Founder & CEO @ Mint & Lemon 🍋 | Building personal brands for startups founders and CEOs | Speaker | Startup Advisor

Hi, I’m Elisabetta 🙋🏻‍♀️ My journey has been defined by resilience, self-belief, and a commitment to continuous learning. From navigating language barriers to building and leading teams in successful startups, I’ve proven that determination and grit can take you anywhere.

I’m passionate about personal branding and the power it has to transform careers and open doors. LinkedIn has been a game-changer for me, and I believe it can do the same for you.

Here’s what we can help you achieve:

- Attract inbound sales
- Spark investor interest
- Attract and keep top talent
- Land speaking gigs and podcast invites
- Expand your network and business opportunities

Ready to take your personal brand to the next level?

✋🏼 Book a call here to work with us: https://calendly.com/elisabettamintnlemon/linkedinpersonalbrandstrategy

✋🏼 Want only a one-off LinkedIn power session? Book a call here: https://calendly.com/elisabettamintnlemon/1-1-linkedin-power-session

✋🏼 Brand Partnerships - Work with me on an influencer campaign: https://calendly.com/elisabettamintnlemon/30-minute-meeting-clone

Elisabetta Torretti

For International Women’s Day I've been asked to 👇🏼

- Speak on a panel for FREE
- Join a podcast that was “free for me”… but required two promotional posts
- Be featured in a magazine for £500
- Share my experience as a woman in business… for “visibility”

Funny how that works. The same week we talk about:
• the gender pay gap
• supporting women
• empowering female founders
Women are still expected to work for exposure.

Let’s call it what it is: 
Unpaid labour wrapped in a nice pink ribbon.

Ladies, start saying NO.
No free panels.
No “visibility opportunities.”
No discounted expertise because it’s International Women’s Day.

Equality doesn’t start with hashtags, it starts with paying women properly.

2012: Got a Master's in Law
2013: Started working in fashion
2014: Started working in fintech

2015: Worked for 2.5 years as a product manager
2017: Started my career in sales as an SDR
2019: Account Executive

2020: Head of Sales
2023: Head of Sales and Customer Success
2024: Build my Personal Branding agency

Careers are not linear paths, and if someone is trying to blame you for switching industries or positions, tell them politely to f* off. 

This is your superpower.
(It was for sure mine ✌🏼)

Instant red flags in a LinkedIn tagline 🚩

- 7-figure founder
- Forbes-featured
- ex (name of big companies)
- Top 1% smt (according to who?!)
- building in stealth (is this such a secret project no one can know about?!)
- DM me ‘SCALE’
- thought leader

Anything to add to the list?! 🤷🏻‍♀️

I built a personal brand out of desperation
(and that's what you shouldn't do..)

In 2020 I had ZERO sales budget and desperately needed to build a pipeline and sell, so I thought ..

Q: "where are all my prospects?"
A: "LinkedIn"

Q: "is the platform free?"
A: "yep"

Q: "can I post FREE ads there?"
A: "kind of.."

So I started putting out posts and envisioning them as a sort of "subliminal ads"
(yep, basically FREE ads)

People laughed (I didn't care)
Prospects saw them (I DID care)
Prospects liked them and talked about them in sales calls
Prospects became clients

And it worked 🤷🏻‍♀️

So yeah I built my personal brand out of desperation, but you shouldn't..
Because it's 2026 and building a personal brand it's no longer a luxury, it's a necessity.

Don't wait to build it till you NEED it.
Build it now
Use it later

You're welcome 🫡

PS: funny how some of my previous clients, bosses, ex-colleagues also eventually became clients of Mint & Lemon 🍋
.. you never know in life :)

Mint & Lemon

Everyone says they want a job.
But honestly?
Some people don’t.

I’ve run a recruitment agency.
I’ve hired for my own teams.
I’ve reviewed thousands of CVs.
Over 6 years.
And this is what I keep seeing 👇🏼

-> I ask for a portfolio.
They never send it 🤦🏻‍♀️

-> I interview someone for a LinkedIn ghostwriter role.
They have:
– An empty profile
– Two connections
– No photo
Nothing..

-> I ask what they know about the company.
Silence, no clue about what we do

-> I hire for creative roles.
I receive a 7-page Word CV.
Really BAD formatting.
Grammar mistakes.
Zero effort.

-> Some people don’t even reply when I ask:
“Do you want to move forward with the interview?”

And then they say they “can’t get hired”.
If you can’t:
– Send a simple email
– Spend 10 minutes understanding the company
– Show up professionally for the role you applied for
– Do anything basic required to get hired 🤷🏻‍♀️
I won’t hire you.
Ever.
(and not only me)

You don’t need to go above and beyond.
You don’t need to work for free.
You don’t need to beg.
But you do need to do the bare minimum.

