Podcasts about Sainsbury

In this episode, I'm joined by Jennifer Bailey, founder of Calla Shoes, a brand born from personal experience and a mission to redefine what stylish comfort really means.After years of struggling with bunions and feeling frustrated by the lack of elegant, comfortable footwear, Jennifer decided to take matters into her own hands — designing shoes that look beautiful and feel incredible to wear.We chat about:✨Jennifer's journey from bunion-sufferer to footwear designer✨How she turned her personal pain point into a thriving business✨ Why comfort and confidence should never be a trade-off✨The design process behind creating stylish shoes for women with foot issues✨Her advice for women who feel limited by their footwear choicesIf you've ever found yourself choosing between looking stylish and feeling comfortable, this conversation will inspire you to rethink what's possible.https://callashoes.co.uk/About the HostWorking with personal clients, Lisa is passionate to inspire & empower ambitious women to have a wardrobe that gives them the confidence & self belief to achieve & reach their goals whilst reflecting their personal brand.Lisa has contributed to editorials such as The Guardian, Times, Daily Mail, The Sun, Daily Express works as the Style expert for BBC & Heart Radio throughout the UK. Lisa has worked on media campaigns with Sainsbury's & Persil.Lisa's website here:www.lisatalbot.co.ukThank you for listening, please remember to hit the follow button so you never miss an episode & leave a review if you enjoy find the podcast.Follow Lisa on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/lisatalbot1/Follow Lisa on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/Lisa-Talbot-Personal-and-Fashion-Stylist-106427762713796Follow Lisa on Linked In https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisa-talbot-b8291615/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Why do great product ideas fail to gain traction? According to Elena Luna, it's rarely about the strategy and more often about the storytelling. In this episode of The Product Experience, Elena Luneva, a seasoned CPO, GM, and Maven instructor, joins Randy Silver live from INDUSTRY 2025 to explore how product leaders can better communicate the why behind their product decisions. What we learned from Elena— Speaking 'User' isn't enough – Executives care about business impact, not just engagement metrics.— Translate features to financials – Frame product initiatives in terms of ARPU, opex savings, or revenue impact.— Use storytelling with data – Combine real user insights with projections to make your case.— Seasonality matters – Product testing should account for time-of-year and market behaviour.— Align go-to-market early – Synchronising product and sales is key to driving measurable outcomes.— Ask better questions – Start with: What is it? Why does it matter? How much will it cost? When will we get it?Chapters 2:45 – The Ceiling for Great PMs4:09 – Speaking Executive5:22 – Case Study: Nextdoor Maps9:52 – Translating Engagement to Revenue10:49 – Embedding Finance into Product Thinking12:43 – Pivoting During COVID14:36 – Business Fluency at All Levels16:00 – Building Context Across Teams18:26 – The Four Questions20:06 – Thinking in Horizons22:43 – Shifting Accountability26:23 – CPMO vs. CPTO27:43 – Common Mistakes29:42 – Seasonality & Cannibalisation32:29 – Practical First Steps34:21 – Credits & OutroFeatured Links: Follow Elena on LinkedIn | Elena's Substack | Industry Conference Cleveland 2025 recap at Mind The Product | Sign up to Elena's coaching course We're taking Community Questions for The Product Experience podcast.Got a burning product question for Lily, Randy, or an upcoming guest? Submit it here. Our HostsLily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She's currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She's worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath. Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury's. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group's Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He's the author of What Do We Do Now? A...

The Confidence Factor: How Your Wardrobe Shapes the Way You Lead✨ Confidence is contagious.What you wear has the power to shift not only how you feel, but how you lead. This episode shares how your wardrobe can become your secret weapon for confidence and career growth.About the HostWorking with personal clients, Lisa is passionate to inspire & empower ambitious women to have a wardrobe that gives them the confidence & self belief to achieve & reach their goals whilst reflecting their personal brand.Lisa has contributed to editorials such as The Guardian, Times, Daily Mail, The Sun, Daily Express works as the Style expert for BBC & Heart Radio throughout the UK. Lisa has worked on media campaigns with Sainsbury's & Persil.Lisa's website here:www.lisatalbot.co.ukThank you for listening, please remember to hit the follow button so you never miss an episode & leave a review if you enjoy find the podcast.Follow Lisa on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/lisatalbot1/Follow Lisa on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/Lisa-Talbot-Personal-and-Fashion-Stylist-106427762713796Follow Lisa on Linked In https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisa-talbot-b8291615/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of The Product Experience, Lily and Randy speak with Dan Dalton (Director of Product Management at Sage) about the current state of product management, and how the role must evolve in today's climate.Chapters0:00 Introduction: product management at a crossroads1:00 Dan Dalton's background and path into product3:00 The evolution of product management: 2010 to today8:15 Framework‐fundamentalism, the broken ladder & career expectations13:45 Why many product careers are being set up to fail19:20 Responding to disruption: returning to basics, focusing on impact24:40 The role of soft skills and mindset in product leadership28:55 How Dan's team operates: fast prototyping, design system, code assets31:10 Hiring and developing product talent: soft skills over tick‐boxes35:30 AI, hype and bubbles: what product leaders need to keep in mind40:15 The mental flywheel: pragmatism, curiosity, resilience, detachment45:00 Wrap up & closing remarksFeatured Links: Follow Dan on LinkedIn | Sage | 'Why is everyone hating on Product Managers?' feature by Peter YangWe're taking Community Questions for The Product Experience podcast.Got a burning product question for Lily, Randy, or an upcoming guest? Submit it here. Our HostsLily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She's currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She's worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath. Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury's. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group's Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He's the author of What Do We Do Now? A...

You might look at everyday items in a different light after this episode, as we hear best-selling author and Woodland Trust ambassador, Jonathan Drori CBE, reveal some of the fascinating things we make with plants. From the well-known coffee bean to the tree bark that's used in spacecraft, he shares some of the amazing relationships between familiar objects and the natural world as we meet beneath a beautiful beech tree on Parliament Hill in London.  These stories and more feature in Jonathan's latest book, The Stuff That Stuff Is Made Of, which aims to spark an interest in nature for younger readers. He explains how discovering the wonder of nature in a fun, exciting way as a child can inspire a lifelong connection, just as it did for him. We also discover why fruit is sweet, the value of the mandrake plant, how beech is thought to resist lightning and more. Don't forget to rate us and subscribe! Learn more about the Woodland Trust at woodlandtrust.org.uk Transcript You are listening to Woodland Walks, a podcast for the Woodland Trust, presented by Adam Shaw. We protect and plant trees for people to enjoy, to fight climate change and to help wildlife thrive.  Adam: Jonathan Drori CBE, is a man of many talents. He's a trustee of the Eden Project and of Kew Gardens, a member of the Royal Institution, a man who used to be a senior commissioning editor at the BBC, and he's also an ambassador for the Woodland Trust and a best-selling author of books such as Around the World in 80 Trees and his latest, The Stuff That Stuff Is Made Of, a book for younger people about the plants in their lives and the things they make which are all around them. And whereas these podcasts often take me on long journeys, this time, well, it's just a hop, skip and a jump away in London at Parliament Hill, where we met to talk about his book and the things we didn't know about the stuff around us all. Right, we are... it's a bit windy right here. It actually sounds windier than it is, but we are in Parliament Hill, or thereabouts, with Jonathan Drori, who has written the stuff that stuff is made of, and is also a big noise, essentially, in the Woodland Trust itself, of which we can talk lots about. But we're standing by a beech tree. So, Jonathan, why did you write this book?  Jonathan: I wanted to do something that would make kids kind of interested in the natural environment. Starting with the things they're interested in, which are kind of ice cream and chocolate and sport and dinosaurs and all that kind of thing. And use their own interests to sort of spark other interests in nature, in trees and plants, and also actually in history and folklore and culture, which are all sort of bound up with those things. One of the things I've tried to do with the book is to explain things from the plant's point of view as well as from a human point of view. So there are all these qualities that we desire plants for, whether that's sort of sweet things to eat or things to build with or things to make musical instruments out of. And they're all in the book and that's fine. But I've also tried to explain, you know, why has bamboo evolved in the way that it has? And why has a beech tree evolved the way it has? Why does chocolate have sweet mush around the seeds? You know, why do the grasses feed us? Why is sugar cane sweet? And why do we love it?  Adam: And so through this book, you're trying to attempt to do that by explaining stuff like tea and chocolate, indeed, where it comes from.  Jonathan: Yeah, I mean, there are 30 different species that I deal with in the book. And on the right-hand side of the page, there's a whole lot of information about the way that the plant grows, how it's cultivated, the relationships that it has with other plants, with the little critters that might pollinate it or disperse the seeds. And on the left-hand side, there's a whole lot of stories about the plant, all kinds of kind of fascinating facts and really about the human relationships with that plant.  Adam: Do you think we have lost that connection with the plants around us. So that this sort of stuff might have been really obvious a few generations ago or not.  Jonathan: *laughs* A leading question, m'lud! Yes, I mean, you know, with urban living and things being in packets at the supermarket, you know, we perhaps don't think very much about where the basic materials for our existence come from, whether it's things we eat or things we build with or things that we just sort of like looking at and playing with.  Adam: Is it important to know those connections? I mean, you as someone who likes nature, I can understand why you might feel that's important. But is it important for us all to rebuild that connection?  Jonathan: I think that my love and interest in nature came from my parents, actually, at the time, dragging me around Kew Gardens and Richmond Park and telling me stories about the trees and plants that were growing there. And they did that in such a way that I would be interested because they knew who I was and so they found the things that would sort of excite me. And I think I want to do the same for young people so that they grow up with a kind of interest and admiration and some sort of understanding of nature. But you can't sort of ram it down people's throats. It needs to be fun.  Adam: Yeah. But why is that important? I understand that's what you want to do, but why is it important?  Jonathan: Well, we've only got one planet. And if we don't look after it, then, you know, our lives and livelihoods are doomed. So that's the sort of very basic reason. And also we are part of nature, so just, not having an understanding or rejecting nature is kind of rejecting part of ourselves, I think.  Adam: So it's a soft environmental message here. And that's also seems to me important because, well, from my perspective anyway, it feels like a lot of environmental charities and environmentally minded people push a sort of narrative, the world could end, it's all a disaster. And actually, I worry that, although it's well-meaning, it might turn people off. Now that isn't what you're doing with this.  Jonathan: No, there's none of that in the book, none of it at all. What I've tried to do is to excite people about the stories of pollination, of the little critters that live in and around plants, the relationships that the plants have with other plants and so on in the environment, and make that sort of exciting and fun and interesting enough that people will just say, say to themselves, that's kind of something that's worth protecting. Maybe they won't think that for 10 or 15 years.  Adam: There's lots of interesting stories here. I think the one that really struck me, I think, was about vanilla. So vanilla, obviously, people use it in cooking, they might use essence of it or whatever. But am I right in saying, you think it's in the book, you actually go, there was a boy, and you name this boy... oh sorry is that a bird I can hear? *laughs* sorry!  Jonathan: It's the parakeets.  Adam: Oh it's the parakeets, I thought there was a squeaky wheel behind me! No no. All right, parakeets in the background. A named boy who taught the world how to pollinate vanilla. Tell me that story.  Jonathan: Yes, it was an amazing story actually about vanilla that in about the sort of 1840s, when they brought vanilla plants over from Mexico where they were native, to Africa where they wanted the plantations to grow and the little bee that pollinates vanilla didn't really travel. And so they had to find something else that would pollinate the vanilla plants so that the vanilla plants would propagate and grow. And sadly, they couldn't find any insect that would do that. No local insects would do this in Africa or outside Mexico. So all the vanilla plants had to be pollinated by hand. And it was a 12-year-old boy, Edmond Albius, who worked out how to do this. And by basically sort of cutting a bit of membrane and then squidging the two bits together and right to this present day, that's the way that vanilla is pollinated, by hand. And that's why it's so expensive.  Adam: It's amazing, isn't it? Apart from the vanilla story, do any others stand out in your mind? Is there ones your favourites?  Jonathan: Oh, it's like asking your favourite children, isn't it? I mean, there are all sorts of things in there that I notice when I talk to young people, to sort of eight, nine-year-olds, they sort of come alive. Those who've read the Hogwarts stories and Harry Potter, they're amazed to discover that mandrake is actually a real plant. And of course, mandrake used to be very, very valuable because it was one of the very few plants that could be used as an anaesthetic. And people used to, back in the Roman days, they used to mix it with wine and then sort of do minor operations and things. Don't try this at home! It's actually a real plant. It grows somewhat, I've seen this in this country, but it grows in Italy quite well and it has these rather sort of mind-altering attributes to it, which are a bit odd.  Adam: So it might be used by people who want that sort of druggy effect, but does it have any other purpose?  Jonathan: Well, not now, but it was an anaesthetic, and anaesthetics were so sort of unlikely, you know, if you think about it, you take something and it makes the pain go away, that people associated the plant with witchcraft, especially as it gave you the impression of flying. And so a plant that could alter your outlook and the way that you see the world so profoundly, and the way you perceive it so profoundly, was associated with witchcraft. And people made all sorts of stories about the mandrakes that they, that when you pulled it out of the ground, they said, that you could hear it scream because sometimes the roots look a bit like a person, especially with a bit of judicious whittling. And so people would say you've got to get a dog, tie the dog to the mandrake root and then kick the dog or throw it some food and it pulls it out. And the scream, they said, of a mandrake root could make you, could kill you.  Adam: And weren't they doing that to stop people, scaring people away from getting their valuable mandrake?  Jonathan: That's right. It was such a valuable plant that the ideal thing to do would be to put these superstitions around, these notions around, so people wouldn't pull them out, because it's very valuable.  Adam: Hippy dragon sort of thing. Well, look, we are here in London, a park in London, a beautiful park. But you've taken me to one of the few trees that actually appears in the book, because so many of the, well, I think almost all the trees really, you wouldn't find in the UK, is that right?  Jonathan: Well, you can certainly find eucalyptus. You can, you know, it's not a native, but you can find them here. And any other trees that are in there, you'd certainly find in botanic gardens. And there are fir trees, Christmas trees in there as well. But here we are by a lovely, lovely beech. And I mean, there are lots of reasons I love beech trees. In the book, one of the reasons that it's in there is because beech wood is made for, is used for veneer and it's used for making furniture and so on in a sustainable way, so it's a very pleasing wood.  Adam: And why is it good for furniture then?  Jonathan: It's stable, it doesn't shrink too much.   Adam: Is it bendable, is it one of those trees that you can...  Jonathan: Yeah and you can sort of use steam to bend it into the shapes that you want. And there are these fantastic machines that make veneer by sort of peeling off a kind of onion ring, rotating the trunk and then sort of peeling off the wood underneath to make veneer. As I say, using sustainable beech forests. But one of the things that I love about the beech is the link with superstition because in Germany, and actually in quite a few countries in Europe, there's this saying that lightning never strikes a beech tree. And in actual fact, lightning strikes beech trees just as often as any other trees that are of similar height. But beech trees seem to survive. And the reason they survive is because of this wonderfully smooth bark. The bark continually renews itself, unlike other trees. And so you've got a layer that is sloughing off all the time and leaving this very smooth bark. And that smoothness means that during wet weather, during a storm, the outside of the tree has a continuous film of water on it. It's wet all the way and that can act as a lightning conductor, whereas the craggy old oak, that has dry bits in it and so the electricity from a lightning strike is diverted through the middle of the tree and would blow it asunder. So the beech tree can survive.  Adam: Fantastic. Talking about the bark on the tree, one of the other things I spotted in your book was, I think it's cork trees and how the bark of that is special in the way we use it, but also in the way that the tree regenerates, just explain a bit about that.  Jonathan: Yes, I mean, most trees, if you sort of cut a whole ring around the tree, it'll die. But cork actually regenerates itself. So you can harvest the cork every 10, 12 years or so. And cork forests in the Iberian Peninsula, in Portugal and in Spain have a fantastic sort of ecosystem around them. The lynx and wild eagles and all sorts of wonderful things that live in and around. And also pigs go rooting for the for the acorns. And that ecosystem is a very important one. And it depends on us all using cork. So don't use plastic cork.  Adam: Right. Oh, I was going to say, unfortunately, a lot of wines now have plastic.  Jonathan: Try and go to the ones which are made out of proper traditional cork. And you're doing the planet a service by doing that. Another interesting thing about cork is that it's a fantastic insulator and it's actually used in the nose cones of spacecraft.  Adam: So why? That is, I did read that and that was extraordinary that something as advanced as a spacecraft would be using cork. It seems unbelievable.  Jonathan: Well, you know, millions of years of evolution have given the cork oak this way of resisting fire. So it's got tiny, tiny air pockets, minuscule microscopic air pockets in a non-flammable kind of medium. And that is an amazing insulator. And it's light, it chars on the outside and then flames just can't get through.  Adam: And it's soundproofing isn't it?  Jonathan: Yes, it's used in recording studios.  Adam: Yes. Well, when I was 17, I took a fancy to corking my whole bedroom in cork tiles, which looked terrible to be honest *laughs*. It took my father years to pry it off the wall again.   Jonathan: Was that in the seventies perhaps?  Adam: Yes exactly. It was trendy then for a short period.  Jonathan: Roman women used to wear cork-soled sandals, which you can still get, but so they didn't sort of walk in the poo and whatnot. But they're very good, very light, very insulating.  Adam: One of the ones I suppose we should talk about, interesting, is cotton, because it has an interesting background, a natural background, but also one, of course, deeply connected with slavery and everything.  Jonathan: So, you know, it was used in... South America among the Aztecs and so on to make armour actually. They made very, very thick cotton twill that they used as armour. And then it became fabulously valuable in the sort of 17th, 18th century especially, as a textile for our clothing. And unfortunately, as you say, it's got this link with slavery along with sugarcane and tobacco, these were the big crops that people grew, slave owners grew, in the Caribbean and in the southern states of North America, and then made the finished products in Britain that were then sold all over the world.  Adam: And I mean, you have some nice, lovely illustrations here of actually the cotton on the plant and it's a puffball. It doesn't look real, actually.   Jonathan: It's bonkers! It's an absolutely bonkers plant.   Adam: Yes but didn't people, when they first saw it, thought they were actually little sheep or something?  Jonathan: Yes *laughs* Well, the writers of the time, you know, they were all sort of knew that they would get a big audience if they made up some stuff so I'm not sure whether they really believed it. But certainly there was a textbook of the, I think it was the 17th century or early or late 16th century, where they sort of wrote, had diagrams of, because they thought it must be some kind of wool, they had diagrams showing little tiny sheep at the end of twigs on the plant *laughs* which supposedly would, you know, sort of the twigs would reach the ground in the evening and then the little sheep would, I don't know, wander off or something.   Adam: No one actually ever believed this, you're saying?   Jonathan: Well, I mean, no, well, I think it was created as a spin, but I think a lot of people did believe it, actually, in the same way that they believed in sea monsters and all those sort of naval stories that were brought back. And it was a very, yes, people believed all sorts of kind of nonsense and about where cotton came from. But the plant itself is very real and quite an odd one because you have these lovely sort of pale creamy flowers. It's sort of quite big, the size of a walnut kind of thing, you know. And then you get the seed pod which is absolutely bursting with all the fibre inside and the fibre's there to help the seeds carry on the wind. That's what the plant wants it for. But these burst open with this sort of great wodge of, I suppose, it looks like cotton wool. And it pretty much is cotton wool. And then the seeds are removed in a process called ginning. And the fibre that's left is then spun into thread.  Adam: Amazing story. The last one I suppose I really want to talk about is something you started with saying, you know, engaging younger people in things they know like chocolate. Chocolate doesn't come from Tesco or Sainsbury's, it comes from the cacao plant. Now, tell me a bit about that, but specifically what surprised me, if I remember this correctly, you said the chocolate we know was invented in England, is that right?  Jonathan: Well, the chocolate bar was invented by Fry back in the middle of the 19th century. And before that, people would have chocolate drinks, which were quite popular, especially at the time when coffee houses were very sort of blokey places.  Adam: This is about the 1800s, is it?   Jonathan: Yeah. Coffee houses were places where, you know, men would go.  Adam: Yeah, they were they were risky places, they were sort of like pubs almost, you know, like...  Jonathan: Yes, whereas families and women would go to chocolate houses. And some of those chocolate houses then became, you know, well-known clubs in London around Pall Mall and so on. They, but chocolate originally from Central America was a drink that would be taken quite bitter, mixed with maize, very, very nourishing, and was sometimes coloured with red dye, sort of symbolizing blood. And it was part of kind of rituals that they had where they, some of them were quite unpleasant rituals actually and then when it came, when chocolate came through the Spanish to Europe in the sort of 16th century, people immediately started adding sugar and milk and things to it, made it a lot more palatable.  Adam: Right. So it wasn't just the chocolate bar, so we really made it into the sweet drink that everyone knows. Maybe not England, but Europe.  Jonathan: Yes, and the and the chocolate bar was, that started in Britain. That was a British thing, with Fry and I think you can still get Frys chocolate?  Adam: Yeah, I was going to say, I do see it every now and then. It's not as popular as Cadbury's and all the others, but one does still see it.  Jonathan: You know, if you think about it from the plant's point of view, the reason that it's got this amazing fruit, which is about the size of a junior rugby ball, that grows very peculiarly on the stem of the plant, on the tree trunk, the reason it's got this amazing fruit is so that it can find something to be attracted to it that will disperse the seeds. That's why fruit is sweet. And the original thing that dispersed these fruit were probably sort of large, large mammals, which may not be around anymore. But the fruit is, the seeds are in this sort of sweet mush inside the cocoa pod. But your sort of big mammal would come along and gulp the whole thing down because it's lovely and sweet and then poo out the seeds somewhere else or spit them out because the seeds themselves are very bitter. And with coffee and chocolate and quite a few other things like apples even, the seeds are very bitter but the actual fruit is lovely and sweet. And the reason for that is so that something gobbles it but doesn't chew up the seeds. And then those get either spat out or pooed out together with a bit of fertiliser.  Adam: Right, amazing. And also, I mean, we've talked a bit about the social aspects of a lot of these plants. Chocolate itself had a huge social impact, wasn't it? It was seen as sort of an alternative, wasn't it, to alcohol and sort of bringing people into the fold of the righteous living and away from terrible drinks.  Jonathan: Yes, yeah, and it's a much gentler drink than coffee, which would have been quite a strong stimulant. Chocolate also has stimulants in it, but it's a bit more gentle. Yeah.  Adam: So it's an interesting book. I know this is part of something very important in your life about reconnecting with nature and spreading that message. Are you optimistic that things are looking up in that way, that people are engaging more?  Jonathan: I think, you know, I could make an argument for being pessimistic or optimistic, depending on the day, actually. But I do notice that young people have a kind of care for the environment that seems to be growing. And I think that's for obvious reasons, that they see it as their future. I'd say, essentially, I'm an optimist. And when you see plants growing and think about, the fact that they've been growing for zillions of years and will be growing for zillions of years, that is a sort of kind of optimistic thing. I think that young people are much more caring of the environment and sort of interested or I would say open to being interested. So if you kind of open their eyes to things, they're genuinely keen to know more and to do something. So all these schools projects that there are, all these things that the Woodland Trust actually does with schools are very, very valuable because I think with a lot of young people it just needs a little bit of a nudge and they're quite willing to go in a good direction.  Adam: That's a great note to end on and we've, I was worried this morning it looked like it would pour down but we've been spared that. So Jon, thank you very much.  Jonathan: Thank you.  Thank you for listening to the Woodland Trust Woodland Walks. Join us next month when Adam will be taking another walk in the company of Woodland Trust staff, partners and volunteers. And don't forget to subscribe to the series on iTunes or wherever you're listening to us and do give us a review and a rating. And why not send us a recording of your favourite woodland walk to be included in a future podcast? Keep it to a maximum of 5 minutes and please tell us what makes your woodland walk special. Or send us an e-mail with details of your favourite walk and what makes it special to you. Send any audio files to podcast@woodlandtrust.org.uk and we look forward to hearing from you. 

