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Andy Hooper, CEO of Global E-Commerce Experts, has been successfully expanding businesses into new markets for over 15 years. An accomplished specialist in e-commerce, Andy now works with companies around the world providing comprehensive gateways and solutions to new markets, especially US-based organisations transitioning into the EU.

Starting from the ground up, Andy, with sleeves rolled up attitude has carved out a unique industry inspired by his own experience and success of growing organisations profits through e-commerce.

As a keen fitness enthusiast with an infectious energy for success, Andy leads a team of professionals in all aspects of e-commerce. With fulfilment centres in the UK & EU, the Global E-Commerce team provide hassle-free end to end solutions that have helped 1000’s of sellers capitalise on the multi-billion dollar UK & EU markets.

In this episode, Andy walks us through the key steps to success in e-commerce, as well as revealing his biggest secrets for making huge £ online consistently for so many years.

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Yali Saar is the CEO and Co-Founder of Tailor Brands, a revolutionary online logo and brand design platform that uses machine learning to fuel innovation. Tailor Brands is currently used by over 30 million businesses across the world. Prior to his work at Tailor Brands, Yali founded Raising the Bar, a worldwide initiative aimed at making education a part of popular culture by creating one-of-a-kind, knowledge-driven events in unusual locations in NYC, SF, Hong-Kong and Sydney.

Yali’s background comes from the intersection of creative marketing and media. He started his way as a conflict correspondent in the Middle East for three years, where he spent time as a spokesperson for key political figures and served on different creative teams for ad-giant BBDO. Today, Yali leads Tailor Brands as it helps over 700,000 new customers every month.

In this episode, Yali and Simon discuss how Yali stumbled into the world of entrepreneurship by accident after trying to be an actor, and they also dive into the importance of failure, as Yali tells his story of failing his way to success, building Tailor Brands into what it is today.

“Everyone fails. Eventually, everyone has to fail.  Every organisation in order to succeed has to develop a system that allows it to remain flexible and learn from these failures and find paths to success.”

Topics:

Yali Saar:

https://bit.ly/366od3i 

Connor Ball is famously known for being part of The Vamps, and recently starred in ITV’s Dancing On Ice. He is also an avid gamer and YouTube content creator, and is taking his passion for gaming to the world of business where he can support E-sports brand LDN UTD be a force for good on their mission to combat social issues such as mental health, racism, knife crime, diversity, and loneliness.

LDN UTD was co-founded by Oliver Weingarten in 2018, as an esports org that unites professional esports and grassroots gaming with healthy lifestyle and social issues. The brand has previously held physical and online campaigns around racism, knife crime, diversity, nutrition, loneliness and education, working with stakeholders including the Mayor of London, the Rio Ferdinand Foundation, Bloomsbury Football, Matchroom Sport, and charities including Street League.

LDN UTD also develops incredible players from all backgrounds and offers them a platform to play at their best, whilst using professional rosters to amplify and raise awareness around the most important issues in the world today. In this episode, Simon talks with Connor and Oliver about the future of esports, metal health, and how to hack luck.

Connor: “People aren't stupid, people see through a lot of stuff. If someone sees something that isn’t genuine then they know it’s not genuine. That’s the same for business as well, people can tell if a strategy isn’t genuine. Being open and honest on social media is the way, and that’s how it’s always been for me.”

Topics:

LDN United:

https://ldnutd.gg/

Connor Ball

https://www.instagram.com/connorball/?hl=en

Oliver Weingarten

https://twitter.com/oweingarten

Jamelia Donaldson is the founder and CEO of TreasureTress — a monthly product subscription service for girls and women with kinky-curly hair and also the co-creator of The Teen Experience, a monthly workshop series that offers young black women to attend a series of personal development workshops, network with other like-minded individuals and be inspired by mature and successful women.

TreasureTress is Europe’s first and largest natural hair product discovery box, where sisterhood connects over kinks and curls. As experts in the natural hair and beauty space, TreasureTress takes a bespoke and forward-thinking approach to serve the natural hair community, by building relationships with their communities and your favourite hair and beauty brands, and ships their global tribe the exclusives, inclusive of educational and practical steps for managing and styling your tresses on a monthly basis.