No one is serving you a job on a silver plate.
If you’re not hungry, it shows.
And hiring managers and recruiters see it immediately.

PS: This is NOT the majority of people looking for jobs.
I’ve met and hired incredible humans throughout my career.
This doesn’t take anything away from those fantastic hires 👌🏼

IWD is coming.. but let's cut the fluffy BS and let's push the WOMEN of LinkedIn.
10 women you should follow NOW 👇🏼

1. Jessie Schofer - THE HR queen 👸🏼
2. Jingjin Liu - women empowerment at its best ⬆️
3. Mariya Valeva - your Finance queen☝🏼
4. Oana Leonte - your IP lady 👌🏼
5. Alya Annabi - empowering women 24/7 💜
6. Laura Wyer - Your FMCG go-to-recruiter 💁🏻‍♀️
7. Yasmeen De Piante - oh hello fellow Italian 🇮🇹
8. Carina Cunha - Advisor, Investor and much more 🟢
9. Shali Rana Reed - 100% Unfiltered content (and I LOVE IT) 👏🏼
10. Lea 🌈 Turner - I just love how your content is so raw and authentic ☺️

Anyone I should add to the list? 👇🏼

Once upon a time, I used to train for looks.

But looks do not equal healthy.
(After spending 10 years in my 20s battling eating disorders I can assure you that..)

There is no business, there is no friends or family or vacations or promotions or parties or partners or anything..
..if you CAN’T take care lf yourself for the long run.

So I stopped measuring success based on the looks and focused on the inside.

1. What is my blood test saying?
2. How am I feeling?
3. How clear my mind is?
4. How strong I am?
5. How well do I sleep?
6. What nutritious food do I eat?
7. How present am I for myself?
8. How present am I for my family and partner?
9. How good am I for my business, for my team and for my client?

Those are my KPIs, and that’s what I am training for.

What are you training for?

WTH is happening?!

followers followers followers

Guys, are we loosing track of what's really LinkedIn about?

Who cares about the vanity metrics 🤦🏻‍♀️
FOCUS on 👇🏼
real connections
quality of content

STOP chasing followers.

And guess what?! You want to grow fast with all the 7 toxic leaders cheatsheets? Good luck with that..

This is YOUR brand, this is YOUR reputation, 
don't dilute it.

Everyone thinks a personal brand is “optional.”

My darling… wake up. It’s 2026.
It’s not optional anymore.

You must build your personal brand if you’re:

-> An early-stage founder.
Because you are the brand. You’re the salesperson, the fundraiser, the recruiter, the face of the vision. In the early days, people don’t buy the product. They buy you.

-> A CEO.
This is reputation management, PR on steroids. And if you’re not actively shaping the narrative around you and your company, someone else will. Silence is no longer neutral. It’s invisible.

-> In sales.
Your conversion rate changes dramatically when people know who you are before the first message lands. Trust built in public makes cold outreach warmer, faster, and far more effective.

-> A candidate.
The market is tough. Standing out isn’t about tweaking your CV anymore. It’s about showing your thinking, your expertise, your voice, consistently.

These are the 4 main reasons people come to Mint & Lemon.
But something has shifted in the last year.
We’re now working with far more CEOs from large multinationals.

Why?
Because they understand that controlling the narrative is power. 

The days of relying on a single polished PR feature are over. Leaders are becoming public figures in their own right, and LinkedIn is actively rewarding that,  more visibility, more influence, more Top Voice badges, more reach.

The platform is evolving.

The real question is simple: do you want to fall behind, or do you want to ride the wave?
Your personal brand is your number one tool.
Stop underestimating it.

Every International Women’s Day we hear the same conversation.
“Women should start more tech companies.”

More women in tech.
More female founders.
More women building companies.

But nobody talks about the real barrier.
Building was never accessible to most women.

For years the path looked like this:
Learn to code.
Find a developer.
Raise money.

Then maybe… you can build something.
So millions of ideas never left the notebook.

I’ve heard it so many times:
“I have this idea… but I’m not technical.”
That sentence has buried more ideas than failure ever did.

But something interesting happened this International Women’s Day.
Thousands of women around the world opened their laptops
and built real apps in a single day.
Using Lovable.
For FREE.

No coding background.
No dev team.
No gatekeepers.
Just ideas finally becoming products.

Because when the barrier disappears…
the builders appear.

And suddenly the next founder might not be a developer.
She might just be someone who finally had the chance to try.

If you’ve been sitting on an idea for months - maybe even years -
Build it → lovable.dev

#LovablePartner #ad

Lovable

So.. I've been working pretty hard on a secret project lately..


It's called: Project ELISABETTA 💁🏻‍♀️

Yep.. I figured out I want to better myself,  but no project on yourself can start without better HEALTH.

