Original subtitles

Our country is full of incredible makers dreaming of turning their talent...

into money -making careers.

It would mean everything to be able to do this full -time.

So, with a team of fantastic professional mentors... I know your

know what you're capable of doing.

I run a one -of -a -kind bootcamp showing them how to do just that.

Perfect. My proudest moment. I'll go share that. Yes. Now, I'm on my way to

catch up with those who have made their dreams come true. Hello. There he is.

Hello, mate.

I'll be hearing about their amazing achievement.

I've been able to put down...

So join me and meet the fabulous makers who have transformed their lives and

made it at market.

You can kind of say I'm living the dream.

I think that's fair to say.

What I love most about my boot camp is seeing makers grow in confidence as they

realise their passion could make them enough money to become a successful full

-time career, just like the two we're catching up with today.

Later, mentor Zoe will be checking in on the jaw -dropping progress of metal

sculptor John in West Sussex.

I did 20 grand's worth of business in a day. I've sold to, I think, pretty much

every continent on the planet.

But first, I'm going to find out how stained glass artist Emily in Derbyshire

getting on.

When she first arrived at my boot camp in the summer of 2023, she was new to

craft, but had big ambitions for her business.

My wildest dream would be to have at least one of my flowers in every single

windowsill in the UK. And I know it's utterly ridiculous.

but I love them and I want other people to love them as well.

Emily may have had big plans, but when I first met her, it quickly became clear

what one of the biggest hurdles to making them come true was.

I didn't do a course in it, so I feel like my technique could be very much

improved. My soldering's not amazing.

I feel very much like an imposter and I would like to move myself forward from

that mindset.

and feel a lot more confident.

To figure out the best way to help Emily get the sales she needed to boost her

confidence and her business, I set her three challenges, the first of which was

to make a volume piece, something she could produce quickly and sell for an

attractive price.

She chose to make a small bouquet of stained glass flowers priced at £82 that

could be delivered through a letterbox, with each of the six stems standing

between 30 and 43 centimetres tall.

I'm scoring the glass, which makes a really satisfying noise, I think. And

I'm about to tap it, which will be another, like, quite big noise.

And then hopefully that will just go and break apart and sound like it's

completely broken.

Once the glass was small enough to handle, Emily clipped around the edges

flower to make the shape.

There are pieces that I haven't cut out and you'll see that the edges are not

particularly smooth. There's some bits that I've missed cutting.

But I've got a grinder which will actually really refine the edges, make

much smoother.

To help Emily gain the confidence she needed to achieve her dream of making

money from stained glass, she was mentored by Derek Hunt.

Derek's been successfully designing and making stained glass artworks for public

spaces, private homes and churches for over 40 years.

Emily is still at the very early stages of our stained glass journey and she's

still got a lot to learn. I think if she comes with an open mind and a

willingness to learn, the sky's the limit.

Derek spotted that if Emily used less cuts, she could speed up her flower

production and make them more cost effective.

Let me just show you how I would cut that little circular piece of glass.

would do is I would make a small section here, slightly larger than the size of

the circle.

I'm going to use a pencil grip here. I'm leaning over it, and I'm using the

weight of my shoulders and just looking at the wheel and applying a little bit

of pressure.

I've sort of done a half -shaped moon, as you can see there.

I'll turn it around and do the other half.

It's all about muscle memory.

We then just tap it.

Now that I've created the fracture all the way around, I just add additional

breaks to make it easy to break away the extra glass that we don't actually

need.

And it should just all come away.

We do still need to do a little bit of grinding to tidy up, but I think you can

see, hopefully, it's less work. And if you're doing that every day, you're

to save minutes and you're going to save hours as you're working.

Nice and slowly.

Whilst Emily concentrated on her volume piece, I caught up with Derek to talk

over her second challenge.

Before she left home, I asked her to bring a high -end piece, an item that

with a steeper asking price.

She brought along a 54cm tall stained glass window called Lady Moon.

This complex Art Nouveau design of a woman surrounded by moon took nearly

weeks to make and was priced at £500.

