As a single mother at 26 I’d built up a multi-six-figure business from nothing – winning awards and plaudits in equal measure.

By the age of 30 I was generating millions of pounds when I gave birth to my second child – but in a moment I did not see coming, everything came crashing down around me, as I stood on the side of a mountain, needing solace from everyone, and finally understood the cost of the path that had got me here

Fast forward a few years and I’m now running three businesses, with a combined turnover of more than ÂŁ1m collectively – and I’m about to have my third child – but this time it’s different.

I’m managing 30 staff across the country but here’s the thing – I’m the calmest I’ve ever been because I’ve learnt a different way after studying neuroscience, hypnotherapy, spiritual practice and so much more, to try and understand the impact of trauma, and how it affects our nervous system.

If I was offering advice to my younger self I would say: ‘Don’t work 14-hour days, trying to hold it all together whilst slowly destroying myself.’

That’s why I’m determined this time will be different and I want to help other people make the same mistakes that I did through my

I’ve lived through many layers of personal traumas, from an unstable upbringing with an alcoholic father, to abusive relationships, both emotionally and physically.

Following my breakdown I hyper-focused on studying across multiple disciplines of neuroscience, hypnotherapy, spiritual practice and so much more to try and understand the impact of trauma, and how it affects our nervous system.

This is what I’d share with her younger self – at different points in the journey.

Before you start this business – heal

You’re about to build something incredible, but you are also about to build it on foundations that are cracked.

ŔĎžĹơ˛č will push you further than you can imagine. It doesn’t just test your skills. It tests your identity, your capacity, your relationships, your survival instincts. It will shine a huge light on every unresolved trauma you are carrying.

The pressure will amplify the parts of you that are driven by fear- fear of not being enough; fear of losing everything; fear of being seen.

If you don’t turn towards those parts now – you will be forced to later, and when that moment comes, it won’t feel like growth, it will feel like total body and mind collapse.

Success built on survival is not sustainable success, so heal first, or healing will happen through crisis.

Stop proving. Start building

You think you are building a business but really, you are trying to prove your worth.

You are chasing validation, chasing security, chasing the feeling of finally being safe.

So you will overwork, over-give, over-achieve, and people will praise you for it. They will call you driven; resilient; inspiring, but they will not see the cost, nor will they care.

The exhaustion, loneliness and constant pressure is only yours to hold but you do not need to prove you are capable, because you already are.

Build from belief – not from fear

Boundaries are not selfish. They are non-negotiable.

You will try to be everything to everyone. Clients, staff, family, friends.

You will say ‘yes’ when your body is screaming ‘no’ and will stay available when you desperately need space.

And you will call this commitment, ambition, drive, but what you are actually doing is abandoning yourself, losing yourself.

A business without boundaries becomes chaos. A leader without boundaries becomes resentful, miserable and will lose all power.

Your capacity is not infinite and pretending it is will nearly break you. Protect your energy like you protect your income. Both are business assets.

You cannot outrun your nervous system

You will believe you won’t suffer burnout but you will. You’ll try and push your way through exhaustion, but you can’t.

Your body will always have the final say.

When you ignore the signals – the anxiety, the tension, the inability to switch off – they do not disappear they build and they build, until one day you physically and mentally cannot continue.

That breakdown on the mountain will feel like failure but it will actually be the turning point that saves your life. Learn to regulate. Learn to rest. Learn that slowing down is not falling behind. It is how you build longevity.

Success means nothing if you lose yourself. You will hit milestones you once dreamed of.

Financial freedom, recognition, growth, but you will realise, it isn’t worth it because you built a life that looks successful but feels empty.

You will have sacrificed time with your children, moments you cannot get back, versions of yourself you didn’t look after.

Second time round is different

The second time around, you will do it differently.

You will build with intention, lead with clarity and finally understand that real success is not just what you create but it is how you experience the life you are creating.

If I could go back, I wouldn’t tell myself not to start. I would tell myself to start in a different way.
With self-awareness, real support and with courage to face what I was running from.

• Megan Stachini works with successful leaders and entrepreneurs who are thriving on the outside and running on empty within.

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I certainly did. When we launched Fusion Surfaces, I could see the potential straight away.

