What do you currently do?
I’m the founder of a website called LatestFreeStuff.co.uk. We are the UK’s largest freebie with over 500,000 visitors a month. We have created a platform where consumers can order free samples from top brands to try before they buy. Our team works with hundreds of brands including Vodafone, O2, Graze Box, Taste Card, Uber, EE and more. This year the company was voted as one of the top 100 startups in the UK and I won an award at the prestigious ‘Great British Entrepreneurs Awards 2015.
Who do you admire?
The person I really look up to is Richard Branson. His incredible journey is just astounding and I really do admire his determination. There has been many points when he had problems, but he’s a brilliant problem solver, and I feel like his inspiration has led me to become a better person. In the future I’ll hope to follow a similar path to Mr Branson and actually setup multiple businesses across the world.
Looking back, are there things you would have done differently?
One of the things I missed when I started my company was that we never concentrated on our email marketing for the first few years, this was a big mistake and only now do we understand the power of an email newsletter. Our database has grown organically through a mixture of word of mouth, social media search engine traffic and we now have a database of over 450,000 subscribers. It’s really incredible how much people value our newsletter and how much value it provides to users everyday.
What defines your way of doing business?
My way of doing work is really automation. My ideal day would be trying to automate as many business processors as possible. We have managed to do this already with many parts of our business including our content team and business development, but now we’re also exploring how to make it work with social media. As my company grows I’m always looking for more innovative tools and platforms to help us in our journey.
What advice would you give to someone just starting out?
One of the biggest problems with new entrepreneurs is that they don’t test ideas. It’s normally quite similar to do some market research or even mockup a basic version of your idea. This normally gives you instant confirmation whether your product is feasible. The first thing I did when setting up LatestFreeStuff was to make a basic website and quickly test the concept.
