James Martin's Rules for Scaling Fast | Backed by Funding Circle

Backed by Funding Circle. Funding Circle is business finance that backs you. Business loans, a flexible line of credit and a cashback business card for UK businesses, with a decision in as little as an hour. If you are looking for funding to take the next step, check them out here: https://www.fundingcircle.com/uk Andrew Hulbert grew up on a council estate in Oxford and started Pareto Facilities Management from his bedroom at 27. He grew it to around £50m turnover and 500 staff, took it through a management buy-out and a private equity exit, and walked away at 37 with a $100M-class exit. Today he is Founder and Vice Chair of Pareto FM and Chair of the Institute of Workplace and Facilities Management (IWFM). Andrew joins hosts Jack Frimston and Zac Thompson at Ideas Fest to explain what buyers actually look for, why you should build your business to sell from day one, and the side of a big exit nobody warns you about. If you are a founder thinking about growth, private equity, a management buy-out or selling your business in the UK, this is the honest version. CHAPTERS Chapters 00:00:00 Welcome to the Show: Meet Andrew Hulbert, Dad, Farmer, and 100 Million Dollar Exit Entrepreneur 00:01:17 The Cash Flow Reality Check: Why Cash Beats Profit Every Single Time 00:02:35 The Borrowing Money Masterclass: Covenants, Interest Rates, and What You Need to Know 00:03:43 Day One of Your Business: Where Is the Money Coming From 00:05:27 The Self-Worth Warning: Why Your Business Is Not You 00:07:01 The Social Media Trap: Why Follower Count Is Overrated Business Advice 00:08:29 The Networking Masterclass: How to Win Your First Customer 00:10:17 Closing Thoughts: Get Out There and Network #BackedByFundingCircle #FundingCircle #AndrewHulbert #ParetoFM #BusinessExit #SellingABusiness #IdeasFest #SmallBusinessUK #BusinessFinance #FounderStory #Entrepreneur #WeHaveAMeeting Connect with Andrew Hulbert: * Pareto FM: https://www.paretofm.com * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewhulbert/ Hear more from the hosts: Jack: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-frimston-5010177b Zac: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zac-thompson-33a9a39b Brought to you by Funding Circle: business finance that backs you. See how they could back your business at https://www.fundingcircle.com/uk Subscribe to We Have A Meeting: new episodes every week with founders, sales leaders and entrepreneurs who've built it from the ground up.

Backed by Funding Circle. Funding Circle is business finance that backs you. Business loans, a flexible line of credit and a cashback business card for UK businesses, with a decision in as little as an hour. If you are looking for funding to take the next step, check them out here: https://www.fundingcircle.com/uk James Martin left school at 14 with no qualifications and dyslexia, and built an empire anyway. He started out mowing lawns, moved into landscaping and tree surgery, then brought the first tree-moving machine to England from Illinois. That became Ruskins Tree Moving, the UK leader in large-scale tree transplanting, which he sold, bought back and sold again. Since then he has built a £30M+ commercial property portfolio, owns the Baddow Park House wedding venue, co-hosts the Baddow Park Mastermind for £2M to £20M founders and hosts the Entrepreneur Conversations podcast. James joins hosts Jack Frimston and Zac Thompson at Ideas Fest to share his rules for scaling a business fast: the rule most founders never follow, what to fix before you try to grow, and why speed without systems can kill a good company. If you are a founder, business owner or entrepreneur trying to scale in the UK, this is the playbook from someone who has built, sold and rebuilt more than once. Chapters 00:00:00 Welcome to the Show: Meet James Martin, Serial Entrepreneur with 48 Years of Battle Scars 00:01:10 The Cash Flow Reality Check: Why You Need to Know Your Numbers Daily 00:01:20 The Borrowing Money Masterclass: Cost, Source, and Purpose 00:01:30 Day One of Your Business: The Market Study You Can't Skip 00:01:47 What Got You Here Won't Get You There: The Best Business Advice 00:01:57 Ignore the Professionals: Why Accountants and Lawyers Give Overrated Advice 00:02:14 Trust Your Gut: The Most Underrated Business Skill 00:02:20 The Laser Beam Vision: What Separates Winners from Everyone Else 00:02:44 The Assassin Customer Strategy: How to Win Your First Sale 00:02:59 Closing Thoughts: Deep Scars, Mini Trips, and Giving Back #BackedByFundingCircle #FundingCircle #JamesMartinEntrepreneur #ScalingABusiness #IdeasFest #SmallBusinessUK #BusinessFinance #FounderStory #Entrepreneur #PropertyInvesting #WeHaveAMeeting #Manchester Connect with James Martin: * Website: https://www.jamesmartinentrepreneur.com * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-martin-entrepreneur/ * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jamesmartinentrepreneur * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@James_Martin_Entrepreneur Hear more from the hosts: Jack: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-frimston-5010177b Zac: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zac-thompson-33a9a39b Brought to you by Funding Circle: business finance that backs you. See how they could back your business at https://www.fundingcircle.com/uk Subscribe to We Have A Meeting: new episodes every week with founders, sales leaders and entrepreneurs who've built it from the ground up.

