Tired of wasting your hard-earned cash into marketing strategies that just don't deliver? 

Frustrated with lacklustre leads that lead to dead ends? 

I get it. I’ve been there.

At SocialTap, we’ve generated over £200M in tracked revenue and 500k leads, we hold the key to digital marketing success.

We've spent the last six years perfecting the art of turning digital chaos into cold, hard cash.

We can help. 

Drop me a message and let's chat strategy.

Jon Wilson

In July 2024, a guy called Guy pitched me an idea.

A community for founders, business owners and exited entrepreneurs — with wellbeing at its core.

At the time, it landed perfectly.

I’d already started making some positive lifestyle changes personally. Training more. Looking after my head. Saying no to things that no longer served me.

At the same time, I was going through a big professional shift.
I’d started SocialTap with the support of three experienced entrepreneurs, but I’d decided it was time to buy them out and go it alone.

Both of those decisions created gaps.

My lifestyle changes created a void in my social circle.
The buyout created a gap in terms of professional support.

I’d been to plenty of “traditional” networking events before.
If I’m honest, I hated them. They always felt like something I should do as a business owner, not something I wanted to do.

Function turned out to be exactly what I needed — at exactly the right time.

A carefully curated group of like-minded people.
All founders, business owners or exited founders.
People who care about fitness, wellbeing, personal progression and building meaningful businesses.

Since joining, it’s led me to:
– Wellness sessions at The Farm Club
– Retreat in Andalucía
– HIIT sessions with other business owners
– A bit of Padel
– And some very honest conversations as part of the peer groups

I regularly feel like the least smart person in the room — which tells me I’m in the right room.

What I value most is that I genuinely look forward to each event.
It’s time away from the business, time for myself, and time spent with people doing inspiring things.

And just as importantly, I know I can pick up the phone to any of them for advice — and they can do the same with me.

They say your network is your net worth.

For that reason alone, Function has delivered an infinite return on investment — both professionally and personally.

Building a business can be lonely.
Building one alongside people who genuinely want to see you win changes everything.

Founder @ SocialTap | £200m Sales Generated for Clients | Get quality leads, drive more sales, make more profit

If you’re currently exploring Meta as a new marketing channel, one of the first questions you’ll be asking is:

“How much budget do I actually need to start?”

The honest answer?
It’s less about daily spend and more about how quickly you can get through the learning phase.

Meta needs data.
You need data.
And that only really starts to become meaningful once you’re hitting ~50 conversions in a short period of time. 

That volume gives:

You enough performance signal to judge what’s working
Meta enough signal to optimise delivery properly

Where it gets tricky is high-ticket businesses. It may be easy to get 50 leads in a week, but what about 50 converted sales?

If a sale costs £500 to acquire, you’re looking at £25,000 just to reach 50 sales.
That’s not always realistic early on.

So the smarter move is often to optimise earlier in the journey, whilst not compromising on lead quality:

Lender approvals in finance
Booked appointments
Qualified leads with a strong likelihood of converting

You’re still feeding Meta high-quality signals, but at a much lower cost, allowing you to reach that 50+ event threshold faster.

Once the data’s there?
You can then progressively move optimisation closer to the sale.

The final (and most important) piece of the puzzle 👇
You must understand what you can afford to pay per converted client — and how that looks at volume, not just one-off wins.

Meta doesn’t reward impatience.
It rewards clear economics, good signals, and enough data to learn.

If you get those right, the budgets start to make a lot more sense. 💡

When Meta ads get expensive, most people fix the wrong thing.

Rising costs aren’t random — they’re a signal that something in the system has changed.

But instead of diagnosing that change, most advertisers panic and start “doing stuff”:
👉 swapping creatives
👉 broadening audiences
👉 resetting campaigns
👉 blaming the algorithm

The reality? There are only a handful of things that usually drive cost inflation:
• Seasonality
• Ad fatigue
• Slower landing pages
• Shifts in user intent
• Broken follow-up

The mistake is treating all of these the same.

Performance issues need a process, not a knee-jerk reaction.

If you don’t know why costs have gone up, any “fix” is basically guesswork.

