Publications

Most businesses who take on a master’s student’s dissertation see it as a favour to the university and the student.

But what I’ve discovered is that it’s more a privilege than a favour.

Paul sits alone in his office upstairs.

And on Paul’s screen is his weekly e-mail from Steve (his business development manager), and the e-mail shows…

It’s Tuesday, 9:47 pm. Steve is on LinkedIn searching for the operations director he messaged 2 weeks ago…

He can’t find her profile, and she’s not in his connections list anymore?

I’ve sat across the table from an opportunity that looked perfect on paper.

So I moved, fast & decisively… and I got burned for it.

Marketing teams will often take credit for their customers’ success.

But in reality, without the customer’s participation, even the best strategies usually fail.

It’s 6:53 am and Jack sits alone in his office with his new product’s marketing spreadsheet open.

It’s on a tab called “What went wrong”…

I met with more than 100 marketing agencies while I desperately trying (and failing) to fix my own marketing.

What I didn’t realise at the time was that…

…I was remaining silent at the exact moment it matters most.

Daniel posts his article, anticipating phone calls from it.

Days later he’s disappointed.

He got almost no reach, 2 reactions from friends and family… and only 1 article view.

It’s Wednesday 7:20 am. Sam places his steaming cuppa tea on his desk and spots and e-mail from his 2nd biggest customer. It’s a supplier review e-mail…

Most founders walk into a first meeting listening to a perfect pitch, a polished figure and a track record being laid out across the table like a deck of cards.

But across my 30-year founder journey I’ve learnt to listen for something else entirely.

David’s sitting at his kitchen table at 20 to midnight, his wife and kids went to bed hours ago.

He can barely keep his eyes open, the dinner and tea his wife handed him before bed sits on the table, cold now.

But he must find the rest of the money to keep his business going 1 more month.

6 weeks into a marketing campaign, Mark pulls up his dashboard and tries to read what’s happening.

The website traffic is real, and the impressions are climbing. 4 people have filled in the enquiry form; 3 from companies in sectors his firm doesn’t even serve.

As a small child, I remember watching my mother counting the family’s money on the bed at night while we huddled around. A daily reminder of just how poor we were.

There’s a phrase founders reach for when a launch isn’t moving.

“It’s early days.”

The phrase is reasonable and it is often true, but those same words can become the most expensive sentence in your business.

Because patience without a method isn’t patience at all; it’s steering blind.

And no calendar tells you when patience turned into waiting.

As the meeting starts, they drop the q-bomb: “So, what does your company do?”

You built your business from nothing; you know every nook and cranny.

You know your product at heart. You designed it, refined it, obsessed over it.

You open your mouth and…

… the words start moving in three directions at once.

Every variation of the answer sounds right in your head – yet you leave the other person dizzy…

There’s a question a lot of founders never ask themselves – and it’s something I wish I’d asked myself sooner.

I’ve been knocked flat more than once and built back up every time. For years, I told myself this is what real strength looks like…

It wasn’t, and I didn’t see it until it started costing me.

Most founders can tell you exactly why they said no to the last agency they spoke to.

What’s harder to explain is why the answer was already decided before anyone opened their mouth, why it was sitting there before a single slide went up.

Most founders see the same number every month for a year.

Each round feels different enough from the last that the number is hard to explain.

Eventually, most stop asking why…

There’s a sound a room makes when it gives up on you.

I missed it for years because I was too busy filling every silence with the next answer, the next solution, the next proof that I deserved the chair.

What I mistook for respect was something far more expensive.

Gavin's AI-built website takes under an hour to build the whole site clean, elegant and functional.

8 weeks in, the enquiry count sits at 3.

He’s not the first founder to buy speed and discover what speed actually produces.

The honest comparison starts on a dimension most founders never think to measure.

Most founders will tell you the job is about getting to the next milestone.

They build and sell their product, scale their business, and then cash out.

I too believed a version of that once.

Want to know the most expensive lesson I ever learnt?

I spent years building management systems that were better than the competition by a mile.

Cleaner code, sharper features, fewer compromises… and the market didn’t care.

Because I never built the engine that carries the product to the people who need it.

Every founder has carried the full weight of a business on their shoulders – and most have been burned by people who promised to help lighten the load.

You’ve been at this for six months.

No sales. No pipeline. And no traction.

But you’re calm about it – you’ve read enough founder content to know that building “takes time”.

Here’s the problem with that story: patience without a method isn’t patience.

It’s a slow way to spend the one resource you’re not earning back.

For years, I watched founders – myself included – hand over serious money to marketing partners who could not explain why their work should produce a result.

I used to think that was the industry.

Now I know it was a choice.

And it is being overturned, one founder at a time.