Jamelia launched Treasure Tress whilst working in her full-time role, waking up at 5am and not going back to sleep until 1am to ensure that she invested enough time in the concept and was able to get the work done that was required from her job. Jamelia left her role just 5 months after launching Treasure Tress to take it full time and now has an incredible team of women working with her on the business daily. In this episode, Simon and Jamelia discuss what purpose actually is, how you can find it, and how you can turn your purpose into a profitable business that you love.

“An entrepreneur is someone who lives a life of service to create solutions for other people to make their lives better”

Topics:

Jamelia Donaldson

https://www.treasuretress.co.uk/

Sarah is one of Europe’s most prominent entrepreneurs, investors and consumer experts, working mainly in the hospitality and lifestyle sectors. She is a proud mum of four and believes that parenthood and business can exist simultaneously, without sacrificing the quality of each other.

Sarah is also a recognised TV personality, appearing as a judge on Raymond Blanc’s ‘The Restaurant’ and sitting alongside Peter Jones, Deborah Meaden, Nick Jenkins and Touker Suleyman as an investor on BBC’s ‘Dragon’s Den’.

In her twenties, Sarah led the international expansion of Pizza Express and Planet Hollywood before going it alone to buy Bombay Bicycle Club, turning it into the UK’s largest chain of Indian restaurants.

These successes helped establish her as a leading figure within the restaurant industry, and Sarah recently took her new company ‘Nightcap’ public within 1 year of launching the business.

Today we find out the business secrets that she lives by.

“I define success in any business as when I’ve made myself redundant. So I start anything and try and make myself redundant from day one. Sometimes that can take years, sometimes you can do it really quickly, but I always strive to make myself redundant.“

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Watch on YouTube

https://youtu.be/evlG-bevoZE

Sarah Willingham:

https://www.instagram.com/sarahwillingham/

https://www.sarahwillingham.com

Alex co-founded Champions Life Academy, a sales and marketing organisation that gave students with job experience fundraising for charity, before starting his own business. He spent three months giving daily presentations to university students as part of his job.

The chance to develop and organise TEDxClapham, a public speaking community event in South London, presented itself. He accomplished this in conjunction with Champions Life Academy until 2016, when Alex and his colleagues decided to close the firm. He organised a public speaking session for Google Startups Campus, a group of entrepreneurs that come to Google for events, guidance, and mentorship. Following that, 10 individuals signed up for his trial public speaking programme, launching his company.

What makes a successful public speaker, according to Alex, can be summed up in one word: empathy. "It has nothing to do with whether you're introverted or extroverted; it's all about empathy and being tuned in to your audience." Simon and Alex examine what it takes to be a world-class speaker in this episode, as well as why purpose comes first in the company.

“Don’t let yourself get in the way of the opportunities that get thrown at you, because you never know who’s going to be watching.”

Topics:

Alex Merry: https://alexmerry.com/

Andy Evans is an investor, mentor and serial entrepreneur who has sold 3 companies. Andy was weaned on marketing as a child by his father who was a marketing manager and he was given his first computer in 1981 for Christmas, which his mother said was the first toy he ever had that he didn’t take apart. In 1985, Andy started his first business aged 15, selling concert tickets and trips. In 1999, He founded one of the UK's first digital publishing businesses & first vertical ad-network in the UK, Net Communities, and in 2015 sold it to Future plc. He also founded the UK's first Podcast production company in 2005.

Frustrated with ad quality, transparency and brand safety online, Andy co-founded award-winning viewability technology provider OnScroll in 2013, which after tremendous growth, they sold to Sovrn Holdings, Inc. in April 2016, where he worked as CMO until May 2019. Today, Andy now uses the knowledge he has gained to advise, mentor and invest in all kinds of digital businesses from aviation to kids entertainment and of course marketing, martech & adtech.