So I've been working hard on fixing 👇🏼

my sleep consistency
my sleep amount
my Vo2 MAX
my cardio
my food time
my food quality
my heart health
my weight training

(still working on screen time and stress levels, but we'll get there..)

I realised if there is no "project ELISABETTA", everything falls apart:
my business
my relationships
my family
myself

So, what's holding you back from making YOU your own Number 1 project?

PS: it's a work in progress and yes I still f*ck up here and there, but I bounce back every single time ✌🏼😉

"Fake it till you make it"

Lot of people will hate on this, but it has been one of my mantras for so many years (and it really worked lol)

I talked about this and much more during the lovely chat I had last week with Jeremy Bennett: from linkedIn inbounds, to personal branding, to how NOT to build a content strategy based on "the 7 toxic leaders" type of clickbait posts 🤦🏻‍♀️

Watch the episode below 👇🏻

And thank you so much again Jeremy for the wonderful chat :)

I interview LinkedIn’s top 1% every weekday, 7am EST | Featured in Forbes | 10M views | 100K followers | 2 world designations | 3 books | Featured in 3 documentaries | Keynote Speaker | Spoken live to tens of thousands

POV: you stop caring about impressions..
and suddenly, your impressions take off again 🤷🏻‍♀️

it's no secret I started to not look at my impressions (since a while now)
(yep there was a time I was checking how posts would perform every 30 mins.. NOT recommended)

I stopped (and my mental health thanked me.. dah!)
but then the other day, my data-brain asked, "ok let's now go back again and check those stats.."
(I know I know, I shouldn't have done it..)

But guess what?
Took off again 🤷🏻‍♀️

Ok now enough, I promise I won't look at those for at least another month 😅

Anyway, moral of the story: focus on the business, NOT on your linkedIn stats
Your business (and your mental health) will thank you 🫡

PS: and drink some good espresso 😆

Looking for some good in-person communities/ 
events in London 🇬🇧

Any suggestions? 👇🏻

Interested in:
- Entrepreneurship
- Startup space
- Female founders

Open to:
- Investor circles
- Intimate dinners/events
- Wellness x ambition spaces
- Smart, curious people building interesting things

Where should I be showing up?

It was 11:47pm.

And I was doing something extremely important..

Resizing text boxes 🫠

Not changing the strategy.
Not improving the narrative.
Just manually transferring my own thoughts into slides like it’s 2014 and I’m an unpaid intern.

Because obviously that’s the workflow, right?

Think in Claude.
Then leave.
Then rebuild everything in a slide tool.
Then spend 37 minutes nudging alignment.

Peak performance 🚀

The annoying part?
The thinking was done.
The structure was solid.
The argument was sharp.

But the slides hadn’t “caught up.”

So recently, I didn’t leave.

I stayed in Claude.
Used Gamma right there in the conversation.
The deck just… appeared.

Then I changed the angle.
Refined the story.
Tightened the structure.
And the presentation updated with it 😍

No exporting.
No copy-paste gymnastics.
No “FINAL_v9_THIS_ONE_FOR_REAL.pptx.” 🤡

Just thinking → turning into slides → refining.
In one flow.

The surprising part wasn’t “wow AI.”
It was realising how long I’ve accepted unnecessary friction as normal.

Anyway.
If you enjoy rebuilding the same deck at midnight, carry on.

If not, Claude + Gamma together is a much saner way to work ✨
https://lnkd.in/e2SkwUvq

PS: Thanks Gamma for taking my creative thinking to the next level 🙏🏻😍

#ad

Gamma

Gamma x Claude

I love automation.
So much.
Which is why I obviously check it 14 times a day 😅

You know.. Just to make sure it’s… automating.

Because nothing says “I trust my systems” like manually reviewing the thing that’s meant to run without you 🙃

For the longest time, my marketing was “automated”.
Which actually meant:
• I built it
• I monitored it
• I tweaked it
• I double-checked it
• I low-key emotionally supported it

Very autonomous. Obviously.

The problem wasn’t the strategy.
The problem was that I was still the safety net.

If something dipped, I spotted it.
If something broke, I fixed it.
If something underperformed, I spiralled.

At some point I realised:
This isn’t automation.

It’s delegation with trust issues.
(BIG ones)

That’s where ActiveCampaign hit differently.

Because Active Intelligence isn’t just “if this then that.”
It learns from behaviour.
It adjusts.
It optimises timing.
It flags what actually needs attention.
That’s Autonomous Marketing.

Not:
 “Set it live and panic quietly.”
But:
 “Set it live and let it adapt.”

The biggest shift? 
I stopped being the emotional support human for my campaigns.

They run.
They optimise.
They tell me when something matters.
And my brain is free to do actual thinking.

If you’re still babysitting your “automations”…
(Respectfully) that’s not automation.

