Winning Friends explores how connections fuel growth in business, culture, and life. It’s powered by e-Residency of Estonia, the digital ID that lets entrepreneurs turn those connections into borderless companies.
Join Julian Poole and Mirjam Hunt for honest talks with people building businesses beyond borders. Expect real, unfiltered stories from founders, CEOs, and leaders about building businesses and unlocking opportunities through the power of community.
Welcome to the show that proves success isn’t just what you know, but who you connect with.
LOST EVERYTHING. STARTED AGAIN: How to choose who you build a business with | Michael Corcoran
Part 1 was about Ryanair, internet fame and building a brand people couldn’t ignore. Part 2 looks at what happened when Michael Corcoran had to build something of his own.
👉 Missed Part 1? Start here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4oXzpsMyifhAw2uKppZGoy?si=c8fd86f14ccb41cc
After Ryanair, Michael co-founded Frankly. The business was growing. Then it collapsed. Michael says he lost around €30,000 in unrecovered expenses, along with any illusions about how far personal trust can carry you in business. Just four weeks later, he started again with Slice Social Consultancy.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
💸 why trust is not the same thing as due diligence
🤝 what to look for in a business partner
📊 why founders need to understand the numbers themselves
🧠 how owning your weaknesses can make you better at running a business
🛠️ how to build around what you’re good at
🔄 what starting again looks like after things go very wrong
👉 The Ryanair story was only half of it. Part 2 gets into the rest.
Winning Friends is powered by e-Residency of Estonia, where founders around the world launch, run and scale companies 100% digitally.
6 Oct 2026
DO IT AND ASK FOR FORGIVENESS: How Ryanair became impossible to ignore | Michael Corcoran
In 2021, Michael Corcoran walked into Ryanair as its new Head of Social with an open brief: take the airline’s social media, work out what it could become and build the team to make it happen. What followed turned Ryanair into one of the most recognisable, provocative and relentlessly entertaining brand voices on the internet.
For the first episode of our new season, Michael joins brand-new hosts Mirjam Hunt and Julian Poole to tell us how they did it. Today he runs Slice, a social consultancy built around helping companies develop stronger strategy, teams and capabilities of their own. So we also put the obvious question to him: if you’re a founder or small business without an eight-person social team, how should you approach social media today?
In this episode, you’ll learn:
⚡ why speed became one of Ryanair’s biggest advantages
🎯 how to turn a distinctive brand voice into a repeatable way of working
🔥 how to judge which risks are worth taking
📱 how small teams can make better social content without over-engineering it
🔁 why your best-performing ideas deserve more than one outing
🧠 what matters when building a social media strategy today
Michael gave us far too much good material for one episode, so we’re starting Season 2 with a two-parter. Part 2 lands on October 13, when the conversation moves from building brands to building a business – including the very hard lessons Michael took from the collapse of Frankly.
👉 Listen to Part 1 now and come back next week for the rest of Michael’s story.
Winning Friends is powered by e-Residency of Estonia, where founders around the world launch, run and scale companies 100% digitally.
14 Aug 2026
Left a billion-dollar company for a Michelin kitchen| Andres Tuul on Winning Friends
The first word that comes to mind when you trace Andres Tuul’s career is unconventional.
After helping scale The Farmer’s Dog into a billion-dollar DTC business, Andres stepped into a two-Michelin-star kitchen with no professional cooking experience. What might look like a detour has become a powerful source of new business ideas, including his latest venture, Lutso: AI technology that helps elderly people age with dignity at home.
In this Winning Friends bonus episode, you’ll learn:
🍽️ what a two-Michelin-star kitchen taught him about leadership and fast feedback
🐕 why The Farmer’s Dog was never just a pet food company
💡 how stepping outside your silo can lead to better business ideas
🏡 how Lutso is tackling a serious real-life problem
⚙️ why AI should remove bottlenecks, not people
Listen and share with your friends today!
Winning Friends is powered by e-Residency of Estonia, where founders around the world launch, run and scale companies 100% digitally.
Reach and audience
Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.
YouTube views
26,240
Score snapshot 15 Sept 2025
Spotify
4.8 / 5
18 ratings
Podcast Authority Score: 55 / 100
A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.
Quality
79
Social presence
0
YouTube
76
Engagement
0
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Guest appearances
Books guests
Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.
Questions about Winning Friends
Who hosts Winning Friends?
Dylan Hey and Logan Merrick host the show. Published by e-Residency of Estonia.
How often do new episodes come out?
The show publishes monthly, based on its RSS feed.
Does Winning Friends take guests?
Yes. Guests have been identified in episode analyses.
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