Transact Media Group

London, Dubai, Sydney & New York. 

Signals 
Outcomes
Brandformance 

The holding group of FairForecast.com & CreatorData.co.uk.

Founder & CEO

FinTech Alliance

Global Board Member

- Global Hub for Fintech
- Monetisation Strategies 
- Revenue Streams 
- Growth Tactics

Interim CEO

Creator Data

Successfully completed merger of Creator Data into Transact Media Group and now powering Transactional Signal Graph business unit of TMG.

ChaChing

Advisor

Leading all things commercial for the business EU + NA, opening up new markets in 2024.

Global Chief Commercial Officer (CCO)

ChaChing is a game-changing platform that's reshaping purchasing dynamics. It offers merchants the opportunity to acquire customers based on a cost-per-acquisition model, with a twist: it gives money back to the consumer and serves as an alternative advertising channel for better ROAS. Instead of competing for clicks and views, ChaChing focuses on competing for conversions.

My primary role is to onboard agencies, merchants and support my cross-functional teams with the overall brand in the UK market.

Managing Director, Sales

Start Ups

Advisor/NED/Investor/Partner

TikTok

Launched the TikTok Venture Capital Business.

Venture Capital, Lead/Founder - Global Business Solutions

Agency Partnerships, Manager - Global Business Solutions

Performace Agency Partnerships, Manager - Global Business Solutions

Insider Media

Rising Star 2021 (25 under 40)

Zeotap

Group Sales Manager - Havas, Dentsu + Indies.

UK Sales, Manager

UK Account Management Lead, Data Sales

Havas Media Group

Account lead on AXA, Hyundai, Michelin, and National Express. 

Planning Programmatic media buying across Display, Native, Mobile, Video, and Rich Media formats, whilst overlaying a variety of data providers such as Oracle Bluekai, Grapeshot, Eyeota, Ad Square to reach target audiences. 

I worked on a daily basis with SSPs/DSPs and liaise with media owners and data providers to find the best programmatic solutions for my clients.

Programmatic Partnerships Executive

Junior Programmatic Partnerships Executive

Compass News

Brand Partnerships

Joel Williams

Media. Data. Commerce. Connected By Transactions.

Tonight, I must start packing my suitcase for Affiliate Summit West, in Las Vegas.

📅 11th–14th January 2026 – Networking, exploring affiliate opportunities, and catching up with partners in tech and e-commerce.

After the summit, we’re heading to New York 🗽 to meet clients, agencies, and brands — showing how Transact Media Group (TMG) helps turn marketing into real business outcomes:

✨ Transact Signals – audience targeting powered our exclusive transaction-level data algorithm
 📺 Programmatic & CTV Activation – measurable campaign performance
 🛒 Consumer Platforms – generating demand and driving commerce

I’ll be traveling with my Co-Founder and good friend, Adam Wilmshurst, and we’re amazed — 55+ meetings booked next week! 

Can’t wait to connect, collaborate, and spark some exciting partnerships. The US is a very important market for us this year, building on a strong foundation laid last year.

🏴‍☠️ 🚀 🇺🇸

It was great to feature in this episode.

Happy New Year all.

View company: London School of DIGITAL BUSINESS

Marketing looks very different when results, not dashboards, are the scoreboard. In this GPIS episode, Sachin Parekh sits down with Joel Williams, Founder of Transact Media Group (TMG) Group, to unpack what happens when marketing is tied directly to real transactions, real revenue, and real accountability. 

Joel shares how he scaled fast by rejecting vanity metrics, betting on outcome-driven execution, and building systems where performance can actually be proven. 

It’s a sharp, no-nonsense conversation about incrementality, guaranteed results, and why the future of marketing belongs to those who are willing to be measured where it truly counts.

