SuperScale with Sam Smith

Strategy & Tragedy: CEO Stories with Steph Melodia is the best business podcast for curious entrepreneurs featured in the UK's Top 20 charts for business shows.

Hosted by Stephanie Melodia, Strategy & Tragedy features candid interviews with entrepreneurs who have scaled - and failed - their businesses - sharing their lessons in entrepreneurship along the way. From Nick Telson-Sillett who achieved financial freedom after selling DesignMyNight (on The Wildest Exit Day in History™) to Emmie Faust, the founder of Female Founders Rise, who opened up about her breakdown on the road to discovering her mission in supporting female founders; from Simon Squibb of "What's your dream?" internet fame, to Cien Solon, the AI leader building the "Canva for AI apps" with LaunchLemonade.

This is one of the best podcasts to listen to if you're looking for educational and inspirational content on Spotify, Apple, Google, Amazon, YouTube or watch the clips on Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, or YouTube Shorts

In this episode, Stephanie Melodia interviews Sam Smith, the former CEO of finnCap, earning her the title as the first female CEO of a city stock broking firm. She is now the Co-Founder of SuperScalers and the author of number 1 bestselling book, 'The Secret Sauce: How to Superscale.'

Watch on YouTube via the link below or keep reading for the transcript:

SM: Sam, welcome to Strategy and Tragedy. Let's turn back the clocks of time: it's Wednesday, December 2018. You are about to IPO FinnCap on the London Stock Exchange. Take us there with you.

SS: Okay. So the morning, I get up. I know what I'm wearing, pink. I wear a lot of pink suit today. Have my dress, get up. We are going to the market open. So we are opening the stock exchange. We walk in. We've done the deal, and we actually bought another company at the same time. So my team and then all the new team are gonna be there at this market open.

So all I'm thinking that morning is, you know, we've gotta be there for half seven. Market opens at eight. I've just gotta be on my a game. I've gotta give a speech. And it's gotta be good, and it's gotta galvanize these two teams, and it's a big moment.

And that's all I'm really thinking about. It's like, get get your game face on. Let's go. So I get there, walk into the stock exchange, and something completely different happens, which is because your name is everywhere. Your, you know, your business is everywhere.

You're waiting for your stock price to come up and see what happens to it. And, it was very emotional. And if I take you back to our journey of IPO, you'll start to see why. So five months before well, actually, slightly more than that. Probably a year before we start thinking, okay, we're gonna have to buy something.

So for twenty years, we had only ever grown organically. So, you know, we had very little money, a million pounds we raised at the beginning, and we took that to grow it to 25,000,000 revenue. So bootstrapped. Everything was organic. And so at that point, we think we really do need to buy something.

We need to grow. If we wanna keep super scaling, how do we do it? So we come across Cavendish. Great acquisition. Soon as I saw it, I knew it was the right one.

Very aligned culturally, and they service clients amazingly well. They're at m and a boutique, and they sell businesses. So we know it's the right one. We work on it for about a year. It falls over a couple of times.

We can't get the structure right. And in July, before the December, we we sit down and agree these are the terms. This is gonna work, and we are gonna IPO. And thought, right. Okay.

We're gonna do two things together. And by the way, I've advised many hundreds of clients. FinnCap advised many hundred clients a month on IPOs. We know how to do this. And we never ever ever have said do an acquisition conditional on the IPO because one or the other will go wrong, and then it's all bad news.

But we don't listen to our own advice because we wanna do the deal, so we crack on. I think we know we wouldn't know what we're doing. This will be fine. So the July, we say, right, we're gonna push the button.

We have to project manage massively. So I set the date December 5. So it's set in July. Every bit of project work is we're gonna do the acquisition. We're gonna do the IPO, but we are going on the December 5.

Hell or high water, this is happening. And one of my skill sets from being probably corporate finance background is I can hit a deadline. It's like, I can do this. Just give me the date. Let's set the date. We'll run for that.

So it was a pretty horrendous process, going through the acquisition, doing the due diligence, getting everyone on board, you know, all the things that happen in acquisitions that you think is gonna fall over or isn't, then we have to raise the money. We got to raise the money. And in the middle of raising the money during November, December, that's when Theresa May's cabinet basically started to split up, and she had her vote of no confidence. And in one actual investor meeting, two MPs resigned during my pitch.

I was horrendous, and we were sitting there. We had to raise money. We had to IPO. We we'd borne all these costs already, probably a million pounds that we'd spent on this transaction. And we also IPO businesses for a living.

Everyone was pulling their IPO. In the market, it was just it was crashing. So, like, we are sitting here with we've got to do this deal because we're acquiring this business. The only way we can acquire it is to IPO. I've got to raise £5,000,000. There's no way the square can be circled otherwise.

I was running around like a lunatic while everyone else was pulling their IPO going, I cannot fail. I just can't fail. And it felt like you're on your own at that point. And the last moment, the last bit of money I raised because when you raise five, everyone says, right.

We're in only if you raise five. If you raise 4.9, that's not good enough. You gotta raise five. So we were getting quite close, but the last bit of money, my sister came over from The States for a Thanksgiving dinner. And it was in the evening.

And I got to the point I've been on the phone all day, hadn't seen her, was, you know, not involved in anything they were doing, running around just on my phone trying to raise money. And the last bit of the evening, I was still in my pyjamas. I had to I had all the kids screaming around. I had to shut my bathroom door. And I sat there, like, pitching for my life, like, the last bit of money, and that person came in.

And that was like hadn't cooked any of her Thanksgiving dinner. Nothing. But I'd raised the money, and I was like, oh my god. So we raised the money. It was all done.

We acquired the business. Then the last piece was our regulator had to give us clearance. We'd done everything else. The regulator hadn't given us clearance. We're like, we're going on the December 5 '3 days before.

So we are they still hadn't given us clearance. My amazing compliance guy and I were like, keep calm, keep calm. It came through just in time, so that nearly mucked it up. So that was that was the last thing. And then we get to a couple of days before where I haven't told all of the team that I'm acquiring that we're buying them yet.

