84. How to grow your business without losing control | David Palmer
6/22/20261 hr
Scaling a business seems like the obvious goal. But what if growth without the right strategy leads to losing control?
In this episode of All About Business, James speaks with David Palmer, founder of Life of Fish, the modern London fishmonger that started as a lockdown pop-up outside a Peckham cafe, and has now grown into a multi-site retail and wholesale business built on sustainability, craft, and genuine customer service.
Together James and David explore the harder lessons of growth: why expanding too fast almost broke the business, how to know when to consolidate rather than chase new opportunities, and what it means to build something that runs on profit rather than debt.
David shares what he learned starting work at Billingsgate Market at the age of 14 with no qualifications and no plan. Climbing into bins at 2am and learning to fillet fish under pressure, allowed David to slowly piecing together a skillset he didn't realise he was building. The lesson he took from those years is simple: nothing you learn is wasted, and starting from the bottom teaches you things no shortcut ever could.
They also discuss what it really takes to build a product business in a traditional industry that nobody had modernised.
Timestamps
2:11 Leaving school at 11
12:56 The entrepreneurial pivot question
15:14 The breakthrough moment
17:26 The gap in the market
19:33 COVID lockdown launch
21:15 70 people queue
38:55 Lesson on over expansion
39:57 Turning down free rent
43:39 Hiring philosophy
Links
Follow David Palmer on LinkedIn
Find out more Life of Fish and their products here
Submit your application to Reed’s Entrepreneurs Fund for a chance to a £20,000 grant HERE
All About Business is brought to you by Reed Global. Learn more HERE
This podcast was co-produced by Reed Global and Flamingo Media. If you’d like to create a chart-topping podcast to elevate your brand, visit Flamingo-media.co.uk
Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsJames Reed· Host0:00
Welcome to All About Business with me, James Reid, the podcast that covers everything about business, management, and leadership. Every episode, I sit down with different guests of bootstrap companies, masterminded investment models, or built a business empire. They're leaders in their field, and they're here to give you top insights and actionable advice so that you can apply their ideas to your own career or business venture. What does it take to build a business from scratch and turn early momentum into something that lasts? Today on All About Business, I'm joined by David Palmer, founder of Life of Fish, a modern fishmonger that has grown from a lockdown pop-up into a multi-site retail business focused on quality, sustainability, and community. In this episode, we discuss building a business with limited resources, why failure can be an advantage, and how to create a brand in one of the most traditional industries in the UK. [upbeat music] Well, today on All About Business, I'm really, really delighted to welcome David Palmer. Uh, David is the founder and director of Life of Fish, a modern sustainability-focused fishmonger based here in London. And David, your Life of Fish began, I believe, at the age of 15, if not earlier. You've been in the- Yeah ... fish business all your, all your sort of