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Steve sits down with Dan Sanders, optician and founder of Perspective Opticians, for a candid look at what it really takes to run an independent business for 21 years.

Dan opened his first practice in February 2005, aged 26, after deciding he didn't want to spend his career running people through the machine in a high street chain. What followed was a steep learning curve nobody had prepared him for. Three weeks in, with the bills landing and almost no one walking through the door, he came close to packing it in. He didn't. Three years later, he was finally able to draw a proper salary.

In this episode, Dan and Steve talk through the parts of business ownership most people never see from the outside: the wobbles, the 4am worries, the cycles of high and low that hit every few years whether you want them to or not. Dan shares how a six-month notice to leave his old premises felt like a disaster at the time, and why it might end up being the best thing that's happened to the practice.

They also get into the good stuff. The freedom to make a decision and just do it. The buzz of building a team that delivers. Winning a national independent award. Manifesting a big enough year to take the whole team to Ibiza. The quiet satisfaction of a client putting on a new pair of glasses and walking out a bit taller.

Along the way they cover:

• The earthquake moments every business owner gets, and why the change forced on you usually moves things forward
• Why personal recommendations still beat almost every other form of marketing
• Working with your spouse as a business partner, and the one rule that keeps it sane
• Looking after a team like family without burning out trying
• Why isolation is the silent killer for small business owners, and what to do about it
• The hardest lesson Dan has learned in 21 years of trading
• Going private after COVID, and what changed for clients
• Why media doom and gloom rarely matches what's actually happening in your business

There's also a real moment near the end where Dan talks about what working with Steve as his financial planner actually did for him, and it isn't what he expected when he walked in.

If you're a small business owner having a wobble, or a couple of years in and wondering whether the highs will outweigh the lows, this one will land.

A reminder that you're rarely as alone as it feels.

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The news is loud, the headlines are heavy, and our phones make sure we never miss a thing. Steve and Jess sit down to talk about what all of that does to your head and your money, and what you can actually do about it.

Steve opens with a particularly committed Diagnose Steve performance (lying awake at 3am, watching markets fall, wondering whether to sell everything) and Jess walks him back from the ledge.

In this episode:

• Why your brain reacts to a push notification like it's a real threat
• How the news, your phone, and the algorithm feed each other
• The difference between reacting and responding, and why it matters for your investments
• A simple way to think about what is and isn't in your control
• Practical ways to take the volume down: phone out of the bedroom, news on a timer, daily anchors that ground you
• A book recommendation from Jess that's worth your time

Plus the usual: an ongoing campaign for KitKat sponsorship, a cameo from Bargain Hunt, and Kenny the happy little horse.

If you enjoyed Episode 37 with George Kinder on living in the present, this one builds on the same idea.

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In this episode, Steve sits down with George Kinder, known to most as the father of life planning.

George has spent the last thirty years teaching advisers a very simple idea: that a financial plan is only useful if it delivers the client into the life they actually want to live. His famous three questions are designed to surface exactly that, and Steve and George walk through all three on the episode.

They also talk about George's new venture, The Moules, which he recently moved to London to launch. The premise is that most businesses are running at a fraction of their potential because of three productivity gaps hiding in plain sight, and George explains what those are and how to close them.

From there the conversation moves into his new book The Three Domains of Freedom, why listening is a faster form of intelligence than thinking, and how meditation fits into all of it.

A conversation about money, meaning, and what freedom actually feels like.