Always exciting

... it's exciting to be the host.

It's exciting to broadcast the shows, and of course, it's exciting to tell you all about it.

And we've got something maybe a little bit, uh, different, uh, today.

Obviously, regular listeners to The Entrepreneurs will know we often talk about businesses that may be in realms that we're more familiar with or perhaps are slightly more, uh, within Monocle's usual editorial bounds, in hospitality, in travel, maybe mobility, things that kind of are, are themes we're constantly returning to.

Something really rather different but a genuinely impressive and really arresting story, um, told to me by Laura Hackney.

And Laura, Chris, is the CEO and founder of Annie Cannons, um, which has a sort of mission to help to support, rehabilitate, and find meaningful employ for people who've been, uh, the victims of, of human trafficking, who've survived some often pretty tr- traumatic and terrible experiences, and help them to find careers that can help sort of break these negative cycles, um, but in tech, which is not perhaps what one might expect.

What could be more inspiring than helping people to completely turn their life around?

And what were you doing with that coffee? Was it for self consumption?

There was lots of test batches, some really bad batches.

And again, I can only describe roasting as like, as in the first few batches was like, I had all this theory and I can just describe it as like getting some driving lessons or something.

But before you hop in the car, you're spoken through how to drive a car, change gears, indicate, you know, signal, all that kind of thing.

So I was pretty confident and then, yeah, turned on the roaster and then did a batch.

But everything just went straight out of my head because there was just too much to kind of remember, basically.

So I think that was the benefit of starting so small, though I think a lot of roasteries will, they'll have the money, basically, or funding, whatever it is, to invest in much bigger equipment to grow into.

really often.

Well, you say that because you actually missed all the horrible heatwave here in London by being further north in Sweden last week.

Well, exactly.

And I'd say there was s-- there was an-- that was definitely an attendant benefit [chuckles] of my attendance at Visby.

A beautiful, uh, medieval town, as you say.

Uh, people who know it, it's a sort of twelfth, thirteenth century walled city.

Incredibly beautiful, uh, right on the shores of the Baltic.

It's, it's quite, uh, hilly.

Who did Monocle meet and sit down with?

It was

... by the absolute pride of the Swedish Air Force.

It was the full bells and whistles visible from, well, certainly probably Kaliningrad, which is po- possibly the point of the exercise.

Um, deafening, captivating, a little bit terrifying.

Um, and so I...

Yeah, it showed, it showed the island of Gotland.

It showed the beautiful town of Visby in, in an em- in an incredible light.

Mm-hmm

So, um, strip it of all, all, all of, all of this, you know, highfalutin language and just make it about the stuff that people care about, and that, that's the ambition of the program.

And I think you and the team do a great job because we speak to kind of committed, abstract academic urbanists, of course, a little bit, but we talk to mayors, you talk to property developers, you talk to landscape gardeners, architects, people who are making mixed-use spaces or thinking about how intergenerational living happens in a more kind of natural and more constructive way.

Where do you find-- We always talk about benchmarks.

Where do you find that best practice? I guess a lot of it is just from you're on the road a lot.

[laughs] Things you see, initiatives you speak to someone about, you fall into conversation with someone at a coffee shop.

H-how much of the discovery of best practice happens through kind of research or actually just through a bit of serendipity?

[laughs]

Tell me just on a sort of more, on a sort of more personal level, Andrew, 'cause I, I think our listeners, readers, subscribers to our newsletters, obviously they get to read your column each week where often you talk about a great moment on a street corner bumping into an old friend or, you know.

I get it now.

Righto, carry on.

What's marking the Monocle calendar next week, Tom? Hello.

Yes, Emma, a very exciting week next week for me, both personally and professionally.

I'm heading to Shanghai.

On Wednesday, Monocle is hosting a special live event version of The Entrepreneurs, the radio show that I host every week, uh, here on Monocle Radio.

Of course, people, regular listeners will know that it's-- We meet inspiring people, we meet innovative companies, we hear about fresh ideas in global business.

Um, and we thought it would be fun to sort of take that show quite literally on the road.