CEO Secrets: Advice, insights and stories from the popular BBC video series

‘An extraordinary and lively series of tips, insights, anecdotes and wisdom from some of the UK’s (and the world’s) top business brains. I was particularly struck by the experiences of women founders and CEOs and the resilience and downright stubbornness of so many brilliantly creative people. If you have ever wanted to start your own business – or simply need encouragement to pursue an idea others say is impossible – CEO Secrets might just be the inspiration you need.’

Gavin Esler, broadcaster and author, most recently, of How Britain Ends

‘CEO Secrets not only educates and informs about the world of business – it also inspires! The series is a fantastic resource to motivate young people with an enterprising mindset. It features a host of entrepreneurs who share their journeys with honesty and humour, providing invaluable insights gained from hard-won knowledge and experience. The series shines a light on the entrepreneurial spirit that exists in the UK.’

Sharon Davies, CEO, Young Enterprise

‘From tiny startups to giant multinationals every company leader in this book has a story to tell of success and failure. All too often interviews with corporate bosses generate little but dull platitudes – CEO Secrets couldn’t be more different, full of illuminating glimpses into what works and what doesn’t. Dougal Shaw has the knack of making his subjects drop the corporate jargon and talk honestly about what makes them and their businesses tick – which makes for an entertaining and instructive read.’

Rory Cellan-Jones, technology journalist and author of Always On

‘Intriguing and surprising.’

Mishal Husain, broadcaster

‘Life lessons and rocket-booster business tips. Dougal Shaw has condensed years of insights into one hopeful, helpful volume.’

Paddy O’Connell, presenter of Radio 4 Broadcasting House

‘Dougal uncovers the most engaging and unusual business stories. He has the knack of capturing what makes company bosses tick and their personality in a way which is always illuminating and surprising. A joy to read.’

Katie Prescott, Technology Business Editor, The Times

This book is dedicated to my family: my wife Aimee, daughters Seren and Elin and my parents Stuart and Paula.

I’d also like to thank every entrepreneur and business leader who took the time to share their advice with me for this series.

Finally, I also want to dedicate this book to anyone who’s ever been brave enough to start a business, just for giving it a shot.

