Podcast
Screw It Just DO It with Alex Chisnall
Hosted by Alex Chisnall · EN
Screw It Just DO It is the podcast for entrepreneurs, founders and business builders who are ready to stop waiting and start building.
Hosted by Alex Chisnall, the show features honest conversations with people who’ve faced uncertainty, taken risks and built businesses that matter — from kitchen-table side projects to global brands and billion-pound companies.
Real stories. Real decisions. Real progress.
New episodes every Tuesday and Thursday.
19episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
Simon Squibb: Turn Your WANT Into a NEED | Founder Classics
Jul 900:10:40Tap to summarizeMost people never start because they want something.Simon Squibb says that is the problem. Wanting is not enough. You have to need it.In this Founder Classic episode of Screw It Just DO It, Simon explains the single mindset shift that has driven every successful business he has built, invested in, or watched succeed. Turn your want into a need. And once you have done that, learn the three things that will multiply your luck: take more risk, know your destination, and never stop.Simon went from homeless at 15 to building and selling his agency Fluid to PwC. He has invested in 76 businesses. He has 23 million followers. And he believes that entrepreneurs, not politicians, are the ones who will fix the world.This is a tight, single-lesson episode. One idea. Applied properly, it changes everything.Key Takeaways• How to turn a want into a need and why it changes your behaviour immediately• The three-part formula for luck: risk, destination, and persistence• Why leaning into fear is a superpower, not a weakness• Why the harder I work, the luckier I get is actually not true🎧 Don’t miss a moment of entrepreneurial insight. Subscribe to Screw It Just DO It wherever you get your podcasts.🏟️ Join us at the Festival of Entrepreneurs, November 3–4 at NEC Birmingham👉https://www.festivalofentrepreneurs.co.uk
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My Wife Gave Me One Year... We Built a Unicorn
Jul 700:57:58Tap to summarizeSteven Mendel built ManyPets from an idea into one of Europe's leading pet insurance businesses. But this episode isn't about insurance. It's about finally backing yourself. After years building successful businesses inside large organisations, one conversation with his wife changed everything. She gave him one year.In this episode, Steven discusses:Why he left corporate.The conversation that changed everything.The three times ManyPets nearly failed.Why becoming a unicorn didn't matter.Building an irresistible employer.Starting again with Lateral.Why it's never too late to reinvent yourself.🎧 This episode is powered by Molten Ventures, a leading European venture capital firm backing ambitious founders from seed through growth. 👉 Find out more at moltenventures.com🎟️ Join us at the Festival of Entrepreneurs, November 3–4 at NEC Birmingham 👉 www.festivalofentrepreneurs.co.uk
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The Moment Jim Cregan Decided to Start Jimmy’s Iced Coffee
Jul 200:15:47Tap to summarizeJim Cregan was a labourer. He was hosting festival stages dressed as a mermaid. He had no idea what he was doing or where he was going.Then he went to Australia, walked into a petrol station hungover, and found a ready-to-drink iced coffee.That was the moment.In this Founder Classic episode of Screw It Just DO It, Jim tells the complete story of how a single product in a petrol station in Australia changed everything. From writing a delusional email to Farmers Union from his hotmail account, to returning to the UK with Suze and launching Jimmy’s Iced Coffee, to the moment he nearly crashed his car watching a stranger choose Jimmy’s off a supermarket shelf.This is the real SIJDI moment. Not a strategy, not a business plan. Just a feeling that grabbed him by the horns and would not let go.Key Takeaways• How a hangover in Australia became the seed of a £10M+ business• Why Jim and Suze started without a plan and built it anyway• What kept them going when nothing was working• The power of seeing someone choose your product over everyone else’s🎧 Don’t miss a moment of entrepreneurial insight. Subscribe to Screw It Just DO It wherever you get your podcasts.🏟️ Join us at the Festival of Entrepreneurs, November 3–4 at NEC Birmingham👉 www.festivalofentrepreneurs.co.uk
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Everyone Said No. She Built A Brand That Sold 20 Years Later.
