LeeroyDotUK

Hosted by Leeroy Powell aka LeeroyDotUK

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Oct 2026

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About the show

A podcast where I hack the great minds of people in business, psychology and sciences. I'll explore what makes them tick, as well as delve into tricks and tactics to grow your business and improve your personal life, All whilst delving into their minds to explore what has worked and what hasn't in their journey. This will be a series of interviews, discussions as well as episodes solely from myself.

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11 recent

October 8, 202638 min

Hacking Great Minds with LeeroyDotUK: Joe Milnes (Revitk)

You hire your first salesperson. Three months later it hasn't worked, you're 20 to 30 grand down, and you're back doing sales yourself. Joe Milnes says the hire was never the problem. Your business had no recipes. In this episode of Hacking Great Minds With LeeroyDotUK, Joe breaks down why founder-led businesses hire too early, what a sales process actually is, and the four-part framework he uses to systemise selling in any industry. Joe fell into sales while chasing a career as a rock star, built a graduate academy that could take people with no experience and ramp them fast, and now runs Revitk, helping founders and founder-managed teams close more deals in less time without the founder being on every call. WHAT WE COVER • Falling into sales, and why almost nobody plans a career in it • Building a training programme that ramps reps with zero experience • Why most SMB founders are still the best closer in their own business • The restaurant analogy: why your first sales hire fails • What a sales process actually is, and why it's the recipes • Selling by accident vs selling on purpose • Why hiring a salesperson too early costs 20 to 30 grand • Why sales gets treated differently to every other hire • Founders aren't full-time managers, and what that means for your systems • The stigma around sales, and confusing salesy with persuasive • Sales as the transference of conviction • Why technical founders often outperform trained salespeople • Symptom-aware vs problem-aware founders • Leads going into a sales team like water into a bucket with holes • The four-part framework: Hook, Wedge, Match, Net • Why discovery raises perceived value before you pitch anything ABOUT JOE MILNES Joe Milnes is the founder of Revitk, a Sheffield-based business he started in 2024 to help founders and founder-managed sales teams design, document and systemise their sales process. He came up through B2B sales into sales enablement at a tech firm, where he built a graduate academy that took inexperienced reps and ramped them quickly. He now works with founders who are the primary closer in their business, as well as larger organisations with established sales teams, combining sales psychology with automation to reduce the founder's dependence on being on every call. Find Joe: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joemilnestdsc/ ABOUT LEEROY Leeroy Powell is a serial founder based in Sheffield, running a portfolio of AI, search and publishing businesses. He runs MarGen, an AI visibility agency helping brands get found and cited inside AI search, and The CAIO, a fractional Chief AI Officer practice. Hacking Great Minds is where he digs into the minds of leaders pushing the needle in business, economics and the psychology that drives it all. CONNECT WITH LEEROY LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leeroydotuk X: https://www.x.com/leeroydotuk AI Visibility Strategies: https://www.margen.net Listen on Spotify: [SPOTIFY LINK] Subscribe for new episodes of Hacking Great Minds With LeeroyDotUK. CHAPTERS 00:00 Intro 00:00 Falling into sales on the way to being a rock star 00:00 Building a graduate academy that actually ramped reps 00:00 Why Revitk exists 00:00 The founder as the best closer in the business 00:00 The restaurant analogy 00:00 What a sales process actually is 00:00 Why founders hire too early 00:00 Why sales is treated differently to every other hire 00:00 The stigma around selling 00:00 Sales as the transference of conviction 00:00 Why technical founders do well 00:00 Symptoms vs root cause 00:00 Hook, Wedge, Match, Net 00:00 Why discovery comes before the pitch #Sales #SalesProcess #B2BSales #FounderLedSales #SalesEnablement #Sheffield #HackingGreatMinds sales process for founders, first sales hire, founder led sales, B2B sales process, sales playbook, sales enablement, scaling a sales team, discovery questions, Joe Milnes, Revitk, Sheffield business, founder podcast UK

October 1, 202645 min

Hacking Great Minds with LeeroyDotUK: Chris Remond (RedHolt/OTTRED)

Screen 20 brilliant candidates. Shortlist five. Place one. Send the invoice, close the file. Chris Redmond calls that heat dissipation, and six years ago he made a three minute phone call from the back of a taxi that changed how his whole business works. That call led to a WhatsApp group. The WhatsApp group became OTTRED, a community now spanning thousands of streaming and media professionals across dozens of countries. Today Chris does no outbound sales at all. In this episode of Hacking Great Minds With LeeroyDotUK, Chris covers the telecoms apprenticeship that gave him his grounding, being a group director at 26 and well out of his depth, the genuinely scary moments in business nobody posts about, moving his family to Dubai, and why he thinks being confidently vulnerable in public is how you actually learn. WHAT WE COVER • Why OTTRED is named in deliberate industry code • The "currency of conversation" and why he likes people getting it wrong • From a Mercury telecoms apprenticeship to group director at Colt • Being out of your depth on purpose, and why run of the mill bores him • The scary moments in business, and how you only know you're in too deep once you're there • Where the obsession with process and systems came from • The golf swing analogy for improving any system • The taxi phone call that changed the trajectory of the business • Turning 19 rejected candidates into a community instead of a closed file • Leaving London for Dubai with a mortgage, kids and no safety net • The side of Dubai that doesn't make Instagram • 50 contacts a day: the only KPI he had at the start • Why they now do zero outbound sales • Specialism as a premium, and why clients come to you • Starting content before Covid, and why cringing at your old work is progress • The RedHolt methodology: campaign days, 48 hour reporting, digital shortlists • How Synamedia turned a general recruitment business into a media specialist ABOUT CHRIS REDMOND Chris Redmond is co-founder and CEO of RedHolt, a productised recruitment business, and OTTRED, a community and talent network for the streaming, broadcast and digital media industry. He also holds a non-executive role at BobCheck. Based in Dubai with his wife and business partner Amanda, he came up through a data network services apprenticeship at Mercury, later Cable & Wireless, and spent five years at Colt as group head of professional services and group head of operations. He presents the OTTRED Spotlight Podcast and is a regular voice on the streaming and media talent economy. Find Chris: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisredmondredholt/ RedHolt: https://www.redholt.net ABOUT LEEROY Leeroy Powell is a serial founder based in Sheffield, running a portfolio of AI, search and publishing businesses. He runs MarGen, an AI visibility agency helping brands get found and cited inside AI search, and The CAIO, a fractional Chief AI Officer practice. Hacking Great Minds is where he digs into the minds of leaders pushing the needle in business, economics and the psychology that drives it all. CONNECT WITH LEEROY LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leeroydotuk X: https://www.x.com/leeroydotuk AI Visibility Strategies: https://www.margen.net Listen on Spotify: [SPOTIFY LINK] Subscribe for new episodes of Hacking Great Minds With LeeroyDotUK. -------- #Recruitment #CommunityBuilding #Streaming #OTT #FounderStory #Dubai #HackingGreatMinds recruitment community building, OTT streaming industry, RedHolt, OTTRED, Chris Redmond, community led growth, zero outbound sales, niche specialism business, recruitment methodology, moving business to Dubai, founder podcast UK, media and streaming talent

September 24, 202655 min

Hacking Great Minds with LeeroyDotUK: Martin Zarian (Factory 39)

