You start with a skill. You're a great engineer, a good accountant, a brilliant IT consultant. Then, somewhere along the way, you turn into a business owner, and suddenly, the skill you started with is about 10% of what your week looks like. The res…
Lead generation gets a bad name, and most of the time it deserves it. The scripts, the cold sequences, the "Hey Phil, hope you're well" openers. The majority of business owners would rather do almost anything else, but that still leaves us with the …
You've seen the headlines. You've heard the promises. You’re probably dabbling with Chat GPT, Claude or Co-Pilot, but the gap between "AI could help" and knowing where to start feels enormous, and nobody seems to be explaining the bit in the m…
This episode is a little different.There's no guest, no external expert, and no tidy list of lessons from someone who's figured it all out. Instead, it's an honest account of something we tried, how it went, and what we'd do differently. Which we …
What does "be real" even mean in business? Marc Johnson gave us his take on honesty, masks and the conversations that matter. Most business advice tells you to be authentic. Show up as yourself. Drop the mask. And then offers absolutely nothi…
A kid behind a till in Sports Direct tried to sell Diyar an oversized bag for two quid. Diyar said no, but then gave a thirty-second exchange that turned into the best explanation of why most sales pitches fail that we've heard in a long time. But w…
There is a version of business ownership that still gets praised far too easily.Being busy. Are you busy? Great! Oh, I’m so busy. We love the word busy, wear the busy badge with pride, when really, who started a business to be busy?Treatin…
There’s a weird gap in the AI conversation.On one side, you’ve got big promises: automation, transformation, “work smarter”.On the other, most small business owners are staring at their day-to-day thinking: That sounds impr…
Most small business owners don’t ignore their numbers because they don’t care.They ignore them because they’re busy delivering, selling, and keeping everything moving.But as Debbie Porter shared on What One Thing, the cost of &lsqu…
Most business owners don’t set out to feel trapped.They start with ambition, opportunity, and the promise of flexibility, only to realise years later that their business depends entirely on them.In this episode of What One Thing, Bev Flana…
If you’ve ever hit a goal and thought, “Is this it?”, you’re not broken, it happens to most people.In our latest episode of What One Thing, we sat down with Lisa Johnson, a business owner who has built multiple seven‑figure…
There’s a point in every business where you stop reacting and start reflecting.Usually it happens quietly.Often it happens late.And almost always, it’s slightly uncomfortable.In our latest What One Thing episode, we did something we …
In this episode of the What One Thing podcast, Phil Davenport (Affirm IT Services) and Hayley Baxter (Corbar Accounting) chat with Jade Hallam, founder of Clever Clicks, a Nottingham-based digital marketing agency specialising in SEO and B2B marketi…
In this episode of the What One Thing podcast, Phil Davenport from Affirm IT Services and Hayley Baxter from Corbar Accounting sat down with Hazel Woodward, founder of a thriving social media agency that started — quite literally — as a …
In this episode of the What One Thing podcast, Phil Davenport from Affirm IT Services and Hayley Baxter from Corbar Accounting chatted with Jenna Farmer, founder of Jenna Farmer PR and host of the PR in Your Pocket podcast.Jenna’s story is o…
In the fifth episode of What One Thing podcast, Phil Davenport from Affirm IT Services and Hayley Baxter from Corbar Accounting sat down with Catherine Wenborn, founder and Managing Director of Vines Legal — a specialist family law firm in Che…
In this episode of the What One Thing podcast, Phil Davenport from Affirm IT Services and Hayley Baxter from Corbar Accounting sat down with bookkeeper and business owner Sophie Baldwin, who shared a journey that many small business owners will…
In this episode of What One Thing podcast, Phil Davenport from Affirm IT Services and Hayley Baxter from Corbar Accounting spoke with business strategist Emma Hine, who shared her brutally honest story of growing — and then walking away from &…