James Reed: all about business

Most charities are told to secure funding before they spend. Bloomsbury Football did the opposite — investing in fundraising before the money existed, and growing from four children to 7,000 a week as a result.
In this episode of All About Business, James speaks with Charlie Hyman, founder and CEO of Bloomsbury Football. His fast-growing social enterprise harnesses the universal power of grassroots football to tackle major societal challenges for young people, providing thousands of disadvantaged youth with vital role models, mental health support, and a true sense of belonging.
Charlie shares the 7 steps in starting, building and scaling a charity. He explains the business mechanics behind this scale: how diversifying income with brands like Mastercard and Adobe, and treating a charity like a high-growth private company unlocks true scale.
James and Charlie explore the strategy behind taking Bloomsbury national and how Charlie built a proprietary AI tool to scrape Charity Commission data for fundraising intelligence. They examine how to close high-value deals, attract top-tier corporate talent with pure purpose, and what commercial businesses can learn from high-ambition social enterprise models.
This leaves us with a compelling question: when building a company designed for impact, do your growth strategies reflect the actual size of the problem you are trying to solve?
Timestamps
03:05 Origin story volunteering
11:47 Income streams and bids
15:53 Charities vs businesses
21:23 Scaling leadership and coaches
32:12 Opportunistic Expansion Plans
38:12 AI Boosting Charity Impact
44:59 Fundraising Skills for Youth
Links
Follow James Reed on LinkedIn
Follow Charlie Hyman on LinkedIn
Find out more Bloomsbury Football 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 underestimated lab-grown diamonds. Conventional wisdom says that luxury is about heritage, exclusivity and the power of a brand. So why are consumers embracing them so quickly?
And what does that tell us about the future of luxury businesses and the shift in consumer values?
In this episode of All About Business, James speaks with Nathalie Morrison, founder and CEO of Astrea London. Her high-end jewellery brand focuses on ethical luxury, using the top 1% tier of lab-grown diamonds and 100% recycled gold to offer flawless purity that gives consumers more carats and less weight on their conscience.
Within just one year of launching, Astrea hit $1 million in sales, prompting Nathalie to leverage her banking network to raise £4 million at a £14 million valuation. The company has since attracted celebrity backing from Sarah Jessica Parker, who became both an investor and creative director after meeting Nathalie in New York.
Together, James and Nathalie explore the rapid shifts in consumer behaviour and the strategy required to position a disruptive brand at the highest end of a competitive market. They discuss the unique marketing channel she created by opening luxury boutiques inside world-renowned hotels such as the Mandarin Oriental, and the realities of challenging a century-old industry monopoly.
They also examine the changing values of the next generation of consumers, why diamonds are built for emotional enjoyment rather than financial investment, and the power of cold outreach—even when it leads to one of the world's most influential style icons becoming a business partner.
Timestamps
02:07 Nathalie Finance Background
06:45 How Lab Diamonds Are Made
14:43 Diamond Pricing Myths
22:27 Celebrity Investor Partner
29:10 Supply Chain And Quality
36:25 Scaling Challenges And Hiring
Links:
Follow James Reed on LinkedIn
Follow Nathalie Morrison on LinkedIn
Find out more Astrea London 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

Financial crises can hit any business- especially in today's economy. Selling might feel like the only option. But is it?
What should founders do when things look bleak? How do you rebuild momentum, and give your business the best possible chance of surviving and thriving? When one pair of siblings were running The End nightclub, they found themselves £1.5 million in debt and facing enormous pressure to sell.
Instead, they chose a different path, and turned the business around.
In this episode of All About Business, James speaks with Zoë Paskin, co-founder and managing director of Studio Paskin. They are the independent powerhouse behind legendary London destinations like The Palomar, The Barbary, and the Michelin-starred Evelyn's Table, celebrated for maintaining flawless standards in a brutal industry.
Zoë shares the remarkable story of turning around a legendary 90s nightclub facing massive debt, stepping into leadership when no one expected her to, and the reality of selling a business at its peak.
James and Zoë explore how to scale when the broader market is struggling, how to strip down operational expenses to rescue a business, and why the best career advice may be to simply : go wherever the biggest problems are.

Links:
Follow James Reed on LinkedIn
Follow Zoë Paskin on LinkedIn
Find out more Studio Paskin and their work 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

Scaling a business seems like the obvious goal. But what if growth without the right strategy leads to losing control?
In this episode of All About Business, James speaks with David Palmer, founder of Life of Fish, the modern London fishmonger that started as a lockdown pop-up outside a Peckham cafe, and has now grown into a multi-site retail and wholesale business built on sustainability, craft, and genuine customer service.
Together James and David explore the harder lessons of growth: why expanding too fast almost broke the business, how to know when to consolidate rather than chase new opportunities, and what it means to build something that runs on profit rather than debt.
David shares what he learned starting work at Billingsgate Market at the age of 14 with no qualifications and no plan. Climbing into bins at 2am and learning to fillet fish under pressure, allowed David to slowly piecing together a skillset he didn't realise he was building. The lesson he took from those years is simple: nothing you learn is wasted, and starting from the bottom teaches you things no shortcut ever could.
They also discuss what it really takes to build a product business in a traditional industry that nobody had modernised.

Timestamps
2:11 Leaving school at 11
12:56 The entrepreneurial pivot question
15:14 The breakthrough moment
17:26 The gap in the market
19:33 COVID lockdown launch
21:15 70 people queue
38:55 Lesson on over expansion
39:57 Turning down free rent
43:39 Hiring philosophy
Links
Follow James Reed on LinkedIn
Follow David Palmer on LinkedIn
Find out more Life of Fish 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

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