Don't worry, this won't be War & Peace, just some background which you may find sounds very similar to your own story.

I started Hireaband back in 1999 when I was still gigging in a wedding band.
The idea was to have a business I could run during the week whilst looking after our first daughter Rachel because her mum, Lisa, had a real job.

From very humble beginnings, the business grew steadily and I found myself with a potential success on my hands.

I made every mistake in the book, particularly with the marketing of the business. It felt as if Hireaband grew despite me rather than because of me.

I slogged away and with help from Lisa, who joined the business full time in 2004, plus a huge list of brilliant people who supported us along the way, we'd grown to be one of the biggest agencies in Scotland by 2011. It was then that we decided to franchise our business and eventually opened 9 Hireaband offices across the UK.

By 2024 our Scottish office had booked wedding entertainment for more than 22,000 couples and thousands of corporate and business clients, many of them household names. In the process we helped put millions of pounds into the pockets of Scottish musicians and entertainers.

In all that time I've been a real geek when it comes to studying sales and marketing; well I had to because to begin with, I was crap at it. To this day I hate 'selling'. I love sales, but feel very self conscious selling.