Mansion by eight, council estate by nine. It explains a lot.

My father built a business, and with it the big house, the cars, the whole catalogue. Then, overnight, it was gone — and so was he. My mother raised the three of us alone on a council estate, on not very much, with no margin for error.

It taught me the lesson I've never been able to shake: circumstances move faster than you think, in both directions. The only durable assets are how you think and how you adapt. Everything I've built since has been a hedge against that night.

Twenty years in ecommerce and brand-building — first inside other people's companies, then through BRND Labs, my own studio, and two DTC brands of my own as a solo founder. Along the way I've consulted for a few hundred brands, including James May's Gin, Doc & Glo and Four Sigmatic.

Some of it worked beautifully. Some of it went broke — twice, in fact. I treat both kinds of outcome as tuition, and the letters are where I publish the syllabus.

Then two things happened at once: AI got genuinely useful, and I became a dad. So BRND Labs folded into this — one name, one desk, one weekly letter. I run the businesses as a team of one plus a stack of AI that handles the busywork, and I design the whole operation around being home for bathtime.

The Dispatch is the working log of that experiment: building lean, employing robots, raising a family, and not losing the plot. No guru nonsense — I'm doing this in real time, same as you.