I’m a Commercial Director and brand strategist with over a decade of experience aligning sales, marketing, and communications to help businesses thrive. Throughout my career, I’ve guided companies through ambitious growth phases, rebrands, and team transformations, always focusing on creating cultures where people feel motivated, valued, and excited about what’s next.

In previous roles, I acted as a fractional marketing and brand consultant, partnering with leadership teams to refine brand identities, recruit high-performing marketing talent, and embed streamlined sales processes. I also co-founded Tiny Wizard Studio and Alchemy Branding Studio, discovering my passion for telling meaningful brand stories and nurturing people-first teams.

Today, I’m fully immersed in leading one organisation’s commercial function, uniting sales and marketing to drive sustainable growth and strengthen brand relevance. I believe real success isn’t just about meeting revenue goals. For me, it’s about building an environment where fresh ideas can flourish, people can grow, and everyone can take pride in the impact they make. If that resonates with you, let’s connect. ✨

Jess Morgan

I spent an incredible week last week in London hot-footing it to as many Wales Week / London events as I could manage, and met some incredible people and businesses doing amazing things. 

Huge thanks to Dan Langford OBE & Mike Jordan for hosting the partners' dinner on Tuesday evening and for the wonderful introductions throughout the week. I should have taken far more photos, but I was too busy chatting!

Really looking forward to getting to know you all better and congratulations to all the organisations who put on such wonderful events. Ligtas Consultancy & Training will certainly be hosting something brilliant for 2027, but for our first year as partners, it was great to be a guest. 

Great to meet all of you, and apologies for the ones I haven't tagged. 

Football Association of Wales Nick Payne Catryn Newton Chelsea Pinches-Burrowes Chris Butt Rebecca Edwards- Symmons Hannah Shackleford Ann Ellis Gruff Dodd, ACA Adrian Coles Professor David Brooksbank Natasha Hale Andrew Howard Belinda Houghton-Jones Rhys Morris FIEP Rhys Pendergast andrew tugwell Sonia Hensley Francesca Carpanini Chart.PR Frankie James Dawn Evans Nicola Parry  Steve Western, Cert CII, DIP CII, CeMAP Lee Gillen Vladimir Jankovski Tenovus Cancer Care / Gofal Canser Tenovus Jayne Brewer Assoc CIPD Charlotte Leyshon Blanche Sainsbury

Commercial Director at Ligtas | Co-founder at Alchemy | Driving brand, marketing & sales alignment for people-first growth | Believer in bold storytelling, behavioural-led leadership & culture that connects ✨

I’m just going to leave this here…

If I had a penny for every time someone (not just women) say ‘I’ve been so lucky’, ‘luck has been on my side’, ‘it’s all down to luck’ I’d be a bloody millionaire. 

We need to start giving ourselves more credit for the work we’ve put in, the risks we’ve taken, the sacrifices, the late nights, early mornings and the downright; screw it, I’m going to give it a go and see what happens moments. 

Own it. You deserve to take credit. 💪

No alternative text description for this image

When someone comes back to you years later, not because you stayed in their inbox, but because they remembered the quality of the work…that means the world.

I had a conversation this week with someone I worked with a few years ago on the branding for his business, Clarified. We hadn’t worked together since. No constant follow-ups. No clever funnel. Just good work, done properly, that stuck.

During the call, he said:

“The branding work you did for me worked so perfectly, and it got me exactly to where I needed to be.”

That gave me all the feel. He went on to talk about the wider impact it had, how that work helped create clarity, confidence and consistency, and how that fed into everything that came next, including the path his career has taken since.

A strategy workshop is never just a workshop.
A brand identity is never just a logo.
Done properly, the work becomes a decision-making tool. A communication tool. A confidence tool. Something people keep using long after the project has finished.

And that’s the domino effect of quality.

When you take the time to get under the skin of a business, build something thoughtful, and make it genuinely usable, it keeps working in the background. It shapes how people speak about what they do. How they show up. What they go on to build next.

This conversation came about because he’s now in a new role, leading a new opportunity, and came back to me based on the impact of the work we did then.

That’s not about “brand magic”.
It’s about doing work that lasts.

A good reminder for me this week that quality compounds. People remember how you made their business feel clearer.

They remember whether your work actually helped. And they come back when it did.

That’s always the goal.

