Shows
Standing Apart | The Business Differentiation Podcast | Nigel Ridpath#34 - Out-Think the Competition: Marc Champagne on Mental FitnessMost organisations have a strategy for sales, marketing and product. Almost none have a strategy for the thing running all of it — the mind.
Marc Champagne spent two decades in corporate healthcare, reaching the top of the country in sales before leaving to study a question he couldn't let go of: how do the best thinkers in the world train their minds to work for them instead of against them? Twenty years on, he makes that case inside Google, LinkedIn, KPMG and Pfizer. His argument: mental fitness is not a wellness initiative. It is competitive infrastructure.
...
2026-10-1243 min
Standing Apart | The Business Differentiation Podcast | Nigel Ridpath#33 - Sell It, Then Build It: Kaihan Krippendorff on ProximityMost businesses still operate on a logic built for the last century: create value in advance, store it, distribute it and hope customers come looking. Kaihan Krippendorff's Proximity thesis argues that logic is being fundamentally inverted - and the firms that understand why are the ones pulling ahead.
In this episode, Kaihan - Wharton Senior Fellow, Thinkers50 management thinker and author of six books including his latest, Proximity - explains why a dozen trends most firms are treating as separate disruptions are actually one underlying shift, and what that means for any business trying to build something...
2026-09-2836 min
Standing Apart | The Business Differentiation Podcast | Nigel Ridpath#32 - The Brands People Never Forget: Warren Kornblum on Emotional BrandingMost businesses assume their biggest branding challenge is awareness. Warren Kornblum thinks that's almost the wrong problem to solve.
After a career spanning global brands including Toys R Us and Serta Simmons Bedding, Warren has spent decades studying why some brands earn deep, lasting loyalty while others fade despite heavy marketing investment. His answer centres on a concept he calls Share of Heart: not just being thought of, not just being bought, but being genuinely liked — and the difference that makes when a market gets tough.
In this episode, Warren and Nigel cover:
• The di...
2026-09-1438 min
Standing Apart | The Business Differentiation Podcast | Nigel Ridpath#31 - Why Self-Esteem Beats Ego: Alan Weiss on Courage and Business SuccessMost people treat self-esteem as a by-product of events, rising after a win and faltering after a setback. Alan Weiss argues the opposite: self-esteem doesn't decline because of what happens to you - it declines out of neglect. Despite decades of positive psychology, Weiss makes the case that most of us have quietly surrendered the internal resource that determines whether we succeed consistently, and that recovering it requires something most leadership conversations quietly sidestep: courage.
In this episode, Nigel speaks with Alan Weiss - consultant, speaker and author whose clients have included Merck, GE, Mercedes-Benz and the...
2026-08-3128 min
Standing Apart | The Business Differentiation Podcast | Nigel Ridpath#30 - Tough but Fair: Dr James Walsh on Conflict, Trust and Adaptive LeadershipLeadership looks straightforward until it isn't. When conflict is sitting in the room, when your natural style is the wrong one for the moment, when you have to be both tough and fair at the same time — that's where most leadership development leaves you on your own.
In this episode, Nigel Ridpath speaks with Dr James Walsh: US Air Force veteran, retired Department of Defense civilian, lecturer at Park University, and author of You're a Leader — Now What? Build Trust, Inspire Teams, Drive Results (Business Expert Press, August 2026). James draws on nearly fifty years in and around milita...
2026-08-1720 min
Standing Apart | The Business Differentiation Podcast | Nigel Ridpath#29 - Fair Share: Brad Johnson & David Smith on Gender Equity at WorkMost conversations about gender fairness in the workplace start from the assumption that it's primarily a women's issue — or worse, a compliance one. Brad Johnson and David Smith start from somewhere different. Their argument, grounded in decades of research at the US Naval Academy and Johns Hopkins, is that the current structure of most organisations fails men and women in different but related ways, and that fixing it is a straightforward business decision.
Brad is a clinical psychologist, former US Naval officer and Professor of Leadership and Psychology at the US Naval Academy. David is a Professor at...
2026-08-0341 min
Standing Apart | The Business Differentiation Podcast | Nigel Ridpath#28 - Gross Jobs, Smart Business: Tim Whitt on Growth and Toxic TeamsPest control is not the first industry most people look to for business insights. That's rather the point. Tim Witt spent 30 years rising through corporate leadership in one of the most consistently recession-resistant, AI-resistant sectors in the economy, before starting his own company from scratch in rural Oklahoma — during the 2008 financial crisis, when most sensible people were heading in the other direction.
That decision, and what it produced over the following 15 years, turns out to offer a genuinely useful lens for anyone thinking about differentiation, team culture or how to build recurring revenue from a standing st...
2026-07-2040 min
Standing Apart | The Business Differentiation Podcast | Nigel Ridpath#27 - The Skills AI Cannot Touch: Johan Roos on Human Magic (Part 2)In Part 1, Johan Roos introduced the central tension of Human Magic: every professional is navigating either an amplification curve, where AI sharpens their human capabilities, or an erosion curve, where it quietly atrophies them. Part two gets more specific — and considerably sharper.
The MIT Project Iceberg study modelled 150 million workers across 32,000 skills. Its conclusion — that what organisations are experiencing now is only the visible tip of AI's disruption — sets up the question this episode addresses: when every organisation converges on the same AI-generated strategy, what actually differentiates you?
Johan's answer centres on five capabilities, and a deeper...
2026-07-0631 minStanding Apart | The Business Differentiation Podcast | Nigel Ridpath#26 - Use AI or Be Used by It: Johan Roos on Human Magic (Part 1)While writing The Time Traveller's Guide to Management, a persistent worry surfaced for Nigel: the management frameworks he'd spent years teaching were developed decades before AI started doing some of the work those frameworks were designed to support. Johan Roos turns out to have been asking the same question, for considerably longer.
Johan is a management scholar, co-inventor of the globally adopted Lego Serious Play methodology, and Professor and former Chief Academic Officer at Hult International Business School. His new book, Human Magic: Leading with Wisdom in an Age of Algorithms (Routledge, 2026), argues that the real competitive ad...
2026-06-2230 min
Standing Apart | The Business Differentiation Podcast | Nigel Ridpath#25 - Doing Great Work: Melissa Swift on Real EffectivenessMost of us end the day having been relentlessly busy and yet not entirely sure what we achieved. Personal effectiveness generates a lot of noise, but Melissa Swift's research cuts through to something more useful: the question isn't how much you can do, it's whether you're doing the work that actually counts.
Melissa is founder of Anthro Insight, a former practice leader at Mercer, Korn Ferry and Capgemini, and a columnist for MIT Sloan Management Review. Her book Effective is the practical follow-up to her debut Work Here Now, aimed squarely at how individuals and teams can...
2026-06-0129 min
Standing Apart | The Business Differentiation Podcast | Nigel Ridpath#24 - Become Hard to Compare: A Practical Differentiation FrameworkIf a buyer cannot tell you apart from your competitors, they will default to price, brand or whoever replied fastest. None of those is a durable basis for business. This episode is about changing that — not by working harder in the same category, but by moving out of it.
Nigel uses his own experience in the keynote speaking world to make the point concrete. Competing as a motivational leadership talk puts you against former Olympians and celebrity entrepreneurs. Competing as a practical storytelling framework for leaders is an entirely different conversation.
The five-part checklist:
Be...
2026-05-1822 min
Standing Apart | The Business Differentiation Podcast | Nigel Ridpath#23 - Culture Is What You Tolerate: A Framework for Values That WorkThis is the practical follow-on to episode 22 — and it starts with the thing most people think but few say out loud. Corporate values are often marketing, written for strangers, with no real grip on day-to-day behaviour.
The distinction Nigel draws is worth keeping. Corporate value statements are usually written for outsiders. Culture, by contrast, is written by what happens on a wet Tuesday when something goes wrong. Culture is not what you say you believe — it is what you tolerate, reward and promote. When those two things diverge, the values statement stops being a guide and starts being a cred...
2026-05-0414 min
Standing Apart | The Business Differentiation Podcast | Nigel Ridpath#22 - What Leaders Really Stand For: Paul Ingram on Values and HiringMost organisations have values. Fewer have values that mean anything. The gap usually shows up in hard moments — when doing the right thing is inconvenient, when a high performer is also causing damage, or when two legitimate priorities pull in opposite directions.
Paul Ingram is the Kravis Professor of Business at Columbia Business School. He has spent close to two decades researching this question and has operationalised the values of more than 10,000 executives worldwide. His book What Do You Really Stand For? is the result. He joins Nigel to go deep on what values actually are, how to...
2026-04-2046 min
Standing Apart | The Business Differentiation Podcast | Nigel Ridpath#21 - The Stress That Never Stops: Justin Hai on Cortisol and PerformanceMost conversations about stress start with how to cope better. Justin Hai, entrepreneur and author of Stress Nation, starts somewhere different. His argument is that the problem is not the volume of stress — it is that technology has removed the off switch from our nervous systems entirely.
The mechanism is cortisol, what Hai calls the master hormone. It follows a natural daily rhythm, peaking in the morning and handing over to melatonin in the evening. When that rhythm is disrupted by constant notifications, always-on inboxes and the disappearance of any real end to the working day, the co...
2026-03-3035 min
Standing Apart | The Business Differentiation Podcast | Nigel Ridpath#20 - Survival Through Character: John Terry on Chipping Norton TheatreSmall performing arts venues have been closing across the UK for years. The economics are brutal — the overheads of a 200-seat theatre are not that different from one with 700 seats, but the revenue potential is a fraction of the size. So what does it take not just to survive, but to thrive against those odds?
John Terry, Artistic Director at the Chipping Norton Theatre for 17 years, has spent his tenure building something genuinely distinctive in a small Cotswold town. This conversation explores what has made that possible.
What you'll hear in this episode:...
2026-02-0236 min
Standing Apart | The Business Differentiation Podcast | Nigel Ridpath#19 - When AI Finds Your Blockages: Vala Afshar & Henry King (Part 2)This is part two of Nigel's conversation with Vala Afshar and Henry King, authors of Autonomous. Where part one established why agentic AI is not another technology trend, part two gets into what it means for a business to be healthy enough to survive and benefit from this shift.
The central insight is striking. Six of the top ten causes of human death involve blockages — cardiovascular disease is the world's biggest killer because arteries narrow and flow stops. The same logic applies to organisations. Most businesses operate with hidden blockages, processes that work just well enough th...
2025-11-1726 minStanding Apart | The Business Differentiation Podcast | Nigel Ridpath#18 - Agentic AI and Digital Labour: Vala Afshar & Henry King (Part 1)The shift from generative AI to agentic AI is not a gradual evolution. It is a step change in what software can do — and, more importantly, in what it will do on your behalf. Vala Afshar, Chief Evangelist at Salesforce, and Henry King, a transformation and innovation strategist, co-authored Autonomous: Why the Fittest Businesses Embrace AI-First Strategies and Digital Labour. This is part one of a two-part interview.
Their argument is that AI is no longer a tool you hand to humans. It is digital labour — software with agency, working alongside people, operating at scale with a degr...
2025-11-0330 min
Standing Apart | The Business Differentiation Podcast | Nigel Ridpath#17 - De-Risk Your Goals: Kyle Austin Young on Probability HackingMost people approach a goal by thinking about what needs to go right. Kyle Austin Young argues that is exactly the wrong place to focus — and that the real lever for success is systematically reducing everything that can go wrong.
Kyle is a strategy consultant who writes for Harvard Business Review, Forbes and Psychology Today. His book Success is a Numbers Game lays out a five-step probability hacking framework for mapping, measuring and improving your odds of achieving any goal.
What you'll learn from this episode:
Why three steps with a 70% success probability each pr...
2025-09-2941 min
Standing Apart | The Business Differentiation Podcast | Nigel Ridpath#16 - The Business of Cannabis: Emilie Lewis & Harrison Radie, MJBizConRunning a successful B2B business when your product is federally illegal, taxed at over 70% and cannot legally appear in social media advertising requires a particular kind of creative thinking. Emily Lewis and Harrison Rady, the marketing and sales leads behind MJBizCon — the world's largest cannabis trade show — explain what that actually looks like in practice.
This episode covers the commercial reality of an industry most UK listeners have never encountered up close: state-by-state legalisation, banking restrictions, AI-powered ad takedowns and a regulatory environment that shifts without warning.
What you'll learn from this epis...
2025-09-1532 min
Standing Apart | The Business Differentiation Podcast | Nigel Ridpath#15 - NHS Digital Health Done Differently: Grace Gimson, Holly HealthSmall performing arts venues have been closing across the UK for years. The economics are brutal. So what does it take not just to survive, but to thrive against those odds?
Grace Gimson is the CEO and co-founder of Holly Health, a digital coaching platform helping people build sustainable health habits across mental and physical wellbeing, deployed widely in NHS settings over the past five years. Its focus is on reaching the people that conventional health tech tends to miss: those with multiple long-term conditions and limited disposable income.
What listeners will take...
2025-09-0134 min
Standing Apart | The Business Differentiation Podcast | Nigel Ridpath#14 - What Actually Motivates People: Dan Pink, DISC and Your TeamDespite decades of research on motivation, most organisations still default to carrots and sticks. Annual bonuses, employee of the month schemes, competitive leaderboards — they produce short-term activity spikes, but the evidence suggests they can actively undermine the deeper motivation that sustains performance over time.
This episode starts with what Nigel has observed across 35 years in business: the same motivation killers appearing repeatedly. Micromanagement. Lack of recognition. Unclear expectations. And above all, a disconnect between what people do day to day and why the organisation exists.
The core of the episode is Dan Pink's research from hi...
2025-05-2621 min
Standing Apart | The Business Differentiation Podcast | Nigel Ridpath#13 - Premium Positioning: How to Charge More Without DiscountingIn every market, there are customers willing to pay more for better. Premium positioning is the discipline of being the option they choose — not by being the most expensive, but by making price a secondary consideration altogether.
Nigel opens with Daylesford Organic in the Cotswolds, where a loaf of bread sells for three times the supermarket price and people happily pay it. The product is almost beside the point. What they're selling is experience, environment and story. That same thinking, applied differently, explains how Timpsons holds a premium position in key cutting, how Brompton Bikes commands £1,000-pl...
2025-05-1218 min
Standing Apart | The Business Differentiation Podcast | Nigel Ridpath#12 - How AI Search Is Changing Inbound Marketing StrategyInbound marketing has been the dominant content philosophy for the better part of 15 years. The basic logic holds: publish valuable content, optimise it for search, let customers find you. AI is now disrupting the assumptions that logic was built on.
In January 2025, AI-serving crawlers accounted for nearly 30% of Google's total crawler activity. That figure was zero two years earlier. AI overviews are now sitting above the organic results that businesses spent years climbing to reach — and the sources those overviews cite are not necessarily the highest-ranking articles. Nigel ran his own experiment: the top-ranking result for a...
2025-04-2817 minStanding Apart | The Business Differentiation Podcast | Nigel Ridpath#11 - How to maximise your relationship with existing clientsStanding Apart, hosted by Nigel Ridpath, focuses on the theme of differentiation - both personally and in a business sense.
Episode 11 focuses on maximising the relationship with existing clients. I chat with Tamara Phelan about best practice.
I also reveal who is Superhero of the Week, which, this week, is from the world of TV comedy, and I get to have my 1-Minute Rant.
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2025-04-1427 min
Standing Apart | The Business Differentiation Podcast | Nigel Ridpath#10 - How to create a great business within the energy sector - pt2Standing Apart, hosted by Nigel Ridpath, focuses on the theme of differentiation - both personally and in a business sense.
Episode 10 is part 2 of an interview with Hugh Taylor from Roadnight Taylor. We discuss the energy sector that is the business focus, but also the purposefulness with which Hugh leads the organisation.
You can find the Roadnight Taylor flywheel here.
Here is Hugh's reading list:
Good to Great - Jim Collins
Influence- Robert Cialdini
Bounce- Matt Syed
Radical Candor- Kim Scott
Hyperfocus- Chris Bailey
Humanocracy- Gary Hemel
Think Again- Adam Grant
No Ru...
2025-03-3133 min
Standing Apart | The Business Differentiation Podcast | Nigel Ridpath#9 - How to create a great business within the energy sector - pt1Standing Apart, hosted by Nigel Ridpath, focuses on the theme of differentiation - both personally and in a business sense.
Episode 9 is part 1 of an interview with Hugh Taylor from Roadnight Taylor. We discuss the energy sector that is the business focus, but also the purposefulness with which Hugh leads the organisation.
Here is Hugh's reading list:
Good to Great - Jim Collins
Influence- Robert Cialdini
Bounce- Matt Syed
Radical Candor- Kim Scott
Hyperfocus- Chris Bailey
Humanocracy- Gary Hemel
Think Again- Adam Grant
No Rules Rules- Reed Hastings & Erin Meyer
The Win Without Pitch Ma...
2025-03-1741 min
Standing Apart | The Business Differentiation Podcast | Nigel Ridpath#8 - How to come up with a new business model - a personal storyStanding Apart, hosted by Nigel Ridpath, focuses on the theme of differentiation - both personally and in a business sense.
Episode 8 focuses on a personal story from Nigel, about how he and the team at Cloud9 Insight were pioneers in the world of selling SaaS solutions - in their case Microsoft CRM Online.
This is Cloud9:
Here Is David collecting his award in the House of Commons, from the Secretary of State:
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2025-03-0319 minStanding Apart | The Business Differentiation Podcast | Nigel Ridpath#7 - What is a Circular Economy?Standing Apart, hosted by Nigel Ridpath, focuses on the theme of differentiation - both personally and in a business sense.
Episode 7 focuses on the circular economy. We take a look at what's happening in this space, inspired by this article by Pallab Ghosh.
I also reveal who is Superhero of the Week, which, this week, has a personal flavour, and I get to have my 1-Minute Rant, which gets slightly political.
** Please like, rate and subscribe! It really helps us reach a bigger audience. **
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2025-02-1716 minStanding Apart | The Business Differentiation Podcast | Nigel Ridpath#6 - How can people in the education sector do things differently?Standing Apart, hosted by Nigel Ridpath, focuses on the theme of differentiation - both personally and in a business sense.
Episode 6 focuses on the education sector. We take a look at what's happening in schools in the most deprived areas, inspired by this article by Elaine Dunkley and producer, Kate McGough. I interview Nicki Hambleton, former Head of Art at UWCSEA in Singapore, about how one of the top schools in the world innovates.
I also reveal who is Superhero of the Week.
Nicki's podcast on Visual Thinking can be found here.
2025-02-0327 minStanding Apart | The Business Differentiation Podcast | Nigel Ridpath#5 - What are the advantages of being a market disruptor?Standing Apart, hosted by Nigel Ridpath, focuses on the theme of differentiation - both personally and in a business sense.
Episode 5 is all about market disruptors. We take a look at examples, including WeBuyAnyCar, Habito and Marshmallow. We explore the characteristics of disruptive leaders. And finally, we provide some tips on how you can make your business more disruptive.
It also includes a rant about the debate around AI.
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2025-01-2025 minStanding Apart | The Business Differentiation Podcast | Nigel Ridpath#4 - What's the latest in the legaltech world?Standing Apart, hosted by Nigel Ridpath, focuses on the theme of differentiation - both personally and in a business sense.
Episode 4 includes an interview with Kim Simmonds, CEO and Founder of Cloud Contracts 365. Kim is shaking up the legal sector with her new SAAS product that handles day-to-day contract creation and contract review.
It also includes a rant about New Year resolutions.
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2025-01-0635 minStanding Apart | The Business Differentiation Podcast | Nigel Ridpath#3 - Stories of musicians who do things differentlyStanding Apart, hosted by Nigel Ridpath, focuses on the theme of differentiation - both personally and in a business sense.
Episode 3 is a music industry special, with stories about MTV, the sale of artists' back catalogues, Gorillaz and SZA. It also includes a rant about dynamic ticket pricing.
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2024-12-2320 minStanding Apart | The Business Differentiation Podcast | Nigel Ridpath#2 - A deep dive into retailers that do things differentlyStanding Apart is a new podcast, hosted by Nigel Ridpath. The show focuses on the theme of differentiation - both personally and in a business sense.
Episode 2 is a retail special, with stories about Shein, Christmas markets, Canada Goose, Black Friday and Mary Portas It also includes a rant about Christmas gifts for men.
2024-12-0919 minStanding Apart | The Business Differentiation Podcast | Nigel Ridpath#1 - Welcome to a brand new podcast about people & businesses that do things differentlyStanding Apart is a new podcast, hosted by Nigel Ridpath. The show focuses on the theme of differentiation - both personally and in a business sense.
Episode 1 is an introduction to the show and features a discussion about Jaguar's new branding, some of the key areas to look at when differentiating your business and a rant about terrible copywriting.
2024-11-2530 min
Seer 365 SessionsSeer 365 Sessions #5 - Partner to Partner best practice with ardenfortIn this episode of the Seer 365 Sessions, we are delighted to be joined by Nigel Ridpath from ardenfort to discuss how he works with partners to leverage each other's strengths, and share best practices - something that I know many Microsoft partners are looking to do more of.We mentioned the IAMCP during the podcast, if anyone is interested in learning more please have a look at their website to see how you can connect with other partners looking to partner Find out more about our GYDE365 platform Follow us on LinkedIn View this and our...
2022-11-0324 min