level of knowledge" of people who read the numbers every week, and Andrew's central rule of EO leadership: don't run it as an EO business, run it as a good business - and let EO make everything you already do work better.

Disclaimer:

The following podcast is intended to be of a general nature, will not be suitable for everyone, and should not be treated as a specific recommendation. We recommend taking professional advice before entering into any obligation or transaction.

Paradigm Norton Financial Planning Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Our FCA Register number is 455083.

Registered in England. Reg No 4220937, VAT Reg. No 918550904.

In this episode of Stake & Soul, Barry speaks with Tom Vincent, CEO of 2020 Project Management Training, the Scottish-founded, UK-based specialist that transitioned to an Employee Ownership Trust in 2018 and, seven years on, was named EO Business of the Year at the 2025 UK Employee Ownership Awards. Tom joined 2020 in 2014 after a career in the Royal Engineers, moved onto the board in 2018 just as the EOT deal was being done, and inherited both the CEO chair and the responsibility of paying off the deferred consideration, which is now, at the time of recording, just two months from being fully cleared.

Tom's story is not the founder's story. He was recruited into the sales function, coached formally into succession, then handed a business he did not build. This episode is an honest walk through what that process looked like: the year of shadowing, the CC'd inbox, the rebuild of the board, the 2022 HMRC crisis that sent him out on a 20-mile marathon-training run at one in the morning, and the culture that has kept 2020 in the 99th percentile of the Good Work Survey for five years running.

What's covered in this episode:

• Tom's route from the Royal Engineers via Sandhurst and the ECITB into 2020's sales function in 2014, and the female leader early in his career who shaped how he thinks about diverse decision-making
• Scottish Enterprise's role in exposing founder Tony to the EO model, and the train journey to Edinburgh where Tony first sounded Tom out about the future of the business
• The two years of shadowing and coaching, including the "what do you actually do as a CEO?" question that Tony couldn't immediately answer, and the CC'd inbox strategy that followed
• Rebuilding the board deliberately smaller (from five to three) and consciously more diverse, with a senior leadership team created to widen the range of voices at the top
• The three-phase share sale (60%, then 30%, then the final 10% agreed a year ago), and the reasoning the vendors themselves gave for eventually letting go of the last piece
• Communication cadence: why annual EO sessions are not enough, and how 2020 now uses quarterly voice sessions and a dedicated workshop to answer the elephant-in-the-room questions
• The financial freedom plan Tom is preparing to take to the trust board: an early emphasis on reserves, then a gradual swing towards profit distribution once the business is properly resilient
• The two values that define 2020's culture: "finding solutions" (a non-blame, always-a-way-through mindset) and "empowerment" (with substance behind the word, not just a poster)
• The Good Work Survey run at the busiest time of year for five years running, and the moment Tom sat down with the results and realised every negative comment was a positive suggestion for how to get better
• Winning EO Business of the Year at the 2025 UK Employee Ownership Awards, and the "no passengers here" culture Tom credits for the win

Quickfire highlights:

• Employee ownership is: amazing.
• Biggest EO surprise: how fun the journey can be, working with like-minded people to create value.
• Book recommendation: Good to Great by Jim Collins first suggested to Tom by his CEO peer network, and the book he now recommends to others.
• Confessional: a moment of honesty. In 2022, mid-way through the handover from Tony, Tom discovered the business owed HMRC a significant sum. Lying awake at 1am, he pulled on his running gear (he was training for the Marathon des Sables) and headed out for a 20-mile run. Ten miles from home he had a moment of clarity that all his self-pity was egotistical; the business, the staff and the future mattered more than his personal fear of being the CEO under whose watch it might fold.

Barry and Tom also discuss the SWOT workshop day that Tom now wishes 2020 had started running in 2018 rather than 2022, and Tom's advice to any founder still weighing up EO - start from a "why", not just a "how much".

Disclaimer:

The following podcast is intended to be of a general nature, will not be suitable for everyone, and should not be treated as a specific recommendation. We recommend taking professional advice before entering into any obligation or transaction.

Paradigm Norton Financial Planning Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Our FCA Register number is 455083.

Registered in England. Reg No 4220937, VAT Reg. No 918550904.

