Scaling Up: Lessons From The World's Best CEOs and Founders

TDM Growth Partners
  • 4.9 (85)
  • BUSINESS
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“Scaling Up” is a podcast that tells the scaling stories of great growth companies from around the world, as experienced by their founders and CEOs. With the aim of inspiring and educating the next generation of entrepreneurs, as well as helping current business leaders, this podcast series hopes to give insight into what it takes to scale a business to hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. Hosted by Ed Cowan and supported by TDM Growth Partners.

  1. Challenging The Giants of the Game - Tom Beahon, Co-Founder Castore [S9.E5]

    5 DAYS AGO

    Challenging The Giants of the Game - Tom Beahon, Co-Founder Castore [S9.E5]

    From a kitchen table in Liverpool, England, to the dressing rooms of some of the world's biggest sports teams, Castore is one of the fastest growing premium sportswear brands on the planet. Founded in 2015 by brothers Tom and Phil Beahon, both former professional athletes. Castore was built on grit, obsession and a bit of a chip on the shoulder. With no fashion experience, no contacts, no outside investment – the brothers remortgaged, their parents' home, lived off just a thousand pounds a month and packed boxes late into the night. Their mission - to build a British challenger to the global sportsweargiants Nike and Adidas - a brand that blends high athletic performance gear with the sophistication of luxury fashion. Fast forward almost a decade and Castore is rewriting the rules of the industry. They've developed proprietary fabrics, run a fully integrated design to distribution platform, and perhaps most disruptively, ripped up the old team apparel playbook, forging deep digital first partnerships with elite teams in cricket, rugby, football, and Formula One.

    1h 2m
  2. Nailing Culture at Scale - Michael Schneider, Managing Director, Bunnings [S9.E4]

    14 JULY

    Nailing Culture at Scale - Michael Schneider, Managing Director, Bunnings [S9.E4]

    “What does it take to scale one of the most trusted brands in Australia without losing its soul?” Today’s guest is Michael Schneider, Managing Director of Bunnings since 2016 and a 20-year veteran of the business. Bunnings is more than a retailer. It’s a cultural institution. With more than 380 stores, $18b in revenue and  55,000 team members, it’s hard to imagine a time when Bunnings wasn’t the default answer to every home improvement question. But behind that dominance is a story of quiet leadership, discipline, and culture at scale. In this episode, we dig into how Bunnings earned and maintained this dominance – from Every Day Low Prices and delivering brand promises at scale,  to the cultural consistency that is stitched into the fabric of the business, this is a story of of what it really means to scale up — not just fast, but for good.

    51 min
  3. Still Obsessed - Steven Marks, Co-Founder and Co-CEO Guzman Y Gomez [S9.E3]

    27 JUNE

    Still Obsessed - Steven Marks, Co-Founder and Co-CEO Guzman Y Gomez [S9.E3]

    When Steven first joined us in 2019, GYG was already making noise—130 stores, a cult-like customer base, and a founder who was across every detail of the business from avocado sourcing to store design. That episode became one of our most replayed for good reason: it was raw, passionate, and incredibly insightful. But so much has changed since then. GYG has nearlydoubled its footprint, gone public, entered the U.S., scaled a drive-thru model, launched a new app, and pushed network sales past the billion-dollar mark. The team’s changed. The scale is bigger. But what about the founder? This episode is about going deep on that next chapter—what’s changed, what hasn’t, and what Steven’s learned along the way. It’s a candid look at what it takes to lead through hypergrowth without losing the heart of the brand. As always, please reach out if you have any feedback or comments, and for more insights on a whole range of topics the new TDM website is a great resource for investors and operators alike.

    49 min
  4. From the Archives: Taking on McDonald’s with Guzman y Gomez’s Steven Marks [S1.E1]

    18 JUNE

    From the Archives: Taking on McDonald’s with Guzman y Gomez’s Steven Marks [S1.E1]

    We are reaching back into the archive to revisit a conversation from 2019 with Steven Marks, the co-founder and CEO of Guzman y Gomez. This was one of the most electric conversations of the early years of the show. Steven shared his passion for food, brand, technology, and most of all, people—with a clarity and energy that defined him as a founder on a mission. At the time of this recording, GYG had around 130 stores. Steven was founder-CEO, still obsessing over every ingredient, every system, every hire. They had global ambition, but the U.S. was still a dream, the IPO was years away, and COVID hadn’t yet tested the foundations of hospitality businesses everywhere. We’ll be sitting down with Steven again soon for a follow-up episode covering everything that’s happened since 2019. But before we do, here’s where it all began. Even if you have heard this episode before, or if you are new to Scaling Up since then, this is a must-listen-to episode full of nuggets that will not only act as a great primer for our next episode, but will also leave you in awe of his energy and passion. Enjoy this re-release of one of our most-loved early episodes—with Steven Marks of Guzman y Gomez.

    44 min
  5. Putting the Care Back in Healthcare, Tim Doyle, CEO and Co-Founder of Eucalyptus [S9.E2]

    5 JUNE

    Putting the Care Back in Healthcare, Tim Doyle, CEO and Co-Founder of Eucalyptus [S9.E2]

    Tim Doyle is the co-founder and CEO of Eucalyptus, a digital healthcare business that in just a few short years has redefined what 'patient first care' can look like in this country and abroad. If you haven't heard of Eucalyptus, you might know it via its house of Brands, Pilot, Kin, Software, Juniper, each delivering vertically integrated care in everything from men'shealth to fertility to weight loss. Before founding Eucalyptus, Tim was part of the founding executive team at Koala, the mattress in a box leader in Australia that scaled rapidly to over a hundred million dollars in revenue and beyond. Here, Tim cut his teeth in the high growth direct to consumer business model and perfected how to build brands that truly resonate. But health, as Tim rightly notes, is a totally different beast. It's a regulated, deeply personal high trust industry, and that makes the scale up journey all the more fascinating. In today'sconversation, we cover a huge amount of ground on the evolution of thebusiness, a mini deep dive into the market of GLP-1’s, and most notably thefascinating team building framework that Tim has used up until this point. Whatstood out to me was Tim's clarity about how and why Eucalyptus will win as itcontinues to move through this hyperscale moment of execution across a range ofglobal markets.

