In The Business

Jens Knoop opened the first Knoops in Rye in 2013 with £20K from friends and family and no business plan. When the landlady asked for one, he handed her a hot chocolate. Thirteen years later there are nearly 30 Knoops stores across the UK, the Middle East and the US. We talk about the luxury bag on the Shanghai metro that sparked the idea, the locals who gave it three months, how a LinkedIn messag...

What if the traits that make someone brilliant at making money are the same ones that show up on a psychopath test? Geraint Anderson was selling trinkets on a beach when his brother got him a job in the City. Ten years later he was running the second highest ranked equity team in London, earning £600K to £700K a year and spending, by his own admission, most of it on cocaine and strippers. For four...

Could you go three years without paying yourself? James Noble was a full time golf caddy at Wentworth when he registered the company that became MyFirst, the UK's specialist car insurance broker for learner and young drivers. He had no insurance experience, no money and no track record. What he had was five hours a round with some of the most successful people in the country, and the nerve to...

Varun Bhanot is the founder of Magic AI. After encountering some personal health challenges, he asked the obvious question: why is my gym so analogue when everything else I touch is AI?Five years on, MAGIC sells an AI fitness mirror that uses computer vision to correct your form, count your reps and scan your body composition. The company has won the King's Award for Innovation, launched in the US...

"You don't have a right to feel comfortable." Susie Ashfield coaches founders and public figures out of the thing people fear more than death. In this episode she explains why we freeze, why filler words don't ruin your credibility, and why confidence can be applied like fake tan. Harrison has given exactly one speech in his life. He froze, and Tom had to open the event instead....

Rachel Murphy sold her company for £13.3 million in under 1,000 days. Then she found out what nobody tells you about life after the deal. In this episode Rachel breaks down the reality of exiting a business: why you never walk away with a bag of cash, why 80% of businesses listed for sale never find a buyer, and why most founders are quietly building themselves a very expensive job. She also expla...

Paul Hamilton started Halo in his bedroom. Today it's a £2 billion software company, the world's first fully bootstrapped unicorn, built with no investors, no debt, no sales team and no intention of ever selling. You might also recognise Halo as the front of shirt sponsor of Ipswich Town FC. In this episode Paul breaks down The Halo Way: why he'll never sell or IPO, how his first custo...

Myles Shaw didn't set out to be an entrepreneur. At 23, with his first child on the way, he just needed to find an extra £100 a week. So he started selling SIM cards on eBay for 5p profit a time. That scrappy hunt for a bit of extra cash became runrug.com, now the world's biggest online seller of made to measure hall and stair carpet runners, and part of a Grimsby flooring group turning over milli...

Everyone says AI is taking graduate jobs. Danilo McGarry, who spent 20 years running some of the biggest AI programmes in the world, says the truth is far more uncomfortable: lazy leadership in the boardroom. In this episode Danilo reveals the boardroom politics behind mass job cuts, why AGI could arrive by next summer, what OpenAI's finances really show, why Elon Musk is wrong about universal...

Roei Samuels was nearly thrown out of school at 14. He was selling burned CDs in the schoolyard before most people knew what a side hustle was. Years later he grew the sports media company RealSport to 9.5 million monthly users and engineered the buyer into acquiring the whole business. Then he did something most founders never would: he walked on stage and tried stand up comedy. In this episode R...

They were told they'd never amount to anything. Now they've got 20+ million views on a single video, cleaned a TfL train, and stopped Simon Squibb in the street. The Maka Twins went from being "looked down upon" their whole childhood and getting a Chatterbox award in primary school, to building one of the UK's most-watched cleaning brands, cleaning TfL trains, airplanes and B...

Entrepreneur Tawhid Juneja went from earning £150K/month in healthcare recruitment to cocaine addiction, £2.4M bankruptcy, and 33 months in prison. Now he's rebuilt, owning businesses and football club AFC Welwyn. This is his full story. In this episode of In The Business podcast, Tawhid opens up about growing up with a single mum, building his first recruitment business, how the 2008 recessio...

