Venture Wisely

It's been a while. Things have been super busy the last few months since I started the podcast, mainly around hiring and growth at ContentCal. We doubled the size of our team and have a huge amount of stuff going on in general, which has consumed all my time! Now we are getting into a good cadence of workflow there I've been able to carve out some time for recording audioblog content again. This post focussed on mental strength and my experiences around this throughout the lockdown period. Enjoy. 

I recently caught up with a good friend of mine Liam Chennells. Liam is an Entrepreneur with a background in tech and retail. He works across a range of businesses today and has an amazing outlook on life, work, travelling and building mental and physical strength. Enjoy this fun conversation with Liam!

Today I interviewed Mitch Lee, Co-Founder of Mitch's Kitchen. 

Mitch is a gluten free, vegan chef. He's hand-crafts an exciting, flavour packed range of fast-paced plant-based meals. 

 I ask Mitch why he became vegan and we talk through how he started his business with his wife Shirin.   

Enjoy this conversation with Mitch.

I'm really excited have interviewed the one and only Rand Fishkin.   

I've been following Rand for a number of years and recently read his book Lost & Founder, which is a truly great read if you're running a tech startup.   I got in touch with Rand after taking a trial for his new startup, SparkToro. He kindly agreed to come onto the podcast, so here we are.  Please enjoy this interview with Rand!

This is a subject I get asked a lot about by people who are thinking about starting a tech business. I have raised $6.4m total for ContentCal and helped another startup, Kindred raise $2m. I've experienced a lot when it comes to raising funding for a startup. Here are my hints and tips. 

Episode 2 of Startup Masterclass focusses on the initial steps you need to take to launch your business, the mindset you need to have, how to plan resources, why you should think about accelerators and why mentors can make all the difference in the early stages. Enjoy. 

We must not go 'back to normal'.  We need to build a better one.  I put a tweet out yesterday asking business owners to contribute to a blog post I am writing about how we need to  build the new normal for a better future in business and in life.  Do I want to go back to commuting on busy London trains, when in reality I can work from home 80% of the time more effectively?  No I don't.  Do I want to be able to have a hub and spoke approach to my office, being with people when I want or need to be? Yes I do.  Will this make my work and personal life better? Absolutely.   This is just one example.  Over 100 business owners have written to me to contribute, and I plan on including all the stories in the post from small and large businesses owners alike.   

Good morning, hope everyone is doing okay out there. This is a little Monday morning ramble because I haven't posted for a few days and wanted to get some thoughts out of my head re lockdown. Generally speaking I'm pretty good with the lockdown and managing through it like we all are. However, I am certainly starting to crave some parts of 'normality' back - going to a restaurant, a pub, seeing mates, travel. I'm currently writing out how I want to live my life post lockdown, thinking of the good bits I can take forward and mixing it in with the parts of life before all this happened I miss. How are ya'll doing?

Do you have a great idea for a business? Many people have that 'eureka' moment when they have an idea for a business, but don't know where to go next. One of the realities of business is its not the idea that makes you successful, it's the execution. Nonetheless, you do need a good idea, and you need to be committed in bringing it to life. In this episode I talk about how to select the idea for your business, and how you need to think to increase your chances of success and minimise your chances of failure. 

Howdy all. Yesterday, we announced my business, ContentCal, has raised £2.5 million in investment from Fuel Ventures. Whoo! 4+ years of hard work paying off. Off the back of this I wanted to share learnings specifically around building a startup in the early stage. They'll be a huge amount of content in this mini series which will run alongside the audioblog for a period, covering the ups, downs, mistakes and the fun you can have building an early stage startup. Hope you enjoy and get value from them.