Contents

Acknowledgements

Author’s Note

Introduction

CHAPTER ONE

UK Unicorns

Introduction

Tom Blomfield, Monzo

Greg Jackson, Octopus Energy

Gareth Williams, Skyscanner

Rich Riley, Shazam

Johnny Boufarhat, Hopin

CHAPTER TWO

Online Marketplaces

Introduction

Nathan Blecharczyk and Brian Chesky, Airbnb

Louise O’Shea, Confused.com

John Roberts, AO.com

Stacy Brown-Philpot, TaskRabbit

Alex Depledge, Hassle.com

CHAPTER THREE

Online Forums and Social Networks

Introduction

Justine Roberts, Mumsnet

Luis von Ahn, Duolingo

Sarah Friar, Nextdoor

Aline Muylaert, CitizenLab

Reid Hoffman and Allen Blue, LinkedIn

CHAPTER FOUR

Music and Fashion

Introduction

Johnnie Boden, Boden

Leanne Cahill, Bravissimo

Jamal Edwards, SBTV

Riki Bleau, Since ’93 Records

Ojoma Idegwu, Dearcurves

CHAPTER FIVE

Tech Companies: Software

Introduction

Aaron Levie, Box

Shellye Archambeau, MetricStream

Bhavin Turakhia, Radix, Flock and Zeta

Michael Cockburn, Desana

10 Pines

CHAPTER SIX

Advertising, Marketing and Digital Agencies

Introduction

Timothy Armoo, Fanbytes

Sara McCorquodale, CORQ

Lisa Utzschneider, Integral Ad Science

Stephen Allan, MediaCom

Ross and Roy Testa, 3 Heads

CHAPTER SEVEN

Food and Drink

Introduction

Keith Tiplady, Indulgent Chocolates

Clive Schlee, Pret A Manger

Tina Chen, HumaniTea

Levi Roots, Reggae Reggae Sauce

Cecily Mills, Cecily’s Ice Cream

CHAPTER EIGHT

Recruitment

Introduction

James Reed, REED Group

Amy Golding, Opus Recruitment Solutions

Anna Brailsford, Code First Girls

Kike Oniwinde, BYP Network

Kurt Schöffer, Auticon

CHAPTER NINE

Businesses That Help Other Businesses

Introduction

Sharmadean Reid, The Stack

Rich Lesser, Boston Consulting Group

Peter Done, Peninsula

Brent Hoberman, Founders Forum

Danae Ringelmann, Indiegogo

Conclusion

Index

Acknowledgements

I’d like to thank my BBC colleagues who all helped make this series and this book happen in various guises (in no particular order): Robert McKenzie, Robb Stevenson, Shanaz Musafer, Angela Henshall, Jeremy Howell, Mantej Deol, Dominic Ball, Rory Cellan-Jones, Ben King, Greg Brosnan, Hannah Gelbart, Katy Austin, Neil Heathcote, Mauro Galluzzo, Josh Hollis, Dhruti Shah, Oliver Smith, Stephen Mulvey, Emily Kasriel, Sam Everett, Emma Simpson, Ian Rose, Matthew Wall and Danielle Codd.

On the publishing side I’d first like to thank Matt James. He was the one who encouraged me to write the book in the first place. He has since left Bloomsbury but his early guidance was extremely helpful. Since then I’ve been in the very capable hands of Ian Hallsworth and Allie Collins who have made things feel as seamless and natural as possible for this first-time author.

Author’s Note

We’ve interviewed more than 350 CEOs and founders in our BBC series. We’ve covered all kinds of people and all types of businesses and obviously we had no idea it would become a book one day when we kicked things off. I decided the easiest way to organize this book was to break things down into categories of business, so sectors like ‘Music and Fashion’, ‘Advertising, Marketing and Digital Agencies’ and ‘Recruitment’. The exception to this is the opening section on ‘UK Unicorns’. Unicorns are privately held start-ups valued at more than a billion dollars. I decided to make this a separate, thematic section because I happened to have some nice examples of this rare phenomenon. Also, I had discussed the idea of growing unicorn companies in the UK with many of these entrepreneurs during the interviews, so they reflected on the idea. There are obviously quite a few examples where one company could have fitted into more than one section – e.g. a ‘Tech Software’ company can also be a ‘unicorn’ and it could also be involved in the ‘Music and Fashion’ market. The idea behind organizing the book in this way is simply to make it more digestible for the reader. It also demonstrates that much of the core business advice cuts through different sectors. You will see some themes emerge again and again, regardless of the type of business. I point some of these out in the conclusion.

Some contributions from CEOs and founders are longer than others. This is because of the nature of the series as I was making it for the BBC. Sometimes I would literally have ten minutes with a CEO before they dashed off to do another interview and so I grabbed a short contribution. It might have been outside a BBC TV studio, or after they had delivered a keynote at a conference, but other times I spent several hours with the interviewees, so we talked at greater length. In a few cases, which I’ve highlighted, I’ve gone back later to ask them some follow-up questions.

The primary aim for this BBC News series was to make a 90-second video in which the CEO would share candid advice to other entrepreneurs. From the outset I realized we were only broadcasting the tip of the iceberg. There was a treasure trove of fascinating advice left in the rushes. Much of that hidden content makes up the material of this book.

