Will Perez is the filmmaker who spent three years documenting Steven Bartlett from inches away. As lead filmmaker and editor at FlightStory, he built Behind The Diary, the behind-the-scenes channel following The Diary Of A CEO, from zero to 400,000 subscribers and more than 12 million views. In April 2026 he was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe list for Media and Marketing, at 24.

He got there by dropping out. At 21, in his second year at Edinburgh University, Will texted his mum to say he was leaving to take a job with Steven Bartlett. Her reply, in Spanish, was blunt: are you crazy? He'd stolen his dad's camera at 16, shot weddings in Velcro Spider-Man shoes, and sent close to a thousand cold pitches that went nowhere. Gymshark said no. HBO said no. Then a referral put him on a call with Jack Sylvester, co-founder of Diary Of A CEO, and four days later he'd quit his degree and moved to London.

What followed was three years inside one of the biggest media operations on the planet. Last year alone that meant 54 flights in 54 weeks. He has since left to build his own studio, telling stories for founders, artists and brands.

He joins Jack and Zac for an unusually honest conversation about storytelling, YouTube strategy and what it actually costs to work at that level. Why nobody cares about your story, how a DOAC video gets packaged before a single frame is cut, the two hours after you hit publish that decide everything, and what Steven Bartlett does backstage that nobody films.

What you'll learn in this episode:

• 00:00:00 Welcome to the Show: Meet Will Perez, The Man Behind Diary of a CEO
• 00:01:55 Nobody Cares About Your Story: The Three Assumptions That Kill Content
• 00:04:00 Brand vs Founder Storytelling: The Red Bull Strategy
• 00:07:08 The Story Seller Framework: How Real Estate Agents Hack Your Brain
• 00:11:09 The Dropout Decision: Texting Your Way Into Your Dream Job
• 00:17:34 Data Before Creative: The Title Testing Process That Changes Everything
• 00:22:15 The First Two Hours: What Happens After You Hit Publish
• 00:26:13 54 Flights in 54 Weeks: The Reality of Working for Stephen Bartlett
• 00:33:21 The Steve Jobs Headphone Jack Story: How Much You Care Equals How Much You Win
• 00:52:39 Going Full-Time: The Bet on Himself and What Comes Next

#StevenBartlett #DiaryOfACEO #DOAC #YouTubeStrategy #VideoEditing #Storytelling #ContentStrategy #ContentCreation #Filmmaking #PersonalBranding #YouTubeGrowth #BehindTheDiary #WeHaveAMeeting

Connect with Will:
Website: https://www.willperez.co.uk
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/btswithwill
Substack: https://btswithwill.substack.com
LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/will-lindsay-perez

Hear more from the hosts:
Jack: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-frimston-5010177b
Zac: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zac-thompson-33a9a39b

Brought to you by Nooks: the AI-powered platform helping teams automate outbound sales and book more qualified meetings. Learn more at https://www.nooks.ai/wehaveameeting

Subscribe to We Have A Meeting: new episodes every week with founders, sales leaders and entrepreneurs who've built it from the ground up.

Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, says empathy is the hardest skill to learn, and the one that matters most. In this clip, Jack and Zac break down why empathy is the single most underrated sales skill in B2B, and how it changes everything about the way you cold call, handle objections and close deals.

Most salespeople think empathy is soft. It isn't. It's the difference between a prospect hanging up in four seconds and a prospect actually telling you the truth about their situation. Empathy is what turns a cold call into a conversation, a pitch into a diagnosis, and a "not interested" into a real objection you can actually work with.

If you're learning how to sell, how to cold call, or how to build a sales career that doesn't rely on being pushy, this is the skill to start with.

