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TL;DR:
In this deeply personal follow-up to his first-half 2026 review, Phil draws on six months of conversations with guests from around the world (plus his own family's story and the recent loss of his mother) to introduce three words now central to how Ignium works: Spark, Scale, Sustain. Using the mechanics of an engine as his guide, Phil explores why businesses with all the right ingredients can still lose their energy, how founders build businesses that no longer depend on them, and why the businesses that truly last are held together by culture, not personality. Why does this matter? We have the power to be the change we want to see in the world, and there's no more powerful tool than the businesses we run.
Full Show Notes:
Are you tired? What about your business? For those who feel like they have run out of steam, there's hope. Values and purpose are the new commodities driving the modern entrepreneur forward in a world that, on some levels, seems to be losing interest in making money to the exclusion of all else.
In a reflective and infectiously upbeat episode, Phil Rose looks back not just on podcast guests from the past six months but also his family's legacy of entrepreneurship — particularly emotive after the recent passing of his mother.
“We're in a world right now that needs change, and you can be that change.”
Phil puts his case for why we need to stop looking outside of ourselves for the thing that'll get us to the next level (even if we need a little specialist outside help to reignite it).
Learn about:
• The three stages every business moves through and how to get over the common barriers at the Spark, Scale and Sustain points.
• Why coaching starts the domino run of developing individuals, businesses, communities and the world at large.
• How to reframe decision-making to propel your business forward, overcoming the fear that's holding you back.
• The powerful parallels between the suck, squeeze, bang and blow action of the combustion engine and how modern businesses avoid stalling and take flight.
• Why the key to fulfilment could be making your business about more than a) you, and b) money — running contrary to everything else you may have heard.
• What carried his parents' business through tough times and why these lessons are still very much relevant today.
• Why having a brilliant product, healthy cash flow, fantastic people and excellent systems aren't enough.
• Real-life stories of people who transformed their business and got their life back.
• How, as leaders, in silence we receive — but we also give. It's the power of pause.
It's a story of resilience rooted in purpose that's as relevant today as it was when Phil's parents started out: a wake-and-shake episode sure to re-energise you.
🎧 You'll love listening to this episode as much as we loved recording it. Remember to like and subscribe to get the word out to others and drop us a comment too. We'd love to hear what you think.
♻️ Feel good about sharing this podcast with someone who'll find it helpful; that would mean so much to us and them.
More about Phil
Phil Rose is the founder of Ignium Consulting and Malabar Coaching, and host of Sparks by Ignium. A former Rolls-Royce engineer turned business coach, Phil has spent the last two decades helping founders build businesses with purpose at their core. By fuelling the transformation from founder to leader, he helps them develop the teams and culture that sustain momentum.
Key nuggets to listen out for:
“Every business starts with a person; every strategy starts with an idea; every culture starts with a conversation; every organisation starts with a spark.”
“It's not about doing more, it's about doing what matters most.”
“Some of my favourite moments when I'm coaching aren't about doubling sales. It's something quieter. People shift. The conversation stops, their shoulders soften, and silence comes in.”
“Scaling isn't about becoming bigger, it's about being less dependent on one individual.”
“Are you the hero or are you the guide? Enable others to become better than you and you can do more than you.”
“Purpose stores momentum and momentum builds your business.”
“Legacy is about asking what you've delivered to the world, not just the money you've made.”