Jun 3000:55:27Tap to summarizeAlla Ouvarova didn't have experience in food.She didn't have investors lining up.She didn't even have an existing category to enter.Alongside co-founder Anna, she launched Two Chicks and created the liquid egg white category in the UK from scratch.In this episode of Screw It Just DO It, Alla shares:- Why everyone rejected their idea- Starting with £25k instead of £250k- Creating a category nobody understood- Nearly losing everything overnight- Building confidence through action- Selling a majority stake after 20 yearsA brilliant conversation about resilience, confidence and backing yourself before everyone else does.🎧 Listen to the full episode of Screw It Just DO It🎟️ Join us at the Festival of Entrepreneurs, November 3-4 at NEC Birmingham👉 www.festivalofentrepreneurs.co.uk
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Comfort Is Slowly Killing You
Jun 2500:12:02Tap to summarizeTommy Kelly spent years in the Royal Marines operating in some of the harshest environments on earth.But one lesson carried into business: Do hard things.This became a conversation around discomfort, resilience, burnout and learning to keep moving when life gets difficult.In this Bite-Sized episode of Screw It Just DO It, Tommy talks about the Arctic exercise that nearly broke his unit, the moment he artificially created chaos to force himself out of the Marines, and the Monday morning he walked into the office and told his co-founder he was done.Key Takeaways• Why doing hard things is the most practical form of resilience training• What the Arctic night from hell taught Tommy about keeping going• The screw it just do it moment — artificially creating chaos by leaving the Marines• The burnout no one talks about: 12 years of compounding pressure• Why being on the right path matters more than being at the destination🎧 This episode is powered by WorldFirst, specialists in international business payments. If your business pays overseas suppliers or receives payments from abroad, those transaction fees can quickly add up. As a Screw It Just DO It listener, you can get 50 international transactions completely fee free for 60 days.👉 Create a free account and claim the offer at worldfirst.com/screwit🎧 Don't miss a moment of entrepreneurial insight. Subscribe to Screw It Just DO It wherever you get your podcasts.🎟️ Join us at the Festival of Entrepreneurs, November 3–4 at NEC Birmingham. Two days of real conversations, practical insight, and founder-led growth.👉 www.festivalofentrepreneurs.co.uk
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He Risked Everything At 47 To Build Yo! Sushi | Simon Woodroffe OBE
Jun 2301:00:21Tap to summarizeSimon Woodroffe left school at 16. He got arrested at 19. He built stages for rock bands, sold TV rights, and spent decades figuring out how the world worked.Then at 47, with no restaurant experience, he put his entire life savings on the line and opened Yo! Sushi.It changed everything.In this episode of Screw It Just DO It, Simon and Alex talk about what it actually means to risk it all, why he believes it is never too late to start, how he negotiated a 1% royalty that made him more than everything else combined, and what 50 years of doing things differently has actually taught him.We also get into his new autobiography, Yo, Man!, Dragons’ Den, Yotel, and why the unconventional path is often the only one worth taking.Key Takeaways• Why starting later in life can be an advantage, not a limitation• How Simon built a £1 million opening using £200k and a lot of pulled favours• The 1% royalty he negotiated that outlasted everything else• Why megalomaniac control at the start is the right strategy🎧 This episode is powered by WorldFirst, specialists in international business payments. If your business pays overseas suppliers or receives payments from abroad, those transaction fees can quickly add up.As a Screw It Just DO It listener, you can get 50 international transactions completely fee free for 60 days.👉 Create a free account and claim the offer at worldfirst.com/screwit🎧 Listen to the full episode of Screw It Just DO It🎟️ Join us at the Festival of Entrepreneurs, November 3–4 at NEC Birmingham👉 www.festivalofentrepreneurs.co.uk
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Before The Billion-Euro Exit: Julian Hearn on Building Huel
Jun 1800:11:03Tap to summarizeThis episode was recorded when Huel was four years old and doing £14 million in revenue.You are listening to it knowing what it eventually became.Julian Hearn started Huel with a simple goal: find 1,000 people willing to pay £45 a month for a nutritionally complete food. Half a million pounds a year. A lifestyle business he could run three days a week.When they hit £750,000 in year one, he knew that plan was gone.In this Bite-Sized episode of Screw It Just DO It, Julian talks about the early Huel story: the initial product order of £5,000 of stock, the PR that arrived in the first month without asking for it, the customers who started defending the brand online before Julian even had a team, and why he never wrote a proper business plan for any of it.He also talks about hiring, culture, direct-to-consumer, and why the biggest risk in any product business is manufacturing — not the market.Key Takeaways- Why Huel started as a lifestyle business and when Julian realised it was not going to be one- The 1,000 fans model and why it is the right way to start anything- Why execution beats business plans, and what Julian did instead- How building direct-to-consumer gave Huel a weapon that retail-first competitors never had🎧 This episode is powered by WorldFirst, specialists in international business payments. If your business pays overseas suppliers or receives payments from abroad, those transaction fees can quickly add up. As a Screw It Just DO It listener, you can get 50 international transactions completely fee free for 60 days.👉 Create a free account and claim the offer at worldfirst.com/screwit🎧 Don't miss a moment of entrepreneurial insight. Subscribe to Screw It Just DO It wherever you get your podcasts.🎟️ Join us at the Festival of Entrepreneurs, November 3-4 at NEC Birmingham👉 www.festivalofentrepreneurs.co.uk
