Lessons from the UK’s top entrepreneurs

Hello, and welcome to a very special episode of *No Bullsh*t Talks*.
You will notice something glaringly obvious about this episode—I don’t actually have a guest with me.
If you’re a regular viewer of the podcast, which I super appreciate, you’ll also notice that I’m on the wrong side. So it does feel a little bit weird, and it’s throwing me off somewhat, but that’s okay.
I wanted to say, first and foremost, thank you so much for tuning in this season.
It’s been the most incredible season, with over 50,000 streams on Spotify alone, a bunch more on YouTube with 10x the viewership, and it’s just been so wonderful.
The amount of people and the number of comments we’ve had about the podcast have been amazing.
So I want to say a massive thank you to everyone who’s watched and listened to the podcast.
If you’re tuning in through audio as well, thank you so much. Please do leave a review wherever you’re listening because it really, really, really does support the podcast.
You won’t notice the unusual setup, but you’ll probably be used to hearing my voice, so let me tell you why I’ve decided to come to you today by myself.
Well, first of all, it’s been an amazing season, but it’s been super tiring getting in a guest every single week.
Since the first season, which was 30 episodes, I decided to make this one 30 episodes as well.
So we got to 29 guests, and I’ve decided to have a bit of a recap episode.
That’s what this is.
This is almost like all the episodes in one—one big summary.
If you were to watch just one episode, this is probably the best one to watch because you get value from all the different episodes in one.
Essentially, what I’m doing is giving a personal takeaway from every single episode.
I feel like I’ve learned so much from my guests every single week, and they have personally helped me grow my business.
So I want to tell you my personal takeaway—the most valuable piece of information I got from every single episode—and why that is.
I’m going to put all of that into one bonus episode, which is this episode.
So I hope you really enjoy it, and prepare for a value-packed episode coming up.
No Bullsh*t Talks is a podcast for entrepreneurs, by entrepreneurs.
There’s too much bullshit out there, especially when it comes to business.
This podcast aims to highlight what’s true and what’s not in the world of entrepreneurship, bringing you honest and raw conversations about the roller coaster that is entrepreneurship.
Each week, my guest will be a high-performing entrepreneur, sharing the ups and downs of their journey and helping you prepare for the road ahead while providing you with actionable insights and absolute gems of knowledge.
Stay tuned as I introduced this week’s guest.

So the first episode was Natalie Connor, who was a former barrister turned, you know, tech founder, turned head of VC fund, and all this other stuff. Now she’s a wellness founder running her own retreat company.
I lose track of all the amazing things she does because she’s an incredible woman, and now I’m super proud to say that she’s a really close friend of mine, and I really love her dearly.
It just shows you also that when we recorded that podcast, it was probably like eight months ago now, and we weren’t as close as we are now. It shows you how amazing podcasting is because sitting down with someone for an hour, being so vulnerable and open and honest and raw during that time, telling each other your deepest, darkest fears and concerns and horrifying stories, and just talking in a real way, it can really bring someone closer together.
Natalie shared some of her darkest moments on the podcast and how she overcame them. For me, the biggest takeaway was that resilience and mindset can help you overcome anything.
The thing is, obviously, you can’t just get resilience overnight. It takes a lot of work, and it takes great people around you to support you. You need a strong mindset to be able to have that resilience as well, so they go hand in hand.
What I realized listening back to that podcast episode is that you could be at rock bottom, and you could be going through the absolute worst things in the world, but you don’t realize that some of the best moments of your life are to come.
Natalie went through rock bottom, and she’s now currently living the life in Ibiza, just having the best life of her life. She’s running retreats, changing people’s lives, and she’s so happy and making such a difference in so many other people’s lives. She went from feeling like there was no way out and nothing could ever get worse to that, with a lot of work on NLP. She’s a certified NLP practitioner now and has just worked on herself so much to change her life in such a short space of time.
For me, this was the most valuable lesson, and definitely listen to her insights for how you can try to do the same in your life.
I feel like lots of people out there have health concerns or have health problems and are actually ignoring them, or they aren’t aware of them.
Talk me through some of those health issues that you’ve had and how it’s actually impacted you, because you’re obviously super grateful for where you are now, but you weren’t always in this place, and you weren’t always as healthy and as great as you are now.
Tell me something about some of the dark times that you’ve been through and how you managed to get through those.
Yeah, I mean, from a physical health perspective, some of the stuff I described I’ve honestly had since I was a young child.
I had digestive issues from childhood. My mom suffered with them, and I think there’s an element of genetics in there. That ties in a lot as you age with hormonal stuff and skin stuff and everything else. It’s been pretty debilitating at times, honestly, and I’ve tried a lot of different medications, which probably actually exacerbated things, to be honest.
Yeah, that’s been super hard.
Then I guess on the mental health front, which is what brought me to the mindfulness aspect of what we now deliver through Elevate and all the stuff I’ve done, I’m a big believer in the notion that nobody comes to mindfulness without having gone through some pretty dark shit. Because if you haven’t really experienced anything difficult, you kind of have no reason to turn to those tools.
So yeah, my rock bottom moment was coming up to three years ago now. Friends tell me I should write a book about this because it’s just so nuts, but everything went wrong for me in my life all at once.
My partner left me. We were in a difficult situation in terms of my physical state. I won’t go into the details of that, but I was in a very vulnerable position physically when he left me with no warning.
Two weeks later, my house flooded, and I lost every single thing I owned. This was a house that I’d hustled to buy a few years prior, again with no help. I lost every single thing I owned kind of overnight.
I called on my recent ex to come and help me. He was the only person I knew in London at the time who had a big car, and he just ignored the call.
My neighbors and I were evacuated from our homes on boats by the fire brigade.
Then within another week of that, I ended up essentially in a whistleblowing situation at work in a relatively new role, where I was being asked to do some dodgy shit, and I refused to do it. I was forced out of that job.
So within a matter of weeks, I had lost my partner, I had lost my home, and I had lost my job. These were all of the pillars of my identity, especially work. Then there was my home. My home was my safe space. I was a really home-oriented person.
I was just sitting in this flat that my insurers were paying for in Fulham, with none of my own stuff, looking at the smoking embers of my life, thinking, “What is the point? What is the point in me being alive?” Not in a suicidal sense, but just like everything that defined me is gone.

So Amanda Baker came on the podcast, and she is a—I don’t want to say personal branding specialist because she might not like that. She’s a world-class storyteller. That’s what she is. She’s a TEDx speaker, and she’s done it on telling how to tell your story in five stories. That’s her brand, Five Stories.
But for me, the enlightening part of the episode came from when she decided to tell us about her difficult time with her co-founders.
It was really interesting for me to hear because I don’t have a co-founder. I’ve never had a co-founder, and that’s both good and bad because I feel like I can make all the decisions. Again, that’s good and bad. I don’t have anyone to help me make these decisions, but then I don’t have to argue with people over making decisions. I have more work to do, but I also don’t have the support. It’s really hard to decide what’s better, and I think it does depend on other people.
But getting into business with the wrong co-founders can be so difficult, and I just can’t even imagine what it’s like.
Amanda shared some of her stories, and they were horrible. The biggest takeaway I took from that was that it’s okay to get out. It’s okay to admit that you’ve made the wrong decision. It’s okay to sever ties with toxic people that are going to be detrimental to your mental health and your physical health, even if it’s going to cost you a bunch of money.
I feel like with Amanda’s story, it shows you it’s never too late to get out, and sometimes those really difficult decisions could be the best decisions of your life.
When I started my second business, which was an agency here in London, that’s where I was one of four co-founders. That was different. I mean, I was buzzing. I was excited because having co-founders meant having people to be in this journey with you.
But it wasn’t fair. It wasn’t a fair journey, and it wasn’t fair from the get-go.
I feel like I am the kind of person that if I have an idea, actually very similar to you, if I have an idea, I’m going to make it happen. I’m going to give it my absolute all, especially if I care about it and I want it to exist in the world. I’m going to do it. I’m a fucking hustler. I’m going to make it happen, and I will work my absolute ass off to do it if I really want it to exist.
I feel like that energy and my tendency to show up and make it happen has been abused by people in the past, and I’ve let that happen. That’s definitely on me, but it’s on them too because they’re the ones who… It’s a two-way thing.
The beginning of that relationship was… I only had 7.5% of that company.
What? Seven and a half percent of that company? Two… four of you?
No. Two of them had the majority share because their other company bankrolled it, but they had the name. They brought me and another member of the team into a meeting and were just like, “Do you want to be a co-founder?” Basically, it was, “We’re giving you an opportunity to do this.”
It was that whole shebang. “This is a great opportunity for you. If you hit X amount of profit…” I think it was like, “Hit £100,000 or £150,000 revenue in the first year, and then we’ll give you more shares.”
Basically, we smashed that. We smashed that.
I brought in a massive client—a quarter of a million pound client. That was also a company that I met when I was at a previous company before then, and I’d just been nurturing them for all those years. Then all of a sudden, they were ready to buy, and at that point I had a company, had an agency, and there we were.
Anyway, fast forward a little bit. I just felt like my co-founders were men. Two of them were white, middle-aged men. Another guy, this was his first business. I’d obviously been in a business before.
I did feel there were times where I really didn’t feel seen. There were times where I really didn’t feel heard. There were times where I didn’t feel respected at all by these people.
Yeah, I felt emotionally abused, and I felt like they took the piss out of my talent and out of my energy.
I mean, I got that company off the ground and brought money into it, and I was burnt out by the end of it all.
COVID hit. We had to make my team redundant, and I was on a Zoom call crying my eyes out, literally just like, “This is an absolute mess. Clients have stopped spending. We’ve now got no money coming in. I can’t pay my team.”
I’m very emotional on a Zoom call, and one of my co-founders says, “Amanda, now isn’t the time to get emotional.”
I saw red.
That was all that I needed to hear to be like, “You know what? Fuck this. I’m out.”
I literally closed the laptop, and I was just shaking so much. I cried. I sobbed, and bogeys were coming out. Literally, honestly, bogeys just everywhere. It was sexy.
Ryan was like, “Babe, what’s happened? Someone’s literally died.”
Honestly, it felt like someone had literally died.
He’s hugging me, and I’m crying—that crying where you just cannot breathe. That’s how it felt. It was just madness.
Like, oh my gosh, it was intense.

So Jason Graystone is probably one of the world’s leading people who teach day trading now. Whatever you think of day traders and that whole industry, I’ll let you watch Jason’s episode because he is also a TEDx speaker now.
He has produced some really wonderful stuff. For example, his course for day trading for beginners has got over four million views on YouTube alone. That’s unbelievable.
He’s extremely popular online with his podcast, his videos, and his social media. He’s influenced positively so many people from all around the world.
The problem is because of the shady industry that he’s in, there are so many scammers around him who are trying to copy him. Some of them literally take his handle, take his face, take all his content, and try to copy him online.
This is a fear for everyone. We’ve had this with our agency website recently, so much so that we’re going to have to completely rebrand everything we do and give up a lot of stuff that we had to do with our agency because of scammers.
Now, Jason doesn’t seem phased by them. He’s so confident in what he does because he does it for the right reasons. He believes that he’s doing it to help people, and he loves helping people and then passing on that knowledge. He’s so passionate about it. He genuinely cares for the people he’s teaching, so he knows that people can’t fake that.
There’ll be scammers out there trying to copy what he does and trying to make get-rich-quick schemes, but the people who really believe in him and know it’s him, they’ll always be there.
So for me, I think the biggest takeaway was that if you stay true to who you are and do things for the right reasons, people will come to you, people will trust you, and you’ll always have your tribe.
I wouldn’t trust most people who are going to say, “Oh, I can help you trade.” You’ve seen the bots on Instagram.
Most of them have got my picture.
I guess that’s flattering at the same time, but it’s also just like… it must be so difficult for your reputation though as well because if those scammers are there with the bots trying to scam people using your face, then how are you going to deal with what you’re doing validly?
It’s really hard.
I feel like you might post, and suddenly all these people are going, “Someone’s helped me trade. I won loads of money,” or whatever, and it’s just all fake.
How have you found building your career in this industry? Because it must be a consistent uphill battle.
Yeah, I think the fact that it wasn’t a deliberate career, and I was doing it because I truly wanted people to get the truth, that will outperform and outlast and out-stamina anyone who’s trying to copy me or anyone who’s trying to make a quick buck.
Because I wake up every morning wanting to share this stuff, whereas they’re doing it… You know, as I say, imitation is suicide, right? Because they’re trying to pretend they’re someone else. That’s going to get very tiring. The guilt’s going to eat away at them eventually.
They’re not going to be one step ahead of me ever. They’re always going to be behind me because they’re always secondhand information.
I do appreciate that there are people like that, and it’s been very tiring over the years, but for me it doesn’t feel like work still.
I’m just still going to talk about what I’m inspired to talk about, and I’m still going to help people.
Anyone who does end up getting scammed by those people, try and just see it as a lesson in the long run. Try and see it as, yes, you might have lost £500 being scammed, but how much has that earned you in the long run, and what has that taught you?
That’s really the only positive that I can spin on it.
It’s hard to feel like that though at the time.
With me being scammed, of course…