Architectural vinyl wrapping could be used across so many sectors, offices, hotels, retail, stadiums, but no one knew about it.

I assumed once people saw it, the work would follow. It didn’t.

We had to build everything from scratch: case studies, credibility and trust before we could scale.

People are the hardest part

Looking back, that part wasn’t the hardest though. The hardest part has been people.

I came from a teaching background, where getting people to do their job well didn’t feel like such a battle.

In business, it’s very different. I thought if you hired people and treated them well, there wouldn’t be any issues.

But without clear structure, things slip. Jobs don’t get finished properly, standards drop, corners get cut.

It’s taken us years to find the right people. The ones who genuinely care about the end result and want the client to be impressed, not just the job done.

At the same time, we started the business when our daughter was just two years old.

From arch-enemies to best friends – the CONDUCTR story

That brought a completely different layer of pressure.

Jade Mitchell and I are not just business partners. We’re a couple, raising a family and running a company together.

I didn’t want to miss the school runs, the pick-ups, the time that you don’t get back.

So we worked around it. Shorter days, then evenings once family time was done.

It’s not something people always see. From the outside, it can look like flexibility. In reality, it often means you never really switch off.

And because we’re both in the business, there’s no safety net. If things go quiet, it’s on us. That pressure sits there all the time.

ŔĎžĹơ˛č is ruthless

What’s surprised me most is how ruthless business can be.

I’m naturally optimistic and tend to see the best in people, which has meant I’ve been caught out more than once.

But it’s also made me value the people we do work with, the good clients, the supportive suppliers, the people who show up and do what they say they will. That matters more than anything.

Running a business as a couple brings its own challenges too.

Even with different roles, work and personal life blur constantly.

Nobody tells you founding a business is so lonely

There have been times where it’s been hard to switch off, hard to separate the two, and that’s something we’ve had to learn over time.

People often assume being your own boss makes life easier. It doesn’t. You carry everything, the responsibility, the decisions, the outcomes.

We’ve worked the day before our wedding, on our honeymoon, on every holiday we’ve had. There isn’t really an ‘off’ switch.

But there’s a reason we keep going. We want to build something meaningful, not just for our family, but also for what we represent.

Two women running a business in a construction-led industry isn’t always the easiest route.

There’s still an element of having to prove yourself more, to be taken seriously.

That’s been a challenge, but it’s also been a driver.

We’re proud of what we’ve built. In six years, we’ve grown consistently year on year and are on track to hit £900,000 turnover.

We work with some incredible clients, from leading fit-out companies to Premier League football clubs and venues like The O2.

But even with that, it rarely feels like enough. There’s always more to do, more to improve, more to achieve.

And you get on with it. Because it never really stops.

• Rosie Christie is director of , a UK specialist in architectural finishes, wall graphics and interior refurbishment for commercial environments. Founded in 2019, the business has grown consistently year on year and is on track to reach ÂŁ900,000 turnover. Fusion works with leading fit-out contractors, hospitality brands and sports venues including Premier League football clubs and The O2.

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Instead, it was a lazy 7am start in the gym with my kids. Two budding rugby players. A great start to any week.

But before we dive in, let me frame the week with a quick intro.

In grandiose terms, I’m COO of Voxelo, introducing a new 3D layer to the world of eCommerce.

In plain terms, we’re helping people feel more confident about buying things online.

Both are true, and holding them together is what makes this role pretty exhilarating.

Voxelo is a new type of virtual studio for ecommerce. We turn a simple product video into a 3D digital twin.

We’re three co-founders based in Manchester: CEO Vladimir Mulhem, CTO Roman Bromidge and me.

Monday

Like every day, Monday is a combination of living in the weeds, creating, fixing and maintaining, and forcing my head up to do some strategic planning.

The weeds work is all the better since Claude Cowork was released. On this sunny Monday it diagnosed and fixed an API issue across my accounts. When you’re a founding team of three doing the work of 15, having a sharp AI partner that both thinks and acts is no small thing.

With that tackled, I’m preparing for a meeting with a major retailer, one of the UK’s biggest. They’re deeply aware of the problem we’re tackling, and I love their engagement in this early partnership.

