Trading Up

Greg Bradley is no spoofer. But when he got a call from the strength and conditioning coach for a global sporting giant requesting equipment he'd seen on Greg's Facebook site to be delivered within days, the young entrepreneur had a problem. All he had was the Facebook post. He hadn't yet figured out how to make the equipment. But the keen sportsman applied a lesson he'd learnt on the field "win first and worry later". He took the order. A week later, he delivered the equipment. Since then he's endured hardship, injury and tragedy. He's found love (but still had to cut short his honeymoon due to a pressing business issue). But he's also built a global business that has many of the world's top sporting brands, sports teams and personalities on its client list. From the moveable feast of installing a gym for Posh and Becks on their yacht, to the job of scaling to meet a major order from UK giant Pure Gym - the business is always presenting interesting challenges. As Blk Box moves into a new phase of global growth, he tells his remarkable personal story.

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What qualifies or prepares someone to create a chain of juice bars and a hospitality-focussed software business? A glance at Sam Shephard's CV wouldn't give any clues. He's a former Royal Marine with tours in Afghanistan and Iraq on his distinguished record. He is one of just a handful of living people to have been awarded the George Cross, the UK's highest honour awarded to those who have displayed the greatest heroism or the most conspicuous courage whilst in extreme danger in non combat situations. He worked as right-hand-man to the UK's First Sea Lord Sir George Zambellas and the billionaire hedge fund boss Michael Hintze. He now runs Juice Jar, a chain of healthy fast-food outlets in Northern Ireland, Bristol and Dublin and is developing a nifty bit of software which could be of use across the entire hospitality sector. He tells his incredible story here.

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Andrew Lynas runs a family-owned food business. But it's not like many others. It began with his grandfather who had a row with his greengrocer boss so he quit and set up a fishmongers. Norman, Andrew's father, was next. He took a gamble with a big order for frozen battered fish. His problem was that he didn't have any freezers or even the fish to put in them. That was remedied by some chest freezers in the garage. Today Lynas Food Service has multiple outlets in Northern Ireland, Scotland and the Republic of Ireland; more than 700 staff; and an annual energy bill that's so large the company has just built its own electricity grid with a £4.5 million investment in wind, solar and battery, that powers its operations. Andrew may have inherited the business, but he's driven it with focus and ambition - growing turnover from £30 million when he took over to around £200 million today. In this episode he talks frankly about the challenges he's faced; the days when he faced financial ruin and cried; the hard-headed business advice his dying father imparted; his Christian faith which informs his whole approach; the life he enjoys with his young family and his deep commitment to the North Coast area in Northern Ireland where his business is headquartered. He works hard, but his commute to work from his seaside home in Portstewart is six and half minutes, "seven if there's traffic". It's a very personal story with some fascinating insights into what drives a company forward and the wider values that can underpin financial success.

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You can't have it all. Life involves sacrifice. But William McColgan is an example of how you can come close to having it all, as long as you correctly define what success looks like and make the right sacrifices. So when his five-year-old son was poised to undertake "shooter drills" on entering elementary school in New Hampshire, he sacrificed a consultancy career with Fortune 100 companies to return to his native Northern Ireland and make sausage rolls in Strabane. Granted, he makes quite a lot of them - around half a million a day - which adds up to around £30 million in annual turnover. But the challenges of being the best are immense and un-ceasing. William's corporate experience is now central to a new culture at the third-generation family firm which has made them so dominant in the Irish market that they need a big move into Great Britain to continue the upwards growth trajectory. His biggest challenge is attracting and nurturing world class talent in this remote corner of Northern Ireland, but he's loving it and he's winning by investing in technology, training and specialist education programmes. And his son, now ten, well he's happy to call Strabane home.

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A nasty tackle during a football match in his final year of school left Rory King with a broken jaw, and it changed his life. If it hadn't happened, Rory wouldn't have messed up is A Levels and would probably be a PE teacher today. A decent job. But not the dream he's currently living. For in the space of a few years, Rory has taken his passion for travel and negotiating deals and developed a multi-million pound business from what began life as a facebook page for friends. He's done it all without raising any external funding. His discount travel business now has 200,000 members in Ireland and Rory has his sights set on Great Britain. He has a unique offer - he persuades the industry to take the money they would normally hand over to the big online booking sites and instead pass that on to his members. The customer gets a cheaper deal; the hotel gets the same money; Rory gets happy members who pay him just one euro a month (and he never takes commission); and the money all stays in the local economy. No wonder his ambitions are big - his growth to date has been impressive. Listen to Rory tell Jim the full story, unvarnished and raw. And that broken jaw - has he forgiven the other player?

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There's a reason why you should keep your key sales staff happy. Mathew Nesbitt is what can happen when you don't. He goes and sets up his own business which puts yours into the shade. He was in his twenties selling bodycams to pay the bills. But when Matthew's Christmas bonus didn't land the way he had expected, it was enough to send him out on his own. He had an idea, and the bones of plan, but no product, staff, customers or money. Within a few months he had raised his first "cool half million" and last year his Halos Body Cameras business took $20 million in investment from a US Venture Capital firm. The company is now estimated to be worth in excess of $100m, which isn't bad for something that was just an idea six years ago. In this episode Matthew opens up in detail about his unconventional journey and explores with Jim some of the key moves that have shaped his success.

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He's behind the biggest residential development Belfast City Centre has ever seen and he wants to change the way we live. He began his career as a surveyor in London before moving into the development game. The £175 million Loft Lines development in Titanic Quarter comprising 778 apartments is Anthony Best's biggest project to date. He details how he makes the sums add up in a city that isn't always the most development-friendly. And he also reveals his wider commitment to changing the way we view our city and our way of living.

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We catch up with two former guests to find out what's happened since we first met them on the podcast. The Newry lawyer who took an Irish pharma firm onto the Nasdaq with a $1 billion plus listing and the Mid Ulster builder who constructed the top four floors of Mayfair's Claridges Hotel in Magherafelt. Who says remarkable things can't happen in remote places? John McEvoy and Mark Gribbin update Jim on how their respective businesses are continuing to grow.

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Jan Cunningham believes in failure. He may have helped put Ulster Rugby on the world stage as European champions with a stunning victory in the 1999 Heineken Cup. But he contends that even that great team had more failures than successes. It's what you learn from the failures that makes all the difference. 25 years later and Jan is now Managing Partner at one of Northern Ireland's leading independent law firms, Millar McCall Wylie. On this episode he explores with Jim how he uses his elite sport experience to help guide his business decisions today and ensure that his law practice can continue to grow in an ever-changing and increasingly competitive market. Clare Guinness of Belfast Chamber joins the discussion and has an elite sports reveal of her own.

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Things get meta on the podcast this week as Jim Fitzpatrick dives into AI with industry leaders Catriona Campbell of EY and Tom Gray of Kainos. Not only do they explore and explain the huge challenges and opportunities that AI presents to business, but Jim takes a mind-bending detour down the AI rabbit hole with an AI podcast within an AI podcast. Angela McGowan joins the discussion as they unpick what's vital for everyone in business to know, and to ask. No humans were harmed in the making of this podcast, though some machines were definitely involved.

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