What is the impact on us as human beings when we never have a single spare moment, when we fill every minute with doing something productive, or even looking at our phones in order to kill time? That's a question that gripped Laurence Shorter after he'd written a really successful book and toured it around the world and found himself to be completely burnt out. And that's when Laurence started thinking about the art of having no idea. Laurence is a leadership consultant, an author, comedian...

This episode of the podcast is a real adventure. It's one of my favourites. Charlie Thuillier was on a world record breaking kite buggy adventure with his brother Harry in Brazil, when he had a great idea, which was partly inspired by reading my first book, Screw Work Let's Play on a beach in Brazil. That idea was to create the world's first healthy ice cream. Today, Oppo ice cream is a reality. It's a product you can buy in thousands of stores all around Europe, and it's won multiple taste...

A special episode on John’s new bestselling book ‘F**k Work Let’s Play: Do what you love and get paid for it’ and how to get a free ticket to the world’s first F**k Work Day. See fworkletsplay.com for more details on the special offer 

If you want to start a movement that changes the way people all around the world think about a particular topic, then this will be a really interesting conversation for you to listen to. Jody Day is the founder of Gateway Women, which has helped millions of women around the world to come to terms with involuntary childlessness. The social enterprise that now has touched millions of women's lives was started in 30 days, in a course I used to run 10 years ago, called The 30 day challenge.

When I first met Sam Bombas and Harry Parr over a decade ago, they were just a couple of young guys doing some wacky things with food, including creating breathable cocktails and designer jellies. I thought what they were doing was so interesting and so playful, that I featured them in my first book Screw Worl Let's Play, which was published in 2010. When I checked in with Sam and Harry at the beginning of the year to find out how they were doing, as I set about writing a new version of...

This is a really powerful episode of the ideas lab podcast. Many of us have ideas about how to change the world for the better. How to take a campaign or a message or cause and make a real impact possibly around the entire world. Few of us achieve that. But Tristram Stuart has done. A few years back, Christian decided that he wanted to gather 5000 people in London's Trafalgar Square and feed them with hearty, healthy food made from ingredients that otherwise would have been thrown in the...

If you've ever thought of writing your own book, whether it's a business book, a novel, or a memoir, then this podcast is going to be interesting to you. Laura Gale is an author and editor and a ghostwriter. And in this interview, we explore what those roles actually do. First of all, why do you need an editor if you're writing your own book? And also, why would you use a ghostwriter? How do they work with you to write a book for you, and he's using a ghostwriter cheating. We explore all of...

Quitting your job to go and do something more creative that you really love doing sounds very tempting. But the reality of it is more complex. How do you transition from a full time job that you're no longer enjoying, to doing something you love full time and getting paid for that? That is not usually a simple process. So I'm really glad that Dan Barker could make it on the podcast and tell his story of how he went from a job in mechanical engineering and transition step by step into...

If you've ever had a crazy creative idea for a business or project, and then you've talked yourself out of it because you couldn't see where it will go and what the point was, and how you could ever make some money out of it. Well, this is gonna be a great podcast for you. Sarah Weiler, runs a business called Power of Uke, teaching ukulele to giant corporations such as Google. Sarah also runs a London comedy club that has been running for six years ever since she launched it during a...

A lot of us find it really hard to change our deeply ingrained habits, whether it's giving up a habit that's bad for our health or our concentration, or trying to adopt a new habit. So I was glad to have this conversation with Dr. Heather McKee, who is a behaviour change specialist, consulting to organisations. This is a really honest conversation between Heather and me, where we talk through some of our own bad habits, and Heather gave some cracking advice on how to change them.

This is a very special episode of the ideas lab podcast. Because this one is announcing my brand new book. I should warn you that this episode has a few swear words in it. You'll find out why soon enough! I wrote the first version of this book as a guide to success for somewhat unconvential people (like mysefl) who are obsessed with their own creative pursuits. 10 years on and after being translated into 10 languages I am here to present a completely revised and updated version.

If you love reading non-fiction books, and you've ever dreamed of getting paid just to do that, then you're going to love this podcast. Mani Vaya runs 2000books.com and he has successfully turned his passion for non-fiction books into a successful business that he can run from anywhere in the world.

