Podcast · Business

Business By Design

by Stuart Wemyss & Mena Abraham · English · Business

Business by Design is the podcast for owners who want to start, scale or exit a business. Each week, Stuart Wemyss and Mena Abraham unpack the four things every business must get right: value, engine, reach and team. Using the VERT flywheel, they show how these fit together to build a business that

New episodes: Weekly
Typical length: 19 min
Latest: 13 Oct 2026
Language: English

Latest episode

13 Oct 2026 · 24 minNew

Ep 201: Business systems and processes: Why talent won't scale

Send us Fan Mail If your business still runs through you, that is an engine problem, not a people problem. Mena and I break down what systems and processes for business growth actually look like, and the four numbers that show whether yours work. Most owners start as what Michael Gerber calls the technician: excellent at the work, but stuck working in the business rather than on it. Learning to step off the tools as a business owner starts with building systems from day oneTry the holiday tes...

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Earlier episodes 29 most recent

E88 · 6 Oct 2026 · 23 min
Ep 200: Referral engine framework: Buy attention, earn advocacy
Send us Fan Mail Your happiest clients are often your best source of new business, yet most owners leave referrals to chance. Mena and I walk through a referral engine framework: earn advocacy first, ask at the right moment, and make the introduction low risk. You can buy attention, but you have to earn advocacy. Fyre Festival's influencer spend couldn't cover for a promise it never deliveredThe right time to ask is straight after a client acknowledges the value they've received. Swap "do you...
E87 · 27 Sep 2026 · 23 min
Ep 199: Why are your best customers quietly leaving?
Send us Fan Mail Here's the uncomfortable truth: by the time a customer tells you they're leaving, you're usually too late to do anything about it. The decision was made months earlier, when they quietly began questioning the value; nobody noticed, and the cancellation email just makes you the last to know. In this final episode of the Value series, Stuart and Mena reframe churn as the most honest feedback your business receives, if you're willing to understand what's behind it. Mena ex...
E86 · 20 Sep 2026 · 25 min
Ep 198: Trust is the real thing your customer Is buying
Send us Fan Mail Every time someone buys from you, they're taking a risk: will you do what you promised? Trust is what gives them the confidence to proceed, and without it, a great product, sensible pricing, and sharp marketing still won't close the sale. This episode unpacks how trust is built, borrowed, and lost. Mena explains why price and frequency determine how much trust a purchase requires: a $4 coffee versus a $40,000 renovation, and why your sales process must reflect the risk the cu...
E85 · 15 Sep 2026 · 25 min
Ep 197: Pricing is a system, not a sticker
Send us Fan Mail Two businesses can charge the same price today and be on opposite margin trajectories five years from now, purely because of the architecture sitting underneath that number. One gets more profitable as it grows; the other gets squeezed with every new customer. This episode is about designing that architecture on purpose. Mena starts with discounting as a diagnostic: persistent discounting isn't a sales problem but a signal pointing at one of three causes, and J.C. Penney's di...
E84 · 8 Sep 2026 · 21 min
Ep 196: Pricing strategy: are you a price maker or a price taker?
Send us Fan Mail Price is the most powerful profit lever most business owners never think about. In this episode, Mena and I break down the pricing strategy question that matters most: are you a price maker or a price taker? A modest price rise can lift profit far more than an equivalent cost cut or volume increase, since it drops straight to the bottom line and improves your margin without touching your cost baseThe value map: plot your competitors on price against perceived value to see whe...
E83 · 1 Sep 2026 · 27 min
Ep 195: People don't buy features, they buy a better life
Send us Fan Mail Most owners sell backwards. You built the thing, so you know every feature and inclusion, and that's exactly what comes out of your mouth when you sell it, while the customer's eyes glaze over. They were never buying a spec sheet; they were buying a different version of their life. Sell the feature, and you compete on the feature; someone will always build it cheaper. Sell the outcome, and prove it, and price becomes the last objection, not the first. Mena breaks down t...
E82 · 25 Aug 2026 · 28 min
