Callum Laing

I take companies public and run a $100m MAS regulated fund. 
I am a partner at the Unity Group, the founder of Global Investment Leaders Directive (GILD) for capital raisers.  And I run the Veblen Director Programme, for first time board members.  
Author of 'Boardroom Blueprint - Boost your career with a board seat in 60 days'
My exclusive network of UHNW individuals meet every quarter for lunch at the 'Captable' Singapore (coming to Dubai soon) 

Founder & former CEO / Chair of MBH Corporation PLC, an agglomeration of small, profitable companies from around the world.  Grew it to $180m in revenue.
Advisor to multiple public and private boards.  

Involved in more than 100 M&A transactions and $500m in shareholder value creation.

Best selling author of 3 other business books, I've published over 2500 interviews with Entrepreneurs and Investors around the world. EnterpriseZone.cc
Host of the daily 'CallumConnects' micro-podcast (top 5% worldwide, top 25 for entrepreneurs, 500+ episodes).

Previously served as Singapore High Commissioner to the World Business Angel Investment Forum, an Ambassador to DealGateway.com and on the Board of Advisors to Kinguin, a $100m turnover eGaming business.

The Agglomeration model helps small businesses to scale using publicly listed holding companies.

If you're interested in taking your business, investments or career to the next level, press the blue Follow button above.  

Author of: 
"Progressive Partnerships - The Future of Business" 
"Entrepreneurial Investing - Connecting sophisticated capital to talented small business"
"Boardroom Blueprint - Boost your career with a board seat in 60 days"
Co-author of:
"Agglomerate - Idea to IPO in 12 months"

Member

The Veblen Director Program is designed to get you that elusive first PLC Director position and to provide you with an enviable global network of other Directors that you can call on at will for the rest of your career.

I got lucky! I've just had an amazing week.  Met up with some cool people, closed some incredible deals, had a lot of fun.

Was it random?  Or can you engineer luck?  Watch this vid and let me know your thoughts.

I am Non-exec Chair of MBH Corporation PLC, an agglomeration of small, profitable companies from around the world.

Best selling author of 3 business books, I've published over 2000 interviews with Entrepreneurs and Investors around the world. EnterpriseZone.cc
Host of the daily 'CallumConnects' micro-podcast.

Previously I have served as Singapore High Commissioner to the World Business Angel Investment Forum, an Ambassador to DealGateway.com and on the Board of Advisors to Kinguin, a $100m turnover eGaming business.
I am the founder of Veblen Directors Program, helping women and minorities to get their first Board seats.

At MBH we help take public established, profitable businesses ($1m EBITDA and above) in a range of industries around the world.

If you're interested in taking your business or your investments to the next level, press the blue Connect/Follow button above.  (no startups or early stage so please don't ask)


Author of: 
"Progressive Partnerships - The Future of Business" 
"Entrepreneurial Investing - Connecting sophisticated capital to talented small business"
Co-author of:
"Agglomerate - Idea to IPO in 12 months"

Successful Investor / Entrepreneur and M&A practitioner. I also help ambitious people to raise money, get board seats and take companies public.

Maryam Adamu

In the last 4 years we have helped hundreds of people to get their first board seat and start incredible board careers.

And it has nothing to do with who you know, where you went to school, what qualifications you have or how much work experience you have under your belt.

There are just 3 things that determine whether you will be a great board member, and you're going to get a chance to execute on 2 of them right now!

1: A willingness to learn - the worst board members think they already know what they need to know.  The best are insatiably curious.

2: An ability to make decisions - Anyone who has ever served on a board, or has waited for a board to make a decision will know that indecision can cost millions (and be soul destroying!).  Valuable board members have frameworks that allow them to make decisions quickly.

3: ...

If you would like to know the 3rd thing, then here is your chance to demonstrate your willingness to learn and make decisions.

On March 9th I am running 2 workshops out at Heathrow, London.  One in the morning, one in the afternoon for members of Veblen Directors to share the Veblen 3A Decision Making Framework.  And I'm opening up the session to the public, coupled with some content around how you can get your first board seat.

