Peer Effect

Dustin is the Founder of Serviss Wealth , a company that provides innovative financial and business advice. But Dustin found himself in a situation where he managed his business better than his life. Today he takes us back to 2014. At the time, he was a firm believer that you couldn’t have a work-life balance, and something had to be given up. Dustin was freshly married and soon after that, he bec...

Mariane is the Founder of Upward, a boutique recruitment agency based in Silicon Valley and specialising in Software Engineering roles in San Francisco, New York, and remotely. She launched it after the learnings of growing her previous engineering team as a CTO to 50 people. Today she takes us back to March 2022. At the time, she was working 100 hours a week, taking care of her young kids, and ha...

Julie is the Founder of Wyseminds , a company that supports early-stage female founders. With a wealth of experience from her previous role, running Specsavers across Northern Europe, Julie is no stranger to business challenges. Today she takes us back to 2008. At the time, she led her company through the Great Recession and spearheaded a business expansion into uncharted territory.  Yet, it was d...

Charlie is the Founder of Remento , which was poised for a groundbreaking product last year. Drawing on his experience as a former speechwriter in the Obama administration, Charlie's journey is a rollercoaster of suspense, high stakes, and critical decisions. We now step into the world of Remento on the Wednesday before Memorial Day, 2022, as the clock counts down to their monumental product...

Chris is the Co-Founder of Class VI Partners , which is a financial advisory firm for founders. They have advised on over $2.5bn worth of deals with the single biggest being half a billion. Picture this: it's 2005, and Chris and his co-founder, armed with ambition and experience, burst onto the investment banking scene, ready to conquer the cutthroat competition. The pressure was on.  The tas...

Chris is the founder of runZero , a cyber asset management company. Chris has been acquired six times, IPO’d once and is one of the few black badge holders of Defcon. Chris had one of his greatest challenges right after college at the start of his career. The whole business was dependent on a key encryption licence which was about to be withdrawn. It would take a year to replace properly. They had...

Libby is the founder of Axioned , in the last 14 years they’ve got 80 people across the UK, the US and India.  Libby lives a life that requires her to be in the UK, the US and India frequently.  Which sounds on paper, but the reality is, it comes with it’s challenges. And this was one of those times.  She was in an unfamiliar place, hadn’t seen her family, including her husband, for a really long...

Ashley co-founded Ice Cream Social which NBC invested in last year.  Like many entrepreneurs, Ashley quit her job to start her own business with a personal goal for work — financial freedom.  After taking on a project she didn’t have the technical ability to do, she found herself at 2 am having a meltdown. She was out of money and time. Ashley had her back against the wall.  She had no support, no...

Natalie Fee is an award-winning founder of City to Sea and 3 times author with a new book just out called “Do Good Get Paid”.  Today, we’re back-peddling all the way to November 2017. Natalie had been running City to Sea for 2 years at this point, and was going hard.  She was Being paid 2 days a week, and volunteering the rest Navigating the pressures of doing a TED Talk In the midst of a breakup ...

Mike was the founder of Shape History which reached  45 people prior to his exit. He’s just releasing his book Founder Therapy, a detailed account of his experience as a founder, and how he has come to help others.  And today, Mike takes us back to the straw that broke the camel’s back in 2019. Mike loved what he was doing, but the pressure of it all was too much.  And almost deliberately crashing...

Ali Schwanke is the founder of Simple Strat , a diamond HubSpot partner and the team behind the HubSpot hacks channel with over 1 million views. Today, Ali takes us to a time we’re familiar with — March 2020.  Ali had applied to receive PPP funds through her bank to support them through this time.  But within the space of an hour, the bank decided not to participate.  Instead of feeling sorry for...

When times are tough — are you focusing on what’s important, or what you think is urgent? This is the urgency trap. When your horizons have shrunk from the long-term vision to short-term goals... that are too short. And in this episode, I share 3 examples of what this looks like.  And how you can get yourself out of the urgency trap, even when you don’t notice that you’re in it. More from James: C...

Simon Barbato is the founder of Mr. B & Friends, which has been going for 17 years and has a major client base such as Lego and Intercontinental Hotel Group.  What do you do when your biggest client industry grinds to a halt? It’s 2004. And after news of a SARS outbreak across Asia.  That’s exactly what happened to Simon's first business.  Without knowing how long it would last, would his...

Tim Tutt is the cofounder of Nightshift Development . They bootstrapped themselves up to 160% year-on-year growth — this year they’re estimated to do $15 million turnover.  And today, Tim takes us to booth 203 at his local restaurant, Earl’s.  He’s about to bring up the equity split with his co-founder and how they should move forward.  His co-founder is a very good friend. So much so, he was the...

Vince has been recognised by Adobe as one of the top 50 marketers in the world, is a best-selling author and also has a great podcast called “Chasing the Insights”.   And today, he takes us back to 1996.  He was sitting on a bench with a friend, and his business had just failed. It’s what he recalls as a bit of a pity party. But his friend didn’t see it that way. And after a stern talking to, Vinc...

Dr Jacqui Taylor has positively impacted half of the world’s population through her company, Flying Binary , and now as a UN advisor, she’s impacting the other half of the world’s population.  And in today’s episode, Jacqui takes us back to the very beginning of her journey.  She was a newly qualified aerospace engineer, after completing her vocational training. But when the first project was assi...

Alex is the co-founder of Workforce.com which he started with 3 friends at university 11 years ago. They now have 150 people across 3 countries. The company had been running for a few years. One day, an early employee, and a close friend, told them it was time she got a “real job”. This was their wake-up call that something needed to change if they wanted to scale. To make sure that the business s...

Howie Xu was the founder of TrustPath which he then sold to Z Scaler. It’s since grown from 1,000 to 6,000 employees. He’s also a guest lecturer in Product Market Fit at Stanford University Graduate Business School. Do you run into discrepancies among your founding team? This is the problem that Howie and I discuss today. Howie was the founding VP engineer for a startup…. But he had fundamentally...

Harrison founded Spokeo in 2006. It’s a people intelligence service with 15 million unique visitors per day. They had tens of millions of dollars in SVB. It’s the 9th of March, 2023. The day that the Silicon Valley Bank collapsed. It was 12.52 pm. And Harrison got a Slack message from his team members about the 60% stock market drop with SVB.  Harrison didn’t feel that worried about it at first. B...

I made a guest appearance on Dustin Serviss’ podcast, The Picture of Wealth. We talk about typical things I help coach people on and a little about my personal coaching journey.  There are two things that I often see with founders I coach, They give a lot of support to others and don’t get any in return They put their personal life on the back burner to focus on their business And both lead to bur...

Asaf is the Founder of Home Made – the biggest hybrid letting solution in the UK. His background is in management consulting with Bain and then an MBA at INSEAD. He’s now well into the founder lifestyle.  Today, we go back 5 years to mid-2018. Asaf has just realised that a key hire he made to drive business development wasn’t working out. The company was burning a bit of cash, and the growth he ne...

Richard is the founder of Fathom , they raised $7 million recently, including $1 million from users. They’re recognised as the 6th fastest growing startup in 2022 by G2.  What principles do you stand by as a founder? If you’ve been in the game for a while — your values are probably different from those you started out with.  But there’s always 1 or 2 that stick with you for the long run.  In this...

Rajeev is a 3x CEO, has had 3 exits and is now an author with his book, Chase Greatness.  In times of crisis, how do you support someone?  This is a question that we come up against a few times in this week’s episode.  Rajeev has been a founder through a recession and the pandemic. And during both those times, he was able to stick to his core values and by them.  But after being asked what his per...

Karthik is the founder of Ignition . He’s not only raised $5 million for his latest venture but his product has also just been launched on Product Hunt.  Today we go back to a moment that made the history books.  August 2012. When Karthik was working for The Knight Capital Group.  It was 9 am and all the systems were running after a software update. But something wasn’t right.  In less than an hou...

Matheus is the founder of Tint . They’re doing some cool stuff with embedded insurance products and are backed by Y Combinator and QED. They have a fully-remote global team. This week, Matheus takes us to a crucial time when his business was in the midst of fundraising.  His daughter was just about to be born. And, at the same time, there were just 4 months of runway left.  To add to the stress, h...