In this week's episode of the Jewellers Academy Podcast, Jess is joined by jeweller and tutor Iain Sainsbury to talk all about sand casting for jewellers and how you can do it safely, confidently, and successfully at home. Iain introduces his brand-new online course in sand casting, available now on pre-sale with 50% off until 6th November 2025. He shares why this ancient metalworking technique, dating back thousands of years, is experiencing a revival. With its low cost of entry, minimal equipment needs, and beautifully rustic results, sand casting allows jewellers to cast their own designs at home without the need to wait on external casters. No two sand cast pieces are ever the same, making every creation uniquely yours. Jess and Iain dive into practical tips for safer, smarter sand casting at home, including: Safety First: Essential setup for fire safety, ventilation, and personal protection. Why you should avoid bulky gloves, always tie back long hair, and keep a fire extinguisher close by. Getting Hot Enough: Why standard butane torches won't cut it, and what to use instead - from MAP gas torches to oxygen/propane systems for faster, cleaner melts. Building Your Casting Area: How to create a simple heat-containing furnace using soldering boards and ceramic bricks to help your metal flow perfectly. ‘Thinking Like Metal': Preparing your mould properly, from vent holes to clean sand and positioning, to ensure the molten metal runs smoothly and fully fills the design. Experiment and Enjoy It: Sand casting is part science, part play. Start small, embrace the imperfections, and enjoy the excitement of seeing metal become something new. This episode is for you if you're curious about the process of casting your own pieces from home or have experience with it, and want to refine your home set up.

In this episode of Property-Porn Stars, David Lindley and Matt Giggs sit down with Sarah-Louise Fairburn, Founder and MD of Imp & Maker, the luxury hamper and gifting company shaking up the food & drink market.Sarah-Louise shares her journey from running one of the UK's biggest farming businesses to starting again with a disruptive new brand. We discuss the challenges of building a luxury business, the sacrifices behind the glossy exterior, and the importance of resilience, vision, and surrounding yourself with the right people. She opens up about balancing entrepreneurship with being a single mother of four, lessons from her mentors, and why disruption and high standards are at the heart of her success.Sarah-Louise also appeared on BBC's Dragons' Den, pitching her vision for Imp & Maker to the panel of investors. She shares candidly what the experience was really like behind the scenes — from the preparation and intensity of the pitch, to how the Dragons reacted, and the lessons she took away from being in that high-pressure spotlight. It's a fascinating look at what most viewers never get to see on the show.If you're an entrepreneur, business leader, or simply curious about what it takes to build a modern luxury brand, this episode is packed with insight, inspiration and honesty. In this episode, we discuss:  • Vision & Disruption: Imp & Maker was born to modernise gifting — every item should be used, loved, and create memories (not just wicker baskets and re-gifted tea). • High Standards: Sarah-Louise refuses to settle; inspired by mentors like Judith Batchelar (ex-Sainsbury's), she obsesses over every detail of brand experience. • Entrepreneurial Drive: Built one of the UK's largest egg brands, then started again from scratch after a separation — now determined to prove herself again. • Resilience & Sacrifice: Talks openly about scars from setbacks, grueling challenges, long hours, and the emotional toll of building a business. • Surroundings Matter: Emphasises the importance of the right people, both in personal life and in business networks. • Scaling Challenges: From supply chain problems to expensive lessons in Google ads and tech systems — learned agility and adaptability are key. • Brand Positioning: Differentiates through modern, artisan, relevant products and an exceptional unboxing experience. • Women in Business: Candid reflections on being a female entrepreneur, navigating biases, and inspiring her daughters to believe they can achieve anything. • Health & Balance: Stresses discipline in eating, exercise, and family meal times as ways to cope with burnout. • Long-Term Ambition: Aims to build one of the UK's biggest gifting brands and, longer term, help other entrepreneurs from a place of real experience.

In this weeks podcast I wanted to talk about why 'Style is not vanity, it's visibility'.Being visible is not about standing out in the crowd, it's about how you show up, how you're noticed & what message you're sending without saying a word.I hope you enjoy it xAbout the HostWorking with personal clients, Lisa is passionate to inspire & empower ambitious women to have a wardrobe that gives them the confidence & self belief to achieve & reach their goals whilst reflecting their personal brand.Lisa has contributed to editorials such as The Guardian, Times, Daily Mail, The Sun, Daily Express works as the Style expert for BBC & Heart Radio throughout the UK. Lisa has worked on media campaigns with Sainsbury's & Persil.Lisa's website here:www.lisatalbot.co.ukThank you for listening, please remember to hit the follow button so you never miss an episode & leave a review if you enjoy find the podcast.Follow Lisa on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/lisatalbot1/Follow Lisa on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/Lisa-Talbot-Personal-and-Fashion-Stylist-106427762713796Follow Lisa on Linked In https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisa-talbot-b8291615/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You can't build great products on gut instinct, and yet, according to IBM's global study of 1,000 enterprises, 77% of organisations using generative AI aren't seeing any financial benefit. In this episode on The Product Experience podcast, Lily Smith sits down with Matthew Certner, Digital Product Engineering and Design Partner at IBM, to unpack the four key traits that drive ROI in AI-powered product teams: flexibility, incremental and targeted delivery, data-led decisions, and cross-functional collaboration. Recorded live at the Industry conference, this conversation offers practical lessons for any product leader navigating the hype and reality of AI adoption. Chapters00:00 – The danger of building on gut instinct00:37 – IBM's global study on generative and agentic AI adoption01:00 – Meet Matthew Certner, Digital Product Engineering Partner at IBM02:00 – Why most enterprises aren't realising ROI from AI04:50 – What the top-performing 20% of companies do differently05:10 – The four key behaviours driving success07:00 – Flexibility: adapting quickly to market feedback08:10 – Incremental and targeted delivery — the “golden thread” principle10:30 – Data-led decision-making versus the HIPPO effect11:45 – Cross-functional collaboration and robust adoption13:10 – Behavioural factors that make or break AI adoption14:20 – Inside IBM's “value orchestration” framework15:10 – The Golden Thread in practice — a sticky-note story from Dallas17:10 – Transparency and traceability in product development18:00 – How IBM helps teams that aren't seeing value from AI21:00 – The paradox of moving too fast or too slow with AI24:00 – Making the Golden Thread a living document25:20 – Inside IBM Garage: speed of a startup, scale of an enterprise27:40 – Why productivity savings, not hype, drive AI ROI29:00 – How large organisations structure innovation teams30:00 – The future: 800 million new products by 202631:00 – Why 95% will fail — and what the 5% will get right33:10 – Final reflections: value, purpose and the human elementFeatured Links: Follow Matthew on LinkedIn | IBM Garage | Industry Conference Cleveland 2025 recap at Mind The ProductWe want to hear from you! Help make The Product Experience podcast even better. Share your feedback in a quick form: Share your thoughts here! It takes 2 minutes, and your input will help shape future episodes.

The future of shopping isn't about selling, it's about experience. Simon Pakenham-Walsh, CIO at River Island, breaks down how technology, AI and data are transforming retail — from smart stores and RFID checkouts to seamless online journeys that actually feel connected. With a career spanning Sweaty Betty, Sainsbury's and Arcadia, Simon's seen how brands win (and lose) when they get transformation wrong. Now he's revealing how River Island is rethinking its tech, people, and mindset to rebuild what shopping means in 2025. This one's for the marketers, retail leaders and founders trying to make digital transformation actually work - without losing the human touch. We talk: The future of retail and technology Why AI and data are rewriting how we shop How to transform a brand without breaking it Why tech isn't the problem - mindset is If you care about the future of eCommerce, AI in retail, or the next generation of in-store experiences, this episode will change how you think about shopping forever.

We wrap up our week of Superfront specials with Nectar360. James Chandler is joined by Tom Priestman, Director of Client Services, to talk about the rapid rise of retail media and how Nectar360 is putting customers at the heart of their approach. From leveraging Sainsbury's and Argos data to unlocking shopper insights, Tom explains how Nectar360 helps brands connect with audiences in smarter and more effective ways.This episode gives a preview of what to expect at Nectar360's Upfront session at Media Upfronts, 14-15 October, where retail media, data-driven strategies and customer obsession will take centre stage.