Ep 194: How to reverse-engineer your customer’s ‘Yes’
Send us Fan Mail Before you can test whether people will pay, you need to know whose "yes" you're actually chasing, and most owners get this wrong in a very specific way. In this Value deep dive, Stuart and Mena introduce reverse-engineering the yes: start from the moment someone buys, then work backwards to the buyer, the outcome, and the trigger that got them there. Mena explains why "business owners" or "SMEs" isn't a target customer at all, just a category, using Peloton, Chewy, and...
E81 · 18 Aug 2026 · 23 min
Ep 193: Stop scaling until someone actually pays you what you want/need
Send us Fan Mail Founders love to scale, but scaling before anyone has paid a real price for a real outcome simply converts a slow failure into a fast, expensive one. In this episode, the first in a deep dive on Value, Stuart names the trap: scaling doesn't fix a weak offer; it just gives that weak offer more customers, more overhead, and more cash to burn. Mena draws the crucial line between attention and demand. Compliments, engagement, and "I'd definitely buy that" are evidence of interest...
E80 · 11 Aug 2026 · 22 min
Ep 192: Can you describe your business model in four sentences?
Send us Fan Mail Here's the challenge Stuart opens with: describe your business in four honest sentences, one each for why customers pay, how you deliver profitably, how the right people find you, and how quality holds as you grow. Most owners can talk about their business for an hour but can't compress it into four sentences that survive scrutiny, and that vagueness is itself the problem. This isn't an elevator pitch; it's a decision filter that reveals where you're genuinely strong and wher...
E79 · 4 Aug 2026 · 26 min
Ep 191: Why your business has four problems, not forty
Send us Fan Mail The three "killers" thin margins, poor reach, and weak demand- tell you what's failing, but not what to build. In this episode, Stuart and Mena introduce VERT: Value, Engine, Reach, and Team the operating system underneath those symptoms, and the four things you actually control. By the end, you'll have a single model to run every business decision through, instead of juggling forty disconnected problems. Mena maps the four pillars onto the three killers: margins sit at the i...
E78 · 28 Jul 2026 · 22 min
Ep 190: Thin margins and empty pipelines are design problems
Send us Fan Mail A thin margin and an empty pipeline both feel like effort problems, so owners respond with more hours. It rarely works. In this episode, Stuart and Mena reframe both as outputs of how a business is designed its pricing, positioning, and channels- not how hard anyone is trying. Working harder on a broken design just scales the problem and burns the founder out. Mena starts with margin, and the distinction most owners never consciously made: are you a price maker or a price tak...
E77 · 21 Jul 2026 · 13 min
Ep 189 : Does anyone actually want what you sell?
Send us Fan Mail Before you fix your product, your marketing, or your team, Stuart and Mena argue you have to pressure-test something more fundamental: demand. Get it wrong, and everything else simply compounds a weak foundation. The uncomfortable question most owners skip is deceptively simple: what problem are you solving, for whom, stated specifically rather than in flattering generalities? Plenty of clever products are just solutions looking for a problem. The single best test is asking w...
E76 · 14 Jul 2026 · 17 min
Ep 188: Most failing businesses are failing at one thing, not twenty
Send us Fan Mail When a business underperforms, owners tend to assume the cause is complex and set about fixing everything at once. It feels productive, and it almost always fails. Stuart and Mena open with a contrarian claim: struggling businesses are far simpler to diagnose than their owners think. The trouble usually traces to a weakness in just one of three fundamentals. They lay out the three "killers" plainly. First, the revenue you don't keep: thin margins can make a business look heal...
E75 · 7 Jul 2026 · 16 min
Ep 187: Why We Retired "The Holistic Accountant"
Send us Fan Mail After five years, Stuart and Mena are deliberately retiring a brand that was working, and the reasoning matters more than the rename. Through an accounting lens, they argue, you can tell what already happened to profit and cash, but never why a business produces those numbers or whether they'll repeat. A clean tax structure sitting on top of a fragile business is still a fragile business. Optimising the tax bill was only ever treating the symptom. In this episode, they introd...
E74 · 30 Jun 2026 · 18 min
Ep 186: The Holiday Test: Can your business run without you?