Try ActiveCampaign and see what happens when the system grows up -> https://lnkd.in/ed5fXQej

#Ad #ActiveCampaignPartner #OutOfTheWeeds #AutonomousMarketing

ActiveCampaign

Last week was Mint & Lemon 🍋 2nd birthday.

2 years ago this started as a one-woman show.
Just me.
An idea.
And honestly… a lot of figuring things out as I went.

We had not one, but two pivots.
Today Mint & Lemon is not only a personal branding agency, but a full social media agency, with personal branding still at the core of everything we do.

Somewhere along the way… 
that one-woman show became a team of 6.

That part still blows my mind a little.
Because honestly, the journey hasn’t been pretty.

Not only the pivots.
But a lot of stress.
A lot of moments where I thought: what the hell am I doing?
And I definitely had to deal with a lot of sh*t along the way.
People trying to take advantage of you because you’re small.
People thinking they can push you around.
People assuming you won’t say anything.

One thing I learned quickly:
If you don’t stand up for yourself, nobody will do it for you.

Looking back, these 2 years taught me more than any job ever could.
Messy.
Hard.
Stressful.
But also incredibly rewarding.

I’m deeply grateful for the team we’ve built and for the clients who trusted us along the way.

Two years in.
And it still feels like we’re just getting started.

Happy birthday Mint & Lemon 🍋 🎂 💜

PS: Of course I'm cheering with a cup of tea 🫖 💁🏻‍♀️

Asim Amin

Founder & CEO at Plumm | Empowering Minds & Building Thriving Workplaces | Passionate Mental Health Advocate

I’m the Founder & CEO of Plumm, the all-in-one HR platform with mental health at its core.

HR today is fragmented, companies juggle payroll, performance, compliance, and wellbeing across too many tools. Plumm brings it all into one platform, helping organisations cut costs, save time, and look after their people. Because no HR strategy is complete without mental health.

Plumm started as a mental health solution and has grown into a full-service HR platform, used by companies worldwide. Our mission is clear: make workplaces more productive, inclusive, and human.

I’m also the host of the Immigrants Building Companies Podcast, where I speak with immigrant entrepreneurs who’ve built companies against the odds, sharing lessons on resilience, growth, and leadership.

If you’d like to:
🚀 Book a demo with Plumm: https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0mJb040 
🎙️ Discuss podcasts, speaking, or media features: taslynn@heyplumm.com

International Trade Program

Poor mental health costs UK employers up to £56 billion a year.

And yet, when employers invest even just £1 in preventative employee wellbeing, they see an average return of £5.30.

We’ve seen case after case, that happier employees make for a healthier business.

It’s why we developed Plumm: a seamless all-in-one, evidence-backed mental wellbeing solution for employers and their teams.

We support your team through our global and diverse pool over 200 accredited therapists and coaches, who can cater to their individual needs, preferences, and circumstances, regardless of where they are in their wellbeing journey.

Whether they can benefit from group learning, need professional help and personalised 1:1 therapy or coaching, or self-help resources, we've got it covered.

Ready to level up your team's wellbeing? 👉 https://www.plummhealth.com/request-demo

I nearly died last year.
 
 
I thought I was doing everything right.
I didn’t feel unhealthy.
I wasn’t burnt out.
 
From the outside, everything looked fine.
Revenue up.
Team growing.
Training regularly.
Eating clean.
 
Then I had an angina attack.
Two stents.
And a very different definition of “fine.”
 
That’s the dangerous part.
 
We think decline announces itself.
It doesn’t.
It hides inside competence.
 
You’re still performing.
Still making decisions.
Still delivering.
 
But you’re operating closer to the edge than you realise.
 
The heart issue wasn’t a surprise in hindsight. 
It was a consequence.
 
I had been slowly reducing the margin I was operating on.
Not through laziness.
Through normalisation.
Normalising pressure.
Normalising speed.
Normalising “this is just what it takes.”
 
People wait for something dramatic to reset them.
 
That’s one way to learn.
It’s just an expensive one.

Founder & CEO at Plumm | Speaker | Advisor

Your team mirrors your emotional state. How are you showing up today?
 
 
As founders, we’re often told to focus on numbers, strategy, and product.
 
But honestly, the most overlooked factor in businesses is how we show up emotionally.
 
Our mood, reactions, and decisions shape the culture of our company.
 
Here’s what I’ve learned over time about emotional maturity and its impact on performance:
 
-People need to feel safe to speak up.
I’ve seen it firsthand: when I stay composed, my team feels comfortable sharing their thoughts, even when it’s tough. 
-Trust is the foundation.
When I stay level-headed during tough times, trust builds quickly within the team.
-Better decisions come from staying calm.
I used to rush decisions. Now, I know staying calm leads to clearer, more strategic choices that drive better results.
-Culture is a reflection of you.
When I’m consistent in my responses, my team better understands our values and the culture that reflects that.
 