In this episode I'm thrilled to be joined by Michelle De KlerkMichelle is the founder of The Women's Chapter®,an invitation-only networking & event platform aimed at connecting & empowering high impact women professionals & entrepreneursShe works as a consultant, lecturer, and moderator, especially in luxury, marketing, communications, and business development.We have a great chat about Personal Style & Brand Alignment, Women as Consumers & Fashion, Style & Leadership Presence, Fashion's Role in The Women's Chapter and Challenges & Identity Through Fashion and so much more.The Womens Chapterhttps://womenschapter.com/SOH Vintage - https://sohvintage.com/Asma Khan - Darjeeling Express - https://www.darjeeling-express.com/aboutusAbout the HostWorking with personal clients, Lisa is passionate to inspire & empower ambitious women to have a wardrobe that gives them the confidence & self belief to achieve & reach their goals whilst reflecting their personal brand.Lisa has contributed to editorials such as The Guardian, Times, Daily Mail, The Sun, Daily Express works as the Style expert for BBC & Heart Radio throughout the UK. Lisa has worked on media campaigns with Sainsbury's & Persil.Lisa's website here:www.lisatalbot.co.ukThank you for listening, please remember to hit the follow button so you never miss an episode & leave a review if you enjoy find the podcast.Follow Lisa on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/lisatalbot1/Follow Lisa on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/Lisa-Talbot-Personal-and-Fashion-Stylist-106427762713796Follow Lisa on Linked In https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisa-talbot-b8291615/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We're back in National Tredge territory with multi-award winning actor, ‘Sex Education' and ‘The X Files' star and soft drinks entrepreneur Gillian Anderson. But what is Green Glass Jello? ‘TRON: ARES' is out in cinemas on 10th October. ‘Trespasses' will air in November on Channel 4Buy G Spot drinks at stores nationwide – including Sainsbury's – or online at thisisgspot.comFollow Gillian on Instagram and TikTok @gilliana Watch the video version of this episode on the Off Menu YouTube on Thu 9 Oct.Off Menu is now on YouTube: @offmenupodcastFollow Off Menu on Instagram and TikTok: @offmenuofficial.And go to our website www.offmenupodcast.co.uk for a list of restaurants recommended on the show.Off Menu is a comedy podcast hosted by Ed Gamble and James Acaster.Produced, recorded and edited by Ben Williams for Plosive.Video production by Megan McCarthy for Plosive.Artwork by Paul Gilbey (photography and design). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Christian Idiodi, Partner at Silicon Valley Product Group, and Co-author of the valuable product book Transformed, dismantles some of the most persistent myths in product leadership. Drawing from his global perspective and work across Africa's fast-emerging tech ecosystem, Christian makes the case for a new kind of leadership, one grounded in clarity, context, and radical trust.Chapters00:00 — The environment, not the people02:00 — Building product leadership in Africa06:00 — Stories of impact10:00 — What real leadership means14:00 — Managing minds, not hands19:00 — The “first team” mindset23:00 — Focus, not prioritisation25:00 — Scaling and the myth of process29:00 — AI and the redefinition of excellence35:00 — Creating space for practice40:00 — Product crits and leadership feedback41:30 — Inspire Africa ConferenceKey Takeaways— Better outcomes start with better environments. Leadership is about designing the conditions for people to do their best work — not managing their output.— Africa is building for Africa, by Africans. The Inspire Africa Conference is catalysing coaching, capital, and community to accelerate meaningful innovation.— Strategy defines focus. If prioritisation is hard, the strategy probably isn't real.— Leadership is a different sport. Managing people's minds, not hands, requires context, clarity, and trust — not control.— AI won't replace good leaders. But it might replace bad leadership. Judgment, product sense, and curiosity are the new differentiators.— Create practice space. Growth requires safety to make mistakes, experiment, and learn — at every level of the organisation.— Critique is culture. Teams that coach and critique together develop sharper thinking and stronger product judgment.Featured Links: Follow Christian on LinkedIn | Silicon Valley Product Group | Inspire Africa Our HostsLily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She's currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She's worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath. Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury's. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group's Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He's the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager's Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon's music stores in the US & UK.

