Gope Walker is the Founder and CEO of Data Kraken, a data consultancy that helps companies make valuable, data-driven decisions.But whilst Data Kraken is making more money than ever today, the venture downstairs is another story.Gope wanted to create a cafe that brought people together. But instead, it left him with depression, loss of appetite, and a £150,000 hole. He thought he was creating something valuable but customers didn’t see it that way. And when the council had the chance to save the business, they gave the cafe the cold shoulder.What happened?If you have any feedback, we’d love to hear it. What would make the show better?hello@secretleaders.com Sponsor links:personio.com/secretleaders Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Entrepreneurs need to reframe failure as the norm, says Aidan Corbett.He is the Co-Founder and CEO of Wayflyer, a unicorn which provides funding for ecommerce companies.Not too shabby, and along the way, he has tried and failed with various initiatives. His failures didn’t all come in one go, but what he learnt added up to some pretty good startup lessons. What happened?If you have any feedback, we’d love to hear it. What would make the show better? hello@secretleaders.com Sponsor links:personio.com/secretleaders Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Henry Engelhardt is the Co-Founder and former CEO of Admiral Group. They’re one of Britain’s most valuable companies – currently valued at over £7 billion – and also the only FTSE 100 company in Wales. Chances are, you’ve used one of their many brands at some point: Admiral Insurance, Bell Insurance, Elephant Insurance, Diamond Insurance, Veygo Insurance… if you’ve ever purchased insurance, basically. Or even if you’ve just run a search on Confused.com or Compare.com. In fact, they launched the UK’s first ever search comparison site.Henry is full of stories and lessons. Not only was he headhunted to found Admiral, but he ultimately had to fight to keep everything that was owed to him once he made the company what it is. His first book, Think Lead Succeed: The Admiral Way, was released in January 2021 and now, he’s back with a follow up: Be a Better Boss: Learn to build great teams and lead any organization to success. We speak about what it really means to be a better boss and how to avoid falling into a leadership style of hypocrisy to how all of life’s experiences offer opportunities to learn. Henry has always been very open about Admiral’s innovations - the one thing he can’t understand is why none of their competitors ever try to copy them. --SponsorsVorboss - get better internet: https://vorboss.com/secretleadersVanta - get 20% off security certifications like ISO27001 and SOC2: https://vanta.com/secretleadersVertice - save on your SaaS or cloud spend ($5k off or a free benchmark) using the code secretleaders: https://www.vertice.one/l/secretleaders--NewsletterSign up here: https://secretleaders.email/You can find our historic newsletters here: https://www.secretleaders.com/episodes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Being really productive isn’t enough to win at startups.Kim Little is the Co-Founder and CEO of Moments of Space, a successful meditation app, but about 10 years ago he was in a very different space.He was living in Australia, having co-founded a semantic driven products company (yeah we get onto what that means). He put $400,000 Australian of his own money into the company and they launched a series of cool sounding products.But they never got anywhere.What went wrong? ------------------If you have any feedback, we’d love to hear it. What would make the show better?hello@secretleaders.com Sponsor links:personio.com/secretleaders Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ed Perry and Rosie Brown are the Co-CEOs in charge of high-end ready meal company, COOK. Their USP is using the same ingredients and methods a normal person would use in their kitchens to create ready meals that actually feel home-cooked. A company run by Co-CEOs is pretty unusual but Ed and Rosie are especially unusual because they’re also brother and sister. Ed co-founded the company with Dale Penfold in 1997. His sister Rosie Brown joined the company soon after and then became Co-CEO in 2018. They’ve steered the company through tough times like the cost of living crisis and credit crunch which took the company to the edge of bankruptcy. Now, COOK's products are available in 850 stores across the UK not including the 94 COOK shops and turnover is £100 million. Just like a great recipe, Rosie believes COOK's success is down to a number of high-quality ingredients like strong principles, valuing people properly and the influence of faith. Yup, faith. For instructions on how to prepare, put your headphones and turn the volume up to 8...--SponsorsVorboss - get better internet: https://vorboss.com/secretleadersVanta - get 20% off security certifications like ISO27001 and SOC2: https://vanta.com/secretleadersVertice - save on your SaaS or cloud spend ($5k off or a free benchmark) using the code secretleaders: https://www.vertice.one/l/secretleaders--NewsletterSign up here: https://secretleaders.email/You can find our historic newsletters here: https://www.secretleaders.com/episodes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mike Dunn is the Founder and MD of Excel TLM Group, a telemarketing and lead generation company for construction businesses. Excel today is a solid, growing business but they came within a whisper of collapse - as did Mike himself. It all came to a head on a family holiday they’d saved for years for. Mike thought he could lose everything, including his family. He felt like he’d hurt and failed everyone. What happened and what did he learn from it?------------------If you have any feedback, we’d love to hear it. What would make the show better?hello@secretleaders.com Sponsor links:personio.com/secretleaders Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen as Holger Seim, Co-Founder and former CEO of Blinkist, shares his journey of building the app and discusses topics like the value of full books vs Blinkist summaries, selling a business, and the challenges faced by entrepreneurs. He also offers valuable advice on building a lasting business.

AJ Keller is the Co-Founder of Neurosity, who make brain imaging devices you can use at home. But before that he experienced an epic fail that put him on the path to where he is today. AJ’s first foray into brain imagining brought him to a point in the Summer of 2017 when everything was riding on him and his teammates winning an NYU startup pitch competition. If they won, they would get the funding they needed to turn their company into a real thing. Fail, however, and their venture would be over.What happened?------------------If you have any feedback, we’d love to hear it. What would make the show better?hello@secretleaders.com Sponsor links:personio.com/secretleaders Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tim Urban is the writer/illustrator behind Wait But Why, a blog he founded with his business partner, Andrew Finn, as well as the man behind one of our favourite TED Talks of all time on procrastination. Tim writes long-form articles covering topics from outer space to love to artificial intelligence. As he puts it, he writes about “almost everything actually”. Each post is also accompanied with Tim’s now-iconic doodles. Content creation is one of the hardest things to monetise effectively, but Tim hasn’t just managed to make a living from stick figures; he’s also used it to network with the most influential people on the planet, including Elon Musk. His new book, What’s Our Problem?: A Self-Help Book for Societies is the fruit of Tim’s six-year exploration into what exactly is going wrong with society right now. In short: he thinks we’ve lost the nuances and lays out how we can start to rebuild the bridges that have been damaged in recent years. What are the simple things all societies need to do to kick on from where we are? How do you monetise well when you’re a content creator going after a niche audience? And what’s Elon actually like in person?Let's find out...--SponsorsVorboss - get better internet: https://vorboss.com/secretleadersVanta - get 20% off security certifications like ISO27001 and SOC2: https://vanta.com/secretleadersVertice - save on your SaaS or cloud spend ($5k off or a free benchmark) using the code secretleaders: https://www.vertice.one/l/secretleaders--NewsletterSign up here: https://secretleaders.email/You can find our historic newsletters here: https://www.secretleaders.com/episodes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Henry Holland is the man behind fashion brand ‘House of Holland’, known for its signature rhyming slogan t-shirts such as 'Cause me pain Hedi Slimane' and ‘“I’ll Tell You Who’s Boss Kate Moss’. At one point they had over a 100 stockists all over the world. Henry produced special collections for Debenhams and Habitat. But at the start of the pandemic, Henry called in the administrators and left the world of fashion to go into ceramics.What happened?If you have any feedback, we’d love to hear it. What would make the show better? hello@secretleaders.com Sponsor links:personio.com/secretleaders Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices