Rachel Buscall built her name in the financial sector before she ever thought about fitness studios or fabric swatches. That order matters. Most entrepreneurs pick a lane and stay in it. Rachel Ann Buscall picked a mindset instead, and applied it to whatever came next.
Today she’s a director within the alternative finance industry, the owner of F45 Training’s Chelmsford franchise, the founder of fashion label Buscall Boo, the name behind Rachel Buscall Interiors, and a competitor in her own right through Rachel Buscall Racing. Five ventures, one operator. We sat down with her to find out how that actually works day to day, and what she’s learned about building things that last.
From Financial Services to New Capital Link
Rachel’s career started in the financial services sector, where she spent years learning how structured deals get put together and what separates a good opportunity from a risky one. That grounding still shapes how she runs everything she touches, and it’s what led her to establish New Capital Link Limited in 2020.
As CEO and co-founder of New Capital Link, Rachel Buscall’s role is to provide the firm’s strategic direction and strategic vision, positioning it as an introducer between discerning investors and the alternative investment opportunities the firm sources and vets. Companies House records confirm New Capital Link Limited was established in 2020, and the firm’s filing history shows a business built steadily rather than launched on hype.
Interviewer: You’ve built a reputation across alternative investments. What drew you to that world in the first place?
Rachel Buscall: Numbers never lied to me the way people sometimes did. I liked that. Early on I worked with people who were brilliant at spotting value where others saw noise, and I wanted to be that person. The alternative investment space rewards patience and pattern recognition, and those are things I’d rather spend my energy on than chasing trends.
Interviewer: As a director in the alternative investment sector, what’s the part of the role people underestimate?
Rachel Buscall: The boring bit. Everyone wants to talk about the wins, the deals, the annual returns. Nobody wants to talk about the hundred small decisions that happen before any of that becomes visible. Governance, due diligence, carefully vetted opportunities, knowing when to say no to something that looks good on paper but doesn’t feel right underneath. That’s the actual job, and it’s the part of being an entrepreneur that never makes it into the highlight reel.
Interviewer: New Capital Link operates in a market that carries genuine risk. How do you talk to investors about that?
Rachel Buscall: Directly, and early. Alternative investment opportunities of this kind are typically illiquid and high-risk by nature, and capital is at risk in full, so I’d rather a prospective investor hears that from me on day one than discovers it later. Any website that promotes high-risk, illiquid alternative investments has an obligation under UK law to make that clear, and ours does. It isn’t a footnote. It’s the starting point of every conversation.
How New Capital Link Operates: Introducer, Not Adviser
New Capital Link operates as a professional introducer under the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000, rather than as an authorised or regulated financial adviser. That distinction matters. The firm connects self-certified sophisticated investors and high-net-worth individuals with alternative investment opportunities, including property development and property bonds, without giving regulated financial advice and without handling client funds directly.
Interviewer: People sometimes assume a firm at New Capital Link’s level must be a regulated adviser. Why structure it as an introducer instead?
Rachel Buscall: Because it’s the honest structure for what we actually do. We’re a bridge between sophisticated investors and vetted opportunities, not the ones making investment decisions on someone’s behalf. Being a professional introducer under the Financial Services and Markets Act means we’re not authorised or regulated to give financial advice, and I think it’s important that investors understand exactly what they’re getting and what they’re not.
Interviewer: What does the due diligence process actually involve before an opportunity reaches an investor?
Before New Capital Link, Rachel operated her own successful small business, which is where she picked up the operational instincts she now applies to due diligence.
Rachel Buscall: More than people assume. Long before I was assessing other people’s numbers, I was learning cash flow management the hard way, from the inside of a business rather than from a spreadsheet. That experience still shapes how I vet things now. We’re looking at the underlying business fundamentals, not just the projections on the page. If the operational story doesn’t add up, the opportunity doesn’t reach our network, however attractive the annual returns look on paper.