YouTube: https://lnkd.in/d2qBq3dT
YouTube Music: https://lnkd.in/dBg3kHxT
Spotify: https://lnkd.in/d5bNgdux

#GPISSeason2 #MarketingLeadership #PerformanceMarketing #RevenueDriven #OutcomeFirst #B2BMarketing #MarketingAccountability #RealResults #GrowthStrategy #LSDBUK

Joe Marston 🚀

Co-Founder

Scaling e-commerce brands to 7 and 8 figures 🚀 | LU Entrepreneur of The Year Award Winner | Founder of The Leading TikTok Marketing Agency and an Award Winning Full Service Ecom Growth Agency.

3x Agency Founder.

We scale brands to 7 and 8 figures with creative, paid traffic, retention and funnel optimisation.

In 2024, having a great product is one thing…

But scaling a brand to £10M is a another.

You need a simple roadmap for profitably attracting and converting customers, at scale.

Because when you get that right…

- You stand out from competitors in the market
- You build a community around your brand
- You acquire customers at will (profitably)
- You turn customers into raving fans 

Giving you complete control over your growth.

We help our clients do exactly that with our proven system that guarantees growth.

1. Initial diagnostic to identify bottlenecks in your business
2. Developing a bespoke growth strategy for your brand
3. Creative ideation and production 
4. Unique UGC collaborations
5. Targeted advertising (Meta, TikTok, Pinterest, Snapchat)
6. Email marketing 

And having generated over £100M+ in sales across 200+ brands, we’ve know the ecommerce game inside out.

🚀 Mystery Shirt In A Box grew from £5K to £2.6M in just one year with our help
🚀 The Essence Vault is hitting 7 figure months in its second year since launch
🚀 Vintage Threads tripled their revenue working with us with a 6x ROAS
🚀 AIRfreshh went from 0% to 52% of revenue from email in 2 months!
🚀 Bene Culture saw their revenue grow 6x in 6 months with our help
🚀 The Oodie generated £2M on TikTok alone in their first year
🚀 UN:IK’s first quarter of 2023 was up 88% on 2022
🚀Grew Liam and Co. 500% year on year

Don’t put up with unpredictable, unsustainable or underwhelming growth any more.

If you want to see how we could help scale your brand, send me a DM saying ‘SOAR’

If you're not ready yet, I post daily educational content to give you all the secrets.

Founder

E-commerce growth agency offering bespoke services to online businesses looking to increase their sales and scale their brand.

2026 is a new game entirely - so we’ve distilled what’s actually working for 8–9 figure DTC brands into one huge resource...

📖 THE 2026 D2C PLAYBOOK: The New Rules of Meta, TikTok, AI & Performance Creative

The scroll is now personal.

Every feed is a unique journey and most brands aren’t building for it.

In 2026, you’re not just running ads. You’re feeding machine learning systems with creative, copy, and context, at speed.

The brands winning are the ones who’ve built signal-rich creative systems and message frameworks that adapt to intent.

We’ve pulled together the exact strategies, formats, and frameworks we’re using right now.

- What’s working
- What’s out
- What’s next

Want the download?

→ Like this post
→ Comment “2026” and we’ll send it your way

Building DTC brands to 8 and 9 figures | Founder of Soar With Us & For You Advertising | Triple Whale's "Agency of The Year" Winner

For one last time, we’re releasing our most requested resource of 2025: a folder of the top-performing brand funnel breakdowns of the year.

Their full stack: Paid strategy > Organic > Landing pages > Google ads > Email > Offers

8 of the best brands of 2025.

Here’s who’s inside:
– rhode skin
– MESHKI
– Loop Earplugs
– ALO
– IM8 Health
– REFY
– BRĒZ
– WONDERSKIN

If you want the folder, you know what to do.

Like the post.
Drop “FUNNEL” below.
We’ll send it your way.

Make sure we're connected so I can DM you

This is an emotional moment for me. 

I never thought I’d make this video…

Saying goodbye to our original HQ isn’t easy but it’s because we’re moving into a bigger space. 

Thanks to everyone who’s supported us along the way! 

Have a great New Years!

The most productive thing I did this week was stare at a wall for 30 minutes.

Dr Andrew Huberman explains that your ability to focus is driven by the inputs you received in the hours before you sit down to work.