The senior team know, but not everyone. We're all prepared to get to know at the right time. I get a call at 10PM from a journalist saying it's about to leak. I've heard about it. I'm gonna leak it because I know you and like you.

I'll give you a few hours grace. It's like, okay. Give me two hours. Then I'm up drafting that. "I'm really sorry about this. I wanted to tell you in person, but it's gonna leak. This is what's happening. I'll come and see you first thing in the morning, present to you all." This is the first time I've met a lot of the team. So by the big day, you can imagine walking in you know, that all happened in five months.

It's a very fast process, and we were living on the edge throughout the whole thing. So I walk into the stock exchange. I'm just in execute mode. I had been for five months. Didn't think about any emotions. I walk in knowing the new team and the old team, some of them I've only just met, are in this room. We're all gonna celebrate. We're gonna press the button together. It's gonna be the start of FinnCap.

And when I see the name on the wall, it was I just lost it and completely unexpected because I was in, I'm doing this mode. And just the tears - it's such a proud day IPO-ing because it feels like the pinnacle of everything you built. You know, we've been going for twenty years. And that was the bit I'd forgotten, like, how amazing that feeling was and how proud all the team were if we built something that is IPO-ing.

I'm one of it's probably only ever been 20 women in The UK that have IPO'd on the London stock market. We think there's probably only 50 globally, and it's just that tiny number. I mean, like, we are we have got to the point of of IPO ing. So that day was probably one of the best days of my whole life. Wow.

SM: Sam, the culmination. I'm right there with you in the moment, and I can completely empathise. Kudos to your fantastic storytelling skills there where you've taken me and the listeners along on this journey with you, and we were all like, oh my goodness. During that time, I was gonna ask you anyway, those five months between July, December. What was going through your mind, your body? Were you just in, like, pure execution mode, just go go, like, eyes on the prize, or what else was happening to you in that whole build up?

SS: So at the time so in my personal life, actually, a few things had happened. So I just separated from my daughter's dad. She was three and a half. We split up. I moved out. So I had a new house, a daughter to sort of get used to the situation and make sure she's okay, and she was just starting school in the September. So my personal life was, you know, influx, should we say. When we found the deal in July, it was, you know, I had to go away for a weekend and say, can I do this? Is it something that I can take on at the moment?

Because I've got a lot going on. But like all entrepreneur when you when you know it's right, you know it's right. So I knew I was gonna do the deal, come hell or high water. But I had an amazing coach who had had been brilliant for years, but at this particular point, she's like, right. You know, wouldn't recommend you do this, but you're going to do it anyway because that's yes.

Of course I am. I why I even asked the question, I don't know. Yeah. But then she said, right. What are you gonna do around your how are you gonna get through this?

Because this is five months. You're buying something. You're IPO ing two massive transactions. You've gotta get your daughter sorted. You've just moved into a new house and and split up.

This is all quite a lot going on. So all she said was get help, get support, look after yourself, focus on sleep, get good food, get the fundamentals right. Don't do anything that's going to destabilize you. And by this point in my journey, I've become quite good at this because I think, you know, really entrepreneurship, particularly if you're scaling, is like an extreme sport. Yeah.

And they would say treat it like you're an athlete, that you're doing your race, you're in you're in your moment, but then you need the downtime. And this was the same thing. This I knew it was gonna be five months of horrendous, just twenty four seven on it, execute. You've got no time for anything going wrong, and you've got a project managed because I've got this December 5 date, and it cannot move. And that's it.

Yeah. So that's all about it. It's an out of self. Yeah. Exactly.

I love that. Just a a few things. So many different directions to take this. I wanna try and control my thoughts here. But perfect analogy, entrepreneurship and athleticism, they always get compared for obvious reasons.

And just a shout out to Maya Aitura, another guest I had on the show who was one of the first people that I heard talk about seasons. Right. And talk about, you know, the anti hustle culture and how to your point on training for this Olympic sport, there are moments when you are full speed, fifth gear, on the go, and there's other times that you just need to rest and recover. So I love I think part of that etched in stone December 5 date also helped to really, I guess, set those boundaries as well for that time period and just know this is when we're on. So rewinding a little bit, you mentioned one point in that story about preparing a Thanksgiving dinner or, like, you haven't had chance Well, not not preparing Thanksgiving dinner.

The fact that you mentioned that as part of the story obviously indicates how different things are for women in business. You mentioned you're in such a tiny minority of, say, 20 UK women who have even IPO'd. The linkage here is what then happened after you've gone back to that story or on the stock floor or what's it even called? I don't even know. The London Stock Exchange.

So you o main the market. So you arrive at the big stock exchange building. There's a balcony, and there's a button, and there's all the screens around you. And you walk up the stairs, and you open the market. You press the button.

So dramatic. Yes. All the stock prices go around, all the colors go everywhere, and it's really exciting. And you start crying, and it's like, yes. This is we've just opened the market.

That's it. So we're back here. You've felt this emotional reaction very understandably, this whole culmination here at the London Stock Exchange. You've cried, linking this back to kind of women in business and our responsibilities. What happens next?

Yes. So that's that's sort of the the background. So in this process from July to December, fifth of December, as I've said, is the date. It cannot move. And the year before, a little bit of background, I struggled while I couldn't make Aoife's nativity.

She was Mary. She was very keen to be Mary. So but luckily, they had a dress rehearsal, which I pretended was the main thing. So I went to that, but I couldn't make the real thing. So I was under pressure this year to go to the nativity.

She's like, you've gotta come. And she just started school. So and given I'm now single mum, it's like, even more pressure. I need to be there. When I get the date, because schools don't give you dates very far in advance, the same date, her nativity, she's the sheep, so real starring part.

She's a sheep in the nativity, and it's the December 5. You are joking. So I clearly cannot not go to my stock market open Wow. Where I'm introducing all my team to each other. And we bought this business.

