A derelict department store, a bold pension strategy, and a belief that buildings should trade like living ecosystems. We sit down with Neil to share how we transformed 45 King Street into a boutique apart-hotel and flexible workspace that runs on smart tech, focused design, and community energy.

We trace the leap from three decades in corporate sales to a SaaS pension-backed acquisition, breaking down how an OpCo/PropCo structure and VAT registration funded a full fit-out without bank finance. On the workspace floor, licences replace leases, soundproofing and climate control lift the bar, and co-working acts as an incubator rather than a crutch. When bigger suites proved slow to move, we pivoted them into a thriving events business, adding steady weekday demand and opening the doors to local organisations, exhibitions, and workshops.

Upstairs, fifteen boutique rooms and suites anchor a tech-enabled apart-hotel experience. There’s no front desk and no restaurant; instead, guests get quality essentials, tight partnerships with local food and laundry, and a QR “cube” that connects everything from breakfast to support in seconds. A six–six–six–six comms cadence keeps service personal and consistent. Summer occupancy climbed past 70 percent, and a growing pipeline of pre-booked coach tours stabilises seasonality while B2C channels fill nightly gaps. We also get candid about the tough parts: late-stage compliance changes, nine months of delays, and the real cost of lost trading days. The lesson lands hard—add contingency for both money and months, and build early alignment with building control and fire safety.

If you’re curious about SaaS pensions, flexible workspace operations, boutique hospitality, or how to monetise a multi-use asset with one empowered team member and the right tech stack, this conversation maps the playbook and the pitfalls. Subscribe, share with a fellow operator or investor, and leave a review—what strategy would you try first?

Most teams don’t need more AI hype; they need better decisions. We sit down with data expert and founder of Head for Data, Colin Parry, to strip AI back to what actually moves the needle: clean inputs, clear processes, and tools that match the job. Colin’s path from renewables and wind turbine analytics to leading data science teams gives him a rare field‑to‑boardroom perspective on how to build systems that work in the real world.

We start with the foundations: why data only exists to improve decisions, and how a centralised platform plus solid governance turns scattered spreadsheets into a reliable source of truth. Colin breaks down the difference between deterministic tasks that deserve automation and ambiguous work where AI’s probabilistic strengths shine. He explains why ChatGPT is just one tool in a larger AI family, and how to pick the lightest‑weight solution that solves the real problem instead of forcing everything through a language model.

The episode’s centrepiece is a practical case study with a major property factoring firm. By defining a true unit of work, cleaning their data, and building an optimisation algorithm that accounts for geography, travel time, and seniority, Colin’s team rebalanced workloads across 40,000 properties. Then they layered fees over effort to expose profitability by development, empowering leaders to adjust pricing, retain the right clients, and drop the wrong ones. The result: fairer teams, sharper unit economics, and faster, more confident decisions.

If you’re wondering where to start, we share a simple path: run a focused gap analysis, centralise your data, automate the deterministic steps, and apply AI where intent or inputs are genuinely messy. Want a partner for that first step? Colin offers a free half‑day Intelligent Futures workshop to identify quick wins. Subscribe, share with a colleague who’s drowning in spreadsheets, and leave a review to tell us which process you’d automate first.

A career can pivot on a single moment. For Graeme Clark, watching his father’s late-career redundancy lit a fire to build on his own terms—first as a self-employed joiner, then as a sales professional, later as the owner of a 50-year-old wholesale brand management agency, and finally as the founder of Oakal Fudge, a handmade confectionery brand supplying iconic distilleries, luxury hotels, and farm shops across Scotland.

We explore how Oakal Fudge balances craft and growth without losing its soul. Graeme walks us through making butter fudge by hand, batch after batch, and why the team refuses to industrialise the core process. Instead of chasing supermarket volume, they choose partners who value provenance, flavour, and story—think Glen Eagles, St Andrews, and malt whisky distilleries where spirit is added to the fudge for a distinct, place-based product. With fifteen Great Taste Awards, SALSA accreditation, and capacity to scale production fivefold through packaging automation, the business proves that artisan and ambition can coexist.

The conversation ranges from culture and leadership to finance and resilience. Graeme shares how accelerators, mentors, and winning Scottish EDGE reshaped his approach, sharpening unit economics, planning, and accountability. He explains the traction system his teams use across both companies, why culture beats strategy for long-term execution, and the lessons he’d give his younger self: know your numbers, start with the end, and take time to celebrate progress. If you care about scaling a product the right way, building teams that take pride in their craft, and turning values into daily operations, this story will stick.

Enjoyed the conversation? Follow and share the show, leave a review to help others find it, and connect with us to continue the discussion.