Simon Squibb is a multi-millionaire entrepreneur and angel investor. After being homeless at 15, he has gone on to found 19 businesses and invest in 76 companies to date. After selling his business to PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC) he retired at 40 and is now on a mission to help 10 million people start their own businesses through the Purposeful Project.But it wasn’t a straight line to success, and one of those businesses, a comic book business, failed, losing $1.5 million.What went wrong?Listen to find out.If you have any feedback, we’d love to hear it. What would make the show better? hello@secretleaders.com Sponsor links:quickbooks.co.uk/secretleaders Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is Secret Leader’s 200th episode! Over the last 5 years we've featured over 50 unicorn leaders and household names such as Monzo, Slack, Duolingo, Brewdog, Lastminute.com.In today’s episode host Dan Murray-Serter takes listeners through the interviews that have had the biggest impact on him. Guests include host of Diary of a CEO, entrepreneur, and angel investor, Steven Bartlett; Co-Founder of Little Moons Vivien Wong on how they went viral during the pandemic; Eve Sleep Kuba Wieczorek on what it cost being one of the fastest UK companies to IPO ever; and Jo Malone talking about how leaving her company after her recovery from cancer was the biggest mistake of her life. Listen to the full episodes here: Steven Bartlett, host of ‘Diary of a CEO’ and entrepreneur  Lemonade Co-Founder Daniel Schreiber  Little Moons Co-Founder Vivien Wong Eve Sleep Co-Founder Kuba Wieczorek Fiverr Co-Founder Micha Kauffman  Trinny Woodall, Founder of Trinny London Jo Malone, Founder of Jo Malone innit :P Dan reflects on what those interviews have taught him: How to stay consistently true to your path and mission statement whilst not believing your own bullshit with Founder and Host of ‘Diary of a CEO’ Steven Bartlett How to redefine an archaic industry by tapping into consumer psychology with Lemonade Founder Daniel Schreiber  How to handle the challenges of surprise growth in hard times with Vivien Wong from Little Moons The pitfalls of hypergrowth when you put the scaling your business ahead of your mental health (everything can fall like a house of cards),with Eve Sleep’s Kuba Wieczorek How to avoid obsessing over the wrong things, with Fiverr Co-Founder Micha Kauffman  How to stay humble, be vulnerable and start again with Trinny Woodall How to build resilience and not be a victim of your greatest regrets, with Jo Malone  --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

In 2013 Emma set up strategic brand agency Hands Down in her spare bedroom, on her laptop, with just £1,000 in savings. She’d never run a business before and had been an employee for the past twenty years, since she was 18. Learning on the job, she put all her energy into growing the business over the next ten years. She had one goal in mind, to make £1 million a year. Despite the pandemic, the business was on set to reach this goal in 2022…but in July she decided to close Hands Down down. What went wrong? Listen to find out what. If you have any feedback, we’d love to hear it. What would make the show better? hello@secretleaders.com Sponsor links:quickbooks.co.uk/secretleaders Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

John Hitchcox is the Chairman and Founder of Yoo Group, the property company behind the £1.3 billion pound regeneration of Olympia London and considered by many the global leader in the branded residence space. John founded Yoo in 1999 with one of the world’s most famous designers, Philippe Starck. Together they have grown Yoo to where it is today, operating in over fifty cities and thirty countries worldwide. John has been in the property market since the early eighties, when he was just 17. He’s had to bring a lot of confidence to be so successful but is honest about the challenges of being an entrepreneur. He has also ridden through multiple financial crises. With the market going bananas and uncertainty over interest rates and inflation going through the roof, it’s a good time to talk to someone who knows more than most. What does he see in his crystal ball? And what happened when he tried to do his first property deal at the age of 14?Listen to 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

