The Four Most Important Things I’ve Learnt From Running Three businesses At The Same Time

I’ve co-founded three very different businesses that I’m running right now - Heights, Infamous Media & Foundrs:

1. Heights , a brain health and performance company - a venture funded startup, which is
where I work full time from Monday - Friday. Since we launched in January we’ve hired
10 employees - all remotely.
2. I nfamous Media , the producers of the UK’s most popular entrepreneurial podcast,
Secret Leaders. A completely creative endeavour that I work on at weekends, which for
me counts as 'active rest and recovery' to the working week.
3. Foundrs , an invite-only community of over 300 of the UK’s top entrepreneurs who share
similar beliefs. The journey began 7 years ago and is my way of giving back to the
community.

It’s an on-going learning process but the four key things I’ve learnt are hiring with honesty,
prioritisation, identifying personal values and the importance of clarity.

 Hiring with honesty
During the hiring process at Infamous Media for our Head of Podcasts role, which Will
Stolerman now heads up - both myself and producer Rich Martell made it very clear that Heights
gets 99% of my time. It’s important to provide clarity and honesty - not only when you’re hiring
but for all your employees. For me, I look for my employees to grow and l ead - which is why I
look for autonomy, good decision-making skills, and trusting individuals . I learnt a lot about
delegation and trust through the experience of building Foundrs.

Prioritisation in business
I use a time tracker to see where I’m spending most of my time so I can work out whether I'm
being productive (or not). The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, written by Stephen Covey,
introduced me to ‘ The Eisenhower Matrix ’ - which helps me to decide and prioritize my tasks
based on urgency and importance whilst sorting out less urgent and less important tasks. I try to
make sure as much as my work as possible stays in the “Urgent Not Important” quadrant.

Identify your personal values
I think the most important thing you can do as a founder is to spend time identifying your
personal values, and from there your company values. This enables you to hire correctly and
build a company culture where people thrive.

I value mental health, humility, purposing potential with purpose and initiative - all of these
values are at the core of all my three companies.

 My advice for founders would be to spend time figuring out your personal values, and from
there, your company values in order to hire correctly.

I've learnt from my mistakes but one thing I’ll say is don’t rush the growth process - by aligning
with your values you can create a company and a culture that not only allows employees to
thrive, but most importantly perform at their best.

I won’t lie and say it’s been easy to learn what my values are, it’s taken me years.

Scale and impact come from clarity of purpose
For me, my intrinsic motivation is community and to make an impact and help others in any way
that I can.

Therefore, it’s clear to me why one business, Heights, focuses on brain care after my own
experience with insomnia and anxiety, and curing it through nutrition, why Secret Leaders
showcases insights from experienced founders for free, for all to hear. And is why Foundrs is a
community designed for 'founders breaking new ground without breaking themselves'.

I have real clarity on my passions. I'm always learning, and growing which is when I’m happiest.
I’m looking forward to the journey moving forward, but know that I’ll always stick to what my core
values are. They’ll always be with me and will inform all of my business decisions.

Secret Leaders is available on Apple, Spotify and all major podcast platforms - https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/secret-leaders /id1229438369