Send us Fan Mail The holiday test is deceptively simple. If you took four weeks off with no phone, would your business hold its standard, or would it quietly degrade without you? For most business owners, the honest answer points not to a workload problem but to a design problem, and this episode tackles it directly. Stuart opens by reframing the issue: a business that depends on the founder for most decisions is not really a business. It is a job that pays the owner to turn up. That dependen...
E73 · 23 Jun 2026 · 19 min
Ep 185: Warning- Asking for feedback and ignoring it is a liability
Send us Fan Mail Asking for customer feedback and then ignoring it is not a neutral act; it tells the customer more about the business than any service failure could on its own. This episode opens with a real example of a high-profile restaurant that solicited specific criticism, replied with a templated response, and confirmed the original concern in the process. It is a pattern more common than most business owners realise, and the commercial cost is significant. Stuart and Mena work throug...
E72 · 16 Jun 2026 · 22 min
Ep 184: Stop hiring on gut feel: a scorecard process that works
Send us Fan Mail Most business owners have at least one hiring regret, and most can trace it back to a decision that felt right at the time. The problem is rarely a lack of effort in the interview. It is a lack of structure before and during it. Gut feel tends to reward confidence, charm, and the ability to perform well in a conversation, none of which reliably predict how someone will actually perform in the role. This episode introduces a structured, scorecard-based hiring process designed ...
E71 · 9 Jun 2026 · 17 min
Ep 183: How business owners can navigate the proposed tax changes
Send us Fan Mail The proposed 2026 budget tax changes have generated significant concern among business owners, but most of the commentary has focused on politics rather than practical strategy. This episode cuts through the noise and addresses what small business owners should actually be thinking about before any of these changes become law. Stuart and Mena work through three areas where the proposed changes have the greatest potential impact. On trust taxation, the discussion explores how ...
E70 · 2 Jun 2026 · 19 min
Ep 182: EOFY tax planning for business owners
Send us Fan Mail EOFY Planning for Business Owners: What to Do Before 30 June With the end of the financial year fast approaching, business owners still have time to make decisions that can legitimately reduce tax, improve cash flow, and strengthen their financial position before 30 June. In this episode, Stuart and Mena cut through the noise surrounding EOFY planning and focus on the practical strategies that matter most. They discuss the key areas every business owner should be reviewing in...
S5 · E69 · 26 May 2026 · 14 min
Ep 181: Buy your premises or trap your cash? The OpCo-PropCo test
Send us Fan Mail Owning your business premises feels like progress, security, control, and the satisfaction of paying rent to yourself rather than a landlord. But for many founders, it is a decision that quietly traps capital, reduces flexibility, and concentrates risk in ways that only become apparent years later. This episode introduces the OpCo-PropCo framework as a structured way to think through one of the most consequential capital decisions a business owner can make. Stuart and Mena ex...
S5 · E68 · 19 May 2026 · 12 min
Ep 180: Expansion math: when a new site actually makes you poorer
Send us Fan Mail A second location, a new service line, a broader geographic footprint, expansion feels like the logical next step for a business that has found its footing. But for many founders, it is precisely where profitability begins to quietly unwind. This episode confronts the expansion illusion directly: the belief that more locations automatically mean more profit. Stuart and Mena explain how revenue growth can mask margin compression, duplicated overhead, and the cultural and opera...
S5 · E67 · 12 May 2026 · 13 min
Ep 179: From lumpy projects to predictable annual recurring revenue
Send us Fan Mail Project-based businesses face a fundamental structural problem: every quarter begins at zero. Revenue can look strong on the surface while cash flow remains volatile, pipeline uncertainty delays hiring decisions, and the founder stays personally essential to winning and scoping every engagement. Effort scales linearly. Value does not. This episode challenges the treadmill dynamic head-on, starting with a clear diagnosis of why project businesses stall at scale, utilisation ce...
S5 · E66 · 5 May 2026 · 17 min
