I’ve been broke twice. The first time I was nine and it technically wasn’t my fault — my father’s business collapsed overnight and took the house, the cars and most of my childhood furniture with it. The second time was entirely my own work: a brand I’d built, funded and quietly run into the ground. People romanticise comeback stories. Let me de-romanticise the middle bit.
Skincare that earns its shelf space — small-batch, honestly made, and run by people who answer their own emails.
docandglo.com →Two slots per issue, never more. Both read like the rest of the letter — no banner-blindness here.
claim this slot →After the crash we weren’t just short of money; we had a whole new identity to wear — new school, new estate, new versions of ourselves. What I didn’t understand at nine, and only barely understand now, is that the number recovered long before the story did. If you’re rebuilding right now, budget for both. The spreadsheet mends faster than the self-image, and nobody invoices you for the second one.
When my own brand failed there was no dramatic phone call, no removal van. Just eighteen months of slightly-wrong decisions compounding politely until the maths stopped working. Which taught me the thing nobody says out loud: most businesses don’t blow up. They leak.
I now run a monthly leak audit on everything I own — subscriptions, stock, ad spend, my own attention. Twenty minutes with a coffee. It has paid for itself roughly four hundred times, and it’s the single habit I’d smuggle back to either version of broke me.
A shorter list of fears, mostly. Once you’ve watched the worst-case scenario actually arrive — twice — anxiety loses most of its plot. The downside is a known quantity now. You’ve met it. It has terrible taste in timing and it still didn’t finish you off.
It also buys you immunity to a certain kind of advice. Anyone selling you certainty has never been to zero. The people worth listening to all carry a faint smell of smoke.
These days the business is deliberately small, deliberately boring in its finances, and run by someone who’s been on both sides of zero. The baby upstairs doesn’t care about MRR. That’s the audit that matters. Go well.