I’ve learned that a high-performing team isn’t just about skills.
It’s about feeling safe, valued, and aligned.
And all of that starts with me as the founder.
 
So, ask yourself:
Are you setting the right emotional tone for your team?
Or are you unknowingly limiting their potential?
 
At the end of the day, leadership isn’t just about the decisions you make.
It’s about how you make your team feel.
 
That’s when the magic happens.

undefined undefined

Speed doesn’t kill startups.
Delayed honesty does.
 
You can feel it before you admit it.
The product isn’t really working the way you hoped.
The demos feel forced.
Retention is weaker than you tell yourself it is.
Pricing conversations feel awkward.
You’re explaining too much.
 
But instead of stepping back and addressing it, you focus on doing more.
More sales calls.
More features.
More marketing spend.
Another “refined” positioning.
 
Because working harder feels safer than asking uncomfortable questions:
What if the product isn’t good enough?
What if this isn’t the right market?
What if the strategy is wrong?
 
We’ve romanticised perseverance so much that we rarely talk about the cost of delayed honesty.
And that cost compounds.
Every month you avoid the real issue, your options narrow. Cash reduces. Team morale shifts. Investors get colder.
You start optimising around a flaw instead of fixing what’s actually broken.
 
Honesty doesn’t automatically mean shutting the company down.
Sometimes it means changing the customer, cutting a product line or admitting you built something clever instead of something needed.
 
But speed is rarely the real issue.
You can move fast in the wrong direction for years.
 
The founders who survive long term aren’t always the smartest or the most relentless.
They’re the ones who are willing to look at the numbers, look at the market, look at themselves and admit what isn’t working before they’re forced to.
 
Ambition builds companies.
Honesty keeps them alive.

If it’s not broken, don’t fix it. Bullsh*t!
 
For big corporates, maybe. For founders? It’s dangerous.
 
Startups don’t die because something breaks.
They die because they stop improving while the market keeps moving.
 
Your product works.
Your CAC is acceptable.
Your churn isn’t alarming.
 
Nothing is on fire.
 
But competitors are iterating weekly.
AI is shifting user expectations monthly.
Talent expects better leadership, better tools, better clarity.
 
“Not broken” is a low bar.
 
Whenever something feels stable, I ask a different question:
If we were starting today, would we build it this way?
 
That question forces honesty.
 
Sometimes the answer is yes. Often it’s uncomfortable.
 
We’ve rebuilt onboarding flows that technically “worked”.
We’ve changed pricing that was “fine”.
We’ve redefined roles that weren’t failing.
 
Not because they were broken.
Because they could do better.
 
Continuous improvement doesn’t mean chaos. It means discipline.
 
Founders don’t get the luxury of standing still.
The market compounds. So must we.
 
Comfort is expensive.

Foundations I’m building on this year:
 

1. Protect my energy before I protect my calendar
 
If my sleep, training and food are off, everything else suffers.
I’ve learned it the hard way.
 
So I treat recovery like a board meeting.
Non-negotiable.
 
Gym goes in first. Sleep is guarded. Food is planned.
Everything else fits around that.
 
 
2. Think in decades, not quarters
 
Whether it’s Plumm or my health, I’m optimising for 10–20 years, not short-term wins.
 
That changes how you hire.
You look for people who compound, not just impress in interviews.
 
It changes how you invest.
You favour durability over hype.
 
It even changes how you eat and train.
Crash diets and burnout cycles make no sense if you’re playing a long game.
 
 
3. Daily deep work block (no noise)
 
At least 60–90 minutes a day.
Phone off. Slack off. No meetings.
Only strategy.
 
Founders who don’t think end up reacting.
And reacting all day feels productive, but rarely moves the needle.
 
 
Small habits.
Long horizon.
Compounding decisions.
 
That’s the focus this year.

Most HR systems measure performance.
They don’t measure decision risk.
 
We track headcount, absence, attrition, and engagement scores.
But we don’t track the mental capacity of the people doing the work.
 
That’s the gap.
 
In most organisations, mental health sits outside the core system.
An EAP.
A benefit.
A separate provider with a separate login.
 
Which means it never informs how the company is actually run.
 
So HR ends up managing the symptoms:
Rising absence.
Underperformance.
Quiet disengagement.
 
By the time it shows up in those metrics, the damage is already done.
 
This isn’t about wellbeing as a nice-to-have.
It’s about decision quality.

When teams are overloaded, errors increase.
When managers are stretched, feedback quality drops.
When leaders are depleted, difficult decisions get delayed.
 
This is not a wellness issue.
It’s a performance risk.
 
If mental health data doesn’t sit alongside your core people data,
It can’t shape how work is designed.
 
And if it can’t shape how work is designed,
HR stays reactive.

HR should sit at the board table.
Not as a courtesy. As a driver of value.
 
