Screw It Just DO It with Alex Chisnall

Everyone told him not to do it. He did it anyway. After 28 years building Ink, Simon Leslie found himself at a crossroads. Having steered the business through COVID, he realised something had changed. The passion that had driven him for nearly three decades was no longer there. He didn't have a detailed plan for what came next. But he did have a boyhood dream. He wanted to buy a football club....

What does it take to turn a university side hustle into a multi-million-pound sports brand used by Olympic champions? Chris Rea started out selling onesies from his student bedroom. Fourteen years later, he and his co-founder Tom have built Y1 into an international hockey brand, with athletes competing at the highest levels of the sport. But the journey was far from straightforward. After appearin...

Charles Black had an idea as a teenager that seemed almost impossible. He wanted to put cameras in space and broadcast live views of Earth for everyone to see. The problem? It was around 1990. There was no consumer internet, no streaming technology, broadcasting required government licences, and launching satellites was prohibitively expensive. Everything was against him. But Charles never let go...

Jonny Plein left a comfortable corporate career in his mid-twenties and went from earning around £50,000 to £60,000 a year to paying himself £500 a month to build his first startup. That business, Pouch, went on Dragon's Den, received offers from all five Dragons and was eventually acquired. But just months before the sale, everything nearly disappeared. A £1 million corporate deal collapsed o...

Sabrina Stocker realised she wasn't afraid of hard work. She was simply working hard at the wrong thing. After losing her tennis-events business during lockdown, Sabrina found herself running a new PR company from her local coffee shop. Then she realised: if she could work from there, she could work from anywhere. Within a month she'd sold her car, given up her flat, sold everything and mo...

Kim Antoniou has built businesses, lost a fortune, started again and spent years developing technology that didn't exist when she first had the idea. In this episode of Screw It Just DO It , Kim shares the story behind Auris Tech and Fonetti, the reading platform using voice technology to help children develop their reading confidence and skills. We talk about losing a business, starting again...

Jay Morton wanted Air Troop when he joined the SAS. Instead, he was sent to Mountain Troop. It was the last posting he wanted and, at the time, he was gutted. Looking back, that unwanted decision became one of the defining moments of his life. Mountain Troop introduced Jay to climbing, exploration and adventure, eventually taking him towards Everest and a life in the mountains. What felt like the...

They had the careers most people dream about. Then they moved back in with their parents. Dom and Phil Kwok had followed the conventional path through top universities and prestigious careers in law and finance. Then they walked away. They moved back home, built the first version of EasyA from their childhood bedrooms and spent their early days delivering flyers themselves. At 3am, covered in bike...

Laura Fullerton hated being cold. Then she discovered thousands of people converting chest freezers into DIY ice baths because the product they wanted simply didn't exist. That was her Screw It Just DO It moment. Despite never having built hardware or software before, Laura decided: “I've got to create it.” In this Founder Classic, we revisit Laura's journey building Munk and the reali...

What does more than 50 years in business teach you about knowing when to grow, when to pivot and when to walk away? In this episode of Screw It Just DO It, I sit down with Brad Aspess MBE , founder of Rarewaves , whose career has taken him from the music industry to high-street retail and ultimately global e-commerce. Brad started at Decca Records in 1973, just after they'd lost the Rolling St...

  Thinking about doing something isn't doing it. Planning it isn't doing it. Talking about it isn't doing it. Eventually, you have to do the thing. In this Thursday Founder Classic episode of Screw It Just DO It, Antony “Staz” Stazicker, former Special Forces operator and co-founder of ThruDark, shares his uncompromising philosophy on overcoming hesitation and executing under pressure....

From a £2.30 first insurance policy to building a billion-dollar business. Sten Saar started his first business at just 17 in Estonia. By 21, he had a team of 22 and a business generating around $1 million in revenue. Alongside the success came painful failures. After putting money into projects that collapsed, including money his father had raised against his own home, Sten bought a one-way ticke...

When your old life disappears overnight, what do you build next? In this Thursday Founder Classic episode of Screw It Just DO It, former Royal Marines officer Steve McCulley shares the powerful story of surviving a targeted IED blast in Afghanistan and rebuilding his entire life from scratch. After spending three weeks in an induced coma as the most critical patient in Queen Elizabeth Hospital, St...

How do you know when to abandon the thing that's working to bet everything on something much bigger? In this episode of Screw It Just DO It, Ed Klinger shares the extraordinary, unfiltered story of how he built Flock from a university drone project to an £80 million acquisition by Admiral. After four years of grueling work, Flock had captured 51% of the UK drone insurance market—only to realize th...

Would you walk away from the peak of your career while you were still winning? In this Thursday Founder Classic episode of Screw It Just DO It, former England and British & Irish Lions rugby star George Kruis shares why he made the "ballsy call" to retire at age 32 to go all-in on his wellness brand, fourfive. Instead of waiting for physical decline or retirement to figure out what c...

What happens when you decide to jump off a cliff and start a business at 47 as a single mother of two? In this episode of Screw It Just DO It, Louise Hill, Co-founder of GoHenry, shares the incredible story of turning a simple parenting headache—her kids spending all her money on iTunes—into a fintech powerhouse serving millions of children across the UK and US.Louise reveals the raw, unvarnished...

What does it take to walk away from a 21 year Royal Marines career and bet everything on a business you know almost nothing about? Stephen Howarth, co founder of Jöttnar, shares the story of failing his dream at 17, deliberately toughening himself up at sea, and eventually earning his place in the Royal Marines. Two decades later, he faced a completely different challenge: entrepreneurship. With h...

Kareem Raslan went from working in banking to building a global e-commerce business serving over 100,000 customers across 30 countries. In this episode, Kareem shares how he and his co-founder started by selling just 25 pairs of adjustable dumbbells from his parents’ garage during COVID, scaled through Shopify and Amazon, and eventually expanded across Europe. He explains why taking action matters...

They were already at the top of their sport. Then they removed the safety net. The Athertons had spent decades becoming one of mountain biking's most successful families. But rather than simply continuing with the security of a global bike sponsor, they took an enormous risk: build their own. Atherton Bikes launched in 2019. They developed and raced their own 3D-printed bikes, bought a mountai...

At 17 years old, Thomas Robson-Kanu was told his football career might be over. Instead of accepting it, he researched natural nutrition with his father, created a raw turmeric formula, and went on to play in the Premier League and represent Wales at Euro 2016.When customers started reporting life-changing results from his homemade blend, he decided to launch The Turmeric Co. When manufacturers sa...

Before Deliciously Ella became one of the UK's best-known wellness brands, it was simply a community. In this Founder Classic, Matthew Mills, CEO and co-founder of Deliciously Ella alongside Ella Mills, explains why building trust came before building products—and how putting the community first shaped every stage of the company's growth.

Everyone is talking about AI. But this conversation isn't really about AI. It's about something far more valuable. How founders spot opportunities. How they recover from failure. Why they pivot. And why the best entrepreneurs don't fall in love with their solution—they fall in love with solving a real problem. In this episode Sammy shares lessons from multiple startups, fundraising, sc...

Dom McGregor helped build Social Chain into one of the UK's most talked-about businesses. Behind the success, he was struggling. In this Founder Classic, Dom opens up about addiction, hitting rock bottom, rebuilding his life and why the hardest day he ever experienced ultimately became the most important.

Charlotte Lee and Olivia Bishop didn't set out to build a swimwear brand—they were simply frustrated customers. After struggling to find stylish, high-quality swimwear without paying expensive shipping and import duties, one simple question changed everything: "Why don't we just do it?" In this episode of Screw It Just DO It , they share how they built Toco Swim with no fashion background, while w...

Most people would never walk away from a secure, high-paying career. Piers Linney did exactly that. In this Founder Classic, Piers shares why he left investment banking to become an entrepreneur, how Richard Branson influenced one of the biggest decisions of his life, and why backing yourself is often the hardest—but most rewarding—decision you'll ever make🎟️ Join us at the Festival of Entrepr...