![[Company Name]'s Founder Stories](/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Fonuder@-Partners-01a-150x150.png)
Founder@ Interview
Interview with Robin Waite
Credits: Rupert Russell Photography Lidia Drzewiecka – Visuable
“Right now, you are making assumptions and drawing up hypotheses about whether your idea or next business decision is going to work out or not. The only way to know for sure it to validate that hypothesis. You need to just get out there and do it. So just do it!.” – Robin Waite
Today we feature Robin Waite, the founder at Fearless Business. We hear their story in their own words, their successes, their challenges and their insights.
Let’s start by getting to know you. Can you please tell us a little bit about you and what you do?
I am Robin, the Founder of Fearless Business, I am a regular speaker at various business events and bestselling author of several books, including Online Business Startup, Marketing Machine and the recent popular release Take Your Shot.
I have over 2 decades of business experience which I put into coaching clients to reach their goals, create more time and increase their revenue. From the age of 18, I have spent four years as a systems analyst for a medical devices company, increasing their turnover by 50 percent, from £1m to £1.5m. From 2004 to 2016 I led a successful marketing agency serving over 250 clients.
During this time delivering workshops and masterclasses I helped over 1,000 business owners improve their marketing, product architecture, pricing, websites, and digital advertising. Behind the scenes, I am a husband and father to two young girls, a surfer and a Sunday warrior (road cyclist).
Although I hate going up the hills I am well known at my local cycling club for descending at speeds more than 50mph downhills. I hold a Guinness World Record for participating in the largest ever speed networking event, and I have raised over £5k for a local Children’s charity in the last 4 years. In addition, I have a goal to help remove 100kg of plastic from the World’s Oceans within the next 12 months via another charity I support – 4Ocean.
A great introduction and start to this interview. Can you please tell us, how did you start, from what age, and what made you decide to change direction and start?
In 2004 I was on holiday in Florida and got a phone call from an old work colleague. At the time he was building websites and I was buying and selling computer hardware. We felt there was a great opportunity to join forces so set up a Marketing Agency.
Over the next ten years we built hundreds of clients websites and also got into Branding in a big way. The agency grew from just us two to a team of six and in our biggest turnover year we achieved £250k turnover. For a small local agency we were incredibly proud of this. During the 12 years running the agency we specialised in building Google friendly, good looking websites which generated leads for our clients.
Thank you for that insight. So can you tell us…What does your business do and where is your company based?
ADVERTISEMENT
Fearless Business is a coaching practice helping Coaches, Consultants and Freelancers to slow down, create a bit more space for themselves and confidently charge their worth. They typically come to us with one major problem, exchanging time-for-money, and because they struggle to articulate their value to prospective clients their earning potential is limited.
We are based in the United Kingdom, however we now have clients from all around the world including Shanghai, South Africa, Switzerland, Spain, USA and Brazil.
What’s the story behind your success? What led to your aha moment? how did you get to where you are now?
During my agency days the biggest hinderance to our business was saying, “Yes!” to complicated, custom, bespoke website builds. They always took longer than we’d anticipated and the clients of these sites were the hardest to please. After reading “Built to Sell” written by John Warrilow, we streamlined our processes and created a series of 1 and 2 day workshops to deliver productised websites and brands.
It transformed the agency.
I remember a summer in 2008/09 where we delivered a handful of large £10k+ projects and a about a dozen smaller £1k projects. At the time we were charging £50/mth for support and hosting irrespective of the size of project.
I realised at this point that the 10+ smaller projects actually produced a 3x larger Customer Lifetime Value than the 3 bigger projects…because we had more people paying £50/mth on the smaller projects.
This was when we flipped our business model and focussed on recurring revenue over project based work. It was an absolute gamechanger.
Thank you for sharing that. What’s been your life’s biggest lesson so far?
I’ve learned over the years to find the things in business that are fun and do more of them and then to delegate any of the tasks which aren’t so fun to someone who absolutely loves doing those tasks.
It frees up my time to focus on the more valuable tasks in my business.
I wish I’d known what I know about pricing back in 2004…I think I’d be retired by now if I did!
If you were to go back in time, what piece of advice would you give to your younger self?
I built several apps as a side hustle when we started building websites, I wish that I’d taken them more seriously now and doubled down as they had the potential to be great SaaS apps.
Equally they might have gone nowhere so I don’t regret it. We just spent a lot of time building other people’s dreams rather than out own and certainly had no confidence around pricing and or knowledge on how to make money when we first set up the agency.
We’re nearly halfway through our interview so it’s a great time to ask how does your business run. What three tools make your business run better?
ActiveCampaign takes care of my deal flow and email automation. I don’t have to remember to follow up as ActiveCampaign takes care of a lot of that for me. It has great automations built in and I can use email templates to save copying and pasting the same content all of the time.
We use Acuity Scheduling to ensure that clients and prospective clients can book into our coaching team’s diaries easily. This saves a ton of time in back and forth via email.
Our 3rd app that we can’t live without is Zapier, it makes all of the other apps talk to one another and avoids mistakes in data entry or balls being dropped with our contacts moving between apps.
What do you know now that you wished you had known before?
I wish I’d known what I know about pricing back in 2004…I think I’d be retired by now if I did!
Credits: Rupert Russell Photography Lidia Drzewiecka – Visuable
What has been your greatest or proudest achievement or moment?
My two daughters, Poppy and Sophie, they’re the best thing to come home to after a day working 🙂
What future life goals do you want to achieve and why?
Financial freedom/independence is my next life goal to achieve. I have everything else that I want right now, but to not have to worry about money is one of the ultimate freedoms. Next location independence to go anywhere, anytime and to still be able to run my businesses.
To finish our inspire questions…”We believe that sharing inspiring words can inspire others.” If there was one positive thing you would say to someone to inspire and empower them what would it be and why?
Right now, you are making assumptions and drawing up hypotheses about whether your idea or next business decision is going to work out or not.
The only way to know for sure it to validate that hypothesis. You need to just get out there and do it.
And once and for all you’ll actually KNOW whether your hypothesis is right…or wrong. And both are fine.
So just do it!
“Thank you it has been great learning more about your founder story and Fearless Business”
To learn more about Fearless Business Visit https://robinwaite.com
Inspired by this story? Please share this story and other founder stories.
For more inspiring founders stories check out Founder Stories.
Have an inspiring founder story?
Every entrepreneur’s journey is unique and powerful.
Your story of perseverance and success could be the spark that ignites the next generation of world-changing ideas. By sharing your experiences, you’re not just telling a story – you’re lighting a path for others to follow, dream, and achieve.
Disclaimer:
The views, thoughts, information, and opinions expressed in the text, videos, images belong solely to those of the individuals involved, and do not necessarily represent those of Founderat.com and its corporate owners, employees, organization, committee, or other group or individuals.
More from Founder Stories
” Be very careful with advice—most of it will steer you toward conventional thinking. Build your ability to reason from first principles, embrace resilience, and focus on creating long-term value.“ – Nick Root
"Be very careful with advice—most of it will steer you toward conventional thinking. Build your ability to reason from first …
“I’ll share two bits of advice that have been instrumental to me, both coming from different places but equally impactful…” – Liam Sanders
Founder@ Interview With Liam Sanders "I'll share two bits of advice that have been instrumental to me, both coming from different places …
“Start with empathy.” Whether you’re building a product, leading a team, or pitching to investors, the core of your business should be understanding people’s needs…” – Rainier Mallol
Founder@ Interview With Rainier Mallol "The one piece of advice I would give is: "Start with empathy." Whether you're building a product, …