Then there’s a call with two new agency partners I met the previous week after speaking at a Shopify event, Successify, hosted by Pixel Kicks. We presented on the near future of visual commerce and it seemed to capture people’s imagination.

In between, I’ve been reviewing our virtual studio with the team. What it promises is significant: a single destination where any seller can create 3D, AR, product and lifestyle imagery from one simple product video.

Tuesday

A morning of deep work and future gazing, looking at emerging agentic commerce opportunities and speaking with two partners who may be able to assist with our R&D efforts later in the year.

We’re fortunate to have incredible regional support in tackling this problem, from accelerators and research partners to some of the biggest names in tech, but it still feels like we’re building the plane as we take off.

The afternoon is emails, admin and prep for investor conversations the next day.

Wednesday

I’m on the train to London for UK Tech Week, with the support of Manchester Digital.

Then it’s across town for an investment panel at Dawn Capital, where Innovate UK and the British ŔĎžĹơ˛č Bank tease announcements on supporting companies like us.

These are the days where you compress months of R&D, customer testing and complexity into a few compelling minutes of conversation, or at least that’s the aim.

We’ve recently closed a significant raise, with more good news to follow, so positive sentiment in investor conversations has grown. They’re good questions to be exploring.

Holly Moore: Rubbing shoulders with the stars to living with OCD

Meanwhile, Vlad has been at SXSW in Austin on an Innovate UK-supported trade mission. He’s back and straight into debriefing the team. Engaging investors and partners at events like these has been a big part of what we’ve been doing in recent months.

Return trains from London are delayed. I get home at 1.30am.

Thursday

Navigating enterprise engagements as a pre-seed company is its own discipline. You need to match their rigour while moving fast.

With time made available, I lean on the team’s expertise to scope new R&D projects, and we’ve been introduced to university research partners, the kind of connections that could significantly shape how our technology evolves.

Wider partner conversations across the week have gone deeper too, stretching into profitability, data opportunities and how agencies can build a 3D and AR layer into their own service offering.

Friday

After customer updates, I start prepping for Voxelo’s next planning day, analysing our operations and go-to-market strategy and preparing a series of ‘positive provocations”’ for the team.

The diversity of any given week is huge: competitor analysis, investor meetings, product testing, customer onboarding, content creation, billing, agency and tech partnerships, and that’s before you get to the research.

Our technology, UG3D®, leverages 3D Gaussian splatting and AI, and sits at the edge of what’s feasible today. If you asked what the red thread through my week was, it would be this: how do we build something that makes Voxelo’s value simple to discover, understand and use?

We’re a young business, pre-seed, if that even matters anymore. It’s a privilege to be backed, to have customers who believe in what we’re building, and partners who are leaning into this problem with us.

And to be doing work that genuinely hasn’t been done before.

• Ben McKay is COO of Manchester-based Voxelo, which has just closed a ÂŁ650k investment round.

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He founded training provider Apprentify in 2019, before joining the company as CEO in 2022 and has already grown it to £25m in turnover with 250 staff.

Despite his success, thoughts of his former business partner at Pareto Law, Andy Sawer, are never far away. A photo of the two of them in happier times looks down on him from his office wall.

They were both working in the telecoms industry when they met on a Mercury Communications incentive trip and decided to go into business together.

They named it Pareto Law, even though it has nothing to do with law, after Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto’s 80:20 principle, which suggests that 80 per cent of outcomes come from 20 per cent of causes. They decided the idea could be applied to sales.

Fitchew and Sawer were not typical co-founders. The pair founded Pareto Law in 1995 from a broom cupboard in Salford and shared an office for 26 years until Sawer’s death.

Both were happily married family men but were so close that when they travelled for business, they shared the same bed.

“It was incredibly intense,” Fitchew told . “If we went on a business trip, we shared a room. We never took two rooms. If we had a king-size bed, he had the left-hand side and I had the right.

“When Randstad acquired us, we had to go to an MD event at the London Hilton on Park Lane. The CEO’s PA rang up and said, ‘We need to book you a couple of rooms.’ I said, ‘We only need one.’ She said, ‘You’re not allowed, you have to have one each’,”

In the end, they had two rooms but, after ruffling the sheets on one bed to make it look used, they shared the other.