In this episode of Stake & Soul, Barry speaks with Johnny Aisher, who spent 40 years at the John Lewis Partnership and retired on 31 March 2025, most recently as a director of the John Lewis Partnership Trust. Having joined as one of 21 graduate trainees in 1985 and made his way from the shop floor at Oxford Street through IT management to two decades as Clerk to the Council, Johnny brings a rare 40-year view on what the UK's original employee-owned business gets right, gets wrong, and can teach the wave of EO businesses that have come after it.

John Lewis wasn't the first to think about co-ownership, but it is the one every UK EO business now gets measured against. In 1929, John Spedan Lewis transferred his shares into trust for the benefit of the partners "labour employing capital rather than capital employing labour". Ninety-six years later, that experiment is still running, and Johnny has been inside it long enough to have watched it work and watched it hurt.

What's covered in this episode:

• The origin story of the partnership Spedan Lewis as a naturalist who described the founding as planting a seed on a beach and seeing what it grew into
• Why Johnny chose the partnership over British Airways or IBM, and the extraordinary level of courtesy in the early recruitment letters that made the difference
• The graduate journey: Oxford Street shop floor, Kingston, a decade in retail, then a switch into IT because he was missing Saturdays with his young family
• The democracy pathway that ran alongside his day job local representative, central council, Pensions Board, main board and how the "Clerk to the Council" role consumed the next 20 years
• The language of partnership: partners not employees, business dress not uniform, dining room not canteen and why those small choices matter
• The weekly Gazette (running since 1918) and its most famous feature: anonymous letters to the chairman that must be published and answered
• The John Lewis governance triangle: chairman, board and elected council, described as "equal in importance but not equal in role"
• The three types of power Johnny thinks matter in EO governance: absolute command (the purse), delegated power, and the power of influence
• The tension between democracy and expertise on a governing council, and why Johnny is adamant the council must remain representative rather than become a shadow board of business specialists
• The moment the trustee board had to be ready to consider the "unthinkable" question of external investment, and the level of business and legal training that turned out to be needed
• The constitutional cap that limits the highest-paid partner to no more than 75 times the average non-management salary, and the honest challenge of recruiting external senior leaders inside that constraint
• What has changed most across Johnny's 40 years: not the governance structure, but the collapse of the five-day full-time workforce into a 24/7 part-time reality, and the family feel that becomes so much harder to hold onto

Quickfire highlights:

• Employee ownership is: a better way of doing business
• Biggest EO surprise: how long it took him personally to fully "get" employee ownership even inside the partnership for years, he was "a keen graduate doing my job" before the penny properly dropped
• Book recommendation: Job Ownership by Robert Oakeshott and, as a companion, the John Lewis Partnership Constitution itself, which is only 30 pages and takes about 40 minutes to read
• Confessional: a secret struggle — keeping the balance between his own personal beliefs and the world of work, and the quiet realisation that much of what he heard on a Sunday sounded like the servant-leadership language he was using at work on a Monday

Barry and Johnny also touch on why the poor global reputation of democracy makes it harder than ever to keep partners engaged, and Johnny's warning that the "long-term career for life" bargain the partnership was built on is very hard to keep offering in a world where people join for five years and move on.

Disclaimer:

The following podcast is intended to be of a general nature, will not be suitable for everyone, and should not be treated as a specific recommendation. We recommend taking professional advice before entering into any obligation or transaction.

Paradigm Norton Financial Planning Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Our FCA Register number is 455083.

Registered in England. Reg No 4220937, VAT Reg. No 918550904.

In this episode of Stake & Soul, Barry speaks with Andrew Murphy, CEO of The Entertainer, the family-founded toy retailer that completed its 100 percent transition to an Employee Ownership Trust in September 2025. The move turned around 2,000 colleagues into employee owners, and Andrew is leading the business through what he describes as the early foothills of a long transformation.

Andrew spent more than 30 years at the John Lewis Partnership, starting on the shop floor in Aberdeen in 1992 and rising to Group Chief Operating Officer. He joined The Entertainer in 2023 to lead the next chapter, working alongside founders Gary and Catherine Grant as they prepared the business for life beyond the family.

