The Chancellor spent weeks saying he was listening to small businesses. Two days after the budget, Charlie isn't convinced, and Matt wants to know what he was expecting.

In this bonus episode, recorded the Friday after the 28 October budget, Charlie leads and calls it the nothing budget. His case: the National Living Wage up 3.9% to £13.21 with nothing to offset it, the Business Asset Disposal Relief lifetime limit halved from £1m to £500,000, the main writing down allowance cut to 12%, income tax thresholds still frozen, and nothing for hospitality on VAT.

Matt plays devil's advocate. He came in expecting worse and finds things to like, including small business rates relief for retail, hospitality and leisure rising from £12,000 to £18,000 rateable value. They argue about foreign investment, whether you can inflate your way to growth, and why Founders' Relief looks generous on paper and narrow in practice.

Then Claude's Question of the Week. Take one measure from Wednesday, apply it to your own business. Did anything make you more likely to invest, hire or stay put? Matt's answer is the most honest thing said all episode, and his one change pitch might be the best policy idea in it.

📊 National Living Wage rises 3.9% to £13.21 from April 2027, with the 18 to 20 rate going to £11.27

🧠 "It could have been worse" is not a growth plan, and nobody runs their own business that way

💷 The BADR lifetime limit halves to £500,000 from April 2027, so selling up gets dearer for many owners

⚖️ Rates relief for small retail, hospitality and leisure premises now reaches £18,000 rateable value, but most other small firms get nothing

🎯 The answer both hosts land on is the same as ever, keep doing what works and grow through it

(00:00) A late start and a Friday budget special

(05:47) Matt's week in the Netherlands

(08:50) A washing machine of a week

(10:23) Win of the Week

(15:58) The Nothing Budget

(19:35) Could have been worse is not a win

(21:04) What did you actually expect?

(23:46) Is foreign investment good for Britain?

(27:39) Only 3.9 percent on the living wage

(29:34) Can you inflate your way to growth?

(33:38) The low value imports change

(34:56) Small business rates relief threshold

(36:21) BADR, allowances and frozen thresholds

(37:40) Founders' Relief and employee trusts

(42:08) Multi-site and losing rates relief

(43:50) Exits and delayed gratification

(45:42) Wages, welfare and hands tied

(47:26) The only answer is to grow

(50:34) Claude's Question of the Week

(53:03) Swap the budget for one change

(56:07) Circle of concern and council tenders

(58:22) Wrap up

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Employing someone on the minimum wage now costs a business £28,309 a year. Ten years ago it was £14,940. Over the same decade, prices rose 41%.

Matt leads episode 93, and it starts with a morning that fell apart. Charlie is five people down from a small team, holidays, sickness and a parents' evening all landing at once, and he's loading the van himself. Matt makes the case for more people on fewer hours, and they get into Swiss army knives versus defined roles, and why a relaxed leave policy suits the business you were but not the one you want to be.

From there it's a Telegraph piece on a 150-year-old New Forest business fighting to survive, and whether that's down to policy or standing still. Charlie blames business rates and city-centre parking. Matt answers with a tale of two butchers.

Then the numbers. The UK tax take, 33.1% of GDP before the pandemic and forecast by the OBR to reach around 38% by the end of the decade. Matt builds the full cost of a minimum wage employee, 2016 against 2026, wages, employer's National Insurance and pension, and sets it against CPI. Charlie says young people deserve good pay, but it has to be relative. Matt goes further, and his reason starts with his first job carrying plates in an Italian restaurant.

📊 A minimum wage employee cost £14,940 in 2016 and £28,309 in 2026, up 90% while CPI rose 41%

🧠 Your leave policy suits the business you were, not the one you want to be

👥 More people on fewer hours beats a tight team on 50-hour weeks

🎯 When times are good, run the business as if they're not

⚖️ When an entry-level hire costs nearly as much as an experienced one, young people lose the first rung

(00:00) Charlie's spat his dummy out

(00:40) Five people down in one morning

(02:37) Annual leave and the business you want to be

(04:20) More people, fewer hours each

(07:02) Labour cost on a knife edge

(08:32) Finding another Swiss army knife

(11:41) Job descriptions and the catch-all clause

(13:55) Getting the owner off the van

(15:40) Are small businesses becoming unviable?

(20:04) Is the high street really dead?