“That’s just how we were,” he said. “We were very close. I think about him every day. I’ve got his picture on the wall.”

Jonathan Fitchew and Chris Maguire on The Naked Founder podcast

Within a split second of seeing his co-founder’s empty desk at Pareto Law after he died, Fitchew knew he could not stay in the business.

“When Andy finally died, it sort of took my handcuffs off because my job was done,” he said.

“I’d looked after the business during Covid and he was not going to be there to enjoy it, so it felt like a natural point to leave. I knew I didn’t need to be there anymore. I wouldn’t have wanted it without him.

“I shared an office with him for 26 years, side-by-side, and as soon as I walked in, I knew it was over.

“When Andy died, part of me died too. I knew within a second of looking at his empty desk I was out.”

The pair had grown Pareto Law to ÂŁ40m in turnover and 400 staff before it was partially acquired by Randstad in 2008, just ahead of the financial crisis.
Fitchew said he had mixed feelings when the deal was completed.

“My world changed,” he said. “Yes, I had this big cheque and we were secure, but I felt the air had been sucked out of me. It no longer felt like mine. I felt like I was renting it.”

Fitchew has always been a disruptor and was kicked out of school after his rebellious streak got him into trouble.

Chicken man: Jonathan FItchew keeps chickens

Today, if he is not building Apprentify, he can often be found tending to his chickens, building something out of Lego or thinking about his best friend.

You listen to the latest episode of The Naked Founder podcast

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After 20 years in tech and AI, I’ve learned the opposite: the technology changes constantly, but the principle of what actually creates value does not.

The businesses that win are not the ones that start with the flashiest tech. They are the ones that start with a real problem and solve it in a way that is simple, high-quality and commercially useful.

If you can deliver something valuable quickly, generate revenue from it and do it to a high standard, you build trust. That trust compounds. Clients come back, they tell others, and over time you create an advocacy flywheel that becomes incredibly hard to stop.

Pair that with a big vision and you can scale far faster than people expect.

The first chapter of that journey for me was at Rant & Rave, where I spent a decade learning what great growth really looks like.

I wasn’t the founder, but I was fortunate enough to work alongside a brilliant one and to be part of building something special.

Hitting first million

I still remember the moment we hit our first £1m in revenue. My honest first thought was: ‘I want some of that.’

But what really stayed with me was not the number. It was the culture, the ambition and the sense of mission we built as a team.

That business would go on to scale to more than ÂŁ22m in ARR before being sold in 2018.

Being part of that journey gave me a front-row seat to what sustainable growth actually requires: clarity of purpose, relentless execution and a product that genuinely solves a problem customers care about.

When I left Rant & Rave, I knew I wanted to build on my own terms.

Like many founders, I went through a period of experimentation. I ran a full-service agency, built a SaaS company in the brand advocacy space and even explored a wearable app.

I don’t see any of those ventures as failures. They all taught me something. But none of them truly lit a fire in me.

What I was searching for, without fully realising it, was alignment. That point where what you are good at, what you love, what the world needs and what people will pay for all come together.

In Japanese, they call it ‘ikigai’. For me, that came in the form of Birmingham Tech Week (which became TechWM).

Building Birmingham Tech Week was about far more than revenue, although scaling to ÂŁ1m with the backing of ecosystem partners including Goldman Sachs, IBM, Accenture and Rigby Group was a major personal milestone.

What mattered more was what it represented.

We weren’t just building an event or a platform. We were helping shape an ecosystem, creating connections, opening doors and showcasing the West Midlands as a serious force in innovation.

Today, the region’s tech sector is the fastest-growing in the UK and worth more than £16bn.

To have played even a small part in that story means far more to me than any single revenue milestone, because the real outcome is opportunity: more founders, more jobs, more investment and more belief.

Now, as a second-time founder at Unloq, I’ve found that building a business is easier and harder in equal measure.

Easier because you have the playbook. You’ve seen the patterns, made mistakes before and understand what good looks like. Harder because your goals are bigger and your expectations are higher.

At Unloq, our mission is to transform the way businesses develop, adapt, execute and measure strategy through next-generation AI decision intelligence.

Finding your ikigai

In many ways, I’ve found my ikigai again. I know the road ahead will come with setbacks; that is the life of a founder.