What's covered in this episode:

• Andrew's improbable route into John Lewis, having been turned down twice before getting in via a cheeky letter, and what 30 years inside a co-owned business actually taught him about ownership in practice.
• Why the partnership model felt utterly unique in the early 90s, and why Andrew believes the differential between John Lewis and the wider corporate world has narrowed over time.
• The headhunter call that landed him at The Entertainer, and his honest reflection that no amount of intellectualising matters in a founder-led business if the founder doesn't trust the cut of your jib.
• How the pandemic shifted the Grant family's thinking on succession, why a public float was ruled out immediately, and how the Tesco partnership swallowed almost two years of leadership focus before EO came back to the table.
• Why Andrew describes The Entertainer's EO transition as a case where "the hearts were always hoping" for employee ownership while the heads needed time to be convinced.
• The communications choreography of the announcement: an all-hands broadcast, immediate written follow-up, and a full-day in-person event in Birmingham for the top 250 colleagues that acted as the symbolic handover from Gary to the leadership team.
• Why The Entertainer brought in an external communications agency, and what worked so well that Andrew says there's almost nothing he would change about how it landed.
• The governance architecture: a Trust Board chaired by Patrick Lewis (former John Lewis CFO) with Callum Lafferty (a former John Lewis Partnership Council member) as employee trust director, sitting alongside the group board and a new 13-person Colleague Advisory Board.
• Why Andrew is adamant that employee voice should sit in one clearly recognised place, and how Colleague Advisory Groups feed into the Colleague Advisory Board rather than running in parallel.
• The commercial decisions that have shifted post-transition, including Sunday trading (with a 94–95% opt-in rate from colleagues) and product range decisions previously made on faith-based grounds.
• Andrew's clear-eyed view on how Gary's Christian faith shaped The Entertainer's culture, what he sees as the durable underpinning principles that remain, and why a complete "cold turkey" handover was the right call for at least the first 18 months.
• Why owner mindset cannot be rushed, and Andrew's view that it takes a minimum of two years and a repeated cycle of communication, involvement and financial reward before colleagues genuinely feel like owners.
• A practical warning that lenders, banks and credit insurers often don't understand EO transitions, and how much "rearguard action" was needed to reassure financial stakeholders.

Quickfire highlights:

• Employee ownership is: a learning journey full of possibilities.
• Biggest EO surprise: how quickly people got on board with the idea of a journey, the destination of which is unclear.
• Book recommendation: Shoe Dog by Phil Knight, for its story of innovation, cross-cultural partnership and the centrality of cash flow in a young business.
• Confessional: a candid moment of honesty about how his brain works, and his unusual technique for staying sharp through long, intense board meetings - playing chess in the lulls.

Barry and Andrew also touch on the difference between transaction, transition and transformation, and Andrew's advice to incoming CEOs of EO businesses to under-promise actively, because the meaningful changes take time to land.

Disclaimer:

The following podcast is intended to be of a general nature, will not be suitable for everyone, and should not be treated as a specific recommendation. We recommend taking professional advice before entering into any obligation or transaction.

Paradigm Norton Financial Planning Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Our FCA Register number is 455083.

Registered in England. Reg No 4220937, VAT Reg. No 918550904.

In this episode of Stake & Soul, Barry speaks with Gary Grant, the founder of The Entertainer, who together with his wife Catherine built one of Britain's most values-driven retail businesses from a single toy shop in Amersham in 1981 to over 160 stores, a Tesco-wide supply contract and a business turning over hundreds of millions a year. In September 2025, Gary and his family transferred 100% of their shares into an Employee Ownership Trust, a move he describes as the biggest risk they've ever taken, and the one that best preserves the jobs and culture they spent 44 years building.

Gary is best known for what he wouldn't do: closing his stores on Sundays after the Sunday Trading Act, refusing to stock products that didn't sit right with his Christian faith, and quietly gifting 10% of EBITDA to charity for 35 years. This is the story behind those decisions and how they ultimately shaped the exit.