You're using AI wrong. Most people treat ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude like a glorified Google search. Amelia Miller calls that level one of ten, and it uses maybe 5 to 10% of what the tools can actually do. In this episode she shows you the other nine levels. Amelia is the co-founder and CEO of Ivee, the AI training company she runs with her sister Lydia. She is a published researcher and current fellow at the University of Cambridge, where she studies which skills survive tech revolutions and which ones die. She spent time in FX sales and trading at Goldman Sachs and sits on the UK government's Women in Tech taskforce. She was also recently named in the Forbes 30 Under 30. And she once had two hours' notice to get on a train and pitch on Dragons' Den, with £0 revenue and a product that didn't exist yet. Amelia joins hosts Jack Frimston and Zac Thompson to explain why there are really only three foundation models and everything else is a wrapper. She also shows how an inbound enquiry landed at 3am and had a meeting booked in her diary before she woke up. She runs a proper prompting masterclass. That includes the persona prompt that changes everything, negative constraints, few-shot examples, and why a bad prompt always equals AI slop. She reveals the automated email that goes out four and a half minutes after a form fill, written to look like she typed it on her phone while travelling. She then walks through the levels above chatbots: AI browsers, automations with an AI layer, and agentic AI. Give an agent your card with no guardrails and it might book you a first class flight to Rome. Along the way: why big companies are using AI to freeze hiring while startups use it to survive, and the three-person dog brand whose founder was losing two hours a day to his inbox. You'll also hear why AI fluency is the number one skill of 2026 and why 70% of today's skills will be obsolete by 2030. Then there's the chaotic 36 hours before Dragons' Den: a fake demo, a dash to Zara and a YouTube compilation of the worst roasts. She explains why they picked Steven Bartlett and Deborah Meaden from four offers, and why 70% of Den deals never go through. She covers the Amazon CV algorithm that binned anyone with "women's" on their CV, and why every company is now an AI company or it will die. And finally, the question she leaves for Barry, 52, from Swansea. Chapters 00:00:00 Welcome to the Show: Meet Amelia Miller, Forbes 30 Under 30 AI Expert 00:04:04 The AI Slop Problem: Why 97.2% of People Are Using AI Wrong 00:05:27 The 3am Email That Changed Everything: AI Working While You Sleep 00:06:50 ChatGPT vs Claude vs Gemini: Which AI Tool Should You Actually Use 00:15:20 The Prompt Engineering Masterclass: How to Stop Sounding Like a Robot 00:18:24 The Job Market Reality Check: Why 70% of Your Skills Will Be Obsolete by 2030 00:27:01 Beyond the Chatbot: AI Browsers, Automations, and Agentic Workflows 00:40:33 The Dragon's Den 36-Hour Scramble: Building a Fake Platform on a Train 00:47:11 The Amazon Hiring Algorithm Disaster: When AI Bias Gets Dangerous 00:51:17 The Closing Question: What Would You Do If AI Took Care of All the Manual Work #AmeliaMiller #Ivee #DragonsDen #AITraining #PromptEngineering #AIForBusiness #ChatGPT #Claude #Gemini #AgenticAI #FutureOfWork #AISkills #UKBusiness #BusinessPodcast #StartupUK #FounderMindset #WeHaveAMeeting Connect with Amelia Miller: Website: https://ivee.jobs LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/amelia--miller Instagram: @buildwithamelia Ivee on Instagram: @ivee.jobs Hear more from the hosts: Jack: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-frimston-5010177b Zac: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zac-thompson-33a9a39b Brought to you by Nooks: the AI-powered platform helping teams automate outbound sales and book more qualified meetings. Learn more at https://www.nooks.ai/wehaveameeting Subscribe to We Have A Meeting: new episodes every week with founders, sales leaders and entrepreneurs who've built it from the ground up.