This week on Skip the Queue, we're stepping into the turret and turning up the tension, as we explore one of the UK's most talked-about immersive experiences.Our guest is Neil Connolly, Creative Director at The Everywhere Group, who have brought The Traitors Live Experience to life. With over 10 million viewers watching every betrayal, backstab and banishment on the BBC show, expectations for the live version were nothing short of murderous.So, how do you even begin to transform a TV juggernaut into a thrilling, guest-led experience? Let's find out who's playing the game… and who's about to be banished…Skip the Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. Your host is Paul Marden.If you like what you hear, you can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and all the usual channels by searching Skip the Queue or visit our website SkiptheQueue.fm.If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review, it really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on LinkedIn. Show references: The Traitors Live website: https://www.thetraitorslive.co.uk/Neil's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/neil-connolly-499054110/Neil Connolly is a creative leader of design and production teams focused on development, production and installation of live theatre, entertainment, multi-media and attractions for the themed entertainment industry worldwide.Neil began his career as a performer, writer, producer & artist in Londons alternative theatre/art scene. It was during this time Neil developed a love and passion for story telling through the platform of interactive playable immersive theatre.Having been at the vanguard of playable & immersive theatre since 2007, Neil had a career defining opportunity in 2019 when he devised, wrote & directed an immersive experience as part of Sainsbury's 150th Birthday Celebrations. Making him the only immersive theatre & game maker in the world to have HRH Elizabeth Regina attend one of their experiences.In a distinguished career spanning 20 years, Neil has brought that passion to every facet of themed entertainment in the creative direction and production of attractions such as; Handels Messiah, Snowman & The Snowdog, Peppa Pig Surprise Party, Traitors Live, The Crystal Maze Live Experience, Tomb Raider Live Experience & Chaos Karts, an AR go-kart real life battle. Other clients and activations include: Harrods, Sainsbury's, Camelot/The National Lottery, Samsung, Blenheim Palace, Land Rover and Warner Brothers.Neil has worked across 4 continents for many years with private individuals; designing, producing and delivering live entertainment on land, sea & air. A world without boundaries requires freethinking.Neil is currently working with Immersive Everywhere on creative development of show and attraction content for projects across U.K, Europe, North America & Asia. Transcriptions:  Paul Marden: This week on Skip the Queue, we're stepping into the turret and turning up the tension as we explore one of the UK's most talked about immersive experiences.Paul Marden: Our guest is Neil Connolly, Creative Director at The Everywhere Group, who've brought The Traitor's live experience to life. With over 10 million viewers watching every betrayal, backstab and banishment on the BBC show, expectations for the live version were nothing short of murderous. So how do you even begin to transform a TV juggernaut into a thrilling guest-led experience? Let's find out who's playing the game and who's about to be banished.Paul Marden: So, we're underground. Lots of groups running currently, aren't they? How did you make that happenNeil Connolly: Yeah, so now we're two floors under us. There's a lower basement and some other basement. So the building that we are in, there's a family in the 1890s who owned all of the land around Covent Garden and specifically the Adelphi Theatre.Paul Marden: Right.Neil Connolly: And they wanted their theatre to be the first theatre in the UK to have its lights powered by electricity. So they built their own private power station in this building. Like, literally like, all this, this is a power station. But unfortunately for these the Savoy had taken to that moniker, so they quickly built their important institution. The family had this building until the 1980s when the establishment was assumed through the important UK network.Neil Connolly: And then it was sat there empty, doing nothing for 40 years. And so the landlord that is now started redeveloping the building 10 years ago, added two floors onto the top of the building. So now what we're in is an eight-storey structure and we've basically got the bottom four floors. Two of which are ground and mezzanine, which is our hospitality area. And the lower two floors, which are all in the basement, are our experience floors. What we're looking at right now is, if you look off down this way to the right, not you people on audio, but me here.Neil Connolly: Off this side is five of the round table rooms. There's another one behind me and there's two more upstairs. And then I've got some Tretters Towers off to the left and I've got my show control system down there.Neil Connolly: On the floor above me, we've got the lounges. So each lounge is connected to one of the round table rooms. Because when you get murdered or banished, one of the biggest challenges that I faced was what happens to people when they get murdered or banished? Because you get kicked out of the game. It's not a lot of fun, is it? Therefore, for me, you also get kicked out of the round table room. So this is a huge challenge I face. But I built these lounge concepts where you go— it's the lounge of the dead— and you can see and hear the round table room that you've just left. We'll go walk into the room in a while. There's lots of interactivity. But yeah, super fun. Neil Connolly: But unfortunately for these the Savoy had taken to that moniker, so they quickly built their important institution. The family had this establishment until the 1980s when the establishment was considered through the important UK network.Paul Marden: Yeah. So we've got 10 million people tuning in to Traitors per episode. So this must be a lot of pressure for you to get it right. Tell us about the experience and what challenges you faced along the way, from, you know, that initial text message through to the final creation that we're stood in now.Neil Connolly: So many challenges, but to quote Scroobius Pip on this, do you know Scroobius Pip? Paul Marden: No. Neil Connolly: Great, he's amazing. UK rapper from Essex.Neil Connolly: Some people see a mousetrap and think death. I see free cheese and a challenge.Neil Connolly: There's never any problems in my logic, in my thinking. There's always just challenges to overcome. So one of the biggest challenges was what happens to people when they get murdered or banished. The truth of the matter is I had to design a whole other show, which happens after this show. It is one big show. But you go to the Lounge of the Dead, there's more interactivity. And navigating that with the former controller, which is O3 Media and IDTV, who created the original format in the Netherlands, and basically designing a game that is in the world and follows the rules of their game with some reasonable adjustments, because TV and live are not the same thing.Neil Connolly: It takes 14 days to film 12 episodes of The Traitors. Paul Marden: Really? Okay. Neil Connolly: So I was like, how do I truncate 14 days of somebody's life down into a two-hour experience and still deliver that same impact, that same power, that same punch?Paul Marden: Yep.Neil Connolly: But I knew from the beginning of this that it wasn't about time. There is a magic triangle when it comes to the traitors, which is time, space, atmosphere. And time was the thing that I always struggled with. I don't have a Scottish cattle show, and I don't have two weeks. No. So I'm like, 'Cool, I've got to do it in two hours.' So our format follows exactly the same format. We do a breakfast scene, then a mission, then a roundtable banishment, then there's a conclave where the traitors meet and they murder somebody. And I do that in a seven-day structure, a seven-day cycle. But it all happens within two hours around this round table.Neil Connolly: I'm the creative director for Immersive Everywhere. We're a vertically integrated structure in the sense that we take on our own venues. So we're now standing in Shorts Gardens in the middle of Covent Garden. So we've leased this building. We've got a lease that is for a number of years and we have built the show into it. But we also identify the IP, go after that ourselves, we capitalise the projects ourselves. We seek strategic partners, promoters, other people to kind of come involved in that journey. But because we're also the team that are licensing the product, we are also the producers and I'm the creative director for that company. So I developed the creative in line with while also getting the deal done. This is incredibly unusual because other producers will be like, 'Hey, I've identified this IP and I've got it.' Now I'm going to approach a creative agency and I'm going to get them to develop the product. And now I've done all of that, I'm going to find someone else to operationally put it on, or I'm going to find a venue to put it on in, and then I'm going to find my ticketing partner.  But we don't do that. We have our own ticketing platform, and we have our own database, so we mark our own shoulders.Neil Connolly: As well as other experiences too. Back, we have our own creative industry, we are the producers, we are the female workers. So we cast it, we hire all the front of house team, we run the food and beverage, we run the bars. The operations team is our operations team because they run the venue as well as the show at the same time. So that's what I mean. We're a vertically integrated structure, which means we do it, which makes us a very unusual proposition within... certainly within the UK market, possibly the world. It makes us incredibly agile as a company and makes us to be able to be adaptive and proactive and reactive to the product, to the show, to the market that we're operating in, because it's all under one roof.Neil Connolly: This show started January 24th, 2023. Right. It's very specific because I was sitting on my sofa drinking a lovely glass of Merlot and I had just watched... UK Traitors, Season One. Yep. Because it came out that Christmas. Immediately I was like, 'Oh my God, this is insane.' And then I got a text message that particular night from our head of licensing, a guy named Tom Rowe, lovely man. And he was like, Neil, I'm at a licensing event with some friends of mine and everyone's talking about this thing called Traitors. I've not watched it. Have you watched it? Sounds like it might be a good thing. And so I sat back and drank my Merlot. And about five minutes later, I text him back and I was like, Tom, get us that license.Neil Connolly: And then I sent him a bunch of other details of how the show in my head would work, both from a commercial standpoint, but also from a creative standpoint, because I'm a commercially minded creative. Right. So I instantly took out my notebook and I started writing down exactly how I thought the show was going to do, the challenges that we would face and being able to translate this into a live thing. But I literally started writing it that night. And then he watched the first episode on the train on the way home. And then he texted me the next morning and he was like, 'I love it.' What do we need to do? And I was like, 'Get us in the room.' Two days later, we were in the room with all three media who own the format globally.Paul Marden: Okay.Neil Connolly: So we sat down and then they came to see one of our other shows and they were like, 'Okay, we get it now.' And then that was like two and a half years of just building the show, getting the deal done and facing the myriad of challenges. But yeah, sometimes it just starts with the text message.Paul Marden: So they get to experience all the key parts of the TV.Neil Connolly: All the key beats. Like right now, I'm holding one of the slates. They're not chalkboard slates. Again, this is... Oh, actually, this is a good challenge. So in the TV show, they've got a piece of slate and they write on it with a chalkboard pen. This seems so innocuous and I can't believe I'm talking about this on a podcast.Neil Connolly: Slategate was like six months of my life. Not in its entirety, but it was a six month long conversation about how we do the slates correctly. Because we do... 48 shows a day, six days a week. And those slates will crack. They will bash. And they're kind of a bit health and safety standards. I was like, can't have them. Also, they write on them with chalk pens, white ink chalk pens. But in the TV show, you only do it once a night. Yeah.Paul Marden: And then you have a producer and a runner.Neil Connolly: They just clean them very, very leisurely and set them back for the next day. And I was like, no, I've got to do a whole bunch of roundtable banishments in two hours. So we talked a lot about material, about style, literal viewership, because if you take a seat at the table. Yeah. If you're sitting at the table here, you'll notice that we've got a raised bit in the middle. If I turn mine around, the other person on the other side can't see it. So I was like, 'Okay, cool.' So we had to do a whole bunch of choreography. But also, the room's quite dark. Yes. At times, atmospheric. Yeah. In that magic triangle time-space atmosphere. So anything that was darker, or even that black slate, you just couldn't read it. And then there was, and then I had to— this is the level of detail that we have to go into when we're designing this kind of stuff. I was like, 'Yeah, but I can't clean off these slates with the white ink because everyone will have to have like a wet cloth chamois. Then I've just got loads of chamois around my venue that I just don't need.' And so then we're like, 'Oh, let's use real slates with real chalk.' And I was like, 'No, because dust will get everywhere.' I'll get chalk just all over my table. It'll just ruin everything. It'll ruin the technology that's inside the table because there's lots of hidden tricks inside of it. Paul Marden: Is there really? Yeah, yeah, yeah.  Neil Connolly: There's loads of hidden tricks inside the table. So after a while, going through many different permutations, I sat down with Christian Elenis, who's my set designer and my art director. And we were, the two of us were nearly in tears because we were like, 'We need,' and this only happened like.Neil Connolly: I would say two, three weeks before we opened. We still hadn't solved how to do the slate, which is a big thing in the show. Anybody who's seen the show and loves the show knows that they want to come in, they want to write somebody's name on the slate, and they want to spell the name incorrectly.Neil Connolly: Everyone does it on purpose. But I wanted to give people that opportunity. So then eventually we sat down and we were like, Christian, Neil. And the two of us in conversation went, why don't we just get a clear piece of Perspex, back it with a light coloured vinyl. And then Christian was like, 'Ooh,' and I'll make it nice and soft and put some felt on the back of it, which is what I'm holding. And then why don't we get a black pen? And we were like, 'Yeah,' like a whiteboard marker. And then we can just write on it. And then A, I can see it from the other side of the table. Thing one achieved. Two. Every marker pen's got an eraser on the top of it. I don't know why everyone thinks this is important, but it is. That you can just rub out like that, and I'm like, 'There's no dirt, there's no mess, and I can reuse this multiple times, like dozens of times in the same show.' And I know that sounds really weird, but that's the level of design I'm going to need.Paul Marden: I was just about to say, and that is just for the chalkboard. Yeah. Now you need to multiply that. How many decisions?Neil Connolly: How many decisions in each game. But also remember that there are eight round tables in this building. Each round table seats 14 people. And we do six sessions a day. So first ones at 10 a. m. Then we do 12, 2, 4, 6, and 8 p. m. So we do 48 shows a day, six days a week.Paul Marden: I love the concept that these are shows. This is not this is not visitor attraction. This is theater repeated multiple times a day for multi audience is concurrently.Neil Connolly: And I've just spent five minutes describing a slate to you. Yeah. But like, I haven't even got— it's like the sheer amount of technology that is in the show. And again, theatrical, like, look above our heads. Yeah. You've got this ring light above every seat. It's got a pin light. There's also microphones which are picking up all the audio in the room, which again is translating to the lounge of the dead. Every single one of the round table rooms has four CCTV cameras. Can you see that one in the corner? Each one of them is 4K resolution. It's quite high spec, which is aimed at the opposite side of the table to give you the resolution in the TV. In the other room. Then you've got these video contents. This is constantly displaying secret information through the course of the show to the traitors when they're in Conclave because everyone's in blindfolds and they took them off. They get secret instructions from that. There's also a live actor in the room. A live actor who is Claudia? They're not Claudia. They're not pastiches of Claudia. They are characters that we have created and they are the host of The Traitor's Game. Right. They only exist inside this building. We never have them portrayed outside of this building in any way whatsoever.Neil Connolly: They are characters, but they live, they breathe— the game of Traitors, the world of Traitors, and the building that we have designed and constructed here. And they facilitate the game for the people. And they facilitate the game for the people. One actor to 14 people. There are no plants, even though everyone tries to tell me. Members of the public will be convinced that they are the only person that's in that show and that everyone else is a plant. And I'm like, no, because that would be insane.Neil Connolly: The only actor in the room is the host.Paul Marden: 14 people that can sit around this table. How many of them are in the same group? Are you with your friends or is it put together where there are other people that you won't know in the room? If you book together, you play together.Neil Connolly: Yes. Okay, so if you don't book 14 people... Ah, we also capped the number of tickets that you can purchase to eight. Right. So you can only purchase a maximum of eight tickets unless you do want a full table of 14, at which point you have to then purchase a VIP package because you are booking out a whole table for yourselves. The game doesn't work if there's less than 10 people at the table. So there has to be 10, 11, 12, 13 or 14 people sat at a round table for the show to actually happen, for it to work. By capping the number of tickets that you book for eight, then that guarantees that strangers will be playing together. And that is the basis of strangers. Yeah, yeah. Like, you need to be sat around a table with people you know, you don't know, that you trust and you don't trust. Yeah. Fact of the matter. And do you see people turning on the others in their own group? Every single time. People think genuinely, and I love this from the public, you would think that if you're turning up as a group of eight and a group of four and a group of two, that the bigger group would just pick everybody off to make sure that someone in their group gets through to the end game.Neil Connolly: I'm sure they think that and they probably plot and plan that before they arrive on site. As soon as this game starts, gloves are off and everyone just starts going for each other. We've been open nearly two months now. I have seen, like, children murdered of their mothers.Neil Connolly: Husbands murder their wives, wives murder their husbands. I've seen, like, three generations—like, we get, because it's so intergenerational, like our lowest, the lowest age that you can play this is 12. Right. And then it's upwards. I've seen three generations of family come in and I've seen grandkids murder their own nan.Neil Connolly: Absolutely convinced that they're a traitor. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 100%. Or they banish them. Like, it's just mental. I've also seen nans, who are traitors, murder their grandkids.Neil Connolly: Like, and this is in a room full of strangers. They're just like, 'No, I'm not going to go for Barbara, who I met two hours ago in the bar. I'm going to go for my own grandson. It's mental.'Neil Connolly: The very, very first thing that I always think about whenever I'm creating an experience or whenever I'm designing a show is I put myself in the position of 'I'm a member of the public.' I have bought a ticketNeil Connolly: What's the coolest thing that I am going to do for my money? What is my perceived value of my ticket over actually what is the value of that ticket? I wanted to give people the experience of knowing what it was like to be sitting in one of these chairs at this table and feeling their heart. The pounding in their chest and I mean, the pounding in their chest, that rush of adrenaline from doing nothing— from sitting in a chair and all you were doing was sitting in a room talking to people and your heart is going.Neil Connolly: Because you're either being accused of being a liar. And trying to defend against it. And trying to defend against it. Or you actually are lying and you're trying to whittle your way out of it. And that feeling is the most alive that you will ever feel. Not ever. Like, I'm sure they're... No, no, no. But, like, give people that opportunity and that experience, as well as, like, access to the world of traitors and the law and everything else. But also, it's like any other theme park ride. People go on roller coasters because the imminent fear of death is always there. Yeah. And you feel alive. You're like, you've got such a buzz of adrenaline. Whereas, arguably, we do exactly the same thing as roller coasters, but in a much more longer-drawn format and multiple times. Yeah. And people do feel alive. When people walk out of the show, you see them go upstairs to the bar, and they are... Yeah.Paul Marden: You've said to me already that you don't use the word 'immersive,' but you know, I'm, I'm, I'm sat. The company is called 'immersive' everywhere. I'm sat behind the scenes. Okay. I'm sat in the room and the room is hugely convincing. It's like the highest fidelity escape room type experience that I've ever sat in. It feels like I'm on set, yeah, yeah. Um, I can totally believe that, in those two hours, you can slip. I sat on a game. It was only a two-minute game at iApple, but I was being filmed by one of the team. But within 30 seconds, I'd forgotten that they were there because I was completely immersed in the game. I can believe that, sitting in here right now, you could forget where you were and what you were doing, that you were completely submerged in the reality of the land that you're in.Neil Connolly: Yeah, 100%. Like, the world does not exist beyond these worlds. And for some people, like, I have my own definition. Everyone's got a different definition of what immersive is. I've got my own definition. But... I can tell you right now, as soon as people enter this building, they're in the bar, they're kind of slowly immersed in that world because the bar is a themed bar. It's done to the same, like we designed and built that bar as well. But as soon as they start descending that spiral staircase and coming into the gameplay floors, into the show floors, they just forget the rest of the world exists. And especially when they sit down at this table, it doesn't matter. I'm sat next to you here, but you could be sat at this table with your loved one, strangers, whatever. The gloves come off and just nothing exists apart from the game that you're about to go through.Paul Marden: You've been open now for a couple of months. More success than you were anticipating, I think. So pre-sales went through the roof? Yes. So you're very happy with the results?Neil Connolly: Yeah, yeah, we were. Yeah, well, we still are.Neil Connolly: We were very confident before we'd even started building the show, like the literal structural build, because we did very well. But then that set expectations quite high because I had a lot of people that had bought tickets and I was like, 'OK, I need to put on a good show for these people. And I need to make sure that they get satisfaction relative to the tickets that they bought.' But I don't feel pressure. I do feel anxiety quite a lot. Creatively? Yeah. I mean, I meditate every day.Paul Marden: But you've created this amazing world and you're inviting people into it. And as a creative, you're opening yourself up, aren't you? People are walking into the world that you've created.Neil Connolly: Yeah, this was said to me. This is not something that I came up with myself, and I do say this really humbly, but it was something that was said to me. It was on opening day, and a bunch of my friends came to playtest the show. And they were like, 'Oh, this is your brain in a building.'Neil Connolly: And I was like, 'Yeah, I hadn't thought about that.' But yeah, it is my brain in a building. But also that's terrifying, I think, for everybody else, because I know what happens inside my brain and it's really quite chaotic.Neil Connolly: But, you know, this I am. I'm so proud of this show. Like you could not believe how proud I am of this show. But also a huge part of my job is to find people that are smarter than me at the relative thing that they do, such as the rest of my creative team. They're all so much smarter than me. My job is vision and to be able to communicate that vision clearly and effectively so that they go, 'I understand.' The amount of times that people on the creative team turn around to me and go, 'Neil, that's a completely mental idea.' If people are saying to me, 'No one's ever done that before' or 'that's not the way things are done.'Neil Connolly: Or we can do that, but we're going to have to probably invent a whole new thing. If people are saying those things to me, I know I'm doing my job correctly. And I'm not doing that to challenge myself, but everything that I approach in terms of how I build shows is not about format. It's not about blueprints. It's not like, 'Hey, I've done this before, so I'm just going to do this again because I know that's a really neat trick.' I go back to, 'I made the show because I wanted people's heart to pound in their chest while they're sitting in a chair and make them feel alive.'Paul Marden: Is that the vision that you had in your head? So you're articulating that really, really clearly. Is that the vision that you sold to everybody on, not maybe day one, but within a couple of days of talking about this? No, it was day one.Neil Connolly: It was day one. Everyone went, that's a completely mental idea. But, you know, it's my job to try and communicate that as effectively and clearly as I can. But again, I am just one man. My job is vision. And, you know, there's lighting design, sound design, art direction, there's game logic. We haven't even gotten to the technology of how this show works yet, or how this room works.Neil Connolly: Actually, I'll wander down the corner. Yeah, let's do that. But, like, there's other, like, lots of hidden tricks. Like, this is one of the games, one of the missions. In the world and the lore of the show, the round table is sacrosanct.Paul Marden: Yes.Neil Connolly: Traitors is the game. The game is in other people. I can do so many missions and there's loads of missions and they're really fun in this show. But the game is in other people. It's in the people sat on the other side of the room. But also I wanted to do a thing where people could interact directly with the set. And so I designed one of the missions to be in the round table itself.Neil Connolly: So there's a course of these moon dials, which you basically have to align through the course of it. And there are sensors built into the table so that they know when they're in the correct position. How you find out the correct position is by solving a very, very simple puzzle and then communicating effectively to a bunch of strangers that you just met.Neil Connolly: And the sensors basically read it all. And when that all gets into position, the lights react, the sound reacts, the video content reacts, the whole room reacts to you. So I wanted to give people something tangible that they can touch and they make the room react to them. Yes, it's. I mean, I've designed, I've got background in escape rooms as well, right? Um, so I've done a lot of that kind of stuff as well. So I wanted people to feel in touch, same, but like, there's more tangible props over here. Um, yeah, that is a model box of the room that we are stood in, yeah. Also, there's an exact replica of it on the other side of it. There are very subtle differences between it, and that informs one of the missions. So that is two model boxes in this roundtable room. There's one of these in every single roundtable room. So there's 16 model boxes of the show that you're stood in on the set. And again, theatre. It's a show. But it's one of the missions, because I wanted people to kind of go, 'Oh, there's a live actor in front of me.' I'm having fun. Oh, look at all these lights and all the sound. Oh, there's a model box over here. That's in theatre land and blah, blah, blah. But that is also a really expensive joke. It's a really expensive joke. And there's other, like, lots of hidden tricks.Neil Connolly: Let's go look at backstage. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.Neil Connolly: I say backstage, like how we refer to it or how I always go. I use 'I' and 'we' very interchangeably. Like right now you're on the set. Like you're on the stage. Yes. We're just wandering around a long corridor. There are round table rooms off to either side. But like, you know, there's a green room upstairs where the actors get changed, where the front of house team are, where the bar team all are. But as soon as they go out onto the show floor, they're on stage—yes, completely. We'll very quickly have a look at the gallery—yes, show control. Hi, Robbo. Do you mind if I stand in your room for the purposes of the audio? I'm talking to the technical manager, Thomas Robson. We're recording a podcast.Paul Marden: Robbo, oh yeah, okay. My mind is absolutely blown. So you've got every single room up on screen.Neil Connolly: Yeah, so that's great. There's 164 cameras—something like that. But every roundtable room has four cameras in it. Each camera is 4K resolution. So we've got cameras on all of them. We've got audio into those rooms. That's two-way, so that if show control needs to talk directly to them, they just press a button here and they can talk directly to the room itself. Mainly just like, stop misbehaving, we're watching you.Neil Connolly: We've then got cameras into all of the lounges, all of the show spaces, all the front of house, all of the bar areas, the mezzanine and back of house. And then you've got QLab running across all of the different shows. We've got backups on all of these screens. So if one... of the computers goes down, we can very quickly swap it in for a backup that's already running. We've got show control, which is, there's a company called Clockwork Dog, who, they're an amazing company. What COGS, their show control system, is doing is pulling in all of the QLab from sound, all of the QLab from lighting, and also we built our own app. to be able to run the show. So there's a whole logic and decision tree based on the decisions that the public do through the course of the game. So yes, there is a beginning, a middle, and an end in terms of our narrative beats and the narrative story of the show that we're telling people. But also that narrative can go in. Hundreds of different directions depending on the actions and the gameplay that the people do during the course of the show. So, you haven't just learned one show— you have to learn like You have to learn a world, and you have to learn a whole game.Neil Connolly: Like, there's the server, stacks, which we had to build. You had to network and cable the entire building. So we have built an entire new attraction, which didn't exist before. And also we're pulling in information from the front of house system which is also going into the show itself because again, you put your name into the iPad when you arrive on site and then you tick a box very crucially to say, 'Do you want to be selected as a trader? Yes or No.' Because in the game, it's a fundamental rule. If you say no, you cannot be selected as a traitor by the host during traitor selection. That doesn't mean you can't be recruited.Paul Marden: By the traitors later on in the game. So you could come and do this multiple times and not experience the same story because there were so many different pathways that you could go down.Neil Connolly: But also, the game is in other people. Yes. The show is sat on the opposite side of the table to you because, like, Bob and Sandra don't know each other. They'll never see each other ever again. But Bob comes again and he's now playing against Laura. Who's Laura? She's an unknown quantity. That's a whole new game. That's a whole new show. There's a whole new dynamic. That's a whole new storyline that you have to develop. And so the actors are doing an incredible job of managing all of that.Paul Marden: Thanks, Robbo. Thank you. So you've worked with some really, really impressive leading IP, Traders, Peppa Pig, Doctor Who, Great Gatsby. What challenges do you face taking things from screen to the live experience?Paul Marden: Challenges do I face? We're wandering here.Neil Connolly: So we are in... Oh, we're in the tower.Neil Connolly: Excellent. Yep, so we're now in Traitor's Tower. Good time for you to ask me the question, what challenges do I face? Things like this. We're now stood in Traitor's Tower. Paul, let me ask you the question. Without the show lights being on, so we're just stood on a set under workers, what's your opinion of the room that we're stood in?Paul Marden: Oh, it's hugely impressive. It feels like, apart from the fact you've punched the fourth wall out of the telly, it does feel like you're on set.Neil Connolly: It's a really faithful reproduction of the set. So that's kind of one of the challenges is managing the public's expectations of what they see, do and feel on site. So that I don't change the show so that people come and play the game that they're expecting to play. But making reasonable adjustments within that, because TV and live are two very, very different things. So first and foremost was making sure that we get the format right. So the game that people play, which informs the narrative of the show and the narrative structure of the show. Breakfast, mission, round table, conclave. Breakfast, mission, round table, conclave. I've designed a whole bunch of new missions that are in this, taken some inspiration from missions that people know and love from the TV shows, whether that's the UK territory or other territories around the world. And also just other stuff is just clear out of my head. So there's original content in there. paying homage and respect to the world that they've built and allowing ourselves to also play and develop and build out that world at the same time. Other challenges.Neil Connolly: This is not a cheap project. No, no. I mean, the production quality of this is beautiful. Yeah, yeah, thank you. It is stunning. When people walk in here, they're like, 'Oh my God, this is... High end.' I am in a luxury event at a very affordable price.Paul Marden: Thank you. And then we're going back upstairs again. Yes. And in the stairwell, we've got the crossed out photos of all of those that have fallen before us.Neil Connolly: No, not quite. All of the people that are in this corridor, there's about 100 photos. These are all the people who built the show.Neil Connolly: So this is David Gregory. He's the sound designer. This is Kitty, who is Immersive Everywhere's office manager. She also works in ticketing. That is Tallulah and Alba, who work in the art department. Elliot, who's our lighting designer. So all of these people are the people who brought the show to life.Paul Marden: Amazing.Neil Connolly: And we wanted to pay homage to them because some of them gave years of their lives to building the show from literally the inception that I had in 2023. Through to now and others are the people who literally spent months of their life underground in these basements building hand-building this set and so we wanted to pay homage to them so we got all of their photos we did the iconic red cross through it yeah and we stuck them all up in the corridor just because we thought it'd be a nice thing to do.Paul Marden: You're in the business of trading and experiences and that ranges from art exhibitions to touring shows. There's always going to be a challenge of balancing innovation and profitability. What is the formula? What is the magic formula?Neil Connolly: I believe, first and foremost, going back to what I was telling you earlier about us being a collaborative organisation. We are not a creative crack that has been used for the show. We are also the producers of the show. And to make my point again, I'm a commercially minded creative. So I actually sit down with the producers and go, 'Okay, cool.' There are 112 seats in the show.Paul Marden: Yep.Neil Connolly: Therefore, how many shows do we need to do per day? How many shows do we need to do per week? How many shows do we need to do per year? Therefore, let's build out a P &L. And we build a whole business plan based around that.Paul Marden: By having everybody— that you need in the team— makes it much easier to talk about that sort of stuff. It makes it much easier for you to design things with the end result in mind. You don't have a creative in a creative agency going off— feeding their creative wants without really thinking about the practicalities of delivering on it.Neil Connolly: Exactly. So you've got to think like, literally, from the very, very beginning: you've got to think about guest flow. You've got to think about throughput. You've got to think about your capacities. Then you've got to basically build out a budget that you think— how much, hey, how much really is this going to cost? Yeah. Then you build out an entire business plan and then you go and start raising the money to try and put that on. And then you find a venue. I mean, like the other magic triangle, like the traitor's magic triangle is, you know, time, space, atmosphere. That's how you do a show. Like with my producer's hat on, the other magic triangle is show, money, venue.Neil Connolly: The truth of the matter, like I make no bones about it, I can design shows till the cows come home, but I'm always going to need money to put them on and a venue to put them in. Also, I want to stress this really important. I use the words 'I' and 'we' very interchangeably.Paul Marden: It's a team effort.Neil Connolly: You can see that in that corridor. I am not a one-man band. I am the creative director of a company. I am a cog that is in that machine, and everybody is doing... We are, as a team... I cannot stress this enough. Some of the best in the business are doing what we do. And everyone is so wildly talented. And that's just us on the producing side. That's immersive everywhere, limited. Then I've got a whole other creative team. Then we've got operations. Then we've got... It's just mad. It's just mad, isn't it? This is a job. Who would have thought, when you were at school, this was an opportunity? Not my principal or my maths teacher.Neil Connolly: So, sorry, just to balance the kind of economies of scale. That was the question, wasn't it?Paul Marden: Well, we were talking about what is the formula for making that an investment, but you know, the authority here is the effort you've put in to do this feels high, but at the same time, you have to find this thing. There is a lot of investment that goes into the front.Neil Connolly: But that comes back to creatives. Caring and I'm not saying the creatives don't, but I care. I care about building businesses. Yeah, not necessarily like building my own CV, like there's so many projects that across our desks. I'll be like, 'Yeah, that'd be really fun to work on.' But do I think that I can make that a touring product? Can it be a long-running location-based entertainment sit-down product? Can it be an art shop? Like you've kind of got a balance with what do you think is just creatively cool versus what can we do as a company that is a commercially viable and financially stable product? And so all that comes through in terms of the creative, but also in terms of the activities of how we run the building, how this model realizes. Because if you think about it, let's make Phantom of the Opera run in the West End. Yes. The show is very obvious, with many casts on a room, away, fruit team away, terrace, it's a big activity. If they haven't sold half that away, they have to use the whole show and play all those people.Neil Connolly: But if they haven't sold half that away from one of my shows... I only have to activate four of my rooms, not eight of them. Therefore, I don't have to call in four actors. I don't have to call in a bunch of the other front of house team and I can scale in the operations on the back. It's an entirely scalable process. Flexible, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, 100%. But also, like, we've got eight rooms here. If we decide to take this to another territory, and that territory demands a much higher throughput, then instead of eight rooms, I can do 20 rooms, 30 rooms. As long as we know that the market is there to be able to kind of get people through it.Neil Connolly: I love this show and I'm so proud of it. The main reason why I'm proud of it is when the show finishes, let's go into one of the lounges. Have you been into one of the lounges?Paul Marden: I've had a nose around a lounge.Neil Connolly: There are different shapes and sizes. We won't go into that one. We'll go into this one down here. That one, that one. It's always such a buzz when you're stood in the bar and the shows kick out, and you see tables and tables of 14 people going up into the bar.Neil Connolly: Area and before they've even gotten a drink, they will run straight over to their friends, families, strangers, whoever they were playing with in that table of 14, and instantly be like, 'Right, I need to know everything that was going on inside your head, your heart, and your soul over the last two hours of my life because this was my experience.'Neil Connolly: And they'll just go, and they'll be like, 'And this is what I was thinking.' And then I thought it was you because you did this and you touched your nose in a weird way. And then I thought you were sending secret signals. And then everyone's like, 'No, that's not what I was doing.' I was just trying to be a normal person. And they were like, 'Well, why did you say that thing?' It sounded super weird. And they're like, 'That's just what I do.' And it's just totally mental. And then they all get a drink from the bar. And we call it the bar tab chat.Neil Connolly: It's another revenue stream.Neil Connolly: I do talk about this like it's a show. And it is a show. You've walked around, do you think it's a show? Completely. I talk to established houses all the time. Like, you know, the big theatres of the land. Organisations that are national portfolio organisations who receive a lot of Arts Council funding. The thing that they want to talk to us about all the time is new audiences. They're like, 'How do I get new audiences through my door?' What can I do? And I'm like, 'Well, firstly, make a show that people want to go and see.'Neil Connolly: Again, they're like, 'But I've got this amazing writer and he's a really big name and everyone's going to come because it's that name.' And I'm like, 'Yeah, that's wicked. That's cool.' And they can all go pay reverence to that person. That's really wonderful. Whereas when you look at the attractions landscape or the immersive theatre landscape or like anything like... Squid Game, or The Elvis, Evolution, or War of the Worlds, which has also laid reality, or any of that kind of stuff, across the landscape, it is nothing but new audiences. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It is nothing but actual ticket-buying audiences.Neil Connolly: And they come from all different walks of life. And what I love is that they do come in to this experience and we hit them with this like secret theatre.Neil Connolly: And they're like, 'Oh my God.' And often it's a gateway to them being like, 'Oh, I didn't realise that.' Maybe I'll go see a Western show or maybe I will go to the National Theatre and see something. Because that's the level of archery. Because those organisations, I love them and I've worked in a few of them, but those buildings can be quite austere, even though they're open and porous, but it's still very difficult to walk through that threshold and feel a part of it.Paul Marden: Whereas coming in here, coming into an event like this, can feel like a thing that they do.Neil Connolly: Because it's the same demographic as theme park junkies. People who love going to theme parks love going to stuff like this because it's an experience, it's an otherness, it's an other nature kind of thing. Because modern audiences want to play and do, not sit and watch. But we all exist in the kind of same ecosystem. I'm not taking on the National Theatre.Paul Marden: Gosh, no. I always talk about that. I think the reason why so many attractions work together in the collaborative way that they do is they recognise that they're not competing with each other. They're competing with sitting on your backside and watching Netflix.Paul Marden: Yeah, yeah.Paul Marden: Our job for all of us is to drag people away from their screens and drag people off of their sofas to do something. And then that's the biggest challenge that we all face.Neil Connolly: I think then that kind of answers the question that you asked me earlier, which I didn't answer. And I'm very sorry.Neil Connolly: is about identifying different pieces of IP. Like, yes, we largely exist in the world of licensing IP. And how do we identify that kind of IP to be able to translate? Not just how do we do it, but like, actually, how do we identify the right thing that's going to... How do you spot the winner? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And that is one of the biggest challenges to your point of we're talking directly to people who consume arts, culture and media and technology in a slightly more passive way, whether that's just at home and watching Netflix and then bringing that to life. In a very, very different way. If you have a very clear marketing campaign that tells people what it is that they're buying and what they're expected to see or do on their particular night out, because that's what modern people really care about, what they do with their money. Yeah. And they want to have a good night out. And I'm in the business of giving people a good night out. We also happen to be murdering a lot of people in the course of the show.Neil Connolly: Still a good night out. Still a good night out. But I'm in a place where the dead sit. Yeah, exactly. Lounge of the dead. And like, you know, this is a really cool space. Oh, it's just beautiful. You know, we've got the telephone really works. There's lots of information that comes through that. The radio works, that does different things. The TV screen on the wall, that has the actual live feed into the round table room that you've just left. And there's other little puzzles and hints and tricks in this room, which means that after you've been murdered or banished and you come to the Lounge of the Dead, you're still engaged with the game to a degree. You just don't directly influence the outcome of the game. But you're still involved in it. You're still involved in it. It's super fun. Oh, and you can have a drink in here.Paul Marden: I don't let people drink in the round table. Even more important. What's this?Neil Connolly: The dolls, the creepy dolls. What this is, this is the void. Creatively speaking, this is where all the gold goes when people win or lose it. And the creepy dolls are from the TV show. Ydyn nhw'r un gwirioneddol o'r sioe? Felly, gafodd studio Lambert, sy'n gwneud y sioe tebyg, llawer o brops o'r sioe tebyg i ni eu rhoi ar y ddispleiddio yma. Felly, mae gennych chi'r Dolls Creepy o'r lles 3 yno. Rydyn ni'n mynd i fyny. Yn ôl yma, mae'r peintiwch Deathmatch.Paul Marden: Which is from season three.Neil Connolly: And they get the quill and they write the names and got the quill upstairs. We've also got over here, the cards that they used to play the death match with. Excellent.Paul Marden: So you began your career in theatre. How did that evolve into the world of immersive live experiences?Neil Connolly: Life story. I am the son of a postman and a cook. And if you haven't noticed already, I'm from Ireland. There was no theatre in our lives, my life, when I was growing up. And I stumbled into a youth theatre. It's called Kildare Youth Theatre. And the reason why I joined that is because there was a girl that I really fancied.Neil Connolly: She had just joined this youth theatre and I was like, 'Oh, I'm gonna join that as well' and that kind of opened the world of theatre for me. At the same time, I then got spotted by this guy, his name's Vijay Baton, his real name's Om, but he converted to Hare Krishnanism in the 90s. And he set up a street theatre company in Ireland. He just taught me street theatre. So he taught me stilt walk, he taught me juggling, he taught me how to build puppets. And so I spent years building puppets with him and going around Ireland doing lots of different street theatre while I was a teenager. And doing street theatre and doing my youth theatre and then kind of all of that kind of came to a head when I had to decide what I was going to do with my life. I applied to go to drama school. And I applied to two drama schools. One was Radha. Didn't get in. Didn't even get an audition. And the other one was Rose Bruford. And they took me. And the reason why they took me— I probably wasn't even that good. But on the day that I was auditioning to get into Rose Bruford was the same day as my maths exam for my final exams at school. You call them your A-levels, we call them the leaving certificate.Neil Connolly: And while all of my friends were back in Ireland doing their maths exam, I was in an audition room pretending to be a tree or the colour black.Neil Connolly: Who knows? And they kind of went, 'Well, if I fail my maths exam, I don't get into university in Ireland.' Like, it's just a blanket thing. And so I was like, 'I literally sat across the panel' and I was like, 'eggs, basket.' And they were like, 'cool.' So they let me in based off of that. So I got a classical training. Then what happened is I came out of university. I was living with two of my friends, Natalie and Joe. And we had our own little production company called The Lab Collective. And we just started making shows. In weird ways, we joined a company called Theatre Delicatessen. Let's get away from this. Yeah, yeah, yeah.Neil Connolly: So Theatre Deli was a company set up to take over disused spaces in London and convert them into art spaces.Neil Connolly: Basically legalised squatting. It's the same as like a guardianship. But we weren't living in the buildings. We were just putting on shows and we put on art shows, we put on theatre shows. We did Shakespeare for a while. We wrote our own work and we just did lots of really, really cool stuff. And I worked in music festivals, classically trained actor. So I was trying to do shows. I did a lot of devising. I also joined an improvisation group. And kind of through all that mix, like those years at Delhi, which was making these weird shows in these weird buildings, were very, very formative years for us. The Arts Council wouldn't support the kind of work that we were making. We were like, 'Cool, how do we get space?Neil Connolly: How do we get or make money to support ourselves? And what are the shows? There's the magic triangle all over again. Space, show, money. And that's your apprenticeship, I guess, that brings you to here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And like, again, I make no bones about it. 10 years ago, I was selling programs on the door of the Royal Festival Hall while doing all of that stuff. So in one of the Theatre Daily buildings, we did a show called Heist, which is you break into a building and steal stuff. That's what the public do.Neil Connolly: And a bunch of us did that. I mean, it's so much fun— kind of doing it. And off the back of that, somebody else basically tried to chase down the crystal maze. And then they went away, and then they called me up and they were like, 'Hey, I've got the rights. Do you want to make the crystal maze?' And I was like, 'Yeah, sounds like fun.' So I got involved with that, did that for a while. And then, from there, this is the end of a very long story. I'm so apologised. Yeah, from there, all of those different things that I've done through the course of my life in terms of operations, designing experiences, being a creative, understanding business.Neil Connolly: Building a P&L, building a budget, talking to investors, trying to convince them to give you money. All of that stuff kind of basically came together. And over the last few years, like the wildest ride is that pre-2020.Neil Connolly: We were just a bunch of people doing a bunch of weird things, making weird shows and weird attractions in kind of different ways. And then that year happened. And I don't know what happened, but literally every single major studio, film, TV production, game designer, licensor in the world, suddenly just went— brand extensions, world extensions, and they all just started calling us. And they were like, 'Hi, I've got this thing.' Can you develop it into a thing? Because I need to extend my brand or I want to build a world and extend that for the public. And we were like, 'Yeah, okay, cool.' And we were just lucky, serendipitously, to be in the right place at the right time. To be those people that people can approach. And we're always, we're very approachable.Neil Connolly: As you can tell, I talk a lot. And, you know, so the last five years, it's just been a mad ride.Paul Marden: So look, Neil, it's been amazing. I have had the most fun. Last question for you. What's next? Are you putting your feet up now because you finished this? Or on to the next? Neil Connolly: Very much on to the next thing. So we're already in production with our new show, which is called Peppa Pig Surprise Party. And that is opening at the Metro Centre in Gateshead next year. Oh, how exciting is that? It's very exciting.Paul Marden: So quite a different demographic.Neil Connolly: The demographic for Peppa Pig is two to five year olds. It's been a really fun show to design and create. To go back to a question that you asked me very early on, there is no blueprint, there is no format. I have embraced the chaos tattooed on my arm. And always when I approach things, any new show or any new creative, I am thinking of it from a ticket buying perspective: 'I have paid my money.' What is the coolest thing that I can possibly do with that money? And so therefore, I'm now looking at families and, like, what's the coolest thing that they can do for that ticket price in the world of Peppa Pig?Paul Marden: Let's come back in the new year, once you've opened Peppa Pig, let's go to Gateshead and see that. That sounds pretty awesome to me. I reckon there's a whole new episode of Designing Worlds for two to five-year-olds that we could fill an hour on.Neil Connolly: Oh yeah, 100%. It's a totally different beast. And super fun to design.Paul Marden: Oh mate. Neil, it has been so wonderful having a wander around the inside of your crazy mind.Paul Marden: If you've enjoyed today's episode, please like it and leave a comment in your podcast app. It really does make it so much easier for other people to find us. This episode was written by Emily Burrows from Plaster, edited by Steve Folland, and produced by Sami Entwistle from Plaster and Wenalyn Dionaldo. Thanks very much. See you next week.  The 2025 Visitor Attraction Website Survey is now LIVE! Dive into groundbreaking benchmarks for the industryGain a better understanding of how to achieve the highest conversion ratesExplore the "why" behind visitor attraction site performanceLearn the impact of website optimisation and visitor engagement on conversion ratesUncover key steps to enhance user experience for greater conversionsTake the Rubber Cheese Visitor Attraction Website Survey Report