Each interview is also ‘frozen in time’ to a certain extent so I explain the story of the company up to the moment when I met the CEO or founder in question for this series. In some cases the interviews took place as far back as 2015. It wasn’t within the scope and remit of this book to bring every company’s story up to date, to the time of publication. That would take too long and would distract from the core point of the book – to convey each person’s timeless advice! However, in a few cases some significant events have happened to the business or the individual since the original interview and I’ve felt it important to acknowledge this. In one case, a company folded. And in one very sad case, an interviewee passed away. Much-loved music entrepreneur Jamal Edwards of SBTV died unexpectedly just as this book was being prepared for publication. He was one of the first interviewees I contacted about being in the book and he was very enthusiastic and supportive from the outset. As you will read in his section, the message he wanted to get across is about breaking down barriers and gaining a sense of self-belief. Hopefully, his inclusion in this book will help to spread his inspiring message to even more people.

Introduction

If you are into CEO-spotting, then the BBC News headquarters in central London is a very good place to be based. Nearly every day a major company will report financial results, meaning a chief executive will step up to the camera, or microphone, whether it’s to bask in the glory, or to put a brave face on things. Working in the BBC’s Money & Work story team (formerly known as the Business Unit until 2021), we see them all.

With all this talent on our doorstep and this enviable access to human capital we decided to set up our own kind of business venture in the summer of 2015. Why not politely grab these CEOs as they passed through and ask them one simple question, on camera?

‘What is the advice you wish you’d had, when you started out?’

We wondered if an open-ended question like that might prove more revealing for the well-briefed CEO.

What makes these people tick?

We thought fellow entrepreneurs would like to know the answer, but also just the regular customers who use these people’s businesses.

These video interviews weren’t designed to run on television news bulletins. We made them for social media: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn. We wanted the audience to feel like they were having a one-on-one video call while they watched these videos on their phone. That’s one reason why we filmed our guests looking straight into the camera – not the traditional way to get a soundbite for television. (Though as it turned out, TV outlets wanted these videos too, so eventually the series became a regular feature on World Business Report, the programme which runs on BBC World TV and the BBC News Channel.)

Although CEOs are busy people, most were delighted to take time out to ponder this question. After all, who doesn’t want to be regarded as a fount of wisdom?

The only real change we made over the years to this simple formula was to tell guests that their advice could also take the form of a short story. If they preferred, they could share a memory of their business journey that had stayed with them – some of the best ones, I think, have followed this format, because everyone likes a story.

After the series established itself as a successful format after six months or so, we started to undertake some trips to visit CEOs on location, either at their place of business or at conferences. Then after the first year, we also expanded the series beyond the remit of CEOs of household-name companies. We broadened it out to founders and CEOs of start-ups at the beginning of their business journeys. It turned out they had very interesting advice too, from a very different perspective.

This book is a selection of 47 interviews from the series, recorded between 2015 and the start of 2022. One interesting thing about the series, which I’ve tried to preserve in this selection, is that we took a kind of accidental snapshot of both the global and UK economy, so from our very unscientific experiment you can learn something of the long-term economic changes businesses have been grappling with in the past two decades or so. This is because a lot of the advice is grounded in the issues these business leaders were facing. Also, as I’ll go on to explain in this Introduction, the ‘snapshot’ has allowed me to spot some patterns about the behaviours and personalities of business leaders.

* * *

We spotted our first guest through a glass wall wandering down a corridor at BBC News HQ, with a flock of assistants around him.

‘Shall we grab him? He would be great to kick off the series!’

Sir James Dyson had just finished a TV interview in a studio. We approached him and explained the concept of CEO Secrets. He liked it, and we filmed it there and then, on the spot. His advice was short and sweet:

My advice for anyone starting a business is to employ good engineers and scientists and to trust them, listen to their ideas and believe in them and back them. Secondly, don’t be afraid of making mistakes. Fifty per cent of your decisions will be wrong, but the interesting thing is to learn from them and then get it right. Thirdly, if you are a young person and entrepreneurial, I do recommend you go to university and get, particularly, an engineering degree, or a science degree, or a maths degree, because it will help you. Even if your enterprise fails, you’ve got a qualification to fall back on.

That was not only my first interview for the series, but also my first insight into the personality types of CEOs.

