82. Start now. The sign your business idea is ready to build | Sahar Hashemi OBE

About this episode

Sahar Hashemi discusses her entrepreneurial journey and the importance of staying connected to customers in business.

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…

People in this episode

Host: James Reed

Guest: Sahar Hashemi OBE

Topics covered

• entrepreneurship
• business growth
• startup mindset
• customer connection
• scaling businesses

Keywords

• entrepreneurship
• business ideas
• Coffee Republic
• startup mindset
• customer connection

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Buy Women Built, Coffee Republic, The Rose Review of Entrepreneurship

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