In most startups, HR is treated like admin. Important, but pushed to the side.
Hire fast. Stay compliant. Keep the lights on.
 
That’s a mistake.
 
Your valuation is a story about future cash flows.
Future cash flows come from execution.
Execution comes from people.
 
So people strategy isn’t a support function. It’s a growth lever.
 
Here’s what changes when HR is in the boardroom:
1. Hiring becomes capital allocation.
Every senior hire is a bet. Are we placing those bets intentionally or reactively?

2. Retention becomes a margin question.
Losing a high performer isn’t just emotional. It’s lost productivity, hiring cost and cultural drag.

3. Leadership pipeline becomes risk management.
If two people leaving would materially damage the business, that’s a board-level risk.

4. Culture becomes strategy alignment.
Are incentives, behaviours and performance standards aligned with the company we’re trying to build?
 
The biggest turning points in a company aren’t product releases or revenue milestones.
They’re people decisions: who you hire, who you promote, what behaviours you reward.
 
If you’re a founder, ask yourself:
Is your Head of People presenting metrics that tie directly to growth, margin and risk? Or just engagement scores?
 
HR at the board table isn’t about status.
It’s about acknowledging what actually drives enterprise value.

3 upgrades I’ve made to supercharge productivity:


1️⃣ Shorter, sharper demos at @Plumm

We tightened the narrative. Cut the fluff. Made the value obvious within minutes.

Result:
Higher conversion.
Less fatigue.
More clarity for the buyer.

2️⃣ Measuring everything

Wearables changed how I approach performance.

When you track properly, you stop guessing.
Data leads to better decisions.

3️⃣ Decision speed > decision perfection

I’ve stopped over-analysing.

70% clarity? Move.

You can always adjust later.

Speed. Clarity. Measurement.
Everything else is noise.

Building a company is a 20-year game.
Most people train for a 2-year sprint.
 
Founders talk about resilience.
But very few actually train for it.
 
Building a company isn’t a 12-month sprint.
It’s usually a 10–20 year test of consistency.
 
You’ll see:
- people leave
- strategies fail
- investors rotate
- markets change
- competitors appear
- new opportunities emerge
 
The founders who last aren’t necessarily the smartest.
They’re the ones who stay steady through multiple cycles.
 
One thing I’ve noticed over the years:
A lot of talented people burn extremely bright for 2–3 years… then disappear.
 
Not because they lacked ability.
Because they were running at a pace their body and mind couldn’t sustain.
 
You can’t build for 20 years if your energy only lasts 2.
Longevity in startups is about building a repeatable rhythm.
 
Showing up.
Making decisions.
Improving the product.
Hiring well.
Doing it again tomorrow.
 
Nothing glamorous.
But that’s the real edge.
 
That’s why I think about longevity less as health optimisation,
and more as career endurance.
 
The goal isn’t to win one year.
It’s to still be building and improving,
decades from now.

Not everyone should be an entrepreneur.
 
 
If I told you that building a company means:
 
• missing weddings, birthdays and moments you cannot get back
• carrying stress most people around you will never fully understand
• lying awake at night thinking about payroll and runway
• making decisions with incomplete information 
• long stretches where balance simply does not exist
• questioning yourself more often than you admit publicly
• working when you are tired, sick or simply not in the mood
• feeling responsible for other people’s livelihoods
• cancelling holidays because the company needs you
• waking up some mornings not knowing what the next 3 months look like
 
Would you still sign up?
 
Entrepreneurship is heavily romanticised.
 
LinkedIn shows the wins.
Podcasts show the exits.
 
Very few people talk about the quiet pressure.
 
The weight of uncertainty.
Making decisions with incomplete information.
Holding the stress so your team doesn’t have to.
 
And here’s the uncomfortable truth:
 
If you are not willing to sacrifice comfort, this path will frustrate you.
 
Because the version of entrepreneurship where life stays the same and you just add a company on top does NOT exist.
 
It is not for everyone.
 
But if you are willing to bet on yourself,
it can be one of the most meaningful and rewarding journeys there is.

AI was supposed to be the great equaliser.
And in some ways, it is.

Anyone can grab the latest AI tool.
Launch a product in an afternoon.
Pretend to be unstoppable.

All the clever hacks, none of the barriers.
So why aren’t we all winning?

Here’s the part nobody wants to hear:
AI closed the skill gap, not the discipline gap.

You can build and launch faster than ever.
But when more people build, attention spreads thin, and staying relevant gets harder.

I see it in founders.
The first version goes live in a weekend.
The LinkedIn post flies.
The demo looks sharp.

Six months later, most have moved on.

Not because the tools failed. 
Because the work changed.

Real products need real iteration, not prompts.
And that’s where the separation shows up.

Revenue is the only proof that something works. And revenue rarely comes from novelty. 
It comes from repetition. From doing the unglamorous improvements that nobody applauds.
 
