Tom Hunt

$3.6m ARR. $0 raised. I have no idea what I'm doing.

Jan 2014.I'm walking home from a depressing New Year's trip to Oslo with an ex. girlfriend.It's raining in East London.I made a decision:I would replace my management consulting salary (£42,000) by the end of the year.I had no idea from where, but that was the goal...I just about hit it and left the corporate world.And I haven't been back since.Fast forward a decade and I've:- Tried and failed with 17 businesses- Invested in 11- Learnt a LOTThe one that is finally working is called Fame:- We have a weird culture (in a good way)- We start and grow podcasts for B2B businesses- We are fully remote and have 75 full-time team membersI live for our awesome team at Fame, building businesses and great marketing.And I post about them here 🤗

Founder & CEO

We start and grow the world's most profitable B2B podcasts.

Clients include:

👉 IDEO
👉 Workday
👉 HighRadius
👉 People.ai
👉 Zendesk
👉 Bevy
👉 Circle
👉 Suzy
👉 Mazars
👉 LeanData
👉 CXL
👉 Ramp
👉 Alibaba
👉 Signify
👉 eToro

$4.5m ARR. $0 raised. I have no idea what I’m doing.

“We need to let them go.”

I’m in a 1-1 and a manager thinks someone in their team isn’t performing.

I'm in shock, to me they seemed enthusiastic and a culture fit.


We dug into the details:

- What weren’t they doing?
- Why weren’t they doing it?

The manager thought they either didn't understand or couldn't do the role.

Then I ask:

“How did onboarding go?”

“What do you mean by onboarding?” they reply.


And that's when we found the issue:

We skipped the onboarding process and replaced it with "a couple of calls".


If you’re recruiting right, you owe it to yourself to onboard right.

You can’t expect someone to join and start performing, you need to set them up to succeed.

Onboard right or do it twice.

Agree?

I had a terrible boss.

And I spent more time with them than my partner.
 

They never raised their voice.

They smiled (kind of).

But they also started:

- Passing my ideas off as their own
- Expecting email responses at 10pm
- “Checking in” multiple times per day
 
Again, they weren’t ever aggressive or rude, they just slowly eroded my confidence each day.

I thought this was normal e.g. you get a job, you get a manager like this.
 

And then…

I moved roles and got a new manager, they:

- Stepped in when needed
- Never emailed after hours
- Saved most comms to our weekly 1-1
 

A great manager won’t get you promoted.

They will change the trajectory of your career.

Agree?

My 7 favourite startup lies:


1. We’re scaling
-- No, you still don't know how/if you'll be profitable

2. We’re going viral
-- No, your CEO’s LinkedIn fundraise post got a few more likes than normal

3. TechCrunch picked us up
-- No, your $10k per month PR agency got you featured

4. We’re partnering with Google
-- No, you’re paying Google Cloud for servers

5. The inbound pipeline is strong
-- No, some competitors requested a demo to see what you’re building

6. We have FANG-level talent
-- No, one of your devs interned at Netflix 6 years ago

7. The team are fully incentivised
-- No, they have paper options based on an inflated fundraise


And my absolute favourite:

8. We’re worth $30m
-- No, a hyped up VC gave you this valuation to make themselves look good (so they can raise their next fund)


Thank god we don't have to lie to ourselves.

Here’s to the bootstrappers 🥂

(Exit the hype-train and subscribe to Cash Machines)

I probably shouldn’t share this…

I like to call it the “Pay Rise Formula”.


Most people go about asking for money in the completely wrong way:

1. Pay review arrives
2. “Can I have more money?”

It’s an easy "not yet" from the boss.


But if you follow these three steps, you boost your chances of a pay rise by at least 56%:

(Not a guarantee but it works)

1. 6 months before the pay review ask your boss: “what do I need to be doing in the next 6 months to get a pay-rise?”

2. Write those things down and make a plan to hit them. Work hard.

3. A few weeks before the pay review, show the list (with things ticked off) to your boss in a 1-1 and ask them to confirm if you are actually doing those things


If done right, there is no way a boss can push back on a raise with the "not yet" excuse.