Thumbstoppers

Thumbstoppers make content that speaks authentically to Millennial and Gen-Z customers.

A collective of strategists, scientists, creators and influencers with over 16 years career experience spanning the evolution of digital marketing to social media and content production. We watched global brands shoehorn traditional branded content into social feeds with huge budgets and terrible engagement rates and knew there was a better way.

We help our clients weave their brand identity into popular culture through content their customers care about. We are proud to deliver authentic, emotional, social engagement for the world's bravest brands.

N.E.D. Advisor 

Leafe Consultancy

• Transformed multiple digital marketing and creative agencies, driving EBITDA growth from £20k to £250k in just 12 months.
• Doubled turnover and profit for another agency, while securing 100% retainer clients for a third.
• Leveraged 35 years of agency expertise to mentor and guide businesses to success, achieving remarkable results.

Managing Director

Moscow for Pleasure

Guitarist and keyboards

"We are old and we are new.  When you get to a certain age, you seem to become invisible. The high street stops catering for you, and the music industry stops providing music for you.  It’s always nice to watch pretty young kids singing about teenage angst and rebellion but their life experience lacks the depth and realism that years of 9 to 5 brings to most of our lives. That’s where we think we come in.  We aim our music at the 30 upwards bracket just by living in the same world that they do.

Our lyrics are succinct and have bite. We relate to the market that still buys recorded music, still buys downloaded music and goes to concerts and has spending power.  Moscow for Pleasure is a five piece with a big sound. A defined melodic groove coming from tight bass and drums overlaid with crunching guitar and keyboards, supporting the powerful yet subtle voice of Keiran Moses. 

Rather uniquely, we played together in our early twenties and exactly the same line-up has now reformed with new material.  We were not musically mature back then and our lyrics lacked depth – not everyone matures at the same speed.  Since then, each member has seen life as it is and the roller coaster ride endured makes us who and what we are.  We're not wet-nosed puppies, we're experienced and it takes a lot to impress us, so we work hard and know what to listen to and what to discard. We may not be long in the music business but we're seasoned in life.

The band has worked with a very impressive musical support team including two well-known and highly successful music producers, Stuart Colman and Stephen Harris.  Between them they have worked with acts as diverse as Santana, U2, Kodaline and Kaiser Chiefs to The Shadows, Shakin' Stevens to Kate Bush.  Stuart is immersed in the music business in New York whilst Stephen works from his home in rural East Yorkshire where he mixes and produces for all the world's major record labels and has won a number of Grammys.

Guitarist

Strawberry

Brand Ambassador

Having run a VERY successful, always profitable and leading Creative Marketing agency in Yorkshire for the last 27 years, I’ve built up a detailed knowledge of numerous industry types.

I’m very experienced in all forms of marketing and digital is a speciality.

It’s my mission to support the boards, the management team and the shareholders of businesses across The UK and Europe.

I focus on what the businesses are good at, really good at and what maybe they shouldn’t be doing.

I help build value through helping the business leaders focus on what’s REALLY important. This approach builds long term, sustainable businesses that are profitable, have good and happy clients and customers, a repeatable sales funnel and a workforce that is dedicated to the organisation and its strategy

I only like to work with organisations where I see I can make an impact.

When I’m not doing this I like to keep my Spanish fluent and my golf handicap just right!


Building relationships that last

Strawberry was established in 1993, and since then, we have grown to become one of the region’s leading full service marketing and web design agencies with a team of Nearly 40 talented individuals.

Our roots are in the city of Hull, yet our client base reaches far and wide to include a diverse range of public, private and not for profit organisations.

The Strawberry mission statement is to ‘listen, think, create and achieve’ and by doing so, we put our clients at the heart of everything we do. This is why we deliver first rate projects and build strong, lasting relationships with all of our customers, each and every time.

Chairman

Leafe and Marr

NH Sotogrande Hotel

Marketing Manager

Barry Cooke Advertising

Account Executive

I’m a failed popstar!

But I’m a great agency coach! I sold my £2m agency seven years ago, and since then, I've been creating superior opportunities for my clients. 

Taking them to places that they never reach on their own. 

All my clients have grown - some doubled, some tripled, and most award-winning.