Tickets to this are normally $299, but if you would like to attend for free just do the following 3 things:
1) Comment 'Chair' 
2) Tag someone else in the UK who you think should have a board career
3) Send me a connection request

Do that and I will get you booked into the event, send you all the details and gift you a copy of my bestselling book 'Boardroom Blueprint'.

I look forward to seeing you in the boardroom!

Stop booking one-hour meetings just because your calendar software defaults to them.

When I took my first company public, my schedule shifted from busy to completely unmanageable overnight. I had a constant stream of investors, partners, and media requests. The volume was overwhelming and my time was no longer my own.

To survive that period, my assistant cut every single meeting down to 20 minutes. Suddenly, I was fitting three conversations into the time I previously spent on one.

This constraint forced me to be concise and focused. We stopped the small talk and got straight to the point. The result was a massive increase in productivity without losing any essential information.

Even after that intense period ended, I refused to go back to the old way. My default is now 30 minutes. 

If you get a 15-minute slot on my calendar today, it means things are hectic and we are going to be extremely direct.

Parkinson’s Law states that work expands to fill the time available for its completion. This is especially true for meetings. If you give a conversation an hour, it will take an hour. If you give it twenty minutes, you will likely achieve the same outcome in a fraction of the time.

Challenge your own schedule this week. Do you really need that full hour, or could you solve the problem in twenty minutes?

(And yes, the big chunks for Family, Friends & Fitness all get scheduled in first)

What is the one recurring meeting you shortened that made your life more effective?

Mike Newton

Most partnerships fail because they are built on a foundation of hope.

I recently spoke with a business owner who has spent 14 years building a fantastic company. When we got to the part of her story where things scaled, she laughed and said, "As you can imagine, it has been a very smooth journey."

It hadn’t been. Every partnership she had ever attempted had gone sideways. They cost her money, let her down, and left her gun-shy about taking the next big step.

I told her the truth: partnerships usually fail because of misaligned expectations. We assume the other person is as enthusiastic as we are. They might start that way, but priorities shift, people get distracted, and life gets in the way.

If your success depends on the other person delivering exactly what you hope for, you are setting yourself up for disappointment.

The secret to a high-level partnership is to structure it so you win even if they under-deliver.

You leverage the announcement. You leverage the signing. You leverage the credibility of the handshake and the association. You design the deal so that it works for your business the moment the contract is signed, whether the other party shows up to the meetings or not.

This approach removes the stress. You are always in a position where you win and never lose. If the partner happens to exceed expectations and delivers even more than you expected, you treat that as a bonus, not a requirement for your survival.

Smart operators do not design partnerships hoping the other person will make them successful. They design them so that success is guaranteed regardless of the other person's effort.

What is the most expensive lesson a failed partnership ever taught you?


For a copy of my book Progressive Partnership send me a connection request.

You’re wrong!

In the boardroom we need to learn to handle disagreements.

There are a million reasons why this is a challenge, but learning how to handle conflict calmly and without emotional reaction is a critical skill for any director.
I have a note on my phone to remind me of three specific questions that diffuse tension and move the needle. Hopefully they will help you.

What would you suggest? 

Rather than pushing back, see if you can get the other person to advance their argument. It shifts them from a defensive posture to a constructive one.

What would it take for us to agree? 

In disagreements, people often get hung up on points that are not actually material but become bones of contention. This question forces the conversation back to a solution focus.

Can you live with it? 

We all want everything our way, but that is not how the world works. Bringing it back to the fundamentals of this question can save you a significant amount of time.

Conflict is inevitable when you are scaling or governing a company. The goal is not to avoid it, but to manage it clinically.

What other tips do you have for dealing with disagreements or heated discussions? Let me know in the comments.

Raising capital is a psychological game that most founders lose because they misread the investor's primary motivation.

They focus entirely on the upside. They talk about projected returns, the massive market potential, and the proverbial pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

But your prospect is probably not lying awake at night dreaming of riches. They are lying awake thinking about how not to lose how to get returns without risking the capital they’ve got.

Risk mitigation is the invisible hurdle in every pitch. If you cannot demonstrate how their capital is protected, they will never sign.

The hierarchy of a successful pitch is simple. Start with the downside. Explain the security, the collateral, or the exit triggers. Once an investor feels their capital is safe, the upside stops being a gamble and starts being a bonus.
Security leads to trust. Trust leads to investment.