Derek, what are your thoughts on Emily's lovely window?

My first impression was that there are a lot of cuts that could have been

designed a little bit more carefully.

Glass likes to be cut in a certain way. So, for example, if you're cutting into

a piece of glass, you're cutting up into the glass, you're creating a potential

weakness where the glass could fracture.

You'd move that sharp internal angle to a corner or make it an end join or

something. Exactly.

Emily's asking £500 for the piece.

What do you think about that?

It probably could do with being a little bit more than that.

There's a lot of cuts and a lot of delicate pieces of glass in there. What

you think about the saleability?

It's quite exotic and I think there are customers out there for it, but I think

she has to think carefully about how to find them.

Back at the glass station, Emily was grinding the individual pieces of her

bouquet of stained glass flowers.

After cleaning and drying the glass, she attached copper foil to the edges, as

solder doesn't stick to glass itself.

I need to add a lead solder onto the flower.

That's the glue that holds the flower together.

There isn't anything else that would look as nice or fix as well onto the

After that, I solder the flowers together, which is very satisfying to

I feel like I've had imposter syndrome since I was quite young.

I was fostered and then adopted when I was seven.

Being adopted, you're put into an environment that's very different to

came from. That's then carried on throughout my life, and it's the same in

stained glass. You know, I haven't been professionally taught, I haven't done

any lessons, and so therefore I do feel like a massive imposter.

Once Emily finished soldering her flowers, she cleaned them up before

patina, which is a liquid used to change the colour of the solder.

The patina really does hide a multitude of different things, like my baggy

jumper, though it's great.

It makes me feel less inadequate about my soldering.

Emily's bouquet of six glass flowers took around four hours to create.

had material costs of £35 and came with an asking price of £82.

Emily, I think they're really lovely. You should be really pleased. Thank you

very much. What do you think, Derek? I think they're fantastic.

Looking at it from a technical point of view, I think we need to work on things

like earth soldering.

Your copper foil work is overlapping and there's a little jagged edge. There's

lots to learn and I think you're keen and you want to learn, which is

What are your thoughts on the £82 price tag?

406. I think that's fair. You're entering quite a crowded market, and

a number of people doing this type of work, so you have to find your own

Perhaps it might be a good idea to think about seasonal bouquets. You know, you

have your winter range, your autumn range, even Easter and Christmas, so you

sort of theme it.

Valentine's Day.

Bunch of roses.

Absolutely.

We'll find out soon how Emily's flowers are selling now, but for her last task

at the boot camp, I asked her to produce her favourite piece.

to find out if what she loved making the most could be a money spinner.

She decided to create a picture window of a beetle called Beautifully Dead

iridescent green and opaque pink glass.

Priced at £120, it stood 12 inches tall and was finished with a zinc frame.

Once Emily had traced the design onto the glass, she cut out the individual

pieces and compared them to her paper template.

The bug itself has got some tight corners on the face area.

They don't have cheeks, do they, bugs? I don't know. On the cheeks.

And there's some really, really small fiddly pieces just here that need some

intricate grinding, and I need to try and get those as symmetrical as I can.

Whilst she was grinding the glove to make it smooth, Emily had to keep

the shapes matched her intricate design.

I'm making sure that they fit snugly like a jigsaw puzzle, because at this

stage, if it doesn't fit from the bug inward, everything on the outside, it's

just not going to fit properly, which has happened before. So I really don't

want that to happen today.

After she assembled all her glass pieces, Emily wrapped them in copper

tacked them together with spots of solder to hold them in place.

I love this stage because it really starts to come together.

And it's lovely after working so hard on something to finally get a good sense

of how it's going to come out.

The next stage is to start doing the actual proper solder.

And then once that's complete, I will put a zinc frame around it.

Emily's beautifully dead beetle took her around two and a half days to make and

was priced at £120.

Emily, it looks beautiful. Thank you. What do you think, Derek? It's a really

nice piece, actually. It works really well. And that iridescent glass really

adds that extra dimension.

