Screw It Just DO It with Alex Chisnall

"I want to be the Air bnb of accessing compute, I want to be Uber of data centres. Having the worlds largest data centre without owning any physical servers. That's a massive market and that's a great opportunity for Yellow Dog". Gareth Williams is doing something int he tech field that no-one else is  doing. The harnessing and monetising under-utilised computer power. Yellow Dog are currently delivering an unrivalled cloud rendering service to the animation, cgi industry and virtual reality industry. They currently serve customers in 37 countries from their Bristol base. I talked to Gareth not only about their journey thus far, but what other opportunities exist to harness this unrivalled power.

"Always head in the direction that you want to go. At the very beginning understand what you want to achieve,where you want to get to, because if you don't... you'll get lost. And that's what Ed and I have done from the very beginning. We knew we wanted to achieve all these things - so we stuck to that, as much as everyone said "you can't do it". So many people said you can't launch a brand new confectionary brand in the market. We said we can, we can do this. Think big. Dream big. Go for it." Candy Kittens co-founders Jamie Laing and Ed Williams join me and a sold out 'live' studio audience to talk about how they built their brand - initially without even a product. In 2012 Made in Chelsea reality TV star Jamie Laing launched Candy Kittens, an upmarket gluten free sweet range using natural colourings and flavours. A mutual friend led to Ed joining Jamie as co-founder and since then they have gone on to be stocked everywhere from Tesco's to Top Shop. Join us for a branding masterclass to find out who they did it.

"Then once we started to get some traction and proof of concept we got a huge amount of press. When we launched Milley Cyrus actually endorsed the product on our first ever event... took a picture of herself of having a champagne ice lolly...put it on the internet - but she forgot she said she hadn't been drinking! It created a frenzy of "back on the booze with these ice lollies" in the tabloid press which created huge coverage. It was this crazy kind of adventure that kicked it all off. I speak to Harry Clarke and James Rae from Pops who produce premium ice lollies aimed at adults. These aren't any ordinary ice lollies, with everyone from Milley Cyrus to Father Christmas being snapped consuming them. Watermelon martini, Champagne, Prosecco and Pimms and lemonade are just some of the flavours. Harry and James talk to me about leveraging celebrity endorsement to grow their brand as well as raising two rounds of finance in under three years as well as entering into a joint venture with Diageo for the Pimms and lemonade product. Let's startup!

"We get to November, we lose £24k in 30 days and I'm like "holy shit". I've been flying by the seat of my pants, investing more money than we've got. I've been blagging the bank to give me more money, and now we're losing nearly £1k per day going into the winter. And I've got a big team of chefs, two venues to run and genuinely shitting myself at this point. Maybe the bank were right, maybe I shouldn't have blagged and pushed this. It's lucky I didn't get into drugs..because I got into business and I got addicted to it. Mark set up Urban Beach after being inspired by his travels down under – wishing to re-create a relaxed, surfers paradise back in the UK.   Since opening Urban Beach, a hotel, bar and bistro, in 2006, Mark Cribb has launched the Urban Guild which unites his restaurant, boutique hotel, cafe, bar, craft beer and a farm in the new forest, together under one heading.  On today's show Mark tells us how he took an ailing B&B in a salubrious area of town from £50k in year one to £1.1 million in year three, going on to launch Urban Reef, Urban Farm, Jenkins & Sons and The Wood Oven. But it's not all been plain sailing...

"It wasn't until I was broke, felt like a loser on my sisters couch for two years and my father wasn't there to support me anymore that I realised I had to figure this out. It was a necessity for me to learn otherwise I probably wouldn't be where I am at. But it gave me this desire to be more, to reach a potential of another life that I never thought was possible...it's been a challenging..but beautiful journey." Lewis Howes was recognised by The White House and President Obama as one of the top 100 entrepreneurs in America under 30. Lewis has been featured on Ellen, The New York Times, People, Forbes, Inc, Fast Company, ESPN, Sports Illustrated, Men’s Health and The Today Show. He is a New York Times Bestselling author of the hit book, 'The School of Greatness' and author of his latest book, 'The Mask of Masculinity' which he talks about on todays show. He is a lifestyle entrepreneur, high performance business coach and keynote speaker. A former professional football player he now hosts a top 100 podcast in the world, The School of Greatness, which has over 40 million downloads since it launched in 2013 and inspired me to start this podcast, 'Screw it, Just do it'. I was therefore stoked to speak to him on today show. Also on today's show is Chris Wright. Chris loves building businesses and loves working with people on their businesses. A successful business owner, coach and marketeer Chris is super passionate about helping people achieve more than they ever thought possible.  He joined me on todays show and has two amazing giveaways to offer you at the end of my interview - stay tuned!

