Big Thinking, Big Impact – Five Things We Learned at the 2025 handl Group Conference

The annual handl Group conference is always a chance for people from around the group to get together, share ideas, and build the relationships that help move our businesses forwards. This year’s event was no exception.

But this year, we approached the conference a little differently, inviting speakers from across the UK to join us on stage and share their knowledge, experiences and – crucially – the big ideas that have taken them to the pinnacles of their various areas of expertise.

Here’s what we learned.

1: Build now, benefit later

The conference kicked off with a brief introduction from CEO Graham Pulford, who outlined the day’s key theme. Thinking bigger. Growth, Graham says, is all about changing your mindset. Creating success today to fund more success in the future.

But how do we do that? Enter the day’s first expert speakers – Adam Wright and Bryan Redpath of Jackson Swiss Partners.

Their advice was clear. Building the foundations today will lead to clear benefits tomorrow. Whether you’re leading an industry, or leading an international rugby team, setting the right foundations is how you overcome adversity.

It’s not about fighting the world. It’s about building a culture of leadership and collaboration, learning from your mistakes, and sharing your knowledge as you go.

Growth and success are down to long term processes and long term thinking. It’s a mindset that we saw our speakers return to time and time again.

“You need to be the very best of you, every single time.”

Bryan Redpath

2: We win together

Bryan’s lessons on collaboration may have come from his time captaining the Scottish rugby team, but it turns out he could have learned the same thing from Speed Medical.

That was the takeaway from two of our internal speakers – Leanne Ayres and Sarah Roddy. Both have risen up through the group after starting at Speed Medical, and both explained that a culture of leadership, support and collaboration helped them challenge themselves, think bigger, and achieve.

Leanne’s advice to take risks and back yourself, and Sarah’s concept of mixing a depth of talent with a balance of skills and details both showed that when we work together as a group, we win together.

That’s something echoed by our third internal speaker, Peter Sanderson. Sharing some of the work he’d done in a very challenging specialist field, Peter explained that the key to his success has always been treating people as part of a family. If you surround yourself with clever people and work together to focus on a goal, you can achieve great things.

For the Health and Wellbeing division, those great things can have a real effect on lives, as demonstrated by the results Peter’s team at PSP have delivered for children and adults alike.

Three: 10x is just as easy as 2x

After a break for lunch, attendees returned to a video of an interview that never happened, generated entirely by AI. But while the work of computers opened up speaker Guy Remond’s presentation, it was the human factor that he returned to time and time again in his speech.

Echoing some of the earlier points, Guy honed in on building teams and making the most of their unique abilities to power your success (or, as Sarah would put it, depth + balance), but he challenged everyone to think bigger.

“Growing to ten times your KPI is just as easy as growing it two times.”

Guy Remond

Growth is a mindset, and setting ambitious goals is the key to allowing faster growth. Yes, Guy explained, there will always be bumps on the road. But you need to have the tenacity and belief to overcome every obstacle, you need to build scale into your plans, and you need to keep your teams aligned.

Failure is a badge, not a scar. Wear it proudly, learn from your mistakes, and never be afraid to take risks.

Four: Change your thinking, change the world

Risk in business is one thing, but what about taking a risk and entering the only place in the UK where it’s legal for you to be killed?

That’s what Johnny Nelson MBE did for a career before becoming a TV pundit and speaker, and it’s something he did amazingly well – with a record breaking 13 defences of the Cruiserweight world title.

But that’s not how Johnny started.

With a frankly terrible amateur record, Johnny found himself going nowhere – thinking that anyone he beat must’ve been a truly awful fighter, and refusing to see what his coach saw in him. When he finally realised what people had been trying to tell him – that he had the potential to be a world champion – he never looked back.

“I had that Eureka moment. I got it. And I never lost again.”

Johnny Nelson MBE

After changing his mindset, Johnny went out and changed his fortunes, learning from his previous failures and doing everything he could to avoid them.

It’s a sporting story that’s easily applicable to any business. Find the right mentor. Build the right team around yourself. Put in the effort. Take away every excuse you have for failure, and believe you can go out and achieve your goals.

Then do it. Change your thinking, change the world.

Five: The future’s bright

He may not have conquered the world of boxing, but group CFO Ian Robins has seen the results of handl Group’s approach first hand.

Finishing off the day with his annual report (and a brief round of trivia questions), Ian’s report shows that the group is growing with the ability to invest even more in our businesses in the future.

With stability and a solid foundation, we’re all set for thinking bigger in 2025 and beyond.