Screw It, Just Do It | Alex Chisnall Chats With Ray Kelvin, Richard Reed, Steven Bartlett & Others Every Week. Alex Chisnall:

"It was fairly difficult. It was more difficult to retain our first customers  than get them onboard. Acquiring the first few customers wasn't a big thing.  It was retaining them and stopping the churn rate them. It was one of our downfalls at the start, we didn't onboard them fully. We didn't have our customer support in place. What we quickly understood was that getting customers was isn't as hard as retaining them." On today's episode of StartUp Saturday I welcome Dominic Chapman, co-founder of StemX.  StemX are a video interviewing platform for recruiters, HR teams and business owners. Designed to enhance and simplify both employer and employee experiences online. Dom's mission is to disrupt the recruitment industry where candidates are assessed on more important qualities than what's just written on a CV.  Let's StartUp!

'I wanted to become a millionaire so I could help a lot of people. But then I realised that I could use my knowledge to build something, and as it scales, it can create impact. If I can make money in the process then I can invest in other young entrepreneurs and their ideas as people have been doing with me. I would like to give back to society, not only with the product but with knowledge and capital. I think this way, if everything goes well, I can achieve it." On today's show I welcome Marco Barbosa, founder of E-Solidar, which is a global, giving marketplace that allows people to shop, sell and donate to their favourite charitable causes. Now, many charities have yet to fully grasp the opportunity that technology offers and we obviously live in a world where we all use the internet to do a variety of things such as shopping, dating and consuming a variety of products and services. Yet, only a small percentage of charitable giving occurs online.  So, E-Solidar's goal is to provide a platform that allows al

"It's been absolutely brilliant. I've had the best year. If you'd have asked me if I'd be in this position last year I'd have said absolutely not and I feel very lucky. I have worked incredibly hard over the last 12 months but we went into the Liberty store a few weeks ago..and it's a nice journey to be on at the moment." Happy New Year! on today's show I welcome Hayley Measures from Born Nouli - Greek for 'being born fearless". Hayley initially supplied base layers to the British ski and snowboard association and which has now evolved into gym and yoga activewear leggings. Hayley shares how she quit her day job after she got sick of buying 'How to' books on Amazon.  For those of you still thinking about starting a business, Hayley tells of her struggles juggling a career, motherhood and a long-distance relationship with her partner in the French Alps, and going all-in with Born Nouli: Being born fearless.

"We're in this stage where you have no money again. And we've had the same problem twelve times. We've run out of money every single time we've done it. I wish someone had turned around to me at some point and gone 'listen, process, absorb'. Just listen to people. At the end of the day everybody turned round to me and said you're going to run out of cash...and I said 'no, no, no we're not going to run out of cash at all'. And..we ran out of cash. We ran out of cash three times until I realised that there's a lot more to running a restaurant and running a business than meets the eye." On today's show I bring you a taste of one of our 'live' events in anticipation of our first 'live' events of 2018 starting later this month. I welcome Andy Lennox from Koh Thai Tapas. Koh was founded in 2009 at the height of the recession when he had a choice of properties with low rent, but the challenge of having no capital from the banks. Andy opened the first restaurant in Bournemouth in 2009, winning restaurant of the year

I hope you had an awesome Christmas and are looking forward to an amazing new year. I interview Alessandra Sollberg founder of Evermore Health who are revolutionising the functional nutrition space that leverage personalisation. Alessandra grew up speaking 6 languages and got into the nutrition space after teaching windsurfing and snowboarding. After graduating from Oxford University she spent time in startups before spending time as an investor with private equity and venture capital firms. She now has her own funded nutritional startup and I recently spoke to her to find out more.

"So with Jonno and I, there was a very clear moment I can remember when I said, 'If we're gonna go ahead and do this...when it's on, it's on...'And we made that clear decision that we're dedicating the next years of our lives to doing this and that's what we did. We quit our jobs and we were all in." I speak to Tim Fung, founder of Airtasker, an online marketplace that allows people to outsource tasks and errands to people in their local community. Airtasker was founded in 2012 in Australia, now has over a million members and is launching in the UK in early 2018.  So if you're looking to make money from tasks, the practical such as moving furniture, right to the outrageously decadent such as paying someone to wait in line to buy you the latest iPhone then listen up. On today's episode Tim and I speak about a whole bunch of different things from raising finance to building a team.

"At the start of this bus journey this american traveller sat next to me and asked me what I did. I explained I wasn't too happy with my job and he basically said something that changed my life. He said if you're not happy you should do the rocking chair test. Essentially this is to imagine sitting in your rocking chair at the age of 90 and thinking about your legacy in the world, who you have helped, have you left the world in a better place, who's going to remember you, and for why. That was a pretty profound moment at the start of an eighteen hour bus journey. I was thirty minutes in going "No, no, no. I haven't done anything of any significance that's going to make a difference in the world. If I died tomorrow no-one's going to remember me. I've not left the world in a bette place and that really struck me hard. Whilst everyone else was asleep on the bus I was bolt upright thinking about my life about what I need to do to make changes." I speak to Cemal Ezel, founder of social enterprise Change Please. La

