Chris is a really interesting Entrepreneur who successfully grew and exited his business extremely successfully.  Chris spent 30 minutes to tell us his story and share some excellent insights for Founders and Investors alike.

We talk late summer 2021, when the UK was in the midst of first UK energy crisis (with Bulb crashing), something that looks like dream, compared to the reality of surging Energy costs, now in Mid March 2022.

His childhood was tumultuous but gave him early life skills, which saw him grow and learn how to overcome challenges like Dyslexia (a condition that many leading founders interesting have suffered from).

He established his winning Start-Up, WAE (We Are Experience) business in 2003, having left the world of consulting when his employer, Arthur Andersen.

There are some super pearls for both “Founders” and “Funders”:

# He speaks about the mistakes you make “Fail to prepare, prepare to Fail”. At some point “Every business gets a kicking”

# Always keep strong cash reserves, for difficult time

# Read “Good to Great” by Jim Collins. Only when you fail, do you improve.. which is why Mercedes, VW, Volvo are starting to eat Tesla’s dinner in electric now. Notably Tesla have never failed..YET

# Always be well prepared when you want to sell your business, in Chris’s case – he prepared for three years ahead of this

# The best way to sell is when you are growing, rather than grown. Sell on the way up

# You should always lean on other people (mentors) at different stages to manage you and your business

# Be careful about taking financial backing, its not always the best thing for a business

# He talks about the pandemic and the best learnings from businesses he helped coach for free.

It’s a good, snappy little listen, with lots of excellent examples – so feel free to reach out to direct to Chris on LinkedIN HERE– or contact us to connect you direct to the team – from Notwics.