We asked James Martin every weird and wonderful question we could think of. He answered all of them. James Martin started cutting grass as a boy, moved into tree surgery, and has been building, buying and selling companies ever since. Today he owns Baddow Park House in Essex, runs a group of businesses and a property portfolio, hosts the Entrepreneur Conversations podcast, and mentors owners through the Baddow Park Mastermind. He is also severely dyslexic. He does not read. He has turned down free lessons more than once. He built a team around the gap instead of spending thirty years trying to close it. We caught him at Ideas Fest and decided not to do the normal interview. No origin story questions. No "so what's next for you". Instead we threw the brutal, the strange and the flat out ridiculous at him and waited for something to break. Nothing broke. That is the problem with James. You go in looking for a wobble and come out with a business plan. Chapters 00:00:00 Welcome to the Show: Meet James Martin, Problem Solver for Entrepreneurs 00:00:25 Snog Marry Avoid: The Royal Family Edition 00:01:17 The Pigeon Poo Property Disaster: When Garden Centres Go Wrong 00:01:35 The 17 Grand HR Nightmare: Firing Someone for Smoking Weed 00:02:20 Robust and Forthright Software: The James Martin Operating System 00:02:37 Da Vinci and Evita's Wedding: The Ultimate Power Couple 00:03:01 Dry Hire Terminology: When Business Jargon Sounds Completely Wrong 00:03:20 Kung Fu Fighting and Row Dancing: The 90s Networking Event 00:04:16 All the Isms: ADHD, Dyslexia, and Throwing Labels in the Bin 00:05:21 The Drowning Question: Why Jack Gets Saved and Zach Doesn't 00:05:42 Michael Bolton at My Funeral: How Am I Supposed to Live Without You 00:06:32 Sexual Innuendo and Paul King: How Do They Get Away With This What should we have asked him? Stick it in the comments. Best question gets sent to James and we will make him answer it. #JamesMartinEntrepreneur #IdeasFest #BaddowPark #EntrepreneurConversations #BusinessPodcast #UKBusiness #SmallBusinessUK #FounderMindset #BusinessOwner #Leadership #DyslexicEntrepreneur #EssexBusiness #BusinessMentor #WeHaveAMeeting Connect with James Martin: Website: https://www.jamesmartinentrepreneur.com Baddow Park Mastermind: https://www.baddowpark.com Podcast: Entrepreneur Conversations LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/james-martin-entrepreneur Instagram: @jamesmartinentrepreneur Hear more from the hosts: Jack: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-frimston-5010177b Zac: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zac-thompson-33a9a39b Brought to you by Nooks: the AI-powered platform helping teams automate outbound sales and book more qualified meetings. Learn more at https://www.nooks.ai/wehaveameeting Subscribe to We Have A Meeting: new episodes every week with founders, sales leaders and entrepreneurs who've built it from the ground up.