• 00:00:00 Welcome to the Show: The One Skill Every Salesperson Needs
• 00:00:36 The Microsoft CEO Quote: Why Empathy is the Hardest Skill
• 00:01:48 Can Empathy Be Taught: Nature vs Nurture
• 00:02:42 The Home Test: When Problem Solving Kills Connection
• 00:04:01 Beyond the Transcript: Reading Tone and Body Language
• 00:04:47 The Ten Out of Ten Problem: Testing Real Empathy
• 00:05:49 The Summary Technique: Your First Empathy Skill
• 00:07:49 Nooks Ad: Stop Cold Calling on Your Mobile
• 00:08:21 Labeling and Mirroring Masterclass: The Theory
• 00:10:21 Live Role Play: Empathy Skills in Action
• 00:13:41 Common Mistakes: Mirroring the Wrong Phrases
• 00:15:03 The Low Stakes Practice Game: Try This at Home
• 00:15:47 Active Listening: The Foundation of Empathy
• 00:16:44 Secret Mission: The Wham Challenge for 850 Pounds

What you'll learn in this clip:

• Why Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella calls empathy the hardest skill to learn
• How empathy actually works on a cold call, and what fake empathy sounds like to a prospect
• The difference between empathy and being "nice" in sales, and why nice salespeople lose deals
• How to use empathy to handle objections instead of fighting them
• Why empathy is the fastest way to build trust with a stranger on the phone
• How to train empathy as a sales skill, not a personality trait

Whether you're in cold calling, SDR work, account executive sales, recruitment, or you're a founder doing your own outbound, this is the skill that compounds.

#Sales #ColdCalling #Empathy #SalesTraining #B2BSales #SalesTips #SatyaNadella #Microsoft #HowToSell #SalesSkills #ObjectionHandling #SDR #Prospecting #WeHaveAMeeting

Hear more from the hosts:
Jack: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-frimston-5010177b
Zac: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zac-thompson-33a9a39b

Brought to you by Nooks: the AI-powered platform helping teams automate outbound sales and book more qualified meetings. Learn more at https://www.nooks.ai/wehaveameeting

Subscribe to We Have a Meeting: new episodes every week with founders, sales leaders and entrepreneurs who've built it from the ground up.

Tom Hunt is the founder and CEO of Fame, the B2B podcast agency he's bootstrapped to around $4.5m ARR with 70+ full-time staff and $0 raised. Fame now starts and grows 300+ B2B podcasts around the world.

Before Fame, Tom quit management consulting in 2014 and, by his own count, tried and failed with 17 businesses before one finally stuck. Those failures taught him more about attention, distribution and demand than any of the wins ever did.

Today he's one of the most-watched voices in B2B marketing. A LinkedIn Top Voice, host of Confessions of a B2B Entrepreneur and Cash Machines, and the founder most other founders quietly copy the day they decide to start posting.

He joins Jack and Zac for an honest, tactical chat about how to become impossible to ignore online. How to build a personal brand that actually generates pipeline instead of vanity likes, why most founder content gets scrolled past, what B2B podcasting really does for a sales team, and how he built a 70-person company without a penny of outside money.

What you'll learn in this episode:

• 00:00:00 Welcome to the Show: Meet Tom Hunt, Founder of Fame
• 00:02:25 The Fame Formula: How Taylor Swift Built Her Brand Twice
• 00:03:29 The Three Ways People Mess Up Their Podcast Launch
• 00:05:32 The Top Podcast Lists Strategy: Free Organic Traffic
• 00:09:53 The Intercom Deal: How One Guest Paid for the Podcast 9X Over
• 00:18:05 The Rollercoaster Years: 15 Failed Businesses Before Fame
• 00:24:44 The SaaS Hacker Newsletter: Building the Audience First
• 00:29:16 The Anatomy of a Viral LinkedIn Post: Face, Hook, and Rage
• 00:33:43 The HR Content Switch: Trading Relevance for Numbers
• 00:39:46 Building Culture Remotely: The Four Values That Drive Fame

#B2BMarketing #PersonalBranding #FounderLedMarketing #LinkedInGrowth #ContentMarketing #Podcasting #Bootstrapping #Entrepreneurship #B2BSales #WeHaveAMeeting

Connect with Tom:
LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/tomhuntio
X: https://x.com/tomhuntio
Fame: https://www.fame.so
Cash Machines newsletter & podcast: https://www.tomhunt.io

Hear more from the hosts:
Jack: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-frimston-5010177b
Zac: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zac-thompson-33a9a39b

Brought to you by Nooks: the AI-powered platform helping teams automate outbound sales and book more qualified meetings. Learn more at https://www.nooks.ai/wehaveameeting

Subscribe to We Have a Meeting: new episodes every week with founders, sales leaders and entrepreneurs who've built it from the ground up.

Josh White is the co-founder and CEO of Cano Water, the UK drinks brand that helped pioneer canned water as an alternative to single-use plastic bottles. The idea was born after a trip to Thailand with friends, where he witnessed the scale of plastic pollution firsthand — a moment that turned into a mission and, eventually, a business. Before water, Josh ran an events company bringing together some of the biggest names in grime and electronic music across the UK.

In this episode, Josh joins Jack and Zac for a candid conversation about building Cano Water from an idea people initially dismissed into one of the UK’s fastest-growing drinks brands, the reality of bootstrapping a physical product business, and how his own personal struggles growing up shaped the way he leads and builds today.

What you’ll learn in this episode:

• 00:00:00 Welcome to the Show: Meet Josh White, Founder of Cano Water
• 00:01:39 The Troubled Kid: ADHD, Addiction, and Rehab at 15
• 00:12:15 Finding Purpose Through Music: The Events Company Journey
• 00:17:40 Rock Bottom to Reborn: The Turning Point at 21
• 00:19:43 The Thailand Trip: How Cano Water Was Born
• 00:37:48 The ADHD Superpower: From Problem to Solution in Seconds
• 00:33:49 Wrapping Cans in Mum's Kitchen: The Scrappy Early Days
• 00:35:36 The Selfridges Miracle: Perfect Timing and Saying Yes with Nothing
• 00:48:12 Taking On Liquid Death: How Cano Survived the American Giant
• 00:57:37 The Future of Cano: Staying True to the Mission

#Entrepreneurship #BrandBuilding #FounderStory #CanoWater #SustainableBusiness #ProductInnovation #Marketing #Bootstrapping #WeHaveAMeeting

Connect with Josh:

🔗 LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/joshwhite2201

🔗 Cano Water: https://canowater.com

Hear more from the Hosts:

🔗 Jack: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-frimston-5010177b

🔗 Zac: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zac-thompson-33a9a39b

Brought to you by Nooks: The AI-powered platform helping teams automate outbound sales and book more qualified meetings. Learn more at https://www.nooks.ai/wehaveameeting

Subscribe to We Have a Meeting: New episodes every week with founders, sales leaders, and entrepreneurs who’ve built it from the ground up.

From Bartender's Verdict to 2 Billion Bottles: The Man Who Invented Baileys - David Gluckman

David Gluckman is the drinks industry legend who created Baileys Irish Cream, Tanqueray Ten, Cîroc, The Singleton, Sheridan's, Aqua Libra and more during his 40-year career at IDV (now Diageo). He's the author of "That Sh*t Will Never Sell" — the book named after the verdict a colleague gave when he first tasted the muddy-brown liquid that went on to sell over two billion bottles.

In one of the most candid, funny, and idea-obsessed founder conversations we've had, David takes us inside the real, messy process of inventing the brands that ended up in millions of homes worldwide — including the flops nobody remembers alongside the wins everybody does.

What you'll learn in this episode:

• 00:00:00 Welcome to the Show: Meet David Gluckman, The Man Behind Baileys
• 00:02:31 The Fear Factor: Why Creative Work is a 24-7 Obsession
• 00:03:56 The One Answer Philosophy: Why 48 Ideas is 47 Too Many
• 00:06:00 The Hard-Looking Bastard: Designing for the Sales Force
• 00:07:41 Ciroc and Grape Vodka: The Story That Got Away
• 00:13:19 The Consumer Research Problem: Why 9 Out of 10 Means You Have Crap
• 00:15:53 The Singleton Strategy: Selling Single Malt to Blended Whiskey Drinkers
• 00:18:00 Burn the Boats: Why Plan B is for Losers
• 00:19:12 The Smirnoff Black Challenge: Getting a Michelin Star for KFC
• 00:24:35 The Australian Rum Disaster: When Ego Kills a Great Idea
• 00:29:24 The Power of One Word: Finding Vitality in Roger's Thesaurus
• 00:33:48 Setting Trends Not Following Them: The Birth of Alcopops
• 00:37:12 The Baileys Secret: Why Passion Beats Product Every Time
• 00:39:53 The Baileys Mystery: How a Brand Survives 51 Years of Bad Marketing
• 00:41:47 The Final Question: Is Your Product Really Good Enough