So Nicole Bremner is one of the UK’s leading property developers. She’s done so well for herself, and she’s got a bestselling book called *Bricking It*. She is also now a financial coach, and she came on the podcast to discuss her SAFER system, which is an acronym for learning what the best things to do are when it comes to investing in property.
I’ll let you watch the full video on this, but S is Strategy, A is Acquisition, F is Funding, E is Exit, and R is Repeat. It will make sense when you go into detail on all of it.
When you think about it in terms of property, if you go through those, it makes sense. Have a strategy, work out the area, but I started to think this also applies to business.
If you apply these five things to business, you think, well, you need a good strategy. I think people miss out on this step so much. You’ve got to start with a strategy. If you don’t have the right strategy in place, how are you going to be able to execute your plan?
Then picking your area or niche is really important in business.
Funding. How are you going to fund this? People don’t think about it. They don’t do budgeting. Budgeting is so important.
E is Exit. What type of business do you actually want to do? Do you want to sell your business to someone later down the line, or do you just want to have a lifestyle business, which is absolutely okay, by the way?
Then R, Repeat. Keep doing it when you’ve got something good, and is it a repeatable business that other people can pick up?
There are so many different areas of this that apply to it, and I just thought it was really interesting.
So take a listen to what she talks about in the SAFER system and how she applies it to property, but then think about how you can also apply that to business.
I guess I’ve distilled down my advice into an acronym, and I know these are quite cringey, but I was sitting down thinking, “What would my advice be to someone coming into property right now?”
I think that I’ve come up with what I call the SAFER system.
It is Strategy. Just be really sure of your strategy, and I will say that you’ve got to make sure all of these things are in place before you even look at purchasing a property because there are so many minefields.
So, Strategy. What is your strategy? Is it buy land? Is it my initial strategy, which was develop and sell? Is it HMOs? Is it holiday lets?
There are so many different strategies out there, and I think a lot of people just teach one strategy and say, “Yeah, everyone should be doing lease options,” for example. That’s not true because what might work for one person doesn’t necessarily work for another because of tax situation, because of their available capital, whatever it might be.
So it’s Strategy.
The next is Acquisition. Where are you going to acquire? How are you going to acquire? Have you thought about your various areas?
You might be based in London and think, “I’m going to buy up north because it’s really cheap.”
But what do you know about property up north? You know nothing.
So many people have come to me and said, “I wanted to buy this whole street up north because it was so cheap, and I didn’t even look at the properties.”
I interviewed a lawyer last week, and she bought three houses on a street that she’d never even walked into. Then she got there and thought, “I’m too scared to even leave my car.”
There’s a reason why they’re selling for £60,000 under auction.
So just be really, really clear on your acquisition and your area.
The third thing is Funding.
How are you going to fund it? Debt? Have you got the ability to raise a loan? Do you have the ability to put the equity in?
Just be really clear on that beforehand because, again, like other people I’ve spoken to and I’ve seen along the way, they’ll put down a deposit, but they won’t have the rest of the money lined up for completion.
So many people lose their deposits because they believe that they’re going to get the money.
Oh my gosh, that’s so irresponsible.
I’m just like, “Wait, what?”
Yeah. They’re like, “Oh, I can do this,” and then suddenly, “Oh crap, I can’t.”
That’s terrible. I’m really quite surprised.
There’s someone right now I know who’s going through legals on a project, and they don’t even have the funds to complete the purchase.
You just think, “My goodness.”
So that’s the Funding.
Then the second last is Exit.
How will you exit this project?
I think this is the hardest one because there’s always a Plan A, and everyone thinks that their Plan A is going to work out.
But in my scenario, for example, I prefer to buy, renovate, and sell.
What happens if I can’t sell? What happens if I have to rent?
That means I become a landlord.
I really don’t like being a landlord. I don’t like evicting people. I don’t like dealing with people. I have too much of a heart to evict parents with children, and I’ve unfortunately had to do that, and it’s the most horrible thing I’ve had to deal with professionally.
I don’t want that. That’s not my Plan B.
So what is my Plan B?
You’ve got to think about all these things and make sure you’ve got that Plan B, Plan C, and make sure that it’s palatable for you because for me, that’s not palatable, to be a landlord.
So that’s your Exit.
Finally, it’s Repeat.
Is this worth repeating?
If you do repeat it, what’s the structure you’re going to use?
Do you realize that the people you leave behind, if you pass away, have to pay inheritance tax if you sell these things?
There are all these different things, and I’ve summarized them into this SAFER system.
All of these have to be thought about before you even purchase a property because if you think about that after you’ve purchased, it’s far too late.
There are too many things that can go wrong.

So Caitlin Rozario is the founder of Interlude, and they started off with a productivity app. Then they realized that actually people were giving such bad advice on productivity, and they were getting really frustrated with basically all the bullshit around productivity.
So Caitlin decided to create a brand—or is it a brand? I guess it is a brand—but a term called anti-toxic productivity, where she’s explained how to be productive without letting it take over your life, which I absolutely love.
I think the thing that I took away from this, which I actually love because I’m a bit of a productivity fan myself—I definitely hate the word guru. People call me a productivity guru. It’s only because I like to get shit done, right? I’m very much like that.
But I do totally agree that a lot of the stuff that’s out there is quite toxic for you.
What I really liked about what Caitlin said is that you should have what they call, and created, a productivity toolbox.
It’s not just one procedure or one concept that works for you. It’s actually a multitude of things that may work for you.
For example, we talked about the Pomodoro Technique, which is the one where it’s 25-minute short bursts.
Now I love this for little tasks, especially admin stuff, which can drag on. You do it in a 25-minute burst, have a five-minute break, come back, and you feel a bit more refreshed.
But imagine if you’re doing deep work. That’s not going to work if you’re constantly being alerted every 25 minutes. You can’t get into flow.
So there are different techniques. People like time blocking or the Eisenhower Matrix—whatever works for you. It’s important that you’ve got a full toolbox of things that can help, rather than just one thing that you try to do.
You know, these gurus saying, “This is the way to 10x your life,” and “This is the way to save five hours a week.” It doesn’t always work like that.
So I really like Caitlin’s stuff. Please do check it out because Interlude has got a whole load of workshops as well on anti-toxic productivity. It’s totally worth checking out.
So now we deliver corporate workshops, and the whole point of it—we call it anti-toxic productivity.
The whole point of that, and the reason why it’s called that, is because what’s toxic to you might be exactly sweet for me.
Not a lot of those things work for everyone, and that’s not the point.
We do three core sessions, and the middle one is all the practical stuff.
Literally what I say in it is, “All of these will not work for you.”
We’ve actually—well, my partner designed the deck. He’s very proud of it. There’s this slide that’s like a clapperboard at the beginning of a film. It says, “These won’t work for everyone.”
Before we go in, don’t get all het up like, “I tried time blocking and it didn’t work for me.”
Cool.
What we want people to do, and the whole point of what we’re doing now, is teaching people about a toolbox of different things that you could have.
It’s about really interrogating your work to see, “What do I need right now for this kind of work?” But also having that knowledge and awareness of other things that you might need to use so that you can deploy them when you need them.
So you mentioned Pomodoro. You can’t do deep work if you’ve got an alarm going off every 25 minutes.
But that’s exactly what you’ve just said. That’s kind of what we’re talking about, which is you’ve got Pomodoro in your pocket, and you’re like, “Okay.”
For me, Pomodoro works really well when I have to get through big chunks of reading because I get tired reading and stuff.
So I’m like, “I’ll read for 25 minutes, then take a break.”
What’s great about it is different people respond in different ways.
I’m super competitive, so I then start to beat myself. I’m in competition against the clock.
Then comes another thing.
The whole point is, how can you take these basic ideas, systems, processes, and strategies and make them your own?
That’s my problem with a lot of the productivity media.
I cannot stand it when people are like, “Do this. It will change your life.”
It’s like, “Do this, and it might change your life.”
For some people, it will change their life. For someone else, they’ll be like, “This isn’t resonating with me.”
But maybe in 10 years they’ll think, “Oh, remember that thing? I’ll try it now.”
I really struggled with this because I felt like I was being too nuanced for social media.
I felt like I was context-collapsing all the time, being like, “Oh, you could do this. You could do that.”
After a while, I decided I wanted to stick to my goals on this because I really don’t like people stating their opinion as fact, especially when the fact is contrary to the opinion.
If you have 100 productivity tools, tips, systems, whatever, they will not all work.
There is not one person for whom 100% of those work.
But on the flip side, I really want to challenge people to be like, “Okay, you tried time blocking once and it didn’t work for you.”
Actually, science says that it is really good, and it really works for humans.
So maybe try using it in a different way and see if that works for you.
Because if you’re complaining that you’re not productive enough—whatever that means to you—or you’re not getting through the things you want, or you want more free time, more time affluence, or more creativity, maybe try it in a different way.
From all angles, I’m trying to challenge people to think about these things a little bit differently because it is really frustrating when you’re told, “This works for you.”
But it’s also really frustrating when people say to me, “That just didn’t work for me.”
Trying it for a day doesn’t really count.

So Marcus Hemsley came on the podcast, perhaps as the founder of Fountain Partnership, which is a big marketing agency and a successful marketing agency at that, but he also is the founder of a new retreat brand which, you know, kind of helps founders’ mental health and helps them reduce stress.
We didn’t even get talking about marketing because he was so passionate about all the personal development areas that he kind of works in, and so we covered a lot of really cool stuff that’s really amazing for founders.
One of the things that I really liked was the concept that he talks about of anxious money versus peace money.
Now there are a lot of people out there who are great at making anxious money. I’m great at making anxious money, and it’s like, you know, that mad hustle that you do when you know you’ve got to make payroll and you’ve got to pay this bill, you’ve got to do this, and you can make just enough money, but you’re constantly checking your bank account. You’re worried that you’re not going to have enough money to be able to pay the bills.
But then the other side of it is peace money, where it’s actually like, you know, you’re constantly covered for all the great things that you want, and you’re able to take these luxuries in life and not have to worry about your bills.
I just thought that’s so much a better way to live.
Sure, we can make money, but what is your number if you’re at peace money versus anxious money?
It started to make me rethink about things because who needs extra stress in their life? Who needs to be like, “Oh my God, I have just enough money to pay my staff this month, but then I’ve got to cover this, I’ve got to cover this.”
But say if you want to do your own course or say if you want to actually take a break, are you worried that you’re not going to make payroll the next month because of it? That’s anxious money.
So it started making me think, what is my magic number that I need to be able to make every single month to comfortably live a life with, you know, occasional luxury and be at peace that I’m not going to be stressed and have to overwork every single month to be able to cover all the right bills?
I was chatting to some fascinating entrepreneur in Silicon Valley. She deals with entrepreneurs that are on the edge of burnout, and she said a distinction between peace money and anxious money.
She said, “Marcus, you’re really good at making anxious money, right? You’re really good at getting anxious and stressed and going out and making money. Anyone can do that. The trouble with that is there’s collateral damage on your body and on your mind and on your relationships and everything else.”
So this is a really cool idea: have peace money.
Mastery is like being in the zone, being relaxed, and then being able to make money, which is true, right? Because business is an intellectual sport.
Actually, when you’re in fight or flight, when you’re stressed, you can think to an extent, but you don’t have your best ideas, right?
So, let’s say you, for example. Where do you have your best ideas, Sabrina?
“In the infinity pool inside the spa downstairs. That’s where they… I genuinely do. I just lie back and it’s so relaxing. The jets are on, and I’m just like…”
It reminds me of, you know, I’m a big *Friends* fan. It reminds me of that scene in *Friends* with Chandler. He’s like, “Could I be more relaxed?” Or, you know, that’s how I feel. He’s in the bath, and he’s like, “It’s hard to care when you’re this relaxed.”
That’s how I feel.
I just lie back. I just stop thinking about things, and obviously I don’t have my phone, I don’t have music, I don’t have anything distracting, and these ideas just flood into my head, and I’m like, “Oh my God, that’s amazing.”
“And that’s where it happens.”
Exactly. Everyone’s the same, right? People say when they’re going for a walk or when they’re on holiday, etc.
Yet we kind of live in a world where we’re overly processed, overly stimulated, and we haven’t got space to be that creative and get those insights.
Yet it’s those insights, those best ideas, that have probably propelled us to where we are today.
So I’m sort of playing with this idea. What we help people with on the retreat company is, okay, how can we make that peace money? How can we slow down to the speed of life and get the best ideas and do it in a way that’s sustainable so our bodies don’t burn out, so we don’t have the collateral damage?
That’s a cool thing to play with.
So answering your earlier question, yes, I’ve taken a lot on, and it happened slightly accidentally because I thought I had more time than I did.
But I’m trying to walk the walk with it.
I’m trying to play with this.
So it’s like, okay, I’m coming back in and helping to manage a team of 40-something, running an agency which, like you say, is stressful because it’s a service business. It’s relationships, and if you’ve got so many people, so many stakeholders, so many clients, so many employees, people are going to have bad moods. We’re going to misunderstand each other. There are going to be business things that go wrong. It happens.
So you’re having to deal with those fires.
The more people there are, the more fires, the more things that can come at you.
So being able to just have that resilience and actually come to it more in the zone and not have that sort of emotional roller coaster.
I think one of my favorite terms at the minute is “emotional sovereignty”. That’s sort of my word for the year, right?