It's very much bug -like. Yeah, it is. It's fantastic.

The price is £120.

I think keeping it about that kind of price, it's affordable and it's

collectible. So, yeah, let's start with that. That's great.

As Emily headed home to Derbyshire, we armed her with an action plan to banish

her imposter syndrome and help her business flourish.

First, she needed to polish up her techniques and designs to give her

better finish.

Next, we wanted Emily to create seasonal ranges, bringing in colors and jewels

to go with each theme.

Finally, she needed to do market research to help her find the customers

pieces.

With eight more weeks of Derek's support, Emily got to work on her plan.

starting with polishing up her techniques and designs at Derek's studio

Leicestershire. I'm dead chapped for that. Yeah, we're not getting those

serrated edges. It's all smooth, which is exactly what we want.

So that is now going to be our template. So we're going to use this template to

cut out shaped pieces of sticky back plastic.

The idea of these templates is great. Such a good idea.

Emily also worked on her branding and created a new logo and website to help

encourage sales.

along with gearing up to sell her products in person.

Monday I cut and ground 50 flowers, and today I've probably done about 30. I'm

hoping to do another 20.

That will give me then 100 flowers, which will mean that I've got some for

upcoming craft fair.

Emily listened to all our advice, and after eight weeks of working incredibly

hard, she came back to the boot camp to share just how well she'd done. Let's

talk figures.

How much money have you made?

In total, I have made just under £2 ,700.

Absolutely brilliant. Yeah. Well, go for your head now. It's so surreal. I'm

excited. Well done. It's a really good achievement. It's brilliant, isn't it?

It's fantastic that you're well on the way and we can see everything taking

shape now, which is fabulous.

Even after taking off her costs from her brilliant sales figure, it was clear

that in just two short months, Emily had shown she had what it took to build a

successful business.

Two and a half years later, I've come to Derbyshire to find out how she's done

exactly that and how much money she's earning now.

Hi, Don.

Hello, how are you doing? I'm all right, thanks. How are you? Good to see you.

Come in. Thank you.

Running a creative business can be tough.

To keep costs down, I'm a big believer in doing it from home where possible.

at first glance, Emily's garden workshop looks just the ticket.

Oh, look at it in here. This is amazing.

How long have you had this space?

So during boot camp, my husband built me a hobby shed. This does not just look

like a hobby shed to me. No, not anymore. This is my workshop.

This is where I spend most of my time.

In the first year, I spent probably more time in here than I did in the house.

Thanks to her husband and the profits of her business, Emily's got a fantastic

purpose -built home studio with its own outdoor workspace.

Tell me how the business has been going since boot camp. Oh, really, really

busy. So I've sold around 2 ,000 flowers.

People were buying bunches of bouquets. So I had one person bought like four

bouquets in one order, which was hundreds and hundreds of pounds. And I

like, yeah, I wasn't expecting it. I am forever grateful. Forever grateful.

Yeah. Is the business now solely...

Making flowers?

No, so 90 % is about flowers.

I would say the flowers are my bread and butter. So that is where I get my

income from. And then I've got my bigger pieces. So I've got my ivy, my hanging

pots, which the larger ones are 120 and then we go up to about 250 for the

wreath. And then I've got commission work. So I've got two really large

that are going next to a chap's front door. So I've got a mermaid and then the

other one, she's going to be a sort of person on the land. And then the same

gentleman also bought Lady Moon, my high -end piece from the boot camp. But I re

-evaluated it, and it took me so long. And it's a one -off piece. I put it onto

750, and he snapped it up.

It's great to see that Emily's now recognising the value in her work,

£250 more for her high -end piece than she was back at the boot camp.

And her two large commission pieces are bringing another fantastic £5 ,000 into

the business.

I'm also delighted that she's expanding her range and she's going to show me how

she makes her new £85 hanging ivy pot, starting with scoring and cutting the

glass for the pot itself.

Whoa. Do you mind if I have a go? Absolutely, go for it. Can I give it one

cut? Yeah, one more cut.

Pushing down? Pushing down and going forward.

