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The Exit You’re Not Planning
The Exit You're Not Planning Is Already Deciding Everything Else There's a sentence I hear more than almost any other, and it's usually said with a slight laugh, like it's obviously true and doesn't need defending. "I don't need an exit plan yet. I'm nowhere near...
How to Grow, Scale and Exit Your Business
How to Grow, Scale and Exit Your Business The Real Story Behind Why I Rewrote The #ADDAZERO Trilogy From Scratch There's a specific kind of stupid that only makes sense in hindsight. Eighteen months ago, I was back home in Bermuda — for Amanda, not for me, though I...
Faithful, Not Just Compliant: What the Military Taught Me About Ethics That No MBA Ever Could
Faithful, Not Just Compliant What the Military Taught Me About Ethics That No MBA Ever Could In 2017, a firm called Smith & Williamson invited me to a private event in London (where I first met, amongst others, a very young Steven Bartlett) having looked at how My...
Busy Isn’t a Strategy: The Cost of Lost Focus
Busy Isn't a Strategy: The Cost of Lost Focus One of the Eight Universal Laws of Sustainable Business Scale You had a plan once. Not a vague sense of direction — an actual plan. Written down. Thought through. The kind of thing you were genuinely proud of when you...
8 Universal Laws
Why I Built The 8 Universal Laws (And Why They're Not Just Theory) Every single one of the eight blog posts you've read on this site — Transferable Value, Predictable Revenue, Systemised Operations, and the rest — points back to something. A single moment, a single...
In Arduis Fidelis
In Arduis Fidelis What "Faithful in Adversity" Taught Me About Building, Scaling, and Letting Go of a Business There's a moment every Combat Medic remembers. It isn't the training. It isn't even the first casualty. It's the first time you understand, properly...
Why Gerald Ratner Is Standing Beside Me at UNBREAKABLE
Why Gerald Ratner Is Standing Beside Me at UNBREAKABLE Let me tell you what happens when anyone mentions Gerald Ratner's name in a room full of business owners. About eighty per cent of them smile. Not unkindly. Just that knowing smile that says: oh yes, him. Then...
The Speaker’s Oath
The Speaker’s Oath No Manipulation, No Shortcuts, No Compromise There are things the military teaches you that never leave. Not the drills. Not even the battlefield skills. But the standards. In the Army, the role of the standard bearer was never just ceremonial....
The Unwritten Rules of Business
The Unwritten Rules of Business (And the Invisible Cost of Breaking Them) The Problem Nobody Talks About We spend a lot of time in the business world talking about strategy, systems, marketing, finance, and growth. We run workshops on leadership. We attend conferences...
The Magic Carpet Doesn’t Exist.
The Magic Carpet Doesn't Exist What the Berber People Taught Me About Business (And Why UK Owners Have No Excuse) There are places in the world that recalibrate you. Not because they're exotic, or beautiful, or far from home — though the Atlas Mountains are all three....
Your headline number might be the most dangerous thing in your business
£15.8 Billion. Twelve Consecutive Quarters of Growth. And a £381 Million Loss. Your headline number might be the most dangerous thing in your business. Let's talk about Morrisons. Not as a supermarket. As a masterclass in what happens when the people running the...
From Grass Cutter to National Training Lead
From Grass Cutter to National Training Lead: What Happened in Between Sometimes the door that changes your life doesn't look like a door at all. I want to tell you a story. Not because it's extraordinary (though parts of it are), but because I suspect more people than...