Be Your Business

In this episode of Be Your Business I talk to Ed Johnstone founder of The Sussex Peasant about how he created an innovative Mobile Farm Shop business which champions and sells local produce from Sussex. Re-connecting people to the local food and food producers. 

Ed started his career as a Headhunter in London and acknoledges that he followed his peers early on in his career. It didn't take him long to realise that he didn't like sitting at a desk all day and he started to consider what he would really like to do with his life. 

Soon after Ed left his job to take a year out and play rugby in Argentina. A talented fly-half it was the perfect opportunity to re-connect with himself and he settled in a friendly community there. It was there that he noticed something, the people there had a connection to their food which was unlike anything he had seen back home. It really resonated with him and he decided he wanted to work in food and try to create something similar in the UK.

Intially Ed wanted to start a Farm Shop but the start-up costs were prohibitive. He started to consider a mobile offering, supported my his family Ed bought a second-hand horse truck and started to contact local farmers.  

Here we talk about his passion for good food and the importance of provenance in society. How he has created a relationship between the producers and the consumers through regular markets in local neighbourhoods, creating an experience where customers can connect to their food.

Finally I find out that Ed has stayed true to his roots and still goes out on the van on a regular basis. From the start he has been aware of ensuring that he stays connected with the reason he started the business and not get detached in full-time management. 

In this episode of Making a business I talk to London-based entrepreneur Francisco Prieto about his journey to creating Machi's Barbecue a Street Food business selling authentic Argentinian Asado in the heart of London.

Francisco left Argentina at 5 years old when his parents moved to London. But his family ensured that even though he was living in England he knew he was from Argentina and so made certain that he grew up with the culture and way of life of his birth, with home-cooked food and a life shared with family and friends. 

Here Francisco talks about working with people from many other nations in London's restaurant scene, working for nig names like Pizza Hut and Pret A Manager. He talks about how he thought the the food was of a very high quality and always fresh but recalls him and his colleagues feeling isolated from the business they worked for and that the staff worked for each other rather than for the company.

I learn that Francisco worked for the civil service because of his desire to make a difference and a strong social conscience. Here he met many hard working and good people who joined for the same reason as him but found many of his colleagues became disillusioned with politics. After 8 years he took voluntary redundancy and realised his dream of starting his own food business.

Formed in 2015 the business was started by Francisco, his brother and a friend, but because of differences of opinion in how the business should be run they went their seperate ways. His focus with the business was always about providing high quality, healthy food at reasonable prices so that everyone can enjoy it. 

The name of his business is an abbreviation of his childhood nickname, his family called him Machita, meaning little macho. Machi's only serve Argentinian beef and a specific cut, called the rump tail. I learn that Argentinian beef is so good because the cows there are British breeds but with much more space, 11 times bigger than the UK. They also have the best buthcers in the world because they were trained by the British before Industrial farming.

Finally and very importantly we discuss Chimichurri! The much loved Argentine condiment and its origins, what his recipe is and how it compliments the meat perfectly.  

I really enjoyed this podcast. Francisco is an intelligent and caring person who is proud of his roots. His personality shines through his business and food, he enjoys what he does because its fun and has meaning to him, it perfectly reflects who he is and where he has come from. He is an inspiration.

Now available! The latest episode of my podcast series ‘Making a business’. In this series I talk to local entrepreneurs about their journey to creating a business they love and how they’ve found themselves along the way.

This week I speak with Olga Mamonova who runs Kino Teatr, an arts venue in the heart of St Leonards which opened its doors in 2014. 

Olga talks about rescuing the old theatre which first opened as a cinema in 1913! When she discovered it, it was being used as storage space for a bathroom shop but now the Kino has developed into the cultural heartbeat of the local area.

Olga talks about what life was like in 1970’s Moscow in the Communist Soviet Union - How she loved her life and fondly remembers shows at the Bolshoi theatre, music lessons and how easily accessible the arts were to her and her family.

I find out how her father came from a poor background to become a novelist and a poet, that he shared his love of culture with Olga and it became her passion too.