Ask for anything else and the clue is in the name. Flat White Or F*ck Off is a concept by Rory Sutherland brought to life by Tom Noble, Charlie Hurst, Will and Lucia Sudlow. Serving only one product, the business is a bold experiment in simplicity and provocation. In this episode we speak with the founders about the £27,000 pop up in London, what's next for the brand and why they started this...

Paul Sherratt is the Founder & CEO of GloveGlu , the company behind the world’s first goalkeeper glove grip spray. In this interview, we take Paul back to step one...the moment GloveGlu began. He shares how the idea came to life, the early challenges he faced, and the key lessons learned while scaling the brand into a global business. In The Business is a podcast that takes entrepreneurs and f...

Grace Hardy is a content creator, accountant, bookkeeper, and business owner. In this conversation, she shares why she decided to start her own business and the very first steps she took to launch her company. Timestamps: 00:00 Choosing the Unconventional Path 01:12 The Decision to Start a Business 02:50 Building the Business: First Steps 04:06 Client Acquisition Strategies 07:47 Content Creation...

Raising investment isn’t about having a “cool idea.” It’s about proving you can execute, sell, and build something real without acting entitled or wasting investors’ time. In this episode, angel investor Phil McSweeney (40+ investments; thousands of pitches seen) breaks down what actually gets a yes, what gets you ignored, and the fastest ways founders accidentally sabotage themselves. What you’ll...

Why is it so hard to find an angel investor and what are you doing that makes it harder? In this reddit asks Q&A, Phil McSweeney (angel investor with 40+ investments, mentor/coach to startups, author) answers the questions founders actually ask when they’re trying to raise: where to find angels, when to pitch, how to spot a bad investor, how to think about equity, and what a pitch deck is real...

In this episode, we sit down with Andrew Keith Walker a founder known for seeing the “direction of travel” early. Unpacking what separates real trend-spotters from people who just chase hype. We cover: • How tech disruption really works (and why the winners often come back with a new value proposition, think Rolex, vinyl, print).   • AI: why it matters, and how it will actually show up (embedded i...

What happens when you’re 17, smashing school, and still decide to walk away because the business is growing faster than the timetable? In this episode, we sit down with Finley Hyett, a 17-year-old entrepreneur who dropped out in Year 12 to go all-in on his Cardiff-based digital marketing agency. We unpack the part most people skip: how you earn trust when you’re young, how you build real self-beli...

In this episode, we sit down with Gavin Bell to unpack how he went from solo social media freelancer to building Yatter a paid ads agency he deliberately designed to sell and successfully exiting in just a few years. Gavin breaks down the difference between a lifestyle business and a sellable business, and why most founders say they want an exit but structure their company so nobody would actually...

In this episode, Andrew Hulbert breaks down the real, uncomfortable truth behind his journey. How the working-class upbringing shaped him, the sacrifices that nearly cost him everything, and the relentless mindset required to scale a company faster than anyone around him. He exposes the myths around “work–life balance,” explains why most founders fail before they even start, and shows exactly how...

Unsecured vs secured business loans. What’s the real difference, what do lenders actually care about. In this episode, finance broker Kat Edwards breaks down how business lending works in plain English: What a “good” vs “bad” rate looks like right now, why your personal credit score matters even for a business loan, and the biggest mistake founders make when they’re desperate for funding.  What y...

Giles Denning joins us to break down how he went from nightlife and hospitality to building PerformX Live a 6,000-person fitness business event reshaping the industry. We dive into why he quit alcohol, how he rebuilt his networkfrom scratch, the real mechanics of getting speakers and partners, why most people build events wrong, and why “mental fitness” is so important for modern men. If you’re bu...

In this episode, were joined by Ellis Bennett, owner/director of EA Accountancy, who works with agency owners, young entrepreneurs and startups (around 400 clients) and breaks down the most common questions he hears from people building income on the side. We cover: • When you actually need to file Self Assessment (and the £1,000 trading allowance that catches people out) • What you can claim as e...

In this episode, we sit down with emotional intelligence coach Nick Atzeni to dismantle the lies you tell yourself about how self-aware you are. If you think you can run a business, lead people, or even hold a relationship together without understanding your own emotions, this conversation will expose the gaps you’ve been ignoring. Nick breaks down:• Why you don’t actually listen and how to fix it...