Amanda Thomson’s journey from broadcast media to founder life is anything but ordinary. In this episode, Sam digs into Amanda’s early career at the BBC, where she lived at the intersection of storytelling, showbiz, and the rise of social media. Amanda shares how her journalistic curiosity — the kind that made her “a child who wouldn’t shut up” — became the foundation of her entrepreneurial mindset. A lifelong love of champagne became her unexpected North Star, leading her to Paris to train under legendary sommelier Gérard Basset and launch her first wine brand. That path eventually pivoted into the bold creation of Noughty, the alcohol‑free wine that disrupted an entire category.We dive deep into the grit behind building Noughty from scratch, including Amanda’s trademark battle, her audacious pitch to investors, and the moment she realised alcohol‑free wine didn’t just need improving — it needed reinventing. She explains how her fine‑wine training shaped her obsession with palate, low‑intervention production, and elegant branding. Amanda also opens up about the psychological resilience required to survive founder life: navigating crises, reframing setbacks, and learning to thrive without drama. Her reflections on gender, being underestimated, and the power of staying gracious (even when someone calls your idea “stupid”) offer sharp, practical wisdom for any aspiring founder.Finally, Amanda shares her passion for the next generation of entrepreneurs through the Future Founder Lab. She speaks candidly about the cultural differences between UK and US founder ecosystems, why British self‑deprecation holds entrepreneurs back, and how young founders can learn to articulate their mission with clarity and confidence. This episode is packed with insight, honesty, humour, and the kind of strategic thinking only hard‑won experience can teach. A must‑listen for anyone building something bold — or thinking about it.

In this episode, Sam sits down with Linda Du, the powerhouse founder behind Mula Money, a financial wellness platform reshaping how people understand and make decisions about their money. Linda’s journey spans engineering at Cambridge, an MBA at Yale, and years advising global banks at McKinsey—before discovering her true calling through microfinance work in Zambia and Malawi. As she shares in the transcript, “finance as a tool for inclusion as a tool for agency” became the spark that ultimately led her to build Mula Money.

Linda opens up about the messy, exhilarating reality of entrepreneurship—from bootstrapping her first company out of necessity during Brexit, to building Mula Money in public with real users, iterating fast, and embracing AI as a superpower. She talks candidly about money dysmorphia, why budgeting culture is broken, and how simple, consistent investing can outweigh all the avocado toast in the world. As she puts it, “everyone has anxieties over [money]… but it’s underlining everything important in life.”

We also dive into the psychology of money, generational shifts, the myth of homeownership, and why founders must learn to fail fast, act decisively, and let go of ego. Linda shares how her product went from “janky” to game‑changing, how users transformed their financial behaviour, and why now—more than ever—is the moment to build. This is an episode packed with insight, honesty, and the kind of founder energy WAGB is all about.

In this powerful episode, Sam sits down with the three founders of Sisterly — barrister Jenny O’Connell, former investment banker turned wellness coach Aoife Matthews, and brand developer Louise O’Riordan — to explore how three women with wildly different careers came together to fix a problem they were all living. From burnout, perimenopause, and supplement confusion to witnessing the extremes of LA wellness culture, each founder shares the moment they realised women deserved a simpler, science‑led, one‑and‑done solution designed specifically for the female body. Their shared frustration became the spark for a product built with evidence, expertise, and zero compromise.

The trio take us inside the three‑year journey of building Sisterly during lockdown across Dublin, Madrid and LA — surveying over 100 women, assembling a world‑class medical and nutritional advisory team, and refusing to dilute their formula despite manufacturing setbacks. They talk candidly about the realities of founding a business with friends: the accountability, the values alignment, the emotional highs of Harrods, Vogue and B‑Corp certification, and the lows of stock shortages, delayed retail timelines, and learning to solve problems on the fly. Their “power of three” becomes a masterclass in collaboration, resilience and midlife reinvention.

Sam closes the episode by exploring what’s next for Sisterly — global expansion, deeper community building, and a seat at the table in women’s health research. The founders share their biggest lessons: never compromise, listen obsessively to your customer, keep talking to people who’ve done it before, and follow your own North Star — the women you love. As Jenny says, “There’s nothing you can’t figure out. You just keep pivoting until you do.”

Sophia Jarvis’ founder journey is anything but linear. After a decade in financial services, she left her job to build a solution to a problem no one in the industry was solving — helping families invest easily in their children’s futures. The very next day she discovered she was pregnant, six weeks later she learned she was having twins, and months later she gave birth prematurely. Through all of it, she kept building Mia Wealth — a family investment app designed to make investing for children as simple as buying a toy. Her conviction came from hundreds of conversations with parents and a 400‑mother survey revealing the same truth: families are worried about their children’s financial futures, and the tools to help them simply didn’t exist.

