25 Years of Business Thinking

August 19th in 2025 marks the 25th anniversary of starting Business Think (though it went through a few name changes before settling on this one). I left full-time employment and launched the business on 19th August — my birthday.

I could talk for days about those first two years. I was so naively positive. I believed every promise — often well-intentioned and sincere — made before I started, which never came to fruition. I had no idea how hard it would be. I’ve never been as stressed as I was in those early years. It took a long time to realise some important truths about business.


A Few Important Truths

  1. Don't wait for something to happen - If you don’t make it happen, no one else will.
  2. You create your own business reality - If it’s stressful, it’s time to make a change.
  3. Don't say yes to every person and opportunity - That’s the road to unhappiness.
  4. Family comes first - The ones you love should always come before work.

I still have to remind myself of these lessons fairly often to stay in that space (mostly). And there are obviously a hundred more I've learnt the hard way — by doing it.

A Blast from the Past

This picture is from the year 2000, when I first started the business. The previous Christmas, in 1999, I was visiting Cornwall to stay with my partner's family, and I bought myself a book called The Internet Starter Kit — mostly just because I was curious. It completely opened my eyes, and it was the first time I thought, Hang on, I could actually work in digital marketing and websites.

The article is from the Eastern Daily Press in Norfolk, and it ran when I created my first internet workshop for businesses, for my employer at the time, Business Link. Back then, I figured search engines just created information overload, and it would be way easier to simply give people the best, most useful links. I called it Experlink — imaginative, I know. They even let me take it with me when I left, which was kind of them.

It seems obvious now, and AI has pretty much solved that problem, but at the time, it was the first step towards everything I'm doing today.

Above is my first advert from 25 years ago, back when the business was called Netapproach — and when I thought I had to wear a tie to be taken seriously! I only had four customers at the time, so of course I mentioned them all as testimonials 🙂