Three founders walk into a... sauna.

No - really. An actual sauna. On a cliff edge overlooking Oxwich Bay on the Gower Peninsula, South Wales.

That's where Adam Brooks took us for Episode 4 of Three Founders Walk Into A... and it might be the most honest, funny, and genuinely useful conversation we've had yet.

Adam is the founder of Sales Academy - a business community built for founders who want to do epic things, built around epic people. He also runs a digital marketing project management agency and co-runs TrueConnectors, a no-pitch networking community in South Wales.

He turned 50 last year, works three days a week, and is fully in love with his life, his work, his partner, and his kids.

Ten years ago, none of that was true.

In this episode, Adam takes us from a health crisis at 40 that he thought might be the end, to a life and business so deliberately designed that he doesn't even need to check his diary the night before a coaching day. He talks about the internal voice that was kinder to strangers than it ever was to himself, the moment he realised he was wearing 'workaholic' as a badge of honour while quietly killing himself, and why "that was good enough today" might be the most powerful phrase a founder can learn.

He also gives us the most practical and genuinely simple framework for designing your ideal week that we've heard on this show. A landscape A4 sheet. Morning, afternoon, evening. Monday to Sunday. That's it. That's where it starts.

Adam's C-Word: CURIOSITY
"Look at Socrates. Look at Einstein. Look at Leonardo da Vinci. They were just curious. They asked questions. They stayed open minded, open hearted. Be the five year old kid pulling on mum's dress going, yeah but why? And do it till they beg you to stop - then do it more."

ABOUT ADAM BROOKS
Adam Brooks is the founder of Sales Academy, a business community for founders who want to do epic things alongside epic people. He also runs a digital marketing project management agency and co-founded TrueConnect, a monthly networking community in South Wales built around real conversations, good food, and zero sixty-second pitches.

He coaches founders on Sales Academy and works with businesses across Wales and the UK. He's based in the South Wales M4 corridor and can usually be found in a sauna, on a mountain, or picking up his ginger-haired son from school.

🔗 Adam Brooks / Sales Academy: https://www.linkedin.com/in/itsadambrooks/

ABOUT THREE FOUNDERS WALK INTO A...
Three founders. Two hosts. One guest. None of us know where we're going.
Every week, one of us invites a founder the other has never met - and that guest doesn't just join the conversation. They choose where we've walked into. Could be a coffee shop in Rome, a treehouse in Costa Rica, or an actual sauna on a cliff in South Wales.

We have three questions. The rest is just whatever happens when three founders sit down and get honest.

Hosted by Emma Campbell (The Coaching Point). and Helen Wingrove-Sanders (HFBAC - Hiring For and Building Awesome Companies)

FIND US:
🎙 Subscribe to Three Founders Walk Into A... on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ThreeFoundersWalkIntoAPodcast
🔗 Listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts - search "Three Founders Walk Into A..."
🔗 Emma Campbell / The Coaching Point: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emmalouc/
🔗 Helen Wingrove-Sanders on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenwingrovesanders/

Three Founders Walk Into A... is hosted by Helen Wingrove-Sanders (HFBAC) and Emma Campbell (The Coaching Point).

New episode every week.

Find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you listen.

This week, Emma Campbell and Helen Wingrove-Sanders welcome Jess Knights - illustrator, workshop facilitator, and founder of a thriving freelance creative business in Bristol.

Jess takes us to Southend Seafront on a typically overcast Essex day - seaweed, mud, the faint thrill of borrowed ID and the King Blues at Chinneries. From there, the conversation travels through Camberwell College of Art, a marketing career she never planned, a pandemic pivot, and a diagnosis that changed everything.

No one in her family was creative. Nobody modelled that path. She built it anyway.

This is an episode about what happens when you stop explaining your no, stop outsourcing your belief to other people, and commit - properly, quietly, stubbornly - to yourself.

WHAT WE COVER IN THIS EPISODE:

- How Jess got into Camberwell College of Art with what she called a 'humble portfolio' - and what she said in the interview that she thinks sealed it
- Why she took a marketing job after art school, and how that turned out to be the best thing she ever did
- The pandemic, a redundancy, and the decision to go fully freelance as an illustrator
- Working with Forestry England, National Trails, Coeliac UK, the NHS and the Department of Health
- Running PIP - the Illustrators Meetup for Bristol - and how she went from member to organiser
- Her ADHD diagnosis and what it taught her about burnout, boundaries, and saying no
- Why she believes creativity is the canary in the coal mine - it goes quiet first when you're running on empty
- Her seasonal ingredients calendars, foraging illustrations, and why personal projects are not a nice-to-have
- Her dream client - and the all-encompassing museum or heritage project she has been quietly building towards
- Her C-word: Commitment - and why she chose it over creativity, community, and every other obvious option

JESS KNIGHTS
https://www.jessknights.co.uk/
https://www.instagram.com/jessknights_creative/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jess-knights-creative-bristol/

ABOUT THREE FOUNDERS WALK INTO A...
Hosted by Emma Campbell (The Coaching Point) and Helen Wingrove-Sanders (HFBAC - Hiring For and Building Awesome Companies).
Each week, one of us invites a founder onto the show - and the other one knows absolutely nothing about them. The guest tells us where we've walked into. That's the three founders, and that's the show.
New episodes every Friday.
Subscribe so you don't miss an episode.

EMMA CAMPBELL
Founder of The Coaching Point.
Website: TheCPoint.co.uk

HELEN WINGROVE-SANDERS
Hiring For and Building Awesome Companies. Helping bootstrapped, founder-led companies hire the right people using Chemistry First methodology.
The Hiring Clinic (Cohort: June 2026): https://hfbac.com/hiring-clinic/
Newsletter for Founders: https://hfbac.kit.com/newsletter-sign-up

Three Founders Walk Into A... is hosted by Helen Wingrove-Sanders (HFBAC) and Emma Campbell (The Coaching Point).

New episode every week.

Find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you listen.

This week, Balve Baines, presenter, moderator, and founder of Purple Square AI, takes us somewhere that doesn't exist. Not yet, anyway.

Imagine landing after a long haul flight and stepping into a hotel lobby with a prohibition bar, crackling fireplace, and a woman in the most comfortable chair you've ever seen. Painted in vivid detail and delivered like he's already been there.

Balve has built three businesses. The first dissolved when life got in the way.

The second got him sued.

The third, Purple Square, was born in a pub at Christmas 2024 when a friend in hospitality said something so colourfully honest about repetitive guest questions that he couldn't stop thinking about it.

In this episode Balve talks about the moment a BBC station manager gave him a shot because he'd done his homework.
About the best ideas being born in pubs. About why he nearly burned out working 17 or 18 hour days alone, in a bubble, not noticing until the dots connected. About AI in hospitality, what it can and can't replace, and why trust takes years to build and seconds to break.

Balve's C word? Coastal. After a very long deliberation and the entire dictionary. It tells you everything.

🎙️ Hosted by Helen Wingrove-Sanders (HFBAC) and Emma Campbell (The C Point)
🔗 Find Balve: purplesquareai.com
🔗 Find Helen: hfbac.com
🔗 Find Emma: thecpoint.co.uk

#founders #entrepreneurship #startup #founderstory #podcast #bootstrapped #hospitality #AI

Three Founders Walk Into A... is hosted by Helen Wingrove-Sanders (HFBAC) and Emma Campbell (The Coaching Point).

New episode every week.

Find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you listen.