Peony Li is one of the most incredible women you’ll meet, and these aren’t actually my words. I’m pretty sure this was Steven Bartlett’s words. That’s when she went on Dragon’s Den, and she went on Dragon’s Den and turned down their money.
I mean, you’ve got to have so much confidence to be able to do that.
They offered her an amount, and she was like, “No. I know my company’s worth, and I’m just not taking that.”
For those of you who’ve listened to a lot of my stuff, I hate the term “I know my worth” because it’s thrown about on social media and misused by people who want to just demand more and they can’t justify it.
The difference is Peony is so accomplished. She’s already raised more money pre-seed than any female founder ever, and she knows exactly what her brand is worth.
When the dragons made that offer, frankly, she found it insulting.
You know what? Good for her.
For me, it took me back because how do you get that confidence in your brand?
But she’s worked so hard. She’s listened to her audience so much. She knows that this is something people need out there. There’s a massive customer demand for it. She’s got gorgeous branding and great messaging. She’s got great positioning. She’s already got proof of success. She’s in Boots and all these other big brands believe in her, so she knows that she’s holding out for something better.
I think I was so impressed that she wasn’t quick to rush to get some influencer investor on her books because it might sound good and it’s good for PR.
Instead, she decided to hold back and was like, “I can do this myself without them for now. I can go out there and find a better investor who does believe in me.”
That was an amazing takeaway for me.
I absolutely have to ask you about your time on Dragon’s Den because it was a great episode, and you know it’s a lot of people’s dream to go on. You said it was yours in the episode as well.
Obviously, I loved that they gave you so many compliments, and it must have felt great about that because the dragons were in awe of you.
I mean, Steven Bartlett wanted to hire you. They thought you were phenomenal. They loved the business, but you guys obviously couldn’t agree on a price, and I want to talk through all of this.
So you’ve already done phenomenally with Jude. You’re super successful. At the time, you’d raised, I think you said, £5 million. I know you’ve raised more money than any other female entrepreneur in the sector, right?
I feel like there are so many women out there, any business owners, who just want a fraction of the success that you have.
So many people would snatch that chance for Dragons’ money. They only wanted 3% of your company, right? Three percent.
And you were like, “No, that’s too much.”
I watched that, and I’d already met you at this point when I watched that episode, and I was just like, “You are so brave.”
You were just like, “Actually, no. Do you know what? I know what we’re worth, and your money’s not good enough.”
I was in such awe.
Talk me through all of that—your time on Dragon’s Den. How did you feel, and what gave you that confidence to say no to the dragons?
Yeah, well first of all, what the show didn’t show on TV was how the dragons were actually really tough on me.
They were so tough.
I could see a little bit.
They were asking really difficult questions, and my God, you composed yourself. I mean, I don’t know how you did it because they were tearing some of that stuff apart, asking about competitors and numbers.
What else was tough? What did they do?
So one of the dragons was like, “I think you underestimated how much time it would take you to go to these retailers.”
Because at the time, we already had conversations with Boots, with QVC, and with Holland & Barrett, and we were saying that we’re going to go into these big retailers soon.
He did not believe it. He didn’t believe that we were going to go there.
Then Steven Bartlett was like, “You spend too much on marketing. This is never going to work. You don’t have product-market fit.”
These are the things that the show didn’t show anybody.
I was so impatient, wanting to persuade them that we have product-market fit.
I wanted to persuade them that it is not cheap to break a taboo. It’s not cheap to invest in research and development and women’s health.
I said those things to them, but Steven Bartlett was still not convinced because his kind of MO is organic growth, social, and virality, and that’s what he is amazing at doing.
Actually, behind the scenes, they are very tough. They’re really, really tough.
But you know what is important for me?
We took some of their comments in a constructive way.
After the retailer conversation, I was just like, “Let’s get this. We have to.”
Now we’re in Boots, we’re in QVC, we’re in Well Pharmacy, and we’re going to go into 500 Holland & Barrett stores in September.
That was already happening when the show aired.
With Steven Bartlett, I think his advice was so valuable.
Our marketing cost was three times less than what it was before.
So all of that was a bit of a wake-up call to be like, “I know that marketing cost is high, but I also know we need to get it down now.”
Immediately, we put so much focus on doing it last year, and we do it so much more effectively.
When I say all of that, actually it is just better content, more valuable content.
We hire ambassadors to say it like it is.
Let’s not skirt around the topic. Just say it.
That resonates with so many more women sitting behind their phones and looking at ads.
The advice and the criticisms in Dragon’s Den fueled us to want to do better and do more.
I think I believe I can do it without their money.
Of course, it would be great to get one of them on board.
I still really want Emma Grede or Deborah Meaden to be on board.
I love two of them. They’re just amazing people.
But the reason why I rejected the offer is, first, I know the worth of the company.
I know the potential, and I know what we can be.
Second, we have existing investors that invested in Jude when we were nothing.
When we only had a deck, when nobody believed in incontinence, and who the hell is Peony?
They invested £2 million, £4 million in me and a deck, and they believed in the potential of the company.
So on Dragon’s Den, we already had the packaging, we had these retail deals, we had all of them, and they’re still believing that it’s not enough.
Do you get what I mean?
Yeah.
Did you feel like you couldn’t prove your worth?
What more can you do to prove your worth when you’ve got £5 million of investors already before you even had a product?
Now you have a product, you have all these deals, you have a professional brand, you have it all, and they’re still not seeing the worth.
Was that kind of what made you feel that way?
Yes.
I think it’s not about the worth now. It’s about the potential worth that they can’t see.
We all know, when we’re younger, what we are capable of doing, and we know where we want to go.
But when you talk about your dreams, somebody will be cheering you on, and somebody will be like, “Sabrina, you’ll never be able to do it.”
Those people you don’t want to be around.
You don’t want to accept that offer because you know that they are always going to be looking at you as lesser than what you think you’re going to be.
I think it’s important in the journey of doing things that are so much bigger than yourself to have people who believe that you can.
I think it’s important.
At that moment, what really made me decide not to take the offer was, of course, I want to be responsible to our existing investors.
I want to promise them that I’m integral to them.
But then, second of all, so many women, including myself, when we face figures of authority, we seem to want to give in more.
But actually, that’s not the right thing to do.

So Izzy Prior is a personal brand strategist, and she’s a LinkedIn Top Voice for Gen Z people.
I sound like they’re a different species because sometimes that’s how they feel they are, because in the media they’re portrayed to be a different species—a different generation, which they literally are—but they are almost mesmerized by the way the media talks about them and their demands, what they need, and all this sort of stuff.
Now the stigma around it is that Gen Z are lazy, they’re entitled, they don’t really know what they’re talking about, and they’re just obsessed with social media.
Now what I loved about Izzy is that she is Gen Z, but she’s so mature. She’s so professional with how she handles things, and she doesn’t do any of those cliché things that Gen Z folk do. She’s a constant voice for this as well, just constantly talking about, “Look, you know what? Gen Z aren’t all like this. This is what we prefer. This is what we’re about.”
Actually, did you know our mental health is at stake because of XYZ?
She helps bring awareness about Gen Z issues that I feel like society needs to hear about.
Her episode obviously brought loads of stuff about personal branding, but for me it showed that ageism is very real, even when it comes to young people.
I think people often see ageism in terms of older people, but actually there’s so much stigma about young people not knowing enough and not having enough experience.
But actually, if you watch Izzy, you would never think that she’s more than 10 years my junior. She’s so professional and so knowledgeable that it just shows you that you should take that stigma out of your head because age ain’t nothing but a number.
I will be straight. There has been ageism, but also there hasn’t been, and that’s what I want to dig into for a second there.
I’ve seen a lot of ageism. When I went onto the LinkedIn scene and started my business, I assumed that I would be subjected to this, that I would be a victim of ageism, and I actually wasn’t as much as I expected.
It kind of led to a mindset of me inflicting it on myself and assuming that I was too young or too inexperienced to do these things.
That then created that incubator of imposter syndrome and a lack of confidence.
So in the early days, I actually created that for myself, which is crazy to think about.
Secondly, a lot of the clients that I’ve worked with have seen my personal branding content. They’ve seen the case studies. They’ve seen the results that I’ve created for people, and they’ve looked beyond age.
I don’t put my age anywhere on my social media. I think around my birthday you talk about it because it’s your birthday, but I haven’t put my age in my bios because it’s irrelevant at this stage.
Whether you’re buying from someone who’s 50 years old or 25 years old, you should be looking at their personal brand from a place of, “Can they do the job? Do I like them?”
That values conversation comes back to, “Would I work well with them? Is their work ethic mirrored in my own work ethic? Can they actually achieve this result for me?”
I think age becomes not even a priority at that point.
Maybe that’s because I’ve attracted the right audience. I’ve attracted people that don’t see that, and it’s been fortunate that I’ve not faced many people who have used age as an excuse.
However, I have seen on the platform reams and reams of conversations saying Gen Z don’t know anything, Gen Z are too inexperienced, why are they charging this amount of money for something that they haven’t even gone to university for or got accredited in, Gen Z are bluffing with all these £10K months, and all that lame rags-to-riches and hooky clickbait content.
It’s almost as if this whole generation, especially in the creative and social media space, has been painted with that same brush.
Now, as someone who’s in personal branding and a young entrepreneur in their early 20s, I’ve been unlucky to be painted with that brush because it’s not just one but two demographics of people that are told to stay away from in the social media space.
Sure, I’ve had to stand up for myself and fight for that, but I’ve done that successfully, and it’s because it comes back to me standing up for myself proudly.
Yes, there are people in this space who you’ll very quickly learn are snake oil salesmen. They’re perhaps not to be trusted for the amount you’re investing in, but that doesn’t mean we should paint them all with the same brush.

So Adam Rubins is an ex-agency owner. He sold his business a couple of years ago for quite a tasty sum, and when we spoke he was saying that it was so anti-climactic. In fact, he even hyperbolized and said it was like the worst experience he’s ever had in his life.
I was like, “What?”
There are so many people in the world who are just desperate to sell their business, and in the agency world this is super glamorized, right?
It’s like your whole goal is to sell your business.
But Adam did this and was like, “It was awful. It was so terrible. You have no idea what actually is the reality when you sell a business.”
So this really opened up my mind.
The lessons I took from this were, A, don’t believe all the bullshit in the media anyway.
But B, there’s all this glamorization about selling your business, but actually it isn’t always the most profitable solution, and it isn’t always the best solution for you and your mental health.
It’s absolutely okay to just want to have a lifestyle business and run a smaller business.
You don’t have to scale and sell.
I think hearing it from him, who’s done it before, and now hearing it from others, just makes you realize that there are so many different ways to run a business, and you’ve just got to do what feels right for you.
Oh my goodness, where to start? And thank you for triggering me.
No, no, no, it’s fine.
Honestly, well look, I’ve done most of the big stresses in life.
Marriage, kids, buying a house, divorce—you know, all of the big stresses.
I would say selling a business, for me, is definitely up there with the most stressful things I’ve ever done.
I have burnt out previously. I burnt out when I worked at Disney, and I certainly burnt out when I was selling my business.
It is a very, very, very challenging process, and it’s one of those things that no one can ever quite understand until they go through it, which makes my job quite difficult because I’m selling something to people that they don’t know they need, but they need it.
That’s remarkable.
So everything we just talked about—preparing your business for exit—and you even said at the beginning that this is one of your goals, right?
Yeah.
So if this is something you’ve wanted for so many years, you’ve worked and worked and worked to get there, surely that should be one of the most magical, stress-free moments of your life.
There’s some stress in it, but didn’t you feel relieved? Didn’t you feel accomplished?
I think most leaders—I don’t say all, but again, I coach a lot of people—and you hear the same thing from a lot of leaders.
Imposter syndrome and it’s lonely at the top.
So you’re talking about people that are battling with relatively low self-confidence but high self-awareness.
There is a combination of those two things happening at the same time, which is very difficult.
Not to mention that a lot of people’s identities are linked to their job, and their self-worth is linked to their work.
So you are facing a lot of things when you’re selling a business.
You’re facing a lot of hard questions.
If you think about burnout, I always classify burnout as extreme fatigue coupled with high-intensity pressure and a misalignment of values.
When you sell a company, you go through all three of those because you can’t tell people you’re selling.
So you’re keeping a secret from everyone, and you’re making decisions about the business that run contrary to your normal behaviors because you have to keep your margins high whilst you’re selling the business.
So when someone comes and says, “We’ve just won a big piece of business. I need to hire someone,” and your normal answer is yes, your answer this time might be, “Sorry, we can’t do that.”
Then they might say, “Why?”
And then you have to lie.
If you’re a leader, for a lot of leaders that’s very difficult.
You want to be transparent.
I was very transparent.
I wanted to tell everyone everything.
So lying to people for three years—it was a three-year process from start to finish—I found very, very difficult.
Not to mention the business has got to be performing.
So during the day you’re putting out fires, keeping the business performing.
In the evening you’re working with brokers, lawyers, accountants, and stakeholders on both ends, and everyone is pissed off with you.
Not to mention you go home at night and your wife is like, “Are we ever going to see you?”
Oh my God.
So you’re failing everyone all the time, and it’s very difficult.
Like I said, because we had offices all over the world, I was on a plane doing long-haul travel all the time.
So my life just lost a sense of momentum, and I was not living my values.
We were going through a very challenging process.
I would say ours was harder than most and longer than most, and a lot of that was due to the complexity of our business.
Again, don’t do all things to all people in all places.
It really impacted my mental health.
The day we sold, I had convinced myself that selling the business would be a utopia.
“Yeah, we’re going to sell. Everything’s going to be all right. Don’t worry.”
“My lovely wife, who’s been really patient with me, once I sell the business everything will be great. Don’t worry.”
“The staff who have stuck with me even though I’ve been painful for the last three years—everything’s going to be all right.”
You convince yourself you’re going to have answers for everyone, and everyone will be okay with it.
Then completion happens, and nothing changes except you’re now no longer a business owner.
You’re a paid employee of your own company.
So emotionally, you then have to go through a letting-go process.
You then have to go through, “This is no longer my business.”
“I no longer make the calls.”
“In fact, there’s someone else making the calls.”
“I don’t really agree with the calls they’re making.”
So it is a really challenging thing to go through.
The next normal question is, “Well, why would you do it then?”
I have a lot of questions in my head right now, but that is one of them.

So Patrice Gordon is one of the world’s leading experts on reverse mentoring. She’s done an official TED Talk for TED on the topic. She’s written a best-selling book. She’s an incredible human working for all these amazing brands all over the world, literally being flown all around the world to run reverse mentoring programs for people. She’s been on Brené Brown’s podcast about this as well. So how much of an honor is it for her to come on this? She’s phenomenal, and our chat about it was so interesting.
But what made it stand out for me was talking about the effect of having an underperforming member of your team on the business. Now obviously I’m aware that having a certain member underperform can have a detrimental impact, but I didn’t quite register the monumental impact it has on everyone on the team and how one small person can have this catastrophic effect. So it’s like that affects performance, it affects culture, affects mood, it affects everything. Everything. And in turn that can really spiral.
So it shows you that if there’s someone who is struggling on a team, training is so important. Listening to them is so important. Actually taking the time to step back from some of those things that seem so urgent at the time, whether it’s a client or whatever, and actually taking the time to speak to your staff and really getting to understand what their problems are and how to help them solve them could actually be so much more beneficial to you and your company in the long run rather than trying to win a new client and, you know, see that this one person brings the company down, so to speak, and actually could be absolutely catastrophic.
It comes down to a lot of values. So I think when we’re recruiting and we’re deciding on who to partner with as well, it’s around values. So like, do you believe in the ethos of the business or the team, whatever? What are your personal values like? Excellence, like delivering on time, like empathy, like whatever your values are, are you aligned? Energy, I talk about energy all the time, but it’s so true. Like energetically and values, are you aligned? And actually everything else you can work out.
Because I also find it’s really interesting, but I find that there’s a real lack of ability to have some real mature adult conversations, which is… I’m really… I could be very direct, but with empathy or kindness, right? And I think people… There is a big thing at the moment, people get very offended about everything.
Yeah, but actually, you know, we are mature. We’re adults. Yeah, and we should be able to disagree respectfully and have a conversation about it because our end goal is that we need to do X, Y, and Z, which is why the values thing is really important. And I don’t think you can move forward if your values aren’t aligned. You’re never going to get to the point that you need to get to because there’s always going to be a difference, a big gap where you’re just not energetically or values aligned.
Yeah, and I think that I also have witnessed people leaders have such great responsibility, especially if you’ve got a small business because every single person is literally handpicked to be part of your business to complete something because you need that cohesion to get your train moving, right?
Yeah.
And so if one person is not performing or there’s like a little pocket of underperformance, then giving enough time to allow that person or people or group to come up to speed. And then from an external perspective, that person would give someone else completely different advice. And this is what I spend a lot of time… Like okay, if this was me, what advice would you be giving me? Like what if this was your best friend? If this was your sister, what advice would you give them about managing said team member? And it would be very different.
And I think where I have done that in my life before and held on to… I think there’s a balance, right, between giving people the right level of support that they need to be able to perform effectively. But then I think it’s a level of maturity, and that’s when the real leadership comes in, to say actually this is just not the right fit. And even though it’s going to be much more difficult because I’m going to have to find someone else, I want to do it myself, etc., then actually that’s one of the key things that I’ve learned and we’re still having. And it’s like the energy that that takes to deal with people who are not energetically aligned. That’s the tough one.