Something I’ve observed over time making the series is that the way CEOs framed their response to the question, as well as their approach to being filmed, revealed a lot about them. What follows are some general observations, rather than scientific rules, about the snapshot of CEOs and entrepreneurs that I encountered. Of course, CEOs, like the rest of us, are unique individuals, but you may find the patterns I highlight here useful, as you read through all the advice in the book.

Founder v ladder climber

Sir James Dyson is a good example of the CEO who is a founder. A founder builds a company from scratch so is perhaps by definition more of a risk taker. He didn’t hesitate to do our CEO Secrets interview, even though he had to make the decision with little time for preparation; he embraced the challenge spontaneously.

Founders also, arguably, need to be particularly personable and charismatic in order to build companies from nothing, since the early days are all about persuasive skills, elevator pitches. Many of the ones I have met have had that swashbuckling style; the magnetic, extrovert personality that draws you in.

Another person who exemplified this in the first year of the series was Sean Rad, CEO of dating app Tinder and one of its original founders. He had come into the BBC News building to do a live TV interview, but agreed to do a contribution for our series immediately afterwards, in slightly impromptu fashion, thinking his advice through on the spot, which was this:

When you’re starting a company work can sometimes get overwhelming. There is a lot you want to accomplish. It’s very important to identify the three most important things that you need to accomplish to get 80 per cent of the results. There is always going to be a lot that needs to get done but there are always the few items that, if done properly, will make all the difference. So you really need to think it through and prioritize. You find that there’s a lot of things that can either wait, or over time are less important.

Also, as you’re growing the company, it’s very important that you all have a common understanding of where you are heading and what your goals are – what are you trying to accomplish? It’s important that there are individual people that are in charge of making certain decisions. Those people need to do a good job of getting feedback and information, letting everyone contribute, so they make the most informed decision.

I spoke to him later on about this phenomenon when I was putting this book together. I asked him if he thought CEOs who founded their own companies are cut from a different cloth. He agreed. ‘Founder CEOs build the foundation of the business, which requires learning and adapting at a rapid pace,’ he pointed out. ‘Corporate CEOs, on the other hand, come in after the foundation is set, which requires learning and adapting the business at a much slower pace.’

Another good example of this phenomenon that springs to mind is Johnnie Boden, founder of the Boden clothing empire. We caught up with him at a London Fashion Week event in 2015. Again, he was happy to do the interview on the spot and shared his advice off-the-cuff (you can read his full contribution later in the chapter on Music and Fashion, see also here).

Those three examples happen to be men, but female founders have exhibited this trait too. In fact, at the same fashion event where I met Boden, I also met fashion accessories designer and entrepreneur Anya Hindmarch, best known for her striking handbags. We were introduced by a BBC producer who was with me. Hindmarch agreed to do a contribution for our new series, thinking on her feet, with little time to prepare:

The first piece of advice I would give is a lovely Oscar Wilde quote actually: ‘Be yourself, everyone else is taken.’ It’s very important to be original, true to who you really are. Secondly, a vital piece of advice is: cash is king. Do not run out of money! And do you know what? Be brave, actually, because fortune favours the brave.

Are founder entrepreneurs perhaps a little braver by temperament? More spontaneous and willing to try things at short notice, whether it’s a media interview, or a business decision?

In contrast to this personality type is the chief executive who has slowly risen up the corporate ladder – who didn’t build the company by him or herself. I would say these CEOs have come across as more measured, a little more reserved in their demeanour when I met them for filming. Quite a few CEOs who fitted this mould came with pre-prepared advice, written down on paper. Some had even memorized it and performed it like an actor, annoyed with themselves when they stumbled over a specific word. They treated the video recording almost like a job interview. And in many ways that was a compliment: they took the exercise seriously and had invested time preparing for it. This breed of CEO is more analytical, careful and research-driven.