When you pitch for capital, do you lead with the dream of the upside, or the reality of protection?

Is Scaling A Business Biological?

Scaling a business is less about strategy and more about how you handle the inherent biological urge to quit when things get difficult. Or worse, the urge to not start in case it does get difficult.

I have been in this situation multiple times over my 30 years of building and scaling companies. Many of our Veblen directors are now sitting on boards where founders are facing these exact same mental blocks.

I eventually learned that it is usually the language that holds me back. The moment I tell myself a task is hard, my brain defaults to avoidance. I stop looking for opportunities and start looking for excuses. All forward momentum stops.

The fix for me is to replace that analysis of the difficulty, with a complete focus on the next steps.

The neuroscience on the Interwebs will tell you this simple shift moves the cognitive load away from the amygdala and back to the prefrontal cortex. 
Your brain moves from defensive to problem solving. No longer fighting a threat, you are just managing a project.  And we can all do that!

Regardless of the science, this is a tactic that seems to work for me.  Does it work for you?

What do you do to keep moving forward when you feel that internal resistance?

You are waiting for a permission slip that is never coming.

One of the most liberating realizations in business is that no one has it all figured out. There are no "adults" in the room with a perfect map. Every expert is less certain than they appear, and every hero is flawed.

This is actually an advantage. It means there is no single "normal" path you are required to follow. The people who actually change things are simply those willing to move while everyone else is waiting to be rescued.

I have found that the best way to manage the pressure of decision-making is to stop being a perfectionist and start being a scientist. If you treat every move as an experiment, failure is just data.

In the Veblen community, we call this the Stepping Stone mindset. No single move is final; each action is simply designed to set up the next one. This shifts the focus from being right to being in motion.

If you feel stuck, try these two filters:
What is the smallest possible step I can take in the next ten minutes?

Which path will result in the better story regardless of the outcome?

High agency is not about the absence of fear. It is about the recognition that no one else is going to build your future for you. It is about playing the hand you were dealt with absolute conviction.

What is one small experiment you can launch this week to break your own inertia?

Are You Feeling The Stress?

"Stress primarily comes from not taking action over something that you can have some control over." — Jeff Bezos

In my 30 years as an entrepreneur, I have found this to be an absolute truth of scaling any business. Stress is normally a good indicator that I’m procrastinating on something that needs to be done.

When I feel that weight, I remember these four realities of the game we’re all playing.

1. There are no unsolvable problems. There are only bad questions. If you are stuck, stop analysing the obstacle and start asking better questions about the solution. Usually, the answer is sitting right in front of you, but your current framing is blocking it.  Most of my questions start with ‘Who?’

2. There is no "one" way. Conventional wisdom suggests there is a single, proven path to success. That is a myth. Multiple paths to any objective exist. If the current route is blocked, pivot. The goal is the constant; the method is variable.  You don’t need to be an entrepreneur to be entrepreneurial, just get creative.

3. There are no adults. This is a hard realisation for many. No one is coming to save you. Every hero you have is just as deeply flawed and uncertain as you are. The people winning are not smarter than you; they just realized earlier on that success is down to them.

4. There is only now. Everything else is fluff. Strategy, planning, and theorizing have their place, but they are often just sophisticated ways to delay the inevitable. Take action, get feedback, go again.

If you are feeling stressed today, look at what you are avoiding. The moment you take the first step, the stress begins to dissipate.

And I’ll leave you with this great quote from Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong: 
“Action produces information. If you’re unsure what to do, just do anything, even if it’s the wrong thing. This will give you information about what you should be doing”

Let me know in the comments what you think

How Much Are You Willing To Admit The Role Of Luck?

Most founders hate to admit that luck plays a role in their success. We prefer to believe that it was all down to our innate talent and good looks.

But once you acknowledge the role luck plays in all areas of our lives, you can actually start to optimise for it. It is the art of maximising your surface area so that "accidental" wins happen more frequently.

This is some key ideas I use to help me get consistently lucky.

The 60/80 Rule Research into high-performing sales teams shows a startling trend. While up to 60% of their revenue can be attributed to lucky circumstances, nearly 80% of that luck was provoked. It did not fall from the sky. It came from making the extra call, attending the "useless" mixer, and staying in the game long enough for the math to work in their favour. Strategy puts you in the room; activity invites the luck.