Resources:
Jim Collins – Good to Great
Nancy Kline – Time to Think: Listening to Ignite the Human Mind
Sam Goodner – Like Clockwork: Run Your Business with Swiss Army Precision
Learn More:
Keywords in this episode:
Phil Rose, Sparks by Ignium podcast, Phil Rose podcast, Spark Scale Sustain, internal combustion business momentum, Ignium Consult, Malabar Coaching, Sam Goodner, Like Clockwork book, Jim Collins Good to Great, Nancy Kline Time to Think, Sharon Spano, Manny Fiteni, Alex Smith strategy, Pete Martin focus, Dana Theus, business coaching, scaling a business beyond the founder, purpose-driven business
🤖 AI-Optimized Semantic Keywords
• how to rediscover passion in your business
• why businesses lose momentum after early success
• how to scale a business so it doesn't depend on you
• what is the flywheel effect in business culture
• building a culture that outlasts the founder
• how to know when to sell your business
• what does sustainable business growth really mean
• how coaching creates space for reflection and honest decisions
• the difference between passion and discipline in business
• why focus is a competitive advantage
• how to build business momentum from within
• why purpose matters more than profit
🔗 Long-Tail Keywords (Great for Blog Posts, Episode Pages, or Social)
• why do businesses lose their spark after early success
• how do you scale a business so it doesn't depend on you
• what is the flywheel effect in business culture
• how do I know if I've lost passion for my business
• what questions should business owners ask before selling
• how does coaching help business leaders make honest decisions
• why does culture matter more than personality in a business
• why having a great product isn't enough to grow a business
• how do leaders use silence and pause effectively
🏷️ Episode Tags / Categories (For Podcast Platforms and CMS Systems)
Use these as tags or categories in Transistor, WordPress, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or other publishing platforms:
• Phil Rose
• Sparks by Ignium
• Spark Scale Sustain
• internal combustion
• business coaching
• scaling a business
• business culture
• leadership development
• founder to leader
• flywheel effect
• purpose-driven business
• half-year roundup
• Sam Goodner
• Jim Collins
• Nancy Kline
Creators and Guests
What is Sparks for Growth?
Conversations with some fo the worlds most amazing business founders, leaders and experts, examining the changing landscape of leadership, purpose, business growth, Scaling Up and change with business leaders and owners in mind. We cover a mix of topics designed to ignite (or re-ignite) your SPARK help you SCALE and then SUSTAIN your growth one conversation at a time.
Learn More: visit the Ignium https://www.igniumconsult.com/
Subscribe for more exclusive content in the Ignium Spark Tank: https://www.igniumconsult.com/the-spark-tank/
Connect with your host Phil Rose on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/coachphilrose/
Sparks by Ignium — Episode Transcript
2026 Half-Year Roundup, Episode 2: Internal Combustion — How to Build Business Momentum From Within
Speaker: Phil Rose (Host)
Welcome back to the Sparks for Growth podcast. I'm Phil, the host, and today I'm delighted to join you yet again wherever you are, whether in your car, in your plane, in your boat, sitting by the pool, lazing, or taking a walk, or sitting at your desk. The key is I'm here to give you my second take on the first half of 2026 from the podcast I've discussed and interviewed. I've talked to guests across the world this last six months, ranging from psychologists, to entrepreneurs, to strategists, to adventurers, business leaders from all over. And there's a couple of key messages that really come out. In the last podcast on this review, I talked about the key messages I'd heard. But what I thought about after this is there's a key resonating feeling that runs through each one of those. I use the word feeling because I think that's something I want to really help people think about. My view in life is that people make decisions emotionally and they justify them intellectually. A lot of people would say the same thing, whether you're buying a car, whether you're buying a house, or you're making a business decision. Most entrepreneurs make that decision with their gut, and then they justify it with their head. They know where they're going, they just have to put the rationale together with it. And if you think about some of the best entrepreneurs in life, they make that gut feeling and just go for it. I was talking to my father recently, and we had this same discussion about when he set up his business in 1982. My mum's just died, she passed away two weeks ago. And we've had lots of discussions between me and my dad and my brother about what their life was like. And one of the things that resonates with me is when they set up their business back in 1982, it was a tough time for them. But they did it because that's what they felt was the right thing. And it was felt because actually they didn't plan it in advance, it just evolved and came about, and then they found out how to do it. So for this podcast now, I'd like to describe what I've learned and hadn't really shared, based on the conversations I've had recently, and how that can help you in your businesses going forward. There's three key words I learned from all of the conversations, but also it resonates for how I deliver my coaching, for what I do, and how we work as a team. And those three words are spark, scale, sustain. And at first glance, they may sound like three stages of business growth, because they are. That's how I think about it. You need that spark. You need the scaling to sustain.
