I hate confrontation, I hate difficult conversations, I hate having to deliver bad news. This made me terrible at firing someone. I would keep people in my business way longer than I should have. This had a bad impact on my business and finances.

In this solo episode, I share the worse example of firing someone in my business. It was a big failure on my part. I share with you the lessons I learned and what I do differently.

• Mistakes I made in hiring people and how to hold people to account.
• One of my most cringeworthy stories about firing someone in the worse possible way.
• What support you can get with your employment law as a small business or solopreneur.
• The best process to follow when terminating someone's contract/firing someone.

Like this show? Please leave us a review here.

***

Jeremy Jacobs is an experienced entrepreneur, business consultant, and mentor. He started his career in digital marketing, managing multi-million-pound campaigns for well-known global brands. He left that career to start 2 businesses including a food manufacturing company with his Mum which ran successfully for 13 years. He now works as a mentor and consultant for a wide range of businesses including start-ups and solo entrepreneurs through his marketing and management consultancy, Cookie Jar Consultancy. He has an MBA with Distinction from the University of Sussex.

He is proudly neurodivergent and a member of the LGBTQ+ community. He lives in Sussex with his partner and their two dogs.

Personal website: https://jeremyjacobs.co.uk

Cookie Jar: http://cookiejar.info/

social media accounts:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremyjacobsuk/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jeremyjacobsuk

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jeremyjacobsuk

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I sat down with my good friend and all-around superstar entrepreneur Ruth Anslow who founded the ethical supermarket chain HISBE with her sister Amy. She is passionate about businesses being a force for good in the world and founded The Good Business Club which supports businesses committed to making a positive impact.

In the conversation we explore why Ruth left her corporate career to start a business in a highly competitive industry she knew very little about.

We discuss:

• Feeling dissatisfied with life and taking action to make a change.
• Starting a movement and building a following.
• What would she do differently if she went back and started again?
• The fears Ruth had when starting and business and did they come true?
• Dealing with the waning of enthusiasm and confidence when everyone around you doesn't think you can make it work.
• One of their biggest failures in expanding HISBE, what went wrong, and how did Ruth deal with it personally.
• Her views on how best to deal with failure moving forward.

Key Learnings:

• Surround yourself with people that believe in you when confidence or enthusiasm waned.
• Share the burden and the pain at the early stages with people in your network.
• Things will always take longer and cost more than you planned.
• Don’t take failure personally. It doesn’t mean what you make it mean.

Like this show? Please leave us a review here.

***

Jeremy Jacobs is an experienced entrepreneur, business consultant, and mentor. He started his career in digital marketing, managing multi-million-pound campaigns for well-known global brands. He left that career to start 2 businesses including a food manufacturing company with his Mum which ran successfully for 13 years. He now works as a mentor and consultant for a wide range of businesses including start-ups and solo entrepreneurs through his marketing and management consultancy, Cookie Jar Consultancy. He has an MBA with Distinction from the University of Sussex.

He is proudly neurodivergent and a member of the LGBTQ+ community. He lives in Sussex with his partner and their two dogs.

Personal website: https://jeremyjacobs.co.uk

Cookie Jar: http://cookiejar.info/

social media accounts:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremyjacobsuk/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jeremyjacobsuk

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jeremyjacobsuk

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In my second solo episode, I share one of my biggest mistakes in business and how I managed to get myself into £150k without knowing about it. I am going to give you a very frank and open breakdown of what I consider to be one of my biggest failures in business and what I learned.

This is, in my opinion, one of the most important lessons need to learn as a business owner.

I’ll discuss:

• My fears around money and debt.
• How I ended up in £150k in debt.
• One of the most important things most SME company directors don’t know that could get them into legal and financial trouble.
• How knowing my numbers helped my business when Covid struck.
• How my understanding of my business finances helps me in my personal life and helps me sleep at night.
• How challenging doing your business finances can be.
• The three financial reports you should be looking at on a regular basis as an entrepreneur.
• How often you should be looking at them.
• The first thing you should do in a financial crisis as a business owner.

Key Learnings:

• If you don’t understand your business finances you are at serious risk of going out of business.

Like this show? Please leave us a review here.