The Science of Superstition Whether you believe in the supernatural is irrelevant. The science shows that people who believe they are lucky act with more confidence. That confidence makes you more observant of opportunities that others miss because they are too busy being "realistic" and cynical. Luck is often just a byproduct of optimism.

Individuals who took a test and were marked as ‘Highly Lucky’ were then told to look for opportunities in a newspaper.  Needless to say they found loads.  Those whose score (a made up number for the experiment) was low, failed to see any.
Building a Sail for the Wind To capture the wind, you have to build a sail. In the boardroom and in the market, that looks like three specific habits:

Appreciation. Every person who helps you is a potential node in a future luck network. Building your network in person and online significantly increases your surface area for luck to happen

The Risk-O-Meter. If you are in your comfort zone, you are in a "no-luck" zone. Luck requires a delta. At Veblen we call this ‘Getting comfortable being uncomfortable’.

Reframing Failure. Resilience is the primary trait of a lucky person. They don't see a "no" as a wall; they see it as a data point that narrows the search for a "yes.".  If every encounter, negative or positive, is seen as just a stepping stone to the next thing, you will always keep progressing.

Knowledge is a Luck Multiplier The more you know about your market, your competitors, and your prospects, the "luckier" you get. You start to spot anomalies when they appear. To the uninformed, a market shift looks like a disaster. To the knowledgeable, it looks like a lucky break.

As Gary Player said “The harder I work, the luckier I get”

Luck might be random, but it’s not out of your control. 

How have you "provoked" luck in your own career? I would be curious to hear the stories that looked like accidents but were actually the result of work.

Markets like nothing more than a bit of uncertainty and volatility...

So 2026 is keeping everyone on their toes! ;)

However, I still see a lot of companies making the same mistakes when they look for money and a lot of investors making huge mistakes when they invest.

If I'm honest most of it comes because each party is playing the wrong game - or maybe the right game but with the wrong set of rules!

Unity Group has literally 10x'ed our deal flow in the last 6 months, both on the company side and the investor side.  At Captable I'm hearing similar things from UHNW investors and at GILD the top capital raisers are tripping over opportunities.

If you would like to understand this market a bit better and figure out how your company, or your investments, could be doing better, come and join me on this webinar next week.  It's going to be a fun insight into what's going on out there and how you can profit from it!  See you there

Feb 23, 2026 1 PM UK time.

https://lnkd.in/gGf5NPbG 

Let me know below if you have any questions/comments ahead of time.

I started my first company, Network IT, during the madness of the dot-com boom. Back then, I thought being an entrepreneur was about the speed of your decisions. 

I’ve since spent 25+ years discovering that whilst that’s important, it’s your ability to endure the ‘gap’ which follows that is the real leverage.

It turns out that in business there is a direct, inverse, correlation between how quickly you get feedback and how much you are likely to be paid.

Look at many of the "front line" roles in our society, typically the lowest-paid positions, they almost all share one characteristic: immediate feedback.

If you are stacking a shelf, you see the result instantly. Flipping a burger? The burger is either cooked or it isn’t. Cleaning a floor, everyone can see the result. 
But starting a business is not like that.

And it turns out society pays a premium for the ability to operate without that immediate feedback loop.

The "Feedback Gap" is the time between taking a significant action and seeing the measurable result. 

For most people, a gap of more than a few days creates massive anxiety. 
For a founder, that gap might be eighteen months. It might be three years, or a decade.  Or it might never come (the fear that hangs over us all!)

The reason being an entrepreneur is so mentally taxing isn't just the "long hours." It’s the psychological toll of "minding the gap."

You make a pivot. You hire a key person. You launch a new programme. Then... nothing.

You may also recognise this pattern in fitness or dieting.  

It is incredibly easy to mistake a lack of immediate feedback for a lack of progress. The temptation to "meddle" with the strategy just to feel like we’re doing something.

But the data is clear. McKinsey’s Corporate Horizon Index shows that firms with a "long-term orientation" deliver 47% higher revenue growth and 81% higher economic profit. They aren't smarter; they are just better at sitting in the silence.