90% of B2B companies have the same product, the same offer and the same go-to-market as their competitors. Martin Zarian's argument is blunt: if you can't differentiate on product, you have to engineer the difference with brand, or accept that an inferior competitor will keep beating you. In this episode of Hacking Great Minds With LeeroyDotUK, Martin breaks down the difference between product and brand, why memorability beats visibility, and how he gets technical founders and finance-driven CEOs to stop dismissing brand as logos and colours. Martin co-founded Factory 39, a brand and software consultancy in Limassol, Cyprus, running a team of around 30 for global B2B clients. He's worked on FIFA, eBay and Dr. Oetker, and he's now moving the business towards agentic AI. This conversation covers the whole arc, including the years he spent making creative work with no strategic substance and hating every minute of it. WHAT WE COVER • Where the name Factory 39 comes from, and the factory idea behind it • Pairing a full-stack developer with a full-stack brand builder • Why the best software developers are lazy, and how AI changed that • Growing up between a doctor, an architect, Armenia and Estonia • The "black cave" problem with traditional agency creative work • Discovering brand strategy through Marty Neumeier, Mark Ritson, Chris Do and Rory Sutherland • Turning brand identity from decoration into a business asset • The weekend automation project that became a consultancy • Why Factory 39 is repositioning around agentic AI • Why consultancy that only delivers PowerPoints is finished • Product vs brand: the ticket to play vs how you win • Why product differentiation can't be defended • The Apple paradox: buyers who don't think it's better and buy anyway • Memory scarcity, and why 95% of your market isn't buying today • How to translate brand for CTOs, CFOs and sceptical C-suites • The "challenge me" slide, and the questions he asks back ABOUT MARTIN ZARIAN Martin Zarian is a full-stack brand builder and co-founder of Factory 39, a brand strategy and software consultancy based in Limassol, Cyprus, working with global B2B clients across tech, SaaS and MedTech. He is also co-founder of Balabook and hosts the Made in Cyprus podcast. With close to 20 years in the industry, he has built strategy-driven brands for names including FIFA, Dr. Oetker, SiGMA and SHARP. He started in traditional art and printmaking, moved through graphic design and brand identity, and now specialises in brand strategy for B2B. He is a LinkedIn Top Voice. Find Martin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/martinzarian/ Factory 39: https://factory39.com ABOUT LEEROY Leeroy Powell is a serial founder based in Sheffield, running a portfolio of AI, search and publishing businesses. He runs MarGen, an AI visibility agency helping brands get found and cited inside AI search, and The CAIO, a fractional Chief AI Officer practice. Hacking Great Minds is where he digs into the minds of leaders pushing the needle in business, economics and the psychology that drives it all. CONNECT WITH LEEROY LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leeroydotuk X: https://www.x.com/leeroydotuk AI Visibility Strategies: https://www.margen.net Listen on Spotify: [SPOTIFY LINK] Subscribe for new episodes of Hacking Great Minds With LeeroyDotUK. #BrandStrategy #B2BMarketing #Positioning #AgenticAI #BrandBuilding #B2BSaaS #HackingGreatMinds brand strategy, B2B brand strategy, product vs brand, brand differentiation, B2B marketing 2026, agentic AI consultancy, Martin Zarian, Factory 39, brand positioning, memorability marketing, Cyprus startups, founder podcast UK

September 17, 202646 min

Hacking Great Minds with LeeroyDotUK: Sam G Winsbury (Kurogo)