So Nick Raeburn is one of the world’s leading social selling coaches, and I didn’t even know really what social selling was. Like I think if you listen to it you think, “Oh, it’s just been selling on social media,” which it kind of is. And you might think then all of us are doing it, but it’s not quite the same thing.
Social selling is a much more targeted approach, and for me this is what I learned from this episode, is that I have always just posted content because I enjoy making content. And, you know, B, I think that I have an active audience who gets involved. I really enjoy the conversations and sparking discussion about interesting things.
However, I’ve never really done it properly as a sales tool and really thought about who I’m trying to target and what I’m trying to get out of it.
Now what Nick does, and what made me think, was that if you focus all your efforts on exactly who you want to win as a client, you basically could target all of your content to speak directly to them. Now if you made all of your content about them and solving their problems, and then when they finally find you, they should be able to be converted as a client.
And if you have your end client in mind, it’s so much easier to target. So I think that what I took away from this is actually how you can be so specific and really hone in and do some really targeted, you know, marketing to your ideal client.
So if I’ve got a target account and I’m putting that content out there, and that target account regularly interacts, and I’m seeing those target accounts regularly interact with that content, it’s like, “Great start. Job. Very clever.” It’s much more precision, and much more like we know that I’ve got a specific target account I’m going after.
So we worked with Panasonic last year, I think. I wasn’t connected to hundreds of people inside that organization. I was connected to maybe around 50 or 60 people, but the senior decision makers I needed to be connected to. I engineered it so that they saw my content on a regular basis.
So should everyone be social selling?
No. It’s not for everyone. I think there needs to be a distinction between… If you’re a small business owner and you’re selling to other small business owners or vendors, then effectively you’re not really social selling. What are you doing? You’re marketing, really, and then having sales conversations.
Can we really clarify the difference?
The difference between the two is typically with social selling it involves teams. So it involves armies of people producing content.
Army is for your virus rather than just…
Rather than just specific individuals. Most of the stuff that you see in the LinkedIn feed, and most of the stuff that people are telling you about making sure that you define your ICP and making sure that really speaks to that person on your profile, blah blah blah, that’s great if you’re a small business owner talking to another small business owner. Lots of one-on-one sales conversations.
But that very rarely happens when you’re having much larger sales conversations. There’s lots and lots of decision makers and stakeholders involved in that. So how do we engineer that to make sure all of those stakeholders and decision makers see that content? That’s the difference between… I guess the main differentiation is project infrastructure.
Like if you’re going after, you know, a half a million pound deal versus a 5K deal, and it only involves one person. This one involves 20 people. That’s the difference between social selling.
It feels a little bit like brainwashing. Like you’re just sort of dropping these little subliminal messages.
You are.
It’s not brainwashing. So think of it like when you’re in the sales process. You’re digging and asking questions and trying to get to the heart of what it is the customer wants. And that’s effectively what you’re doing with social selling.
You’re asking those questions of the vendor and then producing content that answers those questions. And you’re answering those questions in the comment section on that content as well.
So the perfect combination is if you produce a piece of content, it’s for that vendor, that vendor sees it and then comments on it, and you respond to that comment. You are in a sales conversation with that person.
And I do like it. I think it’s a lot more natural than just reaching out to them and saying, “You know, just thinking of you,” and all that nonsense. You know, that doesn’t work.
And they always feel like they’ve stumbled on your content, and they feel like it’s coincidental. But it is, to a certain degree, engineered because if you go into… We go and train large companies. They can’t rely on luck. There has to be a process to it. It has to be, just like sales is, there has to be a process to it.
Yeah, and I guess it’s the same as any sort of marketing in a way because it’s like, you know, billboards are by train stations when you’re standing there, and it’s timing at the end of the day. A lot of things are about timing, and so you just happen to see something that you need.
I think the main distinction is I always think of traditional marketing as more broadcasting. So it’s like, “Here’s my thing. Buy my thing. Here’s me. Check me out.”
Whereas social selling, it’s much more granular, much more context. You’re having a two-way dialogue, and a lot of it is listening. You’re listening to the other person, seeing what they’re saying, and then responding through your content and your comments.
Yeah, and I think then timing is less important because with marketing there’s a lot of element of luck because it’s just like you have to time it right, and they just happen to want that thing as you’re advertising that thing. Where social selling is, you’re waiting to listen for them to be talking about that thing, and then you show that.
Yeah. We had a company that I trained a couple years ago, and they had a new website build. And what they were doing, they were looking on that website to see what products or services, or what products, their customers were looking at. And then they would go off and produce blogs that addressed that specific product for that vendor, and they made sure that that vendor saw that.
Yeah, and I really like that, and I think that it’s a much better use of your time. It’s more targeted and focused.

So Toby Oredein is the founder of Black Ballad, which is the UK’s leading digital publication for Black women in the UK. She also launched a billboard campaign earlier this year in 2024 for International Women’s Day with Google, which was insane. She put 56 Black women on that billboard for those who, you know, are people to watch in their industries. And I’m obviously proud to say that I was one of those 56 women.
But the episode was so eye-opening in the level of racism that still happens, sadly, in the UK. And it’s like covert racism, so it’s very difficult to deal with, and it can be so troubling, and it can run so deep and have a really negative impact.
But what her campaign also showed, and what her whole mission of what she’s doing with Black Ballad shows, is what a positive impact can happen when you bring Black women together to support each other. And I think that if the world can see how supportive Black women can be towards one another and how amazing they all are, and they lift each other up, that other people will start to realize the potential and help lift us up too.
And you must be mega proud of what you’ve done.
I am mega proud, I have to say that. You know, the reason it happened was, you know, I worked with another Black woman called Raji at Google who really championed Black Ballad for this campaign. So Rama approached me about working together on some sort of campaign that was going to, you know, give visibility to Black women who kind of wanted careers in tech. That’s kind of the idea of how it started.
And then as we were talking, and you know things happened, the collaboration got delayed here and there, we started to kind of think about showing Black women off in the working world in general. And then Pixel got involved, and then it was kind of like how do we work together? And I kind of had this idea of like, what if we just shot these portraits of Black women from different industries on a Pixel?
And I was really clear that I really wanted this sentence of, “This is what a CEO looks like.” In my case, “This is what a developer looks like,” or “This is what a doctor looks like.” Because I honestly believe, and people can say what they want, Black women are so important to the British workforce.
When you think about whether it be those that came on the Windrush to be the fabric of the NHS in terms of being nurses and stuff like that, or those that worked in transportation when they came over, or when I think about, you know, I’m of Nigerian heritage and I identify as being British Nigerian, but when I think about my biological parents, and when I think about my in-laws, and all the aunties and uncles I have, and when I think about the jobs that they did and how they’ve risen up the ranks, their contribution to the working society of Britain has kept it going.
And I really feel that. You know, that is never really… it’s kind of celebrated, but it’s never really boldly said. It’s kind of like we’re more than just carers in the world. We bring a huge amount of money to this country in terms of whether it be as entrepreneurs or just keeping systems going.
So I wanted to celebrate that. And we shot 56 Black women from doctors to content creators. We had barristers, we had HR professionals. We shot them over three days, which was very hectic, in the YouTube Studios of Google. And we had an amazing photographer called Anna Pinto, and she shot everybody on a Pixel.
And then once we saw it, we worked with an amazing designer called Sharida, who’s actually based in the UK, a Black woman. And we started to see it, and I was like, “I have to get this billboard. This has to be more than just on my site.”
And also, personally for me, you know, I’ve got two kids, and I want them to see something different from what I saw. I love the fact that my daughter is obsessed with doctors, and the doctors she can name are Black doctors. I love that for her. I really, really love that for her.
So me and Rama were talking, and it was kind of a plan, like how do we get this billboard done? And actually, we were supported by the Mayor’s Office, who gave us some free billboards.
Damn, I didn’t know that. That’s amazing, actually.
Yeah. So they actually got behind this campaign. Yeah, Deputy Mayor is Debbie Bernard Week, she’s a Black woman, and she got behind the campaign and said, “Okay, cool. How can I help?”
And I said, “I really want to make this visible all around London.” And it was really close to the wire, and about maybe a week before, she said, “We’re going to get it billboarded.”
And I was like, “Oh my God.”
So yeah, and then we had billboards everywhere from Shoreditch to Kensington to Hackney, you know, all around London. And I was just so in awe of the fact that, one, the women who were in the campaign got to see themselves on a billboard.
I got to take my children to it, and my children saw me. And I actually saw some other people that they recognized because I had a few friends that were in it as well.
And then I think the one that really got me was I went to see one in the London Bridge, Southwark area, and there was a woman that was driving past and she was taking pictures of the billboard.
And I said, “Are you in the campaign?”
And she’s like, “No, I just love it, and I love the work.”
And I was like, “That’s amazing.”
And then when we were walking, I would see Black women looking up, and they were like, “Oh my God, what is it?” They were just looking up at it.
And I was like, this is what I wanted to do. I wanted Black women to really see themselves, and everyone else to see us. And we are a modern face of the British workforce. I truly believe that.
I think Black women are so pioneering in terms of smashing a concrete ceiling, and the route to getting through that concrete ceiling takes a lot of resilience and perseverance and tenacity. And I believe that every single Black woman who was in that campaign has had to display those characteristics to get where they are now.

So Andrew Dobbie is known as Entertaining Dad on TikTok, but he’s also the CEO of a great branding agency up in Scotland called MadeBrave.
There were some fascinating conversations around Will Smith doing a TikTok with him, which was incredible. But what I think I really took away from this episode was around company culture.
Now, MadeBrave is really known for its amazing company culture, and I think there’s so much buzz around this terminology, with people talking about how to create this ideal company culture. What I found really fascinating was that he talked about how, in his company, he selected people by who they were. So there was already this built-in culture in the team. You don’t need to create culture; it’s already instilled in your team. You just have to discover what that is.
He sat down with his team to find out what things meant to them, why they joined, what they were really passionate about, and what came out. They did this exercise, and all their real values came out as a team. He didn’t pick a load of buzzwords and say, “These are our values. We all now abide by these values.” The team picked them naturally, and they all lived by them.
I thought that was really beautiful, and there was so much in that about hiring the right people because he’s got such a great retention rate with his team, and that says a lot about what they do. I think that in the agency world, there’s a very high turnover of staff, so for me, this is a great one to watch if you’re trying to hire people or build a team because they’ve done it so well.
There were some beautiful things said in this episode.
What did you do then to make MadeBrave who it is now and to build that culture and make a team that people are proud to be part of?
I think it’s also an interesting thing because when you’re creating brands or creating culture, it’s about what is organic and what you’ve actually created yourself—what you’ve made up, as such.
What I did with MadeBrave was just let the first two years happen naturally.
To give you an idea, we would get Mexican food on a Friday—burritos for the team. Different people brought different cultural elements and traditions into the company. There was always a lot of talk of Pixar and Disney, and we used the hashtag “To Infinity and Beyond.” It all came naturally and organically.
Then, after two years, we’d grown to about 16 or 17 people, and I stopped and thought, “What have we created here?”
I had to keep resetting the vision because everyone was asking, “What’s the vision?” I was like, “This is beyond the vision.” I didn’t think I had it in me to create a company of that size, and then we just kept growing.
My job as CEO and founder became figuring out the vision, the purpose, and the reason beyond making money because I’d already solved the problem of feeding a baby and all that stuff.
Then we codified the values that had naturally emerged from the team—the shared beliefs that we all had. We also figured out what was working on social media. That became our tone of voice. There was a personality. We identified the brand codes in terms of the visual aspects of the brand, the colors, and everything else.
You’re really just pulling out what you’ve already created almost by magic and codifying it into the MadeBrave brand. Then we became purposeful about repeating it.
I think that’s true for any brand. You figure these things out, then repeat them, and repeat them, and repeat them.
I layered on top of it my own story—the two-week-old baby, the £1,000 in the bank—and you’re doing as much as possible to humanize the business you’ve got so that if I tell you that story, someone else can repeat it.
For every business, you need a repeatable story. You need a codified set of things that you own. Then you turn up more than anyone else, put more effort into everything that other people would be lazy about, and then do great work as well.
That’s kind of what I’ve always tried to do.
Then I just went out into the world, like I’m doing today, and gave everything away because it comes back tenfold. Just do that consistently over time, and your thing should get bigger.

