I spent fourteen years promoting club nights across Doncaster, Leeds and Sheffield. No degree, no marketing training, just working out what people actually respond to and then doing it again and again.
In 2010 I turned that into a marketing agency, mostly hospitality clients. Then COVID hit and half the business went overnight. The hospitality world had stopped, but the two mortgage brokers on my books were busier than they had ever been.
So I stripped everything else out and focused on financial services. That was five years ago. Since then I've worked with hundreds of brokers, planners and wealth managers on the same problem: how do you get in front of the clients you actually want, without buying leads or waiting for someone to refer you?
The answer usually isn't more activity. It's getting specific about who you serve, then building a system that reaches those people consistently. AI makes that far quicker than it used to be. What used to take me four hours of research per prospect now takes about thirty seconds. That's the beauty of it.
I'm based in South Yorkshire, I've got a young family, and the whole point of building it this way is so you get your time back too. Work less, earn more, enjoy life. That isn't a slogan I put on a mug, it's the actual test I apply to everything I build.