She talks about how she grew up with a desire to work with and in culture and so pursued a career in the arts at a contemporary gallery in Moscow where she met her future husband Russell.

Finally we talk about the importance of culture to a community and what it was like starting an arts business not long after a recession.

Hello, I'm Damien from Beyourbusiness.co.uk and welcome to this episode of Making a Business where I speak to business owners about how they have created a successful business they love, what matters most to them and what they have learnt on their journey so far.

This week I speak to Hassan Gemei who owns Liban Coast a very successful Syrian restaurant with his wife Sennah. The restaurant was founded in 2013 from Sennah’s love of cooking her native food and has grown organically from a market stall initially to an established and thriving restaurant on the St Leonards food scene.

Hassan was born in Egypt to a multi-cultural family, his father was Egyptian and his mother Italian. By the time he was 5 he spoke 4 different languages and his early memories were shaped by very happy times in the kitchen with his Italian grandmother and regular community meals shared with family and friends.

In this episode we talk about the culture shock of coming to the UK in the Sixties where he followed in his fathers footsteps to become an engineer. We talk about his relationship with his father and how he inspired him to explore throughout his career.

I find out how Hassan turned a hobby into a business when he bought his local squash club, managing to persuade his local bank manager to lend him the money when his offer was unexpectedly accepted.

We talk about how each new business venture wasn’t about the money but the challenge and how he got a thrill from succeeding in new industries. So far Hassan has been an engineer, a software developer, a sports club owner, a commercial chef and run several import/export businesses. All of his businesses have been successful and he has sold most of them for a profit, he is a born entrepreneur.

Hassan is a highly intelligent and caring man with a natural affinity for business, throughout our conversation he recalls clearly the people who he has met along his journey and ponders often on how and where they are now. Throughout his life he has trusted his intuition and followed his energy to create. I thoroughly enjoyed learning about his journey and I hope you enjoy this wonderful podcast!

Imogen White is one half of Hello Polly Copywriters, a dynamic copywriting duo setup during lockdown to help businesses communicate their messages clearly and concisely through their written content.

Imogen found her love of writing 15 years ago when she embarked on a personal project about a local historical object. The object captivated her imagination so much it became central to the first of her published children’s books.

In this episode we talk about how her work was born from a love of creating something new which engages people through stories and I discover how it evolved naturally from her previous career in sales & marketing.

I find out why Imogen enjoys being involved in lots of different businesses and how she captures the voice of local business owners` passion to tell unique and compelling stories.

Mia Preston recently opened her latest business venture Pod Central, a Japanese style compact hotel in the heart of St Leonards. 

Pod central provides high quality overnight accommodation at a budget cost with energy saving technology making it a more sustainable hotel model.

Mia has had a fascinating career which has balanced a sharp intellect and keen thirst for understanding ‘how things work’ with a big heart and a desire to care for and help those who are less fortunate than her.

She started with an engineering degree following her love of making and building things, where she found she was the only female on the course. Thereafter she became a design and technology teacher which she enjoyed immensely. 

When she started to have a family she changed career direction to find something that could fit around the demands of a busy family life and became a clinical aromatherapist which she worked as for many years working with hospitals and as a private therapist.

More recently she completed a Masters degree in Attachment Studies before embarking on her latest project, Pod central.

In this episode we talk about having an innate love of learning and enjoying new experiences but getting bored of sameness quickly and how our brains thrives on new experiences and information. 

We discuss how engineering combines science and art, two subjects she excelled at and how that there is great creativity within building a bridge or a road. We dig into the dogma of infrastructure and how things change but the bigger picture often stays the same, our brains like predictability.

We talk about what it is like to literally step into somebody else’s shoes and when Mia spent a day in a wheelchair where she was deprived of her senses in order to really understand the experience of the people that she would be caring for and this helped to create a great sense of empathy.

I found out that we all have behavioural adaptations in our life developed in childhood and that these play out in our adult life whether we are aware of it or not and how Mia explored this while doing her Masters in Attachment Studies.