There we go. Very nice.

As far as I can. Line that up with that. Yep.

Squeeze real hard.

You sure? Yep.

You ready? Yep.

Yeah. Yeah? Yeah.

Hang on.

Yes, you did it. Exactly.

That was immaculate.

Perfect. Bravo.

Right, we've got our flower pot.

With the pot cut, we need our ivy leaves.

Emily uses a glass cutting machine that helps cut the smaller, more intricate

shapes.

She tidies them up on a grinder.

Ready for us to edge them with lead. This is actual lead. This is actual

Hence the glove. Yep. This is a softer lead that I use for my silver edged

product. Oh, it's incredibly soft. It's really easy to bend.

We're going to pop it on the edge.

so that when it's soldered... I would have started up there.

Yeah, that would be wrong.

Says who?

Says me.

No, no, I like to make sure that nobody can see where my soldering mark is, if I

can help it. I'll do whatever you say, if you're the boss.

OK, so I'm just stretching it and pushing it in, and then I'm going to

device and I'm going to just push in there. You know what, that

does look neater than... Having the join up there. Yeah, I think so, because

there'd be a big blob in there, which would then... It wouldn't look like a

leaf. Yeah, I think so.

I know that one of the big issues that you had at the start of this journey was

confidence, believing in yourself and the dreaded imposter syndrome.

How are you feeling now, two and a half years on? Two and a half years on. And

literally thousands of flowers later.

Some days I am 100 % an imposter.

Really? Yeah, still. But then there are other days where I get called an amateur

crafter, and I'm like, hang on a minute.

Excuse me?

What are you talking about?

This is my job. This is my business.

I'm not just a crafter now. This is my full -time job, like I am. This is a

business. This is a full -time job for you. You're heavily invested in

and equipment and tooling, and you're in now with both feet. Yeah, absolutely.

There's no going back.

With all the petals wrapped in lead, Emily lets me solder the ends to join

together.

Oh, there we go. Once the leaves and pot are all ready, we solder them all in

position.

Use wire to create the structure of the hanging ivy and solder the leaves into

place.

Then we add detail to the leaves.

One more blob.

Okay. Nice.

To finish, Emily adds a thicker wire to give the design extra support, then

attaches hooks and another piece of wire to hang it.

Okay, and that is all done.

Is it finished?

It's finished, yeah.

Well done. Look at that with the light shining through it.

Emily's new hanging ivy pot will be cleaned and stained later, but I think

a marvellous addition to her range.

It takes her around 90 minutes to make, has material costs of £25, and comes

with a price tag of £85.

Her whole range is now looking fantastic, and I can see she's worked

honing and improving the finish of her pieces over the past two and a half

years. And I'm keen to find out if the rest of the tips and tricks we gave her

have also helped to fuel her success.

Emily, when you came to boot camp, we gave you an action plan, some pointers

work on.

One of those things was to try and create ranges of flowers seasonally.

Are any of these those?

Yes. My autumn bouquet is my bestseller. That's this? That's this one. This is

the one that I've sold the most of throughout the last couple of years.

And then I've got a spring bouquet.

I've also got a couple of other bouquets, the pink one and the blue one.

It's worked? It's worked, 100%. Another thing we suggested you look into was

market research to really get to know your audience.

Have you done any? I did, because I went to a craft fair and I got to learn who

liked what, what colours were popular, what pairings. At a craft fair, you're

getting first -hand experience from the public. Yeah, so it gave me a real

insight into what I should be working towards and what I know is going to be

popular. Since then, actually, the market research is through my website.

so I can see what is selling, what is not selling.

And then what I can do on my website is order things so I can put the most

popular things at the top of the list.

I see. So because of the stats and analysing all the stats, you're

changing and your website's constantly evolving.

Yeah, it's brilliant, yeah. And it sounds like that has been helpful and

brought in more sales. Oh, yes, it definitely has, yeah.

It's great to hear that Emily's action plan has played such a big role in the

growth of her business.

And it's time to find out exactly how successful she's been.

