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I started a business and sold it 4 years later. Maybe you've seen the posts on social media of people promising you a fast-track to £10k per month. Or a proven strategy to get you above £100k. So you might be wondering how it took me so long to start a business and grow it into something that someone wanted to buy. Four whole years. When I could have just joined a cohort of other ambitious founders and whipped up a £1m side hustle in a few weeks. Well, if you've never run a b

I'd bet that anyone running a business would enjoy it a bit more if they didn't need to have clients. Yeah sure, the bottom line wouldn't look as healthy, but just think about how much time you'd save in delivering client work, having weekly calls and the dreaded monthly reports. But, until the time that someone invents a business model that brings in money without customers, we're stuck with them. And, no matter how much they disrupt our lives, the last thing on earth that w

As I mentioned in a previous blog ( here ), Linkedin was instrumental to the success of my previous business. I would go so far as to say that it was the single biggest contributor to its success. But back in the old days of 2017 there weren't the masses of personal branding experts and copywriters telling you what strategies, templates and blueprints you must use to generate financial gain from Linkedin. Nor were there the tedious AI driven comments and messages. No, back in

Surely that blog title is going to win me some decent SEO results. But it's not just about the organic traffic potential. That title sums up the last 8 years of my career, starting as an employee in 2017, becoming a freelancer and transitioning to an agency owner. Then, selling my business in 2021 and effectively becoming an employee again within the company that I had run for 4 years. And finally, back to the world of self-employment again with FounderON. I would like to thi

In my opinion, your business only launches the day that you have your first client. Obviously there are exceptions, for companies that need to build a product or buy stock, but for a service business there should be no reason why you can't have income immediately. Now I'm not saying that it's easy to sign clients or generate revenue. I just mean that you should do the groundwork before you start relying on your new enterprise to pay the bills. The big risk of course is that y

During the 4 years that I ran my business, I 'took money' 3 times. None of the times did I need to take the money, but each time I did for a specific reason. Reducing your equity in your own business should never be taken lightly. But often it's possible to make your remaining equity worth significantly more than the full equity you started with. Rather than give my advice on what you should do, I'm going to tell you about each of the 3 times I took the money, and why. I hope

I'd guess that this isn't the first article you've seen giving advice on how to 'do' Linkedin. In fact, I'd bet it's probably not even the first one today. Everyone has an opinion on how it should be done. And what it should be done for. Some say it's all about the hooks, the profile optimisation or the commenting. One thing's for certain. There's no right way to use Linkedin. It all comes down to what you're looking to achieve. The right strategy for generating leads is goin

I'm not sure if I can think of anything that can be more positive or negative to your business than a hire. Get it right and it makes your life as a founder far easier and more fulfilling. Get it wrong, and the impact can set you back weeks, months or even years. Chances are that if you have plans to scale up your business, you won't be able to do it alone. You're going to need to successfully run the hiring gauntlet. I think it's so crucial that it should be added to the sch

At the beginning of 2024 I started offering a free business advice call to any agency owners that had a challenge or opportunity they wanted help with. (Book yours here ). Since then, I've spoken to over 100 agency owners, ranging from 1 person agencies up to 100+ people. Speaking to so many, over a short period of time, you can really get a feel for the type of people that succeed as entrepreneurs. Ambitious, confident, curious and not afraid to ask for help, to get them to

Always good for a morale boost when I do these blogs about mistakes and failures from my past. But, they also seem to be the most popular, so will park up my ego for another week and crack on. This weeks blog is a demonstration of why you shouldn't just start a business doing something you love. Or something that life guides you to. Well, maybe you should, but only once you've double checked it with the market. The market doesn't care how great an idea is, or how passionate y

Coming in second place, just behind HR (see here ), tech was my weakest area of running an agency. Even now, over two years on from exiting my business, it still feels a bit like the one that got away. We spent huge amounts of money on developing tech. I'd guess around £1m over just four years of running the business before the acquisition. The reason? The holy grail of the tech-enabled-agency increased valuation multiple. The reality? I don't think it even moved the needle.

I have a busy brain. Usually busy with things I don't need it worrying about. More often than not, some kind of plan to make money. So, for this blog, I thought I would share 5 business ideas that I've had recently that I would start tomorrow, if I had the time. Maybe there's someone out there that's looking to start a business, but needs a little help figuring out what to do. Maybe that person will start one of these company's and make a huge success of it. Maybe they'll fee

I regretted writing this blog within 20 seconds when I stopped to work out how long ago it was that I was 18. Safe to say those 21 years (bloody hell) have gone quickly. It was also a bit of a reminder how the overnight success of Molzi (well not strictly overnight, but 4 quick years) wasn't really overnight at all. So many of the learnings, and failures, and contacts that I'd made during those 21 years put me in a much stronger position to make Molzi a success. Below I try t

You've just sold your business for £5m. You're rich, congratulations. Now, what can you buy for £5m? Possibly any house you want, probably any car, and definitely any holiday you fancy. One small issue. Your other two co-founders. And that 10% EMI pot that you set up a few years ago. OK, but it's still pretty good. £1.5m each. Minus tax, which at todays rates would be 10% for the first £1m and 20% for the rest (please note, I'm not a tax expert). So you end up with £1.3m, plu

I'll say a word and you tell me the first thing that comes into your head. Yeah, you didn't realise that this weeks blog was interactive. Ok here goes. Me: "Cow" You: "Milk" Good start, and thanks for playing along. Me: "Sunshine" You: "Sunburn" A bit negative, but you've got the hang of it. Me: "Entrepreneur" You: "Risk taker" Perfect! That was a long, very weird, and very un-optimised-for-SEO intro to this weeks blog. Entrepreneur = risk taker. Job = safe. I think that was

Strange title for a blog. But it's something that's been bugging me for a while. In life, and particularly on social media, you will find no shortage of advice. Whether you ask for it or not. On my own business journey I took some great advice, but also received lots that I wished I hadn't listened to. My general suggestion to any founder is to prioritise advice from people that have done specifically what you want to achieve. That might be selling their business, or growing

There is no bigger leap during your journey as a founder than that very first leap from the safety of employment to the chaos of a startup. I have absolutely no data to back this up, but I would guess that fear of losing the safe monthly income is one of the biggest reasons people don't fulfil their dream to start their own business. But there are ways to reduce the risk, and even start day one with income, if you start preparing in advance of day one. Notice periods are grea

Sometimes the curse of the entrepreneur is the fact that they have too many ideas. Constantly. Hands up the people who have A4 paper filled with scribbles all over their house? So maybe the title of this blog should have been something more like 'How to think of an idea for your business that you can actually do, in the real world', but I'm learning how SEO works and I don't think people are searching for that. As you saw in my previous blog (see here ), I also suffered from

I always wanted to start my own business, but there was definitely a moment where wanting turned to needing. Lets take a trip back in time to try to figure it out. As I mentioned in a previous blog (see here ) I've pretty much spent my life starting up (and more often than not, closing down) businesses. My first proper business was when I was 18 and about to embark on my A levels. It was an online PC brand called StudentDesktops and fortunately, having achieved a D, E and U i

Despite having many attempts at 'doing business' before Molzi (see here ), the reality was that I started out on my first proper entrepreneurial journey with no real clue about how to do it, but a solid confidence that I would somehow make it work. During my four year adventure starting and running Molzi I learned a huge amount. Below would be my top 10 things, purely because, well, everyone loves a top 10. 1. It's OK not to be a billionaire. For many people reading the title