James Martin started cutting grass as a boy, moved into tree surgery, and has built, bought and sold companies ever since. Today he owns Baddow Park House in Essex, runs a group of businesses and a property portfolio, hosts the Entrepreneur Conversations podcast, and mentors business owners through the Baddow Park Mastermind. He is also severely dyslexic. He does not read, he has turned down free lessons more than once, and he built a team around the gap instead of spending thirty years trying to close it. James Martin joins hosts Jack Frimston and Zac Thompson at Baddow Park to give the least polished answers anyone has given on this show. He explains why he has zero tolerance for what he calls an atmosphere vampire, why he refuses to hand out warning letters, and why he would rather double someone's severance, end it the same day and invite them to sue him than let one bad hire flatten the team around them. He breaks down the gardener he took from £650,000 turnover and an 11% margin to multi-million turnover and a 32% margin in eighteen months, and what actually changed to do it. He gets into the client with twenty five products who was quietly losing money on most of them, why cutting to six raised the margin and dropped the promotion spend, and why he is never the cheapest and says so out loud instead of discounting. He explains how a mistake that cost one of his companies half a million pounds got logged as a free lesson and closed down in one meeting, because your team copies how you frame the bad news rather than the news itself. Along the way: why he told two best friends who run a business together that he would never go into business with a friend or a family member, the Felix Dennis book he keeps coming back to, the jobs he thinks AI is never touching because nobody is crawling under there to mend the leak, what he actually spends in a year and why it is nothing like people assume, the three holidays and the Range Rover he mistook for success, why he has no intention of ever retiring, and the fact that he cannot get through his own gates because he does not know the codes. Chapters 00:00:00 Welcome to the Show: Meet James Martin, Multi-Million Pound Entrepreneur 00:05:53 The Dyslexia Superpower: Turning a Disability Into a Business Advantage 00:09:48 The Van Man Origin Story: From Trees to Multi-Million Pound Empire 00:12:15 The Entrepreneur Apprenticeship: Why Working for Free Beats Business School 00:13:32 AI-Proof Industries: Where to Build Your Business in the Next Decade 00:18:38 Social Skills Over Degrees: The Real Talent Hiring Strategy 00:24:38 The Price Point Philosophy: Why Being the Most Expensive Wins 00:27:19 The Devil Is in the Detail: Why Small Stuff Equals Big Success 00:29:33 No Friends, No Family: The Partnership Warning Every Founder Needs 00:39:54 Commercial Property Over Houses: The Real Estate Strategy That Builds Wealth 00:42:46 The Madness Weirdo Journey: Are You Really Ready to Be an Entrepreneur? #JamesMartinEntrepreneur #BaddowPark #EntrepreneurConversations #BusinessPodcast #UKBusiness #SmallBusinessUK #HiringAndFiring #HowToFireSomeone #BusinessGrowth #ProfitMargin #FounderMindset #BusinessOwner #Leadership #DyslexicEntrepreneur #EssexBusiness #BusinessMentor #WeHaveAMeeting Connect with James Martin: Website: https://www.jamesmartinentrepreneur.com Baddow Park Mastermind: https://www.baddowpark.com Podcast: Entrepreneur Conversations LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/james-martin-entrepreneur Instagram: @jamesmartinentrepreneur Hear more from the hosts: Jack: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-frimston-5010177b Zac: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zac-thompson-33a9a39b Brought to you by Nooks: the AI-powered platform helping teams automate outbound sales and book more qualified meetings. Learn more at https://www.nooks.ai/wehaveameeting Subscribe to We Have A Meeting: new episodes every week with founders, sales leaders and entrepreneurs who've built it from the ground up.

Michael Aaron Flicker started his first company, ZenoSci, at 14 years old, and 28 years later he's built nine operating companies around a single idea: understanding why people actually believe and behave the way they do gives you an unfair advantage in any market. He's the author of Hacking the Human Mind and founder of the Consumer Behavior Lab, where he helps brands use behavioural science instead of guesswork. Michael Aaron Flicker joins host Jack Frimston to break down why humans make decisions with the laziest possible amount of brainpower, and what that means for anyone trying to sell, price or name something. He explains why you instinctively order the second cheapest bottle of wine on a menu, why Red Bull deliberately shrank its can and charged more for it, and why Nespresso built its entire pricing strategy around comparing itself to a Starbucks latte instead of a cup of ground coffee. He gets into the psychology of loss aversion and why fear of missing out beats the promise of gaining something, why rhyming slogans are proven to be more believable, and the real science behind why "Chilean sea bass" outsold "Patagonian toothfish" thirty to one. He also explains the illusion of effort, the reason James Dyson opens his own autobiography by mentioning 5,127 failed prototypes, and why that same trick works for a ramen shop or a plumber with zero marketing budget. Along the way: the study that proves even doctors prescribe whatever drug sits highest in a dropdown menu, the "regret lottery" that got office workers cycling to work, why Five Guys deliberately refuses to sell chicken or salad, and the one-word swap in a police study that changed how fast people remembered a car crash