What's covered in this episode:

• Gary's route into retail through a childhood of Cubs "Bob a job", paper rounds, milk floats and a bike shop apprenticeship, and the skateboard boom that gave him his first £20,000 of trading capital
• The January 1981 firing from the bike shop, and the toy shop in Amersham that opened on 5 May 1981 with a first year turnover of £100,000
• The pack-of-cards financing story: buying a shop, moving house and losing his job all at once and the Barclays manager's secretary who told him "just lend him the money, he'll be okay"
• Why Gary quietly gave away 10% of EBITDA to charity for 35 years, and the charities the family started, including Restore Hope
• The 2008 financial crisis (October turnover down 30% overnight) and the COVID lockdowns of 2020 (losing around £1M a week for 17 weeks) that ultimately drove the succession decision
• The Thursday family meeting where Gary told Catherine he thought they should sell  and the Salvation Army prayer earlier that morning: "have the strength to do the right thing"
• Why VC, trade sale and float were all ruled out, and how the EOT was the only route that preserved both jobs and values
• The 13-week transaction timeline, the tax anti-avoidance scrutiny they faced, and Gary's honest view that tax wasn't the leading motive
• The governance structure Gary put in place: three trustees, one representing the exiting shareholders, one chairing the new Colleague Advisory Board of 10–12 people, and one independent professional trust chair
• The presentation day in Birmingham for around 350 colleagues about five weeks before completion, and the phrase that kept coming back: "you believed in me, you gave us an opportunity"
• Gary's RIG framework, born at a Jersey prayer breakfast: Reputation, Integrity, Generosity  and how he now applies it to his post-EOT life

Quickfire highlights:

• Employee ownership is: empowering everybody in the business to have a voice.
• Biggest EO surprise: the speed of the transaction with a willing attitude, almost any business could do an EOT.
• Book recommendation: an honest admission that he rarely finishes books. Richard Branson, Steven Bartlett and even the Bible sit half-read on the shelf, because as a dyslexic entrepreneur, he learns by seeing and doing rather than reading.
• Confessional: a secret struggle - the weight of responsibility carried for staff, suppliers and family across 44 years, and the quiet pride of never having a supplier or staff member say they'd been paid late.

Barry and Gary also touch on the £6 million Restore Hope community hub Gary is now building in Amersham, and why he's already convinced the EOT is the best decision the family ever made even before the first pound of deferred consideration has been paid.

Disclaimer:

The following podcast is intended to be of a general nature, will not be suitable for everyone, and should not be treated as a specific recommendation. We recommend taking professional advice before entering into any obligation or transaction.

Paradigm Norton Financial Planning Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Our FCA Register number is 455083.

Registered in England. Reg No 4220937, VAT Reg. No 918550904.

In this episode of Stake & Soul, Barry speaks with Liam Toms, Communications and Engagement Manager at Grapevine, the Dorset-based managed IT and telecoms provider that transitioned to 100 percent employee ownership via an Employee Ownership Trust in March 2023. Two and a half years later, Grapevine was named EO Rising Star of the Year at the 2025 UK Employee Ownership Awards.

Liam talks about coming into Grapevine from a marketing and academic background, what the EO transition actually felt like from the inside, the imperfect path of building governance, a Co-Owner Charter and a comms rhythm that works, and the things he tried that didn't land first time round.

What's covered in this episode:

• How Grapevine evolved from a 1991 mobile reseller into a B2B telecoms business, then a merged IT and telecoms provider, and why a trade sale was rejected in favour of EO.
• Liam's unusual route in via Bournemouth University and a Knowledge Transfer Partnership, and why feeling like an outsider initially helped him during the transition.
• The communication of the EO announcement itself, the shift from a board of five directors to two, and how an Employee Forum became an unintended training ground for future senior leaders.
• The evolution of governance at Grapevine: a Trust Board with a rotating founder seat, an external trustee, an employee representative, the disbanded forum, and the open question of what comes next as Financial Freedom Day approaches.
• The tension between paying larger profit shares and reinvesting in headcount, working patterns and team wellbeing once the deferred consideration is paid off.
• How Liam reinvented internal comms, from a weekly Monday email to a browser homepage progress bar tracking the deferred consideration payoff.
• Bella from Salad's advice that has stayed with him: "you need to do things differently for people to realise that something has changed."
• The creation of the Co-Owner Charter, inspired in part by Rubicon's house rules, and why it sits closer to a contract people make with themselves than a company policy.
• The deliberate language shift to "co-owners" everywhere, the short-lived but useful "we includes me" reminder, and why language matters more than it first appears.
• The peaks and troughs of three financial years post-transition, the surprise uptick in inbound enquiries, and the question of what story Grapevine tells once EO itself becomes "wallpaper."
• The uncomfortable but honest reflection on the colleagues who may never fully embrace EO, and why that is not a reason to stop doing the right thing.