At 19, Sam Winsbury couldn't get anyone to take him seriously. So he stopped pitching and started publishing. Six years later he's built Kurogo into a London personal branding agency with 370+ clients. In this episode of Hacking Great Minds With LeeroyDotUK, Sam breaks down the exact positioning system his agency runs on, why templated LinkedIn content has stopped working, and the January morning he decided to shut the business down. This is a proper founder conversation. No polish, no highlight reel. Sam talks openly about the 100k to 1 million grind, hiring people better than him, getting in his own team's way, and the hire who accidentally saved the company before he'd even started. WHAT WE COVER • The psychology blog Sam started at sixth form, and the marketing education he got by accident • Why cold outreach failed at 19, and how LinkedIn content solved the credibility problem • The £200 first client that turned into a personal branding agency • Using lockdown as a "free trial" to build a business • Why he rebranded from Brandly to Kurogo, and who forced it • The brutal jump from 100k to 500k to 1 million in revenue • Losing a third of the business in one week, and the hire that stopped him quitting • How Kurogo hires: why CVs are worthless and self-starter signals are everything • Deep-end onboarding vs a structured 12 week process, and why he still defends the deep end • The hardest part of scaling: letting senior people do it their way • What's changed on LinkedIn since 2020, and why templated content is dying • Why most content problems are actually positioning problems • The Promise, Proof and Packaging framework Kurogo uses with every client • Why your profile gets judged in three seconds, and how to engineer that judgement ABOUT SAM WINSBURY Sam G Winsbury is the founder of Kurogo, a London-based personal branding agency working with founders and executives on LinkedIn positioning, profile strategy and content. Kurogo has worked with over 370 clients and is built on a reputation over reach thesis: credibility and positioning beat volume and vanity metrics. Sam also advises multiple companies on brand and growth. He started out running a psychology blog at sixth form, went on to study psychology at university, and built his first agency clients while still a student. Work with Sam: https://kurogo.co.uk Free personal brand scorecard: https://kurogo.co.uk ABOUT LEEROY Leeroy Powell is a serial founder based in Sheffield, running a portfolio of AI, search and publishing businesses. He runs MarGen, an AI visibility agency helping brands get found and cited inside AI search, and The CAIO, a fractional Chief AI Officer practice. Hacking Great Minds is where he digs into the minds of leaders pushing the needle in business, economics and the psychology that drives it all. CONNECT WITH LEEROY LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leeroydotuk X: https://www.x.com/leeroydotuk AI Visibility Strategies: https://www.margen.net Subscribe for new episodes of Hacking Great Minds With LeeroyDotUK. #PersonalBranding #LinkedInStrategy #FounderBrand #B2BMarketing #AgencyGrowth #Positioning #HackingGreatMinds personal branding agency, LinkedIn personal brand, LinkedIn strategy 2026, founder personal brand, B2B LinkedIn content, positioning strategy, Sam Winsbury, Kurogo, building an agency, scaling an agency, hiring for startups, founder podcast UK

April 16, 20245 min

Growth, Stagnancy, and the Pursuit of Improvement

Introduction: LeeroyDotUK dives into the importance of continuous growth, tackling stagnancy, and improving both personally and professionally. He emphasizes the necessity of active development to counterbalance the effects of inflation and career stagnation. Key Points Discussed: The Illusion of Stagnancy: The concept that there is no standing still in life; you're either moving forward or deteriorating. This principle applies to everything from personal fitness to business activities. Strategies for Personal and Professional Growth: Daily Prioritization of Growth: Creating Opportunities: Proactive Negotiation: Value Recognition and Communication: Psychological Strategies: Rejecting Victim Mentality: Action Over Inaction: Key Takeaways: Leeroy underscores the importance of stepping out of comfort zones and taking responsibility for one’s own progression. His mantra, “the world owes you nothing; you've got to earn your worth,” serves as a call to action for listeners to actively pursue their desired futures without letting fear or complacency hinder them. Conclusion: The episode wraps up with a motivational charge, encouraging listeners to start taking small, consistent steps toward their goals. Leeroy stresses that success is built on daily efforts, and it’s within everyone’s power to lay the foundations for their own success. Listeners are encouraged to take their first steps, however small, towards their personal and professional goals after tuning into this energizing discussion.

