Swapisodes 5 and 6 – with Nick Lloyd, Chair, EMW Law LLP 

Most businesses are predicated on 'their' people serving them. 

We've tried to flip that. The business is here in service of the individuals—not the other way around. That's not soft. It's a model, applied rigorously and intentionally. 

In this episode, Nick Lloyd—corporate lawyer, old friend, and someone who's watched me fail at businesses more than once—asks what's different this time. The answer isn't talent. It's realising skills can be learned, plans can be discarded, and the pyramid works better upside down.

I know very little about ownership models. 

Nick Lloyd knows a lot. He's a corporate lawyer and chair of EMW Law—a top-200 UK firm with around 150 people across Milton Keynes, London, Northampton, and Watford. He's spent 25 years advising on corporate transactions, many involving employee ownership—EOTs, EMI schemes, management buyouts. 

In this episode, I ask him the questions I've been sitting on: What's the difference between an EOT and an EMI? What if the team doesn't want ownership? How do you reward people without giving away control? This is me going up the learning curve—on camera, for free.