Sara Roberts is a three-time founder, and the bit that horrified me was when she was going for a major funding raise with one of her healthy snack brands.
She did so much due diligence on all the investors. They had passports and everything. There were lawyers involved, and she somehow still managed to get scammed.
This company also took other people for a ride—to the tune of about £30 million. It wasn’t even a small amount of money. It wasn’t just her company that was affected.
What really scared me was how easy it was for them to fake everything. It shows you that you really need to do your due diligence. Even if you go through all the basic checks like she did—she really did do her due diligence—you can still get caught out.
I think that shows you that you can never be too careful, and you can’t just trust people at their word.
The only way she worked it out was because she trusted her gut. She felt these red flags coming in, and then she actually contacted other companies in their portfolio to ask them about their experiences. Again, it shows you the importance of references, even when it comes down to investors.
I’ve been told a lot of this stuff recently as well. People have been posing as investors, offering founders money, but when you start speaking to other people about their experience with them, it’s not all that it seems.
References are so important, and I think that’s what I took away from this. It’s not just one reference—you’ve got to get a whole bunch of references to find out who someone truly is because there’s a lot of stuff out there, and you will uncover it if you dig deep.
It is important that founders know there are risks out there.
What was even more shocking to me was that I thought there couldn’t be that many cases like this. But in a closed WhatsApp group of founders, I mentioned it, and three or four other people stepped forward and said they’d experienced something similar—not with the same people, but something similar.
That suggests that the investment landscape, or rather the fraudulent landscape, is becoming more complex. It’s getting more professional, for want of a better word.
So, when people tell founders to go and check where the funds have come from, I don’t care if you’re too nervous—do whatever you need to do and go check where those funds are coming from.
You need to be in control of that relationship just as much as they’re in control.
I know venture capitalists sometimes play that power game, but actually you’re entering a partnership. It’s akin to getting married for seven years. You need to make sure it’s going to work, and you need to trust them.
They’re never going to have 100% of your best interests at heart because, ultimately, they’re in the business of making money.
But a good VC or a good family office will make sure that they scale with you and support you because, ultimately, your success is their success.
There’s a lot to be said for being more vigilant.
I think, more so with women, we can sometimes be too trusting. Sometimes our gut kicks in and tells us something is wrong, but other times we can ignore it because we’re naturally trusting.
I think we need to look beyond that and make sure we have the right support around us.

so Jidé Maduako is a former professional football player, used to play for Leicester City Football Club and then decided to V his own agency instead, which is kind of crazy.
Um, and he started an influencer agency and so knows that industry very, very well.
And he’s used this knowledge and studied the industry so much that he became an influence himself.
So he’s becoming, he’s become a content creator full-time now, and he creates content, um, and documents his journey.
And he’s big on Tik Tok and Instagram and all that sort of stuff, and he’s now even started his own create, um, Community as a result.
And you know, I thought it was really interesting because he shares all those tips about how to build your influencer brand and how to run your own community and the importance of it.
I think, like, you know, the consistency and constantly focusing on the data and the quality of the clip.
So he doesn’t, he’s not someone who posts every single day. Like, there’s people who say, “Oh, you must post 10 times a day on Tik Tok. Yes, literally 10 times a day, three times a day at least on Instagram, five stories,” and all that stuff.
He doesn’t do that. He’s actually much more diligent with it and studies things.
I love that he’s gone from a data analytics point of view.
So I love that he’s really concentrating on the quality rather than quantity, and I took away so many different content creation tips from him.
And so much so that I’m actually going to go all in on content in 2025.
I’m going to take G’s advice.
I’m G to really go for it.
And you know, I think it’s really important, yes, to be consistent but also to really, really value quality.
And really, and I think that this, this episode has so many different takeaways.
That’s why I say, like, do things that actually care because then it’s so authentic.
And then you can capture it from, like, your own perspective.
And, like, most people don’t realize, but their greatest, um, bar to entry are and their greatest value is that it’s them.
Like, unique, they are themselves, you know.
Um, no one’s got your life experiences.
No one’s grown up the way that you have.
No one’s had the worst experience that you.
No one had the best experience that he had.
So by creating a story around, around that, um, makes you unique and makes people actually say, “Oh.”
You’ll find a tribe.
Like this, how many people, I think even in Facebook and WhatsApp, um, and Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram alone, there’s like 3 billion monthly active users, I think.
Somewhere like that.
Crazy.
So if you think about that, even if it’s 20,000 people across the world that fight that are very similar to you, that’s your tribe.
That’s your audience.
I have a WhatsApp has like 2,000 people in it.
And then got now waiting this basically of 2, over 2,000 people.
And then for the adventure, we got these Adventure hikes and then we got these open hikes, which we call Mini hikes.
So our product has the hikes, but then the ones where we’re going to, like, are the Jurassic Coast and then we’re going to go to Snowden.
People going to have to pay.
Yeah.
Anyway, they’re going to have to, like, basically, like, get hotels.
Get, so I B basically got packages for people.
But I know the cost price, but I don’t know people’s price sensitivity.
Well, I just think, like, people would pay to go in a community.
Like, I think people want to do those sort of things.
They will pay anything to go with other people because they might not be other people, their friendship groups who want to do that sort of thing.
So, and if you’re getting that networking, you’re getting that genuinely like-minded things, I think most the time you spend ages trying to get your friends to go.
You can never B bottle it, boil it down to a date.
So I think charge what you want to charge.
Like, Alo, they get access to you, man.
They pay premium for that.
No, I know, but I wanted to see people’s price sensitivity.
So because obviously I think in America and in the UK value is different.
Yeah, so people, like, they will even, the higher you charge, it probably the more people are like the manra it.
But here the price sensitiv is different.
So that’s why I was like, all right, cool.
Um, let me do a blind auction and then I’ll see what people.
I, I have a base price because I know obviously the cost.
But I, I’ve asked a few people and I know, like, how much.
So that’s like obviously my, that’s going to just be like my, it’s up.
It’s still like my side hustle with, with, um, content.
It’s like, but I have big plans for it to build a big business from, like, just my actual socials itself.

so Avital Eusgel is the founder of High Pitched Agency and they do branding, um, and various different bits and bobs for founders. But that’s not the most remarkable thing about Avital. I think that, for me, what wowed me is just her attitude and approach to everything.
She’s got so much energy, so much confidence, and just she’s such a go-getter. And the thing that I really resonated with when she said this was when she came on the podcast, was just about putting yourself out there.
She was telling me stories about how she was in the White House at the age of 19. Like, she just went and just seized every opportunity she could. And it really made me think, like, if you put yourself out there and just practice pitching, just think what sort of levels you could get to.
Now she’s carried this still into her adult life because shortly after she came on our podcast, she went on Chris Do’s podcast. She just, like, dropped into his DMs and pitched her story, and he was like, “Damn, that sounds good. Come on the podcast.”
Who does that? I mean, probably a lot of people do that, but not with her confidence and not with her storytelling capabilities. And she just knew what she wanted, and she went out there and got it.
And look, what’s the worst that could happen? He says no. So you’re in the same position you were in before you asked.
And I think that’s it. It’s like putting yourself out there, not being afraid to get rejected, and just seizing every opportunity you can get.
So from there, I took a gap year and I went to study in Israel for the year. And then I went back to university, and in that first summer I went to Washington to work for a non-for-profit which bridges the gap between Democrats and Republicans.
And it was this startup kind of world in the sense there was like 15 members of staff, and then there was 100 interns. And it was really insane, the energy.
Americans have a longer summer than the Brits, so we arrived to this program like a month late. So all the Americans had kind of got their place in the office, knew where they were going, and there was just me and one other Brit from this bigger program that we’d come from in the UK to intern.
So we’re all interning at this company, and essentially it was like, well, how am I going to stand out?
They said that they were doing an event for all the biggest donors, and whoever signs up the most people to come to the other part of the event, which for citizens they wanted loads of citizens to come out for their new announcement, gets to have a one-on-one with the CEO, who was actually Clinton’s 2008 fundraiser. And she was fantastic.
So I was like, “I’m going to get this. I’m going to get this. I’m going to have this one-on-one with this woman.”
Anyway, so I basically signed up the group that I’d come from from the UK with, which was like 40 people, and I won the competition. I just was like, “You’ve all got to show up in your lunch break.”
So they all came, and I realized essentially that she was super busy. And I said to her, “Listen, don’t worry about this, but actually I know you’re having the donor event, and I’d love to attend.”
Not even the staff were able to go. It was very intimate. There were only three staff members going, let alone all the interns.
And she was like, “Listen, a little bit of chutzpah, but yeah, you can come.”
So I thought it would be like *The Devil Wears Prada*, in that scene where she’s coming in and they’re at the fashion show in Paris, and she’s telling the CEO, “Don’t ask anything about this person. The son’s in rehab. Don’t ask about the wife. She just got divorced.”
I was memorizing all these random facts about the guest list.
I walk into the event, and she just said to me, “Avital, network like you’ve never networked before.”
And I was like, “This is wild. Like, what does that even mean?”
You were meeting George Bush’s Chief of Staff. You were meeting congressmen, senators, and I had this English accent. They were all like, “You must be at Cambridge.”
And I was like, “Okay, yeah, exactly.” I was like, “Okay, fine. This is wild.”
And I just ran with it. I left and I got all these business cards.
Then I was rooming with this girl who was really smart. She was at LSE and I was at Birmingham, so I was like, “Okay, she’s great.”
I went home and I showed her all the business cards. I went to throw them in the bin. I was like, “What are we going to do with all these business cards? Great.”
She was like, “What you’re going to do is follow up with each and every one, and you’re going to ask them for coffee while you’re here.”
And I was like, “Yeah, okay.”
So I basically went through this list, and that was really, at 18 years old on this internship, where I learned, A, how to effectively network and work a room, and B, leave an impression.
I literally just followed up with everyone, being like, “British girl, following up from this.”
And they were like, “Sure.”
I just got so many yeses. So I spent the rest of the summer meeting people for coffee.
Then I was the only one to be offered a full-time job out of the hundred interns. They were like, “Don’t go back to university. We’ll offer you a job. Stay.”
And I was like, “Seems a bit wild. I’m not going to stay, but I will come back next summer.”
The next summer they paid me.
Yeah, and then I was like, “Exactly. I’m 19, getting paid for summer in Washington.”
I was like, “This is great.”
Then that wasn’t exactly what I wanted, so I went back to the UK at that point. Essentially, I was still very interested in politics, but I moved to work for an embassy, and I was working on bringing more investment to the country.
In that role I knew I wanted to go into venture capital. So from venture capital I then decided that I would move to Israel, and essentially that would probably be where I went into another venture capital fund.
During this time I had 80 coffees.
When I got off the plane, I knew absolutely no one. After every coffee I was like, “Oh, who should I speak to next? Would you mind connecting me?”
I was like, “This is wild.”
Everyone was like, “Sure, happy to help.”
They just made the connection. “This was a great coffee. You should meet Avital. She’s just moved here.”
At this point I’m 23, and I’ve moved to this country with nothing, no network whatsoever.
I was like, “I’m going to work in a venture capital fund.”
And I did. I got a job at Reid Hoffman. He was obviously the founder of his fund in Israel.
I was like, “This is great. Yeah, this is literally like a wild thing.”
I was Head of Value Creation, and I was like, “Cool. I’ve done this for the government sector, and now I’m going to do it in the private sector.”
While I was there, all these people were coming to me in the portfolio companies being like, “Who should I go to for my branding? Who should I go to for my storytelling?”
And I’m like, “You’re going to come to me. I’m going to set up a business.”
So at 24 I set up a branding agency.
And that’s probably a good pause point, just to be like, now I run a branding agency. Yeah, this is what I do, but that’s how I got there.

So James Cuss is an eight-times founder, I believe. He was proudly saying that six of them failed and two of them did well. Like, it was quite funny.
But what I loved about this episode is that James was so open about his life as a family man. He constantly referred to his wife and kids. He adores them, and they are his number one priority.
But they weren’t at some point. His business was, and he realized very quickly that actually he was destroying his marriage. He decided one day to just up and leave, pack all his things, and travel the world with his wife and kids because he wanted to be present with them, and he wanted to be a better husband and father.
It made me think how many other men out there are like this, and they also want to be a better husband and father, but they don’t realize that they are, you know, putting their business first because they think that actually if they put the business first, they’re doing it for their wife and kids, and they don’t realize the impact it’s having.
And, you know, I realize this because I feel like a lot of people messaged me and were like, “Why have you done this episode with a man about balancing family life with a business?”
And I was like, “Because men also struggle with it. It doesn’t seem like it, but they do.”
And I thought it was a really interesting take, and I really liked it. I just think it shows you that you need to have important conversations no matter what gender you are because you don’t realize how the other person could be affected by this.
So I really liked this episode for that reason.
How has your wife been through all this? Like, through the 25% of successful companies or whatever that you’ve got, how has it been?
I would say that, to be honest, I have acted a bit like an ass, and I’ve been very boneheaded and selfish. I’ve barreled through, you know, when I wasn’t really paying much attention to my wife.
Actually, that’s changed a lot since. I learned the hard way, and, you know, it was really, really painful times.
But yeah, I do have a wonderful, supportive wife. I think it’s that—I know it’s been bandied around a lot—but you can’t have self-development without self-awareness.
I think the last few years, since the failure of my fintech e-commerce startup where we burned through half a million pounds, and actually, you know, my investors were very supportive. I put a good six-figure sum of my own money in as well, so it hurt.
Just not being available emotionally because I was so obsessed. Actually, in some parts, I realized that I was pretty delusional through some of that process. But I think in some ways you have to be, and it doesn’t mix with family life.
So I think, since I’ve kind of woken up and realized what I had, you know, my kids suffered a little bit too. I think that isn’t glamorous.
But I think now I’m more in the present moment, and I can actually, you know, be there. Even though there’s been times in my life where I’ve been there physically but not, you know, not being in the present, or being in my head trying to figure things out.
You know, the pacing around at 3:00 a.m. in the morning trying to figure out where that £14,000 is going to come from to cover payroll and stuff. You know, that’s not glamorous.
Like, where is it going to come from? And then, you know, you fix it the next day, and then three months later, or a month later, you’re in the same position.
So, you know, it’s painful, right? It’s not glamorous.
So I would caution anyone that has a family—you know, I’ve got three daughters, as I said—whether you want to take this on. And if you do, just make sure you’re aligned because I did things anyway, which is, like, that’s the shit bit.

So I just mentioned gender, and I think it’s perfectly timed because my next guest is Lu Castello, who is my first and, so far, I believe, only non-binary guest on the show.
For me, this was a real enlightening episode.
Now, I get on so well with Lou, and I really, really admire them. Everything they say is so knowledgeable and so professional, and they do such a good job with everything. I’ve always shown Lu so much respect, and they know that.
But I still managed to mess up when the podcast came out.
Now, I was trying to rush things, and I was trying to edit things and take shortcuts, so much so that I didn’t notice I referred to Lu as “she” in the intro. Lu’s pronouns are they/them, and I know this, and I know Lu.
They were brilliant when it came out. They pointed it out, they acknowledged that I made a mistake, and I acknowledged I made a mistake too. I felt awful, and they were really good about it.
They didn’t get all, you know, offended or anything. They were just like, “But these are why we need to have these conversations.”
I’m like, “Exactly.”
So for me, this episode was all about that. We talked so much about difficult issues when it comes to diversity and gender and inclusion, and people shy away from these conversations because they’re scared of making mistakes.
But for me, it’s about intention. I didn’t have a bad intention, and they knew that. So they were much more accommodating to my mistake.
But it showed me that I needed to have still more awareness. Even though I’ve got the right intentions, I’m still making bad mistakes because it’s not as normal to me, because I don’t have to keep doing it all the time.
And I feel like that’s not a good thing. I need to make sure it feels normal. I need to make sure that I respect every single person I’m speaking to.
So for me, I loved that this episode personally also made me feel this way, but helped us open up these conversations because no matter how difficult a conversation is, you absolutely need to have them.
I made a promise to myself when I started my business that I was going to be 100% myself because I wanted to see if it was going to work, because I didn’t want to be trapped in an idea that other people have of me.
You know, I’ve been living that all my life. You know, why I escaped Sicily as well, it was because I was tired of being seen.
You know, in Italy, the figure of even a woman is extremely objectified. Extremely. You know, even if I recognize myself as a woman, you get so much sexism, and everybody’s expecting you to make children by the age of—you know what I mean?
So it’s kind of like, you know, I felt really trapped there.
Society here is a little bit more open. I would say Scotland is extremely open-minded, but still, you know, there is a lot of misinformation about trans people in general and gender-diverse people.
So has it affected my work?
Well, look, I think that the best way to frame this is I don’t think I missed opportunities because I’m non-binary.
I thankfully avoided working with people that are basically violent toward themselves. They don’t allow themselves to be free, and so they can’t work with free people like me.
And that’s how I see it.
They do me a favor.
Because, you know, if you work with me—and ask any of my clients—I’m not going to sweet-talk you. You know, I’m going to bring you out of your shell. I’m going to tell you you’re a badass.
Especially, most of my clients are women. I’ve only had one male client so far, who’s lovely.
But, you know, I mean, I will actually call things out.
I’ve had some of my clients telling me, “Oh, my partner wants me to shut down my business,” and they have a six-figure business.
I’m like, “Tell your partner…”
You know what I mean? I will be that person.
I will empower you. I will be that person that you didn’t have next to you all your life, that is going to big you up and is going to make you get out of your shell and really be yourself 100%.
So, you know, people that want to impose that violence that society has put on them toward themselves and want to shrink themselves, they don’t work with me automatically.
And I think they wouldn’t work with me even if I saw myself as a woman, you know what I mean? Because I’m just not that person.
Yeah, so I think, for me, being non-binary is almost, you know…
I love being queer. It’s the thing that freed me. It freed my thinking.
It also helped me to really look for things that I can improve in society and ask, “What can I bring to the table?”
So I don’t see it as a disadvantage.
I see it as, you know, people do me a favor if they’re transphobic. They don’t work with me.
Yeah, go stay out of my way. I don’t need you because your thinking is outdated. It’s ignorant.
You know what I mean? It’s got nothing to do with me, and everything to do with them.

