James Reed: all about business

Thirty years of building a business without a board, without investors, and without ever wanting to sell, and it just keeps growing, there’s something to learn from that.
In this episode of All About Business, James speaks with Victoria Stapleton, founder of Brora, the British luxury cashmere and clothing brand. Victoria has built Brora over 30 years from a single supplier and a home phone number into a business with shops across the UK, a store on Madison Avenue, and a fiercely loyal customer base.
Victoria shares what she learned from building slowly and deliberately, and why organic growth gave her control, quality, and a life outside work. She also gives insight about why every founder considering outside investment should think carefully about what they are actually giving if they take it.
Together they explore what it really takes to run a product business built on craft and quality: how to manage suppliers, why the shop experience matters more than ever, and what you actually learn about your business by walking the warehouse floor every morning.
Victoria's tells is about who she transitioned Brora into an Employee Ownership Trust, one of the most underused business succession models in the UK, and how it works.
Timestamps
11:25 First Shop and Doing It All
18:49 Hiring and Building a Loyal Team
20:52 Organic Growth and Staying Independent
30:21 In Store Styling Magic
38:21 Bonuses Profit And Legacy
47:05 Store Locations And New York
54:19 Glasgow Store Failure Lessons
56:14 Final Questions And Farewell

Links
Follow James Reed on LinkedIn
Follow Brora on LinkedIn
Find out more Brora and their products here
Submit your application to Reed’s Entrepreneurs Fund for a chance to a £20,000 grant HERE
All About Business is brought to you by Reed Global. Learn more HERE
This podcast was co-produced by Reed Global and Flamingo Media. If you’d like to create a chart-topping podcast to elevate your brand, visit Flamingo-media.co.uk

Most people think successful entrepreneurs spot brilliant ideas.
Sahar Hashemi believes the opposite.
In this episode of All About Business, James speaks with Sahar Hashemi, entrepreneur, author, and founder of Buy Women Built. They talk about Sahar’s journey over three decades building businesses, backing herself, and why entrepreneurship is far simpler than most people make it.
Sahar shares the hard lessons from scaling Coffee Republic to 110 stores and what happened when they handed the business to the professionals. What she learned about founders staying close to their customers, why bureaucracy is the silent killer of entrepreneurial culture, and why the moment you lose sight of who you are serving, is the moment a business starts to decline.
Together they explore what a startup mindset actually looks like in practice, how to know when a growing business is quietly losing its edge, and why the single most important thing any leader can do is keep their people connected to the customer. Sahar also makes the case that something done badly is better than if it’s not done at all, and that the best thing any aspiring entrepreneur can do is start somewhere, however small.
Timestamps
3:13 Discovering New York-style coffee
9:30 The decision to leave law
12:19 First Coffee Republic
16:54 Going public
26:39 The tweet that sparked Buy Women Built
35:05 The Rose Review of Entrepreneurship
40:43 The startup mindset
51:17 No plan, just purpose
Links
Follow James Reed on LinkedIn
Follow Sahar Hashemi on LinkedIn
Find out more Buy Women Built
Submit your application to Reed’s Entrepreneurs Fund for a chance to a £20,000 grant HERE
All About Business is brought to you by Reed Global. Learn more HERE
This podcast was co-produced by Reed Global and Flamingo Media. If you’d like to create a chart-topping podcast to elevate your brand, visit Flamingo-media.co.uk

60% of the UK diet is ultra-processed. And the food industry is manufacturing your addiction. So why is this public health crisis continuing in plain sight, and what it would actually take to change it?
Two things are clear. Britain's food system is more broken than most people realise. And Gousto is far more interesting a business than its recipe boxes suggest.
In today’s episode, James speaks with Timo Boldt, founder and CEO of Gousto, about building one of the UK's most ambitious food businesses from scratch and why, 14 years and 80 million meals later, he's only just getting started.
Timo shares how he left a career in investment banking to start again. With no money, no network, no customers, he shares what that journey has taught him about fundraising without connections, growing with your customers and building a business around a problem genuinely worth solving.
They also discuss how Gousto has used AI intelligently from the beginning, not as a replacement for people, but as a tool that makes the whole operation sharper; from cutting food waste and optimising factory logistics to building fully personalised menus that 80% of customers now rely on.
Timestamps:
01:37 What Gousto Does
06:23 From Banking to Entrepreneurship
13:24 Scrappy Startup and First Orders
25:35 Affordability Taxes and Transparency
31:16 Healthy Without Preaching
34:33 Factories And Delivery Network
42:12 China Trip AI And Robotics
Links
Follow James Reed on LinkedIn
Follow Timo Boldt on LinkedIn
Find out more about Gousto and their products
Submit your application to Reed’s Entrepreneurs Fund for a chance to a £20,000 grant HERE
All About Business is brought to you by Reed Global. Learn more HERE
This podcast was co-produced by Reed Global and Flamingo Media. If you’d like to create a chart-topping podcast to elevate your brand, visit Flamingo-media.co.uk

