The Frozen Food Van Years
My LinkedIn profile starts in 1998. My sales career started well before that, in a white Citroën C15 full of frozen food. In the early nineties I was one of the Marlin Foods van drivers, selling frozen food door to…
Category Business
I’ve built businesses from scratch, lost one in circumstances that taught me more about people than any MBA could, and started again. Twice.
This is where I write about entrepreneurship, leadership, and working life — without the LinkedIn polish.
Bought for a Pound, Wanted Back for £30m
Somebody bought Poundland’s £30m ($40m) loan for a pound ($1.30). Then, by most accounts, they wanted the full £30m back before anyone was allowed to rescue the business. That’s the short version of how Poundland, a chain with around 12,000…
If You Sell Me Exclusivity, Mean It
I came back from Shanghai with a phone full of WeChat contacts and a lesson in what exclusivity is worth. Very few people at the China Toy Expo wanted my business card. They ask for your WeChat instead. They scan…
A Clear No Beats a Maybe Every Time
I’m French, and this week I’m not particularly proud of it. The footage coming out of France has been on my phone between every meeting, and it’s grim viewing from a hotel in Shanghai. Here, people are working, building, selling…
Forty Years, Four Industries, Zero Qualifications
Forty years ago today, on 5 September 1986, I left Varennes-sur-Allier, my village in rural France, with two suitcases and a plan that was only ever meant to last six months. Learn English, then get a job on a cruise…
Two Messages, Two Kinds of Entitlement
Two messages landed this week that couldn’t have been more different, and both taught me something. The first: a company got in touch on LinkedIn with genuinely serious IP. Grade one licences, the kind that gets buyers who usually take…
The Offer I Turned Down the Same Week Pop Mart Proved a Point
Got headhunted this week. First time in a long time anyone’s tried to pull me somewhere else, and I won’t pretend it wasn’t flattering. When you’ve spent years building your own thing, you stop expecting the phone to ring like…
PPWR: How the EU Just Priced Small Businesses Out
The EU’s new packaging rules, PPWR, have just made selling to Europe a lot harder for my wife’s jewellery business. For the past few months, we’ve been working hard on a website for ako & sila, my wife Jovelyn’s jewellery…
Turning 65, Catching Covid, and Watching the Refund Go Nowhere
I turned 65 this week. My present was Covid, four days on the sofa instead of celebrating. Someone else picked up an unplanned windfall this week too. Unlike mine, theirs is worth having. The US Supreme Court struck down the…
Fleas, Tariffs and a French Toy Shop for Grown-Ups
My Airbnb host in Nuremberg just cancelled my booking for Toy Fair 2027. Booked a year out, gone, no explanation. Try finding anything similar for the same price now. You can’t. Old town, two minutes from the U-Bahn straight to…