So Ryan Hopkins is a two times TED speaker and the bestselling author of the book *52 Weeks of Well-being* and you know he came on and dropped so many gems in the podcast I don’t even know where to start.
But I think the first thing that stood out for me is his highlight of the definition between wellness and well-being. It sounds very silly that I feel like I didn’t know the difference, but I think it’s because I’ve been so overwhelmed with social content. Wellness and well-being, people just use those two words interchangeably, but they’re not. Wellness is just one little element of overall well-being, right? It’s like people use this term and, you know, there’s so much focus on wellness, whether it’s eating right and having a morning routine and, like, you know, pamper routines and going to the spa. That’s just one tiny aspect of it.
But, you know, well-being is everything. You could be eating healthily and have an amazing body and whatever, but you can actually be lonely. You could have no friends around you. You have no social well-being. You have no career well-being because you’re in this toxic work. You know, there are so many different aspects of it.
So for me, I realized that actually if I’m going to be trying to have a healthier lifestyle, I need to be thinking about my overall well-being because it’s not just the wellness side of things. Actually, there are so many different elements when it comes to well-being that I can’t just focus on these little glamour bits that sound very fun to do because there’s actually a much bigger picture when it comes to well-being.
We spent $5.6 trillion on wellness and we’d never been more unhappy, sad, or angry. It’s a racket. It’s the shamans, charlatans, and snake oil sales. When I go get wife for the tea in a couple of weeks—but the alliteration—but, like, everyone is ready to sell you something because it worked for them. They often come into it with a good heart, but they’re selling you something and it’s being profited on.
However, well-being and wellness are two different things. I’m trying to unpick that for people because well-being is one’s subjective satisfaction in their life. You don’t have to be happy to have a sense of well-being. Happiness is a temporary emotion like anger and sadness. You can have a sense of eudaimonia, which is a life filled with purpose. It’s working towards something. It’s often the people who work the hardest, who aren’t always smiling or happy, that have the greatest meaning and feeling in life.
That’s what we should be focusing on, and then everyone should work out what their purpose is. It could be a series of little goals or something massive, like running across Africa.
Instead, we look to wellness, which is the pursuit of optimized health physically and mentally, and that’s where we have courses, consulting stuff, and apps. While they can help you get to a sense of well-being, it’s not the only way. It’s being profited that we have to spend loads, we have to invest in these things, we have to do this course, or look or feel or be a certain way. It pisses me off because it takes people away from where they need to be. They need to spend some time on themselves.
This might come out before or after the TED Talk. Regardless, these are three ingredients to well-being: know your vision, understand who you are, and create the time inside and outside of work to focus on the little things. It’s that simple, and we can unpick all of the nonsense. There are so many people profiting off other people’s sapience, and I want to just help people understand who the fuck they are and then prioritize that stuff.
That’s why—
See, all I hear there is passion and the absolute strive to want to do good and help other people, and you’re doing it for the right reasons. That’s what I have to keep telling myself. The reason why I call out the bullshit is not because—
You see, it is hard, but if you know deep down inside—that’s why I was saying people go down to the valleys and your “why.” Start with why, but you have to know you are doing it for the right reasons. I don’t call out the bullshit because I’m looking to start a fight. That’s the last thing I want. I don’t have the energy for that.
There’s too much good stuff going on to deal with.
Exactly. And it’s also just like, I get so annoyed, like you said, all the charlatans out there. I get so annoyed with people just ripping people off. There’s so much bullshit in entrepreneurship now. It’s ridiculousness. It’s ridiculous, and I’m so sick of it that I just want to call that out.
I don’t personally attack people. Like you said, I use data and insight. Data doesn’t lie; humans do. That’s what you’ve got to realize. If you back stuff up with data and research, then you can actually show people how things really are.
So I will keep calling out the bullshit because all the people who are out there scamming and acting all this sort of stuff, they’re ruining people’s lives for so many reasons. Like we talk about, all the people who even just show off on social media, what that does is create imposter syndrome in other people. It makes them lose confidence. It makes them spiral into depression, and actually they get burned out because they’re trying to strive for something that doesn’t even exist.
All this stuff is actually really dangerous, but you don’t see it.
Exactly. That’s a great quote that I love as well.

So Holly Tennock is also an exited agency founder, and we touched on, again, the downsides of selling an agency, and hers was also not pretty, so definitely tune in for that.
But she’s also a qualified coach, and so for me the biggest takeaways were on the subject of advice because I’ve had some horrific advice over the years. You know, this is often why I’m talking about this no bullshit because there’s so much bullshit out there with people who are giving advice who are not qualified to give advice because they haven’t even done it themselves.
There’s different levels of advice, and I think for me it was this takeaway between a coach, a mentor, and an advisor. Coaches are generally people who help coach the questions out of people. They ask lots of questions, and you as a founder probably have the answers inside you, but you need a coach to help you find the answer. A mentor is generally someone who’s been there and done that, and they’re giving you advice based on their experiences and helping you along the way. An advisor is generally someone who gives advice on different topics that they should be experts in.
I think that’s a big crossover with what people do. I think people are trying to do too many different roles, and it’s not quite clear. What I’ve realized now is that when I’m going to take advice from someone, or even when I’m giving advice, I want to be very, very, very clear as to what sort of role they fit into so I can apply it to the right areas without getting blanket advice or the wrong advice to steer me in the wrong direction.
I need to know, have they been on this path before? Can I see them as more of a mentor? Or are they just giving advice in a particular area that I can take or leave? Because advice should be taken or left.
So for me, I thought that was a really interesting conversation, and there were so many different great bits in that episode.
So I would like to then discuss, because I think what you said resonates, and it’s really scary actually because I feel like companies get to a certain size and then they’re like, “I need advisors.” You know, you’re told, because this is the way that every business runs, you’re told to get a board, get advisors, and whatever. Like you said, they could really destroy businesses.
Yeah.
I know so many companies have had a board of advisors and they’ve been awful.
Yeah.
So I would like to just touch on coaches versus mentors versus advisors because they’re sort of so murky, and people just interchange all three of those words as the same thing, but they are so different, and what they should be getting out of you is very, very different.
So I’d love to talk on the differences because you’re a qualified coach. So, what is coaching versus what is mentoring versus what is advice, and who should be getting what?
Brilliant. Such a good question, and one that needs to be sweated a bit more.
I actually did a course specifically in this to really figure it out. I’d say a coach, first of all, is someone who does not proffer advice. They are there to deeply listen, hold space, and they could have loads of experience. Often they would have a lot of experience in your area, but not necessarily. They ask you questions, and there are lots of different styles of coaching, as there are in psychological therapy, and there’s a connection between the two. There’s quite a lot of research and scientific backing, the same as there is in psychological counseling.
There’s a very clear line between what is counseling, what is therapy, but they’re really only there to ask you questions, to ask the right questions, and to notice. They might say things like, “I noticed you grabbed your throat when you spoke about that. Tell me about that a bit more.” Or, “I noticed when you answered that you didn’t mention this.”
They might be drawing your attention to things they notice, but they are never saying, “I think you need to do this.” They are really drawing out from you your best self. They might be aligning you with your values, they might be aligning you with your goals.
The fundamental thing about coaching is that it is always forward-looking because, unlike therapy, which often looks back, coaching is about where are you going. Some of that is somatic, which is very much in the body, noticing where you’re feeling things. Some of it is very functional, like what are your goals, what’s the reality, opportunity, and way forward.
There are lots of different models, but good coaches are able to use a whole range of different models interchangeably depending on what the situation is.
The important thing is all coaches are accredited. There are two bodies: the EMCC and the ICF. You have to keep up your registration, you have to pay, you have to have a mentor, you have to write up your notes after every session, and you need to review those with people. It’s a very accredited profession—or it should be anyway.
Well, it should be anyway, but then 90% of the coaches on Instagram, for example…
Exactly. I think that’s the thing because coaching came from sports coaching perhaps, and a lot of things have evolved. We didn’t necessarily need a qualification then, but really, if you are going to pay for a coach, you need to make sure they’re accredited because they can cause an enormous amount of harm, and you should contract with them very carefully at the beginning around all of that.

so Konrad Sanders is the founder of the Creative Copywriter, which is a great copywriting agency in the UK, and they’ve got some huge clients under their belt like Krispy Kreme and some really cool brands like that.
When AI came out, they were obviously worried because they were under threat. Everyone was saying, “Oh, is it now the death of the copywriting industry because of AI?” And you know, ChatGPT is getting smarter.
So instead of panicking, they decided to go all in on AI, and they decided to create a bunch of their own GPTs, and they’re still doing it now. I’ve seen them writing on LinkedIn about new ones they’ve even done.
It just made me a little bit more fascinated on, again, the impact of really taking your time out and not just rushing into it, not just doing the thing, but actually prepping the thing.
So they’ve spent weeks, months trying to prepare these amazing GPTs to propel their business. So now all the tasks that they do that usually take a lot of time are done so quickly through these GPTs that have been programmed by them for their business. They are trained in what they do and their particular techniques and knowledge base that they have, and it’s saving hours and hours and hours a week. But it took hours and hours to do. They invested that time in order to be able to do that.
I don’t think enough people do this because, like I was saying earlier, people forget about strategy. They just rush into things. I think that actually this was so enlightening, seeing that his whole team had invested time and effort into doing this because of the longer-term picture. I think that not enough people do long-term thinking, and I thought this was a brilliant example of it.
What we ended up doing was basically ChatGPT. We felt it was actually the best tool because of its flexibility and because they then allowed you to build GPTs. So we’ve got ChatGPT Teams. We ended up building a growing, and still building, a growing family of bots or assistants. They’re not really bots. They’re a growing family of GPT assistants. They’ve each got their own name, profile picture, personality, tone of voice, and, most importantly, they serve a different function within the agency.
I’ll give you some examples. So we’ve built a bot, or not really a bot, Echo. It’s called Echo. He helps with that voice of customer language aggregating that I mentioned. We used to do that manually, and now he’s very good at review mining, whipping through all these reviews or survey data, pulling out the voice of customer language, pulling it into a table. We’ve trained him to do a certain task, much like an employee.
We’ve got Lensy, who’s been trained on our 13 Lenses framework. She will score our copy and content and see if we’ve missed anything before we send it over to a client.
You still need a human in the loop. That’s really important with Lensy, with Echo, with all of them. That’s because of the fact that they are, by nature, hallucinatory. They hallucinate. It comes back to that variability thing. Generative AI hallucinates. It’s kind of better for softer things rather than hard data, but it’s still allowing us to speed up and augment quite a lot of different tasks and things, especially the bits we don’t like, like doing a handover.
So I’m in charge of the business development side of things, getting the client win in, and then my colleague Becky and I have to create a really thorough handover to give to the client services team. That’s sort of administrative, but you have to think, “Right, from emails, pull the right information in.”
Now we just pop the transcripts in, and then we’ve got Handy. We built Handy last week, literally Handy. He’s carrying a little briefing sheet, and it’s got big hands. They’re all like 1950s-style. He fills out the table for us, and then we just look through, spot the gaps, and fill in the gaps.
Again, it halves the amount of time it takes to do that task, which is brilliant because it means we can focus on other things, more creative things.
So it’s supplementary or complementary tools rather than a replacing tool. It’s not replacing.
But again, there are still lots of people using it, I’d say, not quite in the right way and sort of replacing copywriters, or trying to. Naturally, freelancers, I’m sure, have found it difficult, especially newbies getting into the industry where maybe the content they’re creating, they would charge less for, and perhaps the companies they’d be working for can get a similar standard of quality with ChatGPT.

so Leanne Maskell’s episode was my most listened to episode of the season by a long, long, long way.
Now Leanne is an ADHD coach, and so we talked very frankly about ADHD and what it meant. It was also, I think, my longest episode because, like classic ADHD, we just kind of let the camera roll and we didn’t really pay attention to the time.
I’m not someone who’s openly announced that I have ADHD or anything like that, but for those of you who know me, the signs are very clearly there. I don’t like to embrace labels very much, and I found it really difficult to deal with a lot of stuff about it out there because there’s so much hype around ADHD.
Whilst I think so much of it is great because of the awareness around it, I think a lot of it is kind of making us fixate on it. We already hyperfocus on stuff, but it makes us fixate on it, and it makes us kind of almost get into a victim mindset and use the diagnosis as an excuse for certain things, which I don’t like.
But this episode gave me so much hope, and I feel like it’s because I didn’t feel as weird anymore. There were certain things I do, certain ways my brain works, that I always felt like I was different and I was strange for. Now I know that it’s just a neurodivergent trait, and there were so many other people who feel the same way, have the same struggles. It didn’t make me feel as alone.
I think that’s why the episode was so popular because there were probably so many other people who feel the same way, and it really, really helped them.
So huge shout-out to Leanne because she’s been amazing as well, even as a friend, and I think I’m so grateful to have had her on the episode. I know that so many other people with ADHD also feel the same way.
You know, the accountability things, I want to get again touch on that because I think what I want to get out to everyone out there with ADHD, or people who are going through something they think is ADHD and they’re not sure about, we’re going to talk about all this stuff, but I really want to do the little things because I think so many people offer this big generic advice, but they don’t really get into actual…
Yeah, and it’s like, okay great, that sounds… yeah, that sounds exactly…
But you. So I’m like, right, okay, so you finished it in a week. What was it? What actually was it like? Was it the accountability?
Yes, it was that. That was it. I was like, “Oh my God, this one has told me that she’s going to read my book, and I’ve told her I’m going to finish it in a week, and now I must finish it in a week.”
Okay, so is that…
I think, because I love the accountability part, I was so stressed.
That’s why coaching is so effective to people with ADHD because it’s like people-pleasing to yourself for your own benefit. So it’s really, really effective for us because there’s a 30% developmental delay in executive functioning skills of ADHD, and particularly self-awareness.
That self-awareness part is why we struggle to do what we know. So if you’ve got someone that can be your body double, like your coach, your accountability partner…
God, I had this morning, like I’ve had a really bad burnout week. Really, really bad. Yesterday I had a huge kind of meltdown, and this morning I went to a personal trainer. Really randomly, they emailed me and offered me a free thing.
Then I went and was like, “I don’t exercise. I don’t leave the house at all. I don’t do anything.” I was like, “This is really going to be really good though.”
This is like a coach for your body.
He was like, “Yeah.”
I was like, “Oh my God, this is exactly what I need because I really, really struggle to make myself even leave the house, but exercise, get a routine.”
I was like, “Oh, this guy can get me to come to the gym and even just leave the house.”
So I think it’s recognizing that you need other people. That’s why when you mentioned you have those journals, it’s like you can buy all the journals and try all of the routines and habits in the world and be like, “Why isn’t this working?”
But you just have to take it little bit by bit. Do the book one go done. Like marathons into sprints.
Yeah.
And treat it like little hills rather than huge mountains, and stop beating yourself up for never being able to finish anything. Then you’re scrolling on Instagram being like, “Why can everyone else do this thing but not me?”
Just find someone that really gets your brain. I think that is really important.

