Scale: An OX7 Partners podcast

Dave Heywood
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A weekly briefing for founders, leaders and marketers making the shift from startup to scale-up. Drawing on over 17 years spent in the guts of growing firms, Dave shares practical advice, hard won lessons and essential thinking.

Episodes

  1. Aug 13

    Are you proud of your price?

    Price isn’t just what a customer pays. It’s part of what you tell the market you’re worth. Great businesses don’t defend their prices with bravado. They build propositions worth defending. Dave Heywood explores why one simple principle has stayed with him since his early sales training: if we’ve created genuine value and made that value clear, why do we become embarrassed when it’s time to say what it costs? In this episode: • Why a 10% discount can wipe 25% from your gross profit • How your price shapes the way the market interprets your proposition • What research reveals about why good salespeople still give too much away • Why you should never simply give a discount, but trade for one

  2. Aug 6

    Waging war on admin

    Every new process makes work harder. Great businesses don't just raise standards. They remove the friction that gets in the way of meeting them. Dave Heywood explores why one simple leadership question has changed how he approaches organisational change: If we're asking more of people, what are we prepared to make easier in return? In this episode: • Why people don't usually resist higher standards, they resist the admin tax that comes with them • The CRM project that completely changed Dave's thinking about leadership and process design • Why AI's biggest opportunity isn't replacing people, but removing work that arguably never needed a human in the first place • A simple friction audit"you can run this week to uncover hidden inefficiencies across your business

  3. Jul 30

    Your competitors can afford to suck at marketing. You can't.

    Big brands get away with saying almost nothing. Copy that playbook and you'll go broke trying. Dave Heywood breaks down why 'nobody gets fired for buying IBM"'is a luxury only market leaders have earned, and what to do instead if you haven't. In this episode: Why vague, confident marketing works for your biggest competitors, and why it'll sink youThe real story behind a firm that beat Accenture, Genpact and Cognizant not by outspending them, but by refusing to compete on their termsThree things worth funding this quarter that need zero extra budgetThe "chase the twenty percent" trap that feels efficient, but usually isn't

  4. Jul 23

    How would you know if your AI starting giving you less?

    Old-school automation broke the same way every time, so you always caught it. AI doesn't. Dave Heywood discusses why your AI could be quietly doing less for you right now, and what to do about it. In this episode: Why the traditional automation's failure modes actually protected you, and why AI's don'tThe uncomfortable hunch behind rising AI costs.The 'cake in the oven' problem: why you can't fix what you can't isolateSome checks you can put in place, at minimal cost

  5. Jul 16

    Your brand is whatever your customers say it is

    A brand is often treated as a creative endeavour. Yet your brand is actually nothing more than the perception of your customers, built by how you company behaves at every single touchpoint. Dave Heywood explains why your brand is whatever your customer says it is - where operational reality will always eat your marketing strategy for breakfast. What we discuss: Why a rebrand alone is largely useless Why changing your logo and visual identity (like MyHermes rebranding to Evri) is a waste of time. Earning and losing trust: How back-office friction and the "Say-Do Gap" can destroy your reputation. Where to start looking to get the real picture: Three unglamorous transition points you need go get a read on to align your operational model with your strategic message.

  6. Jul 9

    It’s called Customer Relationship Management for a reason

    A CRM is a long-term, significant investment most firms make as they grow. Yet 70% of CRM projects fail to deliver value, with only 6% of those failures technical in nature. Dave Heywood discusses some of the major culprits driving CRM in the wrong direction and what good ultimately looks like What we discuss: Layering admin upon admin: How over-engineered bloat and bureaucratic data requirements turn your highest-paid sales reps into inefficient data-entry clerks. The false economy of restricting access: Why saving a few quid by limiting seat licenses completely breaks the model, cutting your marketing data off from critical relationship context. A couple of tips to get CRM back on track: A couple of things you can do to turn the tide, and start making CRM a tool that people actually want to use.

  7. Jul 2

    Are you misreading what matters most for your buyers?

    Most B2B marketing teams are highly confident, but they are consistently misreading what actually matters most to buyers Dave looks at a weighty new market study by Force24 that exposes the brutal reality gap between what marketers thing, and buyers actually value What we discuss: The ghost funnel: Why the vast majority of prospects research your brand completely out of sight.The channels that matter: The visibility bias causing teams to dump budget into social media while buyers are on search engines and review sites.The £0 change that gives you a clearer view: Bypass flawed digital trackers with some simple questions at key points.

  8. Jun 25

    Is your EBITDA lying to you? Why buyers are butchering valuations

    If your customer acquisition engine stalls the second you or a couple of your rockstar team members take a holiday, your valuation won't stand up to scrutiny. Investors are executing a ruthless flight to quality - with companies built on unsustainable models paying the price. Dave breaks down: Two firms - with a £7million valuation difference : The factors that separate a key-person-dependent model from a sustainable system - despite an identical £2M EBITDA. The power of mental availability: Why key individuals being famous on LinkedIn doesn't add a penny to valuation, and what institutional brand equity actually looks like A quick pipeline audit: A practical diagnostic you can run inside your CRM this afternoon to find out what your business is genuinely worth when you strip out the top tier.

  9. Jun 18

    "Just tell me what you f*****g do"

    Data shows that over 70% of B2B buyers want to understand what you offer before they ever agree to a phone call. Dave looks at how lofty value propositions can work against your business, discussing: The incumbent illusion: Why trying to copy the abstract branding of PwC or Salesforce is a structural death trap for mid-market firms who lack global market saturation. The buyer's trigger: How to move past the generic "Start with Why" obsession and align your invisible expertise with the explicit, real-world challenges buyers actually face. A quick test anyone can run: A 5-second diagnostic to find out if your business messaging is completely impenetrable to your prospects—and to the AI models scraping the web to research your category.

  10. Jun 4

    Why Account Based Marketing struggles to scale

    Data shows that up to 80% of Account-Based Marketing programs fail to meet expectations. Dave strips away the illusions actively undermining modern targeting, discussing: Why chasing a fixed list of dream logos can be closer to gambling than strategic targeting. The immense risk of using Generative AI to fake human intimacy with discerning B2B buyers who can smell synthetic content a mile away. The critical difference between Key Account Management and why marketing must tailor to the shared challenge.

  11. May 21

    Flying through the fog: Six biases that wreck strategy

    Making things has never been easier, but deciding what is actually worth making has never been harder. When driving, long-term growth - clarity is everything. Yet many teams are disoriented by their own internal data filters. Dave strips away the six cognitive biases actively undermining effective strategy, discussing: Why high-profile giants repeatedly misread temporary market distortions as permanent shifts in realityThe immense risk of navigating by vibe rather than objective data, The difficulty of stripping emotion out of your strategy.

  12. May 8

    Diagnosis: Friction

    In this opening episode, Dave Heywood sets the scene for the podcast. Drawing on a decade spent in the guts of businesses moving from startup to scale-up, and the growth pains from come with it, Dave shares what actually happens when a company tries to grow and professionalise. We look at why the 'osmosis' of the early days evaporates, why your sales message has gone off the boil and how an intelligence 'black hole' in your CRM is forcing your team to work ten times harder than they should.

  • 12 Episodes

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A weekly briefing for founders, leaders and marketers making the shift from startup to scale-up. Drawing on over 17 years spent in the guts of growing firms, Dave shares practical advice, hard won lessons and essential thinking.

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