Honey, I Blew Up The Business

Lisa Leighton is a Joint Managing Partner at BHP, one of the UK’s largest independent Accounting firms and ranked the second-best firm to work for. But Lisa is the opposite of the accountant stereotype - she’s fun, creative and joyful. Coming from solidly working class roots she navigated an early personal trauma which could have hobbled her career before it began. But the work ethic which took he...

Georgia Kirke is the founder of Write Business Results, author, podcaster, public speaker, and winner of The Ultimate Entrepreneur 2021. While we all had a ‘bump’ in 2020, Georgia got the proper job. In January that year she fell off a rock-climbing wall with her foot stuck in it. Resulting in a gruesome - life changing - injury. Stuck immobile in a hospital bed, in severe pain, she was facing the...

Jo Dalton is a founder, investor and trusted advisor to europe’s most exciting startups (aka those fabled “unicorns”). Frustrated by industry ethics during her early career as a headhunter, she decided to take the executive search industry “and blow it up a bit”. But she was a single mother with no office and limited resources - early days she describes as “really dark”. This was while working in...

Alex Myers is the Founder and CEO of Manifest Group, “the world’s first global small agency”. Manifest has won International Agency Of The Year two years in a row and in 2020 Alex was named Global PR Professional Of The Year. He was a key part of the team that helped Brewdog become a global brand. But one time - at a Simon Sinek talk - Alex bumped into Dan and let slip he’d narrowly missed a busin...

Olivia Sibony was listed in the UK’s Top Ten Women Entrepreneurs in 2019 and has been described as a “trailblazing ethical investment champion”. But blazing a trail has come at a cost. Overcoming severe corporate burnout, she launched a business to change the world. Only to find that her social purpose business began to lose it’s social purpose when things got tough. What was more important: her b...

Richard Jeffrey is a master of growth. Not only for his own business, but in helping other entrepreneurs start and scale on a regional and national level. After some turmoil in his early public-sector career Richard was offered the chance to build a business on behalf of The Growth Company (a 1300-strong social enterprise in Greater Manchester). The business he launched - Business Growth Hub - gre...

Mark Stringer aka “Strings” is a London PR scene legend, with a string of successful companies (from PR, to events…to absinthe). But his hot-shot early career hit a rude reality check: one time at a bus stop, he couldn't get any money from the ATM and had to walk home. This ego-busting moment forced him to open up, and has fuelled a career-building self belief. He is now co-founder of SKOOT,...

In 2015 Peter Sage was named alongside Elon Musk as one of the world’s greatest leaders and entrepreneurs. But two years later he was locked up in the UK’s most violent prison, even though he hadn't committed a crime. He was there for 6 months. Peter has built multiple 8 figure companies and had multiple #1 best-selling books. He’s a globally renowned speaker - 6x at TEDx - and transformation...

Lou Cordwell never wanted to be “an entrepreneur” but ended up with an OBE for services to the creative and digital economy. Over the last two decades she’s led digital design agency magneticNorth to become a globally renowned pioneer. But it wasn't a straight line...only 6 months in she had to confront “what felt like a divorce”. Plus she faced the mix of motherhood while looking after The B...

An entrepreneur since 21, Joseph Pack rapidly built a social media agency with clients like Adidas and the NHS. The new car, weekend partying, nice clothes, and social media success became too much to handle as he knew that “it was all fake, a lie”. 10 strong coffees every day and a 12 hour workday became a recipe for disaster. At 26, Joe nearly died after a series of surprise seizures. Yet he cla...

Katy Baxter has been a pioneer in financial services for over 30 years, building a substantial family business and international jet-setting career as the former UK Chair of the ‘Million Dollar Round Table’. Yet coming out of lockdown she is starting afresh with a new business. So what prompted this radical change...and how has she handled it all? During the episode, Katy will outline how the comp...

An entrepreneur since selling cigarettes at University in the late 90s, Mark Bryant spent 15 years in the energy efficiency industry - owning and managing companies from £1m to £15m. After overcoming a 2012 business meltdown (involving fraud and HMRC investigations) and building back the business he was flying high. Then the real disaster struck: a 2015 cancer diagnosis and 6 months to live. Yet 6...

Alan has gone from getting bullied in school to becoming a successful bodybuilder, training the athletes that once upon a time... bullied him! In the mid-90s, Alan learnt how hypnotherapy could “make people believe they’re Rocky Balboa” and incorporated this into his training. Alan owns and operates one of the world’s toughest endurance events: “The Race Around Ireland” (a 2200km cycling route to...

