After being diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis in 2015 Jasmine Thomas said to her mother "there's no point in crying over spilt milk" alas this belief and ethic has enables Jas to become the business leader she is today! 

Jasmine continued after her diagnosis to work for a large London City firm. It wasn't until Jasmine's discovery of cannabis and other CBD/alternative products & therapies that her MS started to become more controlled. 

Not only inspiring, this interview showcases what belief, passion and determination can achieve in the face of adversity. 

Jasmin has now been trading for just over 2 years and has developed 3 product lines also raising £170,000 through private investment. 

From bouncy castles to gun slips followed by a trip to Spain to start a shoe business which ultimately led to a court settlement... Starting a business isn't as easy as it may seem, it certainly wasn't for the Fairfax and Favor boys. 

Felix talks to Oliver about how his assumption in the early days nearly cost him and his business partner their business. What was the turning point for Fairfax and Favor, when did their breakthrough design moment occur and what quintessentially British designed products have they on the horizon?

💥September 2020 ONLY!💥 Fairfax and Favor 10% discount code available when you listen to this podcast! 🎉🙌

From Director of Opportunities at the Royal Mail through to Editor in Chief at Woman in Business Magazine, Susannah Scofield's corporate career spanned nearly two decades.  Susannah picked up an OBE from HRH in the New Years Honours List and now sits as the Director General for the Direct Selling Association though whilst it was once six figure salaries and recognition from royalty she packed it all in selling her Rolex watch and RangeRover to invest in her brainchild and passion PitchDMM. 

Having initially raised just over £150,000 and just recently raised a further £1.5million, Susannah tells us why she would never crowdfund again and always go 'private'. 

One of the most jammed packed podcasts to date you will walk away (we hope) feeling inspired, motivated and full of passion! 

Initially a byproduct of a dating board game (pre Tinder/Bumble) Smith & Sinclair brought to market alcoholic gummy sweets. 3 days after launching Smith & Sinclair landed an order for over 20,000 sweets. With little infrastructure, no kitchen facilities or manufacturing arm Melanie, her family and her friends spent 2 months hand making their first sizeable order! 

After leaving her job in the events space Melanie sold a family heirloom for what she thought would be a few thousand pounds, it wasn't... This seed capital is what set Smith & Sinclair off on the right foot. 

Manufacturing alcoholic sweets however come with it's complexities. From having stock held ransom by their first manufacturer to learning how to expand into the USA as well as brokering deals with some of the UK's biggest luxury stores Melanie and her team have really come up against almost every hurdle. 

Smith & Sinclair recently diversified into CBD products selling and buying back their business in the space of the last 12 months (2019/2020)   

How do you make £1million of revenue in 1 week during a global pandemic? Hugo Tilmouth tells us how... 

University engineering graduate turned entrepreneur Hugo Tilmouth, like many of us, never predicted the global pandemic of 2020.

Raising £3.5million in seed funding after graduating from university, Hugo launched ChargedUp, a mobile phone charging station allowing users to rent battery packs and return them to venues of their choice. In March of 2020 his 'normal' business halted rather abruptly putting everything on the line...

Pivoting swiftly and rebranding to 'CleanedUp' Hugo and his team turned their potentially doomed business into a proposition offering hand sanitiser stations manufactured through their network and distributed to venues across the UK. In their first week of trading CleanedUp generated over £1m worth of revenue.

CleanedUp has since sold over 30,000 sanitiser stations to locations across the UK whilst hiring an additional 25 staff and going through a rebrand. ChargedUp is still very much operational. 

How do father and son team Chris and James Horne turn their hobby and ultimately vision of an online sporting broker into a reality? 

Having not turned profit for over 10 years and struggled to make payroll on multiple occasions it was only in the last 18 months that the biggest online sporting broker GunsOnPegs finally became 'profitable' 

James Horne, who sold his previous business before becoming CEO of James Purdey & Sons (a business over 200 years old) decided to venture into the world of start-up alongside his Financial Analyst son Chris Horne.

Having nearly lost it all on multiple occasions this is a story of persistence, passion and enjoyment in times of huge illation as well as that of occasional deflation! 

What does it take to grow a gin brand with no distilling license in a market flooded with competition and very little knowledge? Felix and his 3 siblings founded Sibling Gin before most of them could legally drink alcohol. Having never run a business, been to University or worked in the food and beverage industry before, all 4 of them took the plunge in 2013 and formed family owned brand Sibling Distillery.

Having enjoyed the boom of the gin market as it became 'cool' in the early years, the recent pandemic saw Felix and his team have to pivot their business from the supply of gin into the supply of hand sanitiser and pure alcohol for use within the NHS. Facing tough times like so many business Felix looks back on what have been an exciting few years and a turbulent few months. 

 

At 25 years old and with over 120 staff Harry Hugo seems to be doing everything right. Aged 18 he raised £25million to start his second business after being turned down earlier on by the Bournemouth Echo for being 'too young' to write for them. 

Now Harry is one of 3 founding partners at the influencer marketing agency Goat and with offices in London, New York and Singapore Harry talks to Oliver about how COVID-19 and enormous overheads left them with 3 options; to sell, raise funding or trade out the crisis.