So on that topic of labels, Charlie Rogers came on the podcast, and he runs a community called the Undefinables. The reason why they’re called Undefinables is because he believes that his community is all about people who want to just be themselves without having to put themselves in a box and label themselves, which I love.
Like I said, I’m struggling with labels, although sometimes I feel like it’s good to identify yourself. Like you said, like I said in the previous clip, you feel part of that community, and they understand you a bit more, so I think that’s great.
But I love that it is all about looking beyond those labels, you know, and he has some great points about it.
I also think that what I really admired about him was the fact that he is now a Team GB athlete, and he went from being the worst in his running club to running for Team GB. Like, who does that?
It was his whole story. Please listen to it because he was amazing. His whole story and his determination and grit and dedication and just amazing mentality made me think you can do anything you set your mind to. You could be the worst at something and become the best at something with just the right mindset, skill, and dedication to the cause.
It just gave me a lot of inspiration to really go for things that I really want to do.
So I think the way we see it is we see beyond the labels rather than see them as barriers to connection.
Yeah.
For us, that means we all just show up as beings, and we can have those conversations around how the labels are meaningful to us.
One of the exercises we actually did at one of the most recent retreats that I led was all about taking stickers out and writing the labels that we ascribe ourselves to. So we don’t ignore them. They are there, but we see beyond them, and that’s the key. They are things that we can see as part of ourselves, but I think when you see them as your whole identity, that becomes quite challenging because you’re then limiting your world perspective to that single identity as well.
One of the key questions we ask those who want to join our community is, “When’s the time that you had to give up a previous mission that you had?”
That often relates to the identity piece of, “Oh, I thought I was a founder, and then I realized actually I just am much better as the second person, and I just love helping people.”
That’s one story we’ve heard. We’ve heard many, and I think it’s really interesting when people have let go of a previous self.
I mean, myself, I’ve closed two businesses already. When you let go of things, you can kind of outgrow them, become bigger than you were before while keeping the themes of what made you successful in the first place.
I often think that is a huge sign of maturity, being able to do that because you can see it’s not just my perspective right now that matters. There are other ones that also exist, and they’re also correct too. We can both say things that are true but have very different perspectives.
Yeah.
That can lead to much greater conversation, and I think that in the world today is what we need a lot more of. It’s not just tribal, “I’m this, you’re that, let’s just clash.” It’s instead, “No, we’re both human beings. Let’s find our common ground, and let’s talk about things in a way that we can actually understand each other.”
Yeah, I totally agree with that because I feel like the labels now are hindering people and actually causing more harm than good in some ways.
I totally agree that we need awareness. I totally agree that there need to be proud advocates for certain labels, 100%, and people to talk about it, and I definitely agree with that.
But I do also think that if you just define yourself too narrowly, it holds you back and restricts you.
Take, for example, some people talk about me as a black woman. Can I talk about some of the racial issues that I’ve faced and things like that? But I rarely try to position myself as that.
I actually did create a newsletter once called *The Black Female Boss*. I created this because someone told me to, okay? Someone advised me to, and they said that this is what you need to do. This is the brand that you need to go for.
I didn’t like it, and it just didn’t feel like me.
As I started to do this, I think I started to feel more… I don’t know how to describe it, but I think I was more paranoid about racial issues. I started to think, “Oh, that person… they’re judging me because I’m Black.”
Actually, it wasn’t even there. Paranoia was setting in.
I was like, “Oh my God, they’re being misogynistic.” No, it was nothing to do with that.
But it’s because I took on this identity as *The Black Female Boss* that being that color and being that gender kind of almost hindered me and held me back and made me feel like these were negative things.
I was trying to embrace it for other Black women, whereas I think that you can just be you and, like you said, don’t ignore the labels, but see past that label.
So yes, I am still a Black female boss, but that’s not just all of who I am.

so Pascalle Bergmans is a phenomenal human being. I don’t even know where to begin with her. She’s a former West End star. Oh my God, her voice is beautiful. She didn’t sing in the podcast, but I’ve heard her sing. She’s amazing.
She had a stroke at the age of about 22 and, wow, you would never think it listening to her. But instead of letting it destroy her life, she transformed her life. Now she helps coach people about public speaking.
I’ve been a professional public speaker for a long time, so you wouldn’t think there was tons of stuff that I picked up in this podcast, but there was. I think one of the things that really stood out for me was the importance of having a signature talk.
Like I said, I’ve been doing public speaking for several years, but I don’t have a signature talk. I think this is because I do so many things, and I have always considered myself to be multifaceted. I almost brand myself as that, so I’m like, “I can’t put myself into a box,” like I said earlier about labels.
I felt like I never had that signature talk, which I think has actually made it more difficult for me to land as many lucrative speaking jobs as she does for her clients. This was a big takeaway for me.
I think anyone who is interested in doing public speaking needs to listen to this episode. You need to speak to Pascalle because she has some great insights.
Like I said, I’ve been getting paid for public speaking for years, but not the amount I should be getting paid. I think for 2025, I’m now going to craft a signature talk, and I’m going to practice it. I’m going to get known for it under her advice.
I think this has been an amazing takeaway, so definitely tune in and ask her for some advice.
Public speaking doesn’t just become a nice way to network and get new clients. It becomes part of your services.
For example, I have one-to-one coaching, I have group coaching, and I have public speaking. Public speaking is an actual service that people pay for. There’s VAT on that and everything needs to be covered.
That’s the first thing.
Then we need to know what you’re going to talk about. Instead of thinking, “Okay, I’m going to get paid,” let’s make you a signature talk.
What’s the talk you’re going to be known for?
Why that talk?
For example, personal branding is a big thing, right? Everybody’s a personal brand guru at the moment, and I work with quite a few of them. All of them get asked to speak at different events because it’s important that even though you’re doing something that everybody else is doing, people know why they should book you.
Niche down.
I said this to you earlier. Do you want to be the buffet or the steakhouse?
I heard this on another podcast, and I can’t remember the name of the guy, but it was such a good analogy.
If I’m going to book you, I need to know why I’m booking you. Because I want a no-bullshit approach to entrepreneurship, for example.
When people book me, they know they’re going to get sparkles on their stage. They know they’re going to have someone who swears on stage. They know they’re going to have somebody who’s going to explain how communication works.
My whole thing is communication.
You need to be known for one thing.
First of all, start thinking about what is the thing you want to be known for.
If that’s personal branding, then personal branding for what?
Personal branding for legal professionals?
Personal branding for people who have never been online before?
What is your unique selling point on a certain topic?
Because there are lots of public speaking coaches out there. I’m not the only one, thank God, because everybody needs something different.
But I bring a very specific thing to the table, just like all of those other people do.
Don’t be afraid to stand out.
Don’t be a buffet where we have a little bit of everything. It’s like you don’t really know what you want because there’s too much choice.
Be the steakhouse.
If we’re going out because we really want a steak, you’re going to go to the steakhouse because they’re known for their steak. You’re not going to go to a buffet for an amazing steak.
So don’t be afraid to niche down.
People then say, “But I also want to talk about this, and I want to talk about that.”
That’s okay. You will get a chance to talk about those things.
Even though my main thing is public speaking and how to get paid speaking gigs, that’s my number one talk. I get booked for that one all the time.
But I also get booked to talk about communication in the workplace, leadership—even though I’ve never led a team in my life—and I get asked to talk about my stroke.
I still get all of these other speaking opportunities as well, but I’m known for this one thing, and that has massively helped me increase my speaking gigs.
Once you have that signature talk, test it out.
This is when you do your talks for free because the only way you’re going to figure out if it’s going to land is by actually having an audience.
If you think you’ve got a really funny story but nobody laughs, you’re going to think, “Okay, let’s try that again.”
Another good thing is talking to friends and saying, “Hey, I’ve got this part in my talk that I want to add. What do you think of this little story?”
If they say, “Yeah, I love this,” great.
If they say, “It’s too much,” then don’t do it.
Test that signature talk out.
Do it on a podcast.
Do it on a podcast.

So Richard Moore is an absolute guru at LinkedIn and, you know, he constantly shows up on LinkedIn and just gives so much value away to his audience. He’s got this amazing community, and what he does is help people actually convert on LinkedIn. So it’s not just creating LinkedIn content for the sake of it and all that funny personal branding stuff. It’s all about selling and making more money on LinkedIn, which is what most people are here for.
So I loved our episode because he dropped so many knowledge bombs in it. But for me, it was the bit about solving customer problems. He talked about how, you know, when you go into a garage, you just want your car fixed. That’s the customer problem. I just want my car fixed. I just want to know that they’re going to fix my car, fix it well, and do it at a price I can afford.
If the garage is going to talk about all these fancy things that they use, all these tools and methods, I’m like, “I don’t care. I just want my car fixed.”
So I think that’s the thing. A lot of us go on about us and what we do, and all the things that we can do, and the cool tools. But does the customer care? No. They want to see results.
So it’s flipping your content to think about what your customer wants and how you’re going to provide that for them. How are you going to fix their problems? What solutions are you going to provide?
It really made me think about the type of content I’m putting out there and how I speak to customers. There are so many great things in that episode. It’s definitely worth a watch.
Am I speaking to them in the right way?
And here is the biggest blind spot of creators. They assume that the buyer or prospect is solution-aware or even problem-aware.
Now, there’s a famous concept that everyone’s adopted after reading one book on sales. It’s a matrix where prospects are either unaware, problem-aware, or solution-aware. They either have no idea, they know they have a problem, or they know what the solution is. The last group is considered the best because they just want to shop and buy.
Now, what’s missing is the bloated majority of people who sit between the first and second stages. It’s not defined, and it’s completely overlooked.
When I talk about problems, the issue is that the buyer, say a managing director of a six-million-pound company that sells whatever—let’s say a bricks-and-mortar company—isn’t thinking about the problem.
What they are doing is experiencing the symptoms of the problem.
Here’s a nice way to explain it.
I’ve said this a million times online, but if I’ve got a cough and a wheezy chest, I don’t know that I’ve got bronchitis—that’s the problem. I only know the symptoms: a cough and a wheezy chest.
A doctor, an expert, someone who can help me, would know not just my symptoms but also the underlying problem and the solution.
So what we want to do is meet the buyers where they are. We’re adding them to the top of the funnel every day, and then our content, rather than saying, “If I write the word ’10x,’ maybe I’ll get more views,” should focus on understanding the buyer’s inner dialogue.
Sometimes it’s not even an inner dialogue. Sometimes it’s a feeling that represents the symptoms of a problem.
If you can get into their head—and all it takes is ten minutes of quiet thinking—ask yourself what kind of feelings they have, what frustrations they experience, and what makes them feel fed up.
Because what we’re trying to create is a reaction to your post where they think:
*”I feel seen.”*
Or:
*”Ah, yes. That’s exactly how I would put it.”*
Or:
*”Oh my God, you’re in my head. That’s exactly how I think.”*
You can’t talk about a problem when someone isn’t even considering that they have one.
A managing director who ultimately needs a better personal brand has no idea that they need a better personal brand. They don’t even realize that the problem they’re experiencing could be solved by improving their personal brand.
Instead, what they’re experiencing every day is that everyone overlooks their product. People have conversations with their sales team, and the outcome is always, “We’ll think about it,” but no one is really buying.
They don’t know that a stronger personal brand could make a difference because managing directors or businesses that do things other than personal branding or LinkedIn aren’t thinking about personal branding.
A managing director isn’t sitting there thinking, *”Do you know what? If we had a better personal brand, that would fix everything.”*
That’s problem-aware and solution-aware thinking.
Instead, we’re hoping that this tiny segment of the whole market spectrum is paying attention, and they’re not.

