This ScaleUp Radio episode is a ScaleUp Club special — recorded live in February — and it's packed with practical ideas you can apply immediately.

Kevin Brent opens with the month's theme: gaining control of your week, moving away from reactive firefighting and towards deliberate, high-value leadership time. You'll hear a simple framework to help you protect the work that really moves the business forward, rather than letting your diary become "a democracy".

Then we switch gears into a short AI Pulse update from Paul Rhodes, founder of Green Gorilla Software, who shares a genuinely useful productivity shift: stop typing and start talking. Paul explains why AI needs context, why dictation creates richer prompts, and how tools like Granola and WhisperFlow can turn messy spoken thoughts into structured, usable output.

Finally, we move into a live Q&A session with Ryan Slaney, Managing Director of iLockerz, who shares the realities of scaling a product business — including the mistake that "nearly killed" them: trying to build the perfect product from day one. Ryan talks candidly about payroll reality, customer-led development, the value of weekly all-hands alignment, and spotting issues early through "Potential Red Flags".

You'll hear:

How to redesign your week around green time (strategic), red time (operational) and grey time (low value)
Why you must put the rocks in first (or the sand will swallow your week)
Paul's AI Pulse: why dictation creates better prompts and faster output
Ryan's hard-won lesson: MVP, revenue and feedback loops beat perfection
A simple scaling discipline: weekly all-hands, shared visibility and "PRFs" before they become fires

Quick heads-up — we're looking for a handful of founders to test our new AI-powered Smart90 Lite app. It's built to help you stay accountable and actually deliver on your goals — in just a few minutes a day. It's free while we're in testing, and your feedback will directly shape the final version. You can get access by emailing kevin@biz-smart.co.uk.

Make sure you don't miss any future episodes by subscribing to ScaleUp Radio wherever you like to listen to your podcasts - and why not give us a follow.

For now, continue listening for the full discussion with Ryan.

Scaling up your business isn't easy, and can be a little daunting. Let ScaleUp Radio make it a little easier for you. With guests who have been where you are now, and can offer their thoughts and advice on several aspects of business. ScaleUp Radio is the business podcast you've been waiting for.

If you would like to be a guest on ScaleUp Radio, please click here:

https://bizsmarts.co.uk/scaleupradio/kevin

You can get in touch with Kevin here:

kevin@biz-smart.co.uk

Kevin's Book Is Here!

Drawing on BizSmart's own research and experiences of working with hundreds of owner-managers, Kevin Brent explores the key reasons why most organisations do not scale and how the challenges change as they reach different milestones on the ScaleUp Journey. He then details a practical step by step guide to successfully navigate between the milestones in the form of ESUS - a proven system for entrepreneurs to scale up.

More on the Book HERE - https://www.esusgroup.co.uk/

Ryan can be found here:

https://www.ilockerz.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanslaney/

ryan.slaney@ilockerz.com