Bulletproof Entrepreneur

Send us Fan Mail Niraj was 30, healthy and getting ready for work when a stroke put him on the bathroom floor and eventually into the stroke unit at St Mary's Hospital in London.  Fifteen years on, he has built five businesses across property, meditation, sports tech and now M&A, all while carrying two convictions the health scare gave him: that a useful thought beats a true one, and that...

Send us Fan Mail Sam Smith spent 24 years building FinCap from a single desk and a phone into a London-listed investment bank, becoming one of the few women to lead a public financial business in the UK. She bet on small caps when the big banks were running for the exit, kept hiring when her own team thought she was reckless, and walked away at her best year ever. Now she's putting everything...

Send us Fan Mail Martin Lightbody turned a fourth-generation Scottish bakery into the number one celebration-cake supplier to the UK supermarkets, scaling from 50 staff to 1,200 and £60 to 70 million in turnover. Then he sold up, took the whole idea to America, and won the Hershey licence for the entire country. This is the full arc of a career built on one habit: seeing where the market was headi...

Send us Fan Mail James Ashford sold GoProposal to Sage for an eight-figure sum. People hear that and picture a clean line from idea to payday. It took him two decades, several businesses that died along the way, and one moment where he couldn't afford the fee to shut a company down. He started as a wedding magician, walking straight up to the rowdiest table in the room on purpose. What he lea...

Send us Fan Mail Nick Bradley has sat on the other side of the table for more than 50 acquisitions and 27 exits. He knows exactly how private equity firms assess a business, where founders give away their leverage, and why so many walk away from a life-changing deal with far less than they should have. But this conversation is not really about deal mechanics. It is about the journey that got him t...

Send us Fan Mail Anton arrived in the UK with £500 in his pocket. Years later, he founded WealthOS. He recently sold it to one of the world's largest banks. In this episode, Alan sits down with the founder of WealthOS to talk through what the journey from arrival to acquisition actually looked like. We hear about the door-knocking days in suburban Surrey, and the decision to leave a senior co...

Send us Fan Mail Darya Simanovich arrived in London 20 years ago with £300, no contacts, and barely any English. Today she runs two businesses, holds a full-time role supporting small business owners across London, mentors 400 founders a year, and has just published her first book. In this episode, Daria breaks down what 15 businesses across completely different industries actually taught her abou...

Send us Fan Mail Ian has spent 45 years in the music industry, managing Simply Red, Simple Minds, The Pretenders, and Suede. He started at 17 with a boot full of vinyl and a two-litre Cortina, driving 1,200 miles a week as a sales rep.  He went on to oversee the biggest self-released album in history - Simply Red's Home , which outsold most Taylor Swift records and still holds the record toda...

Send us Fan Mail Neil Osmond never set out to be an entrepreneur. He was a pharma executive with a steady job, a young family, and no savings when a friend showed him something on a computer that he couldn't stop thinking about.  What followed was a 15-year journey - mapping the London Olympics, pivoting into healthcare, nearly running a glorified lifestyle business, and eventually selling Ea...

Send us Fan Mail He survived a bomb at four years old. Lost everything in his thirties. Then built a group of companies employing nearly 100 people and sold his media business for 32 x  EBITDA. I sat down with Belfast-born entrepreneur Andrew Scott for one of the most honest conversations about failure, resilience, and reinvention you’ll hear anywhere. Andrew shares the full story -  from growing...

Send us Fan Mail Scott Ellam started with a £13,000 basic salary, cold-called his way into closing a company acquisition at 22, and then built a thriving international executive search firm from his kitchen in 2014. Then he did something almost no UK founder has done - he put Bitcoin on his business balance sheet, and then took the whole thing public - listing it on the stock market. In this episo...

Send us Fan Mail Episode Overview Rachel Murphy sold her company during lockdown. While building the national COVID-19 digital service. Without ever meeting the buyers in person. This conversation is equal parts masterclass and madness - covering everything from selling timeshare at 13, to negotiating 50% equity in a struggling business, to achieving an eight-figure exit in under three years, to w...

Send us Fan Mail The Autumn Budget landed last week -  and while the headlines were busy talking about ‘black holes,’ and ‘fairness,’ the fine print tells a very different story. Nimesh Shah, The CEO of leading tax advisers, Blick Rothenberg didn’t mince words calling it “the most damaging Budget in living memory” If you own a business, if you’re scaling your company, or if you’re even thinking ab...

Send us Fan Mail  What if your business isn’t worth what you think it is? What if it’s less than you think? What is it’s more? Here’s the uncomfortable truth: most owner-managed businesses never sell. Not because the founders are lazy or stupid…But because the business just isn’t sellable in the eyes of a buyer. So Today, we’re fixing that. I’m joined by Graham Stephen, CEO and co-founder of a com...

Send us Fan Mail Today on The Bulletproof Entrepreneur, you’re going to hear from a man whose story is almost impossible to compress into a single sentence -  because it’s part grit, part luck, part audacity… and entirely remarkable. Sir Tom Hunter grew up in the small Scottish mining village of New Cumnock, where his father ran the local grocery shop. It was there -  stacking shelves, serving nei...

Send us Fan Mail Today on The Bulletproof Entrepreneur, I’m joined by Brian Hill — ex-soldier, endurance athlete, entrepreneur, and the founder of a business called Pathfinders. Brian’s also just published a fantastic new book called Everyone Exits, which is a step-by-step blueprint for business owners who are scaling towards a successful sale.  I read it before we recorded this conversation and I...

Send us Fan Mail My guest today is someone whose story is nothing short of remarkable. From a tough upbringing on a council estate in Oxford to building one of the UK’s most disruptive property management companies -  and ultimately achieving an eight-figure exit before the age of 40 - Andrew Hulbert’s journey is one of grit, growth, and gratitude. His story begins with a choice he made as a 16-ye...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome back to the Bulletproof  Entrepreneur podcast - reverse engineering your successful business scale, sale and life on the other side. What I’ve learned over the years is that not every founder wants to sell up and exit their business completely - some prefer to take some ‘chips off the table’ and go again to make the most of the opportunities they see. That's where tod...

Send us Fan Mail What does it take to risk everything — your home, your family’s security, and even walk away from a million-pound payday — in pursuit of something bigger? In this episode of The Bulletproof Entrepreneur , Phil shares the raw truth behind decades of building, selling, and reinventing businesses. From sleeping on an office couch to securing one of the UK’s biggest fintech exits, his...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome back to the Bulletproof Entrepreneur podcast We’ve got a fantastic episode, which turned out to be a masterclass in resilience, reinvention, and the real story of entrepreneurship. My guest today is Gary Abela.  Gary grew up in a family of hoteliers, and he was serving breakfast in the family hotel in London’s King’s Cross at the age of seven.  After uni, he secured a job...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome back to The Bulletproof Entrepreneur, the podcast where we explore what it really takes to build, grow, and successfully exit your business. The podcast is designed to be a helpful resource for business owners as they navigate the challenges of scaling their businesses. One area I’ve been spending time on recently is managing cash within your company's balance sheet....

Send us Fan Mail Welcome back to The Bulletproof Entrepreneur, the podcast that gives you the mindset, strategies, and tools to build a resilient business and thrive under pressure. Today, I’m joined by a true pioneer in the world of food entrepreneurship – John Stapleton. John is best known as the co-founder of The New Covent Garden Soup Company, where he didn’t just launch a product; he created...

Send us Fan Mail If you're a business owner or in a leadership role, this episode could genuinely change how you think about running and growing your company. My guest is Mike Paton, an entrepreneur and author who is one of the driving forces behind EOS—the entrepreneurial operating system We implemented EOS at my firm, Capital Partners, a few years ago, and it was truly transformative. So ge...

Send us Fan Mail The pod's strapline is "reverse engineering the formula for successful scale, sale, exit, and life on the other side," and that's exactly what we discuss in this episode—strategically reverse engineering success.  My guest today is Damian Connolly, the founder of a boutique accountancy business that focuses specifically on getting founders exit-ready and maximi...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome back to the latest episode of the Bulletproof Entrepreneur podcast. I’m your host Alan Smith and right from day one my goal for this pod was to provide a valuable resource for all UK founders and business owners. And therefore I’m delighted today to bring you a masterclass in tax planning from one of the UK’s leading lights in tax advice for successful business owners. Mal...