What happens when two long-time colleagues decide to buy the business?
For Dean Gale and Jo Pollard, that question stopped being hypothetical in early 2022. In the latest episode of Phuel Conversations, they join host Nathy Gaffney to talk through what it actually felt like to buy Phuel back from WPP: the high of the announcement, the immediate weight of being responsible for people’s livelihoods and the very unglamorous work of rebuilding systems from scratch while trying to protect everything that made Phuel worth buying in the first place.
It’s an honest conversation about the shift that happens when you move from being a leader within a business to being the person who owns it. Strategy stops being something that happens above you and becomes something you have to think 12 months ahead on. Help stops being optional and the clarity of purpose that Phuel was built on has to be actively defended, not assumed.
Dean and Jo talk about what keeps Phuel’s culture distinct: a generosity that runs through how the team operates, a genuine commitment to hiring for cultural fit and a deliberate effort to make it hard for great people to leave. They call it “effervescence” and they mean it. It’s not a brand value on a wall. It’s the permission people feel to bring their whole selves to work and the trust that makes that safe.
They’re also candid about the mistakes. Mandating an office return is the one they bring up directly: a reminder that even well-intentioned decisions land badly when they bypass trust and autonomy. Getting it wrong sharpened how they think about control versus culture and pushed them toward a leadership style built on clarity, connection and vulnerability rather than compliance.
The conversation closes on the question every leader is quietly sitting with right now: how do you stay purposeful and playful in a workplace that AI is reshaping faster than most organisations can respond to? Dean and Jo don’t pretend there’s a neat answer. But they’re clear on the foundation: psychological safety, genuine trust and a willingness to keep moving.
This episode is worth your time if you lead people and you’re tired of leadership content that tells you what to feel instead of what to do.