(22:03) A tale of two butchers

(25:09) Episode 93 and the British Business Fact of the Week

(29:01) The government as the biggest shareholder

(30:59) 150k before you've sold a thing

(34:01) Ten years of employment costs vs inflation

(38:12) Why young people lose out

(43:04) Businesses are educators

(46:32) Apprenticeships: have you ever hired one?

(50:25) Win of the Week

(57:24) Claude's Question of the Week

(59:07) What should the country do?

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Your accountant tells you it's your most positive year in a while. Every headline tells you the country is going under. Which one do you believe?

Charlie leads this week with a simple question: is British business actually in trouble, or does it just feel like it? It started in his accountant's office, where everyone through the door that week had opened with the same line. Then the figures came out, and they were the best in years.

Matt gets there first from the other direction. A warehouse purchase, a new store having record days, and yet a September that finished slightly down on last year. Cue imposter syndrome. Did he earn this, or was it right place, right time?

Claude's Fact of the Week takes apart the 16,500 millionaire exodus figure. From there it's retailers warning on business rates, diesel at £2 a litre, what it now costs to employ a junior admin role in the UK against offshoring it to India, the new duty to tell staff about union membership, and who a business owner is supposed to vote for.

Then Claude's Question of the Week: would either of them ever get out, of the country or of the business? One answers without hesitation. The other finds out what Matt really thought of him when they first met.

📊 Matt's September rainfall ran at roughly half of last year's, and his September finished slightly down year on year

🧠 Good numbers and bad headlines can leave you feeling like you've missed something

⚖️ Hard is not the same as broken, and hard is where market share gets won

💷 A junior admin role costs roughly £2,500 a month in the UK with NI and pension, against about £1,000 offshore

🎯 Small businesses need to grow aggressively, bigger ones can afford to play defence

Chapters:

(00:00) Rain, cricket pitches and a dry autumn

(03:00) September rainfall, 143 percent vs 70 percent

(05:24) Matt's McDonald's pen

(08:10) Matt on imposter syndrome

(11:49) A down September and the fear of complacency

(13:26) Is British business broken, or does it just feel like it?

(16:35) Claude's Fact of the Week: the millionaire exodus figure

(18:00) Retailers warn on business rates

(21:10) Hard, not broken

(24:11) Living off our history, and two pound diesel

(28:24) What do the leavers know that we don't?

(33:09) Good numbers, bad headlines

(35:46) If anything, I'd like it to be harder

(36:40) Offshoring to India, the numbers

(39:26) The union letter rule

(40:42) Who does a business owner vote for?

(48:43) If the next five years are harder

(50:33) Wins of the Week

(54:50) Charlie's new unit, two weeks in

(58:37) Meeting the local MP

(1:00:15) Claude's Question of the Week

(1:02:24) From wet lettuce to entrepreneur

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One of us just doubled his floor space after six flat months. The other is about to move into a warehouse five times bigger than the one he's bursting out of, and his best metric is about to drop through the floor.

Episode 91 opens with the wins. Charlie has the keys to the unit next door, completed at 5pm on a Friday and moved in on the Monday, with three months rent free and 87 days for the new space to start paying its way. Matt's business made page three of the Manchester Evening News on the day the Holland's Country Clothing store opened, and one reader drove straight over because he used to do the milk round with Matt's grandfather.

Then the number that frames the whole episode. Matt's warehouse turns over £5,429.60 per square foot. Move into the new building with the same revenue and it falls to £1,085.92. Charlie runs the sum on his own unit and doesn't love the answer. The British Business Fact of the Week is James Dyson's 5,127 prototypes, and there's a proper look at leasing versus buying, why agents say nobody is buying commercial property right now, and the question Charlie's accountant asked before he signed.

Claude's Question of the Week asks how you make peace with signing for the person you intend to become. Matt has made a bet like this before and it didn't go to plan. Charlie explains the reason he won't settle for staying small, and it isn't the one you'd expect.

📊 Revenue per square foot shows how hard your space is working, and a move resets it overnight

🧠 More space isn't a reward for doing well, it's a statement of what you intend to build

🎯 Give new space a deadline to pay for itself, Charlie's is 87 days

💷 Buying ties up cash that could be fuelling growth, leasing keeps it working for you

🚩 Know your worst case before you sign, the size of the gamble is relative to the size of the business

(00:00) Intro(00:27) Sixteen degrees in the cold plunge

(02:19) A flat September that's actually a win

(07:52) Do you get complacent when it's going well?