A more vivid example is Warren Buffett's wealth.  He became a millionnaire when he was 32, but 95% of his wealth accumulated *after* his 65th birthday.  
Compounding anything takes time.

One of the exercises we do with our clients is ask them to imagine 5 years into the future, what would you be most grateful that you began building today?  It might be healthy habits, it might be a powerful network or a board career.
What would it be for you?  And what can you do today to kick it off?

A failed board engagement is often more valuable than a successful one.

I recently listened to Ilona Roodt discuss her board journey with Veblen, and her perspective on failure was a masterclass in professional growth. Her first board role did not go as planned. Despite her efforts to coach and redirect a brilliant but disorganized founder, nothing clicked. Eventually, she had to walk away.

While most professionals would view this as a setback, Ilona recognized it as an essential learning phase. That "failed" experience provided a level of clarity that a smooth success never could.

She walked away with three critical insights:
First, not every board is the right fit for your specific skills. There is a fine line between energizing chaos and pure noise. Learning to distinguish between the two will save you years of frustration.

Second, your role is not to be a savior. Your responsibility is to ask the difficult questions and provide strategic direction. If the founder chooses to ignore that guidance, that is their prerogative, not your failure.

Third, the environment matters as much as the mission. Ilona now has a precise understanding of which founders she works best with and exactly where she adds the most value.

The board journey is not just about what you contribute to an organization. It is an iterative process of discovering your own strengths and boundaries. 

Ilona is now a Veblen Ambassador with new opportunities lined up, all because she had the courage to learn from a seat that didn't work out.

Your career is rarely a straight line. Often, the detours and dead ends provide the most significant breakthroughs.

What is one opportunity you "lost" that ended up teaching you exactly what you needed to know?


If you get accepted into Veblen Director Programme, we GUARANTEE you a board seat within 30 days.  Want to find out how?  Join the next Masterclass:  https://lnkd.in/gP9V97hq

I get that 24x7 newschannels need to fill their time, but honestly the amount of rubbish spouted to try and explain why the price of a stock goes up or down on a given day just blows my mind.

Conventional wisdom is that ‘the market’, that collective hive mind of supposed intelligence, will follow narrative.  So if the story is that a company is doing well, investors buy the stock.

But anyone that has been in any market for more than a few hours quickly realises that doesn’t stand up to much scrutiny.  Two opposing ‘experts’ will both argue convincingly that their own narrative is why the stock is overvalued or undervalued.

Making predictions about where an individual stock is going is crazy difficult.  Coming up with a plausible story as to why it’s at its current price is much easier.

So people do that.  Tesla’s stock is currently X, well it must be because of Y.
Narrative didn’t drive the price.  The price drove the new narrative.
Of course it doesn’t just happen in the markets.   

Many "experts" have become very good at telling you why something happened after it happened.

It’s comfortable and it feels clever. If you can explain the past, you feel like you can predict the future. 

But the narrative is just a shadow cast by the event. It has no substance of its own.

In business, one of the most dangerous things you can do is start believing the stories people tell about your success or your failure.

Success usually comes down to execution and timing. The narrative is just what the spectators write to entertain themselves.

Anyone been on the receiving end of this?

The Barrier To Adding Value In The Boardroom Is So Low!

The boardroom has been one of the most exclusive rooms in business for the past 100+ years.  You couldn’t get in unless a) You already had board experience and b) You were known and trusted by the board you were joining.

Now there are very good reasons for this, but the net effect is that when people got in the boardroom they knew they had made it.  They were ‘safe’.  In fact safety became the main focus.

If you don’t rock the boat, then actually you don’t really need to ‘do’ much at all. Further more, it’s not really in your interests for the company to take risks and so everything becomes about protecting the status quo.

At Veblen ‘Value’ is the 4th component of the programme.  Every member is taught to add as much value in the boardroom as they can.  In fact we have just started tracking how our members add value each month so there is full accountability.

I was reminded of how important it is this week when one of our members who is now serving on a public board took part in a 360 board review.  Although all the other, long serving board members, were very talented, the review showed she was the only one consistently adding value!

If you go in with a genuine desire to help the stakeholders, you will very quickly find that you are standing head and shoulders above those with decades more experience.

What has been your experience of where a little bit of extra effort can have a multiplicative return?

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