happening. Chapters 00:00:00 Welcome to the Show: Meet Michael Aaron Flicker, Behavioral Science Expert 00:01:35 The Irrationality Problem: Why Humans Aren't as Rational as They Think 00:07:16 The Red Bull Pricing Hack: Breaking Comparison Points to Win 00:12:05 The Apple Watch Anchor: How Premium Options Make Everything Seem Reasonable 00:14:10 Pain vs Pleasure: The Psychology of Loss Aversion in Sales 00:18:14 The Pringles Rhyme Effect: Why Simple Phrases Build More Trust 00:20:47 The Illusion of Effort: How James Dyson Built Trust with 5,127 Prototypes 00:25:36 The Chilean Sea Bass Story: How the Right Name Changes Everything 00:29:53 The Five Guys Focus Strategy: Why Doing One Thing Beats Doing Everything 00:34:02 The Ethics Question: Are These Tactics Manipulation or Marketing 00:41:55 The Amazon Prime Trap: How Past Behavior Defines Future Choices 00:45:42 The AI and Effort Connection: How to Use AI Without Losing Credibility 00:47:46 The Test and Learn Philosophy: The One Question Every Business Owner Should Ask #MichaelAaronFlicker #HackingTheHumanMind #BehavioralScience #ConsumerPsychology #MarketingPsychology #SalesPsychology #PricingStrategy #Branding #Neuromarketing #CognitiveBias #LossAversion #B2BSales #ConsumerBehaviorLab #WeHaveAMeeting Connect with Michael Aaron: Book: https://www.hackingthehumanmind.com Consumer Behavior Lab: https://www.consumerbehaviorlab.com Hear more from the hosts: Jack: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-frimston-5010177b Zac: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zac-thompson-33a9a39b Brought to you by Nooks: the AI-powered platform helping teams automate outbound sales and book more qualified meetings. Learn more at https://www.nooks.ai/wehaveameeting Subscribe to We Have A Meeting: new episodes every week with founders, sales leaders and entrepreneurs who've built it from the ground up.

Andy Coleman has spent the last 21 years starting things, breaking things and fixing them, on rinse and repeat. He became the youngest landlord in the Greene King estate in his early twenties, went on to build and run pubs, bars, a roofing business, a women's clothing chain, an events company and a content creation agency, and most recently launched BizzFest, a festival-style business event that went from an idea on a retreat to 1,000 people, three stages and 40 speakers in a field within seven months. Andy Coleman joins hosts Jack Frimston to talk about what actually happens when you build a career out of jumping into things other people would call reckless. He explains why he never learned to delegate until a manager called Ben forced the issue, why the smoking ban was the moment he learned to "jump before you're pushed" in business, and why the businesses that failed for him were never killed by some outside disaster, they just got dragged on too long after he already knew. He breaks down the exact framework he uses to decide whether to pivot or shut something down, why he refuses to call it quitting, and why giving someone terrible food poisoning taught him more about customer trust than almost anything else in hospitality. Then he gets into how BizzFest actually got built: why he spent money before the brand had any trust to spend it on, why ticket sales for a first-time event barely move until the final 48 hours, and what it was like hosting a fireside chat with Andy Coulson and Jamie Laing having never done one before in his life. Along the way: the ChatGPT prompt Andy wrote in the bath the night before interviewing Jamie Laing on stage, the "burn the boats" story that talked him into doing it anyway, why he thinks most business failure feels like getting cut from the school basketball team, and the charity worker who told him a single day at BizzFest changed his life. Chapters 00:00:00 Welcome to the Show: Meet Andy Coleman, Serial Entrepreneur 00:01:37 The Youngest Landlord: Starting a Business at 21 00:04:51 The Resilience Factor: Why Andy Didn't Fail 00:06:09 Learning to Delegate: The Seven-Year Struggle 00:07:20 The Smoking Ban Pivot: Knowing When to Jump or Be Pushed 00:07:55 Building an Ecosystem: From Pubs to Bars to Clothing Shops 00:10:15 Customer Experience Masterclass: The Power of Fixing Mistakes 00:15:12 Defining Success: Happiness Over Everything 00:19:56 The Month Off Challenge: Working Yourself Out of the Business 00:26:59 The BizFest Origin Story: Born in a Bath in Portugal 00:31:01 The Only Real Risk: What If Nobody Shows Up? 00:33:16 Sales and Marketing Lessons: Throw Money at the Problem 00:35:11 The Ticket Sales Spike: Why Events Come Together Last Minute 00:41:30 First Time on Stage: The Andy Coulson and Jamie Lang Interviews 00:46:36 The Future of BizFest: Scaling Across the UK and Beyond 00:47:33 The Life-Changing Moment: When BizFest Led to an Adoption #AndyColeman #BizzFest #Entrepreneurship #BusinessGrowth #Hospitality #EventsIndustry #PersonalBranding #FounderStory #SmallBusiness #BusinessLessons #SalesAndMarketing #CustomerExperience #StartupFailure #Resilience #WeHaveAMeeting Connect with Andy: BizzFest: https://www.bizzfest.co.uk Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theandycoleman/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andy-coleman-6343aa49/ Hear more from the hosts: Jack: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-frimston-5010177b Zac: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zac-thompson-33a9a39b Brought to you by Nooks: the AI-powered platform helping teams automate outbound sales and book more qualified meetings. Learn more at https://www.nooks.ai/wehaveameeting Subscribe to We Have A Meeting: new episodes every week with founders, sales leaders and entrepreneurs who've built it from the ground up.

