ABOUT MICK
I’VE SPENT MY CAREER
LISTENING TO PEOPLE.
More than 25 years in business taught me something useful: most people know far more than they realise. Sometimes they just need someone to help them find the words.
I DIDN’T START OUT
AS A WRITER.
I started in business.
Sales. Business development. Customers. Targets. Ideas. Deals that worked. Deals that didn’t. Businesses that grew and ideas that deserved to but never quite made it.
For more than 25 years, I’ve spent my working life talking to people about what they do, why they do it, what their customers want and what might happen next.
And somewhere along the way I realised that the part I enjoyed most wasn’t simply selling something. It was finding the story. Understanding what made a business different. Taking something complicated and making it clear.
“Yes. That’s exactly what I mean.”
Turns out, that’s writing.
BUSINESS BEFORE
BUZZWORDS.
I’ve worked in sales and business development for more than two decades. I’ve worked with businesses, built businesses and spent enough time around entrepreneurs to know that the best ideas rarely arrive wrapped in perfect language.
They’re usually scribbled down somewhere. Explained badly over coffee. Sent as a two-minute voice note that becomes seven minutes. Or sitting inside someone’s head because they’ve been too busy running the business to articulate them.
I don’t approach business writing from a textbook. I approach it from years spent trying to understand why people buy, why they don’t, what gets their attention and what makes them trust someone enough to take the next step.
THEN EVERYTHING
CHANGED.
Artificial intelligence changed writing. Suddenly anyone could produce a thousand words in seconds.
I don’t think that made writers irrelevant. I think it made words cheap and good thinking expensive.
The value isn’t in physically typing every sentence anymore. It’s in knowing which questions to ask. Which idea is interesting. Which detail matters. What sounds like you and what sounds like everybody else.
I use technology. I build with it. I’m fascinated by it. But I still believe people want to read people.
I BUILD THINGS TOO.
I’m also the founder of StrongOrigin, where I work at the intersection of business, AI, technology, websites and digital visibility.
Building businesses gives me something enormously useful as a writer: something to write about. I’m not observing entrepreneurship from the sidelines. I’m in it.
Trying things. Getting things wrong. Changing direction. Selling. Building. Learning. Starting again.
NORTHERN BY
NATURE.
I’m based in Lancashire. It probably explains some of the directness.
I like good businesses, good ideas, good coffee, proper conversations and writing that doesn’t take three paragraphs to say what one sentence could manage.
I’m interested in business, technology, AI, people, places, music, culture, entrepreneurship and the strange things you notice when you’re paying attention.
Which is why the Journal isn’t going to stay neatly inside one category.
YOU DON’T NEED MORE WORDS.
YOU NEED THE RIGHT ONES.
If you’ve got something worth saying but haven’t quite found the words yet, we should probably talk.