But when you know you are building something that matters, you develop a level of conviction that carries you through the difficult days.

My journey to my first ÂŁ1m taught me that revenue is important, but it is not the point.

The point is trust, impact and building something meaningful enough that growth becomes the natural result.

• Dr Yiannis Maos MBE is a serial entrepreneur and tech advocate with more than 20 years’ experience in AI, technology and growth. He is the co-founder and CEO of Unloq, a decision intelligence platform helping organisations use AI to make smarter, more impactful decisions.

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The salary was sizable, the pension was lovely, and the Range Rover was very comfortable, but I had an itch to scratch that I could no longer ignore.

And so, Freedom Media Group was born.

Moving from a prestigious Manchester office to the back bedroom of my house in Marple Bridge was the first real shock.

What I hadn’t anticipated was the loneliness. Those first few months were quieter than I’d expected, and there were moments where I genuinely questioned whether I’d made the right call.

But as the business began to find its feet and acquire clients, all of whom, I’m proud to say, we still work with today, that loneliness quickly gave way to something far more energising.

If you’re considering a similar leap, here’s what I’d tell you: the opportunities in this marketplace are enormous, if you’re willing to look for them. Think big, knock on big doors, and back yourself.

If you have the right intentions and great ideas, the clients will come.

Build your business on customer satisfaction and genuine happiness rather than chasing revenue, and the revenue will follow. It really is that simple, and that hard.

Making your first million

The journey to your first million is by far the most challenging stretch. You’re generating revenue while simultaneously figuring out what your real point of difference is. What makes you better?

Why should someone choose you? The answer to those questions takes time to crystallise, and in the meantime, the only thing you can do is trust the process you’re building and stick to the plan you’ve spent so long thinking about.

Since launch, Freedom Media Group has grown continuously by more than 50 per cent year-on-year, both across the UK and internationally, and we’ve been fortunate to welcome clients we are genuinely excited to work with every single day.

But by far the most important ingredient in all of it? Your network, no question.

I was fortunate, during my years at Global, to have worked alongside some outstanding businesses and brilliant individuals. Those relationships followed me into my own venture and have been invaluable. There are a lot of kind, generous people in this industry.

If you put your hand up and ask for help, you’ll get it.

Karma always pays its bills

And in return, when someone needs your support, no matter how stretched you are, give it. I can’t stress how important this is. Karma always pays its bills.

It’s an ethos I’ve lived by throughout my entire life and career, and it has never once let me down.

Building Freedom Media Group to where it stands today has been the single greatest professional education of my life.

It is a very different world from working within a media owner. It has its own pressures and its own stresses, but on balance, it has been full of opportunity, full of remarkable people, and rich with possibilities for personal growth that I simply couldn’t have found anywhere else.

I look back on what this agency has become with real pride. Not just in what we’ve built commercially, but in the team around me and what they deliver week in, week out.

I’ll be forever thankful for my time at the incredible business that is Global.

Being exposed to, working with and learning from outstanding operators like Stephen Miron, Mark Lee and Mike Gordon gave me skills that enabled me to go on to build Freedom, which this year will see many millions of pounds in revenue.

This might sound a little cheesy, but I mean every word of it: if you’ve got the itch to sail your own ship, do it.

Back yourself. Lean on and put your trust in the people around you. And give it a bloody good go. What’s the worst that can happen?

•  is a leading advertising and marketing agency offering comprehensive digital marketing and traditional solutions.

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And yes, those moments exist, but what no one really tells you is what sits underneath all of that.

For me, one of the biggest lessons has been that consistency is everything.

You can have game-changing moments, but they are rarely what builds a business.

Founders need flexibility rather than full-time staff

It’s the small things, done well, every single day, that create real, sustainable growth.

The compound effect of showing up, staying disciplined and executing the basics is what truly moves the needle.

There are also days when everything feels overwhelming. In those moments, I’ve learned to shift my mindset to ‘bite-sized chunks’.

Focus on what’s in front of you. Deal with the immediate. Progress doesn’t always come from big leaps. Often, it’s about simply moving forward, one step at a time.

The comparison trap

A big lesson I’ve learned is that comparing yourself to others is both pointless and dangerous.