(08:35) Episode 91, Win of the Week first

(09:42) Charlie's win: the keys to the unit next door

(12:04) Grow through the pain

(14:07) Nine months to buy a warehouse

(15:25) Matt's win: from Buxton to page three

(19:40) Doing the milk round with Malcolm

(22:51) Revenue per square foot

(26:26) Betting on the Business You Don't Have Yet

(28:34) British Business Fact of the Week: 5,127 prototypes

(31:27) Signing before you need the space

(36:00) Burning the boats

(42:00) Lease or buy?

(46:02) Same floor space, 20 times the revenue

(53:16) Signing before the growth arrives

(55:11) An office overlooking an empty warehouse

(59:00) Claude's Question of the Week

(1:00:49) The lease that didn't work

(1:05:51) Five stars on Shopify

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The same loan that cost fifteen thousand a year in interest in 2009 costs forty thousand today. Nothing about the business changed.

The fact of the week is deliberately disconnected from the topic this week, and it is worth it. On 30 April 1993, Sir Tim Berners-Lee had the World Wide Web released into the public domain, royalty free forever. No patent, no licensing fee, not a penny ever. He later told Forbes he could have been a billionaire and that he was happy he was not. That opens up when enough is actually enough, Felix Dennis, James Martin saying he wants to be doing a commercial property deal in his nineties, and Charlie admitting he has never had an original idea in his life.

Then the main topic. Matt spent time this week with a founder six years in who has put the best part of a quarter of a million of his own money into his company, and is being strangled by the interest rather than the idea. So Matt ran the numbers. A 750,000 pound business mortgage cost around 15,000 a year in interest in 2009. The same loan today is about 40,000.

What that does to behaviour is the real subject. Personal guarantees that quietly undo the entire point of a limited company. Asset finance at eleven percent. Why Matt has carried no debt for three years, and how the business went from seven million to heading for fourteen with no new capital at all, by changing the stock model instead of borrowing. He is also candid about going bust once already, and what borrowing too much too quickly actually costs you.

Wins of the week cover a wax jacket, family dinners, and Charlie moving faster on something than he would have a year ago. Then the question of the week: cheap money and easy growth, or expensive money that forces you to build something genuinely profitable? After an hour arguing that money should be cheaper, Matt's answer is not the one you would expect.

Takeaways:
📊 The same 750,000 pound business mortgage cost about 15,000 a year in interest in 2009 and around 40,000 today
🧠 Berners-Lee gave the web away royalty free, and that may be exactly why it worked
💷 Personal guarantees, and what they do to the whole point of a limited company
🚩 Why Matt has carried no debt for three years and grew anyway
🎯 Cheap money and easy growth, or expensive money that forces you to be profitable?

Chapters:
Chapters:

(00:00) Merch for Alex's hunting trip

(03:19) "I thought episode 88 was shit"

(04:34) British Business Fact of the Week

(06:56) Giving the World Wide Web away for nothing

(08:13) Would it have scaled if it had cost money?

(11:10) When is enough actually enough?

(12:30) "None of my ideas have been original"

(15:28) James Martin on why he will not stop

(18:01) Will anything that big ever be given away again?

(23:02) Episode 90: the death of cheap money

(24:13) The founder who put a quarter of a million in

(25:17) The numbers, 2009 versus today

(28:47) Unsecured lending and the high risk end

(30:46) Charlie on financing machinery

(32:14) Should the government back creative ideas?

(34:03) Revenue per square foot, bursting at the seams

(37:05) Personal guarantees and limited liability

(40:00) Funding growth from profit instead of debt

(41:15) "I have gone bust, look on Companies House"

(43:56) Growing without capital, 7 million to 14

(46:14) Win of the Week: the Lockwood Arthur wax jacket

(48:21) Sitting down for dinner as a family

(51:09) Charlie: acting fast on last week's conversation

(54:30) Claude's Question of the Week

(57:40) Why interest improves decision making

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Every business is carrying something it should have dealt with years ago. Most owners know exactly what theirs is.

Charlie leads with fix it, fund it or flog it, and the question underneath it: what are you still carrying that you probably should not be? He puts his own on the table straight away. The stationery side of the business, the part his dad started in 1989, still running its own vans and doing daily local drops, and no longer standing on its own two feet. Three national wholesalers have become one.