Do you mind if I ask how much money you're making now?

Of course, yeah.

I've been making an average of £25 ,000 a year.

Really? Yeah.

That is a big number. It's a huge number.

And that's taken out costs, overheads, materials.

You're making a profit.

Yeah. It's fantastic.

It's because I've got a sustainable income.

I'm bearing in mind the last year I was working nine till three.

So I've only got a very short window because I've got a small child. So I can

only do what I can do. So, yeah, it's phenomenal, honestly.

Well done. Thank you.

Emily's come such a long way since arriving at the boot camp as a novice

glass artist.

Making a profit of £25 ,000 a year is fantastic and I couldn't be happier for

her.

I see my business now as something I never even thought it

could be, to be honest. Before it was just a little thing in my dining room

where I was cutting out flowers and now I've got my huge workshop space and I'm

absolutely thrilled and delighted with my success.

The next maker we're going to be catching up with is metal artist John

Sussex.

He came to my boot camp in the summer of 2024 with incredible sculptures he'd

made from recycled cutlery. But despite his obvious talent, just like Emily, he

lacked self -confidence.

When I look at other metal artists, I definitely get a sense of imposter

syndrome. They're all making such great work, and honestly, I just think of

myself as a guy tinkering in a shed. It's hard to put myself in the same

as them.

John may not have believed in himself, but as a fellow metal worker, I was

away by the high level of his artistic and technical ability.

I can fully appreciate the skill that's involved in welding this together.

I can't see a joint. I mean, look at his beak. It's really, honestly, it's

really, really neat. Appreciate that.

To try and turn John's fantastic talent into a successful business, he also took

on three challenges.

For his volume piece, he decided to make an ornate cutlery bird.

Created from five spoons and two forks, it stood 12 centimetres high and was

priced at £150.

After creating the breast and belly of his bird, John moved on to making the

wings from the two forks.

I've built this jig here, and that enables me to make an identical shape

any fork that I put in there.

I'm going to heat this up with a blowtorch now and I'm going to use the

of a hammer not to hit it because I don't want to destroy the pattern but I

want to gently push on the fork when it's red hot around this curve shape.

Everything's at stake. It is quite a critical time for me. I have outgoings

everyone else at the end of the month.

It's either make this work, sell now or it's back to the real world and get a

proper job.

With the pressure really on for John, I was determined to help him stop making

the sales he desperately needed.

So I teamed him up with a fantastic mentor, luck cycler Zoe Pocock.

John, all my teaspoons that go missing, is it you?

The cutlery magpie, yeah. Guilty as charged.

How do you think I can help you?

Primarily it's going to be business, marketing, self -promotion, how to sell

stuff, social media skills, and probably there's a little bit of imposter

syndrome going on there as well.

Someone who makes these incredible pieces cannot possibly have imposter

syndrome. I have never seen anything so beautiful. I can teach you the business

side of social media, but I cannot teach you this. You've already got this. You

are already out on your own on this. As soon as people start seeing you, they're

going to tell you how amazing your work is. They're going to start buying your

product. We're going to get you in front of people. Awesome. Thank you.

Whilst John concentrated on his cutlery bird, I sat down with Zoe to discuss his

second task.

I asked him to bring his favourite piece to see if what he loved creating the

most could also be a winner with potential customers.

He chose to showcase an amazing sculpture of Pegasus, the winged horse

Greek mythology.

It was something he had managed to sell a couple of years before for £1 ,200.

It's blown my mind. A guy has just got some cutlery and when you look at it so

closely and all the parts and it's so smooth, he has got such a talent, he can

get a good price for his work because it's 100 % worth it. Commission work, he

could demand more because his design process is long and he really thinks

about it.

Back in the upcycling barn, after tapering the fork prongs to create the

wings, John removed the discolouration caused by the blowtorch with some wet

dry paper.

He then gave them a quick polish and welded them together.

Ground down and polished the weld, formed these two decorative pieces to

exact same shape as the wing, and now I'm going to fit that.

inside the body of the bird.