What does it take to build a luxury brand by accident and keep it thriving for 30 years without ever taking outside investment?
In this episode of All About Business, James speaks with Tom Faulkner, award-winning British furniture designer and founder of Tom Faulkner Limited. They talk about the unlikely journey from redundancy at a record label to running one of the UK's most distinctive handcrafted furniture brands, with showrooms in London and New York, and a workshop in Swindon that has been making things by hand since 1996.
Tom shares the story of how a side hustle in hand-painted tabletops became a serious business the moment he discovered what you could do with metal. He talks about buying a Swindon fabrication workshop for £5,000, inheriting two employees, slowly building a loyal team and a global client base. All through organic growth, word of mouth, and relationships with interior designers.
They explore what it really means to build a premium, handcrafted brand in the modern world: the growing appetite among wealthy clients to understand how things are made, why British manufacturing remains a genuine selling point in the American market, and how Tom navigated the early months of US tariffs with a decision that cost him margin but protected his customer relationships.
Together they also discuss the challenge of succession and legacy for founder-led businesses, why Tom has never chased scale for its own sake, and what he hopes to do next.
Timestamps
4:56 From Chrysalis Records to Hand-Painted Furniture
8:40 Buying the Swindon Workshop (The £5,000 Decision)
12:56 The Pimlico Road Showroom & London's Design Cluster
15:53 Expanding to New York
20:24 Staying Artisan: Organic Growth & British Manufacturing
25:20 Signature Pieces: Capricorn & the Collections
36:13 Navigating Business Challenges & US Tariffs
43:01 Future Plans: Collaborations, Sculpture & What's Next
57:04 Advice for Young Entrepreneurs
Follow James Reed on LinkedIn
Follow Tom Faulkner on LinkedIn
Find out more about Tom Faulkner LTD and their products HERE
Submit your application to Reed’s Entrepreneurs Fund for a chance to a £20,000 grant HERE
All About Business is brought to you by Reed Global. Learn more HERE
This podcast was co-produced by Reed Global and Flamingo Media. If you’d like to create a chart-topping podcast to elevate your brand, visit Flamingo-media.co.uk

How can a major museum be run with the same entrepreneurial mindset as a high-growth business?
In today's episode, James Reed speaks with Elizabeth McKay, Director and CEO of the London Transport Museum. While many perceive museums as static archives, Elizabeth explains how she applies commercial strategy to ensure one of London’s most iconic cultural landmarks remains financially sustainable and relevant in a modern economy.
Elizabeth shares insights from her unconventional career journey and explains why the museum identifies as the best in the world for urban transport. They explore the evolution of work through the lens of London’s history, from the original "chairmen" who carried sedan chairs to the "navvies" who hand-dug the first underground network.
Together they discuss the balance between preserving heritage and driving innovation, including the story of Harry Beck’s revolutionary Tube map and how it was initially rejected for being too radical. Elizabeth also outlines the realities of leading a cultural institution that functions as both a charity and a successful commercial entity.
Timestamps
01:48 Transport history highlights
09:50 Young entrepreneurs message
20:04 Design DNA of TFL
24:26 Running the museum business
33:27 Leading through uncertainty
40:21 Funding model explained
45:10 Youth skills pipeline
Follow James Reed on LinkedIn
Follow Elizabeth McCay on LinkedIn:
Find out more about TFL Museum and their exhibitions here:
Submit your application to Reed’s Entrepreneurs Fund for a chance to a £20,000 grant HERE
All About Business is brought to you by Reed Global. Learn more HERE
This podcast was co-produced by Reed Global and Flamingo Media. If you’d like to create a chart-topping podcast visit Flamingo-media.co.uk