They need to meet people. It's it's a massive it's a once in a lifetime moment. So we think, again, back to this coach, I know it's gonna be hell. How am I gonna do it? And the only way we could do it and my amazing PA was like, right.

So 07:30, we're gonna we'll get there. We'll introduce everybody. You'll do the speech, like, ten to eight. We'll go out, do the market open at 08:00. And then you will get on a bike, on a motorbike, and you will drive as fast as you can to the school to arrive at the nativity.

It was always gonna be tight, but it was pretty hairy actually on the bike. I don't wanna do it again, particularly with my dress. Oh god. And I got there with one minute to spare. And what I didn't realize is so I just sat down.

She walks in as her sheep, but she walks in first. So they all sing in this song, but she was first on, which I had no idea about. So if I'd been one minute later Wow. I was like, not The heck. In her mind, not been there.

Yeah. So it was amazing. And I think that, you know, that was the whole day for me culminated in, I've had the best moment of my career. But, actually, in comparison, I still loved being there for my little sheep. You know, age four, it's really not very important in many ways, but it's so important in other ways.

And I got to do both. That's amazing. And the fact I'm chatting with all the other parents and picking her up in her stupid outfit, and she's like, mommy, mate, you're excited to see me. And I just think, I've just IPO'd my business. And I've still made the negativity.

It it was, yeah, it was incredible. So Wow. It's the balance, isn't it? It's the perspective Yeah. That you have as well.

The IPO, I think everyone can agree how big of a deal that is, but making that effort to make sure that you're there, you're present physically for your four year old doll daughter is, you know, to you, equally important. Right? And I always want I knew I wouldn't have a lot of time, but I always wanted to be present at all the moments that I could. Yeah. So any reading slot at school, I'd go and do it.

Any trip, you know, I'd just make sure that I was there for the moments that matter. And the pattern match that I've picked up on with these two parallels, the whole build up to your IPO and then the hairy fraud motorbike journey to go and catch your your little sheep in time is the controlling the controllable. Because that July to December run up, you did everything that was within your power. And when we talked about the self self care element of it, I love that you brought in, you know, that you had a coach to help you through that as well and that great advice of making sure that you take care of those fundamentals because I think so many entrepreneurs override that. I think we don't need the sleep or stay up late for a while.

Sent at the end healthy Like, I've been saying food to eat Amazing. That would just keep me healthy because I didn't have time to shop Exactly. Cook. It's So we just get home. Right.

That's Yeah. And it just keeping that health that you don't spiral into. Exactly. I'm gonna have a glass of water. I'm gonna go to the pub because I'm really stressed, and then Yeah.

Then things spiral. Yeah. I mean, the traditional closing question of the show is one tragedy that's taught you an unforgettable lesson. And one of the most common answers to that question after doing, let's say, about sixty, seventy interviews now is the self care piece. And I've interviewed entrepreneurs who completely overlooked that where it's a lot easier said than done.

Right? When you are in the moment and you've got so much on the line gone wrong. And I've had plenty of periods where I've had extreme burnout, including when I left Think Out, I was past extreme burnout. So Right. It's not like I'm Yeah.

An expert and haven't had issues, but I think the sooner you can learn, the better. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's just so I think it's all those choices that we make in the moment. Yeah.

And it's kind of what's easy now versus hard later. I mean, some of these stories, they've I mean, there was one guy made himself blind as a result of how badly things got with him. I mean, some some extreme cases. But back to you and the point here that I wanna come back to is the controlling controllable. So self care, as much as it's hard in the moment Yeah.

You can get healthy food delivered to you to your point. You can take make sure that you get to sleep and and all the rest of it. But in the IPO buildup, you you mentioned one thing that was out of your control was what was going on with the political turmoil. You made it with a minute to spare to your daughter's nativity play, but something could have happened in the traffic along the way there. Right?

So how do you kind of how do you reconcile that? Because, like, both of these instances, again, IPO and nativity, the parallel I'm drawing here is that they seem so close to the bone. I know. It's a little bit of how I live my life. It's a little bit close to the bone of the time.

Yeah. How much of that is luck, is preparation, is I think it's very much preparation. I mean, there there's always gonna be a bit of luck in it or a bit of bad luck that stops you doing it. But I think preparation, not just with yourself, you know, can mentally get there and last a distance. But can you prepare in advance what's going to happen?

You know, you I don't have much blocks of time in between anything, So I have to really prepare. So I always do my work, which I'm always thinking about things. So, yeah, things can go wrong. Mhmm. That could have been an accident, and I Exactly.

Don't get there. And, you know, I would have been desperately upset, but all I can do is plan for it to work. And most of the time, it does. Sometimes, it doesn't. But on that day, the gods were with me.

Yeah. Amazing. What an incredible day in your in your whole journey. Alright. So let's dive into superscaling.

I wanna hear more about what you're working at the moment with superscales. But the linkage that I wanna kinda connect to is you took FinCap from a million pounds turnover per year to a million pounds a week. So what were some of the growth levers in that? You mentioned growing organically, but let's kinda link the FinCaps what you're doing now with that whole kind of growth thing. Yep.

So I think the biggest growth lever is the mindset. So for me, it's putting yourself in a position to constantly think you've got to grow. And that was one thing that was brilliant about the IPO, that we were 25,000,000 turnover. Some of the team are getting, you know, do we could we really stay like this? It'd be quite nice.

This could be a lifestyle business. Actually, the IPO made us grow. It's like you And I love that about it, that there is no option for growth. So I think keeping yourself in that mindset of wherever you're going, you are just constantly growing and thinking big enough. So that's hugely important.

One of our biggest growth levers was our culture. So we were in investment banking, financial services, wasn't known for its culture. Culture was not a word twenty five years ago when we started using it. It our culture was our only point of difference. So we were in a market that was shrinking, was very competitive, and we decided to become a new player and do something a bit different.