Once he finished welding the bird's body, he moved on to the legs.

Using stainless welding rod, I'm going to clamp this in the vice and then twist

it around itself to form a cute bird's claw.

To be able to twist the metal into claws, John heated it with a blowtorch.

a couple of little stages left to go now the spoons to go inside the back and

i'm going to slice down the center of this final decorative handle and that

form the eye john's recycled cutlery bird sculpture took him four

hours to create had material and workshop costs of around 30 pounds and

priced at 150.

This piece is absolutely ideal for you to start making videos of how you create

such a beautiful little bird out of a spoon, and using that on your social

media, because I think everyone will want to know how that's made.

Absolutely. Because I can't work it out. First thing I did was try and peer

inside and see how it is. It's all stuck together. That actually leads me on to

a bit of a nerdy point, but you're mig welding this together, and I know that

you're making it work, but I feel like you're making life more difficult for

yourself with the finishing.

Because I guess the way the MIG welder works is kind of shooting that welding

wire in to whatever you're welding. It's adding material.

It's adding material that you're then having to remove by grinding it down.

TIG welding, you're adding the filler material.

So you can choose how much heat you're putting in, how much filler material

you're putting in.

a lot more variables but once you nail it and you get the hang of it you can

infinitely more adjustable believe it or not i actually own a tig welder but i

kind of gone with what i know you know i know i can make this work come down to

my workshop i'll show you how to do it if you want i'll tell you how for that

the 150 pound price tag what do you think of that i'd probably pay a bit

the only problem you're going to have is who's going to buy it because it is

very niche. Sure.

Volume pieces generally need to be for lots of people. Lots of people want to

buy it. So a bit more affordable. Yeah. Yeah.

The quality of the craftsmanship in John's first two pieces got a big thumbs

from Zoe and I, but they were purely decorative items.

So for his third task, Zoe set him a special mentor challenge and asked him

make a practical product.

John, before you arrived, I set you a challenge to make a small, functional

piece of art.

And the reason I did this is because I feel there's a market you're not hitting

and that is someone who might not have space for your art or the gift market.

Okay, makes sense.

John designed a mobile phone holder featuring a man sitting in a deck chair

looking at his phone. It was made from 50 spoons and four knives.

I'm going to start off by making a leg and I've got to subtly shape these

to the sort of size and shape that I want.

I actually want a slight taper to represent the bottom of the leg, so I

little wedge, and if I hold the spoon in, crush it with the power of the vice,

that will form the shape I'm looking for.

After shaping the spoon in the vice, John welded on the bowl of a teaspoon to

create the foot.

What I'm going to do next is use this rotary tool, really soft wire brush, and

that's just going to remove the carbon deposits from the weld.

To make the rest of the leg, John shaped three more spoons in the vice and after

welding them together, polished them.

That's the legs basically done.

Looking nice and bling.

Now it's time to move on to the arms and the hands.

As John's mobile phone holder took him 14 hours to make, to be able to show Zoe

a finished product, he brought along one close to completion and worked on the

deck chair the figure he made would fit in.

I'm going to use knives to make the frame. So what I'm going to do is make

rectangles that fit just inside of one another and weld them together at the

pivot point.

I'm going to use this to connect these two, so I'm just going to mark that

point.

I'm going to cut it right along there.

After cutting two spoons...

John welded them to the two knives of his first frame.

Right, that's my first frame complete.

Now I need to make one that is just a fraction smaller and that's going to fit

inside and pivot along this axis.

John's mobile phone holder featuring a man sitting in a deck chair had all the

style and attention to detail of his other work.

Using over 50 pieces of recycled cutlery, he created an eye -catching and

saleable product and knocked his mentor's challenge to create a

right out of the park.

How much would you price this at?

Yeah, I've got to factor in my time and I hope my skill.

Hang on, stop there.

Definitely your skill.

Right, I'll stop believing. I think probably around the £200 mark for

like that.

I'd absolutely buy that as a gift for £200 for sure.

It's really well done for just jumping in with both feet and you've done an

amazing job.

