From a Garden Shed to a Multi-Million Pound Exit: The Business Story Every London Owner Needs to Hear

You started your business for a reason. Maybe it was freedom. More time with your family. Being your own boss instead of watching someone else make decisions you disagreed with.

Then reality hit.

The 60-hour weeks. The staff who quit six months after you hired them. The feeling that if you took a single day off, the whole thing would fall apart around you.

If that sounds familiar, you need to watch this episode of the Action Coach Podcast. It's the story of Jonathan, who started a business repairing sports equipment in schools from his garden shed — his pregnant wife answering the phone from the conservatory — and built it into a national company covering 20,000 schools, before selling it for millions.

But this isn't a highlight reel. Jonathan doesn't gloss over the hard years. He talks openly about the mistakes that nearly broke him, and exactly what changed to turn a business that owned him into one he could walk away from — for good.

"I Didn't Have a Holiday for 10 Years"

Jonathan's business grew fast — doubling, then tripling in size within a couple of years. But growth without the right foundations came at a cost.

"In them first five, ten years, I couldn't have a holiday. I didn't have a holiday for ten years."

He was the engineer, the quoter, the invoicer, and the manager, working until midnight most nights. Desperate for hands on deck, he admits he hired based on one test: "Can they walk? Can they talk? Have they got can they carry a toolbox? Yes, you've got the job." The result was a revolving door of the wrong people, and years of firefighting instead of leading.

If you're a London business owner currently doing the job of three people, this section alone is worth the watch.

The Turning Point Most Owners Never Reach

Everything changed when Jonathan met his coach — and admits he initially thought it was some kind of cult. He gave it a month on trial. That month turned into fifteen years of working together, first on Jonathan himself, then on his entire leadership team.

The result? A business that ran without him.

"By the time we come to sell, I didn't need to be there really... I had a holiday every month."

That's the shift London business owners are hungry for right now: not just a bigger business, but one that doesn't need you standing behind the till, on every job, or answering every email at 11pm.

The Mistakes He Wants You to Learn From — Before You Make Them

What makes this episode genuinely useful, rather than just inspiring, is how candid Jonathan is about what went wrong. He walks through it department by department:

Leadership: Trying to do everything himself and refusing to let go of control — "it was mine, and I could control it."

Hiring: Employing out of desperation rather than fit, and the cost of not building a real culture until years in.

Finance: Growing so fast the business nearly overtraded, and waiting too long to bring in a Financial Director — a decision he now says he'd make on day one.

Follow-up: Perhaps the most relatable lesson of all — delegating a task, assuming it would get done, and only discovering months later that it hadn't. "Whose fault was it — mine or theirs?"

Every one of these is a conversation London business owners are having right now, whether it's over a coffee before the team arrives or lying awake at 2am.

Building a Business That Sells Itself

The most striking part of the story is what selling the business actually felt like. Jonathan expected to feel emotional, torn, attached. Instead:

"It was a complete turnkey business and it doesn't need me... I was happy. We'd achieved what we said we was going to do."

That's the endgame every business owner should be building toward, whether or not you ever plan to sell — a business that runs on systems and culture, not on your personal presence.

Then Life Got Interesting

The story doesn't end at the sale. Jonathan talks candidly about the strange comedown of exit — sitting in his dressing gown at 3pm, three months in, wondering what to do with himself. What followed was a derelict pub turned antiques business, handing that business to his daughter Amy (who, it turns out, had absorbed everything he'd learned simply by growing up alongside it), and — perhaps most tellingly — starting all over again with a new business, this time doing it "back to front," getting the right people and the right advice in place from day one.

Why This Episode Matters for Business Owners in London

Whether you're three years in and drowning in operations, or ten years in and wondering how to finally get your time back, this conversation is a mirror. Jonathan's story is proof that the exhausting, all-consuming version of running a business isn't the only version — and that the businesses which end up sellable, scalable, and sane to run are built by design, not by accident.

Watch the full episode now to hear Jonathan's complete story — the mistakes, the turnaround, the sale, and what he'd do differently if he started again today.