Screw It Just DO It with Alex Chisnall

"This is an amazing opportunity. Women who are mothers are worth trillions of dollars per year to the economy. Women who are earning who are monthers, 90% of their earnings goes back into the family, versus 45% of men's income". Welcome to episode #105 of #Screwitjustdoit. On today's show I welcome entrepreneur Michelle Kennedy, Founder of  Peanut,  dubbed 'Tinder for lonely mums' by the New York...

" Probably one of the greatest pleasures that I get is taking my mum and dad and walking down a supermarket aisle and seeing my dad's face when he see's a picture of his father and his father's name on a shelf in a supermarket. That is a massive plus and a massive pleasure for me. And to think that I made this happen." On today's show I welcome Paul Turner - butcher turned brand building entrepren...

"At the time that I realised PlanSnap was the thing that I wanted to do  - to build the fastest way to get friends together it's very hard if you're tachnically-minded but not from a technical background to find a technical partner to bring on to the team. I realised that was going to be a struggle, and raising investment was going to be a struggle. Not least because women get less than 2% of Vent...

"And he pushed me, saying 'Don't be such an idiot', slightly harder than I think he intended...and I fell off my chair. It was one of those moments in time, drunk as I was, but that conversation haunted me. And I kept coming back to 'Yeah, why not? Why can't we get law into a space where there isn't a premium on information and people do understand how everything fits together and can access that...

"So I phoned them up and said that I would like to buy some razors. He said the minimum order was 100,000 units. I thought "This is the end of the business, I can't do it, I can't get the money."   But then I said 'How's this as a concept..I come to your front door tomorrow with 5,000 Euros in unmarked bills in a bag, would you go for it? "I was just joking...   But he said "if you're crazy enough...

Well here it is..no - not Merry Christmas - that's another week away folks. It is in fact #Episode 100 of my #Screwitjustdoit podcast! Something I'm super-proud of and will be celebrating this important milestone on my journey. Something I never envisaged actually getting to! I thought I would use the opportunity presented to record only my third ever solo round since I started by deciding to #Scr...

"Managing the team and managing the workload is a huge challenge that I'm battling with all the time but the team are absolutely amazing. I couldn't ask for a better, hardworking team. They really love what we're doing, which I believe is quite hard to find". On today's show I welcome Charlotte Sweet, Founder of Sewn Right. Charlotte left a job in luxury fashion to set up her own business in early...

"When my grandparents passed away who I spent a lot of time with I'd been thinking why I didn't record their life stores which is something I had in mind but never did, and realised how quickly their stories faded. And I've had that regret for a long time and been thinking since then about solutions... and why this problem exists if a lot of people want to capture the stories of their loved ones....

"I have so many different passions: fitness, fashion and food - the three "F's" - plus music of course. So it was a natural progression once I came off the x-factor...to get into fashion and release my own clothing line. And as soon as the W8 Gym came along... it's funny how timing works out, as when Nick approached me I was actually thinking of venturing into fitness. So as soon as I saw the prod...

"He and my my mum used to wear a necklace with five little charms. Each charm was a stone that represented each of us. I was a pearl and my brothers had their own stones. They used to wear it around their neck and we used to carry our own as well in a little gold chain so for me jewellry is about this special meaning, occasion, something that you carry with you, like. talisman." Adriana creates je...

"The great thing is a good mentor will always get you to answer your own questions. They'll ask you the right questions, you'll just have to go away and work on it and come back with an answer. They'll either give you a tick or a cross. That's the scret of a great mentor. They don't tell you what to do, you have to learn for yourself what you should be doing with the information and advice that th...

"I was doing a paperbound and I thought it was a mug's game. So I cut the local newsagent out of the equation. No-one was delivering papers on a Sunday so my dad said "you go and get my paper I don't want to get out of bed, i'll give you 50p". My neighbour said the same and I eventually built a paper round that made four times as much on Sunday than I had made on the whole weeks work. That was my...

"The realisation happened when I lost twenty million dollars. It took me losing everything in my life and starting over and asking a different question. The question is what is true? Looking at what I had done over twenty years and saying that was very hedonistic, that was very me, that was all about consumption. And then losing it all, I think the universe was saying ok, here's the opportunity."...

"We're not getting any younger. So you may as well get cracking. That's my main advice: get cracking, get selling, get making and get spending." On today's show I chat to Anglo-Italian entrepreneur and Pasta Evangelists founder Alessandro Savelli.  Pasta Evangelists are trying to do for fresh pasta delivery what fever tree did for tonic. They deliver artisinal restaurant-quality pasta to your fron...

"I find working, doing a startup, and trying to manage a family life and keep all the balls in the air extremely difficult - and I mess up all the time. My children are incredibly patient and understanding. I'm always the mother who's not at the football match at the school, or that I get the date wrong for the cake sale. Then I get really guilty. But the good thing about working for yourself like...

"The initial feedback we got from people was that it was worth us exploring. So we got started, and I guess at each stage there were sufficiently encouraging signs that it was worth carrying on. So we quit our jobs, put in our savings and went out to try and raise money to enable us to start marketing and to start building a team. And it went from there." How do you fit a Christmas tree through a...

"I think that if you feel like you're learning everyday, bringing in more and more amazing people, then I really do believe that if you get amazing people together, and you can create an environment where they can be really high-performing, I really do believe that you can achieve anything." I met up with Callum Negus-Fancey from Verve who dropped out of school at 16 to set up his first business,...

"Make sure you're building the business for the right reasons. If you're building a business in the hope that you'll make a lot of money, that is not the right reason. That is a side-effect of when you build a successful business. You're not going to do the right thing if you're building it to make a lot of money. For your customers or your employees. So think about building it for the right reaso...

"It took two years. The whole journey from thinking about it, doing a full-time job and then changing to a part-time job, and spending all my savings on paying rent. All whilst building up this business. And then I was really panicing as I didn't have enough clients, and didn't know what I was going to do...but everything fell into place and it's now working really well." On today's show I speak t...

"The poverty premium is real. Lower income workers can often pay more than everyone else, despite struggling to make ends meet. At Wagestream we give people access to their earned income when they need it, without the need for employers to alter their usual payroll frequency." Peter Briffett wants to re-establish the link between work and financial reward, a link often broken in monthly pay cycles...

"I just felt that I'm not an entrepreneur. I'm struggling. Everything I do is a juggling act. Entrepreneurs focus on their business and they are a success, where I'm thinking, I'm not a success at anything". On today's show I speak to Tara Howard, who left school at sixteen to go on to become a commercial airline pilot and mum of four. She is now the founder of The Venus Awards which recognises an...

It's only the second solo episode that i've ever recorded in 84 episodes! But something got me fired up and so here you go :) I've been thinking a lot about the difference between thriving and just surviving. It's a massive difference. But something that only needs small daily, weekly and monthly changes to turn things around. I can personally relate to this, and wanted to record an episode where...

"If you've got something unique and believe it's genuinely different to the other stuff that's out there, you just need to believe that wholeheartedly, and tell as many people as you can". On today's show I welcome Sara Collinge from Clarity, an International Communications Agency with offices in London, New York, Berlin and now San Francisco.  A number of guests from this show have passed through...

"I think I was always influenced by the freedom of being able to do what you want, which was how I grew up. My parents just always said you can do anything if you pick something you like. Make that your job and you'll always be happy. That's all I ever grew up with". Harley Moon Kemp left school at 16 when, after discovering photography, she initially shot celebrities for free to get noticed. Shoo...

"We've grown by 1200% already in 2018 and this is the opportunity when you can really sky-rocket the brand and enter into a lot of markets with the kind of growth trajectory that we're on.   So by not investing in the channels that you need to be investing in , in these type of moments, then you end up losing opportunities, you end up losing the ability to leverage this to the fullness of its abil...