Screw It Just DO It with Alex Chisnall

"We had a hundred people come. They'd all paid £50 directly into my bank account. And at the point that they paid me, they didn't know where they were going to eat food, what food they were going to eat and by that point we just created this momentum that we were able to generate. And out of these people none of these were my friends. We generated a hundred real customers through social media, a l...

"I want to be the Air bnb of accessing compute, I want to be Uber of data centres. Having the worlds largest data centre without owning any physical servers. That's a massive market and that's a great opportunity for Yellow Dog". Gareth Williams is doing something int he tech field that no-one else is  doing. The harnessing and monetising under-utilised computer power. Yellow Dog are currently del...

"Always head in the direction that you want to go. At the very beginning understand what you want to achieve,where you want to get to, because if you don't... you'll get lost. And that's what Ed and I have done from the very beginning. We knew we wanted to achieve all these things - so we stuck to that, as much as everyone said "you can't do it". So many people said you can't launch a brand new co...

"Then once we started to get some traction and proof of concept we got a huge amount of press. When we launched Milley Cyrus actually endorsed the product on our first ever event... took a picture of herself of having a champagne ice lolly...put it on the internet - but she forgot she said she hadn't been drinking! It created a frenzy of "back on the booze with these ice lollies" in the tabloid pr...

"We get to November, we lose £24k in 30 days and I'm like "holy shit". I've been flying by the seat of my pants, investing more money than we've got. I've been blagging the bank to give me more money, and now we're losing nearly £1k per day going into the winter. And I've got a big team of chefs, two venues to run and genuinely shitting myself at this point. Maybe the bank were right, maybe I shou...

"It wasn't until I was broke, felt like a loser on my sisters couch for two years and my father wasn't there to support me anymore that I realised I had to figure this out. It was a necessity for me to learn otherwise I probably wouldn't be where I am at. But it gave me this desire to be more, to reach a potential of another life that I never thought was possible...it's been a challenging..but bea...

"This feels like the main act. It feels like the first few decades of my career in technology were the warm up act, the support act. This is now the main act on the pyramid stage at Glastonbury. It's the main event on the Saturday night, this is the real revolution and it's an incredible time to be part of that and to have front row seats in a business like Xero. I'm having a ball." Gary Turner is...

"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...

"I remember when I wrote my business plan for crowdcube and I think I said that we would be a £3 million brand in 5 years time and in our second year we beat that... and suddenly the goalposts moved". On this weeks show I speak to two incredibly successful female entrepreneurs still in their twenties. Pippa Murray from Pip and Nut launched her nut butter brand in 2015 and now has retail sales of o...

"It was at that moment that I realised that a buyer and seller had a need, and that the current operators in that market weren't fulfilling that need, for whatever reason. It really got me thinking about the secondary ticket market...and I actually stumbled across this £3 Billion opportunity. Twenty-Four year old tech entrepreneur Luke Massie sold his first business aged just 17 for £96,000. Havin...

"We started an internet gaming company. We launched it, we built the product out, it was just like fantasy football. We launched it around Euro 2000, and then we just couldn't get any traction...the internet bubble burst." Andrew Walker is now on his 4th startup and has experienced the highs and lows of starting and growing software companies. His last startup, Clicktools, was bootstrapped for ove...

" Here's thirty day's recipes...breakfast, lunch, dinner. Buy this food, follow this food...and do you know what? People just wouldn't bloody do it! Well...if I did it for you would you do it? Well of course they said yes - I just didn't want my clients to fail." Award-winning businesswoman Barbara Cox founded Nutrichef from her kitchen table in 2004 before selling it eleven years later in 2015. B...

" We had no exit plan. In fact we didn't even know the phrase exit strategy. We were three guys who wanted to set up a smoothie business and we had a hope that it would be successful but an assumption that it wouldn't, but we got started anyway...and it just grew and grew and grew. I think to be honest no-one was more surprised than we were really. " In this week's show I speak to Richard Reed who...

