Great Business Stories

I love this story and I kinda love Estee lauder In 1953, she told the world she’d found a secret recipe that she called Youth Dew —gifted by her uncle to a Russian princess. In truth? It was bath oil from an ex-boyfriend's lab. But the scent was sultry, the price was right, and women couldn’t get enough. And Youth dew would go on to pull in $150 million a year. She claimed her father was a Europea...

What if I told you that the greatest cinematic universe of the 21st century almost went out of business because of the views of an influential psychiatrist. Or that in 1996 it went bankrupt because of the reckless ambitions of the guy behind Revlon, the cosmetics brand? And that one of the bondholders during the bankruptcy proceedings included the legendary and feared corporate raider Carl Icahn,...

For all non Irish and UK listeners who mightn’t be aware of Mike Ashely, the billionaire retailer, than you're really in for a treat from alcohol fuelled meetings, to corporate espionage, this story of one of the UK’s most successful businessmen is a cracker, enjoy

This is the story of Palmer Luckey the guy who single handedly kickstarted modern virtual reality barefoot, in a garage, surrounded by a Frankenstein mess of hacked GameCubes and government-surplus headsets. He then sold his 2 year old company to facebook for $2 billion and was then controversially kicked out of Facebook. But he bounced back by founding a defense tech company named after Aragorn’s...

This is such a great story, like the very first Atari product was a wooden cabinet, with two knobs, and a piece of paper stuck onto it that read “Avoid Missing Ball For High Score.” Their first expansion plan involved literally sawing a hole in the wall to steal office space next door.  And what if I told you that the same man who invented modern gaming also created the Chuck E Cheese chain of piz...

Welcome to the story of Yvon Chouinard and Patagonia — a company born in a tin shed, raised on anti-consumerism, and transformed into one of the boldest business experiments of the 21st century. Buckle up.

This is fascinating episode where we do a brief history of diamonds- what are the biggest, most valuable diamonds, and then we dig into some of the key people -how Cecil Rhodes built De Beers into a diamond monopoly, how Ernest Oppenheimer transformed diamonds by more or less inventing the concept of the diamond engagement ring, how Beny Steinmetz  who built a $6 billion fortune has seen that dwin...

I love covering stories where it’s just about how someone does something differently, has a different worldview, and then uses that to have such a big and positive impact. I came across Paul Graham when I read the excellent book The Power Law by Sebastian Mallaby —it’s full of great stories from the world of venture capital. Before I read it, I had heard of Y Combinator, but I’d never dug into its...

What if I told you that one of the biggest insider trading scandals in Wall Street in the 1980s wasn’t orchestrated by a hedge fund titan or a corrupt CEO, but by a charming underpaid journalist for the Wall Street Journal who ruined his ruined his promising career and sullied the reputation of the great Wasll Street Journal- and all for just a few thousand dollars. This is the story of  R. Foster...

It might not sound thrilling, but what if I told you the world’s most feared corporate investigator got his first big break from Spider-Man ? And that this same man would go on to secretly chase billions in plundered wealth across five continents—uncovering Saddam Hussein’s Parisian investment, and billions in missing gold reserves of the fallen Soviet Union? From Wall Street dealmakers, to Pulitz...

I love this story because it’s the story of the American dream. It begins in a tiny Los Angeles storefront started up by a Korean immigrant couple and within a decade, they’ve created an empire. But there’s sweatshop scandals, religion, and a relentless refusal to slow down, leading to 2 bankruptcies, this is the story of how Forever 21 went from defining a generation… to becoming a case study in...

It’s a story that I’ve always wanted to dig into because if you were to tell me that 2 guys who came up with the idea for what became Facebook, had that idea very sneakily more or less stolen from them, would then go on to get involved in bitcoin at a time when it was only worth $13 dollars and predict that it would reach $40,000 and were laughed at by many for that prediction, become the first bi...

In this episode I examine the remarkable rise of Dana White and the UFC- he is without doubt a master marketeer, but there are also some serious question marks over other aspects of his personality.

In this episode we get into the Trevor Milton/Nikola scandal- it's a great story, although it would have been better if he got what he deserved

In this episode I look at some of the best short-selling stories from the inception of short selling in 1609 and all the way up to 2025- we cover the legendary Jesse Livermore, the Piggly Wiggly short sale, the spectacular short pulled by Porsche- and more. It's a cracker of an episode 

Adam Osborne was one of the most important figures in the early years of the personal computer, and yet, I’d never heard of him- he’s an extraordinary figure and it’s a great story- enjoy

The title says it all- in this episode I do a deep dive on Bernie Ecclestone, the controversial F1 supremo for over 40 years.

Subscribe now to access the the longer co-hosted episodes released on the 1st of every month as well as lots of bonus episodes and ad free weekly episodes. Subscribe via Spotify Subscriptions, Apple Subscriptions or on Patreon by clicking on this link or going to patreon.com/greatbusinessstories You’ll find out pretty quickly that both myself and Keith are big fans of Diller- he’s the guy who brou...

this is the story of one of the most remarkable and probably overall talented people we’re ever likely to cover.  A rugby superstar who would go on to lead Heinz for 20 years, become one of the highest paid and most successful CEO’s during that time while at the same time building a media and business empire on the other side of the ocean, who charmed and mixed with global elite, became Ireland’s...

2008 was a monumental year- financial markets collapsed and many countries, including Ireland, where both myself and Keith live, found out pretty quickly that we’d been living in a bubble. And while the impact of this crash affected so many people around the world, I don’t think any other country had such a huge proportion of its citizens affected as adversely as the 370,000 people in Iceland. So...

The WeWork story is one that most of us are familiar with but as you’d expect we go deep into how Nueman was able to raise billions from some of the savviest investors, and from other investors like Softbank, who, as we find out, aren’t very savvy at all. What I love about this story is that as soon as I started digging, I kept coming across facts and figures and quotes from Neuman that just left...

this is such a fascinating story for so many different reasons- we have traders who were found guilty and sent to jail in the UK for a crime that that apparently wasn’t a crime We have senior bankers caught on tape talking about collusion and openly manipulating the interest rates and yet they weren’t even charged and we have regulators who knew everything that was going on who had solid eveidence...

In this episode we dig down into the very beginnings of social media, where MySpace was streets ahead of everyone else. And then Rupert Murdoch, the most famous, the most feared and perhaps one if not the  most successful media tycoons of the 20th century enters the fray and I don’t know about you, but any business story that has Rupert Murdoch in it is going to be a cracker. Article: The Myspace...

Welcome to todays episode "Ackman vs. Icahn: The Herbalife Battle That Shook Wall Street"- now shook might be too strong a word- but it definitely gripped Wall Street and the business media as billionaire hedge funders Bill Ackman and Carl Icahn publicly feuded when Ackman took a short position on Herbalife and Icahn took the other  side of the bet. https://gbspod.com/blog/ackman-vs-icah...

In the episode we look at how 2 very different, diametrically opposed men came together and built a tiny Canadian wireless company into a huge success, and in doing so transformed the way people did business. And Blackberrys weren’t just transformative, they were loved.  The company was just hitting its stride when the rug was pulled from underneath them by Steve Jobs with the launch of the iPhone...