After almost thirty years in the cold - building, scaling and selling a business, it's pretty obvious I don't know everything. And I didn't get everything right.
Plenty of what worked came down to timing, luck and surrounding myself with people far better than me.
I worked hard - harder than it probably looked from the outside. But success has a habit of airbrushing the journey once the dust settles.
I took financial risks that sat uncomfortably close to home at times. Not reckless - but real.. The kind that sharpen your thinking and test your nerve.
I didn't burn out.
What I learnt instead is that when things feel heavy, most people don't need an emergency exit - they need something sturdier around them.
And along the way, I learnt a hard truth about partnerships. The person you start with isn't always the person who gets you to the end.
That transition wasn't easy. But finding the right support - the kind that lasts - changed everything. Ru and I stayed the course. Fifteenish years. Right through to the finish.
None of that shows up in the tidy version of success.
That's why I've started sharing more openly - not because I've cracked it, but because I've lived it.
If that helps someone earlier in the journey steady themselves rather than pull the parachute too soon, then it's worth saying out loud.