Walking is where I do my clearest thinking. Not in a dramatic, “found myself on a mountain” sort of way. Just a proper walk, some fresh air, and enough headspace for my brain to stop tab-switching.

I've realised the view is absolutely the motivation. It’s the reason you start.
But when you’re halfway up a hill, you’re not really living in the view yet, are you? You’re thinking about your pace, your breathing, whether you should’ve brought water, and why your knees have suddenly decided to have an opinion. 😂

Work feels a lot like that. We love the summit moments: the launch, the growth, the promotion, the milestone. They look great in a photo and they’re worth celebrating. But the part I’m always most interested in is how people actually got there, because it’s rarely a straight line and it’s almost never as polished as the final result.

That’s why I love doing the podcast. It’s why I love networking events and chatting to people from all walks, industries, and backgrounds. The real gold is usually in the parts people skip over: the tough decisions, the uncertainty, the stuff that didn’t work, and the tiny turning points that changed everything.

And it’s the same reason storytelling matters so much in brand and marketing. People don’t connect with the “ta-da”. They connect with the climb. They trust the effort, the learning, and the humans behind the outcome.

The view is great. But the story is what gets people to walk with you in the first place.

Really pleased that Ligtas Consultancy & Training is an official partner of Wales Week London 2026, and I’m really looking forward to spending some time in London at the end of February!

If you haven’t come across it before, Wales Week / London is a programme of events celebrating Welsh culture, business and talent, bringing people together across sectors for talks, panels, socials and (from past experience) some very good conversations.

I’ll be there for a few of the events, including the partners’ dinner with other sponsors and partners. For me, it’s a great excuse to step out of the day-to-day, meet interesting people, and listen to what others are building and learning.

If you’re going along too, give me a shout,  would be lovely to say hello.

More info and the full programme are on the Wales Week London site: https://walesweek.london/

🎙 Episode 10 is Live  🥳 Jay Ball  on Building, Selling, Retiring… and Starting Again

New episode of Brand To Scale is now live.

We're back after a short break. This Month I sat down with Jay, founder, exit-success story, and now CEO of Flotek Group Limited to talk about what building at scale actually looks like.

No “overnight success” BS, this…

• Getting sacked early in your career
• Building a telecoms business from 21
• Selling it at 34
• Retiring at 35
• Realising six months later you can’t sit still
• Starting again and scaling to £19.5m in three and a half years

Jay talks about:
• Growing through acquisition (14 deals and counting)
• Why debt isn’t always the villain
• The difference between a business owner and an entrepreneur
• Leading when you don’t always get your own way
• Why culture changes as you scale
• AI vs automation and why most businesses are confusing the two

If you’re building something.
If you’re scaling.
If you’re questioning what “success” even looks like once you’ve tasted it.

Hope you enjoy!

🎧 Listen here:
https://lnkd.in/dDweR8tk

Out and about again this week, visiting our valued clients! 🥳 Yesterday I had one of those site visits that reminds you why this work matters so much. 

I can’t share who the client is, and the tour was strictly NDA (fair enough, it was a proper behind-the-scenes operation). But it was genuinely impressive.
What stood out most was how many moving parts manufacturing sites hold at once: people, processes, equipment, contractors, shift patterns, constant change. Safety can’t sit in a folder somewhere. It has to live in the day-to-day.

That’s why Ligtas Consultancy & Training's work with manufacturing clients is usually “joined-up”: assess the risks → support the actions → train people properly → keep it maintained. 

One of the pain points they’ve had is probably familiar to a lot of manufacturers: training spread across different suppliers and portals, fragmented reporting, and no simple way to answer basic questions like who’s done what, where the certificates are, and when refreshers are due.

So alongside our risk assessment and consultancy support, we’re now building them an induction LMS portal to bring training into one place across all sites, with clear visibility, consistent standards, and reporting that doesn’t rely on chasing spreadsheets.

The bit I’m most excited about? We’re also transforming key policies and procedures into short, role-relevant induction courses, so there’s real data on who’s completed what and evidence that people have actually engaged and understood it. Less “it’s in the folder”, more confidence that there aren’t gaps.

If you’re managing safety across multiple sites and training feels fragmented (or impossible to track properly), I’m always happy to compare notes, because you’re definitely not the only one dealing with that.

I love this quote from George Bernard Shaw:
“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”

Clear communication isn’t about saying more things, or saying them louder, or adding another meeting to the diary.

