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My 14 years’ experience of growing a business from £0-£100m as well as the life that goes with it.

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Simon Says

Winformation this week...

If there’s one piece of feedback I keep getting week after week since launching Winformation, it’s that I don’t just talk about the successes like the vast majority of others in my space. I lay it out, warts and all. And true to form, I need to share in a brutally honest statement that 2025 so far has been the worst year of my life. Hands down. Business is tough, progress has been slow, but the real kicker was losing my Dad in March. Throw in a wedding to organise and 2 young boys to parent, and some days I feel like chucking in the towel. So, over the weekend, when the business I cofounded was crowned The Sunday Times UK Employer of the Year for Business Services and in their top 10 Employers in Britain overall, I’ll be honest, I allowed myself a rare smile. It’s been the light at the end of a very long tunnel. The last few days have all been “congratulations” and questions about “how” a company formed in a garage with 2 slow laptops and a whole heap of naivety would eventually end up as one of Europe’s most important SMEs. Ask other companies on the list, and they may well say something like “there was no exact moment, just a long, hard road of slow progress”. And whilst the 2^nd half of this statement is certainly true for us. There was in fact, a light bulb moment that changed everything. It’s a pretty incredible story, and I share that exclusively for you guys below in today’s One Idea to Win in Business.

I love my partner and the mother of my children to bits. But watching her step over her own shoes on the stairs 42 times, waiting to be taken up to the dressing room, blows my brain. I often joke that she’s got more step-overs than a young Ronaldo. But then, when it comes to procrastination, I put off starting the big things, whereas she dives straight in. The tiny things (taking my shoes up to where they belong), I can handle. Humans are humans, but we are all different. Understanding why we procrastinate can help us individually manage it. Take a bow, Tim Urban. His TED Talk on why we procrastinate has been watched by 13 million people…who were presumably putting off a more important task whilst flicking through YouTube at the time. Below, in today’s One Idea to Win in Life, I summarise the key lessons from the talk, so you can start to reduce the time between thinking, planning…and action!

One Idea to Win in Business

The Lightbulb Moment & Strategy That Took Us From Tiny Garage Start Up to the UK’s Best Employer, All Laid Out for You to Copy

It all started in a cold garage

In 2011, we launched our recruitment business from a garage. Not metaphorically. Literally. A cold, cluttered, dimly lit garage borrowed from a family member, who we confidently promised we’d vacate within six weeks. Our plan was to make so much money in the first month, we’d not just rent an office, we’d probably buy one outright. How naïve we were.

Six months in

Six months later, things hadn’t quite gone to plan. The business was only bringing in about £1,000 more than we were spending. Our grand reward? The chance to pay ourselves £500 a month. Not exactly enough to cover a mortgage, but it was something.

Then, just as we were about to finally draw that tiny salary, we got a call. A former colleague from our previous roles in recruitment was keen to join us. Hiring him meant we had to forgo any salary for a longer period, and actually find more money to pay him.

This individual had been a real performer in their previous job, placing 20 or more candidates a quarter in the very sector we were working in. If anyone was going to supercharge our tiny startup, it was him. Seven months later, for whatever reason, he hadn’t made 30 or 40 placements as expected, he’d made 2. Disaster. His fault? Our fault? Did it even matter?

A disappointing Christmas in 2011

So our first Christmas as a business was the worst Christmas I had ever experienced. Two days before Christmas, we had to let our first employee, who was a friend and a new father, go. The company had simply run out of money.

Our big, shiny office felt like a distant dream, if not an outright joke. My co-founder and I still hadn’t paid ourselves anything at all the whole year. I had gone through all of my savings, my life was now being financed by a credit card, and I had no income to pay it back.

Where did we go from there?

We took a week off over Christmas. When we returned in January 2012, completely unsure of our next move, we did what desperate entrepreneurs often do. We went to the Harvester. While we waited for our food, and after a trip to the ashtray of my £250 car to scrounge enough coins to actually pay for the meal, my co-founder James started sketching something on a napkin. An org chart. Of over 50 people.

The waitress looked over and asked what it was. “That’s our company in five years,” James said. She laughed. I choked on a chicken wing.

The big turning point

But that napkin moment was the turning point. We realised something fundamental. If we wanted to attract brilliant people, fresh talent and experienced recruiters alike, we had to create a brilliant place to work. Lightbulb moment. Simple to say. Much harder to do. Until then, we’d spent a year trying to build a recruitment company like every other one out there. But we had a fraction of the budget, no real brand, and no real reason for someone to choose us over anyone else.