"I think it's an unwritten rule really. For me, I could cash in on who I've worked with over the last ten years and I could really go to town with it, but you lose that long-term credibility. I think people wouldn't call you and want to work with you if they knew you were that sort of person. And that's definitely something we've shied away from." Former rugby player and personal trainer Tom Oliver is the founder of Tom Oliver Nutrition which sells fish oil supplements made from caviar and which will be in over 5,000 retailers around the globe in the next few months.  After leaving Richard Branson's school Stowe to become a professional rugby player with former European Champions Northampton Saints, Tom succumbed to a series of injuries and his pro career ended very early at the age of 22.  After re-training as a personal trainer he set up a lucrative business training some of the most high profile middle eastern families. With a keen interest in nutrition Tom developed his own product range who's fans includ

"To be completely transparent with you, we had made the decision...we opened in Boston - and it didn't work out. It didn't work out for us because we weren't well enough funded, and we didn't have the core systems in place to run a two location business." Nikolay is the founder of Taylor and Hart, an award-winning online jeweller for custom engagement rings who have over 2,000 happy customers and have generated over £2.5 million.  Now - would you like to increase your average order by 50% or more? Because that's exactly what Nikolay did after attending Techsters in Boston in 2015 where his long-standing assumptions were challenged.Including the one that 98% of their customers were men. Since rebranding their average order is up 50% and they have the best of both offline and online with the store in London and plans for future stores in both the UK and the US. We talk about experimentation, the advantage of speed and of challenging your assumptions.

"I just felt that I'm not an entrepreneur. I'm struggling. Everything I do is a juggling act. Entrepreneurs focus on their business and they are a success, where I'm thinking, I'm not a success at anything". On today's show I speak to Tara Howard, who left school at sixteen to go on to become a commercial airline pilot and mum of four. She is now the founder of The Venus Awards which recognises and celebrates the successes of business women throughout the UK.  What started as a one-off awards ceremony back in 2009 is now a nine region operation about to launch in London and with international aspirations.  We talk about empowering women and children and about changing people's lives.

"That was an explicit decision at the beginning that I took which was...start with information...start with media, and start with giving it away for free. So that will allow me to build up a massive audience, and then work out what needs to be sold and what needs to be provided." Bosh! are the fastest growing plant-based online food brand. In 18 months they have amassed over 1.5 million followers and their videos have reached over 1 billion people. Henry Firth and Ian Theasby met in school aged just 11 and together they built Bosh! in 2016 to inspire people to a healthier, more ethical and sustainable lifestyle after seeing the popularity of food videos on Facebook. On today's show we talk about building an online community, the lean startup model, and the launch of a product that their community demanded: the launch of their new vegan cookbook.

"I guess you need that little bit of a kick to really make that leap, and for me that came in a bit of serendipity. I went back home and told my mum the idea...my dad died when I was sixteen...and she reminded me that the last present he had bought me was a popcorn machine. " On today show I welcome Propercorn founder Cassandra Stavrou who quit her high flying ad agency job to move back in with her mother and started experimenting with flavours, for what has turned out to be one of the fastest growing snacks in the Uk, with sales forecast to reach close to £20 million in 2017.  Cassandra talks about having the confidence to quit your job and start your own business. And how a meeting with Innocent's Richard Reed led to her recruiting a co-founder. Plus how a cement mixer and car spray painting kit all played their part in creating the brightly coloured popcorn snack you see everywhere from Tesco meal deals, to abroad in over ten countries.

"When I said to them 'What's your favourite flavour of your noodles', one of the brothers looked at me with a sly grin, smirked, and said 'we don't eat our own noodles Damien'. I said, 'why wouldn't you eat your own noodles?' And he said, 'If you knew what we put in our noodles, you wouldn't either". Damien Lee has just conquered cancer - for the second time. And all whilst building a team of over 20 people and raising millions of pounds to build an award-winning, premium, no-nasty, gluten-free cup noodle. He's also developed a noodle kiosk that will deliver a hot cup of noodles that is set to revolutionise the food-to-go industry. Damien has also eschewed the traditional route to market via supermarkets and sells via their online store, amazon, their kiosks on university campuses, hospitals and on trains - for now. Oh, and I forgot to mention that he's done all this whilst bringing up his two boys as a single dad. Here's his compelling story.

"We had a hundred people come. They'd all paid £50 directly into my bank account. And at the point that they paid me, they didn't know where they were going to eat food, what food they were going to eat and by that point we just created this momentum that we were able to generate. And out of these people none of these were my friends. We generated a hundred real customers through social media, a little website, some branding, and some listings in some magazines." Stuart Langley and Frederick Bolin, co-founders of The Disappearing Dining Club have thrown dinner parties in laundrettes, in lighthouses, film sets and fashion stores.  Stuart started the business in 2010 and since then has partnered and collaborated with a whole host of individuals, companies and brands from Google to Rita Ora to throw dinner parties that offer more than just great food and drink. Do you love restaurants but also love dining in beautiful and unusual locations with a group of cool strangers where there are no menus and you eat what

"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

"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

"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 y

"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

"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