But the key that's come to me recently is they're actually the stages of human growth, because that's what every business needs at the beginning — a person. Every business starts with a person. Every strategy starts with an idea. Every culture begins with a conversation, and every extraordinary organization starts with a spark. And that's the key to that. Now, many of you know I'm an engineer by background, and I've reflected on this a bit more over the last two weeks since my mother's passing, because actually what I realized is the key thing I had right in the beginning was that spark. My dad's an engineer, and he taught me a lot about what I know today. He taught me how a diesel engine runs, how a gasoline engine runs, and he taught me about how to run a business. But then when I went to Rolls-Royce, I learned the real thing about how this works. And the key is it needs fuel, air, compression. The simple phrase I used for my Rolls-Royce training days was suck, squeeze, bang, blow. You suck air in, you squeeze it, you bang it with a spark, and then you push it out the back of the engine. And that's what creates the propulsion. Now, how does that apply to a business? Well, thinking about that, it's all about potential. Because the potential of the fuel is there already, but we have to add that spark. Now, as an entrepreneur, you know you've got that potential. And sometimes you need that spark, that catalyst, to speed up the reaction to make it happen. In my dad's case, it was the end of 1979. We'd come through a tough period and a tough decade. The world was just about to pick up again. And what he did was he started doing work on the side to mend people's engines, to help make their boats work again, help them go faster, to reintroduce that spark. Now, ironically, he was working mostly on diesel engines, so there's no spark, but the compression was still there. And you had that ability to squeeze the air, to make it hot, and then add the fuel and make it blow and help make your boat go faster. I won't labour the analogy too far, but businesses do the same thing. They have brilliant products. They have fantastic people. They have healthy cash flow, excellent systems. But sometimes they might lose their energy, because actually sometimes their spark has gone. And think about what that means for you as well, because when we're running a business, it's very easy to lose our spark. I talked to my dad about how depression and recession during the 1980s and 90s — I mean depression in economic terms — affected their business. They were in the marine business.
People stop spending money on boats at certain times because they can't afford it. It was a luxury expense. So they had to find other ways of doing it. My dad helped with doing that. He was a really good engineer, and he developed an amazing ability to run a business. I've talked about him a lot in the past in terms of what I've learned from it. I learned how to run businesses better, but he did it really well from 1982 to 2010. There's not many businesses that sustain that length of energy, making themselves run. And I think that's one of the key things that made me want to record this podcast now. Often when I talk to business owners, the fuel's still there, but the spark's gone out. What does that mean? It means they've hit some form of barrier in their career. If I think about my conversation with Jono a number of years ago — Jono was struggling in his business, he was struggling in his life. He admitted openly he was alcoholic, but he chose to notice that, and he went through the Alcoholics Anonymous process. And he was one of the people who stood up and said, "I need to make a change in my life. I recognise where I am." Not many people do that, and I acknowledge him to this day. I still talk about Jono a lot, because I admire everything he did in how he ran his business and changed his life around by recognising and admitting that there was a problem. Now, from my perspective, I see this in lots of other business owners. I single out Jono because he was the one who helped me identify the things he was doing and how they were stopping him, but he made it work. He's now been sober for many, many years. He's also moved his business forward and got clarity of thought. And if I appeal to you, Mr Business Owner, Mrs Business Owner, young business owner, to think about what's going on in your business — it's a tough world. Sometimes you need to think about where other people have got your back. But also think about — don't feel guilty about your business, don't feel guilty about how you feel about it. I'd encourage you to become curious about what's going on for you. Alcoholism is one thing, but maybe there are other addictions you've got in your business that stop you being as successful as you want to be. Maybe you're addicted to work, maybe you're addicted to the pressure, maybe you're addicted to staying there, or maybe you just don't want to go home and face up to the full facts of what's going on in your business. And that's where we come back to this word spark, because a spark can be reignited. We can find that passion again. And to me, that's what I want to delve into over the next twenty-five minutes or so. So what does it mean?
How do we rediscover our spark in the first place? Again, if I think about this — I've talked to many guests on this podcast, over the last six years, but also over the last six months. It's now July 2026 as I record this; we're just moving into August. And I think about some of the things I've learned. I've talked to real people, not businesses — I've talked to people. If I think of my guests — Sharon Spano, Manny Fiteni, Alex Smith — three, just off the top of my head. Sharon talked about success and fulfilment. She talked about it in her own words — about achieving things, but also recognising what was happening while her son lay dying, and how she and her husband made the choice to go out and enjoy life together despite the lack of money, because that was the key for them. If I think about that from your perspective, listener, at this stage — think about what success and fulfilment mean in your words. Does achievement mean doing more to make us happier? Does success feel like we've got to keep pushing forward? Because success can feel empty if we lose sight of what really matters. That's what Sharon taught me. If I then think about the conversation with Manny on the Gold Coast in Australia, he talked about subconscious beliefs. In your words, as you listen to this — what do those subconscious beliefs do to you? When I think back to my NLP training back in 2010, sixteen years ago, we talked about how the subconscious controls the body. We talked about how we delete, distort and generalise our thoughts. But what goes on for you in that case? Because it's the stories written decades ago that no longer belong to us that we need to change. Those things are quietly stopping us becoming what we're truly capable of. What are the beliefs and values holding you back? Maybe it's about money, maybe it's about work, maybe it's about other people, maybe it's about your communication. The key is you can change any of this, because the key is to look at how you can move your business forwards and your life forwards. Once you recognise these things, you can make the change.
Now, making a change requires a strategy. One of my more recent podcasts in the last few months was with Alex Smith, and we talked about strategy, because you need to have a strategy. What's a strategy? A strategy is a plan put into action to help you move forwards. In a business you have one — but where's your strategy for your life? Where's the thing you're considering that you need to be working on to put the plan in place? Alex talks about reframing strategy in your own words — it's not maybe about being better, it's about being different. Or maybe it's about being better than everyone else. What's your strategy — different, or better? Just think about that for a moment. The key here is about creating value that nobody else creates, because that's what individual entrepreneurs bring to the world. If I think about what my dad did back in 1982 — he had the ability to transform an engine, which would transform someone's boat, which would transform their life in different ways. That may seem a bit strange to think about from that perspective, but there's a journey there about why we do things. And Pete Martin, my guest on the podcast after I met him in Austin last year, talked about this. He talked about focus. In your own words, what's your focus? It's not about doing more, it's doing what matters most. In a world where there are loads of distractions around us, focus might be your greatest competitive advantage. Because if you can't focus, think about where you're going to be distracted. Focus could be about your niche market, could be about the attention you put into your business, could be about the things you do differently. In two podcasts coming up in September and October this year, we're talking about delegation a bit more, and the key there is what can you delegate so you can focus more, because that's the key to this. So where does your focus get distracted?
Think about some of the other things that come out of this. Where do those key points in your business really start to become key? Because the spark for most of you doesn't actually come from an external environment — you've got it internally, and that's the key. We often think we have to go outside of ourselves to find it, but most of us have already got it, we've just forgotten how to find it. When we think about our beliefs and values, maybe that spark is there. Maybe someone at some stage told us we couldn't do something. Like my conversation with Dana Theus, when she was told she couldn't be a writer — that spark was still there, it was just being muted for many years, and then it came out again. The fuel was still in her. I urge you to think about where your spark is, because the spark is always internal — you have to own that. That's what I learned this year. The people I've talked to over the last six months weren't teaching us how to build better businesses. I believe they were teaching us how to be better human beings, better leaders, better people in our own right. Because we often talk here about businesses and people. If I think about why I do what I do now — I started life as an engineer at Rolls-Royce. I love engineering, I love technical things, products that make us drive, fly, float, make things better for life. But the key behind those is always the people behind it. What did Rolls and Royce have when they started their business? What initial ambition did they have? It's the people behind it, the people with that spark. And that's what I'm going to talk about here — the spark that drives things. Now, often that spark has to be rekindled through coaching. So let me just take a coach's moment for a second, just to give some thoughts on this. Can I tell you about my favourite moment in coaching? This is the thing that really drives it for me. It's never about doubling revenue. It's never about the sale or the new client. It's something quieter than that. It's that key moment where people shift — where I'm sitting in the room with them, I'll ask them one question, and then I do what coaches do best — I shut up and let the client answer the question. I notice things. Their conversation slows. They stop speaking. They drop their head, their shoulders soften, and that silence comes on. What a coach does really well is enable the person in front of them — the human being — to sit with that internal reflection, to go inside. Because the question I ask just enables them to understand what's going on for them. The pause, as I learned many years ago, is the key piece of coaching. How many of you give yourself time to pause, time to reflect, time to meditate?
When you're talking to your employees, your team, your partner, your wife, your husband, your children — it's the pause and the silence that's the most important thing. As I sit here now, I feel it in my chest. And as a coach, that's what I do — I notice things. I don't just hear the intellectual, I notice what I feel, the somatic response I get. And when I don't interrupt their silence, I don't interrupt mine. And you, as a business leader learning to be a better business leader, also need to learn how to be a better pause-taker. Because what they've done, when they get that chance, is they've heard themselves — sometimes for the very first time. It's that internal voice for them that's really clicking over, that's giving them the reference of what's happening internally for them. It's that reflection. It's a bit like Jono really realising one day he needed to change, because alcohol was taking over his life. And Jono, if you're listening to this, I admire you still. I talk about you a lot, and I respect every decision you've ever made. The key here is coaching isn't advice. Coaching is about creating space. When I wrote my coaching thesis back in 2015, 2016, I used Nancy Kline's book, Time to Think, and I realised that what I did really well was enable people to have that space — space for emotion to sink in, space for courage, and space for possibility. Working with Sukhi at Sherlock's many years ago, she enabled that. She could ask some amazing questions and then just sit back and let the emotions work. That's where space for possibility really comes true. Because our role as leaders is to enable people to have space to do their own thinking, because that's where their spark lives. My role isn't to give people answers, it's about holding the mirror up to them so they can see the answer that's already in there. That may seem very glib, but to me that's the key to this. It's about enabling people to see what they've already got. I think again about the people who have moved on, who've changed. I was doing some coaching for a car company over the last five years, and my role wasn't to coach people out of their job — my role was to hold that mirror up to them and help them see what they already knew. But two of those people I can think of straight away decided to leave that role.
One, after twenty-plus years, changed career. And Peter, I know you're probably listening to this — I respect you for those decisions, because you realised that family was most important. You were a great salesperson, but you realised there was something else to life, and you chose to make that decision, because at the end of the day, you can always go back if you choose, but not many people take that chance to give it a go, to reflect on what's there for them. So if you've been pondering things in your life at the moment, what are the things you need to do to make that change? I think about my mother — seventy-nine years and seven months. She died just before her eightieth birthday. I think about all those decisions she made in her life. My mum was a hard worker. She worked all the way through her life, she made some big decisions, she looked after us as children, she looked after my father and us as adults, she helped run the business, and she made those choices — she got up and did it. So I put this to you now — think about what decisions you want to make in your life that you're holding off on. I don't see a decision, when you've made it and it turns out wrong, as a failure. I just see it as one more piece of information. There's no such thing as a wrong decision — it's only wrong in hindsight, because at that time, when you make that decision, it's the right choice. One of my coachees left a role at a car dealership when he was working there, and he decided to go back, because he realised it wasn't what he was expecting — the grass wasn't as green as he thought it was. And that's okay. Coaching isn't about making perfect decisions. Leadership is the same — it's about helping people make honest ones. Because once you've made that decision, you can act on it. And again, one more piece of information always changes a decision. Sometimes it confirms it, sometimes it changes it, but either way, you learn something — and that's where growth comes from. So that spark can be rekindled, that spark can be fuelled to make it into what you need it to do. Think about where you need to go with that.
Now let's move on. Once we've got that spark there, one of the key things that happens in business is we need to scale. Because I see many entrepreneurs running one-person businesses, and they're not really entrepreneurs — they're just doing something different, they're not doing the corporate role, they're doing the individual role, earning their own money. My key here is there's something you can work on — how can you help build your own business, once it's beyond you, into something bigger than you? Because that's the key. So once you've discovered your spark, or rediscovered your spark, something else becomes important in your business — and that's discipline. Discipline, sometimes, to let things go. Because remember, passion starts a business — it gets you going, passion sustains it — but the key that really sustains it is putting the systems in place to enable you to step back from your business. So often we hit these barriers to growth in our business, and we don't realise what we have to put in place. The investment that comes at the first barrier, or that change in energy where we have to let go. I used to talk about how I had a baby on my business card for many years while I was part of another business. That baby symbolised what most people think of their business — it's their baby, they've created it, they've nurtured it, and they don't want to let go. I used to joke that most business owners wouldn't even let their business go to anybody else, in the same way they wouldn't let their baby into someone else's arms, even if it was their mother or mother-in-law, because they don't trust them to do it as well as they do. Now there's some illogic in that, because they've all been brought up as babies and they've survived to this stage. It's the same with business — sometimes you need to step back. And when you've got the systems in place to enable it to happen, it can happen properly. So let's talk about that, when people get stuck. One of my greatest podcasts in the last few months was with an entrepreneur who has systemised his business — Sam Goodner. He wrote the book Like Clockwork, based on his Swiss Army experience — the discipline of the Swiss Army, that's what Sam put in place. He used that experience to build some great businesses, some of which have gone on to beyond a billion in revenue. But Sam still maintains his sense of perspective, he still maintains his family, he still gets there and does it. Think about this — it's about those brilliant entrepreneurs, those brilliant problem-solvers, those brilliant salespeople. They build a business that's bigger than them, because that's the key to this. It's only when they realise that if they stop, everything stops, that they realise they need to put the systems in place. Because scaling isn't necessarily about becoming bigger — it's about becoming less dependent on one individual. Something Sam got right, and Pete Martin talks extensively about — it's about being bigger than them.
It's about building leadership. It's about developing systems. It's about creating clarity in your business so that other people can run it. It's about helping other people make decisions. I've got a great podcast coming up for you in September and October this year — I'm talking to Atiba de Souza. We're talking about delegation and the delegation trap, and this is one of the things Atiba learned, which you'll hear about later, because that's when culture comes together. Culture is stronger than personality. Culture is the thing that holds people together. Culture is the thing people do when the business owner isn't looking, when the manager isn't looking. So what culture are you creating in your business today? What culture do you want? Is it all about you? Are you the hero, or are you the guide, the coach — the person who sits behind and enables other people to become better than you? Because that's the key — how do we help other people become better at doing what they do than you ever can? It's only when you get that full reflection on how these things work that you'll actually realise what you can do in business. And you can do more than just building that, because it's about going from the business owner to becoming the business coach. The business shouldn't need you in every room. Again, think about the sale of a business. When my parents came to sell their business in 2010, my father was in his late sixties, and they decided they wanted to move on. The world was coming through mid-recession. Think about what that meant for other businesses — they were in the marine industry, a tough business to work in during a recession, because personal leisure craft were a luxury and people couldn't afford them. So they diversified, they went to work with ferry companies and other companies, but that wouldn't sustain the passion, and they decided to close the door. They were lucky, they found a buyer — but that buyer bought it for the value of the tools in the workshop plus a bit extra. Not enough to live on.
I believe this is where we need to understand how we can help the business become bigger than you, whoever you are. Because that's the key — that's the difficult part. When you hit that second barrier, it's because you're trying to do it all on your own. It's like a product curve. I often show my product curve to people, thinking about where you start your business and where you end it. Most people end their business on a plateau which leads to a decline, because that's a plane stalling and crashing. What we need is to put more fuel in to get it up again — you may not be coming in to land, you're going up for your second iteration. For any of you who own a phone — which is every one of you — think about how often you buy a new one. When the phone company decides it's time to re-engineer the product, to give you the new one, people rush out and buy them. That's what we need to do with our business as well — we need to scale it so it's more than us, to accelerate its growth to the next climb, so that other people can take it on. That's where you go from founder to leader. Building better leaders is part of coaching. When you have better leaders in your business, you can do more with them, and you can step back and do the things you're really good at — that might not be selling, might not be the accounts, might not be dealing with the admin. It might be creating the next big thing in the business. So if I can enable you to become better coaches, I can enable you to become better leaders, and you can then take pride in the fact you're creating a business which is sustainable and moves forward. Because sustainability, in this sense, is the key to it — and that's the next stage. My parents decided to sell out before they got to the crash. Many business owners crash at that second barrier because they don't know how to handle it. But I want you to push through it. I want you to sustain your business and get the flywheel turning.
Let's come back to those engineering words. We talk about momentum — momentum in an engine comes from a flywheel. It's something spinning, which keeps spinning, but we have to put energy into it. A roundabout with kids on it will stop spinning if you stop pushing — we have to keep doing that. So how do we do it? We need to sustain that energy. Sustaining energy isn't about you doing more. You can't continue to run your marathon, you can't continue to keep sprinting. I've run marathons since 2007, and it's hard work. I admire people like Steve Redgrave, who went on to five gold medals, because when you think about the twenty-five-plus years of doing what he did, that's a really tough call. Not many people manage more than one Olympics. Sustainability is key, because that's what I think people will talk about in the future — but it's what most entrepreneurs talk about least, because they don't think far enough into the future. So sustain is the next key. We spark, we scale, we sustain. Cars have flywheels, engines have flywheels — we have to keep it going, keep momentum, make it work. And that's what culture does. Your job as a leader is to embed culture in the business — but it's not fully your job, it's the team's job. It's not about you, remember. So how do we work on it? Healthy cultures store energy — they're a bit like a coiled spring, they have that potential. Strong leadership helps teams store more wisdom, and purpose builds it — that word, purpose, above and beyond making money. When you first started your business, you probably went into it to make more money — you wanted to make more than the other guys, more than you did in your old corporate job. And what you realised is you didn't always do that, because it's hard work running your own business, not everyone gets there successfully. But the key, as Jim Collins talks about in many of his books, especially Good to Great, is purpose. It's the bit that enables you. Having a purpose above and beyond making money will grow you, and purpose stores momentum, and momentum builds your business.
