About Chris
I’ve never been particularly good at staying in one box.
My background is in engineering and telecommunications, and I’ve spent around three decades dealing with complicated systems, difficult problems, customers, projects, teams and situations where the obvious problem often wasn’t the actual problem.
Eventually that turned into running businesses too, which is an education all of its own. One minute you’re thinking about strategy. The next you’re dealing with a supplier, somebody resigns, a customer hasn’t paid and the printer has decided it no longer believes in capitalism.
That reality is a big part of why I do what I do now.
I’ve spent a long time solving things
Some of those things have been technical. Some commercial. Some operational. Some have involved people, which are usually the hardest ones.
I’ve helped build and run Litenet, worked in large organisations, written a book, published articles, spoken at industry events and spent a large chunk of my career working out why something that should be simple has somehow become extremely complicated.
That turns out to be quite useful in business.
I like understanding how things fit together, finding the bit that doesn’t, and asking the question everybody else has stopped asking because they’ve become used to the answer.
I’m not a career consultant
I didn’t spend twenty years advising businesses from the outside and then decide I understood what it was like to run one.
I did it the other way round.
I’ve had customers, staff, suppliers, cashflow, technical disasters, awkward conversations, brilliant people, difficult people, good years, bad years and all the slightly ridiculous moments that come with owning a small business.
So when somebody tells me that every decision still comes back to them, or that everybody is busy but nothing seems to get easier, I have a fairly good idea what they mean.
A slightly unusual CV
I wrote Preparing and Planning for a VoIP Migration, I’ve written for business and industry publications, and I’ve spoken at events including the WAN Summit.
Outside work, things have been a little less conventional.
I’ve climbed Mount Fuji overnight for charity. My first ever skydive was solo. I crossed India and Nepal in a salmon-pink rickshaw with three mates and very little idea where we were going. I’ve appeared in a Skunk Anansie music video, been credited in a horror film as Angry Van Man, and somehow ended up in a car chase through Bulgaria.
Not all of this is directly relevant to business advice.
But it does mean I’ve usually got a story.
Curiosity is probably the common thread
I’ve always liked understanding how things work.
Machines. Networks. Businesses. People. Organisations. Why one company makes something look effortless while another turns exactly the same task into a weekly emergency.
I’m interested in why people do what they do, why businesses evolve in strange ways and why perfectly sensible people can collectively create processes that make absolutely no sense.
I don’t think you ever really stop learning about that stuff.
Which is fortunate, because I’d be terrible at pretending I already knew everything.
I’m not trying to become a business guru
There are enough people on the internet telling business owners that success is only seven steps, three funnels and a morning routine away.
I’m happy to leave them to it.
I’d rather understand your business, ask sensible questions, challenge a few assumptions and help you work out what would actually make it better.
No magic formula.
No inspirational whiteboard.
No promise that you’ll be a billionaire by Thursday.
Just experience, curiosity, a fresh pair of eyes and a willingness to say when something doesn’t make sense.
The short version
I’m a business owner, adviser, author, problem solver and occasional Angry Van Man.
I’ve spent most of my working life fixing things, improving things and asking awkward questions.
That’s more or less what I still do now.