Dr Marilyn Comrie OBE is a pioneer for positive change and a serial social entrepreneur. In 2009, she was honoured by HRH The Queen with an OBE for services to women's enterprise. But in 2013, a bomb blast stopped her relocation from the UK to Kenya, where she was expecting to live the “glorious expat lifestyle”. Embarking on a business mission with her sons she has had to confront malicious...

In this episode of Honey I Blew Up The Business, Dan is joined by Adah Parris, an entrepreneur and artist. We talk about reinventing our careers...but Adah had to literally reinvent herself. In 1991 she suffered complete memory loss after a super-dramatic car crash in the USA (seriously, it’s like a movie scene). We cover workaholism, saying “no” and chasing other people’s versions of success. Ada...

In this episode of Honey I Blew Up The Business, Dan is joined by Gavin J Gallagher, real estate mogul & executive director at Earlsfort Group. During the 2008 financial crash, Gavin went from owning a multi-million dollar real estate portfolio to €16 million in debt. Now, in his late 40’s with 5 kids and a lifetime of experience, Gavin has an entirely different outlook on life than he did in...

In this episode of Honey I Blew Up The Business Dan is joined by Mike Lander, CEO at Piscari and one of London’s leading dealmakers. He’s negotiated hundreds of deals worth over £400m in aggregate and bootstrapped businesses which he sold for 7 figures. At Piscari, Mike helps smaller companies negotiate better deals with big companies. He co-hosts the “It’s a Good Start” podcast where he discusses...

In this episode of Honey I Blew Up The Business, Dan is joined by Paul Mort, Leader Of Men at Unstoppable, UK Mastercoach of the Year (for 2019 AND 2020), International Speaker and author of “F*cking Unstoppable - the modern man’s guide to grabbing life by the balls”. He’s the host of the podcast “Paul Mort Talks Sh*t” (where he’s interviewed Tyson Fury and Ant Middleton) and his one man show is a...

In this episode of Honey I Blew Up The Business, Dan is joined by David Braithwaite, Director and Principal Financial Adviser at Citrus Financial Management. David runs a portfolio of businesses under the Citrus brand, specialising in working with people with a media profile. He’s a bit of a media personality himself, hosting his own BBC Radio show and having literally toured the world speaking to...

In this episode Dan is joined by Pip Wilson, Co-founder and CEO at Amicable. Pip is a successful serial tech entrepreneur since 2002, building IT consultancy Bluefin Solutions to 300 people in four countries before a 2015 exit. Pip is also the deputy chair of the RSA (Royal Society for Arts, Manufactures and Commerce), is passionate about empowering women in tech and was formerly a trustee of The...

In this episode of Honey I Blew Up The Business, Dan is joined by Carl Castledine, CEO at Away Resorts. In this episode, Carl shares stories about ways of working which burnt him out, re-discovering your inner artist and cultivating compassion as a leader. Carl shares how the challenges of the pandemic have challenged him to take a step back and examine what’s really important. This greater awaren...

In this episode of Honey I Blew Up The Business, Dan is joined by Ian Hambleton, one of the UK’s leading creative entrepreneurs. Ian is the CEO of Maze Theory, a Virtual Reality games studio in London which publishes titles for brands like Dr Who and Peaky Blinders. He’s co-founder of carbon reduction startup Ecologi and was also the co-founder of both Studio Output (a top independent design agenc...

In this episode of Honey I Blew Up The Business, Dan is joined by Charlie Reading, an established entrepreneur, award-winning global speaker, chartered financial planner, published author and podcast host. Charlie reflects on the fact that entrepreneurs can’t ignore health in their quest for a work-life balance (you should insure yourself just like you insure your house or mobile phone). Charlie a...

In this episode of Honey I Blew Up The Business, we have a world first! Dan is joined by Geoff Heath OBE - in his inaugural podcast interview - to discuss Geoff's journey from the forefront of the music industry (just how did it feel when Yoko Ono opened the apartment door to meet John Lennon?) to pioneering the video game industry, when it was seen as a crazy new fad. We discover his top thr...

In this episode of Honey I Blew Up The Business, Dan is joined by Scott Morrison, Founder & Bringer Of The Boom! to discuss Scott's journey from the world of big brands to creating his own entrepreneurial future. Scott shares the advice given by his father that heavily influenced this journey, that entrepreneurs must leverage the power of simplicity and why he listened too much to some pe...