Quickfire highlights:

• Employee ownership is: empowering.
• Biggest EO surprise: the community, and how generously people share without expecting something back.
• Book (sort of) recommendation: You Are The Media by Mark Masters, a newsletter and community Liam credits with reshaping how he thinks about marketing and audience.
• Confessional: a moment of honesty about the first couple of years at Grapevine, when the company was changing faster than he could keep up with, and the long road from "drowning" to finding where he could contribute best.

Barry and Liam also touch on transaction, transition and transformation as three distinct phases of an EO journey, and why the last one only really becomes visible looking back.

Disclaimer:

The following podcast is intended to be of a general nature, will not be suitable for everyone, and should not be treated as a specific recommendation. We recommend taking professional advice before entering into any obligation or transaction.

Paradigm Norton Financial Planning Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Our FCA Register number is 455083.

Registered in England. Reg No 4220937, VAT Reg. No 918550904.

In this episode of Stake and Soul, Barry speaks with Alastair Sawday, founder of Sawday's, the Bristol-based travel publisher that began in 1994 as a scruffy file of addresses from his small group tour company and grew into one of Britain's most trusted authorities on special places to stay. In 2018, after refusing to sell to the highest bidder, Alastair pioneered a hybrid ownership model: 52 percent to employees, 24 percent to a charitable trust, and 24 percent retained by the Sawday family.

Alastair talks about being driven by a dislike of conventional tourism rather than business ambition, how the first book happened almost by accident, why he believes business itself needs to change if the world is to survive, and what he wishes he had done differently.

What's covered in this episode:

• How a friend bursting into his office looking for a job led to the first book in 1994 that sold 12,000 copies, then another 12,000 on reprint, turning a small tour company into a publishing business almost by accident.
• Why he never saw himself as a businessman, and how a parallel life as a Soil Association trustee, Green Party parliamentary candidate, and environmentalist shaped every ownership decision.
• The Bristol lecture about a Palestinian doctor that led to a chance conversation, a recommendation to read David Erdal's ‘Beyond the Corporation’, and the moment employee ownership clicked.
• Why he chose a hybrid 52-24-24 structure, and how the charitable trust was designed to protect the company's values over decades, not just distribute money.
• The honest admission that he did not consult employees properly, the patriarchal habits he recognises in himself, and what he wishes he had done instead.
• The mistake of appointing the company chair as chair of the EOT Trustee board at the same time, and why he now believes the Trust needs proper independence.
• Recruiting the new chair and managing director externally after stepping back, and the reflection that he should have brought more outside voices onto the board earlier.
• How the charitable foundation has connected the business to remarkable people, including a young Bristol activist supporting burnt-out Extinction Rebellion campaigners.
• Why he believes conventional capitalism is failing, and how the Quaker tradition of business, Cadbury, Rowntree, Fry, Barclays, offers a model worth drawing from.

Moments to listen out for:

• The grand piano in the middle of the office, and why the physical quality of the workplace mattered as much as anything else.
• The honest reflection that he "dumped" employee ownership on the team rather than consulting them properly, framed as iconoclasm but acknowledged as a failure.
• The Quaker influence on his thinking, and the conviction that business logic itself is what needs to change.

Quickfire highlights:

• Employee ownership is: one of the best ways of ensuring equity in its human sense among the people who've enabled you to work and to prosper.
• Biggest EO surprise: how extraordinarily successful it can be and has been.
• Book recommendation: ‘Mother Mary Comes to Me’ by Arundhati Roy, for its commitment to individuality and sticking to your values whatever the cost.
• Confessional: thirty years of working alongside Annie, his bilingual secretary who became managing editor and effectively ran the publishing company, and his belief that she deserves the vast majority of the credit for the success of Sawday's.
• Barry's book recommendation: ‘Travelling Light’ by Alastair Sawday, a delightful travel companion.

Disclaimer:

The following podcast is intended to be of a general nature, will not be suitable for everyone, and should not be treated as a specific recommendation. We recommend taking professional advice before entering into any obligation or transaction.

Paradigm Norton Financial Planning Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Our FCA Register number is 455083.

Registered in England. Reg No 4220937, VAT Reg. No 918550904.

In this episode of Stake and Soul, Barry speaks with Nick Parsons, fourth generation leader of Parsons Bakery, the Bristol-based bakery that grew from a horse and cart in the 1910s into a 50-store, 400-strong business across the southwest. In April 2024, on the eve of the company's 99th anniversary, Nick and his family transitioned 100 percent of the business into an Employee Ownership Trust.

