Episode 12

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Published on:

12th Mar 2026

Ep 12 - Consistency Wins: The Real Way Credibility Gets Built

with Alec Pearson, Nick Sellers and Gemma Dawe.

When you hear “starting a business during Covid”, it’s easy to assume it was a brave leap.

But sometimes it isn’t a leap at all, it’s being kicked off a cliff and choosing to build on the way down.

In this episode Alec and Nick speak to Gemma, a business owner who launched a specialist relocation and buying-agent service in September 2020, right in the middle of uncertainty, restrictions, and a property market behaving in ways nobody could predict.

What follows is a conversation about how credibility is really built. Not through polish, shortcuts, or having the perfect plan, but through consistency, trust, and staying in your lane when distractions start shouting.

We discuss:

• Redundancy as a trigger and what it takes to act before you feel “ready”

• The buyer’s perspective, and the psychology behind major decisions

• Building credibility through consistency, opinion, and trust

• Staying in your lane: opportunity vs distraction

• Time, boundaries, and networking as a long game

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About the Podcast

Beyond Leading

Beyond Leading explores leadership as it really happens. Across self, teams, organisations and the boardroom. Decisions, pressures and situations that rarely fit neatly into a framework. Hosted by Executive Coach & Non-Executive Director Alec Pearson.

Leadership is never only about the leader.

Beyond Leading is for people who want to understand what is really going on when leadership gets complicated — when teams get stuck, decisions aren't clear, businesses change, relationships become difficult or the usual leadership advice simply isn't enough.

Hosted by executive coach and Non-Executive Director Alec Pearson, the podcast explores the whole leadership system — from self-awareness, confidence and behaviour, through trust, conflict and team dynamics, to decision-making, accountability, organisational performance, executive leadership and the boardroom.

Each episode is designed to make you think differently about the situations you are dealing with. Not by offering another neat five-step formula, but by looking beneath the surface, challenging assumptions and asking the questions that are easy to miss.

Through solo episodes and conversations with leaders, business owners, coaches and specialists, Beyond Leading helps you make better sense of yourself, your team and the organisation around you.

Because what happens in one part of the system rarely stays there.

🎙 Beyond Leading — and everything in between.

About your host

Alec Pearson

I'm Alec Pearson, Non-Executive Director, Board Advisor and Executive Coach, with more than 30 years' experience across professional services, law, technology, manufacturing, transport and founder-led SMEs.

I've spent much of my career working in and around leadership, leading teams, advising businesses, coaching senior leaders and working with boards on the decisions, relationships and challenges that shape organisations.

Today, I work with boards, executives and business leaders when the stakes are higher, the answers are less obvious and clarity matters. My approach combines independent board-level thinking with a coaching lens: pragmatic, people-aware, challenging when needed, and grounded in the realities of leadership and business.

Beyond Leading grew out of that experience.

It's the podcast I wish had existed earlier in my career. One that looks beyond leadership theory and explores what is really happening across the whole leadership system: ourselves, the people around us, our teams, our organisations and the boardroom.

Some episodes are reflections on the patterns I see in leadership and business. Others bring together leaders, business owners, coaches and specialists with experience and perspectives worth exploring.

The aim is not to offer another neat leadership formula. It's to ask better questions, challenge assumptions and make sense of the situations that rarely fit neatly into a framework.

That's what Beyond Leading is about — leadership as it really happens, and everything in between.