A law can change behaviour, but practice saves lives. We bring on former Police Scotland chief firearms instructor Scott Williamson to make Martin’s Law real for everyday operators, from boutique hotels and co-working hubs to universities, shopping centres, and major venues. Scott shares how to turn policy into clear actions your team can learn fast and repeat under pressure.

We start with why the law exists and what the Royal Assent and two-year implementation window mean for leaders making plans today. Scott breaks down the standard and enhanced tiers, then explains why sub-200 sites should still act: attackers target people, not paperwork. You’ll hear simple, high-impact steps to raise awareness, tighten basic security, and map invacuation and evacuation routes that actually work. We also talk about reputational risk and how early preparation protects trust with guests, staff, and neighbours.

From there, we dig into command training for executives. Paper plans fail without rehearsal, so Scott shows how tabletop drills and realistic exercises expose weak links and build confident decision-making. He outlines practical packages that fit different needs: Safety Shield for staff awareness, Venue Shield for complex sites, Edu Shield for schools and universities, Refresh Shield to keep knowledge current, and Recover Shield to support media handling and counselling after a shock. Throughout, the focus stays human: clear roles, calm communication, and no-blame learning that helps people perform when seconds matter.

If you manage a building, run events, or lead a team, this is your blueprint to prepare, protect, respond, and recover with purpose. Subscribe, share with a colleague who owns a venue or workspace, and leave a review telling us the first drill you’ll run this quarter.

A derelict department store, a bold pension strategy, and a belief that buildings should trade like living ecosystems. We sit down with Neil to share how we transformed 45 King Street into a boutique apart-hotel and flexible workspace that runs on smart tech, focused design, and community energy.

We trace the leap from three decades in corporate sales to a SaaS pension-backed acquisition, breaking down how an OpCo/PropCo structure and VAT registration funded a full fit-out without bank finance. On the workspace floor, licences replace leases, soundproofing and climate control lift the bar, and co-working acts as an incubator rather than a crutch. When bigger suites proved slow to move, we pivoted them into a thriving events business, adding steady weekday demand and opening the doors to local organisations, exhibitions, and workshops.

Upstairs, fifteen boutique rooms and suites anchor a tech-enabled apart-hotel experience. There’s no front desk and no restaurant; instead, guests get quality essentials, tight partnerships with local food and laundry, and a QR “cube” that connects everything from breakfast to support in seconds. A six–six–six–six comms cadence keeps service personal and consistent. Summer occupancy climbed past 70 percent, and a growing pipeline of pre-booked coach tours stabilises seasonality while B2C channels fill nightly gaps. We also get candid about the tough parts: late-stage compliance changes, nine months of delays, and the real cost of lost trading days. The lesson lands hard—add contingency for both money and months, and build early alignment with building control and fire safety.

If you’re curious about SaaS pensions, flexible workspace operations, boutique hospitality, or how to monetise a multi-use asset with one empowered team member and the right tech stack, this conversation maps the playbook and the pitfalls. Subscribe, share with a fellow operator or investor, and leave a review—what strategy would you try first?

Most teams don’t need more AI hype; they need better decisions. We sit down with data expert and founder of Head for Data, Colin Parry, to strip AI back to what actually moves the needle: clean inputs, clear processes, and tools that match the job. Colin’s path from renewables and wind turbine analytics to leading data science teams gives him a rare field‑to‑boardroom perspective on how to build systems that work in the real world.

We start with the foundations: why data only exists to improve decisions, and how a centralised platform plus solid governance turns scattered spreadsheets into a reliable source of truth. Colin breaks down the difference between deterministic tasks that deserve automation and ambiguous work where AI’s probabilistic strengths shine. He explains why ChatGPT is just one tool in a larger AI family, and how to pick the lightest‑weight solution that solves the real problem instead of forcing everything through a language model.

The episode’s centrepiece is a practical case study with a major property factoring firm. By defining a true unit of work, cleaning their data, and building an optimisation algorithm that accounts for geography, travel time, and seniority, Colin’s team rebalanced workloads across 40,000 properties. Then they layered fees over effort to expose profitability by development, empowering leaders to adjust pricing, retain the right clients, and drop the wrong ones. The result: fairer teams, sharper unit economics, and faster, more confident decisions.

If you’re wondering where to start, we share a simple path: run a focused gap analysis, centralise your data, automate the deterministic steps, and apply AI where intent or inputs are genuinely messy. Want a partner for that first step? Colin offers a free half‑day Intelligent Futures workshop to identify quick wins. Subscribe, share with a colleague who’s drowning in spreadsheets, and leave a review to tell us which process you’d automate first.