Interview with Biz Group CEO, Hazel Jackson

Some CEOs build a com­pa­ny. Few­er build one they can hand off intact, cul­ture and all, and walk away know­ing it will keep run­ning exact­ly as they left it.

In this con­ver­sa­tion, Kevin sat down with Hazel Jack­son, founder and CEO of Biz Group, a Dubai-based cor­po­rate learn­ing and human capa­bil­i­ty firm she built from £500 in cash into a 33-year, 100% debt-free busi­ness serv­ing clients like Jumeirah Group, Emi­rates Air­line, and Almarai across the Mid­dle East. Hazel arrived in Dubai at 25 with no for­mal edu­ca­tion past 16 and no plan beyond a hunch that the region need­ed real busi­ness devel­op­ment. What she built instead was a com­pa­ny that banned the one-day work­shop, ran dai­ly hud­dles since 2001, and turned learn­ing into some­thing mea­sur­able long before the rest of the indus­try caught up.

Hazel shares the real sto­ry behind that growth: how ​“enve­lope account­ing” kept her debt-free from day one, why show­ing up in per­son at indus­try con­fer­ences on oth­er con­ti­nents built part­ner­ships her com­peti­tors nev­er saw com­ing, and what it actu­al­ly looks like to hire peo­ple you can’t afford. We also get into why she spent five years plan­ning her own exit, the two-hour-a-day process she used to find and hire her suc­ces­sor, and what it means to build dis­ci­plines that out­last the founder who installed them.

If you’re lead­ing a grow­ing com­pa­ny and think­ing about what hap­pens after you, whether that’s next year or in twen­ty, there’s a lot here worth your time.

Here are some high­lights cap­tured in clips:

From Client Meet­ing to Entrpreneur

Learn­er Impact of Train­ing Programs

Learn By Doing

Hire for Val­ues Over Credentials

Or watch the full inter­view here: 

Addi­tion­al Resources relat­ed to Hazel’s Interview:

• The Biz Group Case Study