Trading Up

Judith Totten thinks kindness is important in her business. Which is rather surprising because she's in the finance business. But it has paid off for her and the numbers tell the story: zero A Levels because she left school early; 20 years at the bank learning her trade; £500,000 scraped together to start her own lending business; 53 rejections from London banks who wouldn't back

Patrick Woods' grandfather died at age 42. His father needed a heart bypass in his early fifties. So, being healthy really means something to him and his family. His dad transformed his lifestyle and eating habits in the aftermath of his bypass thirty years ago. Patrick has helped him transform the third generation family business to align with those new healthy priorities. Linwood

Picture a 72-year-old farmer in Idaho who has been diagnosed with skin cancer. He's about to start a tough regime of chemotherapy. The kind of toxic drugs that have been used to blast such cancers for 40 odd years. It's the only way his doctor knows to treat the cancer. It's possible the treatment could work. But it's also possible the treatment could kill him. But within 24 hours

Greg Bradley is no spoofer. But when he got a call from the strength and conditioning coach for a global sporting giant requesting equipment he'd seen on Greg's Facebook site to be delivered within days, the young entrepreneur had a problem. All he had was the Facebook post. He hadn't yet figured out how to make the equipment. But the keen sportsman applied a lesson he'd learnt on

What qualifies or prepares someone to create a chain of juice bars and a hospitality-focussed software business? A glance at Sam Shephard's CV wouldn't give any clues. He's a former Royal Marine with tours in Afghanistan and Iraq on his distinguished record. He is one of just a handful of living people to have been awarded the George Cross, the UK's highest honour awarded to those

Andrew Lynas runs a family-owned food business. But it's not like many others. It began with his grandfather who had a row with his greengrocer boss so he quit and set up a fishmongers. Norman, Andrew's father, was next. He took a gamble with a big order for frozen battered fish. His problem was that he didn't have any freezers or even the fish to put in them. That was remedied by

You can't have it all. Life involves sacrifice. But William McColgan is an example of how you can come close to having it all, as long as you correctly define what success looks like and make the right sacrifices. So when his five-year-old son was poised to undertake "shooter drills" on entering elementary school in New Hampshire, he sacrificed a consultancy career with Fortune 100

A nasty tackle during a football match in his final year of school left Rory King with a broken jaw, and it changed his life. If it hadn't happened, Rory wouldn't have messed up is A Levels and would probably be a PE teacher today. A decent job. But not the dream he's currently living. For in the space of a few years, Rory has taken his passion for travel and negotiating deals and

There's a reason why you should keep your key sales staff happy. Mathew Nesbitt is what can happen when you don't. He goes and sets up his own business which puts yours into the shade. He was in his twenties selling bodycams to pay the bills. But when Matthew's Christmas bonus didn't land the way he had expected, it was enough to send him out on his own. He had an idea, and the bon

He's behind the biggest residential development Belfast City Centre has ever seen and he wants to change the way we live. He began his career as a surveyor in London before moving into the development game. The £175 million Loft Lines development in Titanic Quarter comprising 778 apartments is Anthony Best's biggest project to date. He details how he makes the sums add up in a cit