#Entrepreneurship #BrandBuilding #FounderStory #Baileys #DrinksIndustry #ProductInnovation #Marketing #Bootstrapping #WeHaveAMeeting

About David Gluckman:
Creator of Baileys Irish Cream, Tanqueray Ten, Cîroc, The Singleton, Sheridan's, Aqua Libra and more. Spent 40 years at IDV (now Diageo) building some of the world's most recognisable drinks brands from scratch. Author of "That Sh*t Will Never Sell" (2nd edition), a book about the ideas behind the brands, told by the person who had them.

Connect with David:
🔗 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-gluckman-7a7bb29
🔗 Book & more: https://www.thatshitwillneversell.com
🔗 Author site: https://davidgluckmanauthor.com

Hear more from the Hosts:
🔗 Jack: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-frimston-5010177b
🔗 Zac: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zac-thompson-33a9a39b

Brought to you by Nooks:
The AI-powered platform helping teams automate outbound sales and book more qualified meetings.
Learn more at https://www.nooks.ai/wehaveameeting

Subscribe to We Have a Meeting:
New episodes every week with founders, sales leaders, and entrepreneurs who've built it from the ground up.

How to sell your business: James Ashford built GoProposal from a WordPress plugin and exited to Sage. This is the full story.

For founders, agency owners and accountants who want a business that runs, grows and sells without them.

James Ashford turned a pricing problem in one accountancy firm into GoProposal, software that let the most junior team member price and sell complex services in under five minutes. In this episode he answers the questions every founder types into Google at 2am: how do I know if I have a business or just a job? How do you actually sell a software company? And what happens to your mental health after the exit? He also opens up about the breakdown that followed the sale, and the inner child work that rebuilt him.

Buy his book here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1781339872?ref=cm_sw_r_ffobk_cp_ud_dp_GQR6D38EGKM6069R9J0J_3&ref_=cm_sw_r_ffobk_cp_ud_dp_GQR6D38EGKM6069R9J0J_3&social_share=cm_sw_r_ffobk_cp_ud_dp_GQR6D38EGKM6069R9J0J_3&bestFormat=true

• 00:00:00 Welcome to the Show: Meet James Ashford, Serial Entrepreneur
• 00:03:19 The Sales Problem: Why Business Owners Can't Let Go
• 00:05:59 The Restaurant Analogy: How Accountants Price Like Amateurs
• 00:08:05 The Accountancy Breakthrough: Solving the Same Problem Over and Over
• 00:14:01 The Four Grand Launch: Building a SaaS Business on WordPress
• 00:16:32 The Waiting List Strategy: 100 Customers in 30 Days
• 00:19:54 The Shock and Awe Pack: Customer Retention Through Physical Gifts
• 00:22:03 The Five Million Pound Goal: Getting Your Wife on the Journey
• 00:23:49 Taking Over the Space: The Conor McGregor Mentality
• 00:27:07 The Discounting Problem: How You Train Bad Clients
• 00:29:30 The Sticking Points: When Revenue Hits a Wall at 18K and 53K
• 00:34:21 The Competitor Blindside: Losing 25 Percent of Customers Overnight
• 00:37:11 The Oversuite Launch: Turning Crisis Into a New Product Line
• 00:38:12 Built to Sell: Manifesting the Acquisition From Day One
• 00:40:26 The Negotiation That Started Everything: Could We Buy You Instead
• 00:44:03 Putting On Your Best Suit: Going to Market With an M and A Firm
• 00:46:02 The Day the Money Hits: Why Everything Felt Exactly the Same
• 00:47:40 The Loss No One Talks About: Purpose, Team, and Identity
• 00:48:42 From Apple Tree to Apples: The Shift From Making to Managing Money
• 00:49:14 Playing to Win Versus Playing Not to Lose: The Corporate Shock
• 00:51:31 The Breakdown: On Your Hands and Knees at the Side of the Road
• 00:57:57 The Inner Child and Small T Trauma: Understanding What Drives Us
• 00:59:49 Equine Therapy and Breath Work: The Journey to Healing
• 01:00:45 The Final Question: Where Is the Gift in This Moment