In today’s world, it’s easy to get caught up in what people are sharing on LinkedIn or other platforms.

But the reality is, what you see is rarely the full picture.

I think it’s healthy to stay aware of what others are doing, but it’s essential to remain grounded in your own values, your own vision and your own journey.

Increased awareness

Founding a business has also made me far more aware of the world around me.

Things that once felt distant suddenly matter. What’s happening in the Middle East, for example, can have a direct impact on my business, from fuel costs to energy prices.

When you work for someone else, it’s easier to detach. As a founder, you can’t. Everything connects back to your business in some way.

Personal sacrifices

But alongside the wins come the challenges, and these are the parts people don’t talk about enough.

I took just four days of maternity leave. In the early years, recruitment meant early starts, and my husband, Martin, took on the responsibility of doing the nursery and school runs every day for our daughter, Charlotte.

I missed a lot of those moments, school events, nursery milestones, things many parents take for granted.

Thankfully, Charlotte understood that. She’d say: ‘Mummy runs her own company,’ but that doesn’t mean those choices were easy.

Always ‘on’

Then there’s the mindset. The reality is, you are always ‘on’.

I can honestly say that for 21 years, I haven’t had a single day where I haven’t been thinking about the business.

Whether it’s checking emails on Christmas Day or dealing with an issue while on holiday, it never truly switches off.

And that doesn’t just affect you, it affects your family too.

They feel the pressure, they sense when things aren’t right and they carry that with you.

Hidden pressure

There’s also the weight of responsibility. As a founder, there’s no buffer. You don’t always have a mentor to guide you. I didn’t.

Imposter syndrome can creep in more often than people realise. You question your decisions, you doubt yourself, and yet you still have to lead from the front.

Phlo, QBS & PortSwigger among winners at Northern Tech Awards

Despite what people may think, it isn’t always glamorous. It isn’t always fun.

Behind the scenes, you’re dealing with things you may never have anticipated. Corporation tax, staffing challenges, employee wellbeing, rising costs.

You become responsible for areas of a business you may never have had exposure to before.

More than just business

But perhaps that’s the reality of being a founder.

It’s not just about building a business, it’s about growing as a person.

Becoming more resilient, more aware, more adaptable. Learning to navigate uncertainty, make decisions under pressure and keep moving forward regardless of how you feel.

The wins are real, but so is everything it takes to achieve them.

•  is an independent business recruiting across the North West of England since 2004.

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You assume strategy, product, or funding will be the hard parts.

In reality, it’s people – finding them, managing them, paying them, and sometimes letting them go – that will test you the most.

When I started  (Transformify Ltd), I thought hiring was about choosing the ‘best’ candidate.

It turns out, that’s one of the first mistakes founders make.

There is no universally ‘best’ hire, only the best fit for a very specific moment in your company’s evolution.

Early on, I hired people who looked impressive on paper but weren’t suited for the ambiguity and chaos of a startup.

They needed structure. I needed builders. We were both set up to fail.

Another lesson nobody warns you about: hiring locally limits your horizons.

In the early days, like many founders, I defaulted to hiring within familiar geographies.

It felt safer – the same time zone, same legal framework, easier communication. But it was also incredibly limiting.

The moment we embraced international contractors, everything changed. We gained access to talent we simply couldn’t afford or find locally, and we became faster and more competitive overnight.

But here’s the catch: hiring globally introduces operational complexity that most founders underestimate.

Paying contractors across borders is not just a finance function; it’s a trust function.

Delayed payments, compliance gaps, or a lack of transparency can destroy relationships quickly.

That’s one of the reasons TFY evolved the way it did – because I experienced firsthand how broken contractor payments and workforce management can be.

If your people don’t trust that they’ll be paid correctly and on time, nothing else matters.

Founders need flexibility

One of the most common hiring mistakes I see – both from my own experience and from senior executives we work with – is overcommitting too early.

Founders hire full-time employees when they actually need flexibility.

In today’s world, the rise of self-employed professionals isn’t a trend; it’s a structural shift.

The global workforce is moving toward independence, and companies that don’t adapt will struggle to stay agile.

At TFY, we learned to think in terms of outcomes, not headcount. Instead of asking, ‘Who do we hire?’, we started asking, ‘What needs to be done, and what is the most

efficient way to get it done?’

