When Growth Becomes Noise

Dubai runs on motion.
Every week, another restaurant, another beach club, another “concept.”
From the outside it looks like ambition. Up close, it’s often panic wearing perfume.

Too many people mistake activity for achievement. They lease before they learn. They hire cheap and call it “lean.” They treat marketing like decoration, not direction. And when it falls apart, they blame the market instead of the mirror.

I’ve seen that pattern everywhere — property, food, marketing itself. The tragedy is that most of them could get it right. They’ve got the money; they just don’t have the discipline.

 
From a cupboard with a window
I left a sleepy town in Wales at seventeen with nothing in my pocket and a head full of plans.
London was calling. I landed a job in hospitality at the Park Lane Hotel on Brick Street — lived in-house, in a cupboard with a window. That little room became my first office, my first classroom.

My dream was to work in real estate — or, as we called it then, estate agency. On weekends I worked for free at a boutique firm in Kensington, photocopying, cutting keys, learning by listening. Eventually I caught a break with a developer, Barclay Himes, and then climbed through every layer of the industry.

From independents to corporates, from lettings desks to boardrooms. I worked for Halifax Property Services and saw what happens when titles grow faster than results. I wasn’t one of the ones hiding under the radar. I grafted.

 
Twenty-six years of lessons
Real estate taught me how business really works — and how easily it breaks. I’ve sat in cold offices waiting for keys, and I’ve watched executives make decisions that crippled teams.

After twenty-six years, I can smell risk a mile away.
So when I see people flooding into Dubai, signing leases in new hotels with no footfall, or buying “guaranteed yield” apartments because a broker told them so — I know what’s coming.

This city is a jungle of investment groups disguised as independents.
I know because I check the receipts. The merchant name on that trendy mall café usually traces back to a holding company that also owns a handful of restaurants and half a floor of offices. They can afford to look empty for months. Their profit isn’t in coffee — it’s in capital appreciation.

That’s who you’re up against. You’re not competing with another barista or chef; you’re competing with money that doesn’t need to win.

 
The pivot that saved me
When the web arrived, most of property market ignored it to start with . I didn’t.
I could see where it was heading — the gold rush of attention.
In 2001 I bought my first domain: Started From Scratch. The name came from a Richard Branson book, but it summed up my life.

I left real estate and threw myself into digital marketing just as social media was taking shape. I bet on Facebook before it was fashionable, on data before it was trendy, and when AI started whispering, I listened.

The irony? I’ve got no tech background. None.
Give me an iPhone and I’ll probably press the wrong button, but give me code, a tool, or a dataset and I’ll find my way through it. Because when you love what you’re building, you learn what you need to learn.

I’m 53 now and I’ve been working hands-on with AI for about seven years — long before most companies even noticed it. I’ve watched it quietly reshape marketing behind the scenes. It’s only now the rest of the world’s catching up.

 
The reality of AI
Here’s the truth: AI isn’t coming — it’s here.
And it’s not taking all the jobs; it’s taking the lazy parts.
Eighty percent of the workload can be automated. The remaining twenty percent — the judgement, the instinct, the human finishing touch — that’s where the value sits.

Businesses that adapt will thrive.
The ones that don’t will vanish under their own noise.

 
Risk and reinvention
I’ve never been scared of risk. I don’t measure my life in pounds; I measure it in pivots. I’ve built, sold, rebuilt, and started again. I’ve taken chances, cut ties, dropped the weight, and kept moving.

Money’s just the by-product of doing something properly.
And the only constant worth trusting is change.

 
Building for what’s next
After thirteen years running my marketing firm, I’m still obsessed with the craft — strategy, psychographics, data — but I’m building it into technology now. Tools that think. Systems that scale. Businesses that breathe without me standing guard.

That’s not stepping back. It’s levelling up.

We all have to adapt.
We all have to stay accountable.
Because business doesn’t care how long you’ve been in it — only how quickly you can read the shift and move.

We all start somewhere.
We all start from scratch.
The difference between those who last and those who don’t?
They stay awake, take the right risks, and keep building something that still stands when the noise fades.