So the only way we could build was to have a differentiating factor, and our only differentiating factor was our culture. So to be more inclusive, to give people equity, to have a difference of belonging, inclusive culture, which meant listening, open, not the hire on fire that historically is known in financial services. So I was passionate about this culture. We were doing that because we thought it was the right thing, but that eventually, probably five years in when we separated and became FinCap, that became our, what is our point of difference? I was like, it's that.

So we use that culture to then apply to every team or acquisition we made, and that was our that was our growth lever, which is really what the book's about as well. Amazing. Well, I definitely wanna hear more about that, but let's just unpack culture on a more practical level. Like, what exactly did you do? Who did you hire?

What initiatives happened to help foster that culture of growth? So if I can take you back sort of twenty years, it it was not like now where you have culture consultants and specialists and people to ask, and it wasn't a thing. So that's why we didn't know it was our USP because I was, you know, I was 23 when I started the business. So I was 33 when we did the buyout, and we were only 3,000,000 turnover. But we had this pitch of, okay, we are gonna be different in the small mid cap world.

And that was around treating small growing clients differently. So rather than have the small the smallest, worst, least experienced team because you're a small company, we'd say, well, actually, you're the company that's gonna create the big company, so you should have the best team. So we have people that were absolutely interested in it and really wanted to grow these companies. So that's, you know, that's really what we did. We've sat there and said, how do we treat our clients differently?

But also, how do we treat our team differently? And it was our team that started to, you know, building culture in ways that weren't written down. So I just when it first started, when I met all the CEOs in my industry who all my who guys, and the biggest thing I learned from them was how I didn't wanna do it. Yeah. But hang on a sec.

What? You fire the bottom 10% of what you don't care about people and what you'll so you're gonna take all the equity and give them nothing and which was, by the way, still normal in some businesses now. But then it was that was just normal. And people would look at me and say, why are you wanting to look after your team? Like, why are you wanting to look after the most juniors?

They're just sort of dispensable. What so it was just using my beliefs about what's right. So I learned from what not to do. Mhmm. I learned what motivated people.

I got really into not just reading business books, but reading psychology books. So I got very into, and I'm still so passionate about what makes people tick and just looking at what works. And we just created this amazing culture that looked after people. What So it may hang up as we went along. It's basically the odds.

So it's I think all entrepreneurs will relate to. Don't worry about that. I'm just wondering, what did that do to your reputation as a female CEO? Quick one. This is future Steph coming to you from Beyond.

If you're enjoying this episode, then you can probably guess what I want you to do. Please do me one tiny favor that costs you nothing and takes a second of your time. Hit that subscribe button. It really helps to support the show, and I'm really grateful for you listening. Let's get back into it.

I'm just wondering, what did that do to your reputation as a female CEO? Now I really, really do not want to highlight, spotlight, and belabor the gender piece because I think that it's reductionist. I want to move past it. For me as well with this show, I don't want it to become a gendered thing, but just by by virtue of having a female host, suddenly the pendulum sort of swings in that direction. But we cannot ignore the fact that you are in such a tiny minority.

We haven't even brought, you know, race, ability, all these other aspects into the conversation, so purely between genders. At this point, what you're describing with building a culture, fostering this growth mindset to help the business grow, your pre IPO and your pre these milestones that give you the validation in the market. Like, now you're accomplished. Now you've got all this to kind of point back to. But back then, in such a heavily male dominated space, how did this focus of being so nice and lovely and soft and caring about people and giving them equity and not hiring and firing, What did that do to your standing at that point in time?

God. What a question. I I don't know if I'm honest. You know, they've I think for a long time, people thought what you're doing, including probably some of my own team. And why are you spending money on that?

Why are you bothered about that? You know, it's all about making the money. Just focus on making the money. And that that happened all the way through. But I think I've always been someone who I I just believe what I believe, and I fight for what I believe is right.

And there is you know, I struggle with confidence, but I don't struggle at all with sticking up for what I think is right. I never have. And so I just carry on anyway. Mhmm. So it it wasn't really Stay in your lane or something.

Bothered me. Mhmm. I can see how many other women would have got disheartened Mhmm. Because everyone tells you you're wrong. But then I liken it to every other entrepreneur.

You know, everyone tells you if you're doing something new that you're wrong. Yeah. So you just have to believe in here that it's right. And as long as you've got followers and you've got a team that believe it, if I didn't have anyone in the business who believed it, it would be different. But we created our own team, our own tribe of people that understood what we were doing, and then they'd hire people who believed that that was the right way to treat people.

So we we became disruptors of our industry without necessarily knowing it. But it comes at a price because I you know, when I left, I said I've basically been in warrior mode, I call it, for twenty four years, which is banging the drum every minute of every day to anyone that starts questioning you why, you know, why this is important, why I believe it's right. Mhmm. So you just have to be really, you know, true to your own belief. I would say though, you know, back to the I didn't have any issue with being a female in my space.

In fact, it was an advantage because I was the only one, and I treated it like that. I know many others wouldn't have found it like that, but I did. What I did find difficult is the fact that I went to a state school. That was by far what made me feel more excluded, which is why now I'm very keen to champion social mobility as one of my major causes. Yes.

Gender is important and but social mobility is key. So when I used to sit in meetings at the beginning, the fact I was female was just one of a number of things that might come up. The fact that I was asked every single question that I'd meet a client or a new person I work with, whoever it was in the early days, where did you go to school and what did your dad do? And at that point, I'd be like Right. I'd start hyperventilating thinking Right.

Well, I didn't go to a private school. And my dad was a computer engineer, which is a perfectly okay job, but it's not like a lawyer or a Mhmm. And I used to get really stressed about, I know someone's gonna ask me that question. And they didn't ask me because they thought, oh my god. If you're not, you're a lower quality person.

That's just what they were used to. Yeah. And I think we forget that now that this this whole debate in a way, you know, the fact that DEI is going and and the fact we're talking about what it really means, I think is good because I never had gender targets. Mhmm. I worked on a culture that made everyone feel welcome and listened to people.