"No-one at school had ever given me the attention and, needless to say, it was pretty miserable. I didn't enjoy school and I didn't enjoy being a teenager because of it...when you feel worthless when you're going to school just being that bad...its an awful feeling." I speak to Doug McMaster about how he dropped out of school at 16, overcoming both undiagnosed dyslexia and a lack of education to b...

"We built it, we uploaded it to the App store and we were charging for it. So from day one we thought we've spent a ton of time on this, this is amazing, it's got so much value to it...and guess what? We sold like two. Where's the amazing story of when you make millions overnight? On this week's podcast I speak to Matt Doyle about his startup, Launchcloud. Matt first met Richard Branson as staff a...

"We both saw this as an opportunity to really build something exceptional and I think we thought from day one up to today that this has the opportunity to be absolutely massive." This week I speak to Seedrs co-founder Jeff Lynn who's mantra is "Equity Crowdfunding done properly". With offices in five European countries and high profile investors like Andy Murray and Richard Branson, Jeff believes...

"It's cool to be a foodie now. Whereas it used to be a very niche thing, all over now..whether it's pop-up food markets or open kitchen restaurants... food on TV, and in the real world, is a kind of cool space to be in." On this week's show I speak to Ben, Jamie, Mike and Barry who launched SORTED food in 2010 after finishing university.  The Wall Street Journal calls their show "food porn meets s...

“When you’re 32 and getting home at five in the morning, having dealt with police and then a fight outside the club at 3am, you think there must be a better way.”  After a decade in the nightclub business hosting events from Barbados to Bournmeouth, serial entrepreneur Josh Simons has found a better way and is celebrating four years with the Chicken and Blues restaurant chain he co-founded with bu...

" I will be bitterly disappointed if I retire or die doing what I currently do for a living" That  realisation was all the incentive that Conker Spirit founder Rupert Holloway needed to quit his job and launch his own business. As Rupert says, "There has never been a better time for you to do your own thing, learn new things, follow your passion or launch your own business". Join us and our 'live'...

"We started with a problem. With how it is. And we created a vision of how it should be. And I think if everybody did that around something they cared about then the world would be a very different place." Ruth Anslow is on a mission to create a new type of supermarket chain with Hisbe - How It Should Be. And Claire Timbrell is also on a mission to change how groups of people socialise with her es...

"So I was in New York at the time filming & Ed phoned me up..and it was our first big one...and you could walk into the shops and see your own brand there on the shelves...& that was so significant at that time as we would have had another two or three months...before we went bust." I talk to the founders of Candy Kittens about their health conscious sweets that aren't just for kids. Candy Kittens...

"Hey, I was a part-time mermaid, I’ve been to Australia, come home and now I make this iced coffee that I’m really proud of. Do you want to come on this journey with us?"  Join Jim and our sold-out 'live' audience in Bournemouth as he recounts his journey, as well as providing tips on how to grow your brand and how to pitch to buyers for your product/service. Fresh from pitching his iconic drinks...

"I suffered a pretty heavy burnout...anti-depressents, the whole thing. On the outside it probably looked like I was on top of the world, but deep down I was working 16 hours a day, living on coffee, wasn't working out, wasn't eating well..I ended up hiring eight people..to remove myself from the business." Chris Ducker is a serial entrepreneur who moved from London to the Philippines seventeen ye...

"...I would go up on stage and I would trip and my nose would bleed... and then people would throw tomatoes at me..or even worse, potatoes, and then I would wake up in a ditch somewhere..naked". Pat Flynn has been called "the crash test dummy of online business" and in this interview you'll find out why. Forbes named him as one of the most transparent leaders in business  and the New York Times pr...

"Work hard..any idea that you have can be come a reality just by sharing it and getting people inspired". Conker Spirit are at the forefront of the Gin Revolution. Founder Rupert Holloway talk us through his journey from self confessed "miserable surveyor" to happy head conkerer. Rupert has taken Conker Spirit from a one band foraging, distilling and marketing to building a team with his best frie...