If you scroll Twitter, watch YouTube, or listen to podcasts between work blocks, your brain is still processing that stimulation when you try to focus.

He calls it "dopamine residue."

The fix is simple: boring breaks.

No phone. No music. No input.

Just silence.

I tested it for 3 days. The clarity was immediate.

I now build 10-30 mins of nothing before any writing, strategy, or deep work.

It sounds lazy. It's the opposite.

The less stimulated your break, the sharper your next work block.

This is one of many systems that helped me scale past 8 figures before 28.

(Yes, that's me staring at a wall. I don't actually do this - I normally meditate or sit in silence away from my desk. But I did sit there for 4 minutes just to get this shot, which might be worse so you should give this a like for effort) 

Want the full list of protocols that I’ve tested to 3x my productivity? 

Comment "productivity" and I'll send you 10 protocols that actually moved the needle.

Couldn’t be prouder of the team this year.

2025 was fast-moving, high-pressure, and full of change and they showed up every single time.

From scaling 8-9 figure client accounts to evolving our own systems, we kept pushing.

Here’s what we learnt, built, and achieved:

- 50,000+ ads launched across client accounts 
- 15,000+ downloads across our playbooks and strategy guides 
- 3.5K subscribers to the D2C Diaries podcast 
- 36K+ readers of the D2C Delivered newsletter 
- Nominated for the Meta Creative Diversity Award 
- Expanded strategic partnerships with Meta and TikTok 
- Launched a new website and released 8 outstanding case studies 
- Two full agency off-sites to strengthen team culture 
- Introduced the Growth Strategist role to sharpen client strategy 
- Hired 38 team members across creative, strategy, media, and operations 
- Spoke at industry leading events including Ecom Live 
- Partnered with 25+ new brands and continued scaling with some of the most ambitious names in eCom, including Trip, Heights, Puresport, Nutrition Geeks, AKT, 47Skin, Mindful Chef, and Spacegoods.

The pace isn’t slowing down in 2026.

We’ve crossed £600M in revenue generated for clients and we’ve made some changes that’s going to help us unlock the next £600M.

The next chapter won’t be unlocked by volume, it’ll be unlocked by capability.

As we step into 2026, we’re restructuring the business around depth, performance, and long-term client outcomes.

And that starts with a set of new, foundational hires.

The first is our Client Success Director, a role built to strengthen what matters most: the brands that already trust us.

Instead of running harder, this role helps us run smarter, bringing commercial clarity, better forecasting, and a more integrated experience across strategy, creative, and performance.

It’s a step toward something we’ve been intentional about for months: maturing the organisation to match the scale of the brands we partner with.

And this isn't the only new role of 2026.

We’re also adding:

- Head of Development & Performance: focused on team development, skill progression, and building a performance culture from the inside out.
- Podcast Lead: a full time role solely focused on driving the success of the D2C Diaries Podcast.
- Post-Production Coordinator: strengthening the speed, volume, and quality of our story-driven output.

These new roles are about building the internal systems, leadership, and operating rhythm that will produce the next stage of growth, sustainably and repeatedly.

“We could’ve raised at £100million. We didn’t and I’m glad” - Dan Murray🧠

🔥 Just dropped a monster episode with Dan, co-founder of Heights, one of the UK’s most trusted wellness brands (and a brand we’ve been proud to partner with on creative).

Dan gets brutally honest on:

- How insomnia, gut issues and startup burnout led to Heights
- Why he turned down a £100M valuation and raised at £60M instead
- The real impact of celebrity collabs (every one of them a paying customer first)
- How they broke through 2 years of flat growth to hit £25M
- Why he believes in building the best product in the category, not the trendiest
- And how “The Smart Supplement” became Vitals with messaging that finally converts

If you’re building through the mud, chasing profitable scale, or trying to unlock a better narrative for your brand…

This one’s a masterclass in founder clarity, creative strategy, and performance at scale.

🎧 Listen here: https://lnkd.in/eWii754p

In under a year, IM8 Health crossed a $100M+ annualised run-rate and the underlying metrics actually improved as they grew.