Despite the chaos, Sophia raised £1.5 million, won the Britain’s Got Started Awards, and launched her MVP into beta with over 2,000 families on the waitlist. She found her operational co‑founder, Geri, just weeks before giving birth — a unicorn who could build the infrastructure Sophia couldn’t. Together, they’ve shaped Mia Wealth into a regulated fintech with early data showing strong engagement: 72% of accounts funded and over half setting up monthly contributions. Sophia is now raising a £4 million seed round, navigating the shift from angel investors to institutional VCs, sharpening her numbers with a fractional CFO, and learning the language of CAC, LTV, and portfolio logic at speed.

Sophia’s story is one of resilience, obsession, and the kind of founder naivety that becomes a superpower. She shares the lessons she learned the hard way — validate before branding, build your personal brand early, choose co‑founders for complementarity, and be kind rather than nice when leading a team. Her journey shows what’s possible when a founder refuses to stop, even when life throws everything at once. Episode 10 is a masterclass in grit, clarity, and building something important in the middle of absolute chaos.

The Biskery didn’t begin as a grand plan — it began as two women who refused to stay somewhere they no longer believed in. When Lisa returned from maternity leave to find her senior title stripped away, clarity hit hard: “There’s no future for me here.” That moment became the spark. She and Saskia, once colleagues in a London digital agency, started baking the flavours of home at market stalls, learning quickly from what sold, what didn’t, and what the market was quietly telling them. What looked like a simple biscuit business was actually the beginning of something built on listening, resilience, and a whole lot of bootstrapping.Their pivot into branded biscuits wasn’t strategic — it was survival. Two working mothers, limited time, limited kitchen space, and a simple equation: 100 biscuits an hour vs two cakes. Their digital marketing background led them to build a website, and suddenly Google, Amazon, Meta, the BBC and Calvin Klein were ordering logo biscuits baked from their homes while their kids slept upstairs. No investors. No shiny office. Just grit, borrowed canteen space, part‑time working mothers, and a commitment to grow slowly enough to understand every step. As Saskia put it: “We’re the grafters… tiny blood, sweat and tears. Baby steps.”But the heart of their story came during the pandemic. Unable to save lives, they baked — sending free biscuits to nominated loved ones across the UK. The messages that came back changed everything. “We sell that feeling of people feeling closer to that person,” Lisa realised. Kindness became the product. Connection became the mission. Today, The Biskery has reached 300,000 people and is aiming for ten million — one intentional biscuit at a time. Handmade, human, and built around something true. This episode is a masterclass in clarity, co‑foundership, and building in the dark until one day you lift the veil and see something beautiful.

In this episode, we sit down with Chantal Epp, the two‑time world champion cheerleader, music tech pioneer and founder of ClicknClear — a business born at the exact intersection of every skill she’s ever had. When a major record label lawsuit hit the cheerleading world, Chantal was the only person who understood both sides of the problem: a cheerleader, a music graduate, and a music licensing expert. As she puts it, “The universe said: here's this thing, you're perfectly capable of solving it. Go and do it.” What followed was a methodical, multi‑year build of a platform that now powers legal music use across global sport.

We explore the resilience behind her journey — from holding four jobs while building the company, to surviving a pandemic that shut down her entire industry. Instead of pausing, she doubled down: “The commercial part of the business couldn't function, but the foundational work could continue.” That decision meant that when sport returned, ClicknClear was ready — leading to rapid growth, Olympic presentations, and a business now entering what Chantal calls its “teenage phase,” where she’s learning to step back and scale.

Chantal also opens up about her ambition to IPO — a bold move in a landscape where fewer than ten women lead FTSE 250 companies. She talks candidly about funding (including her iconic run of angel investors all named Dave), the power of non‑dilutive capital, and the communities that keep her grounded. And she leaves us with one of the most honest founder reflections we’ve heard: “You can only do your best until you know better. And sometimes that naivety in the early stages is the thing that lets you begin.”

Female finance expert Roxanne Goodman joins us for a powerful, myth‑busting conversation about money, funding, and the realities facing women in business. Roxanne shares her unconventional journey from qualified nursery teacher to 20‑years‑deep commercial finance broker, explaining how she “fell into finance by accident” and later founded Female Founder Finance after noticing the “lack of women that we were dealing with” in the industry. Her mission now is to close the knowledge and access gap for women entrepreneurs who are building brilliant businesses but often lack the networks, language, or support that male‑led companies take for granted.