Mark Bowden has spent his career reading the eight seconds before anyone says a word. He's the founder of Truth Plane, and he's coached leaders at the G7, elite athletes and Fortune 500 executives on how to win trust and credibility the moment they walk into a room, long before their content, their numbers or their pitch ever gets heard. Mark Bowden and hosts Jack Frimston and Zac Thompson get into why your brain decides whether to trust someone in seconds, and why that decision has almost nothing to do with what's actually being said. Mark delivers the same five-million-pound pitch twice, live, with two completely different sets of body language, to prove that identical words land completely differently depending on how predictable your movement is. He breaks down why "you can never change a first impression" is a myth, and gives the exact script for rebuilding trust once it's broken. He explains why the brain isn't a computer but a chemical system that changes its own thresholds day to day, why a nervous read and a lying read can look almost identical, and why Donald Trump's handshake theatre with world leaders is a deliberate performance for an audience, not an instinct. Along the way: why one person's charisma is another person's arrogance, the exact question to ask at any networking event instead of pitching yourself, how to build real rapport without turning someone else's story into your own, the cold call line that stops a "no" before it starts, and the story of how Zac's brother accidentally avoided being mugged by his trousers falling down. Chapters 00:00:00 Welcome to the Show: Meet Mark Bowden, Body Language Expert 00:00:30 The Trust and Credibility Problem: Why Everyone Needs Help 00:01:25 The Anxiety Factor: Who Mark Helps and Why 00:02:57 First Impressions in the Boardroom: The Predictability Principle 00:07:38 The Likeability Paradox: When Being Difficult Still Works 00:11:13 Can You Change a First Impression: The Real Answer 00:13:40 The Persuasion Transparency Technique: Telling Them You're Persuading Them 00:20:44 The Brain Is Not a Computer: Why Complex Systems Need Simple Tools 00:26:20 Trump's Handshake Strategy: Performing for Your Audience 00:30:47 The Networking Event Masterclass: How to Win Without Selling 00:38:27 The Hierarchical Evaluative Question: Finding What People Really Value 00:47:52 The Cold Call Pattern Interrupt: When They Say No, Say Thank You 00:50:33 The Duty to Persuade: Why Letting People Go Is Failing Them 00:51:51 The Closing Question: What Will You Do Immediately and What's in Your Way #MarkBowden #TruthPlane #BodyLanguage #BodyLanguageExpert #NonverbalCommunication #TrustAndCredibility #FirstImpressions #Charisma #Persuasion #SalesPsychology #ColdCalling #Networking #PublicSpeaking #ExecutivePresence #CommunicationSkills #SalesTraining #B2BSales #WeHaveAMeeting Connect with Mark: Truth Plane: https://www.truthplane.com Hear more from the hosts: Jack: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-frimston-5010177b Zac: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zac-thompson-33a9a39b Brought to you by Nooks: the AI-powered platform helping teams automate outbound sales and book more qualified meetings. Learn more at https://www.nooks.ai/wehaveameeting Subscribe to We Have A Meeting: new episodes every week with founders, sales leaders and entrepreneurs who've built it from the ground up.