In this episode, Andy and Simon lay out all the essential tips and secrets of finding investment for your company, and how to sell it for the highest amount possible.

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Connect with Andy:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/andyevans/?original_referer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Egoogle%2Ecom%2F&originalSubdomain=uk

David Abrahamovitch is the CEO and Founder of Grind. Grind has expanded across London with cafés and a coffee roastery since its inception in Shoreditch in 2011. David took Grind online when he was forced to close his cafés due to lockdown and since then, hundreds of thousands of people have used Grind to make better, more sustainable coffee at home.

Grind creates compostable Nespresso coffee pods that decompose faster than a banana peel in your compost or food waste bin. They use organic and ethically sourced coffee from around the world. Despite going to a school that pushed its students to aim for a career working for somebody else, David knew he was capable of more and now wants to help other young entrepreneurs do the same.

In this episode, David explains his story of starting a coffee brand before anybody knew what a ‘flat white’ was, and he shows us how he has built a business that is now taking on the huge coffee brands around the world.

“What you have to do as the organisation grows is be responsible for the culture. You have to be responsible for making big decisions, and you have to be able to get all of the experts that work for you to point in the same direction. That’s not always easy.”

Topics:

Grind:

https://grind.co.uk/

At just 23 years old, Curtis Tilbury has worked with massive brands such as Red Bull, grown a following of over 10 million people online with his father Mark, and amassed over 100 million views on videos that he has created. What’s more, Curtis has an impressive investment portfolio of over £100k.

Curtis started out as a freelance videographer, traveling the world and working with clients for free in the beginning to gain experience and expertise. Before long, Curtis was working with huge brands and running a successful videography business. Out of nowhere in 2020, the world was hit with Covid and Curtis’ business was put on pause.

Instead of seeing this as a setback, Curtis used the opportunity to merge his and his father’s expertise as they began to create personal finance content across YouTube and social media. Within just 12 months of launch, the father and son duo managed to grow to over 1 million YouTube subscribers, and become the biggest finance page on TikTok! Today Curtis continues to grow the Mark Tilbury channels, as well as running their podcast ‘Like Father Like Son’, and helping other brands and creators out with his content consultancy company.

In this episode, Curtis gives us the secrets to growing and monetising social media channels fast, tips to master the YouTube and TikTok algorithms, and he tells us what it takes to become a 7-figure business owner in your 20s.

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Watch on YouTube:

https://youtu.be/RMgWQgYA_z8

Follow Curtis:

https://www.instagram.com/curtistilbury/

Tiwalola Ogunlesi is a globally recognised and qualified life coach, international speaker, Positive Psychology Specialist, Master Neuro-Linguistic Practitioner and founder of Confident and Killing It. After struggling with low-self esteem throughout her teenage years, she’s now on a mission to transform the lives of women and girls all over the world. Tiwalola founded Confident and Killing It in 2017 as a response to the generation cycle of low self-esteem amongst women and girls.

Tiwa has made it her mission to champion a social movement that inspires women to love and believe in their whole self.  Tiwalola has been praised for her valuable insights and thoughtful content on topics such as becoming confident, overcoming fear and insecurities, dealing with imposter syndrome, mental health, wellbeing and entrepreneurship. She is known as a captivating speaker who understands how to infuse self-development and positive psychology with fun and inspiring stories that relate to millennials.

Recently she has delivered interactive experiences for organisations such as Youtube, Morgan Stanley, Facebook and Google. So far, she’s equipped over 3000 women in London, Lagos, New York, Kigali and Johannesburg at The Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy For Girls with the tools and knowledge they need to be confident. In this episode, Tiwalola and Simon go deep on how to escape imposter syndrome and feel more confidence, and neuroplasticity and Tiwalola explains the 5 pillars of wellbeing.

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Tiwalola Ogunlesi:

Monthly Wins Tracker: This is a free tool to help the girls track their wins and get better at celebrating themselves

Find out more about The Confidence Game Plan Course and Academy

Pre-order Tiwalola's book Confident and Killing It.

Instagram: Confident and Killing It