There are always reasons why you feel like you aren’t at the right life stage to start your own business: too young – not enough experience, embedded in an existing career – too much to lose if you fail and perhaps the hardest to overcome is feeling too old – like the opportunity has passed you by. Truth be told, there is never a perfect moment, it is always hard and that’s exactly the way it’s meant to be. Almost like a process of natural selection for commerce, just as there is in nature.

Wagestream was conceived on one simple premise – if you could let workers decide and control when they get paid their earned wages; could you put them in a much stronger financial position by preventing them getting into debt between pay cycles and having to suffer the debt-stress that impacts millions of UK households?

Photo c/o Jamen Percy

High Growth Handbook (scaling startups from 10 – 1000 people). By Elad Gil.

Loved this book, particularly liked the bit on Product Development Management and Product Marketing. Most of us have been hiring the wrong types of marketing people. The branding piece is so small, hire it out and the growth marketing most marketers have no experience of but it’s what you need so hire that in and make sure they have plenty experience of that!

1. Would you describe Covid 19 as a catastrophe or an opportunity?

It’s fair to say it’s been a bit of both! At Habito, we were fortunate that we already had a business that was 100% online. It’s how we built it, five years ago. Although we had a culture of working from the office, all staff were already set up to work remotely if they needed to so the transition was seamless. Plus, with highstreet brokers closed, our business was in the best position to make the most of consumers turning online for their goods and services during lockdown.

Photo courtesy of Jamen Percy

After starting my career at a hedge fund (Clareville Capital, acquired by Tosca Fund), I soon turned my attention to disruptive tech businesses to flex my entrepreneurial spirit: Karma Cans, Feast It and Airtasker. Having helped launch the rental kitchen business Karma Cans, I moved to support in a director capacity, the business recently closed a successful Series A. I am also an early investor and on the board of events marketplace Feast It, where I continue to learn from a very experienced board of operators. But it was at my most recent role as VP International at $140m GMV Australian jobs marketplace Airtasker, where I brought the brand to the UK as GM, that I met my co-founder, Sam Bradley, and was exposed to the decorating industry and its challenges.

I’ve had a few genuinely transformational moments in my career; I’d love to say that they were all born out of positivity, inspiration and amazing mentorship. Alas, they weren’t, but they were critical all the same.

Shoppers no longer enter a store with the same expectations and needs. This was the case before the pandemic and has now become an inevitable aspect to be considered in business strategy. Retailers’ presence across different channels is no longer a competitive advantage and this is why deploying an effective omnichannel has become a priority.

Ah, “athletes”. What a broad term. Most only see the athletic prowess displayed on the court, field or track. What’s not typically seen is the attributes that lead an athlete to success and dominance on and off the field. These same principles can and should be implemented by entrepreneurs.

The stark reality of the COVID-19 virus is that it has had a devastating impact on lives, economies, businesses and livelihoods. However I’m keen to try and look at this event, and think about what it has uncovered across the world of business and what this can teach us about the pressures businesses are under, our approaches to dealing with them and how we can learn to be more resilient in the longer term.