Explore every episode of the podcast Sound Advice: Entrepreneurs Unfiltered

In this exciting season finale, we dive into the secrets of building a powerful personal brand, sharing your unique story, and reaching millions on social media. 
This is the second episode in our 2-part special on how you can utilise your online presence to drive business growth. We welcome Ash Jones, visionary founder of Great Influence—a platform designed to help businesses and individuals elevate their brand.

With over a decade of experience, Ash has helped shape the personal brand strategies of some of the most successful entrepreneurs, including Steven Bartlett and Gary Neville. In this episode, Ash reveals how a well-crafted personal brand can dramatically benefit your business by increasing brand recognition and loyalty, building trust and credibility, attracting new opportunities, and driving sales. 

So if you're looking to grow your online presence and create content that not only engages your audience but also converts them into loyal customers, then this is an episode you don’t want to miss!
Tune in now to learn how to leverage personal branding to successfully scale your business.

In this 2-part special, co-founder of NINI Organics, Alex Nicolauo, shares how he has grown his customer base by using confidence, empowerment, and joyful marketing strategies on social media.  

From Instagram to TikTok, our social channels are overflowing with content, but Alex is here to tell you how you can create a brand that resonates with authenticity and stands out from the crowd. 

Find out how to build your brand mission, engage your audience, and stay on top of the latest trends. Alex shares all his top tips on how he has taken his beauty business to the next level. 

But most importantly of all, you’ll learn how you can have fun while turning your followers into loyal customers. 

When clubbing and partying were on hold during the pandemic, a lot of us found ourselves hosting good old-fashioned game and quiz nights. 

Well, Nicola Robinson and Tolu Abisogun took this opportunity to create their cheeky and fun drinking games brand, Berserk Games, which soon became a thriving disruptive player in the industry.  

We're going to delve into their remarkable journey and uncover how their resilience and creativity propelled them to create an incredible impact in the UK and US. 

Stay tuned as we explore how they overcame challenges, embraced their unique backgrounds, and triumphed as founders of a successful company, proving that with determination and passion, even in the hardest of times, anything is possible. 

Sound Advice is known for truth-telling and our mini-sodes give more insight from our star entrepreneurs. The founder of Small Robot Company believed in his prototype made from Blu-tack and elastic bands but when early customers didn’t, he persisted.

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The co-founder of Songkick and carbon-offsetting platform Supercritical, on imposter syndrome as a non-coder, raising investment, burnout and facing failure.

Sound Advice is known for truth-telling and our mini-sodes give more insight from our star entrepreneurs. This week, the founder of The Cornwall Camper Company shares how she taught herself everything she needed to know through Google and YouTube.

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We know tax can be scary and numbers daunting but don't worry, this episode features 5 small business owners laying out the fundamentals to getting tax right – and what they've learned from some hairy moments…

Covert discrimination, invisible barriers, being broke, raising a million, feminism, intersectionality - if you want to reach your next business milestone, then you NEED this episode with the inspirational founder of WAH Nails and The Stack World.

Sound Advice is known for truth-telling and our mini-sodes give even more insight from our star entrepreneurs. This week, the co-founder of YEO Messaging—and 2 other International Women's Day guests—confide the challenges of being women in business.

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What's more important; the ability to make, or the ability to sell? Both, says the co-founder of Hiut Denim. Here's how he built a global brand from nothing.

Sound Advice is known for truth-telling and our mini-sodes give even more insight from our star entrepreneurs. This week, Sahar Hashemi reveals how she persevered when 19 bank managers told her that Coffee Republic was a 'crazy' idea.

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When the pandemic grounded Joe Townshend’s career as a pilot, he saw an opportunity to chart a course towards being his own boss. Fast forward a year and Altitude Coffee is soaring, bringing hand-roasted coffee to everyone. Here’s how he did it. 

Sound Advice is known for truth-telling and our mini-sodes give even more insight from our star entrepreneurs. This week, Solveiga Pakštaitė confides what she did when an angel investor disappeared, leaving her without the funds to pay her staff.

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Join us on this episode of Sound Advice, as we discover how the dynamic power couple, Jim and Dannii Mee, captured their love for travel and transformed their passions into a thriving international events business, driving Rat Race Adventure Sports to new heights. 

Learn from their resilience in adapting through the challenges of the pandemic, pivoting from obstacle races to offering exhilarating expeditions in once in a lifetime destinations.  

From the Namib Desert to the Panamanian jungle, discover their story of passion, perseverance, and the unbreakable foundation of their marriage, which fuels their adventure sports empire. 

From huddling in a fire escape, cold calling dismissive beer bosses, to creating a disruptive brand that lives up to it's name ‘Lucky’ Saint, this is Luke Boase’s epic story of perseverance, false starts and last-minute flights.

Sound Advice is known for truth-telling and our mini-sodes give even more insight from our star entrepreneurs.

This week, Mathew Porter confides how manufacturers stonewalled his idea to bring glass straws to market.

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In the depths of postnatal depression Samantha Senior found herself 'scouring the internet to change how she looked’.  
Unexpectedly, her research led her not to botox, but an entrepreneurial lightbulb moment that injected the passion back into her life.

Sound Advice is known for truth-telling and our mini-sodes give even more insight from our star entrepreneurs. This week, Alec Dobbie confides he had some harebrained ideas that never would have made money.

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Sound Advice is known for truth-telling and our mini-sodes give even more insight from our star entrepreneurs.

This week, Julien Callède confides the mistakes he made in the early days of setting up Made.com

Listen to the full episode here:
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'There is no nursery slope in business.’ Approached by an army general to be a classic Cool Runnings-style bobsleigh sprinter, Will Golder was off to the Olympics – until injury struck and a new, entrepreneurial career beckoned.

Thinking of setting up your own creative business in the New Year? The fabulous founder of Cake or Death talks making a sell-out product from your side hustle. It's practically an MBA in leopard print letterbox brownies.

Sound Advice is known for truth-telling and our mini episodes are designed to give you even more insight from our star entrepreneurs.
This week, Carl Reader confides how to start up on a shoestring budget.
Listen to the full episode here: 
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Let’s Be Honest, it’s hard to start a small business. 

Sound Advice is known for its truth-telling, that’s our USP, and our brand-new mini series is designed to give you even more insight from our star entrepreneurs. 

Nothing we can write here will do this two-part episode justice. Not only does Carl Reader subvert all the usual myths and clichés of being an entrepreneur, he tells small businesses how to crack tax fear and get to grips with Making Tax Digital. 

Becoming homeless and jobless at 15 wasn't enough to stop Simon Squibb from dreaming big. Instead, this was the catalyst to his extraordinary entrepreneurial journey. Today, he is a multi-millionaire, founder of 19 companies, and investor of 78 more. 

With a personal mission to help others achieve similar dreams, Simon created HelpBnk. Alongside his social media channels, this investment platform aims to give 10 million people the funds, advice, and motivation to kickstart their own ventures.  

So, whether you're a startup founder or curious about how to take your business to the next level, this episode is jammed-packed with priceless advice on securing investment, crafting a winning pitch, and even learning how to decode the investor's perspective. 

This is an episode you don't want to miss, filled with Simon’s infectious inspiration and proven strategies that will propel your business towards success. 

Getting into the nuts and bolts of starting a business from scratch, ditching trad business plans, driving yourself with fear, having uncomfortable convos and creative avoidance. You need this two-part episode with the star that is Carl Reader. 

Do you have £0? Then you can build a business, says the founder of Colleague Box. And not just any business. When Nat Bamford’s accountant told her to sell 7,000 boxes to break even – she sold over 100,000. Here’s how she did it from her spare room.

How do you make your passion project profitable? When Natalie Bannister moved to London from Portugal she lost her community in the process, so set up Gutsy Girls, running bespoke retreats and unique active experiences to bring women together. 

Mart and Rob Drake-Knight set up Teemill in a garden shed. From tinkering with Epson printers to building factory robots from old eBay parts, this is how the pair built the first open access circular fashion supply chain from scratch. 

When is the right time to quit the day job and start your own business? Disillusioned by the 9-5, barristers clerk Rob Abrahams retrained in his spare time as a plumber before taking the leap to set up RJA Plumbing. Here's how he did it.

Her day job made her ‘cry every night’, so Hazel Reynolds took the plunge, quit, and crowdfunded her first card game 'Randomise' which became an Amazon bestseller. Gamely has since sold 250k games (Soundiculous and Frozen Unicorns are fan favourites) and turned over £2.5m.

His Dragon's Den pitch is imortalised as the tv show's 'best ever', and Harry Redknapp describes him as having the workrate of a top footballer. This is how Sam Jones convinced stars like Tinie Tempah to invest in his tech start-up, Gener8.

The former record-shop manager co-founded musicMagpie in his garage and turned it into the world's most popular eBay shop, with an annual turnover of £100 million and exports to buyers in 140 countries. He tells us how he did it.