Because when difficult times come — as they always did for my parents, running their business for thirty years, as they have for me since I've been running my business since 2004, as they have for every business through recession, through difficulty, through problems in their lives — it's not that businesses fail, it's that the people running them lose the energy for them. So that's the key. It's not about you managing all the time, it's not about relying on one charismatic founder. Yes, we have that in the world — we talk about the Richard Bransons, we talk about the Musks — but they put teams in place. What they've realised is it's deeper than them. They're the figurehead, but it's about putting the systems in place to enable the business to move forward. To me, that's shared purpose, shared values, and that creates shared ownership in the business. People turn up to work for your business because of what you do, not because of what you pay them, ultimately, if you've got a clear purpose. Otherwise, they'll just leave and go to the next person who offers them the same money. So that's what sustaining means to me. It's not about surviving. It's about creating something that continues to make a difference long after you've stepped away. The value of your business is in that, and I think that's the key — how can you build something that has value above and beyond you? Now, interestingly, the older I've become — I'm now fifty-five, going on fifty-six — the less interested I am in helping businesses simply grow to make more money. I often say, glibly, revenue up, cost down, make more money. That's not what I want to be doing — if that's what you need, you need to find a different consultant. What I do is help you build sustainability, build the right culture, because the right culture will sustain your business. We talk about culture and commercial — the commercial side is revenue up, cost down, make more money. The culture bit is what sustains it. It's the flywheel, as Jim Collins talks about. Because healthy businesses matter — jobs, prosperity, opportunity. But businesses don't change the world on their own. People do. We have to enable people to do this within the business. We need a successful commercial business with a successful culture to keep this going. People create businesses — as I said earlier, it's that spark at the beginning — but businesses shape communities, and communities shape society in the future. It's that ripple effect we can put in place. When business owners realise it's not about commercial, it's about culture, that's the difference. Culture means two things to me here, and I'll talk more about this later — but for me, culture is about what you want to deliver in the world. When you set up your business on day one, you had a chance to do something different. You either wanted to change the world or make more money. And at some stage in your journey, you realise either you're making enough money and you want to change the world, or you're changing the world and you need some money to live on. What do you really want in your business? What's the ripple effect you can put in place? How can you think about your business differently? This isn't glib — it's about setting your legacy, so that in the future people remember what you delivered to the world, not just the money you made. When you write your eulogy — which you will one day, or someone will for you — what do you want to be known for? It's not about making money, it's about changing people's lives. As a coach, that's what I do — I change people's lives. My purpose is to inspire transformation. If I can inspire just one of you listeners today to think about your business differently, to think about the transformation you want in the world, and inspire you to come up with the answer, that's when it matters. Because coaching, I believe, changes people. People change businesses. Businesses change communities. And communities, quietly and almost imperceptibly, change the world. We're in a world now that needs change, and you can be that change.
So, there's me talking for a number of minutes about what I've learned from six months' worth of conversations. These conversations weren't about strategy, or happiness, or neuroscience, or entrepreneurship. They were all about the same question: who are you becoming? Perhaps that's the real work of leadership — to become the kind of person your business needs you to be, your family needs you to be. I think about my mum — seventy-six years, seven months. She taught me a lot, she inspired me, she led me to get to where I am today. My parents ran their own business, I'm running my business, my brother runs his own business. We're a family of entrepreneurs — that's what we do best. But we're also a family of family members, we look out for each other. And this is where I get a bit emotional.
Because sometimes we all lose our spark.
And that's where we need that rekindling. I've lost my mother — she was the spark for all of us. You can probably tell in my voice now, this is hard to say. But I want you to ask yourself the question — where have you lost your spark? Where have you lost someone else? What do you need to do to build your business — is it to scale beyond you, or is it just about you closing the doors when you pass away? And the question I'll ask you finally is — what legacy are you creating, and how will you sustain that after you've gone, if that's what you choose to do? If you can answer all three of those questions honestly, then I believe that's the first step in building a business that's truly successful, but one that also matters to the world. That's what I've learned from these conversations. It's about you. It's about building something, it's about building something that's sustainable. Spark it to start it, scale it to make it grow, and sustain it so it can keep going into the future. Thank you for indulging me as I've talked through this for the last thirty minutes. Thank you for helping me build this Sparks for Growth podcast. When I set out to do this back in 2019, 2020, I did it to help make the business work better. But I've realised over the last six years, actually, why I do this is because I believe through this communication medium, we can all change the world one bit at a time. If just one person picks up what I've said now and says "let's do something different, let's build a sustainable business that changes the world," then my work's done. And if you know somebody who's lost their spark, and needs rekindling — pass this on to them. Let them know there are other people out there who can help them. Sometimes you just need that person to come along and add more fuel to your fire, because that spark is already internal. Until next time — keep growing, keep learning, and above all, keep your spark alive. Sparking your growth. Love and blessings.