Today, Sean and Sarah welcome Author, YouTuber, Journalist, Speaker, Podcaster, Film Critic and Baptist Minister, Peter Laws to discuss his upcoming book 'The Frighteners: Why We Love Monsters, Ghosts, Death and Gore'. The book will be published on 9th October 2025. 'The Frighteners' finds Peter on a paranormal pilgrimage to seek out what is it that draws people to both the dark and macabre, but also to the light and faith.With a healthy dose of dark-humour including threatening a zombie in a wheelchair with a shotgun, enticing a werewolf with peppered steaks from a Sainsbury's Local, to a festival which Peter described as a sort-of meta-physical Come Dine With Me, this thought-provoking book is one not to be missed. When I say thought-provoking, mainly death if we're honest but we'll get into that.As the book blurb proclaims: 'Grab your crucifixes, pack the silver bullets, and join the Sinister Minister on his romp into our morbid curiosities!'Sean, Sarah and Peter share their own ghost 'experiences'.Guest Links:-Peter Laws Website: https://www.peterlaws.co.uk/-Into The Fog with Peter Laws: https://www.youtube.com/@IntoTheFog-Creepy Cove Community Church Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/3238cjOfCXGgXHI3SKI4ka-Uncanny: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0010x7cAcknowledgments: Thank You To Peter, Elle-Jay from Icon Books and Paul Bavill from the 'History Rage' podcast.Chapters:0:08 Welcome to Review It Yourself1:06 Literary Exploration of the Macabre2:25 Introducing Pleasure a.k.a. Peter Laws3:42 Childhood Memories of Fear8:52 The Psychology of Horror12:20 The Cultural Significance of Death18:01 High vs. Low Culture22:45 The Evolution of Female Representation in Horror Films26:03 Personal Paranormal Experiences36:50 The Quest for the Paranormal45:11 The Nature of Belief and Skepticism56:07 The Role of Coincidence1:00:00 The Intersection of Science and Supernatural1:08:09 Blasphemy and Artistic Expression1:11:42 Final Thoughts and Recommendations1:18:29 Conclusion and AcknowledgementsMost Importantly: Thank you to you for Listening!X:@YourselfReviewInstagram: reviewityourselfpodcast2021Review It Yourself. 'The podcast with the sigh. Film Reviews (mostly) without the Faff'. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Style isn't just about clothes, it's about the way you show up. In this episode, I explore the link between looking polished and feeling powerful. Discover how intentional choices in colour, fit, and detail can strengthen your executive presence and help you command the room with confidence.About the HostWorking with personal clients, Lisa is passionate to inspire & empower ambitious women to have a wardrobe that gives them the confidence & self belief to achieve & reach their goals whilst reflecting their personal brand.Lisa has contributed to editorials such as The Guardian, Times, Daily Mail, The Sun, Daily Express works as the Style expert for BBC & Heart Radio throughout the UK. Lisa has worked on media campaigns with Sainsbury's & Persil.Lisa's website here:www.lisatalbot.co.ukThank you for listening, please remember to hit the follow button so you never miss an episode & leave a review if you enjoy find the podcast.Follow Lisa on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/lisatalbot1/Follow Lisa on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/Lisa-Talbot-Personal-and-Fashion-Stylist-106427762713796Follow Lisa on Linked In https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisa-talbot-b8291615/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How do we reconcile our expectations with God's unfolding plan? In this episode, Professor Derek Sainsbury explores the remarkable life of Nancy Naomi Tracy–a woman whose unwavering faith and bold defense of religious liberty and temple service helped shape the early Latter-day Saint experience. Through persecution, political exile, and personal loss, Nancy remained devoted to the gospel. Professor Sainsbury draws from her writings and activism to reveal how she navigated the tension between personal hopes and divine direction, offering a compelling lens into the cost of conviction and the legacy of spiritual resilience.  Publications: “‘We Have Not Been Allowed to Worship as We Please': Nancy Naomi Tracy and the Denial of Latter-day Saint Religious Liberty,” in Religious Liberty and Latter-day Saints: Historical and Global Perspectives (Religious Studies Center, 2023) Joseph Smith as a Visionary: Heavenly Manifestations in the Latter Days (Religious Studies Center, 2025) "Befriending the Constitutional Law of the Land" in Doctrine and Coveants Insights: Capstone of Doctrinal Understanding (Religious Studies Center, 2025) Storming the Nation: The Unknown Contributions of Joseph Smith's Political Missionaries (Religious Studies Center, 2020) “‘For the General Good of Mankind': Why Joseph Smith's Presidential Campaign Matters,” Religious Educator, 21.3 (2020)  Click here to learn more about Derek Sainsbury

