On Wearing a New Hat

This week, The Hidden Code for Business Success received the International Author Excellence Award in Dubai. It’s a generous thing, and I’m grateful for it.

I’ve spent the last twenty years building businesses – over a hundred ventures, more wins and losses than I can neatly file away. Writing a book was never on my plan. It was a side door I walked through during COVID, when a lot of us were forced to slow down and ask uncomfortable questions about what we were actually building for. The book is what came out of that.

I won’t give too much away here. Truthfully, it’s the book I would have liked to read at twenty-three, when I was launching my first venture and figuring most of it out the hard way. It’s part the story of how I got from there to here. Part the things nobody told me along the way. And part a handful of ideas that, once they finally clicked for me, quietly changed how I built everything that came after.

If you’re early in your entrepreneurial journey, or somewhere in the middle and stuck on something you can’t quite name, there’s a good chance there’s a chapter or two in it for you.

As meaningful as the recognition is, the part that has stayed with me most has been the messages from readers. People writing in to say a chapter landed at the right moment. Founders telling me they recognised themselves in a story I didn’t think anyone else would relate to. That’s the whole reason the book exists, and that’s where the real reward sits.

Thank you to the team behind the International Author Excellence Award for the honour. And to the team at Austin Macauley Publishers, who turned a stack of notes and stories into a book worth holding.

Now, back to building.