Nick talks about flunking his exams and learning to sell beds in Australia before joining the family business, nearly going bust four times, the 2008 phone call from the bank that forced a private equity deal he never wanted, and why employee ownership felt like the only honest exit when his time came.

What's covered in this episode

• Buying his parents out of the bakery in the 1990s with his brother, with no formal training and a point to prove after flunking school.
• The visionary moment driving around Bristol in the late 90s, seeing high streets dying, and deciding bakeries had the emotional pull to survive.
• Spotting Ben on day two of a part-time driver job and knowing within six months he was the next leader.
• Stepping back four years before the EOT, working from the kitchen, and learning to read a team you can no longer overhear.
• Communicating the deal to 400 people across 50 stores, expecting champagne corks and getting an avalanche of worried emails instead.
• The 2008 bankers' phone call demanding £1.2 million back, the floating charge over his home, and the forced private equity sale that triggered a culture clash.
• Why employee ownership beat the alternatives Nick had already lived through, including a trade acquisition where the seller put the business into administration on the day of signing.
• Leaving a million pounds of working capital in the business so Ben would never have to sit across the boardroom table saying the deferred consideration could not be paid.
• The post-transaction adjustment, grey days drumming his fingers on the desk, and hosting his old team in his kitchen for coffee to stay connected.
• Acting as the vendor while three separate law firms negotiated the deal, and why advisors who have done it before are non-negotiable.

Moments to listen out for

• The day Nick stood up at a business coaching session and could not articulate his own role, only to be told he had quietly become a leader rather than a managing director.
• The phone call at the lawyer's office from an acquisition target who had put his own bakery into administration that morning, leaving Nick 48 hours to salvage eight stores.
• The 98 percent of staff who put their hands up to keep working through Covid when given the choice not to.
• The line about why he could not have sold to the highest bidder: he lives a quarter of a mile from his shop and bumps into 20 customers on the high street.

Quickfire highlights

• Employee ownership is: a nice way to thank your team for helping you build the business.
• Biggest EO surprise: how genuinely enjoyable the transaction process turned out to be, when most trades are not.
• Book recommendation: ‘Kitchen Confidential’ by Anthony Bourdain, for endurance and survival through difficult times.
• Confessional: the 2008 bank crisis, remortgaging the family home, and learning two things from it. Back yourself when you are really up against it. And pick a good person to marry.

Disclaimer:

The following podcast is intended to be of a general nature, will not be suitable for everyone, and should not be treated as a specific recommendation. We recommend taking professional advice before entering into any obligation or transaction.

Paradigm Norton Financial Planning Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Our FCA Register number is 455083.

Registered in England. Reg No 4220937, VAT Reg. No 918550904.

In this episode of Stake and Soul, Barry speaks with Karen Maguire, founder of Relinea, the Northern Ireland-based manufacturer supplying glass reinforced plastic (GRP) alternatives to the construction sector. Karen built Relinea from a port-a-cabin and a dodgy forklift into a multi-million-pound business, and in March 2022 became the first manufacturing company in Northern Ireland to transition to an Employee Ownership Trust.

Karen talks about walking away from M&A meetings that left her feeling "a wee bit dirty," navigating the EOT transition during Covid with no local ecosystem to lean on, and the parts of the journey she got right and wrong.

What's covered in this episode

• Leaving a sales role at a company that kept letting her customers down, and starting Relinea from an old farm shed with no windows.
• Surviving the 2010 financial crisis with a bag of samples and her first English customer, who is still with Relinea today.
• The death of Karen's father in 2018 and how it became the catalyst for thinking seriously about succession.
• Why M&A felt wrong, and the Chain Reaction precedent that hardened her resolve: sold to outside investors, closed within years, 300 jobs lost.
• Transitioning to an EOT during Covid with no local adviser network and "flying blind" through a process Northern Ireland had barely seen.
• Paying the full tax-free £3,600 bonus from year one, and why founders should not wait until the deferred consideration is paid to share rewards.
• Clearing the deferred consideration two years early, and the conversations about life beyond debt-free day she wishes had happened sooner.
• The identity loss after stepping down, and what she would do differently around founder transition.
• EMI schemes inside an EOT business, the governance tensions they create, and her concerns about employee protections.
• Founding Employee Ownership Ireland to build the ecosystem that did not exist when she went through her own transition.