Pro-activity pays.

Agree?

"OK let me get this straight..."

"Because it kind of sounds like you built yourself a job."


It's 11:37pm in 2017 and I'm sat with a good friend enjoying a spicy margarita in a seedy city bar.

He's shouting into my ear because they closed something called a "Series A":

- How their going to change the world
- An upcoming TechCrunch article
- All the people he needs to hire
- Their "enterprise motion"


But something isn't making sense to me:

1. He has to report to the board every month
2. Any cost greater than £25k must have board sign off
3. He can't take cash out whenever he wants
4. Board needs to sign off his salary
4. If he leaves in the next 4 years he only keeps a slice of his own company
5. If they don't sell it for a massive amount he may get nothing
6. To sell it, they need investor sign off


He replies:

"Yeah I see what you're saying, but the reality is the company is now valued at £20m, my stake is £6m, so I'm basically a multi-millionaire"

😳


As you can imagine, it didn't work out well.

Glad I stuck to building Cash Machines.

$4.5 million ARR, 0 raised.

$500 invested.

It’s been a wild ride.


We have built Fame as a service business with mostly intangible assets.

We did it without selling a single piece of equity to venture capital.

But even asset-light businesses get stuck.

You often need to buy speed to hire a star developer, fund a new marketing campaign, or pay a tax bill.

In those moments, I did not want to wait weeks for a bank.

Unless I had another option.

An option like iwoca.


They fund small businesses that move quickly and have already funded 100,000 businesses in the UK. 

They lent £3.3 billion to business owners who need to move fast and build resilience.

You can apply for business finance between £1,000 and £1M in about five minutes.

They typically give you a decision within 24 hours.

Apply here to check your options: https://lnkd.in/euSG4SCm

NOTE - applying does not impact your credit score.

#Ad

Brand partnership • $4.5m ARR. $0 raised. I have no idea what I’m doing.

It felt like the responsible thing to do... 


But then it turned out to be one of the worst business decisions ever.

Depreciating assets hurt the balance sheet, locking up capital that could be used for growth. 

For example... 

We are in a hiring sprint, bringing on 2 - 3 new team members in Feb. 

Old Tom would have dropped thousands upfront for laptops that would be worth significantly less by next year.

That isn’t scaling.

It’s a cash drain.

Instead, we are using Raylo.

It took 60 seconds to set up a subscription for the latest HP laptops, and they arrived the next day.

Here is why I recommend Raylo as an affordable option for small businesses:

- Protect Your Cash: We paid £0 upfront. Every pound saved on hardware goes straight into growth.

- Upgrade Freedom: With the MacBook M5 rumors floating around, I am not worried because we can upgrade the team to the latest models for free with Raylo's monthly rolling option.

- Zero Drama: If something goes wrong with a device during the subscription, Raylo's Lifetime Warranty covers technical faults and they sort it quickly.


Or in other words:

Stop buying "stuff" that rots on your balance sheet. 

Convert your tech to OpEx and keep your capital for growth.

Check out the subscription options for your team here: mdsh.io/raylo-business 

#Ad

humanworks

At humanworks, we do b2b marketing differently. Bland, boring and blah blah blah B2B isn’t for us. We’re storytelling specialists, working with forward-thinking, growth-minded businesses to put the human connection at the heart of B2B marketing.

What we offer:

Content strategy
• Editorial
• Value proposition development
• Content audits

Brand awareness
• Thought leadership campaigns
• Industry reports
• SEO Blog articles

Lead generation
• E-books
• Whitepapers
• Email communications
• Paid ads

Social media
• Social media strategy
• Content creation and ghostwriting
• LinkedIn content
• Company page management

Communications & copy
• PR
• Website content & SEO
• Landing pages
• Case studies
• Employee engagement

Video & design
• Brand design
• Website design
• Video content
• Infographics

Founder

Cosmo Creative Content

If you're a b2b marketing director in financial services, insurance, SaaS and sustainability - we work with you to deliver the thought leadership strategy and content your in-house teams can't.