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The Idea I Couldn't Ignore
Jun 1600:48:10Tap to summarizeJoe Woodward had what most people would call a dream job. Chief Marketing Officer for the Rajasthan Royals in Mumbai. Ten years building things in sport, music and entertainment. Then the pandemic hit, the rug came out from under him, and he moved home.He sat down to update his CV. He immediately got frustrated.That frustration became Vizzy — a platform built to replace the 500-year-old document Leonardo da Vinci invented, and give people a genuinely human way to show who they are. Not bullet points and PDFs. Not job titles and logos. Who they actually are.In this episode of Screw It Just DO It, Joe tells the full story. The flip chart moment with his sister Jess and her husband Chris. The investor conversation with Robert Dodds, Simon Fuller's business partner, that ended with four words: 'That's the idea. I'll back it tomorrow.' The cold start launch. The Instagram DM from a stranger who said Vizzy had just landed them their dream job. And the lesson from Burberry, Louis Vuitton, EY and Tiffany that the future of hiring is not about getting more applicants — it's about getting fewer, better ones.Key Takeaways- Why the flip chart moment changed everything — and what that looked like in practice- How Joe went from zero to Burberry and Louis Vuitton without a hiring background- Why the best founders are still personally obsessed with hiring at £2 billion- What Vizzy taught Joe about the difference between instinct and overthinking🎧 This episode is powered by WorldFirst, specialists in international business payments. If your business pays overseas suppliers or receives payments from abroad, those transaction fees can quickly add up. As a Screw It Just DO It listener, you can get 50 international transactions completely fee free for 60 days.👉 Create a free account and claim the offer at worldfirst.com/screwit🎧 Listen to the full episode of Screw It Just DO It🎟️ Join us at the Festival of Entrepreneurs, November 3-4 at NEC Birmingham👉 www.festivalofentrepreneurs.co.uk
Transcribe →Master of Scale with Cornerstone's Ollie Bridge
Dec 26, 2018Tap to summarize"So I phoned them up and said that I would like to buy some razors. He said the minimum order was 100,000 units. I thought "This is the end of the business, I can't do it, I can't get the money." But then I said 'How's this as a concept..I come to your front door tomorrow with 5,000 Euros in unmarked bills in a bag, would you go for it? "I was just joking... But he said "if you're crazy enough to come from London to East Germany overnight to give me 5,000 Euros you're on. I'll see you tomorrow morning." I phoned my dad and said "What are you doing tonight"? He said "Nothing" so I said "Get the car we're going to Dover". We stopped at Barclays UK on the way down and got 5,000 Euros in cash, drove through the night to East Germany, got there with ten minutes to spare and this guy nearly fell over when he saw us in the morning. It was incredible. He was true to his word and gave us the stock. He gave us a couple of thousand razors and said 'Now that we've supplied you, we might as well keep on supplying you". And that was the start of a great relationship. It was just one of those crazy #Screwitjustdoit moments." Happy Christmas and welcome to episode #101 in which I welcome Cornerstone's Ollie Bridge to the show via itunes https://apple.co/2RhgBSG Or Spotify https://spoti.fi/2GJ9NJD Cornerstone started back in 2014 as a razorblade subscription startup. Ollie had some savings and took out a startup loan and since then has gone on to raise in excess of £8 million. He now has hundreds of thousands of subscribers and in this podcast is going to tell you how he went about doing that. It wasn't an easy journey, he's had his ups and downs but has recently launched vitamin tablets and other male grooming products and his eyes are firmly set on the health and beauty market. He has a goal that by 2020 he'll have 500,000 customers with Amazon-like predicted Tech for orders and to broaden the product range beyond shaving-related products. The whole journey started with him having to leave work and stand in a queue at Boots in his lunchtime to get a razor and thus wasting his lunchtime, when he could be doing something else. His whole mission is that customers will never have to go to Boots again - they will send you everything you need and go on to predict what you need for the month ahead. Let's find out how he's going to set about doing this... Let's StartUp!
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