And as a result of that, ten years later, we had 40% females in our investment bank, unheard of anywhere. We also had people from different backgrounds. We also had a pitch team that would look and feel very different from anybody else, and that all stemmed from culture. So for me, I'm an advocate. Work on your culture.

Work on, you know, the feeling of belonging. Value people properly. Be very open minded and listen to everybody, and then all of the direct will happen in the way it should happen. Yeah. Well, love that.

Ground is I didn't talk about it until probably last year or the year before because I was still a bit embarrassed. Still getting that tight chest and anxiety of that question. Super interesting. I do feel like the women thing is just it's a very easy go to, isn't it? It's so it's it's obvious.

It's a super it's like, oh, and it's just that's why I'm always kind of like, I don't really wanna come belabor that point and make it even more of a thing that it needs to be, but it's kinda getting that balance between I still wanna celebrate and amplify and spotlight, but without kind of without swinging the pendulum so far in the other direction that we get this backlash, which is what's currently happening. And what's important to me, I think, is that in leadership positions, we have which is why I do a lot of speaking. I don't like it. I didn't like it, but I do it because I think it's really important Mhmm. That people see people who are more relatable, who are normal, who have their stories, who felt, you know, awkward because they didn't want to say what the dad did or Right.

School. And, yeah, are much less of the, you need to be this type. And to be in business, you need to be like this. And people say, well, I'm I'm not like that, so I won't do it. Yeah.

Well, the great thing about women and different backgrounds and neurodiversity and whatever gender, whatever race, whoever you are, you just be you. And authenticity of leadership is the key thing that I think drives businesses to do really well. And if we can encourage people to be their authentic self, that's that's where you have real power. And I think people don't quite get that yet, that being you is the best thing that you can do, and we need more people being themselves in leadership. And that's women and different brands, just different thinkers and the whole you know, at the top, if we all look a bit different and have different ideas, that that would be a great place to be in my mind.

That's where representation still absolutely matters, doesn't it? What also comes to mind just before we move on, because I am keen to hear more about super scalers and your c a little bit of the secret sauce on super scaling, but just sticking with this for a second. What you've also made me think is if you can't get the power, then take it. And I wonder whether entrepreneurship is a way to simply go and grab it and go and go out there and go and take it for yourself. Always been my belief.

So I know we say I I call myself champion of entrepreneurship. Yeah. And when I left, that's I was thinking about what do I really wanna do, and it drove the decisions I made and what businesses I'd worked with. And I want to be a champion of entrepreneurship because I've seen for twenty five years not just how I built the business, but also all these entrepreneurs I've advised, how they grew a business from nothing. And it's a it's a tribe like no other.

Yeah. It is inclusive, and it's different people doing things. I've managed to change a culture in a industry. These other people are innovating. They're disrupting.

They've got ideas that they're changing things every day of the week, and we still have companies that are starting and growing all the time. So we think that we're going backwards. We're not. We are creating more companies every day. We are scaling more companies every day, and people from different backgrounds and different regions are scaling those businesses.

So for me, that entrepreneurship piece is this is the lever. If we want a blooming growth lever Yeah. And we want a productivity lever, and we want a fairness lever, and we want to wealth create and create that, you know, the wealth divide shrinking, entrepreneurship is, like, the most amazing way. Well, Sam, you're preaching to the choir here. I completely agree.

And, obviously, the whole philosophy of the show, I I completely agree. Right? And it's grabbing that that lever. I love how you describe it as the growth lever, the fairness lever, the wealth creation lever, grabbing it by both hands with both hands because you can. And it's you know, one of the things I got very passionate about was at school.

So at FinCap, one of our projects for a long time was putting entrepreneurship into school. Nice. And it was started in secondary school. And when I had EFA, when I started to try to explain what my job was, so how am I gonna explain this to, like, a three year old? I really struggled.

So I started to, like, go around the kitchen and say, right, who's someone makes all these cups, and someone makes the microphones, and someone puts the content on the TV. And something that a three year old could understand saying a company makes that, and that's a group of people, and someone set up that company, one person. So once I got the message, it's like, we need to start this early because she does understand what I'm saying of that. And so then we did a big project to put, entrepreneurship into primary schools. And we we got up to about 70 schools, and I go into quite a lot of them.

And we went into more high percentage of free school meal schools. We try and cover really disadvantaged schools. And what what came out was the theme that, one, you just see these kids, you know, just light up. Wow. But what all the head teachers will say is, oh my god.

So that kid that we'd labeled lazy, disruptive, not interested, It it's not entrepreneur. You know, almost been written off by the system and probably not feeling very great about themselves. You know, those kids are engaged by this three week program. And at the end, when you start looking at them and they're, you know, 10 to 13 years old, they're not very old, you could see I would hire those. They've got something.

And the fact that they're failing in their academic world, but they've got a massive skill set is not right. So it's been my passion for ten years, and I I fight for it every day. Oh my god. Because it's it's so unfair that someone with skills is made to believe that they're not good, probably a bit like I was at school. I was dyslexic.

I had no idea until my daughter got diagnosed two years ago. Oh. And I couldn't read for a long time. And I was basically in my primary school. I had a horrible time.

I hated it. Wow. But I think because no one saw me. Yeah. Yet now I've built a business and, you know, I'm I'm doing good things, and there's no way anyone spotted me at a young age.

And I think that's why I empathize with a lot of kids. So that entrepreneurship lever, if we could just get that into schools and get those kids that don't believe in themselves to believe, one, we might create a lot more entrepreneurs. But more importantly, you can give them a skill set and a belief that they are good at something because they're not good at exams. I am totally right there with you on the same mission. I think it is such an injustice, and I also it's not lost on me the psychological damage that it does when you are so young as well when you're developing and can be a very fragile time as you're growing up and maybe going through puberty around that age and everything as well.

And if you are written off by the system, that's an identity that's, you know, was given to you by people who are there to teach you how to memorize for an exam, and it doesn't set you up for success in the real world. Getting worse because skills we need in the world are not the skills we're teaching Yeah. Right now. Yeah. So the problem is getting worse.