You can send the updates. You can hold the meetings. You can repeat yourself politely (and still somehow feel like you’re the one being difficult).

And yet… people still walk away with different versions of what was “agreed”.
That’s usually because clarity isn’t volume. It’s intent.

People don’t just need information. They need context. They need to know what actually matters, what good looks like, where they fit, and what the point is in the first place.

Nine times out of ten, the fix isn’t another meeting. It’s a clearer message.

When I visit sites or sit in team meetings, I’m reminded that what makes Ligtas Consultancy & Training strong isn’t just technical knowledge, it’s the people. We get this feedback from clients all the time, they love who they work with. And when you join the team here, you'll be supported by a passionate, curious, willing to challenge and always willing to support. 

This blog captures that better than I could in a short post. We gathered feedback from across the business to showcase what life is really like here. 

I'm super thrilled to say that we’re growing, and we’ve got some exciting vacancies open at the moment. 

But the fit matters just as much as the CV.

If you’re someone who wants to work in an environment that blends consultancy, training, and real-world impact and you like being around people who genuinely care about doing things properly, it’s worth a read.

👉  https://lnkd.in/ewm2hfvh

We see this a lot, highly capable people being asked to complete training that’s technically correct, but disconnected from the hazards they actually deal with day to day. When training reflects real processes, real materials, and real risks, something changes.

👉 People engage.
👉 They recognise themselves in it.
👉 And competence becomes practical, not theoretical.

We saw this clearly when working with a biotechnology manufacturer, where training was built around their specific objectives and hazards not generic scenarios lifted from a slide deck.

The feedback that stuck with me was this:
“Providing bespoke content relevant for our objectives and hazards which staff can better relate to.”

That’s the bar, in my view.
Not more training.
Better training.

If you’re in manufacturing, what’s the biggest challenge right now? Making training relevant, keeping it up to date, or ensuring people can actually apply it on the floor?

The case study is here if it’s useful:
https://lnkd.in/exQSyxhH

I used to think growth was about doing more and moving faster. More leads, more meetings, more content, more outreach…more of everything.

If that was the magic formula, we’d all be unstoppable. What I’ve learned is that growth is far more sensitive to the conditions people are working in than the effort they’re putting in. You can have a great team and plenty of activity, and still stall if direction, priorities and expectations aren’t clear enough to guide day to day decisions.

I’ve written a longer piece on this, based on lived experience and patterns I’ve seen across businesses. There’s a simple test at the end you can try with your team this week.

Enjoy!

I used to think growth was mostly about pace. If I’m honest, being a busy fool, managing more busy fools. You can guess what that leads to, right? If 

Open article: Everyone Wants Growth. Hardly Anyone Builds the Conditions for It by Jess Morgan • 15 min read

Everyone Wants Growth. Hardly Anyone Builds the Conditions for It

Small marketing teams often have a big job.

They are expected to support campaigns, create content, enable sales teams and keep brand messaging consistent across multiple channels. When you are working at that pace, having tools that simplify content creation can make a real difference.

In a new article, I share the ways I use Adobe Express when supporting sales and marketing teams, including how Brand Kits help maintain consistency and how Resize can quickly adapt content across channels.

If you are working in a small marketing team or supporting sales enablement, this might be helpful.

Try Adobe Express here:
https://adobe.com/express

Sponsored by Adobe Express.
#AdobeExpressAmbassadors #Ad #HowToAdobeExpress

Sponsored by Adobe Express #AdobeExpressAmbassadors #Ad Creating content is not usually the hardest part for marketing teams. The challenge is produci

Open article: How I Use Adobe Express to Help Sales and Marketing Teams Create Consistent Content Faster by Jess Morgan • 4 min read

How I Use Adobe Express to Help Sales and Marketing Teams Create Consistent Content Faster

Helping General Managers to level up their leadership skills through relatable training and create lasting behavioral change using 1:1 and Group training and coaching. 🚀

If one of your future leaders handed their notice in tomorrow…would you be surprised?

Most People Directors wouldn’t.

Not because they don’t care about their teams, far from it, but because hospitality promotes at pace. Good operators get handed titles, pressure ramps up, and they’re expected to “step up” without being shown how to lead.

So they crack on… until eventually they crack under it.