FRAMEWORKS COVERED
The Restaurant Pricing Method | Built to Sell | "Where's the Gift?" | "Who Do I Need to Be?" | The 2-4% Finance Rule | Small t Trauma and Inner Child Healing

ABOUT JAMES ASHFORD
James Ashford is the founder of GoProposal, the pricing and proposal software acquired by Sage. He now invests in businesses and mentors entrepreneurs, with a focus on founders raising young families.

Find James on LinkedIn and Instagram, and @thejamesashford on TikTok.

https://jamesashford.com/

YOUR HOSTS
Jack Frimston and Zac Thompson are the co-founders of We Have A Meeting, the B2B sales agency behind the Sales Is Therapy method.
🌍 https://wehaveameeting.com
📖 Get the book: https://salesstherapy.com

THIS EPISODE IS SPONSORED BY NOOKS
The AI dialler that helps your sales team have more conversations: https://www.nooks.ai/wehaveameeting

SUBSCRIBE for weekly conversations with founders, sales leaders and psychologists: https://www.youtube.com/@wehaveameeting?sub_confirmation=1

If you're searching for how to sell your business, how to build a SaaS company with no funding, how to price your services, or what a business exit actually feels like, this episode covers it all. James Ashford shares the GoProposal story from WordPress plugin to Sage acquisition, including value pricing for accountants.

Who cold calls better — the UK or the USA? In this LIVE cold calling battle, Jack (USA) and Zac (UK) go head-to-head, dialing real prospects back-to-back to find out whose style, tone, and script actually book more meetings.

Building something cool? Running a business?
Join our FREE WhatsApp community -

https://www.wehaveameetingpodcast.co.uk/

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Watch as two very different cold calling styles clash in real time: British directness vs. American energy. You'll hear the openers, the objection handling, the pivots, and the moments where each caller either books the meeting or gets hung up on — all live, unscripted, and unfiltered.
If you're in sales, SDR, or lead generation, this is a masterclass in how cultural style shapes cold calling success — and a fun, brutally honest look at what actually works when you're live on the phone.

Check out Nooks here: https://www.nooks.ai/wehaveameeting

• 00:00:00 Welcome to the Show: UK vs USA Cold Calling Battle Begins
• 00:01:45 The San Francisco List: Dialing America at 8am
• 00:03:10 First Blood: Jack's Opening Calls and the Data Problem
• 00:08:14 The Polite American No: Beverly Hills Brush-Offs
• 00:11:50 Zac Takes the Stage: Parallel Dialing Mode Activated
• 00:14:03 The Duncan Conversation: When Persistence Pays Off
• 00:19:47 Jack's Revenge: The Real Work Beatdown
• 00:21:50 The Embroidery Company: Mark's Marketing Agency
• 00:24:14 Connection Rate Reality Check: UK 10-30% vs US 5-10%
• 00:35:48 The Five Second Challenge: When Prospects Give You No Time
• 00:37:44 Jerry the Berry: The Gatekeeper Transfer That Goes Nowhere
• 00:39:37 The Dr. Sean Marathon: A Masterclass in Discovery
• 00:52:54 The Debrief: Who Won UK vs USA

In this episode, we sit down with Sean McPheat, Founder and CEO at MTD Training and Skillshub for one of the most brutally honest, emotionally raw, and strategically revealing conversations about what it really takes to survive 25 years in business, why a Tony Robbins weekend walking across hot coals convinced him to quit his £100k corporate job at age 29, and why most people fail in entrepreneurship because they go into it half pregnant instead of fully committing to the fight.