With Danny Yeung making an appearance on the podcast this week, it felt like the right time to reshare our funnel breakdown to show what’s actually driving the numbers:

A few numbers worth paying attention to:

- $100M+ ARR pace in ~11 months
- 76% QoQ growth in the latest quarter
- 80%+ of first-time buyers convert to subscription
- $150 AOV, up materially post product expansion
- EBITDA losses now ~$2M per quarter, with breakeven in sight

We mapped IM8’s entire growth system end-to-end in a teardown a few months back, covering:

- Performance media across Meta + Google
- High-converting lander architecture
- Subscription-first funnel design
- Email + retention doing real revenue work
- Ambassador-led distribution
- Strong organic + owned community
- Bundled offers that lift AOV
- Clear, science-backed positioning (without killing brand)

If you want the full breakdown:

1️⃣ Like the post
2️⃣ Comment “IM8”
3️⃣ Make sure we’re connected so I can send it over

I consumed 10+ hours of neuroscience-backed productivity content so you don't have to.

Here's the one thing that actually moved the needle:

Boring breaks.

Dr. Huberman explains that your focus isn't decided when you sit down to work. 
It's decided by what you consumed in the hours before.

He calls it "dopamine residue."

If you scroll Twitter, watch YouTube, or listen to podcasts between work blocks, your brain is still processing that stimulation when you try to focus.

The fix: No phone. No music. No input. Just silence before deep work.

I tested it for 7 days. The clarity was immediate.

This is 1 of 10 protocols I pulled from the research.

I put all 10 into a free PDF with step-by-step actions for each.

Comment "focus" and I'll send it to you.

Here’s how we’ve been reskinning our existing, top-performing founder ads.

Founder ads still work. But when performance softens, it’s rarely because the story stopped resonating.

What usually stalls is the format, not the message.

Meta’s current delivery systems respond far more to how a story is packaged than the script itself.

The hook, the structure, and the visual vehicle are the signals that unlock fresh reach inside GEM.

So instead of rewriting scripts or re-shooting from scratch, we’ve been scaling brands by re-formatting winning founder ads.

Here are the two formats consistently opening up spend again:

1️⃣ The 3rd-person founder ad

Hook: “This is [Founder]. He didn’t build a [industry] brand just to sell products…”

We take the exact winning script and shift the perspective.

Moving from first person to third person reframes the story as a hero arc rather than a testimonial.

We run the VO through AI, rebuild the edit using b-roll, product sequences, and lifestyle UGC, and structure it more like a short-form brand film than a typical DR ad.

Why it works:
- Repositions the founder as a character → not a salesperson
- Creates a new format fingerprint GEM treats as a distinct asset
- Retains the emotional arc while refreshing the delivery

2️⃣ The green-screen UGC retell

Hook: “Meet the founder who [solved a specific pain point] for [persona].”

Here, a creator becomes the narrator.

They green-screen themselves over the original founder footage, reacting to it, contextualising it, and retelling the story in a social-native tone.

It blends credibility with UGC energy without changing the core message.

Why it works:
- Adds relatability and external validation
- Lets you expand into new personas using the same narrative
- Gives Meta a completely new visual identity to learn from

You don’t need new ideas every week, you need new vehicles for the ideas that already convert.

If you’ve got a founder ad that once crushed, this is your highest-leverage next step.

This is what it looks like when persona-led growth is baked into the product, not just the marketing.

Kind patches are selling solutions to 10+ highly specific problems and doing it through 3,000+ live ads at once.

Each product?
→ Positioned to a different pain point.

Each creative?
→ Tailored to a specific outcome.

Each angle?
→ Built for a defined persona.

We’re talking:
• “Sunday scaries” sleep anxiety
• “Skin and hair” glow-ups
• “On-the-go” energy boosts
• “Late-night scrolling” focus drops
• Even “support with weight goals” and “hormonal balance” for women

They’re building mini-funnels that slot into people’s lives. It’s why their paid system scales without fatiguing.