Content Director

BBC Radio 5 Live

-	Senior leader of the 5 live Breakfast programme and the wider 5 live network leadership team.
-	Leading a team of 20 producers creating a network breakfast radio programme 7 days a week. Responsibility for team performance and welfare.
-	Overseeing the on-air team, managing key talent and setting the editorial direction of the programme. 
-	Leading the commissioning of the programme’s digital and social content   

INNOVATION & LEADERSHIP

-	Leading the recent re-development of the 5 live Breakfast programme: creating a modern radio programme with the audience at its heart. Developing new formats and a programme clock to better showcase presenter talent – driving increased engagement and audience appreciation.
-	Leading 5 live Breakfast’s acclaimed Brexit coverage: developing formats like #BrexitBarometer (a simultaneous discussion format, on-air and online). Driving significant social media traffic.
-	Leading 5 Live Breakfast’s 2019 Election coverage, including creating record levels of engagement with the 5 Live Leader Your Calls, broadcast simultaneously on the BBC News Channel (the leaders of the main political parties taking listeners’ questions). Demonstrating an ability to lead high-profile projects with multiple stakeholders.

STRATEGIC HIGHLIGHTS:
-	Leading a 5 live strategy to improve our reach to younger audiences. Collaborating with multiple stake-holders and creating a blueprint that has had a real impact: 25-44 measure up on Rajars Q4 2019, significantly more live listening through BBC Sounds for U35s (Q3 vs Q4 2019)
-	Leading the BBC's 50:50 project to encourage greater diversity of voices on-air.
-	Currently leading on a project to develop a unique strategy to increase live listening through BBC Sounds (Q1 2020). Working across the BBC Radio division, engaging and managing multiple stakeholders. Demonstrating an ability to identify problems across the division and bring a team together to tackle them.

Assistant Editor

Senior Broadcast Journalist

Broadcast Journalist

THEN → BBC Journalist For 17 Years NOW → Building a B2B Content Agency HOW → Transforming Your Business Into a Thought Leader

At humanworks, we do b2b marketing differently. Bland, boring and blah blah blah B2B isn’t for us. We’re storytelling specialists, working with forward-thinking, growth-minded businesses to put the human connection at the heart of B2B marketing.

What we offer:

Content strategy
• Editorial
• Value proposition development
• Content audits

Brand awareness
• Thought leadership campaigns
• Industry reports
• SEO Blog articles

Lead generation
• E-books
• Whitepapers
• Email communications
• Paid ads

Social media
• Social media strategy
• Content creation and ghostwriting
• LinkedIn content
• Company page management

Communications & copy
• PR
• Website content & SEO
• Landing pages
• Case studies
• Employee engagement

Video & design
• Brand design
• Website design
• Video content
• Infographics

_________________________________

Why choose humanworks?

We don’t think business to business; we think human to human.

That means crafting content and communications that create genuine, personal, and authentic connections between your business and your customers.

We’re a new type of marketing agency. We help you cut through the blah, blah, blah and give your business a compelling story that will help you stand out from the crowd, build your brand, and grow your bottom line.

• We’re storytellers
• We’re thinkers & doers
• We’re humans, not robots

Our content doesn’t just click with your audience; it connects your business to new leads and converts them into customers.

That’s the power of human-to-human marketing. It just works.

__________________________

Our founder:

I’m Cosmo Shield, founder of humanworks. Before you ask, yes, that’s my real name! I was a BBC journalist for almost two decades before I realised I was sick of telling people bad news every day and wanted to help a generation of businesses tell their stories in a more compelling way.

That’s the passion the humanworks team brings to every client and project. I’d love to hear more about your business.

Email
cosmo@human-works.co.uk

Website:
www.human-works.co.uk

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The Battle

Tom Hunt

Cosmo Shield ♾

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taplio

The Battle

Tom Hunt

Cosmo Shield ♾

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Tom Hunt's LinkedIn Performance

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