Ep 178: Lifestyle creep is a capital allocation problem
Send us Fan Mail Surplus cash flow is not the same as freedom; it is a decision point. And what a founder does with it reveals whether they are building income, lifestyle, or enterprise value. This episode frames lifestyle creep not as a personal failing but as a capital allocation problem with real commercial consequences. Stuart and Mena explore why founders blur the line between personal reward and business extraction once cash pressure eases, and why emotional spending decisions made insi...
S5 · E65 · 28 Apr 2026 · 11 min
Ep 177: Controls without bureaucracy- how to scale safely
Send us Fan Mail Most businesses only take controls seriously after something goes wrong—and by then, the cost is already high. In this episode, Stuart and Mena explain why controls become essential as a business grows. In the early stages, trust and visibility can be enough. But as complexity increases with more people, more transactions, and less direct oversight, that approach starts to break down. The key point is simple: trust is not a control system. Even good people make mistakes, espe...
S5 · E64 · 21 Apr 2026 · 11 min
Ep 176: Div 7A liquidity without the tax blow-up
Send us Fan Mail Most Division 7A problems don’t begin with strategy; they begin with behaviour. Money is taken out of the business without a clear plan, documentation falls behind, and by the time advice is sought, the structure is already under pressure. In this episode, Stuart and Mena unpack why Division 7A issues are rarely technical at the start. They are usually the result of poor systems, unclear boundaries between personal and business finances, and year-end decisions made under time...
S5 · E63 · 14 Apr 2026 · 12 min
Ep 175: Buy lease or finance: how to make the right call
Send us Fan Mail “The tax deduction makes it worth it” is one of the most common and costly mistakes business owners make. In this episode, Stuart and Mena break down why taxes should never be the primary reason for acquiring an asset. A deduction can improve the outcome of a good decision, but it cannot turn a poor investment into a good one. The real question is far more commercial: will the asset generate a return that exceeds its total cost? Mena walks through how to define that return pr...
S5 · E62 · 7 Apr 2026 · 15 min
Ep 174: The delegation tax- saving money is costing you millions
Send us Fan Mail Most business owners focus on hiring costs while completely missing what their own time costs the business. In this episode, Stuart and Mena unpack “The Delegation Tax,” the hidden cost of founders staying too involved in low-value work. It’s not salaries that hold businesses back; it’s bottlenecks. When decision-making, approvals, and execution all run through one person, growth slows, opportunities are missed, and the business becomes harder to scale. Mena explores why “I’l...
S5 · E61 · 31 Mar 2026 · 16 min
Ep 173: Most team problems are actually clarity problems
Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Stuart and Mena challenge one of the most common assumptions in business: that underperformance is a people problem. Instead, he makes the case that most issues inside a team stem from a lack of clarity, unclear expectations, mixed signals, and poorly defined standards. They explain why most employees genuinely want to do good work, and how vague instructions like “do a great job” fail unless they are translated into specific, observable outcomes. From qualit...
S5 · E60 · 24 Mar 2026 · 19 min
Ep 172: Capital allocation policy: owner wage, buffers, reinvestment, investing, lifestyle
Send us Fan Mail Random distributions create random wealth outcomes. In this episode, Stuart and Mena introduce the concept most business owners don’t have, but desperately need: a written capital allocation policy. They break down how surplus cash should be intentionally directed across six competing uses: owner wage, tax, buffers, reinvestment, external investing, and lifestyle. Because if it’s not decided in advance, it gets decided emotionally. They explore structural landmines like Divis...

About Business By Design

Business By Design is a English business podcast from Stuart Wemyss & Mena Abraham. Melo plays each episode straight from the publisher's own feed — no ads added, no account needed — and remembers where you stopped, in this browser only.

Publisher: Stuart Wemyss & Mena Abraham
Language: English
Category: Business
New episodes: Weekly
Typical length: 19 min
Latest episode: 13 Oct 2026
Feed: RSS — paste into any podcast app
Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1556152973

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