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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

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

Many business owners dream of having a big exit one day. I was no different From as early an age as I can remember, I always wanted to start a business and sell it. I didn't give much thought to what that would actually entail, or even what the business would do. My dream was to build a business that someone found valuable enough to buy. In September 2021, I was lucky enough to have that happen to my business. You can read all about that day here . As you'll see from the blog

You have to speculate to accumulate when growing a business. And we did a lot of speculating during the 4 years of starting, scaling and selling Molzi. But some of that speculation didn't result in accumulation. So rather than you making the same mistakes, I thought I'd share them. But sometimes you need to make your own mistakes to truly learn. So feel free to still make them. Below are the 5 main areas that we wasted money. We wasted money, but also saved money. By saving o

When I first sat down to start to turn the journey of building Molzi into a series of posts, I had a bit of a mind blank. I knew there had been lots of interesting, odd and hilarious moments, but the more I would try to think of them, the more my brain moved the memories out of reach. I found the best way to remember the big moments was to scroll back through the photos on my phone. Most notable moments had some kind of accompanying picture. I'm not quite sure how I missed t

I'm guessing I'm not alone with this, but if I'm being honest I gave very little thought to the earnout in the run up to selling my business. Everything I did or thought about for the 5 months prior to signing day was about getting to signing day (read about it here ). For anyone not aware of what an earnout is, it's a mechanism often used when selling a business to allow the founder and shareholders of the business that's being acquired to realise some of the ongoing upside,

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

Well the time has come, six years and one month after starting up Molzi in my spare bedroom, it's time for me to say goodbye. Three years ago I would have been devastated to think about this day. One year ago I'd have been terrified. But now, my overriding feeling is excitement, and that's why I know the time is right. A sad day as I say goodbye to Molzi. Can you believe I'm not a trained graphic designer? Back before Molzi was acquired, it was fair to say that it was my baby

Signing week had finally arrived, and this was the first time during the process that I felt truly confident that it was all going to happen. Although there still seemed like a huge amount to get done before signing on the dotted line, it was the first time that all parties were talking about when it happens rather than if . Photos had been taken, press releases signed off and plans made for starting to integrate the businesses post-signing. The actual completion was planned

It was time to sell As Molzi turned 4 years old, my mind was set on selling the business. A combination of things driving it, but mainly that I was exhausted, I felt like I had reached the limit of where I could add value, and… I wanted the money! Up to this point we had received 12 approaches to buy Molzi. Some had been from large global agency groups, some had been large US Amazon agencies and some had been from private equity backed roll ups. So far the faithful gut feel w

The World changed overnight I remember as if it was yesterday, Boris on the TV making the announcement that the UK was to go into a full lockdown. It seems so normal to think of it today, but I remember sitting there with my wife and thinking that’s it, all that work down the drain. So many businesses were decimated that day. Businesses that their teams had worked on for years, just stopped in their tracks overnight. My assumption was that Molzi would be no different. Surely

Starting our second year as the perfect lifestyle business As we started our second year we were a great lifestyle business. Every day was fun, I don’t remember there being a tonne of stress and I was able to spend every Tuesday with my daughter to take the opportunity to see her grow up. That was my goal when I set-up Molzi, but I found myself daydreaming at any given opportunity about how it would feel to have the first £50k revenue month, or £100k revenue month and, you ge

Retail sales agency and baby brand - a match made in he... Molzi began and ended its short life as very different businesses. Not just in terms of revenue and people, but actually the fundamental concept and services that we offered (and still offer today, just called Brainlabs instead!). I’ll do a blog soon that goes through the original Molzi business plan in detail, so you can see how important it is to have a plan, but how possible it is to deviate from it once you start