Yeah. Love that. Okay. Amazing. I love that mission.

I've teased enough about Yeah. User scaling. So tell us about super scalers. Give us a little bit of a hint of the secret sauce from your best selling book. You mentioned culture was a big growth lever for FinCap, but let us know what else our entrepreneurs can do to help scale up their businesses.

Okay. So lots of questions there. So the super scalers so much. So much. I'll have to remember them.

You must have to remind me. So the super scalers is something I set up in September with my business partner, Roselyn Blair, who is also yeah. Really recent. And probably, you know, we're all both very passionate about social mobility, fairness, and entrepreneurship, and really building big businesses. So we wanted to champion that.

And I think the reason for doing it was we saw these underrepresented founders. We are underrepresented founders ourselves, both state school educated, both female. And we don't see many underrepresented founders go on to grow big businesses. There just aren't many. First, it took us a year to find out the information.

There are about 80 women who build business over 50,000,000 in The UK at the moment. Wow. So really small number. In terms of sort of just the 50,000,000 turnover? 50.

How many of them in the whole country? 80. Eight zero. Wow. So very small number.

Mhmm. But at least we know who they are now. So when we got the number, we didn't we probably thought it was only gonna be 50. So we were gonna call it 50 over 50, but then it was 80. But, you know, these 80 women who've done it think, that's great, but they've probably all been trailblazing.

No network doing doing their own thing. Amazing. But how do we showcase them? And so the mission of the Super Scalers became, we want more underrepresented founders to Super Scaler. Mhmm.

Super Scaler is getting to 50,000,000 revenue. Mhmm. So you have a start up, a scale up. You have a unicorn, a billion pound Mhmm. Company, but you've got this 50,000,000, which is really important in terms of influence.

So for me and many other women, you know, when you've got to 50,000,000, and for me personally, you can IPO. You get private equity backing. You can go global. You're a market leader. You are really important in your sector.

You're relevant. You start to have a significant voice. And for me, you know, when we talked about my journey, everyone's saying, oh, it's rubbish what you're doing. You're doing this, so you're doing it all wrong. It was only when we became the market leader, number one in our space, advising the most companies that everyone else turned around to me and went, oh, well, what have you done?

Obviously, something is working. Maybe this culture thing is a thing. And it was that that, you know, made us think, if we want more underrepresented founders in the room when decisions are being made, if we wanna change the face of power and influence, we want a fairer society, our bit of input can be how do we help them grow really big. So that's where it came from. That was the mission.

One of our goals is to double that 80 over the next six years by 2030. Nice. Like what it was '24. Launched. So now five years to go.

So that's that's a very specific goal we've got. So So we launched the business to say, look. We'll build a community. We want it to be a global community. We're in cohorts, so you you have to be a million revenue to be in it because that's, you know, startup we're not in startup land.

We're once you got to the hard yards of building a million pound revenue business, we think you can scale at that point. So we're in cohorts of different revenue bands, one to ten, ten to twenty, twenty to 30, and then our 50 plus who've been there, done it. And the idea is you learn the lessons from those who have done it, build the community, build a network, get to ask all the questions that we never got to ask and made it as we went along. And hopefully, by doing that, we can encourage this sort of bigger ambitious mindset, provide the role models, and make it easier for them, and connect founders that really where the system doesn't work for them to a system that doesn't work for them. So we're sort of the the middle link between we'll be the human relatable face.

We'll have a great trusted community and a great global platform, platform, and we will connect them to a system that hopefully starts to change. I love but I'm assuming that it won't change. I'm not a great I'm just a great believer. We just gotta create an answer. So that's my superscalers.

Love it. The book is all about well, it's called, The Secret Sauce How to Super Scale by Empowering Your Talent. So it's really about empathetic leadership, what I believe is important about culture, and how you can just use culture as a growth lever on its own with nothing else. So, you know, we had a very competitive business. You'd never go into it out of choice, but we still made a market leader from doing something different around culture.

So we talk about in it, you know, being your growth champion, why talking to your team matters so much, why internal comms is so important. We then talk about six e's, which is around the e of Excite, so creating great vision, enroll, getting a real financial and emotional connection to your business, which is very important. Engage, which is all about the belonging inclusion. Elevate, which is all about how do you find your next talent. You know, how do you find the people that are really gonna excel and elevate them as fast as you possibly can.

Energize, which is all about the fizz factor of how do you make it fun, and a great place to work where on a Sunday night, people are thinking, yay. I wanna come into the office. No. Oh, god. It's Sunday night.

It's Monday morning. So, you know, creating that great energy and a great place to work. And then the last e is exit, which is all about, you know, growth does have its challenges, which is not everyone's gonna be on the journey. So you've gotta get rid of the wrong people fast. You've got to make sure the right people are moving on at the right point, and new people are coming in to give it fresh energy and the right skill set at the right time, and you've also gotta exit yourself.

That's what happened to me. So, you know, it it's all about how to do that well and actually how everyone that leaves is an alumni that can help you later and how that is important in culture because the whole circle comes full circle. That's so nice, Sam. I feel like a lot of what you're saying is so simply obvious and obviously simple. And there's so many organizations getting around not to do any of a a disservice because it's all fantastic good stuff, but it still feels like it's the minority of the way a lot of businesses operate.

And I'm not just talking about the financial sector. I think across sectors. Like, why do you think that is? Why do you think that like, what gets in the way? It's getting better.

I mean, it is. Yeah. What's been nice about leaving the financial services sector is I see what other sectors are doing, and it it really is happening. Mhmm. And you see scale ups that have got to that point of, you know, 10,000,000 revenue and are growing really fast.

The vast majority of those are very much culture based businesses. You have fund managers now that invest in businesses that look at culture as a key driver of will this company be more profitable, more productive. And because really, there's a very, like you say, simple principle. Happy valued people are more productive. They they're likely to stay more, and they will help you drive growth.

