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Business By Design

Business By Design

Stuart Wemyss & Mena Abraham

Business By Design

Entrepreneurship Management Business English

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 runs without you, and how the choices you make inside the business flow through to your personal wealth, lifestyle and exit options. Every episode is short and to the point, with no fluff and no sales pitches.

Episodes

Ep 190: Thin margins and empty pipelines are design problems

Ep 190: Thin margins and empty pipelines are design problems

Send us Fan MailA 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...

Ep 189 : Does anyone actually want what you sell?

Ep 189 : Does anyone actually want what you sell?

Send us Fan MailBefore 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?...

Ep 188: Most failing businesses are failing at one thing, not twenty

Ep 188: Most failing businesses are failing at one thing, not twenty

Send us Fan MailWhen 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...

Ep 187: Why We Retired "The Holistic Accountant"

Ep 187: Why We Retired "The Holistic Accountant"

Send us Fan MailAfter 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...

Ep 186: The Holiday Test: Can your business run without you?

Ep 186: The Holiday Test: Can your business run without you?

Send us Fan MailThe 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...

Ep 185: Warning- Asking for feedback and ignoring it is a liability

Ep 185: Warning- Asking for feedback and ignoring it is a liability

Send us Fan MailAsking 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...

Ep 184: Stop hiring on gut feel: a scorecard process that works

Ep 184: Stop hiring on gut feel: a scorecard process that works

Send us Fan MailMost 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...

Ep 183: How business owners can navigate the proposed tax changes

Ep 183: How business owners can navigate the proposed tax changes

Send us Fan MailThe 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...

Ep 182: EOFY tax planning for business owners

Ep 182: EOFY tax planning for business owners

Send us Fan MailEOFY Planning for Business Owners: What to Do Before 30 JuneWith 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...

Ep 181: Buy your premises or trap your cash? The OpCo-PropCo test

Ep 181: Buy your premises or trap your cash? The OpCo-PropCo test

Send us Fan MailOwning 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...