***

Jeremy Jacobs is an experienced entrepreneur, business consultant, and mentor. He started his career in digital marketing, managing multi-million-pound campaigns for well-known global brands. He left that career to start 2 businesses including a food manufacturing company with his Mum which ran successfully for 13 years. He now works as a mentor and consultant for a wide range of businesses including start-ups and solo entrepreneurs through his marketing and management consultancy, Cookie Jar Consultancy. He has an MBA with Distinction from the University of Sussex.

He is proudly neurodivergent and a member of the LGBTQ+ community. He lives in Sussex with his partner and their two dogs.

Personal website: https://jeremyjacobs.co.uk

Cookie Jar: http://cookiejar.info/

social media accounts:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremyjacobsuk/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jeremyjacobsuk

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jeremyjacobsuk

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jeannette started off her career working for the UK Government as an economist but after deciding it wasn't for her, she jumped into the travel industry. She worked her way up to Managing Director for Emerging Markets for TUI and CEO for the Travel Division for Saga, running 4 businesses with £370 million of turnover. 3 years ago, she took the leap to leave her corporate job to become an entrepreneur running her own portfolio of businesses. She shares her journey into entrepreneurship and running her own businesses, the mistakes she has made, and what she would do differently. In a fun, lively, and down to earth conversation, we discuss:

• Is being an entrepreneur a mindset or an actual job?
• Making the leap from the relative security of a high-profile, corporate job to being an entrepreneur.
• What she would do differently when starting out in business?
• Planning for success and embracing failure.
• The mistakes and failures when getting started in the business.
• How to deal with the inevitable negative feedback and other people's opinions.
• Be true to yourself and define your culture for your business.
• Dealing with the aftermath when big plans fail.
• Trusting your gut and instincts.
• Empower yourself to say no.

Key Learnings:

• You need to be flexible when starting out and not rely on what you learned in your corporate role.
• You have one life that you are solely responsible for so don’t waste it never taking risks and living your dreams.
• You should listen to your gut and trust your instincts.
• You need to learn to empower yourself to say no.

Like this show? Please leave us a review here.

***

Jeremy Jacobs is an experienced entrepreneur, business consultant, and mentor. He started his career in digital marketing, managing multi-million-pound campaigns for well-known global brands. He left that career to start 2 businesses including a food manufacturing company with his Mum which ran successfully for 13 years. He now works as a mentor and consultant for a wide range of businesses including start-ups and solo entrepreneurs through his marketing and management consultancy, Cookie Jar Consultancy. He has an MBA with Distinction from the University of Sussex.

He is proudly neurodivergent and a member of the LGBTQ+ community. He lives in Sussex with his partner and their two dogs.

Personal website: https://jeremyjacobs.co.uk

Cookie Jar: http://cookiejar.info/

social media accounts:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremyjacobsuk/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jeremyjacobsuk

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jeremyjacobsuk

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Woohoo! Welcome to episode one! I thought I would start off by taking the mic and kicking off by explaining the idea behind “How Not to Run a Business”.

I started it for a very specific reason, to have conversations around failure and mistakes. Something we often avoid.

I also share a short version of my 15 years of running my own businesses. Enjoy!

I’ll discuss:

• Introduction to the podcast and why I set up podcasts.
• The biggest lies we are told about success.
• Why no one wants to talk about failure and mistakes.
• What success, failure, and mistakes really mean.
• The biggest thing people get wrong about making a mistake or failing.
• How do deal with failure.
• The truth about your chances of success.
• My journey and story about how I started working for myself.

Key Learnings:

• Success is defined by the individual.
• A failure is always an option.
• Having a successful business is harder than most people think but a definite possibility.

Like this show? Please leave us a review here.

***

Jeremy Jacobs is an experienced entrepreneur, business consultant, and mentor. He started his career in digital marketing, managing multi-million-pound campaigns for well-known global brands. He left that career to start 2 businesses including a food manufacturing company with his Mum which ran successfully for 13 years. He now works as a mentor and consultant for a wide range of businesses including start-ups and solo entrepreneurs through his marketing and management consultancy, Cookie Jar Consultancy. He has an MBA with Distinction from the University of Sussex.

He is proudly neurodivergent and a member of the LGBTQ+ community. He lives in Sussex with his partner and their two dogs.

Personal website: https://jeremyjacobs.co.uk

Cookie Jar: http://cookiejar.info/

social media accounts:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremyjacobsuk/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jeremyjacobsuk

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jeremyjacobsuk

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.