Twenty years building DTC brands — these days as a team of one, plus a stack of AI and a baby upstairs. The Dispatch is one honest letter a week on how it's actually going: what's working, what it costs, and what I'd do differently.
Building DTC brands without the venture-scale theatre. Pricing, positioning, products — and keeping more of what you make.
How a small business actually uses AI: the workflows I run daily, what gets automated, what never will. No hype, no doom.
Building a company around a family instead of squeezing one in. Hours, energy, money — and the point of all of it.
My father lost everything overnight; my mother raised three of us alone. It taught me early that circumstances move fast — the only durable assets are how you think and how you adapt.
Twenty years on, I've built two DTC brands as a solo founder and consulted for a few hundred more — James May's Gin, Doc & Glo and Four Sigmatic among them. Some worked. Some were expensive lessons I now sell cheaply.
And now there's a baby upstairs. So the question has changed from "how big can it get?" to "how good can it be while I'm still home for bathtime?" AI handles my busywork. I write down the rest.
Paid traffic that pays you back — the full system for profitable ads without an agency retainer.
Launch and grow a lean Shopify brand — customer, product, store, and the first $100k, in order.
Like talking to a mate who's read all the books, done the therapy, built the companies — and somehow stayed normal.
One of the few newsletters I actually read. A thoughtful email from a smart friend — not a sales pitch dressed up as advice.
Finally — someone who talks about AI without the hype or the doom. Just what he actually does with it.
One letter a week on building a lean business, putting AI to work, and staying present at home. Written by an actual human, between feeds.