    47 min
  6. Founder Energy, Scaling Mindset - Silvija Martincevic, CEO, Deputy [S9.E1]

    6 APR

    Founder Energy, Scaling Mindset - Silvija Martincevic, CEO, Deputy [S9.E1]

    Silvija Martincevic, the Croatian born, San Francisco based CEO of Australian founded Unicorn Deputy. Silvija's executive career has been immense in the world of fast-growing technology, as the COO of Group On, and then the chief commercial officer of Affirm, that scaled annual revenue through the billion-dollar ceiling and beyond IPO. Silvija grew up in Croatia and while she didn't learn English until she was 18, she's an incredibly lucid storyteller. We traversed some key scaling challenges from moving Deputy from a point solution to a full workforce management platform trying to move from the fickle SMB market towards solving larger and more complex problems for mid-market customers. All of this is wrapped up in a big global push to continue the growth trajectory that now has reported revenue well over a hundred million dollars a year. While Sylvia is known in the industry as an incredible executor, as an operator, it's her leadership skills that have been front and center in Deputy’s post Covid transformation, despite not being the founder, her ownership mentality is the cornerstone of her values-based leadership principles, which come clearly through as accountability, trust, and empathy. Her insights into scaling culture as a non-founding CEO were a real highlight of the conversation. As always, please reach out if you have any feedback or comments, and for more insights on a whole range of topics the new TDM website is a great resource for investors and operators alike.

    48 min
  7. Keeping The Country Running - Greg Boorer, CEO and Founder CDC [S8E3]

    22/08/2024

    Keeping The Country Running - Greg Boorer, CEO and Founder CDC [S8E3]

    Very rarely do you get to tell the story of a wildly successful entrepreneur that is largely unknown beyond the immediate circle of influence. Today on Scaling Up, Greg Boorer, the CEO and Founder of CDC, formally Canberra Data Centres, which is in some rarefied air among companies globally, having compounded earnings at over 30% for the last 15 years. It's now valued well in excess of $10 billion and is at the centre of the beating heart of Australia's critical infrastructure. All this, and it still has a massive growth runway ahead of it. Greg's story in many ways is the CDC story from an aspiring cyclist and reluctant it graduate. Greg has become the face and often lead salesperson of a business that has rewritten industry standards as it relates to innovation and security. In what is seen from the outside as a commoditised industry, CDC has thrived by listening to customer needs and adapting accordingly. This is a story of initial hustle and belief in an opportunity, but ultimately it's about resiliency and delivering on promises. Greg has undoubtedly built one of Australia's best businesses from the ground up, and to hear him speak about this scaling journey with the knowledge and passion that he does will undoubtedly be inspiring to all our listeners. Transcript: CHAPTERS:   (00:55) – Greg’s beginnings   (05:50) – A foreign start   (11:32) – Moving back to Australia    (18:40) – Building Canberra Data Centres , now CDC (22:40) –Tactics, tips and techniques (24:12) – Technological and competitive ddvantage    (30:54) – Solidifying CDC’s Future   (36:58) – CDC’s scaling journey  (44:08) – Why you need to partner with the right people   (47:33) – CDC’s sustainability commitment

    57 min
  8. The King of Kalgoorlie - Bill Beament, Founder and CEO, Develop Global [S8, E2]

    15/07/2024

    The King of Kalgoorlie - Bill Beament, Founder and CEO, Develop Global [S8, E2]

    Bill Beament grew up in a working class family out of Esperance in Western Australia. He dreamed of being a general manager of a mine one day. Instilled at a young age with a deep work ethic and an acute commercial sense, he achieved much, much more than this as CEO and Executive Chair of Northern Star. Bill reshaped the underground gold mining industry and built from scratch a $16b, ASX 50 behemoth. Not resting on his laurels though, Bill has more recently turned his attention to wrapping up all his learnings about mining, about people and about leadership to his own venture Develop Global (ASX:DVP), which is on the precipice of replicating Northern Star's success in critical minerals with its unique business model of both mining services and mine ownership. This is one of Australia's great stories, largely unknown and untold outside the resource community so heavily centred in Perth, but the scaling lessons, as you'll hear, are applicable to all sectors and leaders of businesses, of all shapes and sizes. This episode takes you underground into a world unfamiliar to most, but applicable to all. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Scaling Up with Bill Beament, CEO and founder of Develop Global.  Show Notes: CHAPTERS:   (00:55): Bill’s upbringing in country WA (04:09):  Starting in the underground industry   (06:19): Lessons from Barminco  (09:11): Building Northern Star    (14:03): What makes a world-class underground mine operator (18:48): Operational excellence at Northern Star and starting Develop Global    (24:23): Unearthing critical minerals   (29:14): DVP's business model (32:34): Buying Woodlawn mine (35:59): Best in class hiring and retaining talent (41:47): Remuneration philosophy

    47 min
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“Scaling Up” is a podcast that tells the scaling stories of great growth companies from around the world, as experienced by their founders and CEOs. With the aim of inspiring and educating the next generation of entrepreneurs, as well as helping current business leaders, this podcast series hopes to give insight into what it takes to scale a business to hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. Hosted by Ed Cowan and supported by TDM Growth Partners.

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