There are way too many founders running businesses that are slowly draining them, I was one of them. This is my story, and the reason I do what I do now.

What happened to me

I ran a UX agency for twelve and a half years. Around year eleven, I had a mental breakdown.
My son was young at the time, didn't want to do something  (I can't even remember what it was) and for some reason that moment was the final straw. I started crying, and didn't stop for about three days.

I knew something was desperately wrong. I didn't really know if I was ever going to come out of it. I wanted help, but I didn't want to expose myself on that level to somebody else.

It took me a while to recover. And stupidly, I think I kind of knew at that point that it was the business causing me this pain. But I couldn't leave. People relied on me. It was my baby. So I went back with a view of sorting it out.

I didn't sort it out. The issues just kept coming and the problems kept growing. We hit a bad financial period, lost a couple of big clients, and had to scrape ourselves through. We did. But at the end of that period, I was done.

I just woke up one day and thought: I don't think I can continue to do this anymore.
So I exited. I sold to my co-founder and tried to work out what the hell I was going to do next.
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"What came quite quickly after that was a loss of identity. I'd always been the guy that founded and run that business. Now I was just me. And I didn't really know what value just being me brought anymore."

This was also around the time of COVID. About a month after I left, the world became a strange place for a couple of years.

After leaving my business, I eventually found a role at Ipsos, a research business with 18,000 people, where I came in to help build and run a global UX function. And what struck me, sitting inside an organisation that size, was that the problems were exactly the same as the ones I'd had in my fifteen-person agency.

Getting enough of the right clients. Keeping the lights on. Making sure people had the right level of freedom without losing quality. Not over-promising. Keeping everyone heading in the same direction. Same problems, just a different scale.

That gave me confidence. The fundamentals don't change. And it told me that what I knew wasn't just one agency's experience. It was how agencies work.

Why I'm doing this now

I see more of this now than I ever did before. Founders who are working hard, keeping things afloat, but actually they're exhausted. They're not enjoying this. They're struggling. There's more and more pressure, and there's no clear way out.

That's exactly what I was feeling too.

The reason I'm doing what I'm doing now is that I want to make that experience of running a business easier, lighter, more enjoyable. Because there are too many people wrapped up in the weeds every day, doing stuff they don't want to do, that one day they're going to wake up and think: I don't want to do this anymore.

I don't want selling, or running away from their business, to be the only option they feel is viable.

If I'd had somebody in my corner during all of this, I think I might have made some different decisions. I probably could have redesigned my role in my business to be something that gave me energy, not took it away. But I never really saw that as an option. I just felt the need to escape.

I don't want people to feel like they've got to escape the thing they've built and poured their heart and soul into.

What I want is for people to feel they can actually enjoy the business they're in. To delegate some things, automate some things, remove some things, and redesign the role into something they genuinely get pleasure from.

And then there’s the whole grow-and-sell model, screw that. My priority is a business you actually want to turn up to. One that gives you the freedom to take a step away when it's a sunny day and you want to spend time with your kids or your family. Because otherwise, what's the fucking point? Why are we doing this to ourselves?

The pattern I keep seeing

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Most founders didn't start their business to end up where they are.

Some started because of passion, because they wanted to do their own thing, their own way, not be told what to do by someone else. Some spotted an opportunity and went for it. Some were made redundant and thought: why not do it myself? The reasons are different for everyone.

But one thing is true and consistent. Most set up the business with a view of what life was going to be like. And more often than not, after some time has gone by, maybe three years, maybe five, the daily role they have in that business looks nothing like what they imagined.

They're dealing with issue after issue. Responding to client needs. Responding to what the team needs. Responding to enquiries they don't really want to deal with, but they have to, because the lights need to stay on.

And suddenly the role they'd created for themselves in their mind, back when they founded the business, no longer exists.

What's left is stress. A consistent, relentless pursuit of other people's needs. To a point where they get lost in what they're doing, and why they're doing it, and whether this is even what they want anymore.

That starts to chip away. They feel trapped, because it's their baby. They set this up. They've built their own cage and it's not clear how to get out. And more often than not, they're so busy in the doing, in the weeds of every day, they don't have the time, the energy, or the headspace to step back and work it out.

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If those Monday mornings are getting a bit heavier, if the energy is starting to drop, that's the time to fix it. Not when you're where I was.

You don't have to wait until it gets bad

You don't have to wait until you're where I was to do something about it.

If you're starting to find that there are things you have to do on a regular basis that you really don't want to do. If those Monday mornings are getting a bit heavier, if the energy is starting to drop, that's the time to fix it. Fix it before things escalate. Because the longer you leave it, the harder it gets, and the more it costs you.

Who I work with
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I still do UX work. I've spent twenty-five years in it and I still enjoy it. It's not something I particularly want to give up. But it's more like fifteen percent of my time now. The rest goes on working with founders and solving these business challenges, and that's a balance I like.

If anything, I think I'm turning my UX skills of listening, understanding, spotting patterns, and redesigning things towards founder-led agencies. That's where I want to focus.

My sweet spot is creative agencies, one to twenty people. That's the area I know well. I feel like there are a lot of problems in that space, and I think I understand most of them from the inside.
I've found something I genuinely want to do, and I feel like I've got a genuine love for it.

If any of this resonates, I'm genuinely happy to talk. Not everything needs to come with a price tag. I do need to make a living, but I also just want to help where I can. If I can help founders enjoy their businesses more, I'm going to be a happy man.