Welcome to my Substack

Lovely to see you, come on in...

Lovely to see you, come on in...

Can I start by giving those who know me a big welcome, thank you so much for popping along, I really appreciate you taking an interest. And to those who don’t know me yet, an equally warm welcome, I’ve no idea how you found the door and stumbled in, but please take a seat and make yourself at home. Like my last company, there are no tea and coffee making facilities here, so I hope you’ve brought your own.

What am I doing here? Great question, thanks for asking.

I could be described as a serial entrepreneur… or unemployable whichever way you choose to look at it, and by the time I reached my third successful start-up microbarbox.com I came to the realisation that the corporate life wasn’t for me.

Despite the dizzying job title of CEO (I can tick that one off now), I was still more pre-occupied with devising marketing campaigns that might make the odd person giggle, rather than us profit.

A great example of which was our ‘Expressions’ range, which included such classics as the ‘Please forgive me!’ and ‘Let's Break Up!’ gift sets.

These gave Scarlett (our brilliant Digital Marketing Apprentice) and I many happy hours chortling away, as we played around with the various phrase combinations and speculated on what was ‘just this side’ of good taste.

As you can see, from their complete lack of saleability¹, this range’s sole purpose was to amuse and delight, as we went completely off on a tangent from the rather more bankable ‘Happy Birthday’ range into the relentlessly niche ‘Sorry I shat on your rug’ range.

Many’s the time I imagine an 80’s John McEnroe bawling me out with a “You cannot be serious!”. Yes, quite frankly, I really struggle with that.

Once the ‘Expressions’ range was launched, the two most notable pieces of genuine feedback we received were as follows:

1. A Facebook fan² congratulating us on the funniest product post they’d ever seen. Result! 

2. A complaint stating the £1,000 price uplift³ on the ‘labradoodle’ option was taking the piss. Er, yes Sir, that was entirely the point. Sigh.

When we should really have been doing some proper marketing, like convincing the world that Tequila is the new Gin, we were in fact giggling over the prospect of anyone ever going for the ‘pay for the dog’s counselling’ option, proffered on the ‘Please forgive me!’ gift set. Happy days.

To summarise, once the business had gone from zero to £1 million turnover (after a seven year slog), I ticked that one off my bucket list and mentally checked out. 

I tend to have a nine year itch with companies and jobs, and when the opportunity arose to exit, I happily skipped off into semi-retirement land. 

So what’s next?

Jesus H Christ!!!⁴

Can I not just have some time off? Can I not just pause and take a breath? I have been hard at it for over 35 years! Can I not just discover Ashtanga yoga or master the art of a Coconut Chai traybake??? 

And breathe…

So I’m taking a year off, a gap year, if you will. This Substack will become a portal for my thoughts and document some of the experiences that await.

And perhaps more importantly it will reassure my very patient, very supportive husband that I’m not just going to sit on the sofa binge-watching MAFS⁵ for the next 12 months, but will be productive… on some level.

I’m ready to move on to fresh challenges… new horizons… and finally answer the question of whether I can rinse 600 words out of a pair of ill-fitting trousers. 

Time will tell.

I’d love for you to join me on this whimsical journey. If you fancy coming along and don’t want to miss any updates, just subscribe for free below.

If not, no worries, do feel free to pop in from time to time.

K8x

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1. I believe, to date, we sold a total of two of these sets, and weirdly they both decided to compose their own gift card message, rather than go for any combination of the prompts provided. Unbelievable.

2. Thank you Sir, I love you and if it wasn’t for this pesky menopause I would threaten to have your babies.

3. Visit this product and have a play with the options. I personally think £1,000 is quite reasonable to cover up that you’ve been caught wanking in front of your girlfriend’s pet dog, but then I’m old fashioned like that.

4. What does the H. stand for? — “whatever the errant imagination proposes and the imaginer is disposed to enjoy”… a beautiful quote taken from the Wiki page, if you have time, do give it a read, it’s an absolute treat.

5. Married At First Sight, the TV programme, UK or Australian version, I don’t mind which, they’re both as ridiculously entertaining as each other. In fact, if you haven’t tried it yet, treat yourself to an episode or two, then you’ll be fully up to speed as and when I release the rules to ‘MAFS Bingo’ which I’m currently workshopping… as an elaborate ruse to do more ‘research’.