All Ears Storytelling

Join us on 24 April to celebrate people who have created interesting, successful and, at times, outrageous businesses through sheer determination, passion and guts.

With self-employment in the UK now peaking at over 4million, it is clear that people are embracing their entrepreneurial spirit and creating their own career destiny. Whether they are driven by the desire to escape corporate life, manage their work/life balance better or to recover from redundancy, it is creative individuals who will help repair the UK economy.

The Speakers:
Madam Becky Adams has always had an entrepreneurial spirit. Convent educated and a qualified riding instructor (no pun intended), Becky decided to hang up her boots and start Scrubbers, a topless car valeting service. With the slogan ‘best hand job in town’, Scrubbers was a media darling…but vilified by the local authorities. However, she wasn’t deterred and went on to run successful brothels in the Home Counties for 20 years. Just like running any other business she had to think about staff motivation, profit and loss and most of all customer satisfaction.

BJ Cunningham is a successful entrepreneur, but also a most unusual entrepreneur. In 1991 he boldly launched Death Cigarettes and his ‘truth in marketing’ approach to advertising caused quite a stir. This venture - which he describes as a vertical learning curve - culminated after five years in a spectacular tax arbitrage scheme, threatening to overturn the entire tobacco industry. He has since gone on to launch other successful enterprises and is a thought leader in the field of branding, brand marketing and communications.

Tokunbo Ajasa-Oluwa is the founder and Managing Director of Catch 22, a social enterprise that helps young people break into journalism. Catch 22 started in 2007 as a magazine for young Londoners but has since evolved to include a recognised training academy for creative talent who have the skills but not the crucial experience to make it in media. Toks’ passion for nurturing talent is infectious and his graduates often find themselves at the likes of The Mirror, Company magazine and New Media Age.