This conversation with Paul Avins is a remarkable look at what reinvention truly means when life hands you challenge after challenge.

Paul is one of the UK’s most sought after scale up strategists and business coaches, known for helping founders grow multi million pound companies with practical, battle tested insight. Across more than 20 years, he has supported over 1000 clients to break the one million mark, with many scaling far beyond, and has built and sold several companies himself.

Alongside this impressive track record sits a deeply personal story of adoption, dyslexia, identity shifts and a near death experience that changed him completely.

Paul speaks with honesty, humour and emotional depth about the moments that shaped him and the shift from ego led ambition to service and contribution. His reflections on patience, seasons of growth and the courage to rebuild are powerful for anyone navigating change.

This episode will stay with you long after you finish listening.

Highlights:

(01:46) How adoption shaped his earliest sense of identity

(04:58) Growing up dyslexic and the search for self worth

(09:32) The university moment that sparked a major life pivot

(14:20) Reinvention as a slow burn, not just a dramatic event

(24:35) The heart attack that became a defining rebirth

(28:40) Paul 1.0 to Paul 2.0, shifting from ego to contribution

Connect with Paul:

www.paulavins.com

www.scaleupcoaching.com

Connect with Lucy:

Website - https://bookmagic.ai

TikTok - @lucymccarra

Instagram/Threads - @lucymccarraher

LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucymccarraher/

YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@lucymccarraherauthor

Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/LucyMcCarraher/

In this conversation, Lisette and I travel through the many reinventions that shaped her life, from a spiritually attuned child who learned early to hide parts of herself, to a woman who rebuilt, rewrote and reclaimed her identity again and again.

Lisette Schuitemaker is the author of seven books, a pioneering impact investor, and a respected board director and chair. She has worked across communications, entrepreneurship and personal development, co hosted The Year of Being 70 and is now writing The Inner Life of Money.

Her honesty about depression, intuition and the power of choosing a different path offers a refreshingly human take on change.

From entrepreneurship to healing work to impact investing, Lisette's story shows that transformation is rarely tidy, but it can be deeply liberating, and sometimes it brings you back to the truest version of yourself.

Highlights:

(01:30) How Lisette and I first met and the seeds of her earliest reinvention

(04:10) Becoming a teenager who consciously reshaped her identity

(08:45) The dream that ended her engagement and prompted a new path

(13:32) Leaving a successful company when her conscience shifted

(20:55) Naming lifelong depression for the first time and finding support

(26:40) Training as a healer and discovering the work that reshaped her life

You can learn more about Lisette at:

https://lisetteschuitemaker.com/

Take her Childhood Conclusions Test at https://lisetteschuitemaker.com/test-your-childhood-conclusions/

And connect with Lisette at https://linkedin/in/lisetteschuitemaker

Connect with Lucy:

Website - https://bookmagic.ai

TikTok - @lucymccarra

Instagram/Threads - @lucymccarraher

LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucymccarraher/

YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@lucymccarraherauthor

Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/LucyMcCarraher/

Talking to Tony Robinson OBE felt like sitting down with someone who has lived nine different lives, each one shaped by courage, curiosity and a refusal to settle for anything that does not feel true.

Tony is a multi business owner, speaker and author of nine books across entrepreneurship, fiction, satire and poetry. He chairs Yorkshire in Business, runs its Yorkshire Coast Workshops subsidiary and leads organisations he founded, including the Micro Business Alliance.

His work across enterprise, education and advocacy has earned him an OBE, multiple lifetime achievement awards and a reputation as one of the UK’s most influential champions of small business.

What I loved most is how Tony approaches every reinvention the same way he approaches writing, by following what he loves, staying open to surprises and trusting the clues life places in front of him.

He has built and run businesses for decades with his long time business partner Clare Francis, campaigned for fairer treatment of micro business owners and helped shape national enterprise standards.

Tony shows that reinvention is never about dramatic declarations. It is about movement, experimentation and letting the next version of yourself emerge through doing. His generosity, grit and belief in community run through everything he touches, and his journey is a reminder that it is never too late to reshape your life with creativity and purpose.

Highlights:

(02:41) The early reinvention sparked by illness and homeschooling

(06:58) How sport, theatre and stubbornness shaped Tony’s identity

(11:05) From English and Philosophy to trade unions and industrial relations

(16:28) Walking away from corporate life to start from nothing

(24:21) Funding cuts, collapse and rebuilding from the ground up

(31:09) The sabbatical that led to Enterprise Rockers and a global movement

Connect with Tony:

Website https://TonyRobinsonOBE.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tonyrobinsonobe/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TonyRobinsonOBE

X (formerly Twitter): https://x.com/TonyRobinsonOBE

Connect with Lucy:

Website - https://bookmagic.ai

TikTok - @lucymccarra

Instagram/Threads - @lucymccarraher

LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucymccarraher/

YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@lucymccarraherauthor

Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/LucyMcCarraher/