Grown UP Business

About Grown UP Business

The Grown Up Business Podcast is a scale-up podcast for entrepreneurs, founders, and CEOs who want proven strategies for scaling a business sustainably and building companies that work without them. Hosted by Paul Avins, Business Transformation Expert, this podcast draws on over 21 years of coaching experience, supporting 20,000+ entrepreneurs and helping facilitate £150m+ in business exits. Each episode Paul shares practical insights, disciplined leadership thinking, and real-world scale-up frameworks to help founder and CEOs find new levels of personal and professional performance. On the podcast, you’ll hear: Expert Interviews Candid conversations with successful founders, CEOs, investors, and subject-matter experts covering leadership, scaling, funding, operations, exits, wellbeing and personal development. Actionable Scale-Up Strategies Clear, practical frameworks built around Paul’s four pillars: Level UP (founder mindset and CEO identity) Team UP (building high-performing leadership teams) Scale UP (sales, systems, and operational discipline) Fire UP (harness the power and energy of mind, body, spirit connect) Real Business Stories Proven strategies and hard-won lessons from leaders who have scaled businesses, failed and rebuilt, in the real world — with clarity, structure, and purpose. This CEO podcast is for you if you want to: - Scale a founder-led business beyond day-to-day dependency - Build a high-performing leadership team - Create a scalable and sellable business - Move from operator to confident scale-up CEO - Invest in your self and your personal development You’ll learn how to scale a business without chaos, implement systems that support sustainable growth, and build a company that delivers results, with or without you at the centre. A sellable business is also a great business to run. The Grown Up Business Podcast shows you how to build both. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your favourite platform and join thousands of ambitious founders already scaling with Paul and Team Purple. Level UP. Team UP. Scale UP. Fire UP

Publisher

Paul Avins

Category

business · business · business

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

27 Jun 2024

Latest episode

16 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

3 of 71 episodes have a transcript.

1. 

   16 Oct 2026TRANSCRIPT

   Pete Cohen, ITV Life Coach: How to Build a £2M Business and Survive Trauma

   Host Paul Avins interviews performance coach Pete Cohen about building a £2M business, overcoming trauma, and the power of self-awareness for entrepreneurial growth.

2. 

   2 Oct 2026TRANSCRIPT

   Add $1M to Your Business Using The Profits Tap Framework with Stephen Jones

   Host Paul Avins interviews expert Stephen Jones about the Profits Tap framework to add $1M to your business by optimizing people, performance, and profitability.

3. 

   18 Sept 2026TRANSCRIPT

   Your North Star vs. Your Goals: The One Thing Missing From Your Business Plan - Will Polston

   What if the biggest thing missing from your business plan isn't a strategy, a funnel, or a hire, but a clear answer to where you're actually trying to go? In this episode, Paul Avins sits down with Will Polston, best-selling author of North Star Thinking, entrepreneur, NLP practitioner and one of the UK's top business strategy and performance coaches. Will shares his journey from believing money equalled happiness, chasing it hard through a career as a city broker, to the moment at a Tony Robbins event that revealed his real driver had nothing to do with cash. Will and Paul unpack what a North Star actually is: not a purpose, but a life mission you'll never fully achieve but keep working towards, the business equivalent of trying to empty the sea with a spoon. They explore why entrepreneurs hit a scale-up ceiling between £500k and £1.5m, why beliefs like "I don't have the time or money" get baked in during underfunded start-up years, and how to break a limiting belief by introducing doubt through other people's references. The conversation goes deep on identity: why exited business owners often spiral into feelings of depression from losing the "business owner" identity without a life-after-exit plan, why peak performance is potential minus interference, and why "it needs to be done, but I don't need to do it" was the belief that kept Will stuck longest even after success. They also cover recovery, why sleep quality now trumps everything else in his routine, his self-love list for staying recharged, and 22, the mushroom supplement business he built to run on one to two hours a week. What you'll learn: Why a North Star differs from a purpose, and why most businesses have a vision and values while most people never define their own. Why the money-equals-happiness belief gets embedded early. Why entrepreneurs hit a scale-up ceiling around £500k to £1.5m, and why hustle gets you there but framework gets you further. How to break any limiting belief by introducing doubt through other people's references. Why exiting without a life-after-exit plan often triggers depression through identity loss. Why peak performance is a subtraction game, not addition. The difference between guilt and shame, and why "work guilt" keeps founders chained to their desks. Why multiple identities protect you through major transitions. Why sleep quality became Will's single biggest performance lever. What a self-love list is and how it drives active accountability. Why Will built 22 to prove a company can grow on one to two hours a week. Why reviewing your net worth, including your business valuation, quarterly changes how you treat the business. Apply this: Get clarity on your North Star before your next goal. Ask what you're actually doing this for, long term. Interrogate your beliefs about time and money. Find people who've proven them wrong. Build a life-after-exit plan before you exit, not after the deal closes. Treat recovery as part of performance. Track sleep quality and build in genuine off-season time. Get your business valued every quarter. Treating it as an asset, not just income, changes your decisions. Create a self-love list of things that recharge you, and use it to check in on yourself weekly. Ask "how can I do this and have fun?" instead of forcing yourself through what you resent. About Will Polston Will Polston is a best-selling author, entrepreneur and one of the UK's top business strategy and performance coaches. A former city broker turned NLP practitioner and psychologist, he's the author of North Star Thinking: Master Your Mindset and Live a Life You Love. He's also built 22, a functional mushroom supplement company, and is working to build a 6,000-seater ice arena and develop the junior academy of the ice hockey club he played for over 23 years. Find out more: https://willpolston.com Scale with Paul Avins Connect: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulavins/ Book a call: https://www.paulavins.com/book-a-call Newsletter: https://www.paulavins.com/newsletter-opt-in Level Up. Team Up. Scale Up. Fire Up.

Inside a recent episode

Pete Cohen, ITV Life Coach: How to Build a £2M Business and Survive Trauma

Published 16 Oct 2026 · Transcript excerpt

[…] I love my son. He plays computer games, right? I don't play computer games with them. Not that I wouldn't love to, because I would love to, but I know that if I start that, I'm going to want to win, because I know that's my competitive nature, and then I'm going to get addicted to it, and that's going to be 40 hours of my life going a week or something. And I know that about me, so I don't even start. If we're out in London with clients and stuff, and some of them want to go to a casino, I go home, because I don't want to walk into a casino. I know if I walk into a casino, and the worst thing that could happen is I win, I will be addicted at that point. […]

Who has been a guest on Grown UP Business

Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.

• Pete Cohen
• Stephen Jones
• Nicolas Manuel
• David B Horn
• Emma Burke

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

67 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

5,708 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 24 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

47

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

0

Contact Grown UP Business

Guest appearances

Does not typically book guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.

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Questions about Grown UP Business