In this episode of The Product Experience, Lily Smith speaks with Sahil Jain, co-founder and CEO of Samepage.ai, about one of product management's hardest challenges: keeping teams aligned. From his early career at Yahoo and AOL to founding multiple startups, Sahil shares lessons on building products that tackle “unsolvable” problems like communication and alignment. He explains why shared understanding matters more than speed, how product managers can become better storytellers, and why early-stage startups should obsess over just a handful of teams before chasing scale.Chapters0:00 – Why alignment is so hard1:14 – Sahil's unconventional career path4:00 – First foray into startups at AOL and beyond6:50 – Founding AdStage and lessons from raising early capital9:00 – Moving into product leadership after acquisition12:53 – On delusion, motivation, and tackling “unsolvable” problems16:34 – Starting Samepage.ai and the problem of information asymmetry22:43 – Validating the problem and testing prototypes27:22 – Why product managers are the perfect early adopters29:20 – The first 10 obsessed teams: startup focus34:00 – Neurodivergence, communication, and shared understanding36:43 – From Claude Shannon to storytelling: frameworks for better communication39:59 – Lessons from Duolingo on multimodal learning41:19 – Where to find Samepage.aiFeatured Links: Follow Sahil on LinkedIn | Samepage.ai | 'What we learned at Industry conference - day one' feature by Louron Pratt at Mind the ProductOur HostsLily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She's currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She's worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath. Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury's. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group's Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He's the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager's Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon's music stores in the US & UK.

In this episode of the Tech on Toast Podcast, Chris Fletcher sits down with Joel Robinson, founder of Openr – a data orchestration platform transforming how enterprise hospitality brands manage their tech stacks.Joel shares his journey from Sainsbury's digital transformation team to leading digital strategy at Azzurri Group, before building Openr to solve one of hospitality's biggest headaches: fragmented data and disconnected systems.

Busy leaders don't have time to waste on outfit stress. This episode reveals how to streamline your wardrobe so getting dressed becomes effortless. From capsule combinations to smart outfit planning, I'll show you how to reclaim time in your day while always looking polished.About the HostWorking with personal clients, Lisa is passionate to inspire & empower ambitious women to have a wardrobe that gives them the confidence & self belief to achieve & reach their goals whilst reflecting their personal brand.Lisa has contributed to editorials such as The Guardian, Times, Daily Mail, The Sun, Daily Express works as the Style expert for BBC & Heart Radio throughout the UK. Lisa has worked on media campaigns with Sainsbury's & Persil.Lisa's website here:www.lisatalbot.co.ukThank you for listening, please remember to hit the follow button so you never miss an episode & leave a review if you enjoy find the podcast.Follow Lisa on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/lisatalbot1/Follow Lisa on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/Lisa-Talbot-Personal-and-Fashion-Stylist-106427762713796Follow Lisa on Linked In https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisa-talbot-b8291615/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of The Product Experience, hosts Lily Smith and Randy Silver speak with Damilola Adelekan, Lead Product Manager at Remedial Health, who discusses building pragmatic, people-centred solutions in Africa's fragmented and under-resourced healthcare system.  Chapters05:30 – Early Lessons from Volunteering and Nonprofits07:00 – Why Digitising a Broken System Isn't Enough10:00 – Tackling Trust, Funding, and Fragmentation in Healthcare12:30 – Collaborating Beyond the Organisation14:30 – Building a Full Healthcare Supply Chain16:00 – Pragmatism Over Perfection in Product Vision18:00 – Cross-Team Collaboration at Scale20:00 – Structuring Product Work Across Functions22:00 – Communications Tips for Cross-Functional Leadership24:00 – Increasing Tech Adoption Among Low-Digital-Literacy Users26:00 – Customer Research in Low-Tech Contexts28:00 – Voice of the Customer: Calls, Feedback, and Sales Teams30:00 – What Inspires a Product Manager in Nigeria?Featured Links: Follow Damilola on LinkedIn | Remedial Health | Inspire Africa | 'How I got my job in product' feature with Damilola at Mind The ProductOur HostsLily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She's currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She's worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath. Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury's. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group's Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He's the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager's Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon's music stores in the US & UK.

In this week's episode of the Jewellers Academy Podcast, Jessica Rose talks with jeweller and community member Iain Sainsbury to explore his journey through the Advanced Stone Setting Masterclasses program, an advanced training series designed for jewellers ready to refine their fine jewellery and stone-setting skills.   Iain shares how he discovered jewellery-making after career burnout, and why the Masterclasses became the perfect next step in his learning. From tackling the challenges of piercing and decorative collets with Anelia Kuprina, to pushing his stone-setting skills further with Scott McIntyre, and making tiara wedding rings with April Dace, Iain reflects on the breakthroughs, struggles, and valuable lessons he's learnt along the way.   This conversation highlights not just the technical skills taught in the program, but also the importance of community, accountability, and feedback in the learning journey. Iain talks about his philosophy of 'slow making,' the benefits of creating prototypes, and how he has been able to transfer his new skills into his own sand-casting practice.   Whether you're curious about the Masterclasses, looking for inspiration to challenge yourself, or eager to hear from a fellow jeweller's perspective, this episode offers insights, encouragement, and practical takeaways.   Enrolment is now open for the Jewellers Masterclasses. Choose to enrol on one or save by buying the bundle.   Learn more and enrol https://www.jewellersacademy.com/masterclass   About Iain Iain Sainsbury creates his fine jewellery pieces from his studio in South Cambridgeshire where he specialises in one-of-a-kind pieces and bespoke commissions. He enjoys examining classic jewellery styles of the past, from Art Deco to Anglo-Saxon, and reimagining them. lain's favourite techniques include sandcasting and using gemstones and KeumBoo to highlight features and add colour. https://iainsainsbury.com/ @iains_jewellery     Watch Iain's episode of the Handmade Jewellers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLX9GHr9Rx4

This week, Anthony and Piers dive into the Fed's unexpected “risk management” rate cut, what does that even mean? And why is Powell suddenly more concerned about jobs than inflation?Then it's on to Trump's latest bombshell, scrapping quarterly earnings in favour of semiannual reports. Maverick nonsense or a legitimate debate about investor pressure and corporate costs?Finally, the team dissect the failed sale of Argos from Sainsbury's to JD.com. Why did the deal collapse? What does it say about cross-border M&A, boardroom discipline, and China's global shopping spree?Whether you're trading the headlines or prepping for a finance interview, this episode is packed with the market mechanics and strategic insight you need.(00:00) Intro & News in Focus(02:23) Fed Rate Cut & Market Implications(10:03) Trading Psychology & Market Reactions(11:55) Fed Dot Plots Explained(18:21) Trump's Corporate Earnings Proposal(20:21) Press Bias & News Interpretation(21:00) Quarterly vs. Semiannual Reporting(26:12) Tech's Role in Corporate Transparency(31:30) Argos Deal Breakdown(42:43) Investor Sentiment & M&A Takeaways

In this episode of The Product Experience, Patrick Ndjientcheu, Chief Product and Technology Officer at Irembo, shares how his team transitioned from delivering projects for government to building a portfolio of scalable products. Patrick talks about shifting mindsets from execution to strategy, spinning out payments and identity into independent products, and the challenges of balancing internal bias with customer needs. He also reveals how Irembo is evolving into a super app, why sales enablement is crucial in a B2B context, and the lessons he has learned guiding teams through the move from project to product to product portfolio.Six things we learned from PatrickProject to product mindset: Repeat customer demand signals value, turn ad-hoc projects into structured products with identity, principles, and strategy.Team restructuring without turnover: Shifting from project delivery to product development requires reorganising teams around capabilities.Spinouts emerge from features: Payments and identity started as embedded features, but with scale and external demand, became standalone products.Bias is real: Teams naturally over-index on the dominant revenue product. Separation, customer interviews, and rebranding are critical to balance focus.Sales enablement matters: Without educating sales and customers on new platform capabilities, adoption stalls and value is under-communicated.Leadership lesson: Product leaders must bring the whole organisation on the journey—marketing, sales, finance, and operations—not just product teams.Featured Links: Follow Patrick on LinkedIn | Irembo | Inspire Africa Our HostsLily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She's currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She's worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath. Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury's. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group's Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He's the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager's Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon's music stores in the US & UK.

The government unveils plans for billions of private investment in nuclear energy which it says could create thousands of jobs. Sean Farrington hears from a business involved in making it happen. And, ahead of the busiest period of the year for retailers, we take a look at why Sainsbury's might be looking to offload Argos. Also, we'll hear about what the Pope has had to say about what companies pay their executives, in particular the $1 trillion on offer for Elon Musk. And tributes for Ricky Hatton from the former Man City executive who counted him as a friend.

Analizamos los escenarios de Kering, Rheinmetall, Swatch y Sainsbury de la mano de Araceli de Frutos, asesora del fondo Alhaja Inversiones.

In this episode of The Product Experience, Lily Smith speaks with Sally Foote, a seasoned product leader whose journey from product roles to C-suite commercial leadership spans Carwow, Go Compare, and The Guardian. They unpack the increasingly vital intersection between product, marketing, and sales.Sally explains why growth is a shared responsibility, how product managers can become commercially fluent, and why understanding marketing economics is now critical. Expect actionable advice on working across functions, owning growth levers, and designing products that fuel acquisition and retention. Whether you're in B2B or B2C, there's something in here for every product leader looking to elevate their commercial impact.Key Takeaways:— Modern product managers must understand marketing funnels, ROI, and acquisition costs to create scalable impact.— Propositions beat PPC: In saturated digital channels, differentiation must come from product innovation.— Stop the handoffs: A strict separation between product, marketing, and sales creates missed opportunities and inefficiencies.— Product roadmaps matter to the business: While sometimes shunned by PMs, roadmaps help align and activate sales and marketing functions.— Product marketing isn't enough: What's needed is cross-functional growth thinking—not just better product copy.— B2B is a rich source of insights: Embedding PMs in sales cycles and advisory panels unlocks product innovation directly from the source.— AI is reshaping go-to-market: From focus groups to pricing strategies, machine learning is changing how teams make commercial decisions.— Your funnel is only as good as your data: PMs should design products with marketing data needs in mind to drive better acquisition performance.Featured Links: Follow Sally on LinkedIn | YourRoom AI focus group | Carwow | Watch Sally's 'Maximum Possible Products' talk at #mtpcon London 2019 | Sustainable living made easy with Bower Collective Our HostsLily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She's currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She's worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath. Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury's. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group's Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He's the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager's Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon's music stores in the US & UK.

