08/14/2026
The rest of the story
Finished filming Shark Tank ! if you ever needed evidence that embarrassment is the price of entry, here it is 👇🏾
In July I announced I was a guest Shark on Shark Tank 🦈
Some years before that, I was announced as a Dragon on Dragon's Den 🐉
Online, that's the story you saw - two announcements a few years apart!
But behind them is a whole lot of rejection and embarrassment I've never talked about
It starts at 16, in 2009!
The Junior Apprentice was auditioning - I heard 30,000 kids applied - and I travelled an 8 hour round trip from Plymouth to London to try out 😄
In my naive teenage head, this was my ticket out of my small town and into the world of business
Somehow I got through 7 hours of auditions and was called back weeks later for a final round
There was one rule: nobody could know your surname, not even the other kids - first names only, on badges, so the media couldn't find out who was on the show
On the way out, a few of us snuck off to Subway, and a boy who'd barely spoken all day asked me several times for my FULL name... and I told him 😅
By the time I got home, the producers had called me
Someone claiming to be my friend had told the BBC they were making a page "celebrating me getting on the show" & it had "jeopardised my chances"
I hadn't told a soul except my dad, in my mind it was the kid in Subway, and it had worked
I cried like a baby - sounds kinda pathetic now, but at that age I didn't have the context to know it wasn't the end of the world
At 18 I stayed up until 2am writing an application to pitch my first business on Dragons' Den - the show I grew up watching
After weeks of refreshing my email, I accepted that dream was over too
At 25, with my next business doing well, the BBC rang, interested in me "for something in TV"
I met them for hours and told them my favourite show was Dragons' Den
Nothing came of it
In 2020 I decided I'd try audio (clearly TV wasn't for me) and asked Adrian Sington to get me a radio audition
He organised an audition at LBC - I prepared for weeks, did my best, and never heard anything back
Clearly radio wasn't for me either 😅
So that year I channelled everything into my own little radio show, filmed from my kitchen table, called The Diary Of A CEO
That same year my luck turned - the BBC called out the blue and asked me to become a Dragon 🤯
Shark Tank was the same story 🎢 I auditioned 3 years ago and was told there wasn't a spot for me 😅
Then this year they called back and asked me to become a Shark
What's the moral of the story?
Embarrassment, rejection, imposter syndrome and self-doubt is the price of entry
You rarely see other people's rejection, but you have a front row seat to your own, so it's easy to believe your rejection is evidence of your inadequacy
Many of my "No's" turned out to be "Not yet's" & a lot of the others redirected me to something I loved even more
You're going to have to fail your way there! 👊🏾❤️
