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What would you do if I gave you £1 million to invest in your business? Sarah Willingham explains why your answer to that one question tells her whether your business can scale, why making yourself redundant is the real goal, and how she built a £40m business the hard way before learning the smart way!

Sarah Willingham is a serial entrepreneur and investor who has built, bought and scaled consumer businesses for over two decades. She grew Bombay Bicycle Club into the UK's largest chain of Indian restaurants, having earlier opened sites internationally for Planet Hollywood and run international development at Pizza Express. She was an investor on BBC's Dragons' Den across two series, and co-founded the bar group Nightcap - home to brands including The London Cocktail Club and Dirty Martini — with her husband and business partner Michael Toxvaerd. She's also a personal business mentor to Adam.

She explains:

• Why the answer to "what would you do with £1 million?" exposes whether your model is actually replicable
• Why making yourself redundant, not working harder, is the real definition of success
• Why you probably don't need investment - you need to go and sell something

Chapters

• 00:00:00 Intro
• 00:01:33 Sarah's Unlikely Route Into Business
• 00:04:02 The Paris Pub Job That Changed Everything
• 00:06:20 Learning The Business Of Hospitality
• 00:07:15 The Year That Taught Her Everything
• 00:09:22 "Sarah The Small From Stoke"
• 00:10:10 Building The UK's Largest Indian Restaurant Chain
• 00:11:12 The Hardest Part Of Business And Family
• 00:12:26 Why Doing Both At Once Makes You Mediocre
• 00:14:10 Diarising Your Downtime
• 00:16:40 Life Path Over Career Path
• 00:18:13 Why Holidays Are Business Critical
• 00:20:00 Adam's First Debrief With Sarah
• 00:21:12 Breaking The Addiction To Your Business
• 00:22:09 The Pie Chart Exercise
• 00:24:48 Everything Has A Relative Value
• 00:26:03 Adam's Biggest Constraint Was Himself
• 00:27:31 How To Replicate Yourself
• 00:28:36 Why Great Teams Aren't An Accident
• 00:30:06 Why Grit Isn't The Answer, Models Are
• 00:30:55 Making Yourself Redundant Is The Goal
• 00:32:10 Building £40M A Year The Hard Way
• 00:33:02 Ads
• 00:33:23 Do You Have A Supportive Partner?
• 00:34:29 Working With Michael: Staying In Your Lanes
• 00:36:43 The Decisions He Talked Her Out Of
• 00:37:27 Dragons' Den Vs A Year Travelling
• 00:39:08 Why You Have To Do Two Series
• 00:40:10 Walking Away To Keep A Promise
• 00:41:38 The Fork In The Road: Fame Or Family
• 00:43:51 Why Nothing Changes Without Action
• 00:44:34 How To Assess Your Downside
• 00:45:18 Why Fear Is Something To Relish
• 00:46:56 Decision Paralysis And The Investment Trap
• 00:48:30 You Can't Scale On Your Own
• 00:49:32 The Problem With Hustle Culture
• 00:50:12 Learning What You Don't Know
• 00:51:08 The £1 Million Question
• 00:52:24 Defining Your Business Model
• 00:53:53 Draw Your Model On Paper
• 00:54:18 Outro

Even More Value:

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