April 5, 2024Episode 643 min

Leeroy Presents 006... Robb Gilbear (Growth Habit)

In this conversation, Rob Gilbear: a business mentor and coach, shares his journey from the corporate world to entrepreneurship. He emphasizes the importance of authenticity and self-acceptance in building a successful business. Rob discusses his approach to helping clients and the different programs he offers. He also highlights the significance of community and support in the entrepreneurial journey. The conversation explores the power of self-awareness, the role of identity in achieving goals, and the importance of taking action and creating healthy habits. Overall, Rob's story and insights inspire listeners to embrace their true selves and pursue their dreams. Takeaways - Authenticity and self-acceptance are key in building a successful business. - Creating a supportive community is essential for entrepreneurs. - Self-awareness and self-image play a crucial role in achieving goals. - Taking consistent action and creating healthy habits are important for personal and professional growth. Sound Bites / Chapters 00:00 Introduction and Background 00:54 Rob's Work as a Business Mentor and Coach 03:11 Rob's Journey to Success 04:37 Enjoying the Fruits of Success 05:32 Transitioning from the Corporate World 06:31 Building Courage and Belief 07:28 The Decision to Pursue Entrepreneurship 09:23 Overcoming Self-Doubt and Second-Guessing 10:26 Rob's Approach to Helping Clients 11:51 The Impact Accelerator Program 12:51 Building a Community of Support 13:48 Creating Authentic Content 18:18 Being Authentic and Showing Up as Yourself 19:16 Overcoming the Fear of Being Yourself 21:37 The Journey to Self-Acceptance 23:34 The Power of Self-Awareness 24:52 Creating and Maintaining Healthy Habits 27:43 The Importance of Taking Action 29:12 Rob's Daily Routine and Structure 31:48 The Journey of Personal Growth 35:42 The Importance of Progression and Evolution 36:10 The Role of Identity in Achieving Goals 40:06 The Power of Self-Image

March 11, 2024Episode 537 min

Leeroy Presents... 005 Dakota Robertson (Growth Ghost)

Dakota needs no introduction. Taking his audience from 0 to over half a million in just a few years across X, LinkedIn, YouTube and Instagram. The ghostwriter and founder of Growth Ghost - his videos and posts are synonymous with grabbing attention. We discuss a multitude of topics from business, to growing businesses, the creator economy, copywriting, psychedelics, and digital nomads whilst touching on ideas and concepts throughout business.

March 8, 2024Episode 446 min

Leeroy Presents... 004 Paul Banks (Javelin Content)

Join Paul and myself in discussing the possibilities of video content for business. In this discussion, we explore how and why video does well in driving business growth, along with why some businesses utilise it and where they go wrong. If you are looking to utilise video content to drive the business forward, this conversation is for you.

February 27, 2024Episode 340 min

Leeroy Presents... 003 Liam Bartholomew - VP Marketing (Cognism)

In our latest podcast episode, I had the pleasure of speaking with Liam Bartholomew, the Vice President of Marketing at Cognism. Throughout the conversation, Liam shared his unique insights and experiences, highlighting his journey in competitive marketing for SaaS. As VP of Marketing, Liam is at the forefront of shaping innovative marketing strategies and I enjoyed finding out, from his angle, what techniques they use to stay ahead and at the forefront with and for the customer. We discuss tactics that can drive substantial growth and engagement, along with the competitive landscape of sales intelligence. There are many challenges that Liam points out along with how they tackle them within Cognism. Liam offered a behind-the-scenes look at the company's approach to creating predictable pipelines. Moreover, Liam shared his thoughts on the future of sales and marketing technologies, reflecting on Cognism's mission to transform prospecting from an art to a science. He highlights how Cognism's commitment to innovation, compliance, and customer understanding is crucial in providing solutions that meet the ever-evolving needs of revenue teams. This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in the intersections of marketing, technology, and sales intelligence. Liam's expertise and the conversations around the strategic initiatives at Cognism provide valuable insights into driving success, either from being a startup with a small budget to an international data provider. This was a great conversation and I look forward to sharing it with you.

February 27, 2024Episode 244 min

Leeroy Presents... 002 Colin Gallagher - The AI Marketing Guy

Join us for an enlightening episode and the second in the series of the podcast, Leeroy Presents... We host the distinguished AI Marketing Guy aka Colin Gallagher. In this episode, we talk about marketing, business and AI