In this episode of the Curious Business podcast, we meet Ella McKay, founder of Fatso. The provocatively named chocolate brand is bringing unapologetic indulgence to dark chocolate and putting ethical sourcing at its core. Ella shares the story of her journey from corporate marketeer to entrepreneurial risk-taker, and provides invaluable insights into effective business strategy and how to use consumer research.

If you’re building a brand in a crowded market, you’ll learn how being provocative and staying true to your values helps you cut through the noise. Sometimes you need to break the rules to make an impact. Hear how Ella established partnerships with cacao farmers in Colombia and why she believes gut instinct, learning by doing, and calculated risk-taking trumps analytics, especially for small businesses trying to innovate and challenge.

Tune in to hear all about:

• The story behind the provocative brand name
• Building ethical supply chains with Colombian cacao farmers
• Navigating retailer relationships and learning when not to take ‘no’ as an answer
• The production disaster that nearly derailed everything
• Plans for new formats and products, and making the dark chocolate category sexy
• The skills and training that best prepared her for the challenges

This episode is perfect for founders, brand builders, food entrepreneurs, and anyone who believes business should be built on passion, ethics, and a healthy disregard for doing things the conventional way.

Buy online from Delli Market: https://delli.market/collections/fatso

Buy online from Holly & Co: https://holly.co/storefront/fatso

Buy online and read more about Fatso ‘from farm to face’: https://sofatso.com/shop/

Find your nearest retailer : https://sofatso.com/stockists/

To buy the book ‘Thanks For The Feedback’ (recommended in the podcast): https://uk.bookshop.org/a/15792/9780670922635 (affiliate link)

And visit the Curious Business bookshop: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/curiousbusiness (affiliate link)

How do you turn a 15-person tech shop into a £300m global powerhouse? Is it instinct – or experience? What are the tough calls that fuel B2B growth? And how do you keep ahead and keep pushing forward?

Over the last 15 years, Simon Haighton-Williams, CEO of The Adaptavist Group, has led the company to annual revenues over £300 million. On a mission to make business work better, the Group now comprises over 1,000 employees in more than 15 countries, helping companies gain a competitive edge through its software and consultancy services. A staggering 57 million users work with its products, solutions, and services, including more than half of the Fortune 500.

Tune into this episode to hear:

• The formative experiences that shaped Simon’s personal vision of business
• The key transitions in scaling from 15 people to a £300m group
• Why calculated risks are the only path to growth
• How systems thinking and empathy are the fundamentals
• Why thriving means being comfortable outside your comfort zone

Learn more about The Adaptavist Group and check the Digital Etiquette reports: www.theadaptavistgroup.com/

Connect with Simon on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/simonwilliams/

How do we move beyond AI hype to take advantage of the real opportunities for business strategy? Who’s using AI well already, how does it reshape reality and who can we learn from? What happens when AI upsets your value chain and how can you maintain your competitive advantage?

In this episode of Curious Business, Stephen Morris welcomes Sangeet Paul Choudary, renowned author and business strategist to Fortune 500 companies. They explore the themes in Sangeet’s latest book - Reshuffle - and dive into what AI really means for individuals, businesses and industries. Fuelled by keen insights and profound understanding, Sangeet highlights the foundational shifts occurring from task-centric to system-centric views, and gives leaders a framework to rethink their strategies and reimagine their organisations to take advantage.

Listen to this episode to find out:

• How AI is shifting focus and why we should be looking beyond optimising tasks to reimagining entire systems
• Why the hype around GenAI isn’t unique but why it might, however, be distracting us from what really matters
• The often surprising exemplars who are using AI to restack the odds in their favour, and the two reasons imcumbents typically struggle
• How AI turns previously scarce information into abundant knowledge, and how to find value in what is scarce and defensible
• What skills are crucial for the transition to an AI-driven economy - and what can we learn about commoditisation from performing magicians?

Buy the book (affiliate link):

https://amzn.eu/d/dw4CfN4

Connect with Sangeet on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/sangeetpaul

Sign-up for updates on Reshuffle and Sangeet’s thinking on Substack:

https://platforms.substack.com/

What do you do when people won’t pay a sustainable price for the high quality product you’ve worked so hard to produce? How do you get started in your career and find your passion? The co-founder of Hive Mind Mead tells all.

Kit Newell, co-founder of the Great Taste Award-winning honey drinks brand, shares how his career in advertising and design prepared him for entrepreneurship - and the key skills that helped him build a business stocked in over 50 M&S stores.

Listen now to hear all about:

• The journey from advertising, design and product management to an award-winning ‘modern mead’ business
• How (and why) Hive Mind pivoted from high-quality honey to a modern honey-based drinks business
• The interplay between intuition and analytics, and the main thing Kit would do differently if the business started again
• How they’ve built the business, adding stockists and distribution, and what Kit spends most of his time doing
• Why they found themselves listening to heavy metal till sunrise four or five nights a week?

🔗 Explore Hive Mind Mead and buy online: hivemindmead.com

🛒 Find them in M&S (until end of September): See locations

Is communication a soft skill or is the most powerful tool in your armoury? In this episode of Curious Business, Nima Abu Wardeh, author of The Brilliant Communicator argues that it can easily be the difference between success and failure.

Do you deliver your message so in a way that engages your target audience? Do you resonate with what they care about so your message takes root? Speaking from her experiences as a presenter, moderator, trainer and broadcast journalist with a background in medical engineering, Nima shares crucial tips and business insights for better communication.