If you give them freedom, trust them, and they you value them, they will work hard for you. They will stay, and they'll do your greatest job for you. So it's not actually rocket science. Yeah. Yes.

And if you think about everyone, you know, everyone that's worked for anyone Yeah. Whether it's working for the NHS, a big company like, you know, my mom does, and or it's a fast growth tech company. You know, everyone has their own experience. They've had a rubbish boss and a rubbish culture, and they've hated working. Or they've had a great culture, and they've really enjoyed their job.

You know, which one is going to make you want to stay, and which one's gonna make you wanna put your Mhmm. All in and try harder? Yeah. Of course. And the answer is probably not.

Yeah. I like the first one. I feel like instances where they get it wrong, I'm sure completely unintentionally. It kinda goes back to what we were saying before about how these things are easier said than done and how in the moment, it's hard to make that right decision, that longer term thinking, having that perspective, especially when you're under the cost, when you have got maybe investors breathing down your neck, when you've got an IPO date that you're working towards, like, some of those other things perhaps fall by the wayside. So how can companies make sure that they safeguard that culture?

How can they also how can you also kind of make the intangible tangible with that as well? Right? Because culture is often described as something that you can't quite put your finger on, but you know that it's there. So how do we kind of could you give us some practical tips to help with that? Yes and no.

The problem is it comes from the top. So if people say to me, you know, how how can I build culture? That's great. But if it doesn't come from the top and the CEO is not caring about it and it means something to them, it's not going to happen. It's all gonna be lip service, which is slightly what happens in a lot of these companies.

They think they should do it. But if someone doesn't believe it at the top, it it doesn't really filter through. So to me, it has to be the CEO that's driving it. So until we have CEOs that believe in it and drive it, that company is probably not gonna change very much. The good news is that many are great people that, you know, that want to have a great environment.

There are companies that are on the top a hundred best places to work. You know, they're the people now that I spend most of my time with. And it's great to see because they see profitable businesses. They see growth. They see success.

So I just believe, you know, this is a long game. Everything is a long game when you want to change things. But the CEOs that don't believe in it will eventually retire, and the next person Mhmm. Hopefully, will be someone who gets it. So I don't think yes.

You can put lots of things in, and there are some great tools, but it it comes from here. Mhmm. It's a feeling of I want to do this, and I have to do this. And and then you make the culture work. And then your issue is, as you scale, how do I keep it?

How do I not let it, you know, falter? And that's about having proper values, having it written down, having it all through every appraisal, every feedback, every remuneration structure, training your managers on it, hiring utterly on values. If you skip that, it's gonna go wrong. So it's just making sure the whole way down the line Mhmm. Everyone gets why it's important.

Yeah. Sam, you absolutely beat me to it because as lovely as it is to hear that these great companies are being rewarded, you mentioned the top 100 best places to work, and they also happen to be the most profitable and best places. But I'm also thinking about some of these very high growth, aggressive scale ups And knowing a few people that work for some of them directly, they've gone through the most torturous experience with absolutely no work life balance, toxic culture, can't wait to get out. And so I think the I guess the reassurance there is that it's a short kind of burn that you go through. It's a kind of a fizzle.

It's this big bang. You're the hottest thing, and sifted, and TechCrunch is covering you one minute, and then the next job bankrupt, and you're no longer around. So you absolutely touched on the important point I was gonna come on to, which is maintaining that culture as you do scale. Because I think, again, it's one thing whilst running that business, but if you are going through that hypergrowth, super scale process, then I think that's probably one of the biggest challenges. So I love that you talk about values, not just writing them down, but actually living them, actually making sure that they are ingrained in how you operate as a business.

Any other tips and tricks, pearls of wisdom as it relates to super scaling a business beyond culture before I come to my final question, Sam? Oh, gosh. So, I mean, as the Time has flown. I know. The time has flown.

There's so many things. I think the biggest thing I would say is make sure your vision is big enough. So growing a business is not a linear game, and that's what I've noticed with my Supercenter community and and talking to many others over many years is there's this idea that, you know, growth is linear. It's not. So you have this exponential growth that happens.

So once you get something that works, you're starting to exponentially grow, so you're doubling. If you can double a business from 1,000,000 revenue to 2,000,000 revenue, something's working. So you can you can carry on doubling that from two to four, four to eight, eight to 16. Suddenly, you're a £32,000,000 revenue business, and then you can go somewhere at that point. So it's this doubling concept of keeping in your mind, let's think about the next couple of doubling journeys and plan for that.

If you're planning to grow 10% a year from a million pound turnover, you're not you're not going to superscale. If you realize that companies double, you put your processes and your plans in place, and you hire the team, and you look at opportunities that are gonna get you to that doubling space. And I you know, I sit as a judge of entrepreneur of the year. I've sat as a judge for every woman. I've every I've acted for many different entrepreneurs.

And every time I see a business plan you know, I wish I'd done some research and, you know, probably written this down, but companies just double. They go from 50 to a hundred million. They go from a hundred to 200,000,000. They don't go from a hundred million to a hundred and 5,000,000. That's just not how it works.

So that ambition to really think much bigger than you're actually thinking to plan for that, I would say, is the biggest, biggest thing to do because it's all about mindset. And then it's about team. It's about hiring the right people. It's about cutting people fast. It's about making good decisions, not pontificating.

Utterly relentless focus on your client. You know, good founders listen. You know, getting as much advice as you can and and talking to businesses at the next stage to keep yourself aware, being able to pivot. I pivoted so many times. It's unbelievable.

I mean, I think, like, we describe entrepreneurship as an extreme sport. We also say it's like sailing, that you've got your destination. You put your pin in the map, but you don't know where you're going because there's many things that could happen to get you there, but you know you're gonna get there. Right. It's a bit the same.

If you've got your big ambition that's, you know, maybe five times where you currently are, you don't know what is gonna happen. That you've got to expect some difficulties. Mhmm. But the ability to pivot, to move, to listen, to adapt is what entrepreneurship is about, and no one knows what they're doing. Love that.

