50 Founder Interviews. £100k Spent. 15 Hard Lessons. 1 Hour

50 Founder Interviews. £100k Spent. 15 Hard Lessons. 1 Hour

From scale with soul by AJ

November 6, 2025 · 1h 0m

About this episode

A reflection on lessons learned from spending £100k and conducting over 50 founder interviews.

A 15-lesson reflection on £100k spent, 18 months, over 50 interviews with some world class entrepreneurs. This is a very open and honest look under the hood into what it takes to create a podcast business. I've been focusing on founder interviews because I wanted to learn what it takes to create a great company and build an audience at the same time. I definitely learned one of them.... the hard way. 📖 Chapters 0:00:00 - Intro 0:01:13 - Pret A Manger & Itsu Founder - Get To The Truth 0:05:29 - Sharmadean Reid - Build Networks Of Power 0:12:30 - Busuu Founder - Operationalise Your Culture 0:17:19 - Count the pennies, and the millions will count themselves 0:21:49 - WeWork Cofounder - What Does It Mean To Change The World? 0:28:11 - Don't go slow to go fast... just go 0:31:10 - Know what you're selling first 0:36:44 - Distribution is 50% of the game 0:39:46 - The cost of isolation is delusion 0:41:31 - The answer isn't pushing harder 0:43:32 - Financial Breakdown (My P&L) 0:48:38 - Don't build for the wrong reasons 0:51:05 - Question your foundations 0:53:12 - The Cognitive Dissonance Spiral 0:54:43 - The art of learning from others' experiences 0:56:10 - Failure Is The…

People in this episode

Host: AJ

Guest: Sharmadean Reid

Topics covered

  • entrepreneurship
  • podcast business
  • founder interviews
  • lessons learned
  • building an audience

Keywords

  • founder interviews
  • entrepreneurship
  • podcast business
  • lessons learned
  • building an audience

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Pret A Manger, Itsu, Busuu, WeWork

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