Burnout.
Self-doubt.
Quiet disengagement.
A resignation that looks sudden-but wasn’t.

And by the time it shows up in your metrics, the damage is already done.

That’s where what we do so well fits.

I help People Directors build up their future leaders before hospitality breaks them down, developing confidence, clarity, and leadership habits early, so pressure doesn’t become the teacher.

This isn’t theory-heavy training or tick-box workshops.

It’s practical leadership development focused on:

• Knowing what good leadership actually looks like
• Leading people, not just shifts
• Handling pressure, feedback, accountability, and ownership
• Building confidence before responsibility tests it

Because replacing future leaders is expensive.
Developing them early is key to sustainability.

What about me.....

Who am I you may be asking, well I’m Jon 

I’m a dad of 3 and a proud husband! These are why I do what I do! 

My son’s 19 and daughter 16 and I see first hand how hard it is to get a chance after school!! 

That’s why I started Crack On, to give young people the skills and confidence the job assumes they already have.

I've been lucky (Or crazy) enough to have heard the word "Jon, you are an Ironman" 3 times in Tenby.

I don’t take myself too seriously.

But love backing the underdog!! 

Thanks for reading, Jon

Jon Saunders Leadership Trainer and Coach

Huge good luck to the The King's Trust Wales team setting off for Kilimanjaro today 🏔️

I had a small taste of what’s coming three weeks ago on the training walk… and after the fundraising dinner, that myself and Anne-marie Saunders attended, you could feel how much this means to everyone involved.

Proud to see one of my best mates Richard Selby MBE DL taking it on, a proper challenge for a proper cause.

Climb safe, look after each other, and take it all in.

You’ll come back with more than just photos!! 

Go #CrackOn 

We’re all behind you 👊

Supporting Young People In Wales 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 Proud! 

Sarah Jones Richard Selby MBE DL Bethan Richmond Milly Evans Rhian Mathias

Jonathan  Saunders

I help People Teams build up their future Leaders before Hospitality breaks them down.

How hard should a parent push if they see real potential in their child? 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 


You’re not seeing the moment a career is made.
You’re seeing the years no one watched.

Kane James didn’t go from St Peter’s to starting for Exeter Chiefs by accident.

Early mornings.
Extra reps.
Doing the work when nobody was clapping.

And one influence that kept showing up, his dad (Good mate of mine), Chris James.
Not pressure. Not hype.
Just a standard: outwork the opposition.

In this episode we talk about:

• discipline before confidence
• how environment shapes belief
• where support ends and pressure begins

Because whether it’s sport or leadership, performance isn’t built on the big stage.

It's built daily, with little positive habits!!

Episode live now 🎙️

Thank you Kane!!!  Whether it's England or Wales, keep working hard mate and smiling!!

💥 Sponsors 💥 

Metroguard Security provides professional, people-focused venue and event security, helping hospitality teams create safe, welcoming trading environments. 

Kurve delivers smart self-service ordering solutions, helping hospitality venues increase speed, efficiency, and customer spend.

Thank you Steven Rolfe and Andy Bannon!!!

Last night WRU - Welsh Rugby Union U20s got the result against Scotland 👏

On 25th March I’m sitting down with the Head Coach of the Under 20s, Richard Whiffin to go inside the bit most people never see…

How a coach actually prepares a team for a night like that.

What he really looks for in players at that age (hint, it’s not just talent).

And what the Welsh pathway genuinely looks like right now.l? 

If you’ve got a young player, coach a team, or care about future leaders in sport — this one’s for you!! 

Can Wales win today? 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

What do you think? 

As always- thanks Kurve and Metroguard Security for sponsorship🔥🔥🔥

Ever walked onto the floor knowing it was going to go wrong?


If this coming Saturday was a pre-shift huddle… and Steve Tandy was standing in front of your team 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 

Out of interest, what do you think he would be saying, and why?

Not the tactics.
The message.

After yesterday, I put my coach hat on and wonder what i would say?

The team need clarity and belief.

Curious, what’s the one line you’d want your team walking onto the floor with?

I'll share mine when I get a few comments......

WRU - Welsh Rugby Union

Ps We have all had shifts go wrong, and all remember the worst shifts ever (Mine was Tiger Tiger Portsmouth Valentines 2009....wow), but what would you say before the next go live shift?

This one means a lot to me.

The podcast started as a simple idea… sit down with good people and talk honestly about what it really takes to chase something big.

Kane James was brilliant, honest about the work, the pressure and the people who helped him along the way. Listening back, it’s the kind of conversation I wish younger me had heard.

If you’ve got 40 minutes on a walk, drive or gym session, I’d love you to watch it.

Not for numbers — just because I’m proud of it and wanted to share it with the people who’ve backed me.

My favourite but, who’s your biggest influence in your career…..

“My dad” Chris James 💚🖤💚 

Thanks Metroguard Security and Kurve for the ongoing support and believing in us!!

Let's do this Anne-marie Saunders!!  So looking forward to this year and beyond.  So many exciting things to come for growth mindset learners!! 

Let's untap and develop more hospitality leaders!

Welcome onboard!

#Boom

Crack On Leadership

Big news for Crack On Leadership!


and a big step forward in delivering Leadership you trust while investing in the leaders of tomorrow.

Anne-marie Saunders has officially joined the team as our new Client Relationship Manager, marking an exciting chapter as we continue building something that truly believes in the future — especially the future leaders we work with every day!

Over the coming weeks, Anne-marie Saunders will be introduced across our partner teams. Her focus is simple: strengthen relationships, elevate the client experience, and support the growth journey that helps leaders, and future leaders-thrive.

She brings a wealth of operational experience, a people-first mindset, and the structure needed to support sustainable expansion. As Crack On Leadership grows, so does our commitment to developing confident leaders who believe in themselves and the teams around them.

Here’s what Anne-marie Saunders had to say:

“I’m excited to be joining Crack On Leadership at such an important stage.  I have a deep routed passion for people, so when Jonathan Saunders approached me to come join the team, I jumped at it because building young and emerging future leaders is what we do.”

We’re lucky to have her on board, and even more excited about what this means for the future!

Please join me in welcoming Anne-Marie to the team.

Croeso i’r tîm — ymlaen gyda’n gilydd.

Matt Howcroft Georgina Jones

Hospitality turnover is still sitting around 67%.


For the People Team, that isn’t a stat.

That’s recruitment spend.
That’s rota stress.
That’s culture erosion (Big time, and we have all been there).

I once took over a site in Cardiff (I wont mention where) where turnover was running at 150% a year.

People were leaving almost as fast as we hired them — and it had been happening for two years.

The assumption internally?

“We just need better people.”

We didn’t.

We needed better prepared leaders that bought into the culture! Because supervisors were being promoted for effort…not equipped to lead people.

So we stopped recruiting first and started understanding.

We trained managers how to:

 • run a first shift properly
 • set expectations clearly
 • hold a 5-minute coaching conversation
 • give feedback without conflict
 • actually onboard someone beyond paperwork

It was not rocket science.

Just leadership skills they’d never been shown.

Leavers dropped. Fast.

A great Ops manager once told me, why would you spend £1 and lose 75% (On costs) of it when you can save £1 and keep it all!!

Leadership saves ££££££'s 

Crack On Leadership can help- contact me jon@crackonleadership.com

ps Meant to say Stopped....thanks to all who have messaged me!

To get a team to buy in…how do you do this? 

“Conflict is positive”

Richard Whiffin on the Jonathan Saunders Podcast 

We talk 

Coaching 👍
Pathways 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿
Leadership 🤝

Out Wednesday 🎙️🎙️🎙️🎙️

Thanks Kurve and Metroguard Security for the continued support!!!

Did you know….


“79% of employees say their performance isn’t managed in a motivating way”

Gallup 

Are your GMs developing the next generation? 
Is it through Will or skill? 

Crack On Leadership

I don’t think young people have lost their work ethic.


My son (19) is up at 6am and out the door daily and my daughter (16) out and wants to work more and more! 

I think they leave when they don’t feel seen!!  

If day one is confusing,
week one has no feedback,
and mistakes get noticed more than effort…

why would they stay?

Most don’t need an easier job, they need a clearer one.

After you vote on the poll…

What do you think?  What are you seeing in our young leaders?👇

Crack On Leadership

What’s the REAL reason young people leave within the first 90 days?

Thanks for joining our exclusive live broadcast. Feel free to share your questions and interact with other participants in the chat.

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The Battle

Jess Morgan

Jon Saunders Leadership Trainer and Coach

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The Battle

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Jon Saunders Leadership Trainer and Coach

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