So, really on the money. Make it up as you go a lot, but you just solve the problem as and when. Yeah. Yeah. And I do just wanna connect having the big vision because it's so exciting.

And I think if there is a big enough ambition there, that also helps to energize and pull people along and see what's possible. And I think once you do get that sense of achievement, I think that that also fosters the upward cycle. You can do this. It's validating. You keep going.

You want more. It's it becomes addictive. I just wanna connect that to your mission of underrepresented founders Yeah. Whatever that looks like. Like, what what also gets in the way with that?

Like, is there what can help underrepresented founders to think bigger and be more ambitious? So a big problem that I found, which was my general hypothesis before we started this, but it's turning into, you know, more proof points now, is that underrepresented founders, for whatever reason, build businesses differently. They iterate. They take lower risks. They take more time to scale.

They bootstrap generally, not just because they can't get access to money. That's just, you know, is the way they build. And that's how I built my business very slowly until it got to the point I thought, right, we now acquire. It took me twenty years to make my first acquisition. It's slow growth, but really consistent growth, really sustainable businesses as a result.

What was the catalyst for you, Sarah, just to jump in there? So our catalyst was we were at 25,000,000. So we were very slow growth, organic growth up to then, raised hardly any money. At that point, we said, right. We're 5% market share.

We wanna get to 10. But because we had this growth ambition, really just doubling was almost maxing out in our current market. So we have to add something else. So we added something else before we doubled to make sure we could keep going past that. So the acquisition was all about growth.

How do we get to the next stage? Why that point in time was that decision made after twenty years? Because we just got to that size and scale. So before that if we got to that size and scale before and we got market share, it wasn't particularly about the years. It was about the point in time we got to Mhmm.

5% market share. Achieving that milestone. If we could have got to 20% market share, we would have probably carried on and not acquired. But we just needed to take risk at that point. Mhmm.

And we felt ready to take risk. Yeah. Yeah. So underrepresented founders quite often build slower. The problem with that is, as you're building slower, so doing it on your own head down with not particularly a network, you you then get to the point where you don't know how to build from there.

So you might need funding, but there's a big funding gap because you're not fast enough greater of a venture capital firm. Yeah. You're not big enough for a private equity firm. So where's your funding? You're not angel funding.

You're not a start up. Mhmm. You didn't go to Eton. You built something really good and promising, but you might be growing 20% a year, which is very fast growth. Mhmm.

But that falls completely in a gap of funding. Mhmm. So what we're trying to do with the superscalers is work on mindset, work on ambition. That's partly talking about its exponential growth theory, looking at how other businesses scale, introducing people to businesses who've scaled, make it seem less scary because you've met someone who's done it. You think it's really not that hard.

And what I try and say is the hardest part is starting. The second hardest part is going to a million pounds. Once you've got to a million pounds of revenue, you've been on so many doubling journeys. You're doing everything by yourself. It's never ever that hard again.

So for me to get to 25,000,000 to 50,000,000 revenue was about the same as me going from 1 to 2,000,000 revenue. It sounds silly. No. I get it. And it was I'm not saying it's easy at any point.

Yeah. But it gets easier because one, you can take yourself out of it if you want to. Yeah. Two, you've got a team. You've got support.

Mhmm. Three, you've generally built up cash. So you are less worried day to day about, oh my god. Can I afford that person? Can I not?

Yeah. And you've got some momentum and some brand. It makes complete sense. So it's it takes time to scale. Scaling is a long journey.

But getting people to just believe, to keep going, to make it easier for them and connect them to other people and to a system that can help them Yeah. Find those contracts and and just start to scale. So exciting. I love that. Will make a big difference.

Yeah. It's really though. It's the one work in progress. Well, it's so exciting. I can't believe it's such early days.

So we'll obviously put links and everything in the show notes so everyone can check it out. We'll make sure to promote that because it sounds amazing. I'm sure so many listeners would be interested to find out more. Free as well. That's an importiva tale.

Wow. Well, that's fantastic. I wasn't expecting that either. So that's that's the cherry on top. Just quickly to mention what came to mind on on the one to two versus the twenty five fifty eight, for example, that I think that's also the argument for Tim Cook, Apple CEO, being better at business in many ways than Steve Jobs, lo and behold, because he took it from the different sort of level of multiples.

So I get what you're saying once you've got those tailwinds and resource and validation momentum and everything else, it does get easier. So but it's reassuring for listeners as well. Get to that 1,000,000 mark, and then you're you're up and away from there. Sam, traditional closing question. This show is called Strategy and Tragedy.

One of the reasons because often the biggest lessons come from biggest mistakes. What's one tragedy that's taught you an unforgettable lesson? Okay. So I've had lots of lessons in business, but I think tragedy, probably the worst one. So I think I mentioned I worked with a company that put all this entrepreneurship in primary schools, a lady called Donna Irving.

And we worked together for many years, got into 70 schools, and we really worked this program, and we both believed in it. And probably four or five summers ago, can't remember how long ago, she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and very quickly passed away. Oh, wow. Very quickly. Wow.

Went from, you know, doing a great job to, she wasn't there, young family. Wow. And we were just launching our entrepreneurship piece about a white paper on how to get into the curriculum. We dedicated it to her. Oh.

But I think my lesson from that tragedy is, one, you know, your health you get one chance at health. So entrepreneurship is an extreme sport, but you can make it work with your health, and you should never do it to the detriment of your health. But the second most important thing with her, I think, is living a life of impact, making sure whatever you do is purpose driven. And that's how I work and live now that, you know, have a purpose, drive for an impact, you know, when the cards are up and, you know, it's your time. Have you done everything you can to do what you want to do?

And, yes, she passed away early, but my god, did she make an impact. And that will live on.

SM: Sam, that's so lovely. A pleasure to have you on here. Words of wisdom, all kind of speaking to the choir here. I love everything that you've said. I completely agree.

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