Listen now to learn from her "brilliant communicator" framework, the foundations that set up you up for success. She recounts real-world examples from her time presenting on BBC World and FT TV and explains the ways that people often fail to connect.

Whether you're an aspiring entrepreneur or a seasoned corporate executive, pitching to investors or inspiring your team, you'll learn how to elevate your communication skills and realise your version of success. Tune in to hear:

• The secrets of standing out and seducing the people you want to reach (with your ideas)
• How school conditions us to mis-communicate
• The misalignment that cost NASA $125m
• How companies fumble their media appearances and misunderstand their goals
• Prep, focus and land your message for maximum impact

Grab 'The Brilliant Communicator' book: - at Bookshop.org (affiliate link, supports local bookstores)

Get weekly tips from Nima, sign up for her newsletter: - at www.thebrilliantcommunicator.com

Connect with Nima: - on LinkedIn

Band logos sit at the intersection of design, culture, and belonging, and can stir up no end of passion, nostalgia, and debate. In the book Logo Rhythm, Jim K Davies and Jamie Ellul have uncovered the stories behind 93 of the best band logos (and a few solo artist logos) of the last 60 years. In this podcast, we talk about how they came about and what business branding can learn.

The book lovingly explores legendary (and not-so-legendary) bands and their legendary brands, revealing whether they were created by designers, agencies, the bands or even the drummer’s dad. It raises questions about what makes for an unforgettable logo, and identifies the marques that have influenced wider design and branding, or wound up on the t-shirts of today's pre-teens.

Tune in to learn:

• Who do they think is the best-branded band of the last seven decades
• All about the seven-year process of bringing the book into the world
• Why Taylor Swift doesn’t have a logo
• What’s so odd about The Beatles’ logo
• How do band logos fit into the current music (and design) landscape

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Buy 'Logo Rhythm' the book:

- at Bookshop.org (affiliate link)

Connect with Jim:

- Jim on LinkedIn

- Totalcontent

Connect with Jamie:

- Jamie on LinkedIn

- Supple Studios

Mentioned in this episode:

- Tat by Andy Altmann (affiliate link)

Is GenAI a revolution or merely an evolution of data-driven innovation and automation? Dan Klein has been at the forefront of data-driven tech for thirty years. From the timeless principles guiding how he helps organisations and the need to test GenAI’s output, to finding the value and championing curiosity, he provided real food for thought in this conversation with Stephen Morris.

As someone who has been working with neural networks, deep learning, automation and data-driven decision-making since the 1990s, Dan sees GenAI not as a revolution but as a continuation. Don’t go after the tech; think about how you can improve your business, focus on continuous enhancements and foster a culture that encourages small-scale innovation by those at the sharp end. He illustrates his view with references from real-world experience in the aircraft, automotive, banking, government and other sectors.

Dan believes we must champion curiosity to ensure organisations continue improving and adapting to new possibilities. However, he thinks many organisations neglect to maintain employees’ skills and use their knowledge and perspective to drive innovation. We must ensure experienced teams focus on doing what GenAI can’t – questioning, experimenting, and inventing. “The individuals who exhibit curiosity in the workplace,” he says, “always do substantially better than those who do not.”

In the rapidly advancing world of AI, curiosity stands out as a differentiator between those who will thrive and those who may be left behind.

You’ll learn:

• How GenAI can augment human decision-making
• The precursors and technological changes that paved the way for Generative AI
• What GenAI means for managers and management
• The blockers that will stop many organisations from transforming and leveraging AI
• What it means for the workforce of the future – onboarding, training and collaboration
• The intricacies of synthesising information, managing data, and making informed decisions in evolving tech landscapes

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Connect with Dan on LinkedIn.

Listen to Dan's Data Today podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify (or wherever you get your podcasts).

Join Dan for kayaking, whale watching and lots more on the beautiful shores of Lake Sunart in Scotland.

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Mentioned in this episode:

Barbara Minto 'The Pyramid Principle' (affiliate link)

W. Edwards Deming 'The Essential Deming' (affiliate link)

It seems we're awash with data these days. It's meant to improve decision-making and outcomes. While sales data tells us what has happened, it rarely tells us why it happened. It also tells us nothing about what didn't happen. Why did a customer walk away? What didn't they choose — and why?

In this podcast, I talk to Tessa Stuart who dives into the mysteries of actual consumer behaviour almost every day. Tessa works in the food and drink retail space, helping brands to understand customers and decode their preferences, choices and actions. She helps to reveal the mindset behind the metrics. These consumer insights bring the numbers to life and transform how companies present themselves to customers when it matters most.

Known as 'The Shopper Stalker', Tessa shares her journey from advertising focus groups to becoming a leading voice of live customer insight via attempting to sell her children to Innocent drinks. Featured on Radio 4's The Today Programme, she's also the author of two books about getting stocked and then getting picked off the shelf.

What Tessa does is eminently transferrable outside of food and drink, listen to 'What Data Doesn't Tell Us' to find out:

• Tessa's approach and how she became the Shopper Stalker
• What she's learned about how consumers think and behave
• How real-time encounters can help brands connect with customers
• What her observations of buyer behaviour reveal about how brands should present themselves
• How augmenting sales data can help us connect with actual customer needs

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Connect with Tessa on LinkedIn.

Sign up for her insight-packed newsletters.

Buy her books on Amazon: Packed and Flying Off The Shelves.