Nepal's prime minister KP Sharma Oli has resigned as deadly anti-government protests against a social media ban and political corruption escalate.Microsoft have launched an ambient clinical AI assistant for the NHS.Apple have a brand new iPhone on the way…Also in this episode:-Have scientists found an atmosphere around an Earth-like exoplanet? -Sainsbury's has rolled out facial recognition in two stores-Major new study launched tracking thousands of babies-The age of Sycamore Gap tree is revealed Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

M&S launches a dedicated resale shop on eBay (with Reskinned), the ONS delays July retail sales to 5 Sept, TikTok Shop's GMV Max becomes the only supported campaign type, Sainsbury's begins a facial‑recognition trial, Lush closes UK stores for a day in solidarity with Gaza, and Charlotte Tilbury drives experiential shade‑matching at John Lewis and Café Airbrush in Covent Garden. Simone Oloman joins to decode what matters for operators—right now. Show notes / references:In this UK edition of Five Things Friday, Alex and Simone Oloman cover six moves reshaping trading plans this month:Resale goes mainstream: M&S × eBay launches an official pre‑loved shop, powered by Reskinned—a cleaner, scalable route to circularity than DIY platforms. Operators: track supply inflows, voucher economics, and re‑commerce margin mix. Marks & SpencerDemand sensing > lagging KPIs: The ONS delayed the July 2025 retail sales release to 5 Sept for quality assurance; combine official series with real‑time social/returns data for better buys and markdowns. Office for National StatisticsSocial commerce hardens: TikTok Shop Ads → GMV Max only. Expect heavier automation; ensure attribution and returns accounting are wired for campaign‑level ROAS and net‑margin truth. TikTok For Business+1Safety vs privacy: Sainsbury's begins an 8‑week facial‑recognition pilot in Sydenham (London) and Oldfield Park (Bath); union support vs privacy‑rights pushback—governance, DPIAs, and signage matter. corporate.sainsburys.co.ukbigbrotherwatch.org.ukBrand activism with teeth: Lush shut UK shops, website and factories for a day—authenticity is an operational decision, not a slogan. Budget for impact and community response. LushExperience = acquisition: Charlotte Tilbury turns shade matching into a moment (John Lewis photo‑booths; Café Airbrush at Covent Garden). High‑touch, low‑friction sampling feeds CRM and lifetime value. British Beauty CouncilTheIndustry.beautyChapters / timestamps (mm:ss)00:00 – Welcome & format (fast 15)00:58 – M&S × eBay resale (why it's smart, how it scales)02:14 – ONS delay & the case for live demand signals03:50 – TikTok Shop GMV Max: what marketers must change04:32 – Sainsbury's: facial‑recognition pilot (safety vs privacy)06:05 – Lush: one‑day UK closures; what “authenticity” really costs06:55 – Charlotte Tilbury shade‑match activation (John Lewis)09:19 – Café Airbrush & Covent Garden Big Beauty10:00 – Wrap, next week teasers & CTAsShow notes / references:• M&S launches resale on eBay (Reskinned partnership): https://corporate.marksandspencer.com/media/press-releases/ms-launches-resale-ebay-give-clothes-another-life• ONS: July retail sales release delayed to Sept 5 (quality assurance): https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-statistics-office-delays-retail-sales-data-release-by-two-weeks-2025-08-19/• TikTok Shop Ads — GMV Max migration (official help): https://ads.tiktok.com/help/article/gmv-max-migration-tiktok-shop-ads• Sainsbury's facial‑recognition pilot (Sydenham & Oldfield Park): https://www.computing.co.uk/news/2025/sainsbury-s-begins-facial-recognition-trial-to-combat-shoplifting• Lush closes UK stores in solidarity with Gaza: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/sep/03/lush-closes-all-its-uk-stores-in-protest-over-starvation-in-gaza• Covent Garden — Big Beauty (4–14 Sept): https://www.coventgarden.london/experience/things-to-do/big-beauty-at-covent-garden/• Charlotte Tilbury pop‑up / shade‑match activations: https://theindustry.beauty/charlotte-tilbury-turns-covent-garden-into-cafe-airbrush-celebrating-complexion-launch/

In ep 137 of “How Do You Say That?!” sponsored by britishvoiceover.co.uk, the voice of Sainsbury's, Lizzie Jobling joins Sam and Mark to talk about adding in the elements of a real conversation - things like grasping for words as if you've just thought of them. We explore speaking from the persepctive of the character and how to go from instructional to warm. We also get on board a ship for a video about all kinds of nasty stomach complaints! One of our wildcards takes us to one of the most ubiquitous commercials of 2025, and hear Sam in the pool doing a lazy breast-stroke on the Cote d'Azur!!Our VO question this week is all about what an accredited voiceover course actually is, and why the actual accredition is important.Get involved! Have you got a Wildcard suggestion that we should try or an idea for the show? Send it to us via Mark or Sam's social media or email it directly to podcast@britishvoiceover.co.ukScript 1Moreover we know that, after the pandemic of 2020, around 67% of Italians said that their screen fatigue had increased because of video calls and the time spent online, and the audiobook finally allows us to rest our eyes and let our imagination soar. And there is a fundamental element and that is the emotional bond that develops with the narrator's voice. This is the great advantage that audiobooks offer, the voices who read audiobooks create an emotional bond that often goes beyond the story and the author, so much so that many users choose the next audio book on the basis of their favourite narrators.Script 2ALL visitors on the ship must report to a member of staff if they are affected by or have just recovered from infections of skin, eyes, ears, mouth or gastrointestinal illness. In the case of ammonia or waste release, if you smell ammonia or waste, or come across an ammonia alarm remove yourself from the affected area and contact your manager or RP immediately. If you are not in the affected area remain indoors or assemble in the ground floor mess room area and await further instruction. You are responsible for disposing of any waste you create. We'd love your feedback - and if you listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, hit the follow button today!**Listen to all of our podcasts here - you can also watch on YouTube, or say to your smart speaker "Play How Do You Say That?!"About our guest: Lizzie Jobling is a full time voice actor based just outside of London and more recently the founder of the UK's first and only accredited Voice Over Business course. She's also the In-Store brand voice for Sainsbury's UK, as well as voicing for AirBnB, Hermes, Mclaren, Warner bros and everything and anything in between! Lizzie is the familiar voice you didn't know you knew. Lizzie 's Website @that_voice_lizzie on Instagram Lizzie 's Facebook pageResources:

Dr. Derek Sainsbury continues to unpack D&C 98-101, blending historical context from the Saints' 1833 expulsion from Missouri with profound insights on suffering, sanctification, and resurrection, enriched by his own story of finding God's comfort amidst struggles.SHOW NOTES/TRANSCRIPTSEnglish: https://tinyurl.com/podcastDC237ENFrench: https://tinyurl.com/podcastDC237FRGerman: https://tinyurl.com/podcastDC237DEPortuguese: https://tinyurl.com/podcastDC237PTSpanish: https://tinyurl.com/podcastDC237ESYOUTUBE: https://youtu.be/Qrnf5NUvzwYALL EPISODES/SHOW NOTESfollowHIM website: https://www.followHIMpodcast.comFREE PDF DOWNLOADS OF followHIM QUOTE BOOKSNew Testament: https://tinyurl.com/PodcastNTBookOld Testament: https://tinyurl.com/PodcastOTBookBook of Mormon: https://tinyurl.com/PodcastBMBookWEEKLY NEWSLETTERhttps://tinyurl.com/followHIMnewsletterSOCIAL MEDIAInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/followHIMpodcastFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/followhimpodcastTIMECODE00:00 Part 2 - Dr. Derek Sainsbury01:34 Emily Partridge's journal regarding the mob02:24 Men offered themselves to save the Saints04:30 Looking to obtain the character of Christ06:36 What do we learn from the Saints being traumatized?09:38 An immutable covenant11:52 Francine Russell Benyan's “The Theology of Suffering”17:36 Suffering and marking with a green pencil21:35 Doing what the Lord did25:47 Richard G. Scott's “Trust in the Lord”28:39 God is with us through our suffering32:08 Doctor Hurlbut's damage and Joseph and Sidney's mission37:29 Little ‘s' savior39:24 Orson Hyde and Edward Partridge visit Governor Duncan40:31 Phil Dibble's miraculous account44:50 Mobs causing hundreds to flee creating a “trail of blood”47:57 Dr. Sainsbury's enormous personal trials and the fireflies56:06 The Lord commands patience59:04 Love and expectations from the Lord1:02:51 President Nelson's “Joy and Spiritual Survival”1:05:49 Hope in suffering and letters to the President 1:09:23 Testimony of Christ's ability to restore blessings1:10:35 A farmer and Rush Creek1:13:33 Gratitude for Sidney and Elizabeth Gilbert1:16:25 End of Part 2 - Dr. Derek SainsburyThanks to the followHIM team:Steve & Shannon Sorensen: Cofounder, Executive Producer, SponsorDavid & Verla Sorensen: SponsorsDr. Hank Smith: Co-hostJohn Bytheway: Co-hostDavid Perry: ProducerKyle Nelson: Marketing, SponsorLisa Spice: Client Relations, Editor, Show NotesWill Stoughton: Video EditorKrystal Roberts: Translation Team, English & French Transcripts, WebsiteAriel Cuadra: Spanish TranscriptsAmelia Kabwika: Portuguese TranscriptsHeather Barlow: Communications DirectorIride Gonzalez: Social Media, Graphic Design"Let Zion in Her Beauty Rise" by Marshall McDonaldhttps://www.marshallmcdonaldmusic.com

What can we learn from the Saints' devastating losses in Jackson County, Missouri and how does that promise of the resurrection transform the story? Dr. Derek Sainsbury explores the harrowing events of 1833, the destruction of the Church's printing press, and the personal sacrifices of the early Saints as they sought to build Zion in one of the most difficult frontiers imaginable.SHOW NOTES/TRANSCRIPTSEnglish: https://tinyurl.com/podcastDC237ENFrench: https://tinyurl.com/podcastDC237FRGerman: https://tinyurl.com/podcastDC237DEPortuguese: https://tinyurl.com/podcastDC237PTSpanish: https://tinyurl.com/podcastDC237ESYOUTUBE: https://youtu.be/ScT0t5_BGuIALL EPISODES/SHOW NOTESfollowHIM website: https://www.followHIMpodcast.comFREE PDF DOWNLOADS OF followHIM QUOTE BOOKSNew Testament: https://tinyurl.com/PodcastNTBookOld Testament: https://tinyurl.com/PodcastOTBookBook of Mormon: https://tinyurl.com/PodcastBMBookWEEKLY NEWSLETTERhttps://tinyurl.com/followHIMnewsletterSOCIAL MEDIAInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/followHIMpodcastFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/followhimpodcastTIMECODE00:00 Part 1 - Dr. Derek Sainsbury01:32 August 1833 information03:41 Derek Sainsbury bio05:30 Presidential candidates assassinated06:38 Come, Follow Me Manual07:56 Death of first foreign missionary10:07 Indian Removal Act12:08 Mary Rollins and John Murdock16:05 Polarization of Jackson County20:13 The Promised Land 2.023:33 The Law of Consecration in Missouri25:01 Article by W. W. Phelps26:42 Zion in every book of scripture, except the New Testament28:03 Checking in with John Murdock (and Parley P. Pratt)36:46 John Murdock is the best of the Saints39:26 What happens to the Murdock children42:24 Innuendo and a lost letter45:06 Missouri and Kirtland needed emojis46:55 Leadership is easier without people48:45 Doctor Philastus Hurlbut “coverts”51:41 John Murdock's journal May 7, 183355:42 Dr. Sainsbury shares lessons from his own personal trials1:01:05 24-temple rendering1:05:09 Reasons they blamed the Mormons1:10:04 Results of meeting in Gilbert's store1:13:53 Mobbing and the Book of Commandments1:17:58 End of Part I - Dr. Derek SainsburyThanks to the followHIM team:Steve & Shannon Sorensen: Cofounder, Executive Producer, SponsorDavid & Verla Sorensen: SponsorsDr. Hank Smith: Co-hostJohn Bytheway: Co-hostDavid Perry: ProducerKyle Nelson: Marketing, SponsorLisa Spice: Client Relations, Editor, Show NotesWill Stoughton: Video EditorKrystal Roberts: Translation Team, English & French Transcripts, WebsiteAriel Cuadra: Spanish TranscriptsAmelia Kabwika: Portuguese TranscriptsHeather Barlow: Communications DirectorIride Gonzalez: Social Media, Graphic Design"Let Zion in Her Beauty Rise" by Marshall McDonaldhttps://www.marshallmcdonaldmusic.com

Product decisions built on daily-active metrics fall apart when your customers show up once a year, or once a decade. In this episode, Randy Silver talks to Vivek Kumar about building and growing low-frequency products, from property and tax to jobs and dating. Chapters04:25 — What makes a product “infrequent”? Episodic use and recall decay07:05 — Rethinking PMF: penetration and market share over retention curves10:36 — When iteration is slow: prioritising problems under seasonal cycles14:28 — BELT framework: behaviours, enduring vs transient problems, lock-ins21:56 — Spotting enduring problems: “what will still matter in 10 years?”24:11 — ICE framework overview for infrequent products26:03 — Engagement: active retention, complexity, single- vs constant-touch29:55 — Predictable vs unpredictable retention; referrals as a strategy31:06 — Lifetime retention: seeding frequency hooks (e.g., estimates, salary data)33:01 — Distinctiveness and brand: why CAC collapses when you own the memory33:48 — Control over experience: monetisation through end-to-end journeys36:13 — Research that works: ethnography, diary studies, “follow-me-home”40:22 — Example: discovering the real tax filing pain (document collection)43:04 — Ethics and value: “cures vs treatments”, utility vs entertainment productsFeatured Links: Follow Vivek on LinkedIn | Atlys | The Steps 'Grow and managOur HostsLily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She's currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She's worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath. Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury's. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group's Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He's the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager's Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon's music stores in the US & UK.

In this episode of The Product Experience, Randy Silver and Lily Smith sit down with Katja Forbes, Executive Director at Standard Chartered Bank, design leader, and lecturer, to explore the fast-approaching world of machine customers.Katja shares why businesses must prepare for a future where AI agents, autonomous vehicles, and procurement bots act as customers, and what this means for product managers, designers, and organisations.Key takeawaysMachine customers are here already. From booking services for Tesla cars to procurement bots closing contracts, AI-driven commerce is no longer hypothetical.APIs are necessary but insufficient. Businesses need to think beyond plumbing and address trust, compliance, and customer experience for non-human agents.Signal clarity matters. Organisations must make their value propositions machine-readable to remain competitive.Trust will be quantified. Compliance signals, ESG proof, uptime guarantees, and reliability ratings will replace human gut instinct.New roles will emerge. Trust analysts and human–machine hybrid coordinators will be critical in shaping future interactions.Ethics cannot be ignored. Without careful design, agentic commerce could amplify consumerism and poor societal outcomes.Practical first step. Even small businesses can prepare by structuring their product and service data into machine-readable formats.Product managers must adapt. The skill to manage ambiguity, think systemically, and anticipate unintended consequences will be central to success.Featured Links: Follow Katja on LinkedIn | Katja's website | Sign-up for pre sale access to Katja's forthcoming book 'The CX Evolutionist'Our HostsLily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She's currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She's worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath. Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury's. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group's Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He's the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager's Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon's music stores in the US & UK.

Mark Palmer is a marketing genius, he's worked on the following brands Burger King, Nandos, Pret A Manger, Green & Blacks, Cawston PressHe's a total genius. You're going to love this episode!!!ON THE MENU:1. Tim Ferris Heuristic: “you are the sum of the difficult conversations you have with yourself”2. How To Have Hard Conversations with Sainsbury's, Tesco or Waitrose: Don't ignore the hard stuff, get straight to the point 3. How to Fire People Correctly: “Ruthless in decision making, generous in execution” 4. Pep Guardiola Brand Building Philosophy: Move your players around to fit the brand builders5. Green & Black Brand Building Strategy: Philosophy first, Product second, strategy third 6. Product before brand, you can layer a brand around a product 7. Seth Godin Positioning Rule: Competitors must become your colleagues 8. Anti-Fragile Customer Feedback: Why are you not buying us > Why are you buying us?9. Invest in creative UPSTREAM “get them to join the team, not just a freelancer”10. Biggest Challenger Brand Mistake: “Don't build a bad version of a corporate organisation”11. Byron Sharpe's Mental availability vs physical availability unpacked 12. Green & Blacks Scaffolding of Ideas: Niche Mainstream  ==============================================

In this episode of The Product Experience, Lily Smith and Randy Silver are joined by Kirsten Mann, former CPO at Prospection and now startup founder and board member, to discuss how product leaders can play a vital role on company boards. Drawing from her own board experience and a research series interviewing founders and directors, Kirsten explains why product, culture, and customer insight must be central to boardroom conversations.Key Takeaways— Product's Place on Boards: Product is a strategic lever, boards should treat it with the same seriousness as financials.— Culture as a Strategic Asset: Culture emerged as the most frequently cited factor in board-level success—more than AI or tech.— From Operator to Overseer: Transitioning to a board role requires stepping back from execution and focusing on governance and strategic guidance.— Communicating with Boards: Product leaders must avoid jargon, speak in terms of customer problems, outcomes, and investment returns.— The Risk of Exclusion: If your product team isn't presenting to the board, that's a red flag.— Practical Preparation: Aspiring board members should build financial literacy, start with non-profit boards, and cultivate visibility through writing or public speaking.Chapters00:00 – Culture over strategy: Why getting culture right matters more than clever planning00:45 – Meet Kirsten Mann: Introduction and credentials01:45 – Career transition: From CPO at Prospection to board member, investor, and startup founder04:50 – Early board experience: Saving a youth club through governance and tech06:45 – Product's value on boards: Bringing customer and tech insight into strategic discussions08:00 – Oversight, not execution: Adjusting from exec roles to governance roles09:50 – Frustration sparks research: Why Kirsten began writing about product leaders on boards11:00 – Product strategy ≠ support: The board's risk-first mindset Our HostsLily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She's currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She's worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath. Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury's. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group's Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He's the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager's Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon's music stores in the US & UK.