We just broke the funnel down.

Mapped the personas, analysed the creative, and pulled the patterns.

Want the full teardown?
Like this post
Drop “persona” below and I’ll send you the link
(Make sure we’re connected so I can DM you)

If you’re a DTC founder, today might be your biggest money-maker of the year.

Boxing Day is the most underrated revenue window of the year, and the savviest founders treat it like Black Friday 2.0, but with warmer traffic and better margins.

Here’s what to focus on:

1️⃣ Turn gifting customers into long-term buyers
A huge chunk of orders this week aren’t from your core demo, they’re gift purchasers.
Set up tailored post-purchase flows that introduce the brand story, not just the product.
🎯 Your goal: convert gift-givers into genuine customers.

2️⃣ Launch your returns → retention play
Boxing Day kicks off return season.
Smart brands treat returns as a retention window:
– Offer instant exchanges
– Provide credit with a bonus
– Route return traffic into remarketing funnels
Reduce friction → preserve LTV.

3️⃣ Lift your AOV before January
January shoppers are more price-sensitive.
Today is your window to push higher-value bundles, limited-time stacks, and “last chance” seasonal kits.

4️⃣ Prep your Q1 narrative
January positioning isn’t the same as December positioning.
Health, routine, renewal, savings, minimalism: choose the theme your brand can authentically own and build content for week one.

Today’s not just about the sales, it’s about setting the tone for 2025. Let’s make it count. 🚀

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Talks about #dtc, #ugc, #paidsocial, #digitalmarketing, and #entrepreneurship

Here’s why most entrepreneurs never build anything that lasts:

They chase what’s easy, cheap, and fast, which means it’s easy to copy, and impossible to protect.

From day one at Soar, we asked ourselves:

“What would the best agency in the UK look like in 5 years and what do we need to do today to build that?”

At the time, it was just me and Olly.

Fewer than 5 staff.

No office.

No profit.

But that one mindset shift shaped everything.

We:
- Reinvested every penny instead of paying ourselves
- Hired top-tier people before we could “afford” them
- Built IP, frameworks, and internal systems from scratch
- Never cut corners, even when no one was watching

That’s what built the moat.

We weren’t trying to grow fast.

We were trying to become undeniable in one of the most competitive agency markets in the world.

And we’ve been scaling like that ever since.

Because while most people play the same game, we learned to play asymmetric warfare:

Win by doing what others can’t… or won’t.

If you’re building a DTC brand or service company, make decisions your future self will thank you for.

Short-term advantage is sugar. Moats take longer, but they’re the only way to win long-term.

Happy New Year 🥳

Whether 2025 was your biggest year yet or a year that stretched you, sharpened you, or challenged you… you made it through. And that counts.

A new year isn’t magic, but it is a reset.
A chance to step back into your ambition with clarity.
A chance to decide who you’re becoming, not just what you’re doing.
A chance to move with intention again.

Here’s to:

🔹 Setting goals that excite you, not drain you
🔹 Building momentum one small win at a time
🔹 Backing yourself even when it feels uncertain
🔹 Surrounding yourself with people who push you forward
🔹 Taking action before you feel “ready”

And here’s to remembering that progress doesn’t come from intensity, it comes from consistency.

One decision. One step. One day at a time.

2026 will be whatever you choose to make it.
So choose to go for it.
Choose to grow.
Choose the opportunity over the obstacle.

Wishing you health, clarity, energy, and big wins this year.
Let’s make 2026 unforgettable. 🚀

We’ve audited hundreds of 8-9 figure ad accounts and the same problem shows up every single time.

Most DTC ad accounts we audit are built backwards are ignoring 3 key stages of the buyer journey:
- Problem unaware
- Problem aware
- Solution aware

All the budget is pointed at people who are already ready to buy.
- Offer overlays
- Product carousels
- Feature dumps
- “X% off today only”

And sure, it works, until it doesn’t.

You can’t scale if you only sell to people who already know you.