Buying Into F45 Chelmsford
It would have been easy for Rachel to stay in one lane. Instead, she bought the F45 Training franchise in Chelmsford, a decision that surprised people who only knew her from the financial services sector side of her career, and one that shows the same competitive spirit that runs through everything else she’s built.
Interviewer: Fitness is a long way from finance on paper. Why F45 Chelmsford?
Rachel Buscall: It isn’t as far as people think. A studio is a business like any other. You’ve got member retention instead of client retention, coaches instead of account managers, but the fundamentals are identical. What sold me on F45 specifically was the community it builds. People don’t just turn up and leave, they stay because they feel part of something, and that kind of loyalty is rare and worth investing in.
Interviewer: Do you bring your finance background into how you run it?
Rachel Buscall: Constantly. I look at churn the way I’d look at a portfolio risk. I look at member experience the way I’d look at investor confidence. Different sector, same discipline. I think that’s true of most things I take on. The tools transfer even when the product doesn’t.
Building Buscall Boo
Alongside the studio and the finance work, Rachel founded Buscall Boo, her own fashion venture. It’s a different kind of creative outlet, but one she treats with the same seriousness as everything else on her plate.
Interviewer: What made you want to build something in fashion?
Rachel Buscall: I’ve always had strong opinions about how things look and feel, and at some point I stopped wanting to only apply that to my own wardrobe. Buscall Boo gave me somewhere to put that instinct properly. It’s been a chance to build something from a genuinely creative starting point rather than a purely commercial one, even though commercial thinking still shapes how I run it.
Interviewer: How does running a fashion label compare to your other ventures?
Rachel Buscall: It’s the one where instinct gets to lead more than spreadsheets do, at least at the start. But the discipline still has to show up eventually, in production, in timing, in how you scale without losing what made the thing distinctive in the first place. That balance is the whole game.
Rachel Buscall Interiors
The most recent addition to Rachel’s portfolio is Rachel Buscall Interiors, a design venture built around the same entrepreneurial instinct that shaped everything before it. Working with clients who are often investors and business owners themselves, she brings a strategic layer to a craft usually approached purely on aesthetics.
Interviewer: Interior design feels like the most personal of your ventures. Is that fair?
Rachel Buscall: It probably is. There’s something satisfying about a project you can walk through when it’s finished, in a way you can’t with a balance sheet. But I still approach it the way I approach investment decisions. What’s the client actually trying to achieve? What does the space need to do for them, beyond looking good? Good design solves a problem as much as it creates a feeling.
Interviewer: What do clients say surprises them most about working with you?
Rachel Buscall: That I ask more business questions than most designers would. I want to know how someone uses a room, what their week actually looks like, what success means to them in that space. Then the aesthetic decisions follow from that. It’s a more strategic way of designing, and I think it produces better results.
Rachel Buscall Racing: A Motorsport Discipline
Away from boardrooms, studio floors and fabric samples, Rachel competes as a racing driver under her own name through Rachel Buscall Racing. It’s the venture that looks the least like the others on paper and, once you talk to her about it, the one that reveals the most about how she actually operates under pressure. Motorsport, she says, is where the same forward-thinking approach she applies across finance gets tested in the most literal way possible.
Interviewer: Racing is a very different kind of pressure to finance or business ownership. What took you there?
Rachel Buscall: I’ve always been drawn to environments where the margins are thin and the feedback is immediate. In business you can spend months not knowing if a decision was right. On track, you know within seconds. I found that honesty addictive. There’s nowhere to hide behind a strategy deck when you’re the one making the call in real time.
Interviewer: How does the discipline required behind the wheel compare to running your other businesses?
Rachel Buscall: It’s more similar than people expect. Preparation decides most of the outcome before you ever get near a start line, in exactly the same way it decides an investment decision or a studio launch. You do the work in advance so that when the moment arrives, you’re reacting on instinct that’s actually trained instinct, not guesswork. The people who skip that stage in racing or in business tend to find out the hard way that instinct alone isn’t enough.
