Beer mat business plan to multi-million pound recruiter - Lee Madden on building GR8 from scratch
Great At Business
Friday, 8 May 2026 - 46 minutes
Lee Madden has lived several lives. Soldier. Policeman. Restaurant owner. Signage company director. Each one ending harder than the last - a partner who changed the locks, a brother's business that collapsed, a divorce, four nights sofa surfing with an empty bank account.
Then he wrote a business plan on a beer mat in St Mary's pub, started GR8 Recruitment with £23,000 from a voluntary redundancy and a PPI claim, and built it into a multi-million pound business changing lives across Jersey, Guernsey and Kenya.
Luke Smith sits down with Lee Madden, founder and MD of GR8 Recruitment, in this episode of #GreatAtBusiness.
Listen to this for advice and insights on:
- Why control is everything, and what happens when you don't have it in a business partnership
- The Christmas week decision to take on a competitor's entire payroll overnight, quadrupling the business in days
- How GR8 grew during COVID by redeploying workers into hospitals, nursing homes and ambulance crews and ringfencing every penny of profit for charity
- Flying to Kenya to solve Jersey's hospitality workforce crisis and interviewing 250 candidates in a hotel conference room
- Why "fail fast" isn't about failure, it's about spotting quickly when something isn't worth your life