Sometimes that’s a full-time hire. Often, it’s a contractor, a freelancer, or a distributed team across multiple countries.

Of course, with flexibility comes another mistake: lack of clarity.

When you work with contractors, you can’t rely on implicit expectations.

You need to be brutally clear about deliverables, timelines, and success metrics.

Early on, I assumed smart people would ‘figure it out’. They didn’t – and that was my fault, not theirs.

Then there’s the emotional side of hiring, which nobody prepares you for.

As a founder, you want to believe in people. You want to give them chances. But not every hire will work out, and holding on too long is a mistake I’ve made more than once.

Wrong hire can wreck culture

The cost isn’t just financial; it’s cultural. One misaligned person can slow down an entire team.

If I could give one piece of advice to first-time founders, it would be this: treat hiring as a continuous experiment, not a one-time decision.

Build systems that allow you to test, adapt, and scale your workforce dynamically. The future of work is not about owning talent – it’s about accessing it efficiently and responsibly.

And finally, remember this: your workforce strategy is your business strategy.

The way you hire, pay, and manage people will define your speed, your culture, and ultimately, your success. I learned that the hard way – so you don’t have to.

• Lilia Stoyanov is an angel investor and the CEO of TFY (Transformify), an AI-powered global contractor management platform.

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Although, knowing the younger me, I’d probably nod politely, ignore the advice and carry on doing exactly what I was doing anyway.

Like most people in hospitality, I started out focused on the day to day.

Running busy venues, building strong teams and trying to get through Saturday night service without something catching fire or the EPOS system deciding it had had enough.

Hospitality teaches you resilience very quickly. It also teaches you how to solve problems at speed, usually while three other problems are arriving at the same time.

Over the years, I’ve been fortunate to help build and operate some fantastic hospitality businesses, including 17 years with the Living Ventures group (The Living Room, Gusto, The Alchemist, New World Trading and many more).

It’s an industry that gives you a real education in leadership, pressure and problem solving.

It also teaches you that if something can go wrong five minutes before a full restaurant service, it absolutely will.

Looking back now, after more than three decades in hospitality, and the slightly unexpected experience of building a technology platform, there are a few lessons I wish I’d understood earlier.

The first is this:

The problems everyone accepts as ‘just the way things are’ are often where the biggest opportunities sit.

Throughout my career, one challenge kept appearing again and again, compliance.

Health and safety. Food hygiene. Risk management. All important things, but usually managed through a strange mix of folders, spreadsheets and bits of software that didn’t talk to each other.

Managers were juggling paperwork and checklists. Leadership often had limited visibility. And the shift manager was left wondering whether everything had actually been done properly.

At the time, we all just accepted it. It was part of the job.

Looking back now, that frustration was actually pointing straight at the opportunity.

Tech must be simple to use

The second thing I’d tell my younger self is this: if a system isn’t easy to use, people simply won’t use it.

This sounds obvious, but it’s amazing how often it gets ignored.

In hospitality, managers are already spinning about 15 plates at once. They’re running shifts, leading teams, dealing with suppliers, speaking to customers and occasionally trying to remember whether they’ve eaten that day.

If a system is slow, complicated or confusing, it won’t last long.

People will try it for a week, then quietly go back to whatever system actually makes their life easier, usually a notebook, a WhatsApp group and a lot of crossed fingers.

That’s something we’ve tried to stay focused on while building the Mercury platform.

The goal wasn’t to build clever software. That was just an added extra.

It was to build something simple enough that busy teams would actually use it.

The third lesson took me a long time to properly appreciate:

Tech shouldn’t replace people

Great technology shouldn’t replace people, it should free them up to do their best work.

In hospitality, the best managers aren’t the ones buried in paperwork. They’re the ones on the floor, leading their teams, talking to customers and keeping standards high.

But too often, people end up spending hours dealing with admin, chasing paperwork or trying to piece together information from multiple systems.

When technology works properly, it removes that friction. It simplifies the background processes so people can focus on running great operations.

The goal isn’t to automate people out of the picture.

It’s to give them the time and clarity to do what they’re actually great at.