In this episode of The Product Experience, Randy Silver speaks with Dariusz Dziuk, Product Lead for Music Expression at Spotify, about the origins and evolution of Canvas, the looping visuals that accompany music tracks. From early assumptions and first principles thinking to scaling and measuring marketplace success, he shares how a bold experiment turned into one of Spotify's most engaging features.Key Takeaways— Balancing Art and Science: Product management often lives between structured analysis and intuitive creativity—success lies in mastering both.— First Principles and Assumptions: Questioning defaults—like static, square cover art—can open doors to bold innovation.— Real Stakes Drive Real Creativity: Artist engagement with Canvas only truly emerged once the stakes felt genuine and public.— Marketplace Thinking: Canvas succeeded because it delivered value for all marketplace participants—creators, consumers, and the platform itself.— Innovation Through Structure: Weekly design sprints and rapid prototyping allowed Spotify's innovation lab to explore and discard ideas quickly, eventually landing on Canvas.— Scaling Insights: Measurable impact came later—higher engagement, saves, shares, and a new visual identity for music on Spotify.— Artist-Centric Focus: Prioritising the needs of the supply side (artists) can unlock cold start challenges and marketplace growth.Chapters0:00 – Marketplace Thinking at Spotify1:20 – Darius Jurek's Journey into Product2:45 – From Engineering to 0-to-1 Product Innovation4:00 – Is Product Management an Art or a Science?6:30 – The Brief: Connecting Creators and Fans8:20 – Building an Innovation Lab10:00 – Exploring Dozens of Ideas11:45 – Why Canvas Won Out13:10 – The Challenge of Validating a New Format16:00 – Questioning the Assumptions Around Cover Art19:00 – Real Stakeholder Feedback and Creative Buy-In21:00 – Marketplace Metrics of Success23:30 – Canvas and the Evolution of Music Discovery26:00 – Visual Design, Collaboration, and Artist Empowerment28:00 – Darius on Supplier-Led Product StrategyFeatured Links: Follow Dariusz on LinkedIn | Dariusz's website | Spotify | '#mtpcon @ Pendomonium 2024 Encore' recap Our HostsLily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She's currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She's worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath. Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury's. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group's Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He's the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager's Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon's music stores in the US & UK.

In this episode of The Product Experience, Lily and Randy dive into the nuanced world of team collaboration with Jenny Wanger, product ops consultant. Jenny challenges the overuse of RACI matrices in product teams, arguing they often obscure deeper organisational issues rather than solve them. They discuss better alternatives, the root causes behind requests for RACI, and the value of prioritising human relationships over rigid frameworks. Chapters0:00 – The accountable vs. responsible dilemma0:37 – Meet Jenny Wanger: Product ops and Reforge1:20 – RACI: A quick explainer3:16 – Why RACI falls short in product teams7:00 – Infantilisation and territorialism9:18 – The flaws in the terminology10:14 – The consulted conundrum11:05 – RACI as a conversation starter12:01 – Better alternatives: Rapid and others14:20 – When RACI might be useful18:01 – Team dysfunction and RACI misuse23:00 – A case study in resolving collaboration issues26:00 – RACI as scaffolding, not infrastructure28:02 – AI, documents, and relationships30:05 – Diagnosing the real problem behind a RACI request32:38 – Job descriptions vs. RACI35:25 – Everyone's a bit of everything37:04 – Focusing on mission and collaboration39:57 – Final thoughts and where to find Jenny's workKey Takeaways— RACI isn't a cure-all: It often signals deeper dysfunction like poor team structure, unclear mission, or lack of trust.— Healthy teams don't need RACI: When collaboration and communication are strong, formal frameworks become redundant.— Use RACI as scaffolding: Let it initiate conversations, but don't enshrine it as a permanent solution.— Language matters: Terms like “accountable” and “responsible” are often confused, making the framework less clear than intended.— Consider better alternatives: Frameworks like RAPID offer more clarity around decision-making without creating silos.— Prioritise relationships over roles: Documents don't build culture—conversations and mutual understanding do.Featured Links: Follow Jenny on LinkedIn | Jenny's RACI feature at her website | Dave Johnson's page at The Pragmatic Agilist Our HostsLily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She's currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She's worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath. Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury's. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group's Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He's the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager's Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon's music stores in the US & UK.

Dr. Don and Professor Ben talk about the risks from eating cooked chicken from a bag where one piece of chicken was caught in the bag seam. Dr. Don - not risky

In this episode of SheerLuxe Conversations, Georgie Coleridge Cole is joined by Gary Lavin, founder of VITHIT, the UK's leading health drink brand. Gary's journey is nothing short of inspiring: after a rugby injury ended his career at just 24, he spotted a gap in the market for healthier drink options, leading to the creation of VITHIT. The two discuss the challenges he faced along the way, including losing his home during the recession and being forced to sell bottles out of a van. Gary also shares the pivotal moments that led to the rebranding of VITHIT and how he turned a struggling business into a success story generating over €100m in retail sales across 15 countries, all without outside investment. He also dives into the importance of branding, the innovative ingredients in VITHIT and the strategies he used to get his product on the shelves at places like Boots and Sainsbury's. With insights on entrepreneurship, resilience and the health revolution, this episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in business and wellness.AD | VITHIT | https://www.vithit.com/ Subscribe For More | http://bit.ly/2VmqduQ Get SheerLuxe Straight To Your Inbox, Daily | http://sheerluxe.com/signup PANEL GUESTSGeorgie Coleridge Cole | https://www.instagram.com/gcoleridgecole/?hl=en Gary Lavin | https://www.instagram.com/vithitdrinks/?hl=en Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We revisit our conversation with Frances Ibe, Chief Experience Officer at Tide. Frances shares invaluable insights on her journey from developer to product leadership and how to avoid common pitfalls during the discovery process.Chapters01:07 – Meet Frances Ibe02:05 – Common Discovery Pitfalls03:34 – Embedding Continuous Discovery04:51 – The Myth of Talking to 20 Customers06:38 – What is a Data Prototype?08:03 – Building Confidence in Product Bets10:42 – Sharing Insights Across the Business13:52 – Keeping Sprint Reviews Engaging15:49 – Discovery Through Observation17:21 – Responding to Data-Driven Disruption18:30 – The Power of Storytelling20:49 – Training Teams in Storytelling22:36 – Maintaining Message Consistency23:48 – Collaborating Across Disciplines25:01 – Francis' Game-Changing AdviceFeatured Links: Follow Frances on LinkedIn | Tide | 'Six things we learned at the Pendomonium and #mtpcon roadshow - London 2024' feature by Louron PrattOur HostsLily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She's currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She's worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath. Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury's. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group's Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He's the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager's Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon's music stores in the US & UK.

Erica Wass, Principal Product Consultant at Brainmates, joins the Product Experience podcast to share pragmatic tools for building strategic foresight into your roadmap. From horizon scanning to backcasting, this episode explores how product teams can harness future-focused techniques—bolstered by generative AI—to improve decision-making, resilience, and impact.Chapters:0:00 – Why foresight matters in product1:00 – Introducing Erica Wass2:30 – How product is changing3:45 – The value of strategic foresight5:00 – Clarifying the term and its importance7:00 – Who owns foresight in the product org10:00 – Techniques: Horizon scanning, scenario planning, backcasting14:30 – Horizon scanning in action: Google & Android16:00 – Scenario planning for resilience21:00 – Tips on running scenario sessions23:45 – Backcasting: Vision-first roadmapping26:00 – Using AI to accelerate foresight30:00 – Product team dynamics in the AI era33:00 – Mistakes to avoid and balancing action with foresight37:00 – Wrap-up and takeawaysKey Takeaways— Horizon scanning helps teams identify early, weak signals that may grow into significant trends.— Scenario planning enables resilience by preparing teams for a range of plausible futures.— Backcasting flips traditional planning by working backward from a long-term goal to define near-term milestones.— Generative AI can democratise access to foresight tools—when used with critical thinking and proper validation.— Product professionals should take a proactive role in guiding strategic conversations, regardless of their title.— Avoid extremes with AI: neither fear it nor over-rely on it. Use it as a pairing partner rather than a replacement.Our HostsLily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She's currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She's worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath. Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury's. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group's Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He's the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager's Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon's music stores in the US & UK.

Daniel Cray, an Australian entrepreneur and CEO of Phizz, pivoted from advertising to create a revolutionary three-in-one hydration, vitamin and electrolyte tablet that's now one of the UK's fastest-growing wellness brands. He shares his journey from bootstrapping with three friends to leading a category-defining company used by Premier League teams and travellers worldwide.• After discovering travellers lose up to six litres of water during flights, Dan identified hydration's broader impact beyond just athletic performance• Partnered with a neuroscientist co-founder to develop a scientifically-backed formula that enhances brain performance through proper electrolyte balance• Initially secured partnerships with Emirates Airlines, W Hotels and Premier League teams to build credibility while bootstrapping• Made the bold decision to relocate from Australia to London despite having no UK connections or secured funding• Transformed from a £250,000 revenue business to nearly £10 million by transitioning from brand partnerships to retail distribution• Maintained scientific integrity by including glucose in their formula despite "sugar-free" trends, as it's essential for optimal hydration• Successfully positioning Phizz as a category leader in "hydration enhancers" – creating an entirely new retail category in UK stores• Recently expanded into Middle East and European markets with plans for continued international growthCheck out Phizz in major UK retailers including Boots, Tesco, Waitrose, Sainsbury's, or online with Amazon.Support the show

Featured Links: Follow Brigitte on LinkedIn | DrDoctor | European Commission Public Health 'Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare' featureOur HostsLily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She's currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She's worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath. Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury's. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group's Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He's the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager's Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon's music stores in the US & UK.

In this episode of The Product Experience, Lily Smith and Randy Silver speak with Dee Miller, Director of Product Strategy and Insights for Product Equity at Adobe. Dee shares her personal journey into inclusive design, and discusses how Adobe is moving beyond accessibility compliance to build genuinely usable, inclusive, and emotionally accessible products. Featured Links: Follow Dee on LinkedIn | The Adobe Accessibility Checker | Listen to previous The Product Experience episode: 'Building Accessible Products' with Jonathan Hassell (CEO & Founder, Hassell Inclusion) Our HostsLily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She's currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She's worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath. Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury's. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group's Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He's the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager's Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon's music stores in the US & UK.

The ladies are throwing their names in the hat to join the Secret Swear Club after one listener reveals a genius (and slightly unhinged) new tradition to swerve their child's judgmental side-eye. Meanwhile, Dottie's been yelling about itchy legs in the middle of Sainsbury's, and one listener's caught in a parenting pickle with their sister. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is episode 230, From Knysna's Burning Forests to Tolstoy's War and Peace: The World in 1869. Globally, the end of the sixth decade of the 19th Century was full of fire and brimbstone, and some technology, social change, significant moments. The construction of the the Port Nolloth-O'okiep railway line is one notable tech development, but on the down side, the Southern Cape experienced a devastating fire that began in early February in the Meiringspoort area of the Swartberg Mountains, destroying numerous homesteads and ancient yellowoods. More about this in a few minutes. IN the United States, Elizabeth Cady Stanton testified before the U.S. Congress, thus becoming the first woman to do so, and later in 1869, Stanton and Susan B. Anthony formed the National Woman Suffrage Association. Sainsbury's opened in Drury Lane in London in May, Boston University was founded in the same month. A month later, John Hyatt patented celluloid in Albany New York, a product created by mixing nitrocellulose and camphor — thus creating the basis for the coming film revolution. Like all good ideas, Hyatt had actually bought the original patent from Englishman Alexander Parkes who couldn't figure out how to make money from his invention. It's amazing how many inventions were co-opted by entrepreneurs after the inventor struggled to make a buck out of a good idea. Take the common computer mouse, invented by Stanford Research Unit student Douglas Engelbart in the early 1960s. In the late 1970s, almost two decades after the mouse's invention, Apple's Steve Jobs saw a mouse being demonstrated along with what was called graphical user interface, GUI, at Xerox labs in Palo Alto California. November the 17 however, was probably one of the most significant dates in the calendar when it came to the Cape, because that was the date that the Suez Canal was completed. For the first time in history, ships could now sail through the canal, linking the Red Sea to the Mediterranean, shortening the voyages between Europe and the far east by months. In Cape Town, there was fear and loathing about the Canal. And so, to South Africa, let's retrace our steps to February 1869. It began, as such stories often do, with a wisp of smoke on the horizon. According to the local newspapers, the fire that would become known ominously as the Great Fire of 1869 was first spotted on the 8th February. The conditions were perfect for a catastrophe. Southern Cape berg winds, searing, north-westerly to north-easterly gusts, swept down from the heights. Born of a low-pressure system sliding from west to east, they could reach gale-force strength, tearing through valleys like invisible predators. By the time the flames were first seen near Knysna, the air shimmered with heat, the humidity was almost non-existent, and the vegetation which was parched after years of relentless drought, stood waiting, tinder-dry.But in February 1869, the fire dominated every horizon. From its first sparks, it began a horrifying march: sweeping west towards Swellendam, east to Uitenhage, and threading through the Langkloof valley north of the Outeniqua Mountains. Then, inexorably, it spilled down towards the coast, devouring all in its path, Great Brak River, Victoria Bay, Knysna, Plettenberg Bay.

Homebase was once one of our leading home improvement chains so, why did it have to close all of its stores?The BBC Business journalist Sean Farrington investigates.Alongside him is the entrepreneur Sam White, who at the end of the show has to reach her own conclusions, based only on what she has heard and her own business acumen.Homebase was established by the supermarket chain Sainsbury's and a Belgian retailer which was already running a DIY business in Europe and America. The first Homebase store opened in Croydon in 1981 and it had to be temporarily closed by the police after visiting crowds caused a traffic jam. The chain expanded across the UK and had more than 300 stores. It went through some highs, and some serious lows, with various owners but what ultimately caused the closure of its shops?Sean and Sam hear from expert guests including:- Allison Foster, curator of the Sainsbury Archive, which is based at London Museum Docklands- Dave Elliott, a former Trading Director then later Commercial Director at Homebase under different owners- Matt Walton, senior data analyst at GlobalDataWhile Homebase's standalone stores are toast, the brand continues to trade online under new ownership. Homebase garden centres and products are also being included within branches of The Range. Produced by Jon Douglas, Toast is a BBC Audio North production for BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds.You can email the programme at toast@bbc.co.ukFeel free to suggest topics which could be covered in future episodes.

In this episode of The Product Experience, Lily and Randy speak with Faith Forster about the art of aligning product work with commercial outcomes. From redefining velocity as a function of customer value to implementing impact models that quantify ROI, Faith outlines practical frameworks to help product teams think commercially without compromising user value. She also explores the evolving role of AI in product development, the necessity of syncing planning cycles with business units, and why happy teams are the cornerstone of faster, better delivery.Key takeawaysVelocity = Value: Product velocity isn't about coding speed—it's about reducing time to customer value to improve ROI and lower opportunity cost.Impact Modelling: A disciplined approach to estimating commercial outcomes before development helps product teams understand and justify their work.AI Integration: Teams are expected to primarily use AI tools within three months to boost delivery speed and build organisational capability.Viability from Day One: Pricing and revenue potential must be considered from the outset—not after feature completion.Cross-Functional Alignment: Successful planning requires synchronising product cycles with finance, sales, and marketing calendars.Happy Teams, Better Results: Reducing friction between design, engineering, and product roles directly impacts delivery speed and feature quality.Chapters00:00 – Redefining velocity: Why speed isn't just about code01:05 – Faith's journey from Dex to Legal03:02 – Introducing the commercial value talk04:51 – Understanding the P&L from a product lens08:07 – Why team cost-awareness matters10:00 – Building better impact models12:25 – Increasing ROI through value velocity16:37 – The AI imperative: Adoption, anxiety, and accelerationOur HostsLily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She's currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She's worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath. Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury's. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group's Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He's the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager's Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon's music stores in the US & UK.