Her university tutor told her she was 'too business minded', her parents said she was mad. But the creative founder of Burnt Toast Designs didn't let that stop her building an impressive client base in corona times. This is how she did it.

This is not your average accountant. After a South-American sabbatical, Mike Psaras ditched the suit and tie, drawing on a decade of industry experience to practically help small businesses thrive with his super smart strategies, instead.

If you wanted more advice on how to overcome your fears of finance, then you're in the right place, as Julie Wong is back with more tips and tricks in this 2-part episode special.

Get ready to explore how finance and marketing are intertwined, giving you valuable insights into how you can adjust your strategies to get the best out of both.

Discover how AI technologies are making it easier than ever before to start a business and learn how to maximise your resources when bootstrapping.

We are also trying something a little different in this episode, as we put Julie on the spot to answer some questions from our listeners on all their business worries and woes.

Are you one of 1.3m following Bubba Ice, co-founder of experiential ice cream chain Pan-N-Ice, on TikTok? From cringe posts and rubbish Shopifys to brand hook-ups and hashtag strategy, super-charge your small business with his social media secrets. 

The World Economic Forum predicts we can close the gender pay gap in 217 years – but the founder of Gapsquare thinks we can do it in 20 with her AI software. This how she built the prototype and why parenthood made her a better business owner.

Setting up a business is like playing poker – you have to deal with ambiguity, anxiety and risk. The trained architect shows his hand to reveal how he built coffee recycling company BioBean, and tech and urban housing company Skyroom, from big ideas.

Dream of a design-based business that takes off online? From cashflow to finding customers, the founder of Plumb and Rabbitts shares an incredibly honest insight into growing her bespoke cake and design start ups with five children in Northumberland.

The super-personal story of how ex-Red Bull marketeer set up shampoo brand Nut and Noggin from her farmhouse table in 18 months, to 'look after our heads’. Share your burn-out-to-start-up stories during Mental Health Awareness Week on Twitter @sageuk

Ryan Panchoo is a joyful burst of creative fresh air. Family food intolerances led him to create a gluten-free doughnut that tastes so good, Selfridges came knocking. For anyone who dreams of quitting the day job – this is how he created Borough 22.

Endlessly effervescent is the way to describe pocket rocket, Jess Ratty, the energetic founder of The Cornwall Camper Company and Ha-lo PR company. Pitch up and learn how she built them from scratch.

Transferring decades of pencilled performance figures to Excel was eye-opening for farmer Sam Watson Jones. Revenues were static and little by little, fields disappearing. There had to be a tech solution, he thought. Enter, the Small Robot Company.

To celebrate International Women's Day, we bring you a bumper small business investment episode with three brilliant guests who have fascinating stories to tell. In this episode, we are talking with Sarah Turner, Rushina Shah and Sarah Norford-Jones.

Latte habit out of control? Blame Sahar Hashemi, founder of Coffee Republic. The UK's coffee craze started with the former lawyer and a super smart business plan that slowly smashed through suppliers’ and banks’ countless rejections.

Does the idea of looking at your finances leave you with sweaty palms and an overwhelming feeling of dread? Then look no further, this 2-part episode special is for you! 

In the chaotic early days of starting a business, it can be easy to overlook the numbers. You place all your focus on marketing, branding and manufacturing, and before you know it, you have lost track of your finances.  

You might not even know what “good” looks like when it comes to cashflow or profit margin—or where to begin when it comes to managing your money. 

Well, Julie Wong is here to give you a masterclass in how to create a more profitable and resilient business. She is a business mentor who specialises in helping entrepreneurs use their numbers to build effective growth strategies so their small businesses soar.  

Join us on the Sound Advice Podcast as we eliminate your fear of finance and help you to confidently manage and maximise your profits. 

Half of the world’s food created, is wasted. Cue industrial designer Solveiga Pakštaitė and her beautifully innovative product Mimica Touch. Scientists, seed funding, biochem cramming, it's the stuff of entrepreneurial dreams, this episode.

Retro video games, sustainable glass straws - Mathew Porter is a seasoned side hustler. Google hacks, supply chain secrets, what makes manufacturers tick; hear how VASO’s CEO launched his innovative product in an emerging market and kept his day job 

FanFinders started life as a side-hustle in Alec Dobbie’s box bedroom in West Yorkshire. His self-coded data platform curates content from top baby companies, and grew to serve over five million parents on two continents.