No one would hire me - so I built my own business! Brandon Hulcoop on lifting barriers for blind people

Happy Place

Fearne Cotton

Society & Culture, Mental Health, Health & Fitness, Relationships, Personal Journals

4.6 • 15.2K Ratings

🗓️ 25 June 2025

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

23 year old Brandon is the regional winner of the Enterprise category at the 2025 King's Trust Awards. In this chat with Fearne, Brandon explains how, before starting his braille business with the help of The Trust, he had applied for over a thousand jobs without any success. He always struggled to get past the interview stage either due to a lack of experience or due to his visual impairment.

Fearne and Brandon explore misconceptions about his visual impairment, the importance of supportive mentorship, and why starting a business has to come with some hilarious trial and error!

Plus, Brandon tells the story of how not being able to access shower instructions led to him setting a hotel fire alarm off, proving just how vital it is that public spaces are accessible for everyone.

...and stick around to the end of the episode because there’s a big surprise in store for Brandon!

All Things Dotty makes accessible products for visually impaired people, their families, and businesses – everything from braille menus and greetings cards, to colouring books and art work. You can visit the website here!

Find out more about The King’s Trust.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to Happy Place with me Fern Cotton. Today, a chat that's going to warm your
0:05.7	heart with happiness and hopefully fire you up with inspiration too. I'm talking to an incredibly
0:12.2	impressive young man. His name is Brandon. I got an email the day after saying, yeah, you came
0:17.6	across really well in your interview. Thank you for your application. However, we don't feel that you could work effectively with Excel, data management and databases.
0:24.3	And considering that they had asked me the day before, they'd actually said, well, how would you use
0:28.0	various applications and how did your software work and can you work with images?
0:32.1	And I said yes and gave detailed answers as to how I would do that.
0:36.3	They then came and said, well, because of your visual impairment,
0:38.5	we don't feel that you could do it.
0:39.7	And it was so frustrating for me that because I thought, well, yeah, I can do it.
0:42.3	Brandon is 23.
0:43.9	He's from Plymouth and he's one of the 2025 winners of a regional enterprise award
0:48.7	from the King's Trust.
0:50.9	Oh, I loved meeting Brandon so bloody much. He is such a bundle of brilliant fun energy,
0:59.8	but he's been through periods of feeling pretty despondent and discouraged. For quite some time,
1:05.2	he was unemployed and had applied for over a thousand jobs without any success before he joined the King's Trust
1:14.0	Enterprise programme. He always struggled to get past the interview stage, either due to a lack of
1:19.4	experience or due to his visual impairment. He's been blind since birth. Now, though, Brandon's the
1:26.7	proud owner of All Things Dottie, which makes
1:30.6	accessible products for visually impaired people, their families and businesses, everything from
1:36.0	Braille menus to greeting cards, colouring books and artwork. Now look, the King's Trust is such an
1:41.8	amazing charity. I'm a goodwill ambassador for mental health and well-being for them and I love my role.
	...

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