Will Perez is the lead filmmaker and editor behind Behind The Diary, the documentary series following Steven Bartlett's day to day running Flight Story and hosting The Diary of a CEO. His work on the channel has passed 12 million views and helped build an audience of over 400,000 subscribers, and in 2025 Forbes named him to its 30 Under 30 list for Media and Marketing at just 24. Will Perez joins hosts Jack Frimston and Zac Thompson for an honest conversation about what it's actually like working that close to one of the UK's most recognisable entrepreneurs. They get into ego, his own and the ego that comes with being permanently embedded inside someone else's brand, the parts of working for a high-profile founder that never make it into the polished footage, and the reality behind building a career off the back of someone else's fame. #StevenBartlett #DiaryOfACEO #FlightStory #BehindTheDiary #WillPerez #Ego #Filmmaking #ContentCreation #CreatorEconomy #PersonalBranding #WorkingForACelebrity #PodcastProduction #WeHaveAMeeting Connect with Will: Website: https://www.willperez.co.uk Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/btswithwill Substack: https://btswithwill.substack.com Hear more from the hosts: Jack: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-frimston-5010177b Zac: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zac-thompson-33a9a39b Brought to you by Nooks: the AI-powered platform helping teams automate outbound sales and book more qualified meetings. Learn more at https://www.nooks.ai/wehaveameeting Subscribe to We Have A Meeting: new episodes every week with founders, sales leaders and entrepreneurs who've built it from the ground up.

Anna Cairns and Kerry Collinge are the co-founders of Illuminari, the marketing collective they launched in 2026 alongside Rory Sutherland, Les Binet, Karen Nelson-Field, Orlando Wood, Richard Shotton, Margaret Heffernan, Tom Goodwin and Adam Morgan. Anna spent 22 years agency-side. She ran Nudgestock, the behavioural science festival, for a decade, and spent eight years building Rory Sutherland's fame and stage presence around the world. Kerry spent 25 years in marketing at Carlsberg, AB InBev and Mondelez, then ran marketing at System1 and took Uncensored CMO to Marketing Week's B2B Brand of the Year as its Managing Director. Between them they have sat in most of the rooms where marketing decides what it thinks. Their view is that the industry has hidden behind measurement. Everyone uses the same dashboards and the same frameworks, so everyone gets the same answers, and nobody is accountable for whether any of it worked. Along the way: why Anna's daughter believes Elvis is still alive, the Joe Rogan cat litter story and who gets paid when misinformation spreads, why you can line up ten beers blind and nobody can tell the difference, why a CEO will believe a stranger with a slide deck over the team he already employs, and why marketing still gets treated as the colouring in department. Chapters 00:00:00 Welcome to the Show: Meet Kerry and Anna, The Founders of Illuminari 00:01:41 The Data and Fear Problem: Why Marketing Lost Its Humanity 00:09:21 The Cannes Dinner Party: How Illuminari Was Born 00:14:52 The TikTok Generation: Misinformation and the Need for Real Conversations 00:23:50 The Three Martini Lunch: Bringing Back Joy and Connection 00:39:11 The Organ Transplant: Moving from B2C to B2B Marketing 00:55:08 The Rory Effect: Why Simplification Beats Complication 00:56:50 The Wall of Shame: Why Great Work Comes from Shaking the Tree 00:59:07 The Avengers of Marketing: How to Work with Illuminari 00:59:53 The Closing Question: Are You Bringing Your Whole Self to Work? #RorySutherland #Illuminari #UncensoredCMO #Nudgestock #System1 #Marketing #BrandBuilding #MarketingStrategy #CMO #B2BMarketing #MarketingEffectiveness #BehaviouralScience #Advertising #WeHaveAMeeting Connect with Anna and Kerry: Illuminari: https://www.theilluminari.com Anna Cairns: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anna-cairns-70284220 Kerry Collinge: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kerry-collinge Uncensored CMO: https://system1group.com/uncensored-cmo Hear more from the hosts: Jack: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-frimston-5010177b Zac: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zac-thompson-33a9a39b Brought to you by Nooks: the AI-powered platform helping teams automate outbound sales and book more qualified meetings. Learn more at https://www.nooks.ai/wehaveameeting Subscribe to We Have A Meeting: new episodes every week with founders, sales leaders and entrepreneurs who've built it from the ground up.