To help John make the sales he desperately needed to keep his dream of

successful metal sculpture business alive, we drew up an action plan for him

take home to West Sussex.

First, he needed to broaden his product range, including offering functional

pieces.

Next, we wanted John to learn to TIG weld and make large pieces of art.

Finally, he needed to promote himself and his work on social media.

With our continued support for two more months, John set to work on getting the

sales he needed to get his business up and running.

Job one was travelling to my workshop for a TIG welding lesson.

Alright. A form of welding that uses electricity to join pieces of metal

together. That's it.

That's it.

TIG welding is better for delicate and artistic metalwork as it leaves a neater

and better looking weld. But it can be tricky to master as it requires both

hands and a foot to control the power and heat of the welding torch.

The joy of TIG welding is you can get these stuck together, you'll get a

join across there without adding any filler material. Yeah.

Okay, here we go.

That's it. Good. Hold it there. Hold it there.

A bit slower.

That's it.

Hold the power the same.

Back and forward.

Yep. Perfect. You can see you're dragging the bottle. Perfect.

Really good. Look at that.

Yeah, that's lovely.

That's really good. There you go.

I'm proud of this moment. I'm sure of that. Yes.

Back at home, John spent weeks creating a large metal lobster and also worked on

making more functional pieces.

He even branched out into making jewellery from his cutlery.

I'm just going to have to gently work around this three or four times, just

putting curves in.

About 10 minutes, 12 minutes of my time if I do them individually, faster if I

do them in batches.

So there's my finished ring. Absolutely beautiful little rose pattern there.

For eight weeks after he attended my boot camp, it was great to see that

alongside his obvious talent, John was also prepared to roll up his sleeves and

get stuck into his action plan.

And boy, did it pay off.

How much have you earned over the last few weeks?

From a starting point of essentially zero in the last two months, I've made

a few pounds shy of £6 ,000.

I know, right?

You kept that close. £6 ,000?

£6 ,000, yeah.

I never thought that I would be where I am at this moment. We did.

Zoe was absolutely right.

John needed to deduct his costs from his outstanding sales of almost £6 ,000.

But in just two months, he'd fulfilled the potential we both saw in him. And

good news is, that was just the beginning of life -changing success for

18 months later, I've asked Zoe to visit him at his new workshop on a local farm

to find out exactly how he's built a thriving, sustainable business and how

bank balance is looking now.

Zoe, welcome.

Good to see you. Let me show you around. Thank you.

When he came to my boot camp, John was working in a small home workshop. But a

few weeks ago, he rented a new one that's eight times bigger.

and has renovated it to meet the needs of his business.

Absolutely love this place, John.

Tell me, why did you take it on?

Everything kind of went crazy. A real whirlwind last 18 months of my life.

Yeah, I did 20 grams worth of business in a day. I've sold, I think, pretty

every continent on the planet. My volume piece birds really serve me well, and I

just can't make them sell them fast enough.

And I have a commission folder for larger, more complicated pieces,

about 30 at the moment.

What's on the bench right now, John? Tell me what you're making.

I'm trying to do something a bit different right now with my volume piece

I'm going to introduce two new ones, a slightly simpler version of my highly

ornate bird, and another bird we're going to make today, which is a

That's a brilliant idea. Very clever, because that piece clearly does you

John's business has really taken off.

Selling £20 ,000 worth of pieces in just one day is phenomenal.

And I agree with Zoe that making more volume pieces is a very smart move.

He'll be using 10 pieces of recycled cutlery to make his new Kingfisher.

And he begins by making the sides, or wings, by welding two forks together and

shaping them to a point before grinding the weld and polishing them.

I'm going to use two separate mops to get this up to a mirror finish.

This is like a sisal rope, like a cat scratching rope kind of thing, and then

soft mop here, and that'll make it properly blingy.

That has got it almost to a mirror finish. You can see all of those tool

are basically gone.

And we're just going to get those really fine surface scratches out. I love this

bit. It's like transformation.

And that's it.

Simple as that. Dunning.

