Beer mat business plan to multi-million pound recruiter - Lee Madden on building GR8 from scratch

Lee Madden has lived several lives. Soldier. Policeman. Restaurant owner. Signage company director. Each one ending harder than the last - a partner who changed the locks, a brother's business that collapsed, a divorce, four nights sofa surfing with an empty bank account.Then he wrote a business plan on a beer mat in St Mary's pub, started GR8 Recruitment with £23,000 from a voluntary redundancy and a PPI claim, and built it into a multi-million pound business changing lives across Jersey, Guernsey and Kenya.Luke Smith sits down with Lee Madden, founder and MD of GR8 Recruitment, in this episode of #GreatAtBusiness.Listen to this for advice and insights on:Why control is everything, and what happens when you don't have it in a business partnershipThe Christmas week decision to take on a competitor's entire payroll overnight, quadrupling the business in daysHow GR8 grew during COVID by redeploying workers into hospitals, nursing homes and ambulance crews and ringfencing every penny of profit for charityFlying to Kenya to solve Jersey's hospitality workforce crisis and interviewing 250 candidates in a hotel conference roomWhy "fail fast" isn't about failure, it's about spotting quickly when something isn't worth your life