I'm writing this from Acai Club in Beaconsfield. My son's napping, my Sunday run is done, and I'm £200k into building someone else's brand.
Running Toucan, a full-service Amazon agency. Co-owning Twenty One Beauty, a brand we're taking to exit. Trying to be present as a dad. Training like I actually care about my body. Doing all of it from a laptop, usually with an iced coffee next to me. It’s the life I always wanted. It just took me a while to get here.
This newsletter exists because I couldn't find one that spoke to the person I am. Brand builder, agency owner, athlete, parent. So I'm writing it myself.
Most businesses have a first impression problem and don't know it
We audited 34 brands last quarter. 26 of them had the same problem. Not their pricing. Not their ads. Not their copy. What people saw first.
It doesn't matter whether you're selling a product, running an agency, or building a brand. The principle is the same everywhere: you have about two seconds before someone decides whether you're worth their attention. Most businesses spend all their time and budget on getting people to that moment, then completely neglect the moment itself.
Your hero image. Your website header. Your proposal cover. Your LinkedIn banner. Whatever someone sees first is doing more conversion work than everything that comes after it combined. Most businesses treat it as an afterthought.
“What people see first determines whether they see anything else at all.”
The test I run on every new client takes 20 minutes. Put your hero asset next to your three closest competitors. Ask yourself honestly: is there a clear reason to choose yours? Not a marginal reason. A clear one. If you're hesitating, you have your answer.
Most businesses respond to poor conversion by spending more to drive more traffic. The smarter move is to fix what people land on before spending another pound getting them there.
Training when your business has no off switch
I run a hybrid training block. 3 strength sessions, a sprint intervals session, a long run and 1 Hyrox specific session. People ask how I fit it in around the agency and the brand. Honest answer: I don't fit it in. I protect it. There's a big difference.
Here's what I've learned running both a business and a training programme simultaneously: the discipline is the same muscle. The person who skips leg day because they don't feel like it is the same person who skips the hard client conversation or the Q4 strategy session. The reps you don't feel like doing are the ones that matter most.
I am a fair weather runner, I'll admit that freely. All winter it was the treadmill. Now it's spring I've started getting outside again. Today I did 15km and finished at the Acai Club in Beaconsfield. Abby met me there with Cody after his nap. That's what a good training week looks like for me. A Sunday run that ends somewhere worth running to.
“Discipline isn’t something you have in the gym and leave at the door when you get to work. It’s one thing. It either runs through your life or it doesn’t.”
The reason I mention this in this newsletter: the founders I see building the most consistently are almost always the ones who've got their physical operating system sorted. It's not separate from the work. It feeds it.
"Never stay up late for something you wouldn't get up early for."
I read this recently and it hit harder than I expected.
Think about it. You wouldn't set an alarm to scroll TikTok or put on another Netflix episode at 5am. So why are you doing it at 10pm when you should be asleep?
Most people don't have a discipline problem. They have a clarity problem. They haven't decided what actually deserves their time - so everything gets it by default.
The question isn't how do I stop wasting evenings. It's what would I genuinely wake up early for? Answer that, and the evenings sort themselves out.
That's issue one. Short and useful is the only format I'll ever write in. Your time is worth more than a 4,000-word deep dive you'll save and never read.
If this was useful, forward it to one person building something. That's the only growth strategy I need right now.