What we’re seeing in 7–8 figure audits:
- No context-setting
- No objection handling
- No storytelling or teaching
- No emotional runway

What to build instead:

You need creative that earns attention before it asks for action:
- Explainers: “Why most X don’t work”
- Sceptical UGC: “I didn’t think this would work because…”
- Founder POVs and breakdowns
- Category education or side-by-sides
- Hooks that sell the problem before the product

When you focus only on the most aware, you’re just pitching.
When you build for all 5 stages, you’re telling a story and scaling with depth.

We helped Mindful Chef lift conversions by 39% and reduce blended CPA by 26% in 90 days - while maintaining spend

Mindful Chef came to us on a mission to scale efficient new customer acquisition and modernise its paid channel strategy. We needed to ensure that rising platform competition didn’t translate into rising acquisition costs.

The brief was clear: refresh channel strategy, bring AI-assisted optimisation into the mix, and allow creative strategy to do more of the legwork.

‍
👉 Meta
On Meta, we moved from manually stacked interests to letting creative drive discovery, integrating Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns (ASC) as the backbone of the strategy. A tightly run testing pipeline meant that each new concept had a fast path: validate in a dedicated test environment, then promote winners into core campaigns.

We layered in whitelisting to introduce fresh audiences and add trust signals, expanding reach while maintaining quality.


👉 Google
We streamlined Brand to remove cross-competition between Performance Max and Branded Search. Our bid strategy moved from target impression share to a Max Conversions test (versus manual CPC), unlocking volume and efficiency.

With stronger signal density established, we shifted to a focused target CPA approach, reducing acquisition costs on Google by 49% within the first 4 months of our partnership.


👉 Creative execution
Our first wave of creative translated Mindful Chef’s values into native-feel storytelling, mapped to key personas. We balanced high-production, “sceptic-to-convert” formats to tackle common objections around recipe boxes with UGC-led concepts that play into everyday tension points like back-to-school routine resets.

The result is a modular foundation spanning Problem-Aware to Product-Aware messaging, anchored in Mindful Chef’s USPs: health, convenience, and premium quality.

The Results:
✅ 67% META CONVERSIONS UP
✅ 26% BLENDED CPA DOWN
✅ 49% GOOGLE CPA DOWN

It feels like we're just getting started here, and we're incredibly excited at what's next for our partnership.

We tore up our entire creative process and rebuilt it for AI-first performance.

These 7 changes are now non-negotiable for scaling 8-figure brands.

2024–25 was about testing with AI.
2026 is about building with it.

Here’s what we’re shifting in our creative ops to scale real reach and win Meta’s AI game:

1. Creative diversity becomes non-negotiable
Meta’s new entity grouping system means if your ads look the same, they deliver the same. No matter how different the copy is.

💡70% of brands we audit are flooding their accounts with 100+ iterations...
But Meta sees them as 5 unique ads.

What we’re doing:
- Visual first, not copy first
- Distinct scenes, styles, formats
- Strategic volume > cosmetic tweaks

2. The AI Videographer becomes essential
We’ve added a Visual Prompt Engineer to every pod. A production multiplier.

🎯 Their remit:
- 10–30 ad variants per brief
- VO hooks, metaphors, transitions, environments
- Studio-level output without studio-level cost
It’s how we hit Meta’s volume bar without burning creative teams out.

3. AI = a second studio
We now run parallel briefs for human and AI production.
Same input, different output.

💡Where AI is outperforming:
- Product in environment
- Visual metaphors
- Explainers and low-prod demos
- Fast iterations on hooks + B-roll

4. Systems > tools
AI makes asset generation cheap.
So your edge isn’t generation, it’s organisation.

What we’re building:
✅ Centralised creative warehouse (transcribed, tagged, promptable)
✅ Context libraries for every format
✅ Performance data piped into feedback models
✅ Automated creative routing to avoid the graveyard problem