That thinking is what shaped Mercury Support into a hybrid model, simple digital tools supported by experienced people who understand how hospitality businesses actually operate.

The final thing I’d tell my younger self is this: don’t wait too long to build something.

For years, I saw the same problems appearing again and again across hospitality and other operational businesses.

Eventually, we started building our own internal systems simply to make life easier for the teams we were supporting.

Those early ideas slowly grew into the platform we’ve built today, particularly after partnering with the brilliant team at Zapt.ai through the ASCEND scale-up programme run by the Greater Manchester ŔĎžĹơ˛č Growth Company.

Looking back, the move from hospitality operator to technology founder wasn’t part of some grand master plan.

It happened because, after 30 years of seeing the same problems, I finally thought, surely there has to be a better way to do this.

And so, with my team and the talented people at Zapt.ai, we built a platform we’re incredibly proud of, designed not just for hospitality, but for any industry with compliance management needs.

So far, it’s been one of the most exciting and rewarding periods of my career.

And thankfully, slightly less stressful than a fully booked Saturday night service.

• Mercury Support is a one-stop shop for compliance needs, specialising in the hospitality sector.

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Most founders assume that once you have something that works, growth is just a matter of doing more of it.

In reality, high growth tends to break the very thing that made the business successful in the first place.

I founded One Day Agency in 2019, after more than 20 years working across digital advertising, from early design roles to leading teams at Google and agency groups internationally.

Today, we are an integrated advertising and marketing agency headquartered in Manchester, operating across 35 countries without intermediaries, with a team of 18 people.

We are on track to reach ÂŁ7m in revenue this year, up from ÂŁ4.5m last year, while expanding into France and continuing to build our position in generative AI-led advertising in the North West.

Getting to a point where a company works, where it has clients, revenue and a clear proposition, is already difficult. But it is a contained problem.

You are operating within a structure that you understand. The team fits the stage. Decisions are relatively fast. Complexity is limited.

Growth changes that overnight.

As revenue increases, the systems, people and processes that got you there start to fail.

What worked at ÂŁ500k does not work at ÂŁ2m. What worked at ÂŁ2m does not work at ÂŁ5m.

The structure stretches and eventually breaks.

One of the first things that becomes obvious is that not everyone scales with the business.

This is uncomfortable but unavoidable. People who were excellent at an earlier stage may no longer be the right fit when the company grows.

The requirements change. The level of ownership changes. The pace and pressure increase. Suddenly, you need senior operators who have done it before.

And those are significantly harder to hire than any client you will ever win.

Most founders underestimate this. They focus heavily on new business, but the real bottleneck becomes talent.

Finding people who can manage teams, own revenue and operate across markets is far more complex than closing a deal. And without them, growth stalls or becomes chaotic.

At the same time, the nature of decision-making shifts. Early on, you are focused on opportunity.

During high growth, you spend more time managing risk. Cash flow becomes critical. Hiring decisions carry more weight. One wrong move can create months of instability.

This is where many companies start to struggle. Not because the idea is wrong, or the demand is not there, but because the business was not built to handle its own growth.

Growth introduces layers. More people, more clients, more markets, more moving parts.

Communication becomes harder. Alignment becomes harder. Execution slows down. What used to take a day now takes a week. What used to be obvious now requires process.

If not managed properly, growth turns into inefficiency.

We have seen this repeatedly in the market. Companies that grow fast but do not evolve their structure often hit a ceiling or collapse under operational pressure.

Beware BrewDog

Recent examples like BrewDog highlight this clearly. Rapid expansion without the right internal foundations creates long-term challenges that are difficult to reverse.

The reality is that growth management is one of the hardest parts of building a company. It requires a constant rebuild of the organisation. New structure, new people, new processes, often before you feel ready for them.

It is also less visible than success. Revenue growth looks impressive externally. Internally, it is usually a constant state of adjustment, tension and trade-offs.

For founders, this means shifting mindset. The goal is not just to build something that works, but to build something that can keep working as it scales.

That requires being proactive about change, not reactive to problems.

Growth is not a reward. It is a new level of difficulty.

And in many cases, it is where the real work actually begins.

• One Day Agency is an integrated agency headquartered in the UK and Europe, with work that spans more than 35 countries.

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