Moments to listen out for

• The kitchen-table conversation and the two questions: what is the worst that can happen, and would I live to regret it if I did not do it.
• Coming out of M&A meetings feeling "a wee bit dirty" because no one wanted to talk about employees or community.
• The employee trustee who had never seen a P&L in his life, and the realisation you cannot hand someone the role without the tools.
• Her grief metaphor for stepping down, and the internal struggle she worked hard to keep out of the business.

Quickfire highlights

• Employee ownership is: creating a system where everybody has a voice, and a right to have that voice heard.
• Biggest EO surprise: how lonely the journey was, and how exciting it has become as honest conversations about EO start to surface.
• Confessional: the imposter syndrome of a woman in business who still sometimes thinks Relinea happened more by accident than by design.
• Book recommendation: Find Your Why by Simon Sinek.

Disclaimer:

The following podcast is intended to be of a general nature, will not be suitable for everyone, and should not be treated as a specific recommendation. We recommend taking professional advice before entering into any obligation or transaction.

Paradigm Norton Financial Planning Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Our FCA Register number is 455083.

Registered in England. Reg No 4220937, VAT Reg. No 918550904.

In this episode Barry speaks with David Sproxton, co-founder of Aardman Animations, the Bristol-based studio behind Wallace and Gromit, Shaun the Sheep, Morph, and Chicken Run. 

For more than 50 years, David and his co-founder Peter Lord built one of the most beloved creative companies in British history. In 2018, they had the opportunity to sell to a major studio. They chose not to. Instead, they transferred Aardman to an Employee Ownership Trust, handing control to the people who had built it.

In this conversation, David talks about what drove that decision, how a creative business holds onto its soul when the financial pressure to sell can be enormous, and what it actually feels like to say "you have control" after four decades at the helm.

What's covered in this episode

• How David and Peter met at school in the mid-1960s, discovered animation through a borrowed 16mm clockwork camera, and sold their first piece of work to the BBC's Vision On for £25.
• Why Aardman said no to Jeffrey Katzenberg when DreamWorks offered to buy the studio outright, and the deal structure they chose instead.
• What David observed watching the ad agency Gold Greenlees Trott get absorbed by a US conglomerate, and why that convinced him a trade sale would destroy the thing that made Aardman worth acquiring.
• The book ‘Beyond the Corporation’ by David Erdal, a 2011 EOA conference talk, and how they spent several years researching the EO model.
• The John Lewis trust model and why it suited Aardman better than direct shareholding.
• Monthly financial workshops, bimonthly town halls, and the challenge of communicating financial information.
• The games department closure, the announcement of forthcoming trading losses, and how transparency in difficult periods is managed.
• David's view on AI: a powerful tool for administration and search, but one that averages rather than imagines, and one whose generative output is already feeding on its own mediocrity.

Moments to listen out for

• David's account of that first wet Sunday afternoon when he and Peter pulled a clockwork Bolex out of a cupboard and played with paper cutouts, not yet knowing where it was headed.
• The moment Aardman announced its transition to employee ownership and received hundreds of emails from people inside Disney, DreamWorks, and Sony saying "if only."
• His description of the away days where he would take questions from the floor and the question that kept coming up: what happens when you and Peter retire?
• The phrase he used on transition day, borrowed from his time learning to fly gliders: "you have control," and what it cost him emotionally to mean it.
• His CEO confessional: the Tortoise and Hare feature film that had too many legs on it, that he believes could have been saved, and the goodwill with the crew that took a long time to rebuild after it was cancelled.

Quickfire highlights

• Employee ownership is: the only way forward.
• Biggest EO surprise: the reaction from people inside the big US studios. Hundreds of emails, all saying the same thing.
• Leadership insight: at a certain point, you have to stop being a backseat driver. Giving someone control means giving them control, not giving them control with an asterisk.
• Book recommendation: ‘Beyond the Corporation’: Humanity Working by David Erdal.

Disclaimer:

The following podcast is intended to be of a general nature, will not be suitable for everyone, and should not be treated as a specific recommendation. We recommend taking professional advice before entering into any obligation or transaction.

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Registered in England. Reg No 4220937, VAT Reg. No 918550904.