John builds up the body of the bird by welding on a grapefruit boom.

grinding off the discolouration caused by the heat, and polishing it to make it

shiny again.

Now it's time to fit the teaspoon which will form the chest of the bird.

That's the approximate fit I'm looking for. Don't mind a little bit of a lift

here because that gives the impression of a ruffled feather.

Once I'm happy with that, I'm going to mig -roll it in place.

We've got the underside of the bird done, so what I'm going to do Let's take

this nice, pretty bit of pattern cutlery, kind of wrap it around another

and that will form not only the foot of the bird, but also a nice way to mount

it.

After making the feet, John welds them to the body of his bird.

He then creates the back of his kingfisher with two spoons, which also

bird's beak.

And once they're welded to the rest of the beak...

John trims off the excess and starts on the eyes.

John, tell me, what have been your biggest successes since boot camp?

Biggest successes?

First, no more imposter syndrome. That's long gone. Full of confidence.

Everything's selling. I really do feel like an artist.

And second massive win in my life is I asked my girlfriend to marry me and she

said yes. That is amazing.

I mean, firstly, congratulations on getting married. But mainly for me,

lost your imposter syndrome. You've got your confidence and you are an artist

and you know it. I'm so super proud.

It's fantastic to hear about John's engagement and his newfound self

-confidence, which now matches the quality of his work.

His attention to detail can be seen throughout his new Kingfisher, from its

sockets formed with a rotary tool to the ball -bearing eyes.

Just hot -gluing them in position. It's a really useful little hack. It allows

me to get everything in perfect alignment.

And now, just put one little tack weld in the front there.

Okay, that is exactly what I'm looking for.

Now I'm going to tack weld that in place.

To finish, John tidies up the bird's facial features, adds a final spoon for

head, and then it's back over to the buffing machine.

There is my finished kingfisher.

So that will mount on a block of wood. It'll just slide onto a handle like

And that's it.

John's new recycled cutlery kingfisher has material and workshop costs of £25,

make time of five hours and is priced at £200.

It's great that he's expanding his range of volume pieces, but I'm keen to know

if the advice we gave him 18 months ago has been helping him to grow his

business. John, when we last saw you at boot camp, we gave you some action

plans.

One of them was to work on larger pieces. Now, I'm assuming with all the

of your volume pieces, that's taken a back step. I haven't really made any

large pieces because the volume, you know, the demand for the volume pieces

been so high and making a significant income from them is quite difficult to

sort of step away from. That's security.

I get it. Yep. But I am desperate to make some bigger, more complicated

So look out for that coming up soon.

Another part of the action plan was to promote and post on your social media.

If you haven't done that, you're in big trouble.

What's been going on?

Right, well, first off, started off initially taking your instruction by the

letter, posting every day for 30 days, getting your algorithm to pick me up,

it made a huge difference to me. My social media number is up to around

,500 over three platforms, so a massive increase.

And, yeah, just really humbled by the support and appreciation.

John has spent the last 18 months working through orders, developing new

products and promoting his business with barely a day off. And it's time to find

out how that's paying off financially.

It's been wonderful seeing all this today, John, and seeing where you're at.

have you made money? Are you surviving?

In 10 months, I have earned a little under £40 ,000. That is...

Incredible. I can't believe that. From the starting point of like zero, not

being able to sell anything, it's just monumental. Like, I mean, I was

weeks or days away from having to give it all up. And now here I am in a brand

new workshop.

Everything I make sells straight away.

It's at the risk of talking in cliches. You know, it is a dream come true. Well,

you literally are living the dream. You love what you do and you're making money

through what you love. Like, I am so proud.

After the boot camp, John worked hard to build on the strong foundations he'd

put in place with his action plan.

But to go from selling virtually nothing when I first met him to an income of

£40 ,000 after cost over the past 10 months is mind -blowing.

I've had a hell of a journey.

I've gone from not being able to sell anything, no one knowing who I was, to

being in really high demand.

I feel very lucky, very grateful, trying to stay humble and just trying

to pinch myself to believe it's all real.

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