Matt refuses to let him flog it. His argument is that it is not a dying arm, it is an under-leveraged one. Every workwear customer should be buying stationery and the other way round, and the thing killing the margin is the van rather than the pens. Then he turns it on himself, with the service company he could be scaling and has chosen not to, and the decision he made years ago to kill off the markets that were seventy percent of turnover.

The back half is stock. Charlie's eight bottles of pandemic hand sanitiser, three years on a shelf. Matt on the barn with hay in one end, stock going into skips, and the argument about mouldy jackets. The point that lands hardest is an accounting one: if it has not sold in six months it is worth what someone will pay today, not what you paid for it.

Wins of the week are worth staying for. The first ever paid order through the new Workwear Innovation site, logo uploaded and embroidery paid for without a human touching it, and a stock bottleneck at the store fixed by someone in the warehouse asking an obvious question. Then the question of the week, in two parts, and Matt's answer to the second one is more honest than most owners would manage.

Takeaways:
📊 What a proper product line analysis almost always finds sitting at the bottom
🧠 Fix it, fund it or flog it, and why most owners quietly choose none of the three
🚩 If it has not sold in six months it is worth what someone will pay today, not what you paid
🤝 Why the van, not the product, is often the thing killing the margin
🎯 Name the part of the business you have been avoiding the decision about

Chapters:
Chapters:

(00:00) Shades, a teapot and low calorie breadsticks

(02:02) Episode 89, and how trade is going

(05:33) Doing a lot with not very much

(07:56) Back from France, and the pull of old habits

(09:50) Jacob Lockwood's new toy

(11:10) Win of the Week: first paid order through the new site

(12:41) Why Charlie has not promoted the site yet

(17:24) It does not need to be perfect, it needs to be live

(18:51) Matt: fixing the stock flow into the store

(19:49) DPD twice a week versus running your own van

(21:19) Fix it, fund it or flog it

(22:07) Where Abacus Repro actually came from

(23:20) The part of the business Charlie has been carrying

(25:31) Three stationery wholesalers down to one

(27:51) Matt: do not flog it, cross sell it

(31:35) Why Charlie has clung on for five years

(38:27) What Matt could be scaling and is choosing not to

(42:12) Killing the markets that were 70 percent of turnover

(44:30) Eight bottles of pandemic hand sanitiser

(45:15) A barn with hay in one end, and stock in skips

(48:24) Drawing sheets, nibs and a scanner nobody uses

(51:50) Walking past problems, including people

(53:05) Claude's Question of the Week

(54:17) Net realisable value, and what your stock is really worth

Follow Matt:
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You can be surrounded by staff, co-directors and customers and still be the only one carrying it. Matt reckons most owners know exactly how that feels.

Matt takes the lead on founder loneliness, and he is honest about his own. He runs the business with Rob and Sarah, but when something goes wrong it lands on him. The fact behind it is a December 2025 YouGov survey for the British Business Bank's Start Up Loans Company: 44 percent of UK smaller business owners have felt lonely or isolated running their business, rising to 56 percent for those with under ten staff. Only 38 percent do anything about it by connecting with other business leaders.

Charlie admits organised networking leaves him cold and he gets far more from reaching out directly. Matt's counter is that it was never the organisation, it is the people you meet through it, and he tells the story of a lunch that was meant to be about one specific opportunity and turned into a relationship with a man who has built and sold three companies. They also get into why hearing other owners say the same things out loud was such a relief to both of them, and Matt's theory that the better you get at this, the weirder you are.

The other half of the problem is delegation. The Sinclair rule on what your time is actually worth, a job passed down the chain twice in one morning, and Matt's view that his real bottleneck is not having enough people to hand things to. Then the question of the week: when did you last spend real time or money on growing yourself rather than your business. Matt's answer to what comes after it is the most exposed he has been on this show.

Takeaways:
📊 44 percent of UK smaller business owners have felt lonely or isolated, rising to 56 percent under ten staff
🧠 It is never the networking organisation that helps, it is the people you meet through it
🤝 The Sinclair rule: if someone can do the job for less than your hourly rate, they should be doing it
⚖️ Why your business partner cannot be your only sounding board
🎯 When did you last spend real time or money on growing yourself and not your business?

