Curious Business: The B2B Growth Podcast

After growing up as a programmer, hating school, and being given a chance to follow his passion via an apprenticeship, Justin Megawarne is the co-founder of Megaslice, a technology consultancy with a difference. Justin progressed to consulting, software architecture and CTO roles. However, he became tired of seeing technically excellent work fail comme...

How do you build and fund a business built around a mission that life-changing for your community but doesn’t represent a typical 10x opportunity for investors? Meet Kirsten Jack, founder of Uncommon, the online community where neurodivergent young people can connect, find their people, and build the support networks they need.

At a crossroads in a her career, Kirsten did mo...

While competitors race to scale by loading their products with emulsifiers, humectants and sweeteners - and call it health food - The Protein Ball Company has stayed stubbornly natural, and accepted slower but more sustainable growth. This is an episode about the hard yards of business: logistics, cash flow, risk, scaling production, export paperwork, and the instincts no degree or accelerator will teach you.

The Protein Ball Compa...

What happens when a professional writer who finds AI-generated content "quite horrific" decides to build an AI writing platform to help people show up more authentically on LinkedIn? With AI as his development team?

Nigel Jay Cooper found himself in exactly that position. He'd spent a decade training professionals and teams in employee advocacy to create authentic LinkedIn content. He was also determined to fight the flood of ‘beig...

Imagine being told someone you love is dying, and then discovering they have been trapped in a coercive and controlling relationship. You'd turn to a number of agencies to seek help, guidance and justice. But it turns out you often need to know the 'magic words' to unlock that help.   In this episode of Curious Business, Stephen Midgley recounts how he navigated those challenges and leaned on Chat GPT and his background as a syste...

With ecosystems increasingly outperforming standalone firms, marketing leaders’ key skills may lie in their ability to get their organisations to influence, persuade, enable, and collaborate. In an ever-noisier and more complex market, the companies that can co-create, communicate and change to bring customers value tend to be the winners - but it requires a very different approach.  

In this episode, former three-time global CMO L...

What’s it like to be a real legacy business? One with a heritage going back over 100 years? How do you navigate new methods, classic products and changing tastes? This is a masterclass in knowing who you are, who your customers are and what you’re about.

Andy Valentine is a food industry veteran who now feels like the proverbial "kid in the sweet shop". He’s responsible for developing direct, B2B and private-label channels for a bu...

After eight years as Head of Marketing for Red Bull UK and Europe, Huib van Bockel walked away to build something the industry told him couldn't work - an energy drink made entirely from nature, with 60% less sugar, and no artificial ingredients. Every manufacturer he approached said it wasn't commercially viable, but he found one willing to try. Today, Tenzing is the third-biggest energy drink brand in Tesco, and number one in Lon...

How much can we influence people with advertising? What’s the best way to understand and model buyer behaviour? How should we set about growing market share?

James Hankins has worked in agency, consultant and client roles, tackling these very questions. In this episode, he challenges marketing myths and woolly thinking, and explains why understanding your market matters more than chasing funnels. The conversation blends practical ...

Chris Brogan shares some brutally honest insights about leadership, growth and being helpful. He's a self-proclaimed expert at failing, but what does that mean? And how can leaders learn from it to keep their organisations flexible and effective even as they grow at speed?

Ten-time author, executive coach, strategic advisor, writer, photographer and co-host of the internet’s Backpack Show and Playing For Time, Chris is a master com...

In this episode of the Curious Business podcast, we meet Ella McKay, founder of Fatso. The provocatively named chocolate brand is bringing unapologetic indulgence to dark chocolate and putting ethical sourcing at its core. Ella shares the story of her journey from corporate marketeer to entrepreneurial risk-taker, and provides invaluable insights into effective business strategy and how to use consumer ...

How do you turn a 15-person tech shop into a £300m global powerhouse? Is it instinct – or experience? What are the tough calls that fuel B2B growth? And how do you keep ahead and keep pushing forward?

Over the last 15 years, Simon Haighton-Williams, CEO of The Adaptavist Group, has led the company to annual revenues over £300 million. On a mission to make business work bett...

How do we move beyond AI hype to take advantage of the real opportunities for business strategy? Who’s using AI well already, how does it reshape reality and who can we learn from? What happens when AI upsets your value chain and how can you maintain your competitive advantage? 

In this episode of Curious Business, Stephen Morris welcomes Sangeet Paul Choudary, renowned author and business strategist to Fortune 500 companies. They ...

What do you do when people won’t pay a sustainable price for the high quality product you’ve worked so hard to produce? How do you get started in your career and find your passion? The co-founder of Hive Mind Mead tells all.

Kit Newell, co-founder of the Great Taste Award-winning honey drinks brand, shares how his career in advertising and design prepared him for entrepreneurship - and the key skills that helped him build a busines...

Is communication a soft skill or is the most powerful tool in your armoury? In this episode of Curious Business, Nima Abu Wardeh, author of The Brilliant Communicator argues that it can easily be the difference between success and failure.

Do you deliver your message so in a way that engages your target audience? Do you resonate with what they care about so your message takes root? Speaking from her experiences as a presenter, mod...

Band logos sit at the intersection of design, culture, and belonging, and can stir up no end of passion, nostalgia, and debate. In the book Logo Rhythm, Jim K Davies and Jamie Ellul have uncovered the stories behind 93 of the best band logos (and a few solo artist logos) of the last 60 years. In this podcast, we talk about how they came about and what business branding can learn.

The book lovingly explo...

Is GenAI a revolution or merely an evolution of data-driven innovation and automation? Dan Klein has been at the forefront of data-driven tech for thirty years. From the timeless principles guiding how he helps organisations and the need to test GenAI’s output, to finding the value and championing curiosity, he provided real food for thought in this conversation with Stephen Morris.

Read more