"This feels like the main act. It feels like the first few decades of my career in technology were the warm up act, the support act. This is now the main act on the pyramid stage at Glastonbury. It's the main event on the Saturday night, this is the real revolution and it's an incredible time to be part of that and to have front row seats in a business like Xero. I'm having a ball." Gary Turner is co-founder and Managing Director of Xero Accounting in the UK. Under Gary's management, Xero has scaled from a three -person startup with annual revenues of £50,000 in 2009 to now having over 1 million subscribers and being valued at over £1.4 Billion. I found out how he's done it. I also speak to Arun Thangavel from social video discovery platform Hollabox. After graduating from Bournemouth University Arun, along with co-founders Adam and Josh, launched Hollabox in Bournemouth. After pivoting and rebuilding their platform from the ground-up, they have been accepted onto Just Eat's accelerator platform. I caught up with Arun to find out more.

"I have so many different passions: fitness, fashion and food - the three "F's" - plus music of course. So it was a natural progression once I came off the x-factor...to get into fashion and release my own clothing line. And as soon as the W8 Gym came along... it's funny how timing works out, as when Nick approached me I was actually thinking of venturing into fitness. So as soon as I saw the product I just jumped on it..quite literally. This is what I was looking for. This was amazing. You may know Fleur East from the X-Factor, from her Top 3 album, her number one single 'Sax' ...but what you may not know is that she is a female entrepreneur and business woman with her own clothing brand on Lipsy. Now Fleur is related to Nick Meaney..who's related to Clive Payne..who first came up with the idea that became W8 Gym. Having first met me at Jim Cregan's 'Jimmys Iced Coffee' HQ for the first Virgin StartUp meetup outside London eighteen months ago, they are now fuelled with a Virgin StartUp loan. Clive developed the prototype, Nick travelled to China to source suppliers and many iterations later, Fleur designed the final product and filmed all the exercises that W8 Gym allows you to do. Releasing W8 Gym on the crowdfunding site Indiegogo on October 24th, I got all three of them in the studio to hear the full story.

"I remember when I wrote my business plan for crowdcube and I think I said that we would be a £3 million brand in 5 years time and in our second year we beat that... and suddenly the goalposts moved". On this weeks show I speak to two incredibly successful female entrepreneurs still in their twenties. Pippa Murray from Pip and Nut launched her nut butter brand in 2015 and now has retail sales of over £9 million and is stocked in over 3,000 stores from Fortnum & Mason to Selfridges. I also speak to Emily Austen who founded PR Agency Emerge as a 22 year old graduate specialising in fashion and lifestyle and now has 18 staff and a turnover of 7 figures. 

"It was at that moment that I realised that a buyer and seller had a need, and that the current operators in that market weren't fulfilling that need, for whatever reason. It really got me thinking about the secondary ticket market...and I actually stumbled across this £3 Billion opportunity. Twenty-Four year old tech entrepreneur Luke Massie sold his first business aged just 17 for £96,000. Having invested £50,000 of that in his next startup, Vibe Tickets is now valued at over £6,000,000. With over 200,000 fans on social media and investment from Matt Newing, Scott Fletcher and Richard Branson, this "Air BNB" for concert tickets" is on a mission to stop ticket touts for good. Also on this week's show I speak to Alice Reeves who is the living embodiment of the phrase "Screw it, Just do it". On the day she spoke at a Virgin StartUp event she gave up her job at a global agency to set up her own agency - The Joyful Web. Her entrepreneurial qualities were never far away as she has previously written a series of published children's stories under the title "Truth and tails".

"We started an internet gaming company. We launched it, we built the product out, it was just like fantasy football. We launched it around Euro 2000, and then we just couldn't get any traction...the internet bubble burst." Andrew Walker is now on his 4th startup and has experienced the highs and lows of starting and growing software companies. His last startup, Clicktools, was bootstrapped for over 14 years from 3 to over 50 people, and was partly acquired by Survey Monkey before being fully fully acquired by Callidus. Andrew is now on a new journey with his social media app, Ikooloo, as well as mentoring new startups through Virgin StartUp and Barclays Eagle Labs. I also speak to Isaac Bartlett-Copeland who started cooking professionally aged just 16 in fine dining and luxury hotel restaurants in Sussex. Isaac's passion to learn more about food led him to London to further his training and experience by working in a series of Michelin Star restaurants. Having always wanted to own his own restaurant he then moved back to Brighton, launched a pop-up aged just 22 which has now evolved into 'Isaac at', his own Brighton-based restaurant.