This a new one for us - we've just launched our first true crime show at Kindling Media (we make Secret Leaders).It's called Bad Money and it's about the Hong Kong gangster, Big Spender. Obsessed with money, he went further than anyone before to get rich. In fact, he became so wealthy he could've had his own episode on Secret Leaders.This is a story of how money and power really work - and this is the first episode.You can listen to the rest of the show here: https://link.chtbl.com/badmoney_slOr search for Bad Money wherever you listen to your pods.Hope you enjoy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Konrad Bergström is the founder of Swedish electric boat manufacturer X Shore and Zound Industries, the Swedish tech giant that sells consumer electronics for Marshall Amplification and Adidas. But before that, he was half a million euros in debt and living out of his car after his previous business, Megascine Agency, failed. Konrad set up the business which distributed brands like Quicksilver and Burton in Sweden in the late 90s. The company grew quickly and made a name for themselves, organising events such as the world’s largest indoor snowboarding competition and the first European edition of the World Cup in wakeboarding. So what went wrong? Listen to find out what. If you have any feedback, we’d love to hear it. What would make the show better? hello@secretleaders.com Sponsor links:quickbooks.co.uk/secretleaders Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nikki Wicks is the CEO of The Body Coach and the older brother of Joe Wicks. Joe, aka The Body Coach, is a household name. He’s a fitness coach with a massive online following and the author of one of the best selling cookbooks of all time ‘Lean In 15’, having sold over a million copies in its first year alone. During the pandemic Joe became known as the ‘Nation’s PE teacher’, delivering exercise sessions on YouTube for children every week. One class of PE with Joe was live-streamed by nearly a million people, earning him a place in the Guinness World Records. Joe has his own personal brand, but The Body Coach is also a fast-growing business that Nikki has built, along with Joe, over the past seven years. Their YouTube channel has over 2.5 two and a half million subscribers and they hit over a million downloads on their app in their first year. They are booming.Nikki and Joe have a strong bond, formed during a difficult childhood during which their father struggled with a drug addiction. Nikki says he first heard the word ‘drugs’ when he was just five years old and tried to hide his father’s drug’s use from the rest of the family. When Joe asked Nikki to come back from working abroad in 2015 to help him build his business, Nikki says he was worried about working with his brother because of the warnings he’d heard about working with family but doesn’t regret his decision. What is his advice for those that want to work with someone they are close to and how do they cope with such a fast-growing global business? Listen to 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

Kurt Davis has spent twenty years in Silicon Valley and Asia, working in venture capital and business development for technology startups, focusing on deals with companies like Apple, Microsoft, Spotify, and Sony. But he experienced failure, with his very first business, a mobile game company. Kurt was living in Hong Kong in the early 2000s and from there he witnessed the beginning of a wave of innovation in China, especially in tech. Alibaba, Tencent, Baibu, all of them were launched around that time and were beginning to grow. It was exciting and Kurt couldn’t resist the opportunity. He left his job and moved to Shanghai in 2003 to make it as an entrepreneur. He was really into football and hit upon the idea of starting an online fantasy football game app. At first it was going to be a website but, after realising they weren’t going to be able to monetise it very well, they then turned their attention to mobile phones. Remember this was 2003, so the early days of smartphones, before the iPhone. All of this was really new, but they did it! They got mobile phone carriers, like China Unicom, to sell their product and also spread into other countries in Asia. So what went wrong? Listen to find out. If you have any feedback, we’d love to hear it. What would make the show better? hello@secretleaders.com Sponsor links:quickbooks.co.uk/secretleaders Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Christian Angermayer is a German-born billionaire. He’s on the Sunday Times rich list, and has accumulated a lot of wealth from his work as an investor, film producer and founder. But Christian is about much more than money…From his family office, Apeiron Investment Group, he invests and starts companies in areas from psychedelics to fintech, cryptocurrency, biotech, and artificial intelligence. In fact, he’s been called the world’s first ‘psychedelic billionaire’. That might seem a bit strange given the fact he is basically a tee-totaler. He doesn’t smoke. He’s a Bavarian who’s never drunk beer! His biggest vice is tea and coffee. He’s also really into longevity. He believes that within his lifetime, we will extend human lifespan to such an extent that we will voluntarily decide when we exit this life. And he’s committing some of his vast fortune to making that a reality. He thinks deeply about how he has got to where he has and works hard to master his ego.Why does he think this is key to being a successful founder and investor? Listen to 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

Jonathan Anderson is the co-founder and CEO of Candu, a no-code platform that helps people build their own products. They are used by companies likeAdobe, Thought Industries, and Gorgias and have raised over five million dollars.But his first business wasn’t such a success. In 2011, when Jonathan was a student at Stanford University in a CleanTech programme, he came up with the idea for a smart thermostat controlled by your smartphone with a couple of his fellow students. The problem they’d identified was that programmable thermostats at the time were really hard to use meaning customers just didn’t do it. It was early days for the smartphone but also exciting times. They realised they could use the GPS on customer’s smartphones to say when they were coming in and out of their homes, making heating much more efficient. After securing twenty thousand pounds with convertible note financing, they worked with a Chinese supplier to build a prototype. They were pumped to be at the forefront of the revolution in household technologyBut they’d made a fundamental mistake.Listen to find out what. If you have any feedback, we’d love to hear it. What would make the show better? hello@secretleaders.com Sponsor links:quickbooks.co.uk/secretleaders Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices