The UK’s Biggest Gathering of Founders Is Back

0:00Welcome to a special one-off episode of Screw It, Just Do It, a bonus episode. Just me talking today, no guests, and the reason being, I'm telling you about an event where you get to meet loads and loads of ex-guests from the show in person, get to meet them, get to listen to them, get to see them, and take on board their advice. Those people who've been there, they've done it, they've done what you're trying to do,

0:27Alex Chisnall:and it's an event that's happening in just a couple of weeks okay I'm the co-founder and content director of the festival of entrepreneurs it's at the NEC in Birmingham on the 8th and 9th of October and wherever you are listening to this whether you're in England the UK or in any of the other 180 plus countries where this podcast is listened to if you can get here it's going to be amazing. Honestly, if you're listening to this podcast because you're trying to grow your business, scale your business, you're thinking of starting a business, okay, then this event is the event for you. Listen to these guests that we've had on the show before, okay?

1:09So we've got Rowena Bird, co-founder of Lush, a billion pound British business. We've got Juliet

1:17Alex Chisnall:Barrett, co-founder of Grenade that exited for 200 plus million a few years ago. I spoke to her ex-husband, Al, on this podcast, I think two or three times now. Piers Linney, former Dragon's Den investor, now co-founder of Implement AI. Richard Harpin, who sold HomeServe for over four billion pounds. And Ray Kelvin, founder of Ted Baker, again, scaled it from one to 500 plus stores worldwide, billion pound business at the time, and loads of other amazing founders who you would have listened to on the show, the likes of Dominic McGregor, former business partner of Stephen Bartlett. You've got people like Darren O 'Reilly from Holesup, Laura Fullerton from Monk, Simon Gardner from Carrington West, Mark Rushmore from Surrey, Joe Dalton, who we've just had on the show from JD and Co.

2:10Loads and loads of other great guests, people I haven't interviewed before, people like Catalina Valentina from Elixir, I should say. Loads of people that you'll recognize, old friends and new friends as well. We've also got some real heavyweights when it comes to British business. So people like Louis Taylor, CEO of the British Business Bank, Janine Hart, the CEO of Innovate Finance, Anthony Impey from Be The Business, Martin McTague, OBE from the Federation of Small Businesses. The list goes on and on and on, guys, honestly. The best part is that we've made tickets free. Yep, you heard that right.

2:54Tickets are free. So you can get a two-day pass whilst they're still available for free. So they're limited. So at some point in time, in the next three, four weeks, we will run out of free tickets. But those tickets are available now. You just need to go to festivalofentrepreneurs.co.uk or scroll down to the notes, whether you're listening or watching this podcast, and go and claim your free two-day pass. And please, if you do one thing for me personally, could you please tell somebody else about this? Feel free to post about it on social media.

3:31Alex Chisnall:As you might have gathered, if you follow me on social media, at Alex Chisnall, you'll see me posting about this nonstop at the moment. This is year one. This is the first event we are bootstrapping, even though, as people point out, you've got Sir Liam Fox as the chairman of the organization. Yes, we have. And Sir Liam was former defense secretary, was also former secretary for international trade in the UK. So again, he's got amazing connections for this event. But equally, we've built this off the connections I've made through this very podcast. As I say, we'll recognize so many of the names.

4:07And the whole point of this event is that we want to help you. If you're a founder or you want to be a fan, we want to help you break through the barriers that every founder faces. and those are funding, hiring, growth, you name it, break through those barriers to build the thing that you want to build. So you can learn how Britain's top entrepreneurs built their businesses, how they raised capital, how they reached new markets, how they built their teams. Plus you get to meet experts who can help you do the same.

4:41Alex Chisnall:I wish when I started back in 2009 with my first business when I left Virgin Atlantic, that an event like this was available, but it wasn't. How do I know? Because I looked. And look, yes, it's time out of the office, which is valuable time, but this will accelerate your growth. If you just take one thing away from this or meet one person, that could be the one person or the one piece of information that moves you forward, that is the big domino that knocks over all the other little dominoes that you've got lined up in a row. It's definitely worth it just for the networking. It's worth it just for a couple of the speakers, but I've got over 100 of these speakers might even be over 150.

5:22I can't remember now. But we've got amazing different stages. We've got a keynote stage, we've got a funding stage, we've got a scale up stage, four stages in total.

5:35Alex Chisnall:It's everything you could ever want. If you want to learn how to grow and scale your business, you can see a passionate I'm about it, hopefully. This is for ambitious entrepreneurs and the people who back them. So, you know, founders and owners, yes, who are building their businesses, but also sales directors, marketing directors, finance directors, operations directors. It's for investors. It's for advisors who are backing ambitious founders with capital and guidance. And it's for exploring new tools for talent funding getting ready for that next step and it's based in the West Midlands in the UK but what's interesting we've seen already there's more people who've registered for the show who are outside of the West Midlands you know London or Manchester Liverpool the North etc than there are in the West Midlands so that is really interesting because we are looking at by the time this comes out it might be confirmed but the second event being next May in London, but that's seven, eight months away.

6:41Alex Chisnall:So this is the event that you need to go to now to learn how to grow and scale your business. So just go to festivalofentrepreneurs.co.uk. You can get the links, whether you're watching or listening to this podcast. And when you go there, not if, when you go there, come and grab me, say hi. I'm going to be hosting a whole bunch of these talks. But I would love it if you just came over and said hi and let me know that you listened to the podcast. That would mean the world to me. So look, thank you very much indeed. Really excited, as you can tell, about this event. Something I've been working on since the end of last year in all fact.

7:22And I just love you to be there. Honestly, make the effort.

7:27Alex Chisnall:You won't regret it. It will be time well spent outside the office.