Finally exploring spirituality and doing a 10 day vipassana (silent retreat) and confronting hidden parts of yourself and understanding where we fit within the world and how attending Catholic school helped to nurture her ability to understand another.

Plus a helluva lot more!! 

I met and interviewed Mary Barrett who is the owner of Little Fusion Kitchen, a fusion pop-up in The Jenny Lind pub, Old Town - Hastings. 

Mary bravely decided to start her own business in the middle of lockdown. As circumstances had it, she was working part-time in the pub and they realised they needed a kitchen to keep operating under the new government guidelines in Dec 2020.

5 mins later the kitchen, which was a disused staff room had been gutted and fitted out with a kitchen and Mary was operating a take-away and eat in service for customers.

I went along to try the food not long after I had interviewed Mary and to say it was exceptional would be an understatement. Mary is a talented chef and a brave business owner at a young age, definitely one to watch for the future.

Listen to this podcast if you are interested in how to start up your own food business and want to hear a genuinely lovely human story. 

Nicki Oloyede is the founder of Missy Mop Fabrics, a sustainable fabric company based in Hastings. The business is named after the nickname Nicki’s mum gave her when she was a girl after her 'wild & crazy hair'. 

Launched in 2019 the company sources and sells leftover fabric from the fashion industry, which would have otherwise been sent to landfill. 

Nicki has Nigerian and German roots and had a colourful childhood surrounded by adults wearing clothes from these cultures with interesting colours and different styles.

In this episode I talk to Nicki about her varied career and finding her passion in the thrill of seeking unusual ‘dead-stock’ fabrics as well as the great satisfaction she gets when her customers select a fabric they might not usually wear.

We talk about how living in an entrepreneurial town has helped nurture her business and how Hastings is a place where people can and do re-invent themselves. 

We find out that our paths actually crossed in 2009 when we both worked for a large telecoms company, although we never actually met.

We also talk about how she used a pop-up format to establish her business and why it was such a great way of testing the business concept. How pop-ups could be used to rejuvenate towns across the country to nurture startups and give towns a stronger identity & sense of community.

Finally we talk about how the fashion industry is changing and why doing work that we really, really love is so important, that when we do this it gives us the energy and drive to succeed.

Alice Hull is the co-founder of 55 prints, a screen printing startup based in St Leonards. We met in her studio amongst the printing equipment and smell of inks to speak about how she started her own business & what her journey has been like so far.

In this episode we talk about how she found screen printing and that initially she didn’t really know what it was or why she was doing it. She trusted it though and has since found that she loves it! 

Her daily work involves liasing with artists to develop their projects and bring them to life and working with different businesses making anything from tee shirts to purses. She has found that she now has an outlet being creative herself and has started to write and print her own poetry.

Quite by coincidence Alice found out that she also has a family link to the screen printing through her grandad, Tristram Hull who set up a screen printing studio in 1960’s London which became a famous hub for local and international artists. 

Alice explained how she is becoming more accomplished at her trade but that it takes a long time to master it as screen sprinting is part art and part science. The skill of the printer is in getting the right balance between ink and materials to create a unique finish.

For more details see @55prints on Facebook.

Lisa Driver is the founder and Managing Director of Booyah Vitality, a wellness drinks company based in Hastings. Booyah was born during in March 2020 at the start of the pandemic, it was the impetus which enabled an idea to manifest. Lisa had lost a lot of her clients and her husbands work vanished overnight. I spoke to Lisa about what happened next and the inspiring story of what can happen when you take action and follow your passion.

Lisa is a keen ambassador for “food as medicine” and has worked in the health industry since 1995 as a naturopathic nutritionalist and nutritional fitness consultant. She also runs a popular pilates class on Hastings pier and when Lisa started selling turmeric shots to her members, an idea was born.

Booyah is a family affair and they each have roles within the business. Lisa is the guiding force while Phillip and their son are in charge of production and their daughter Phoebe looks after social media & logistics. 

In this episode Lisa talks about the story of her business being born from home initially and filling her sons room with boxes, finding the right branding for her packaging which has helped establish the brand and how Booyah is above all a community business.