5. Feedback loops go automated
AI’s not just replacing creators, it’s coaching them.

We’re using tools that:
- Auto-critique sales calls and 1:1s
- Coach UGC creators on delivery
- QA edits before they hit the ad account
- Provide VO tone, clarity, and brevity suggestions in real-time

6. Video Gen hits mass market
Sora 2, Gemini V3.1, Nano Banana, Runway, they’re levelling up fast.

We’re already seeing:
- Seamless B-roll
- Abstract metaphors (balloons for stress, fire for urgency)
- “AI but not obvious” animations
- Scripted face swaps and founder clones

7. New workflows = new risks
Expect legal firewalls around:
- Creator likeness + consent
- Deepfake disclosures
- Brand safety for AI assets
- Authenticity disclaimers in ATL creative

We’re helping clients pre-empt with consent protocols, asset tagging, and workflow rules.

Bottom line for DTC brands in 2026

The brands that win will:
✅ Build an AI-native production function
✅ Invest in strategic visual diversity
✅ Systemise asset tagging, routing, and prompts
✅ Use AI for creation and performance coaching
✅ Blend AI + human storytelling at scale

The brands that lose will:
❌ Rely on text swaps and tired recuts
❌ Let GenAI files rot in Google Drive
❌ Skip strategic iteration
❌ Ignore how fast video is changing

I spent years thinking I had to figure everything out alone.

That’s what founders do, right?

Then I read Ray Dalio’s approach.

He didn’t build Bridgewater by being the smartest.
He built it by being the most willing to be wrong.

Here’s what he did differently:

He worked for what he wanted.
Not for what others wanted him to do.

He came up with independent opinions.
Then found the smartest people to destroy them.

He stress-tested everything.
Not to prove he was right.
To improve his odds of being right.

He stayed wary about overconfidence.
Because in markets, bad opinions cost everything.

He wrestled with his realities.
Reflected on consequences.
Learned and improved from the process.

Most founders confuse independence with isolation.

They think if they’re truly leading,
they should trust their gut and move alone.

But the best founders I know
don’t just think independently.

They think independently, then test brutally.

They create systems to challenge their own logic.
They seek out people who will prove them wrong.
They remain paranoid about blind spots.

Because you can do a huge amount of work
and still be wrong.

The market doesn’t care how hard you worked.

Independent thinking isn’t about being alone.
It’s about being right when everyone else is wrong.

And the only way to get there
is to test your assumptions with people
smart enough to prove you’re not.

Founder lesson:
Work for yourself.
Come up with independent opinions.
Stress-test them with people who will destroy them if they’re weak.
Be wary about being overconfident.
Reflect on consequences and constantly improve.

That’s how you win.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Q5 is the most important quarter (that isn’t a quarter) and this is how not to waste it.

Most brands go too seasonal or default to evergreen messaging that totally ignores how people actually feel post-Christmas.

The sharpest operators?

They lead with problem-aware creative that taps into the “reset” mindset and they build it to last beyond Q5 with smart hook variation.

- 50% goes to problem-aware + unaware top-of-funnel content
→ Tap into the “reset” mindset but build in hook variations so these ads outlive Q5.

- 20–30% goes to mid-funnel trust-builders
→ Objection handling. Social proof. Clear transformations. Especially important in health & wellness, where everyone’s shouting at once.

We break this all down in the 2026 Ecommerce Playbook: why now’s the best time to reach your hardest to reach customers and the biggest mistakes brands make post-Christmas.

Catch up now: https://lnkd.in/eTdgnNRH

$0 to $120M run rate in 11 months. The fastest-growing supplement brand in the world.

Backed by David Beckham.

Built on science.

IM8 Health is setting the pace for a new wave of consumer health brands, and Olly sat down with CEO Danny Yeung to unpack exactly how they’ve done it.

One of the sharpest operators we’ve ever spoken to.

Watch the full episode → https://lnkd.in/ewauU5yT

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Performance ScoreJoe Marston 🚀's LinkedIn Performance

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Joel Williams

Joe Marston 🚀

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Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Joel Williams's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreJoe Marston 🚀's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreJoel Williams's LinkedIn Performance