This is the first in a series of interviews with people who are featured in my brand new book published this July by Pearson. And this is David Crane. Dave is a friend of mine for some years, but he's also the person who is the creator of the number one stop smoking app in the world, called smoke free, he's now had 4 million downloads. And I wanted to ask him, what makes a good app idea? How do you get apps noticed right at the start, and what is the key to an app that takes off.

Have we lost touch with our bodies? Are we treating our bodies like some kind of brain taxi that's just carrying around the contents of our head? And what is the impact of that? That's a question that has obsessed Mark Walsh for going on 20 years. Mark is the creator of the Embodied Facilitator course, which helps coaches, therapists, body workers, and other practitioners to bring the body into their work and into their own lives as well. Mark is the creator of the embodiment conference.

If you've ever wanted to write a book about some aspect of business, then this is a great podcast for you. Alison Jones is founder of Practical Inspiration Publishing a pioneering publishing partner for businesses. And she runs the podcast, the Extraordinary Business Book Club, and she's had some fantastic guests on that. She is a veteran in the publishing industry with 25 years of experience with companies like Chambers, Oxford University Press, and Macmillan.

Mike Michalowicz is a New York Times bestselling author who has sold over half a million books. He's also built four multi-million dollar companies and sold two of them. But, he admits it's not all been positive. He lost his house at one point lost his entire fortune. twice, launch 10 failed businesses and experience years of depression. After working out where he was going wrong in his own businesses and finding a way to solve it.

This episode of the podcast is a really fun one. Sam Ashdown is a leading property industry marketing coach and with her son in law Phil Jones, she co-owns Fire Wave a marketing agency for estate agents, and also Ashdown Jones the Lake District estate agency. She's been featured in the Times, the Telegraph, on BBC Radio 4 and in House Beautiful. But Sam is also a friend of mine and we often meet up in a peer mastermind group and chat to each other about our businesses.

Is blogging still relevant? Does it matter in the age of social media? And if you do blog hacking effectively, does it actually get you results? Well, I’m very pleased that Yaro Starak has agreed to answer those questions for us on The ideas Lab Podcast. I’ve been following Yaro from somewhere around 2008, maybe even a little bit earlier. And he’s something of a legend of the online marketing world.

If you're wondering how to take your creative or artistic skills, and make a really good living out of them, or if you're interested in how you can create something in the market that is completely unique, a marketing successfully, this podcast is for you. Ingrid Lill is an illustrator based in Denmark. She joined my pioneer program a few months ago, because she wanted to pull yourself out of that market of illustrators, where often you don't get paid that well for your work, even if you're...

Srabani Sen has had an impressive leadership career in the not for profit sector. She has been the CEO of three organisations: Alcohol Concern, Contact a Family and the British Association for Adoption and Fostering. She has more than 25 years board experiences currently Chair of two not for profits, including the campaigning organisation 38 degrees. Srabani joined my Pioneer Programme in 2019 to launch Full Colour, which helps leaders learn how to lead inclusively, drive inclusion in their...

Most people spend far too long with their business ideas on hold before they launch something. This special episode of The Ideas Lab podcast will tell you how you can launch a business idea in 5 days. And if you want to make it happen for yourself, you can join our free 5-Day Business Startup Challenge. The next one starts Monday 11 May. Register your free place at: https://theideaslab.org/5dc

Well, this week’s interview guest is me. I'm being interviewed by Simon Williams, who is a serial entrepreneur, author, speaker, lecturer, and successful business owner and he’s now the founder of Expert Velocity. We talk about finding the right idea at the beginning of getting your business started, how to test it out, and then how to get it going. Along the way, I also tell a few stories about my own work life in order to illustrate my points. Enjoy, John

When Kat Williams started planning her own wedding she found the standard offers of the wedding industry uninspiring so she started exploring alternatives to the standard wedding in order to find something that she really loved. In 2007 Kat started sharing these ideas and inspirations on a blog and on social media, and this turned into RockNRollBride, one of the biggest wedding blogs in the world! When Kat launched her bi-monthly RockNRollBride magazine in 2015

Just imagine that you never had to look at your email inbox, read or reply to any emails ever again. How much free time would you have? What could you use that time for in your business or in your personal life? That is a question I explored with Claire Giovino in today's episode of the ideas lab podcast, because she set up a business to do exactly this for her clients. She launched Inboxdone in 2017, and has grown the business to multiple 6 figures in just 11 months with 0 capital.