So we started writing some goals down for the year. There were the usual goals related to revenue and the other boring bits you have to set yourself. But then I asked James, “how are we going to write the goal of becoming a great place to work”. It was hardly a “SMART” goal. We didn’t have a defined outcome to aim for.

So James said, “Just write to become the UK’s Best Employer.” It wasn’t small or sensible, and totally unachievable for 2 chancers who were still operating from a garage. But “aim for the moon,” as they say… As soon as we committed to that goal, the clarity was unreal. Every decision we made from that point forward was guided by one question “Is this what the UK’s best employer would do?”

That’s when things started to click.

In January 2012, we stopped trying to build just a good recruitment company. We focused instead on building the best place to work in the country, which happened to be a recruitment company. Focus shifted. And so, like all huge goals, they take time. A decade of hard work and clear decision making ensued.

But then one cold November night in 2022, on my 40th birthday, no less, (it’s funny how huge milestones usually happen in twos or threes), we collected “The UK Platinum Employer of the Year” from “Investor’s in People. The organisation in the UK that recognises the very best employers, people and culture.

In 2023, we were recognised by The Sunday Times first time around as a Top Ten UK Employer. And now, in 2025, as a 110 people, £100m business, we’ve been named a Top Ten UK Employer by The Sunday Times once again, but more importantly, as the Sunday Times UK Employer of the Year for Business and Management Services.

That’s not just a win for us as founders. It’s a win for everyone who’s been part of this journey. For everyone who’s helped build the culture, weathered the early storms, and brought the vision to life. They are the greatest team I believe, anywhere in the country. I am so fortunate to come to work every day and be in their presence.

The real winners though are our customers and clients. Because we work so hard to be the very best employer, we don’t lose team members to other companies. That means the client deals with our people for many, many years, ensuring that their relationship with them and us is the very best they can be.

You see, the key thing here is, so many other companies in the UK, especially in 2025 see spending time and money on their team as a silly, wasteful cost when in actual fact it’s the biggest single investment you can make.

You nail these 5 steps, and as if by magic, your company grows, customers are happier and yes…eventually the money rolls in.

One Idea to Win in Life

Steal Tim Urban’s Genuis to Switch off Procrastination

Tim Urban is an author, illustrator and co-founder of Wait but Why, a blog that has more than 600k followers. Urban’s TED Talk ‘Inside the Mind of a Master Procrastinator’ has had many millions of views over the years and is well worth checking out. Here’s a summary of his advice, which is funny, if it weren’t so sad, which is sometimes the funniest thing of all. 

1. Two different brains. Urban talks of a detailed analysis of the brains of a procrastinator and a non-procrastinator. The non-procrastinator is manned by what he calls a rationale decision maker. But the rationale decision maker is thrown off course in the brain of the procrastinator, by what Urban calls the instant gratification monkey.

2. Needs of the instant gratification monkey. These are very simple, it’s easy and fun. If it’s not one of these things, then it doesn’t get done. This doesn’t bode well if you have a deadline. 

3. The dark playground. This is where the instant gratification monkey takes you to play. You haven’t earned a break and a laugh, but that’s just what you’re headed for. The problem is, rather than being fun, it leads to guilt. Why? Because you have important stuff to do, that you are not doing, and the clock is ticking. 

4. The panic monster. It’s at times like these when the panic monster raises his head. He normally lies dormant. The awful realisation of an impending deadline and the risk of humiliation wakes him up and scares off the instant gratification monkey. 

5. Is a life without deadlines a life? The thing is, the panic monster only comes out when a deadline is looming. Yet in his absence, people are still unhappy. Without a deadline, procrastination can bleed out across a life, leaving people miserable. Urban points to a sheet of paper with 90 boxes drawn on it, with each box representing a year of your life. It’s a lot of years, but when you start crossing them out one by one, you realise life is a deadline and nobody is promised tomorrow. The answer? Beware of your own instant gratification monkey and stop procrastinating right now, or maybe tomorrow! 

Win or Wonder?

Ask Me a Question…

No matter where you are on this mad journey. Starting out, scaling up, or somewhere in the messy middle feel free to ask me anything.

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Until next week! 

Let’s win, together!