We reveal why just because you're good at something doesn't mean you'll be good at leading a business doing that thing, why decorators and painters are brilliant at their craft but terrible at answering emails and sending invoices, and why the acid test question for entrepreneurship is whether you want to be old looking back with regret about all the things you didn't do.

More From Sean: https://www.seanmcpheat.com/

Hear more from the Hosts:
Jack https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-frimston-5010177b/?originalSubdomain=uk
Zac https://www.linkedin.com/in/zac-thompson-33a9a39b/

Brought to you by our amazing sponsors:
*Nooks* The AI powered platform helping teams automate outbound sales and book more qualified meetings. To learn more visit: https://www.nooks.ai/wehaveameeting

In this episode, we sit down with Sean McPheat, founder and CEO of MTD Training, for one of the most brutally honest, emotionally raw, and strategically revealing conversations about what it really takes to survive 25 years in business, why a Tony Robbins weekend walking across hot coals convinced him to quit his £100k corporate job at age 29, and why most people fail in entrepreneurship because they go into it half pregnant instead of fully committing to the fight.

We reveal why just because you're good at something doesn't mean you'll be good at leading a business doing that thing, why decorators and painters are brilliant at their craft but terrible at answering emails and sending invoices, and why the acid test question for entrepreneurship is whether you want to be old looking back with regret about all the things you didn't do. Sean leaves us with one powerful piece of advice: don't go into business ownership half arsed or half pregnant because you've really got to go all in, build up a treasure chest of savings to give yourself a couple of months runway, and question the shit out of your decision before you burn the bridges.

Hear more from the Hosts:
Jack https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-frimston-5010177b/?originalSubdomain=uk
Zac https://www.linkedin.com/in/zac-thompson-33a9a39b/

Brought to you by our amazing sponsors:
Nooks The AI powered platform helping teams automate outbound sales and book more qualified meetings. To learn more visit : https://www.nooks.ai/wehaveameeting

In this episode, we dive into Samuel Leeds, property entrepreneur and course creator, for one of the most divisive, brutally honest, and strategically revealing conversations about whether he's a legitimate property investor helping people build wealth or a course selling shyster using rage bait and fear mongering to drive clicks and sales.

We break down his viral content teaching kids how to buy houses with the bank's money, why flying his children in economy while he sits in first class sparked outrage across the internet, and whether that's actually good parenting or just another algorithmic stunt designed to boost impressions when engagement drops. You'll hear why his appearance on the Gary Economics documentary raised questions about his sales tactics, why telling people to take out loans they can't afford to buy property courses is dangerous advice that Gary Economics was right to call out, and why those that can do and those that can't teach.

We reveal why AI scaremongering has become the new FOMO marketing tactic creating urgency around property investment, why claiming your investment properties will hold value when AI takes everyone's jobs ignores the reality that nobody will have money to buy houses if the economy collapses, and why people need to stop being sold on fear and start engaging the rational part of their brain before taking out loans that put strain on their families. You'll hear why Samuel's social media strategy feels all over the place, why his networking content of a nervous 17 year old trying to find investors at a party is bizarre, and why ethical sales means giving people the bad news upfront instead of getting them excited in the moment only for remorse to hit them later.

We leave you with one challenge: post a picture of Samuel Leeds and ask Samuel, are you from Leeds, tag us in the comments, and the first person to do it wins 500 pounds while the second person gets the mystery prize.

Hear more from the Hosts:
Jack https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-frimston-5010177b/?originalSubdomain=uk
Zac https://www.linkedin.com/in/zac-thompson-33a9a39b/

Brought to you by our amazing sponsors:
Nooks The AI powered platform helping teams automate outbound sales and book more qualified meetings. To learn more visit : https://www.nooks.ai/wehaveameeting