Currently...

I run GirlMeetsDress.com (GMD) as the founding COO delivering fashion highs to tens of thousands of women throughout the UK and Ireland.

The first of its kind, Girl Meets Dress offers women access to their dream wardrobes for all of life's special occasions. Girl Meets Dress allows you to hire designer dresses and accessories for up to 95% off their retail price. You can borrow over 4,000 designer pieces from over 150 global designer brands like Marc Jacobs, Halston Heritage, 3.1 Phillip Lim, etc.

Get up to 3 dresses delivered next-day to your home or at your office and all you have to do is have fun in the one you want, and get a refund for the others when you send them all back in the pre-paid box... "simples"!

Our customers regularly write to us saying “everyone came up to me to say how lovely I looked”, “I felt amazing!”, “I got so many compliments”, “I haven’t felt this good in years!” etc.

Before I escaped...

Immediately before GMD I led the UK Digital Media and eCommerce practice at a Bank in the City working with Startups of all sizes helping them raise funds / sell themselves or even buy other companies.

Yes I went back after my first startup, but this was different, and working with startups and corporate finance in the Small Medium sized businesses space is a heck of a lot of fun!

I remember working with Errol from Wonga before it became the impressive beast it is today, and with Alderbaran, an incredible robotics company, on their first fundraise, now worth 100mn+. You name it, someone is starting it up and being smart about it.

More importantly it was smart hard work, and I loved it but it's never as much fun as doing it yourself.

My moment of truth...

I can remember it quite vividly. It was the summer of my A-Levels and I was interning at Citigroup, (best internship I ever had - really formative, and a really colleagiate and fun team). To summarise, the lesson eventually learnt was that it is very precarious to live without being conscious of what you find important and the decisions you are making with regards to how well you are going about getting to where you want to be.

Given how hard you will end up working for things, it will be truly unforgiving to get there only to find it wasn't worth it... and have to start again, if you still can. You are better off either not aiming for anything in particular and letting life take you (like most), never getting there (like many), or getting there but never realising what it cost you.

The second truth, which came later on from my co-founder Anna Bance, is that nothing needs to feel like sacrifice or an unwanted compromise - life is too short to not sort things out today.

Planning for it...

I didn't plan for it at all - it happened before I was even ready to deal with it. I blindly started walking a path that became clearer and clearer and clearer until eventually you realise it's an art form and you are a performer perfecting your craft.

In hindsight you never really can plan for it if it's a big step. A small one like replicating a business, sure, easy; leveraging what you know, doable. For anything else, you need a big attitude/mindset.

One thing to note however is that the skills you need, you can start perfecting in your current job. Be it being a manager, leader, sales; you may need to be all those people for a good while before things can be delegated reliably.

The worst and best bits...

Best bits: everywhere and never ending, you see the world as it really is (the good, the bad and the ugly as they say... the really ugly), and if you're lucky enough you really get to orchestrate your life in a very tangible way - and that gives you space to breath and really be your best.

You get to make your own decisions about how you feel about things vs never knowing why you might agree or like something you see on the news or read in a paper.

Meet people you probably wouldn't even get to hear about; you get to interact with life all around you.

The bad: life / business is tough; it's people, and people (individually or together) can be tough. Be it human nature, competitor dynamics, you name it - every once in a while you get hit really really hard and you have to get up and make a decision.

Best advice...

The http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTJ7AzBIJoI">Sunscreen song! I love listening to it every once in a while.

I have found that for every advice, the opposite advice has worked somewhere else, so my advice would be to be specific about what you want advice on or don't bother asking. Feeling that you missed out on asking for advice can be more inspiring than asking a random question and feeling satisfied.

Advice needs to be specific and tailored and invariably should only be considered for key decisions if received from within your business/team; you might as well have asked, 'can you tell me something random you think might be interesting to bear in mind', in which case you are always better off asking for thoughts on how you might tackle what you are struggling with at this point in time; the mere act of articulating it sometimes removes it all together as a stumbling block.

Also thinking your next decision remains elusively out there as opposed to within your core members of the team/customers, can be a big time waster.

Useful resources and information...

Everything!

No one can tell you - you need to be at the forefront of anything that might give you your edge.

Twitter, linkedin, blogs, social radio (radio read out of any twitter stream you want), ALL google products and plugins, other executives/CEOs, hundreds of podcasts, loads of books (lately reading http://www.amazon.co.uk/Management-10-Words-Terry-Leahy/dp/1847940897">Terry Leahy's "10 words" book and liking it a lot!).