Here’s another telling, behind-the-scenes detail. I also remember on a few occasions there were decisions to make about the location for filming the interviews. Often there was the choice between a nice, visually-appealing backdrop, which came with the threat of noise interrupting us (because staff were about to go on lunchbreak, or there were works going on nearby, for example). Or we could decide on a less impressive visual backdrop, but a guarantee of uninterrupted quietness. The risk-taking founder personality would typically opt for the former: ‘Let’s just see what happens, shall we?’

A number of founders revealed to me that they started their businesses as part of a friendly bet with friends (you will read three examples of this in the book). I suppose this is another indication of a slightly reckless, risk-embracing mentality.

One way to think about it is that the corporate-climbing CEO is like the typical eldest child in a family: reserved, restrained, careful, a rule-follower; the founder is more like the younger sibling, unabashed, unrestrained, free-wheeling and a rule-breaker. That is a big generalization of course, but I’m painting an impressionistic picture for you in broad brushstrokes. In some cases I’ve had the chance to discuss these observations with the interviewees themselves. As you will see, their reactions were mixed. Some agreed, some didn’t. Some pointed out entirely different ways of breaking down personality types in the world of business.

Gender divide

I noticed another pattern after doing the series for a couple of years, about gender. Female founders and CEOs often framed their contribution by recalling personal experiences and they weren’t afraid to share moments of vulnerability. In television there is a phrase, ‘interview for emotion’. The most compelling moments aren’t about people conveying information on camera, they are about people sharing how they are feeling. On this measure, female entrepreneurs have given the best contributions for CEO Secrets. Many of them were willing to open up about their moments of self-doubt and how they struggled to overcome them.

Two really stand out for me in this regard. Alex Depledge co-founded an online domestic cleaning platform called Hassle.com and sold it for a tidy profit (see also here). She had all the charm of the founder when I met her, but also told a disarmingly honest story that took me aback as we recorded it. She recalled the time, just after she had raised millions in funding, when her husband had found her at home rolled up in a ball, crying on the floor, saying over and again: ‘I don’t know how to be a CEO.’ That’s a million miles away from the kind of Wall Street, Gordon Gekko stereotype of the alpha-male, all-powerful, super-confident business boss.

In another memorable interview, perfume entrepreneur Jo Malone straight off the bat confessed she was guilty of taking ‘the wrong decisions’. She had grown up on a council estate in south-east London and built up a highly successful beauty brand from nothing. But here’s the advice she chose to pass on:

I would say never make a life-changing decision on a bad day. How many times have I done that and made a really big decision? Always make that life-changing decision on a good day, when you are on the up and feel much more balanced. Some of the big decisions I’ve made, when I’ve felt very emotional, have probably not been the wisest and the smartest. They were probably wrong decisions.

There were lots of other examples of this too that I was struck by while making the series.

Jessica Butcher of Blippar opened up about how she felt ‘imposter syndrome’ as a business leader. Justine Roberts, the founder of Mumsnet, revealed crushing feedback from early potential investors, who told her ‘she didn’t look the part’ – and how that made her feel. And in a video which went viral on LinkedIn, Amy Golding of recruitment company Opus revealed how she had been given feedback that she was ‘too girly to be a CEO’. (You will read the latter two contributions in full later in this book, see also here and here) Other women talked about how the pain of bereavement had propelled them in their business careers. None of these guests were revelling in pity. Each one was simply sharing a story about finding resilience, to encourage others if they felt self-doubt too.

One year into the CEO Secrets series we asked female entrepreneurs in our audience if they preferred to hear advice from women – most said yes.

‘There is a tendency for women to make it more personal, to overtly base their advice on their own experiences which, in turn, makes them feel more accessible as people and their advice more applicable,’ Roxane Gergaud, co-founder of Doris & Dicky, a website for finding affordable boutique hotels, told us.

‘We feel empowered by seeing women giving business advice. It feels real, it feels relatable,’ Louie Tew wrote to us. She was in the midst of setting up a wedding business called TH&TH, with two other female co-founders.

For both these women – and many others who wrote in – advice from female business leaders was especially appreciated because they