AI can accelerate output. It can’t make you keep showing up.
If anything, it has made discipline more valuable. 

When everyone can start, winning comes down to who keeps going.

Your body is a system. 
Yet most people manage it like a crisis.

We wait for the red light.
- The burnout.
- The bad blood test.
- The back pain that won’t go away.

Then we panic.

But systems don’t fail because of one bad week. 
They fail from long-term neglect. Small misses. Repeated often.

As founders, we understand this in business.

You don’t wait for payroll to bounce before checking cash flow.
You don’t ignore churn for a year, then suddenly “go all in” on customer success.
You build dashboards. You review numbers. You make small adjustments early.

Yet with our bodies, we do the opposite.

We treat sleep, strength, nutrition and stress like optional extras.
Then act surprised when performance drops.

Reactive health creates constant firefighting.
Proactive maintenance creates stable output.

The shift is simple:
Think in systems, not symptoms.

Instead of asking: “How do I fix this pain?”
Ask: “What inputs have I been neglecting?”

For me, that means boring consistency:
3–4 strength sessions a week
Protein at every meal
A hard stop at night
Regular bloods, even when I feel fine

Nothing dramatic. Just maintenance.

High performance isn’t built in emergency mode.
It’s built in quiet routines no one sees.

If you’re building a company, your body is your first operating system.
Treat it like one.

International Women’s Day gets a lot of attention.
But what happens on the other 364 days is what really matters.
 
Do women have the same access to leadership roles?
Are they in the rooms where decisions are made?
Are they actually getting funded?
 
The numbers still tell a clear story.
 
Many workplaces still struggle to build cultures where women can thrive long term.
Women founders still receive a small fraction of venture funding.
Leadership teams are still heavily male in many companies.
 
One day of celebration won’t fix that.
 
But ignoring the conversation won’t help either.
 
The work that matters is slower and less visible.
 
It’s how leaders hire.
Who gets promoted.
Who gets listened to in meetings.
Who gets backed when they start a company.
 
As founders and leaders, that’s the part we actually control.
 
It’s not the LinkedIn post.
It’s who gets a seat at the table.
It’s in the decisions we make every day.
 
That’s where the real progress happens.

HR doesn’t sit below EBITDA. It drives it.

Retention. Absence. Churn. Engagement.
These aren’t soft metrics. They’re margin levers.
 
When a good performer leaves, you lose output, context and customer relationships.
You add hiring fees, onboarding time and manager distraction.
 
That hits operating profit directly.
 
If absence rises, productivity drops. Deadlines slip. Overtime climbs. Burn increases.
 
When engagement is low, your top performers quietly compensate for average performance around them.
That works for a while. Then they burn out and leave.
 
I’ve seen teams grow top line fast while the foundations quietly weaken.
On paper, it looks great. In the P&L six months later, it doesn’t.
 
The founders who build resilient companies understand this early.
They quantify the real cost of attrition.
They treat retention as a core operating metric.
They invest in manager quality before it becomes urgent.
And they treat wellbeing as part of performance, not a perk.
 
This isn’t about being ‘people-first’ for optics.
It’s about recognising that operating margin reflects how well your organisation runs.
 
If EBITDA is under pressure, the answer isn’t always more sales.
 
Sometimes it’s better leadership, tighter management and a team that actually performs.
 
That’s where margin is really built.

10 Things HR Is Not Responsible For 👇
 
→ Your strategy
If the direction is unclear, no people policy will save you.
 
→ Poor leadership
HR can coach. They can’t lead for you.
 
→ Unrealistic growth targets
You can’t hire your way out of fantasy planning.
 
→ A toxic high performer you refuse to address
If you protect them, you own the culture.
 
→ Lack of accountability at the top
If leaders don’t live the standards, no one else will.
 
→ Constant restructuring
If the business keeps changing shape, instability isn’t an HR issue.
 
→ Fixing burnout caused by bad workload design
Yoga won’t solve broken capacity planning.
 
→ Making managers competent
Training helps. Avoidance doesn’t.
 
→ Repairing trust after repeated leadership inconsistency
One town hall doesn’t undo 12 months of mixed signals.
 
→ Doing the emotional labour for the entire company
HR supports the system. They are not the system.
 
HR is leverage.
But it only works if leadership does.

There’s a quiet trap founders fall into.

It starts as “just keeping an eye on the market.”

Then it becomes shaping your product around what others are shipping.

A new feature drops.
A new pricing page appears.
A new positioning angle gains traction.

And suddenly your roadmap is responding to theirs.

On the surface, that feels strategic.

In reality, it erodes clarity.

When you build based on competitors, you only see what’s visible.
You don’t see what their customers are actually struggling with.
You copy surface solutions and miss the underlying problem.

We made a conscious shift early on.

Less time watching.
More time listening.

