Lock-In by HappyStack 🥞

Lucie MacLeod, founder who turned kitchen-made hair oils into a multi-million pound brand and Sunday Times Founder of the Year. She talks about accidental TikTok virality, deleting the account then leaning into demand, being rejected by all six Dragons and turning that into huge visibility, building operations from a conservatory to a warehouse, and a deliberately restrained growth strategy.

Founders recount cooking pet food in a kitchen and the messy early hustle to prove product-market fit. They explain why they built their own 70,000 sq ft plant and how insourcing slashed margins. Topics include creating a dry Unkibble process, handling a COVID-driven demand surge, using AI to automate ops, and product and channel strategies like PupGum, Amazon, and influencer creative testing.

This week, we sit down with Lukas Pakter, the 24-year-old founder behind Haus, Trybe, and Outliers. Lukas has built a personal brand generating millions in revenue, and in this conversation he walks through his actual playbook—why audience quality matters more than size, and how the right mentor helped him scale from £100K a month to £100K a day.We cover his approach to content, the systems he's built to scale beyond himself, and the realities of growing modern ecom businesses. He also gets honest about nearly going bankrupt, taking a deal everyone advised against, and the lessons that shaped how he operates today.Practical, direct, and full of specific insights you can actually use.

This week, we sit down with Aimee Smale, the inspiring founder behind Odd Muse. In four years she's taken the cult British womenswear brand from a bedroom startup to a £30m business. Aimee opens up about spotting the gap in the market for accessible luxury, quitting ASOS without a plan, and quite literally dismantling her bed to make room for a desk. From making £10 logos and packing orders herself, to designing the blazer that changed everything, this is a masterclass in betting on yourself.Aimee speaks candidly about online pile-ons, media attacks, and why the last year has been her hardest yet. She also breaks down the decisions that shaped Odd Muse’s growth, and why she believes Odd Muse can be a £100m brand, even if she doesn’t want to take it there alone.Honest, high-stakes, and full of lessons you won’t hear in a pitch deck. Timestamps:00:00 Intro & Early Years of Odd Muse12:00 Taking Impulsive Risks14:55 Importance of Building a Rounded Skillset19:30 How One Hero Product Can Change Your Life22:20 Importance of Being Your Own Customer28:00 The Influencer Moment That Changed Odd Muse33:30 Founder-Led Marketing37:00 Dealing With Online Trolls Over The Last 12 Months46:08 Why She's Now Stepping Back & Hiring a CEO53:25 How Moving to New York Changed Her Mindset55:30 The Strategy Behind Odd Muse's Retail Stores01:01:30 Growing the Wholesale Business

This discussion features Jack Rubin, founder of Purdy & Figg, a booming DTC cleaning brand; Matt Kelly, co-founder of Spacegoods, known for innovative product launches; and Olly Hudson, co-founder of Soar With Us, a leading UK growth agency. They explore the challenges of acquiring customers in 2025, the critical balance between product focus and marketing, and the transformative role of AI in creative strategy. Dive into insights on influencer strategies, scaling efficiently, and the importance of creative diversity to stand out in Meta's crowded landscape.

Meet Olivia Jenkins - the founder behind the fastest-growing jewellery brand in e-commerce.In 2020, she was burnt out, broke, and dealing with the recent loss of her mum. Alongside her partner Jack, she channelled this grief to start D. Louise — a multi-million pound jewellery brand now loved by thousands of women across the UK from Molly-Mae to Maya Jama.In this unfiltered episode, Olivia shares how she turned a side hustle into an eight-figure business.Chapters00:00 - Trailer01:10 - Introductions02:10 - Launching a brand with zero experience 08:30 - The importance of customer-centricity 10:24 - Sourcing and selling her first products13:20 - Bootstrapping the first drops 18:55 - Taking the leap full-time, & working with your partner24:50 - Black Friday: The day everything changed25:50 - Bringing Gymsharks ex-CEO on board29:50 - Importance of authenticity in collaborations33:40 - Handling negative reviews and customer experience35:10 - What made D.Louise stand out in a saturated market44:30 - Future categories and avoiding distraction47:00 - Why big brands can't copy D.Louise52:40 - Shifting Behaviours: Women buying themselves jewellery54:00 - The big vision for D.Louise56:30 - Rebranding: Telling her mother's story through design

Grace Andrews, the former Marketing Director of Diary of a CEO, scaled the podcast to over a billion listens in just four years. She shares her unconventional marketing playbook and the importance of learning from failures. Grace discusses the balance between authenticity and clickbait in content creation, and how personal branding plays a pivotal role in building community. She reflects on her emotional transition from a corporate role to entrepreneurship and emphasizes the potential of underutilized social media platforms for growth.

Meet Michael Corcoran and Dave Morrissey. Mates, drinking buddies, and two of the UK's leading social marketers. Michael is the marketing genius who turned Ryanair into the world's leading airline on social, clocking up more than 1 billion organic impressions in 12 months. Now he's building Slice, a consultancy agency where he's helping some of the UK's top brands cut through the noise and grow on social. Dave has spent the last three years leading out e-commerce at TikTok where he has helped the UK's top DTC brands scale their revenues through TikTok Shop. In this unfiltered chat, we deep dive on the strategy that built Ryanair into a global leader on social, how brands can level-up on TikTok, and some hot takes on the future of social. Not one to be missed!

Bio.George Kruis and Dom Day aren’t your average founders, they’re former international rugby stars who went from scrums and stadiums to supplements and Sainsbury’s. As ex-Saracens teammates, their journey from elite athletes to co-founders of wellness brand ‘FourFive’ is full of unexpected pivots, hard-won lessons, and big wins in both the worlds of e-commerce and retail.In this episode, George and Dom get real about the moment they knew they had something special with FourFive, how they tackled the transition from rugby to retail, and the mindset shift that came with life after sport. From leveraging their athlete networks to landing shelf space in major retailers, they unpack how they found their “unfair advantage” and built a trusted name in the crowded wellness space. Including the challenges of scaling and building a brand around a highly regulated product, CBD.They talk Shopify, subscriptions, investor relationships, and even the science (or lack of) behind whether FourFive can really cure a hangover. We say it can.If you're a founder, athlete, or someone in between, this one’s packed with energy, insight, and inspiration. And a good load of laughs too.Timestamps0:00 Trailer01:30 The Back Heel Conversion02:56 The Aha Moment for FourFive/ The Idea for FourFive05:10 Transitioning from Rugby to Entrepreneurship07:55 Finding the Right People and Support09:15 Lessons in Communication09:52 Preparing for Life After Rugby/ Tapping into your Network14:18 Lean into your Skillset/ Finding your Unfair Advantage17:17 Getting into retail/ Sainsbury's20:43 The Ecom Pivot22.06 The Parallels between Sports Teams and Businesses29:35 Goal Setting31:49 Is FourFive a Hangover Remedy?36:53 Challenges of being in the CBD Space40:17 Shopify + Subscriptions43:38 Influencers and Investors46:15 Jack's POV

Daisy Kelly, the dynamic 25-year-old founder of Glow For It, transformed her kitchen side-hustle into a booming beauty brand, raking in six figures daily on TikTok Shop. She dives into her journey from overcoming challenges to creating an affordable serum with clean ingredients. Daisy shares the secrets behind her TikTok success, including the impact of live streaming and customer feedback in shaping her brand. Her authenticity shines through as she emphasizes building a community and the importance of a strong, collaborative team to sustain growth.