Beyond the Numbers with Bev Wakefield

Bev Wakefield is joined by Paul McAnulty, CEO of Rebuild East Midlands, to explore lived experience, leadership, purpose and the role business owners can play in rebuilding lives.

Paul shares his own journey through exploitation, homelessness, policing, charity work and ethical business, and explains why Rebuild focuses on survivors’ futures, not their past.

This is a powerful conversation about hope, community, purpose, and why there is no such thing as “just” a business.

 

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Beyond the Numbers is hosted by Bev Wakefield, founder and owner of Vibrant Accountancy.

At Vibrant, Bev and the team help business owners make sense of their numbers, understand their business more clearly, and build with confidence.

To find out more, search Vibrant Accountancy.

Season 4 opens with a big one.

In this first episode, Bev is joined by executive coach and Tough Talk Mentor Cheryl Thompson for a bumper conversation for business owners who need their people at their best if they want to scale, grow and stop carrying everything themselves.

Cheryl shares why leadership is not about being liked, why being clear can be kinder than being comfortable, and why the conversations leaders avoid often become the problems their teams have to carry.

From founder bottlenecks and unclear expectations to high performers with poor behaviours, values, communication, accountability and the pressure on women in leadership, this episode explores what it really takes to build a team that can perform without everything depending on the business owner.

Because growth does not just need more clients, more revenue or more staff. It needs people who understand what good looks like, leaders who are willing to have honest conversations, and a culture strong enough to support the next stage of the business.

Great teams are not built by avoiding the hard bits. They are built through clarity, trust and conversations that move people forward.

“I’ll sort that later.”
“I’ll pay myself properly when things settle.”
“One day I’ll sell, and that will be my pension.”

In this final episode of the series, Bev shares the shift that changed everything for her: moving from building to sell to building for freedom now.

She breaks down the three layers of real financial security, your Enough Number, your Freedom layer and business value, and explains why relying on a future sale is not a strategy. From paying yourself properly to investing early and building a business that can run without you, this episode is about protecting both Present You and Future You.

Because freedom is not one big exit moment. It is built in small decisions, month after month.

More clients. More revenue. More staff. More pressure.

In this episode of Beyond the Numbers, Bev challenges the idea that bigger automatically means better. She shares why most businesses don’t hit a revenue ceiling, they hit a capacity ceiling, and how chasing growth without intention can quietly erode your profit, energy and freedom.

Through the Visionary, Deliverer and Generalist model, she breaks down where most founders get stuck and what it really takes to grow sustainably. Because the goal is not expansion at any cost. It is building better margins, better systems and better capacity so your business supports your life.

Growth on your terms is not about doing more. It is about designing smarter.

What happens when you stop waiting to be promoted and start building your own table?

In this episode of Beyond the Numbers, Bev sits down with Kavita Oberoi OBE, founder of Oberoi Consulting and the Oberoi Business Hub, to talk about resilience, cultural expectation and backing yourself when no one else will.

From being passed over for promotion to landing a half-million-pound contract with no team in place, Kavita shares how passion, courage and sheer determination built a multi-million-pound business. This is a story about refusing to shrink, leading with purpose and proving that success follows belief.