We dive into the real barriers women face—from confidence gaps to networking limitations to the simple truth that “you don’t know what you don’t know.” Roxanne breaks down the finance jargon that often intimidates founders, sharing stories of women who were offered the wrong products, misunderstood by banks, or left without guidance until they reached crisis point. She explains why cashflow is queen, why overdrafts rarely solve the real problem, and how products like invoice finance, trade finance, and supply‑chain funding can transform a business when used correctly. Her examples—like founders stuck with high‑cost short‑term loans when they actually needed invoice finance—shine a light on how costly the knowledge gap can be.

Roxanne also champions the importance of community, collaboration, and asking questions without fear. She highlights the rise of women‑only networking groups, the value of scrappy resourcefulness, and the role of CDFIs—Community Development Finance Institutions—in supporting underserved founders with more accessible funding options. This episode is a masterclass in financial empowerment, packed with clarity, compassion, and practical tools every founder should know. Whether you're scaling, starting, or simply trying to understand the money side of your business, Roxanne’s insights will leave you informed, inspired, and ready to take action.

Laura Brunton is the business and mindset coach whose energy hits you the moment she walks into a room — and whose journey from a North East council estate to a multi–six‑figure coaching company is anything but ordinary. As she tells Sam, the turning point came when she realised, “I was literally giving this company all of my good Laura energy — and my husband and my kids were getting the dregs of what was left.” Leaving corporate wasn’t the plan, but it became the catalyst for everything that followed.

In this episode, Laura opens up about building a business during an unplanned pregnancy, navigating financial pressure as the sole breadwinner, and discovering that necessity can be the sharpest strategy of all. “Failure is not an option,” she says — not as a slogan, but as a lived reality. She shares how showing up online as her full, unfiltered self became her superpower, why authenticity is non‑negotiable, and how fifteen years in HR quietly prepared her for entrepreneurship.

We also dive into money, mindset and the myths women inherit about worth. Laura talks candidly about growing up around scarcity, learning to love money unapologetically, and why women must talk openly about pricing, budgets and revenue. From walking through London in her bra and knickers to selling out Ignited Woman events, Laura’s story is a masterclass in bravery, alignment and taking action before you feel ready. Her message for every woman listening: “You are enough.”

In this episode, Gilly Ridley Whittle — founder of Peach House — shares how she stepped out of a 25‑year corporate career and into the unknown. She opens up about the fear of losing her job when Topshop went into administration and the unexpected redundancy payout that became the launchpad for her entrepreneurial leap. As she says, “I honestly had no idea how I was going to make this happen… I was terrified” .

Gilly reflects on the harsh reality of launching a sustainable underwear brand into a declining market — from cash‑flow crises to failed wholesale attempts. A single retailer meeting became the breaking point: “I literally… lost it. I am not being beholden to anyone” . That moment sparked a full reset, revealing what had been working all along: bra fitting. From festivals to pop‑ups to workplace activations, every event proved the same thing — women were desperate for comfort, confidence, and proper fit.

What followed was a bold pivot into a service‑led bra‑fitting model, now entering corporate workplaces to tackle women’s health, productivity, and wellbeing. Julie shares how she convinced her investor, built a scalable framework, and stepped into a mission far bigger than product — “We’re building a movement… I’m going to be the number one bra‑fit service in the UK in 18 months” . It’s a conversation about intuition, resilience, reinvention, and turning up exactly where women are.

Female experts Nonie White and Yvonne Biggins join Sam to unpack their research into the real cost of entrepreneurship for women. Their own journeys — spanning filmmaking, teaching, tech startups, coaching and positive psychology — led them to interview and survey 215 female founders, revealing a powerful truth: women are experiencing extreme stress and burnout, yet still report high levels of joy, purpose and satisfaction in the work they do.

Their findings highlight the physical and emotional toll: 83% reported high stress, over half had experienced burnout, and many struggled with sleeplessness, low mood and reduced exercise. With most respondents juggling caregiving, domestic load and often perimenopause, the pressures compound. A quarter identified as neurodiverse, with ADHD founders experiencing even higher stress levels — all pointing to a system that demands more than it supports.

But the research also uncovered the “positive deviants” — founders who thrive despite facing the same challenges. Their blueprint is simple but powerful: regular exercise, meaningful support from peers or coaches, prioritising joy and recovery, practising mindfulness, managing negative thinking and spending intentional time in nature. The red thread is self‑awareness — remembering you’re a whole person, not just a business engine — and building wellbeing as the foundation for sustainable performance.