Customer calls over competitor analysis.
Retention data over comparison tables.
Revenue signals over market noise.

We use a simple internal filter:

Is this solving a repeated, real customer pain?
Is it tied to revenue or retention?
Does it make the product meaningfully simpler or stronger?

If the answer isn’t clear, it waits.

That discipline narrows focus.
It sharpens the edge.

Matching features is easy.
Deep customer understanding isn’t.

Competitors can inform you.
They shouldn’t guide you.

Clarity compounds.
And that’s usually where the advantage sits.

Perfection is the most expensive way to avoid selling.
I learned that the hard way.
 
 
Early-stage founders don’t usually fail because they shipped too soon.
They fail because they waited too long to charge.
 
There’s a comfortable phase at the start of a company.
You’re busy, but not exposed.
 
You’re “improving” the product.
 Refining the messaging.
 Tweaking the onboarding.
 Adding features that make it feel more complete.
 
It feels disciplined.
But often, it’s just fear of the real test.
 
Because the real test isn’t whether it works.
 It’s whether someone will pay.
 
An MVP isn’t about launching something scrappy for the sake of it.
 It’s about creating something just strong enough to test willingness to pay.
 
Revenue, discount requests, confusion, and silence are all feedback.
That feedback is worth more than months of internal iteration.
 
Don’t wait to perfect the product.
Sell early.
Iterate in public.
Improve under commercial pressure.
 
Because until customers pay, you don’t have validation.
You have a hypothesis.
 
And businesses aren’t built on hypotheses.
They’re built on proof.
 
If I had to start again, I’d choose proof over perfection every time.

Growth doesn’t fix the mess. It just magnifies it.
 
I’ve seen this play out too many times.
 
Revenue is climbing. Headcount doubles. Energy is high.
But underneath? Still running on spreadsheets, email threads and “we’ll fix it later.”
 
Later comes quickly.
 
Suddenly:
– Contracts aren’t standardised
– Managers all “do it differently”
– Compliance sits in someone’s head
– Performance reviews happen inconsistently
– No one can answer basic people questions confidently
 
Growth doesn’t expose your strengths.
It exposes your cracks.
 
The shift founders need to make is simple:
Stop treating HR as admin. Start treating it as systems design.
 
Systems thinking in HR means asking:
 
– Is compliance proactive, not reactive?
– Can we see people data in real time, not chase it?
– Do we track performance consistently, not emotionally?
– Are managers supported with structure, not guesswork?
– Are contracts templated, version-controlled and jurisdiction-ready?
 
Systems don’t remove culture. They protect it.
 
When expectations are clear and processes are consistent,
managers can focus on coaching,
founders can focus on strategy,
teams feel safe because things are fair.
 
Chaos feels fast. Systems feel slow.
But only one of them compounds.

Outcomes are decided long before they’re documented.
 

Performance reviews just make them official.
 
By the time a review comes around,
the real work has already been done.
Or not done.
 
In the meeting rooms.
In the months leading up to it.
In who gets trusted with bigger problems.
Who gets pulled into the room when decisions are made.
Who gets feedback early enough to course-correct.
And who only hears about issues once they’re already labelled as “performance”.
 
This matters more than most people realise.
Because performance systems don’t just measure output.
They shape behaviour.
 
They signal:
What gets rewarded
What gets overlooked
Who is worth investing in
Who is expected to self-correct quietly
 
When those signals are inconsistent, the review process becomes a formality.
An explanation for outcomes that were already shaped by access, exposure, and belief.
 
This isn’t fixed with better templates.
It’s fixed with better behaviour.
 
If opportunity, trust, and forgiveness aren’t shared consistently throughout the year, the review is just paperwork catching up with reality.

You spent £50k on employer branding.

New messaging. New EVP. Slick videos. A polished careers site.

And your best people are still updating their CV on Sunday night.

At some point, companies need to stop confusing branding with fixing the business.

Top performers don’t leave because the logo isn’t modern enough.
They leave when working inside the company feels harder than it should.

When expectations aren’t clear, they fill the gaps themselves.
When managers avoid hard feedback, tension builds under the surface.
When decisions take too long, momentum disappears.
When standards shift depending on who’s involved, trust fades.

The people who care most feel this first.
They’re the ones pushing things forward. Raising the bar. Taking ownership. 

When their effort keeps running into hesitation and inconsistency, they don’t always complain.
They just start looking elsewhere.

I’ve seen this in scaling companies. Leadership invests in how the company looks before improving how it operates.

But employer brand isn’t something you design. It’s something you earn.

You earn it in how clearly you set expectations.
You earn it in how quickly you make decisions.
You earn it in how consistently you apply standards.
You earn it in whether managers actually manage.

If leadership is consistent, expectations are clear and decisions are made properly, people stay.

If not, no campaign will fix it.

How you run your business is the brand.

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