Build a business.
Keep your life.

My first business had a stupid goal.

A warehouse with stock in it, cool people, motorbikes and an infinity wall down the back.

Computer games every afternoon.

Millions a year, and fifteen grand a month for me.

That was the entire plan.

I was 17, it was 1998, and the business was called Warcom.

I hit the goal.

There was no clever strategy behind it.

I turned up every day and sold a lot of stuff.

In 2014 I sold Warcom to an ASX-listed company (opens in a new tab) and stayed on to see it through.

I also spent years running marketing for other people’s brands, in their offices every week.

Many of those clients became close friends.

Then one of the hardest days of my life put my wife in hospital, and I stopped answering my phone.

When I picked up, one of them told me he didn’t care, and asked when I’d be back at work.

He got a goodbye email the next morning.

Another one, years in, told me I’d got slow on email since our son arrived and it was getting annoying.

It was a baby.

I told him he didn’t have a marketing manager anymore.

That was the last brand I built for someone else.

Insiteful came next, in 2015.

Then eCommerce Circle, with Chris McLean.

I won’t pretend running your own store is easier.

But you choose the customers, and the hours around the people you love.

I’ve been in the room with Aussie founders every day since.

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