Siddhi Mittal is one of the co-founders of a company called WhyHangry, and these guys are the people who put private chefs in your home for an affordable price. They are incredible. I’ve used them personally, and you really do get the luxury private chef experience for an absolutely ridiculously good price. It’s just a wonderful, wonderful thing.
Now, the things I learned from her were that she came from India and went over to America, but her hustle was just incredible. She put herself out there in so many different places.
So for me, the takeaway was, again, about putting yourself out there. She went to so many different accelerators, joined all these communities, pitched to so many different investors, and networked like absolute crazy in order to build her brand.
Now WhyHangry has secured investment from all these high-end investors. They went on Dragons’ Den, they’ve got all these celebrities investing in the brand, and they’ve got so many people lining up to invest in WhyHangry because she put herself out there, networked with the right people, and showed that she was this incredible person.
So when it came to asking for money and proving that she was good at business, she was able to get that investment so much more easily.
It made me think, right, how do I put myself out there in front of the right people and just not be afraid of getting rejected?
I think the one thing I really want to flag is that we have had so many rejections. The thing is, people only see the wins.
I remember the first thing I applied to was Techstars. Boom—rejected.
I still have that video. It’s so cringe. We’re dancing with spoons in the air, juggling oranges. We made this really funny video for WhyHangry, and Hina and I have sworn never to put it up.
But I think one day we will. It’s such a good video when you’ve come so far and you’re successful because then you can kind of get away with it. But if you failed, it’s like…
Exactly.
Anyway, that happened. Then we got into Google for Startups, which was an equity-free accelerator that actually changed our lives quite a bit.
As a first-time founder and a tech outsider—even though I had worked in artificial intelligence for the past seven years—I had been in trading, so I didn’t know anyone in the world of tech. It’s a huge bridge. Everything is new.
Every little thing, from marketing, Google SEO, Google Analytics, building a product, creating a website, branding, how much to spend on this or that—everything was new.
What the Google for Startups accelerator did was bring together ten women-led startups, and it really forced us to become a proper startup.
We were able to articulate what we were building. We had our first version of the product that looked much better. So that was really great.
Then COVID happened, which was insane.
We then got the opportunity to do Dragons’ Den, and we said, “Yes, yes, yes.”
I think one big thing in our lives has been that we said yes to every shot that we got. You have to take every shot because you’re going to get so many rejections.
I just assume rejection, so I don’t even care. I’ll apply, and if it gets rejected, that’s the base case.
So we did Dragons’ Den, which was really good.
Then COVID kept coming in and out, and life was really crazy in 2021.
Fast forward, Y Combinator happened in 2022.
There were still so many years of COVID, heartache, going in and out of lockdowns, Dragons’ Den, and a lot of other things that happened before that, which were quite difficult.
But we just kept going, made it through, and survived.
Then with YC, it was the same.
We actually had a Halloween photoshoot, and I remember telling Hina, “We really need to apply to this thing. We have to send in something.”
The deadline was 3:00 a.m. London time.
We started at around 12:00.
We came back from the photoshoot, and I was like, “I’m going to make some coffee.”
She went back to her place, and we were both online.
After about two and a half hours—actually, I think it was around 6:00 a.m.—I was like, “Dude, I’m done. I’m so tired.”
But that deadline really forced us to get everything tight and clear.
I also remember that at the Halloween photoshoot, we had a videographer. So we were like, “Just record a quick video of us,” because we had to submit a video file.
We sent it in.
With YC, we got our first call.
Then, after about a month, they wanted to check our P&L again.
We got another call.
But we still didn’t get accepted, which was unusual because I think they were just waiting to see more data points.
Finally, I remember sending them an email saying:
“Look, we’re potentially looking to crowdfund at this valuation. If we do that, we can never accept YC because we’re not going to dilute again. So let us know.”
We actually got accepted the next day.
Now, I don’t want to say causation or correlation, but I really feel that they were waiting to see more and more proof points that the startup could be successful.
There’s a statistic that around 70% of founders who go through YC have applied twice or more because YC wants to see that you’re still at it again and again.
In a way, we were the outlier who got in on the first application, whereas people in our batch had applied five times.
That’s dedication.
So I think the really big lesson for me was: just keep trying.
Always find the back door.
Always do the thing that other people wouldn’t normally do.
It cost us nothing to email YC and say that.
If we hadn’t sent that email, I don’t know—would we have gotten in, or would they have just continued to delay the acceptance?
So I feel like you just have to do the crazy stuff that people wouldn’t normally do because it’s not always the front.

So Lee Chambers is a male ally, and I think when I first heard this term, I didn’t really understand it. But for those who don’t know, it’s a man who stands up for gender equality, discrimination, diversity, inclusion, and all that kind of stuff.
He constantly puts himself out there, speaks up for women’s rights all the time, and gets a lot of hate for it.
The conversation that really struck me was around why we still have these issues in 2024.
It made me think about what he talks about regarding male-led content, especially in the business world.
When you think about how much content you digest, who is it by?
I constantly look for female content creators in business because I’m trying to find inspiration from women who are like me and doing similar things.
But there aren’t that many of us out there.
Men? Oh my God. I’ve found so many men who are doing endless amounts of stuff and constantly putting their advice out there.
Business books are mainly written by men.
But why is this?
I think the problem is that it creates a male-dominated environment. Then you’re naturally hearing advice from men, and it makes the whole environment more masculine as a result.
So the importance of female-led content is more powerful than ever.
This has really inspired me to create more and more content in 2025 because I think women need to have a bigger voice. We can’t do that without more women getting out there, creating content, and having these conversations.
So this is a huge takeaway for me, and it’s really inspired me to put more and more content out there in the business world in 2025.
Lots of things are written and created through the male gaze.
If you look at what men and women consume, women consume about a 50/50 split of male-created, male-led, male-designed content alongside female-created, female-led, and female-designed content.
Men, on the other hand, are more likely to over-index on male-created, male-led, male-designed content.
That means we often don’t read, hear, watch, or listen to things from a female perspective, which means that, generally speaking, we lack some of that gendered intelligence because we just don’t have that second perspective, which can be really powerful.
Ask anyone to look at their bookshelf—especially men.
It’s full of men.
Business books have historically almost always been written by men.
Even the way we operate in business is very male-normative.
That creates a gap before we even realize it.
Secondly, if you think about the stories that have come out about very powerful men in recent times, sometimes they’ve passed away before these stories have reached the point where they needed to because of NDAs and other factors.
But it’s not just one powerful person who’s created this completely toxic trail of destruction.
They’re held up by an entire system and structure around them that has allowed them to facilitate that abuse for years.
It’s really sad that it doesn’t come out when it’s one woman speaking up.
It often takes ten women reporting it before it’s even taken seriously.
We’re in a world where not only is content consumption skewed, but the history books are too.
If you look at history books, they literally are *his story*.
They’re full of headshots of men who created things, drove innovation, started wars, broke records, and built empires.
Where are the women in the history books?
Unless there was a queen, they were often portrayed as either a mistress or a witch—and probably got beheaded.
It sets an example of who gets listened to and who gets platformed.
That still exists in society today.
Women are simply less likely to be listened to, less likely to be believed, and less likely to be taken seriously.
That’s ingrained into all of us, including women themselves, because we all swim in the same sea that has been created for us.
If you look back at some of the things that were on television or in newspapers when we were children, you look at them now and think, *”Jeez.”*
But that’s what we were surrounded by.
Our parents talked about those kinds of things.
Those were the rivers we swam in, and all of that water has been absorbed into us.
That’s part of who we are.
We’ve all got lots of internalized beliefs and biases that we actively need to work on.

So Alicia Richardson is the founder of Black Create Connect, which is a community that helps Black creators get jobs in the marketplace. It’s been an amazing community that helps Black creators support each other.
The biggest takeaways I took from Alicia’s episode were around the future of content creation. We talked a lot about what that looks like going forward, and she was saying how important it is to just be as real as possible. Obviously, I believe in this, which is why I’m talking about no bullshit all the time. I’m trying to show both sides of the spectrum when it comes to entrepreneurship.
She was saying that this is going to be even more true in 2025. The type of content that’s doing well is less of the chiseled, polished stuff now. It’s more of the real stuff—people just talking to their cameras, unedited, really raw, and unfiltered—because people relate to people who are just being real.
It’s less scripted and requires less production value, which is great to hear for those who have lower budgets. I just started thinking about what that means because she’s also talking about influencers. She even has an agency now that uses influencers to advertise jobs, and that’s doing so well.
Again, it’s like, wow, influencers are really, really influential, and they’re probably going to be used even more in the coming months. I just thought this is my sign to go all in on content. Everything I’ve been saying is about going all in on content because I really think that this is where the industry is going.
Because I’m already all about no bullshit, showing up as myself, being less scripted, and using less production value, I think more people are going to relate to it. I think I could really make a difference in this niche of entrepreneurship by showing up as someone who talks honestly and actually shows both sides of what it’s like running a business.
I just need to do more of that in 2025.
Do you know what’s interesting? With influencers and content creators, a lot of them have built their platforms around ego and making themselves the star of the show.
Some of my TikTok creators ask me about this during our one-to-one calls, and I tell them, “You have to put your viewers and your audience first.”
If you’re not connecting with them, if you’re not trying to get to know them, if you’re not trying to add value to them, and it’s all about you, you will lose traction. It’s not sustainable.
I tell them, “I don’t know if you’re here for the short term or the long term, but my philosophy is that anything you do should ideally be long term. It might change along the way, but it needs to be long term.”
I’ve been telling all of the content creators we’re working with that they need to think about what their audience wants. They come with all these great ideas that are all about themselves because they want this or that, but if your audience wants Q&As and wants to get to know you, then do that.
If you really want to be a content creator who’s honest and transparent, ask yourself what it is they want to see from you.
I’m even having to push myself out of that comfort zone because a lot of people in the community have said to me, “We want to hear more about you, your story, and your background.”
I’m always interviewing people, doing events, and just jumping in and out of things. I’m listening to that feedback and thinking, “Okay, how can I do that in a way that’s manageable and consistent?”
Working with content creators is hard work, but my whole message is straightforward. Every content creator I meet, whether I work with them or not, has to think about the bigger picture. If you’re adding value to a wide audience, you don’t have to worry too much about trying too hard because you’re valuable.
The reason why people like Melissa’s Wardrobe, for example, have grown such influential platforms is because they give people genuine fashion advice. I’m not going to lie—I really look up to her and her brand because she’s managed to grow her influence by being honest with her audience about what works. She also talks about affordable things, if that makes sense.
People resonate with honesty. They resonate with things that are real. Even when we say, “You know what? I tried this whole thing and it didn’t work. It didn’t make money. This did make money though, and props to this person for that.” People just resonate with honesty.
Natalie: Yeah, and value.
Alicia: Exactly.
Natalie: For me, when I think about all the influencers out there, so much of it is fake. People compare themselves to these creators all the time, and so much of it isn’t real.
If you look at the ones who are actually shining through, they’re the ones being the most authentic. People are so sick of the perfect, polished stuff.
Honestly, when I see people’s homes, I’m like, “Do you not actually live in them?” If you notice influencer homes, there’s nothing anywhere. Everything is spotlessly clean all the time. There’s not even a cup on the table.
I’m just like, “Do you not drink coffee?” because I see a video of you making coffee every single day, but there are no cups anywhere.
Everything is so pristine. They don’t have anything lying around. It’s nice having a clean home—don’t get me wrong. My place isn’t that messy—but it’s lived in. There are things everywhere, so it doesn’t look like a showroom every time I film content.
They basically live in a showroom, and it’s quite depressing. When I speak to content creators, they tell me, “We can’t actually live properly in our home because we have to keep a whole area just for content.” They’ll say, “One room isn’t even allowed to be used.”
I’m like, “This is a weird way to live.”
Even those “day in the life” videos aren’t real. Most of them are filmed over five different days.
Please, just be realistic.
Let me be honest with you.

So Katie Street was our last podcast guest for this season, and she runs an agency called Street Agency, named after herself. It’s all about getting B2B leads, so in non-jargon terms, that just means getting more customers for businesses.
She does it with a human-led approach. She’s all about being human, running events, and doing a lot more in-person activities. Brands are really embracing this, and she’s saying that this is where everything is heading now. People want more in-person, human interactions. They’re tired of AI, webinars, and always being at a distance from other people. They want real experiences.
Again, it’s reinforcing what I’m trying to do with No Bullsh*t Talks—bringing face-to-face interactions back, doing more in-person events, having real conversations rather than scripted ones, and creating genuine connections. This is clearly where everything is going, and I think it’s a great sign for what’s coming up in 2025.
“Every single event and everything we do is a content capture opportunity, and it’s very much person-first. We’re doing talking-head interviews. Obviously, we record the panels as well, but a lot of the time it’s just really lovely, human-centered, two-camera, nice, raw-ish content that really brings the people and the experts to life. It’s very much thought leadership-led.
You know how to do this. You have some kind of hook that gets people interested and makes them want to continue listening. We do SlideShares occasionally, but it’s much less designed content and much more human-centered content because, in a world where AI is creating everything and everything is fake, the only thing that is real is in-person events. That’s the only thing that’s real.
That is why, when you post content on LinkedIn, like we were saying earlier, if I create a video in my bathroom with no makeup on and I’m just doing something really quick to camera, people can see that it’s real. That performs way better than the polished content I’ve spent hours, if not weeks, creating because people want authentic, real content. Everything else is fake.”
“Yeah, and every person who’s ever created a video resonates with that. They spend hours, days, weeks, or even months on a video thinking, ‘This is going to go viral. It’s so good. I’ve put all my heart and soul into it—blood, sweat, and tears.’ Then it just flops because people scroll past it. They think, ‘Oh, it’s another perfectly polished video,’ or now they wonder, ‘Is it an AI video? Is it all fake?’ They can’t tell anymore.
High-production quality content is harder to relate to. On the other hand, if you just get up and record a quick video while walking down the street because you’ve got something to say, that reaches way more people because it’s so real. Everyone can do that, and everyone can relate to it.
I’m obviously a massive advocate for in-person interactions. I’ve been preaching my ‘Go, Go, Go’ philosophy.”
“Go on.”
“I’m like, ‘Go, Go, Go’ is my new way of doing business.”
“So what does that mean?”
“You’ve got to Get Out, Get Offline, and Gain Opportunities.”
“That is amazing.”
“I know! So I’m like, actually—Get Out, Get Offline, and Gain Opportunities. In person. In person. In person. So it’s Go, Go, Go.”
“That’s amazing. I wish I’d thought of that.”
“Stealing it now?”
“Yeah, we know who started this.”
So that was a very long episode recapping everything that happened in Season 2 of No Bullsh*t Talks.
I just want to say a massive thank you to everyone who’s tuned in this year, whether you’ve been listening on podcasts, watching on YouTube, or tuning in on Spotify.
As I said, we hit 50,000 streams on Spotify this year, along with many more across podcast platforms and YouTube, plus all the reach we’ve had on social media.
I just want to say a huge thank you to everyone who’s listening. You mean the world to me.
If you’ve really enjoyed this podcast, please like and subscribe below, and leave a review wherever you’re listening. It really, really helps.
Also, let me know what you want for Season 3 because we’re coming back bigger and better. We’re going to have even bigger guests and even more no bullshit.
It’s shown me that people want real conversations about real topics, and I’ll continue to have them.
Please drop me a message about what you’ve loved about the show, what your favorite takeaway was, and what your personal takeaways were from each episode as well.
Thank you so much, and I’ll see you in Season 3.
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