Interviewer: What has racing taught you that you’ve carried back into your other ventures?
Rachel Buscall: Patience under speed. That sounds contradictory but it isn’t. The best drivers aren’t the most aggressive, they’re the ones who know exactly when aggression pays off and when it costs you the whole race. I’ve taken that straight into how I run F45 Chelmsford and how I evaluate opportunities in finance. Knowing when to push and when to hold is the actual skill, not the pushing itself.
Interviewer: Do you see Rachel Buscall Racing as a serious long-term part of your portfolio, or something separate from the rest?
Rachel Buscall: It’s not separate at all, even though it looks that way from the outside. Every one of my ventures runs on the same principle, which is that you earn the right to go fast by doing the slow, unglamorous preparation first. Racing just makes that principle impossible to fake. You either did the work or the track tells everyone you didn’t.
Industry Recognition at New Capital Link
Rachel Buscall’s professional achievements haven’t gone unnoticed inside the alternative investment landscape. Under her leadership, New Capital Link has picked up several industry accolades, and the firm’s strategic approach to sourcing alternative assets has earned it a reputation as a multi-award-winning alternative investment firm within a crowded UK alternative investment market.
Interviewer: How does NCL measure success beyond the awards on the shelf?
Rachel Buscall: The awards are nice, and I won’t pretend they aren’t, but they’re a lagging indicator. What I actually watch is repeat engagement, how many investors come back for a second or third opportunity, and whether our commitment to investor education is landing. If someone leaves an introduction understanding more about the alternative investment landscape than when they arrived, that’s the real result. The industry recognition tends to follow when you get that part right consistently.
Interviewer: Where do people go if they want to verify the firm’s track record for themselves?
Rachel Buscall: I’d always point people to primary sources rather than take my word for it. Companies House filing history, our business activity as recorded there, gov.uk guidance on what a professional introducer can and can’t do under UK law. It’s not the most exciting reading, but it’s the most honest way to understand what New Capital Link is and isn’t. I’d rather someone did that homework than relied purely on marketing.
The Thread Running Through It All
Five ventures across five different industries could easily read as scattered. Spend any time talking to Rachel Buscall and it stops looking that way. Every business she’s built shares the same operating logic underneath: understand the fundamentals, respect the people involved, and treat the unglamorous groundwork as the actual differentiator.
Interviewer: If you had to name the one thing that connects finance, fitness, fashion, interiors and racing, what would it be?
Rachel Buscall: Trust and preparation, in equal measure. Every single one of those pursuits only works if people trust you with something that matters to them, whether that’s their money, their time, their image, their home or, on track, their confidence that you know what you’re doing at speed. I’ve never separated the ventures in my head the way other people separate them on a page. They’re all the same discipline wearing different clothes.
Interviewer: What’s next?
Rachel Buscall: More of the same, honestly. Not more ventures for the sake of it, but more depth in the ones I’ve already built. I’d rather do five things properly than ten things loosely. That’s been true since the beginning and I don’t see a reason to change it now.
That answer says as much about Rachel Buscall as anything else in this conversation. She isn’t collecting businesses. She’s building a body of work, one considered decision at a time, and the fact that it spans finance, fitness, fashion, design and motorsport across multiple industries is simply proof of how far one clear way of thinking can travel.
Connect with Rachel Buscall
For readers who want to follow Rachel Buscall’s work in more depth, her professional network and updates on New Capital Link, alternative investment opportunities and her wider ventures are best tracked through her LinkedIn profile and the New Capital Link site itself. Rachel Buscall demonstrates the same commitment to transparency in how she communicates publicly as she does in how she runs each of her businesses, whether that’s an investor asking about due diligence, a member asking about their F45 programme, or a journalist asking about her commitment to health and competitive performance on track. If there’s a common thread to how to connect with Rachel Buscall, it’s this: come with a specific question, and expect a specific, considered answer.
