Speaking

If you’re organising a podcast, event, workplace session, or education talk, and you want someone who’s been in the trenches, not just on the stage, I can help.

I started a marketing agency (with no clients) while my wife was pregnant with our first child, and I learned very quickly that most advice quietly assumes you’ve got spare time and spare energy lying around. You don’t - you get one set. If you try to give 100 per cent to family and 100 per cent to building a business, something gives. Not because you’re lazy, but because you can’t be fully involved in two full-time lives at the same time. So you have to split what you’ve got, make choices, and stop treating that as a personal flaw.

That’s the territory I speak about. The gap between what most business advice assumes, and what real founders are actually living. You sit down to work, and five minutes later you’re dealing with the ordinary stuff again - a message, a form, a forgotten thing that suddenly matters right now. And in your head it’s, I’m lost. I don’t know which way to turn. I’m trying things, but none of it’s working, and now I feel guilty that I’m not doing more. The plan does not fail because the idea is bad, it fails because life keeps interrupting the person trying to build it.

After nearly 40 years in brand, marketing, and building businesses, I’m less interested in what sounds clever and more interested in what survives real life. I don’t teach from a tidy distance. I help people work out what to keep, what to ignore, and what to change when your time, energy, brain, and risk tolerance aren’t standard issue.

I’m available for podcasts, keynotes, panels, workplace sessions, and education settings. If you’ve got a theme, I’ll shape it into something that fits your audience. If you want to talk, get in touch.