Holland's Country Clothing store opening, Lowes Farm, Friday 25th. All welcome, just drop Matt a message on Instagram if you are coming.

Chapters:

(00:00) Recording at the end of a long day

(03:47) Delegating, and Teflon Danny

(07:02) The Sinclair rule on what your time is worth

(07:41) Episode 88: the cost of doing it alone

(08:15) Why being the one in charge is lonely

(11:13) British Business Fact: 44 percent have felt isolated

(12:16) Are you in a founders network?

(13:44) Some trades have it far harder

(14:39) Why your business partner is not a sounding board

(15:44) "I thought I was a strange and weird person"

(18:25) A lunch that turned into something else

(20:54) Is prospecting for relationships a luxury?

(24:12) Paying to be in a founders group

(25:05) Win of the Week

(26:05) Charlie: theworkwearexpert.co.uk is live

(29:02) Matt: two laptops and two more hires in India

(33:03) The choke point is having nobody to delegate to

(36:26) Delegation never actually ends

(41:18) Get a mentor, join a community

(42:37) Talking honestly instead of "yeah, smashing it"

(45:36) Claude's Question of the Week

(48:28) Charlie has booked Ideas Fest

(49:32) Matt's fear of public speaking

Nearly two in five business owners could not tell you whether they made money last month. More than one in five are too embarrassed to ask.

Charlie leads with a Xero survey of a thousand UK small business owners. Thirty eight percent did not know whether the previous month had been profitable. Fifty five percent were struggling with cash flow. Twenty two percent were too afraid to ask a financial question because they felt they should already know the answer. Charlie's first response is to admit he and Tom probably sit in all three.

Matt walks through what his month end actually looks like, and the distinction that comes out of it is the useful part. Management accounts confirm what happened. KPIs are how you navigate in between. He names his three, and explains why advertising spend gets watched every single day.

Then the practical half. How much accounting rigour a business needs at each stage, why management accounts built on unreconciled data are worse than none, and why Matt reckons his own finance team is the weakest part of his business. Charlie finishes with two questions: what number have you obsessed over that turned out to mean nothing, and what number do you know you should be watching and are not. Matt's answer to the second is one most owners will recognise.

Takeaways:
📊 38 percent of UK small business owners did not know if they were profitable last month, and 22 percent are too embarrassed to ask

🧠 Management accounts confirm performance, KPIs are how you navigate between them

⚖️ How much accounting rigour a business needs at 50k net profit, at 100k, and once you carry a payroll
🚩 Why management accounts built on unreconciled data are worse than none at all
🎯 The number you can safely stop chasing, and the one you know you are neglecting

Chapters:
(00:00) Whose fault is it when the podcast breaks?
(01:00) Charlie has not read his own show notes
(02:19) Lagging, leading or lying

(03:18) Claude's Fact of the Week: 38, 55 and 22 percent
(03:57) Charlie: we probably sit in all three
(06:26) Why those numbers do not surprise Matt
(09:08) Could you say whether last month was profitable?
(11:08) KPIs navigate, management accounts confirm
(11:40) Matt's three KPIs
(12:53) How Charlie's dad ran the business
(14:09) Allocating time and resource to the numbers
(15:19) Learning accountancy through pain
(15:51) When Matt started monthly management accounts
(16:39) "But I know my numbers"
(17:31) The Formula One driver analogy
(20:15) Build the business you want to be, not the one you are
(21:38) How much accounting you need at 50k, 100k and beyond
(23:26) Are you doing quarterly management accounts?
(23:48) Bad data makes management accounts worthless
(24:24) Reconcile weekly, or daily
(25:19) Why Matt thinks his own finance team is weak
(25:48) Building now for 25 million and 50 million
(27:34) Where the KPIs still need levelling up
(29:58) Focus on the biggest bottleneck
(30:37) Win of the Week
(31:27) Matt: a conversation about a second store
(33:27) Charlie: back to the gym, and time with no phone
(34:51) Eight weeks, nine kilos, and cold plunges
(38:47) The number you obsessed over that meant nothing
(40:45) Why cash stopped being the obsession
(42:03) Turnover, and the professional money mover
(44:08) The number you should be watching and are not
(47:25) "There's loads of space in that warehouse"
(53:23) Claude's Question of the Week
(54:02) One number on the wall for the whole team

Follow Matt:
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