When I finish working with them, they’re happier, confident and wealthier. 

This is the most rewarding work I’ve ever done. Other being a popstar!

Jonathan Leafe

It’s all about the feminine 

(I wrote this eight years ago, and it's also in my book; I thought it was worth a revisit for International Women's Day)

The assertion that ‘female’ companies will fare better in the 21st century than ‘male’ ones is an intriguing one - and one which can prove remarkably relevant for the modern company. 

The basic notion that a company can have traits that can be categorised as ‘male’ or ‘female’ is naturally a tricky one. Of course, we are clearly stereotyping here - obviously not all men and women hold or exhibit the characteristics listed in this post, nor are these lists exhaustive. 

Let’s begin with an exercise. Read the list below and tick all the traits that you believe apply to Apple, Google, Amazon, John Lewis and any other of the World’s biggest companies that you can think of. Give them each a plus score for ‘female’ traits and minus for ‘male’ - what would Apple’s total score add up to, for example?

‘FEMALE’ TRAITS
Flexible
Sincere
Teamwork
Honest
Reasonable
Cooperative
Kind
Listening
Sensitive
Gentle
Adaptable
Dependable
Patient
Supportive

‘MALE’ TRAITS
Rigid
Decisive
Focused
Daring
Overbearing
Confident
Straightforward
Selfish
Self-reliant 
Distinctive
Aggressive
Direct
Career-orientated
Ambitious

Now do this with your organisation - how did you fare? Were you leaning more towards ‘male’ traits or to ‘feminine’ ones? What are you going to do about it? 

Obviously, the best companies will have struck a good balance between the two, but out of both lists, the most attractive traits are blatantly ‘female’.

... Or do you disagree?

A big shoutout to all the female agency leaders I've had the pleasure of coaching and working with over the last eight years. We've been through ups and downs, triumphs and tears (mainly mine). 

Jane Entwistle
Libby Entwisle
Courtney Godwin
Jessica Metcalfe
Clare Bushby
Gemma Daniels BA(Hons)
Lilly Copeland
Lois Miles
Roisin Reilly
Amelia Caruso
Georgina Partington
 
And also to the multiple brilliant women I've had the pleasure of working alongside at Strawberry in my 27 years there. (Picture of me and many of the team just before I left - some legends in there).

 #IWD26

Helping agency owners solve their problems by someone who’s been there, done it, and exited successfully

The elite Agencies? They’ve built a different engine.

Most agencies are stuck on a treadmill. 

After 8+ years of coaching and 27 years running my own agency, I‘ve noticed a pattern that works every time, and I always initially focus on this. The top agencies, the ones that scale elegantly, primarily share these six traits:

1. They prioritise "Sleep-at-Night" Revenue. 

They don’t survive on one-off projects. They’ve built predictable, multi-stream income through retainers, SLAs, and support. If you can’t forecast next quarter to a year, you don’t have a business; you have a job.

2. They obsess over Impact, not just Output. 

Almost anyone can deliver a "task." The best agencies are obsessed with the benefit of that task. They don't just write code or copy; they move the needle for their clients. They create impact.

3. They are Order Makers, not Order Takers. 

If a client asks for "XYZ," an average agency says, Yes. A great agency asks "Why?" They are curious, proactive, and constantly looking for ways to enhance the client’s business. They lead the strategy; they don't just follow a brief.

4. They fire Energy Vampires. 

Toxic clients suck the joy out of the work and demotivate the team. The best founders protect their culture at all costs. No amount of revenue is worth losing your best people over a bad client.

5. They practice Calculated Courage. 

They are generally cautious with overhead and debt, but they aren't afraid to move. When a real opportunity arises, they have the "dry powder" and the guts to leap while others are still over-analysing.

6. They play the Long Game. 

They don’t chase "exit-at-all-costs" fantasies. They have a plan grounded in reality that focuses on wealth creation for everyone - founders, employees, and partners alike.

Building a great business isn't about maximum effort. It’s about these six fundamental shifts in mindset.

Which one/s are your agency currently missing?

Very similar messages come out of the excellent book 'Standout or Die' by my fellow agency coach Gareth Healey 

Image courtesy of Google Gemini.

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