Inspired Business season preview trailer transcript

[Music]

Jon Eno: If anybody wants to know what fear is really like, driving a minibus full of 4,000 bees is terrifying.

Toby Bradford: In business, you never know when inspiration may strike. It might come in the middle of the night or while you're transporting a minibus full of bees to France or it could be when you're listening to a podcast. We can help you with that.

Inspired Business is a new podcast from the University of Derby, hosted by me, Toby Bradford, and business expert Angela Tooley. Every episode, we bring you inspiring stories from across the business landscape in Derby, Derbyshire and beyond. We meet the people involved and get the full picture. Not only will we hear fantastic stories, we'll explore the issues affecting your business and leave you with key insights to take away.

We’ll cover topics such as leadership, the environment, big data and more. We'll find out what it's like to start a business, to grow a business and, sometimes, to start again. Here's a taster of what's in store in our first season.

Richard Gerver: Management is all about compliance. Management, I believe anyone can manage, and this might be a controversial thing to say, I think anyone can manage because, if you have power over somebody, you have control over that person's salary or bonus or professional development programme or targets or whatever else it is, or even the power to hire and fire people, right, ultimately people will be subservient and do what you tell them to do. So that, to me, is management.

Leadership isn't about compliance and control, it's about empowerment. Leadership is about identifying the talents and abilities in others, inspiring them, giving them a sense of purpose and then letting them off the leash and letting them run with stuff, to a point where, ultimately, yeah, you want to be able to do yourself out of a job, because you want to be able to sit there one day and go, oh my goodness me, I know I want to feel unbelievably valuable and irreplaceable to these people but they're actually getting on with the job and making this company evolve and develop better than I ever could.

Toby: What about other businesses? Is business doing enough as far as the environment’s concerned, as far as sustainability's concerned?

Nicole Yeomans: I think there's always room for improvement. I think there has been shift in the way that businesses think. So, previously, it was always a win-win situation whereas now businesses look to their long-term influence. There's been a shift definitely in the way that businesses operate now that there's a drive towards being more sustainable. It . . . not only does it draw in potentially more clients because people want to work with companies that are sustainable, that have got a good reputation, that are resilient to things like climate change and biodiversity losses, but then it also inspires employees. For example, I actually read a study recently where UCLA found that employees of companies that adopt sustainable practices are 16% more productive, apparently.

Toby: 16%?

Nicole: 16%, so, if that's not a reason to be sustainable, then I don't know why not. Improve that productivity and get more out of your employees.

Jon Eno: If anybody wants to know what fear is really like, driving a mini bus full of 4,000 bees is terrifying. So we had to let DEFRA know, we had to let all of the Channel Tunnel know, we had to let the French animal authorities know that we were coming.

Toby: Did they put you in a carriage on your own?

Jon: No. You would think so. We had to put the beehives in muslin. So you wrap your beehives up in quite a lot of muslin and then you tie it at the top and then you put it in there. And you only have a certain amount of time because the bees they warm up quite a lot. And then all the way around the minibus we had to put big stickers saying, you know, transporting live bees so, if there was a crash or an accident, and all of them escaped, the fire engines would know to come with a special type of foam so they could stop the bees escaping.

And then we drove down from Derby all the way down to our farm in Brittany and, about an hour and a half before we arrived at our farm, a bee landed on my shoulder in the in the driver's seat and we realised that we had an escape-bee - ba-bum-bum - more than one escapee. We had quite a few bees that started to escape from one of the hives we were transporting. So it's quick on with the the bee suit and do the last hour driving with a few bees flying around the minibus just to get them down to our farm in France.

Toby: Whether you working from home, on your lunch break, or taking your daily exercise, let us and our guests inspire you and your business. Season one of Inspired Business from the University of Derby launches this spring. Subscribe now on Spotify, Apple podcasts or wherever else you listen.