Bob Fitzjohn

After nearly 40 years as Founder & Chairman of RSVP (Media Response) Ltd, I think it’s finally time I came out from behind the sofa and joined the real world. I’m currently finalising a succession plan that will give my extraordinary team the freedom to shape their own future with the business we've built together. Over the years I’ve been called a serial entrepreneur, but if you only knew me through RSVP, you might not see that side. Truth is, I’ve started many ventures-but always quietly, behind the scenes. Then 2023 changed everything. In just six months I faced pneumonia, sepsis, double pneumonia, Covid, a terminal cancer diagnosis, septic shock, cardiac arrest-and Covid again. I lost over 30 lbs, broke five ribs, have a collapsed vertebra, lost 95% of my bone marrow and 45% of my hip. My skeleton now looks like Swiss cheese. But here’s the bad news: I'm still here. In August, I was officially declared in remission. And while I’m more aware than ever that others face far tougher journeys, I’ve come out of this with an even deeper sense of purpose. Since I can’t be quite so hands-on these days, I’ve returned to my roots: building something from scratch. This time, it’s a SaaS venture-a time and attendance app to support service-based businesses. And I’m proud to say… We launched it this week. New chapter. Same drive.

Most small businesses operate with zero margin for error. They use today's takings to buy tomorrow's supplies. One slow day and the whole thing could collapse. I've seen this pattern across dozens of service businesses over the years. House cleaners buying supplies every day... Construction crews waiting for client payments to cover materials for the next project. The bootstrap mentality gets romanticized in business circles. People talk about scrappiness and resourcefulness like they're virtues. They are, to a point. But when you're living hand to mouth with your business, you're not building. You're surviving. There's no cushion for mistakes. No room to experiment. No capacity to take advantage of opportunities when they appear. A supplier offers a discount for buying in bulk? Can't afford it. Equipment breaks down? Hope it can wait. Customer takes an extra week to pay? That's a crisis. Breaking this cycle requires one of three things: outside help, patience or improving your margins.  Outside help doesn't always mean investment. Sometimes it's advice that saves you from expensive mistakes. Sometimes it's connections that bring in work faster. Sometimes it's just someone helping you see what you're too close to notice. Patience means accepting that growth will be slower. You build reserves one day at a time. You turn down opportunities that would stretch you too thin. You resist the urge to spend every pound that comes in. Improving your margins can be as simple as increasing your prices, being ruthless with your costs or buying better.  The uncomfortable truth is that many small business owners never escape this trap. They work incredibly hard, provide good service, and still end each month exactly where they started. It's not a failure of effort. It's a structural problem that effort alone can't solve. If you're in this cycle right now, know that it's not sustainable long-term. You'll burn out or the first real setback will take you under. Look for the help. Ask for the advice. Don’t listen to the negatives. Find someone who's been there and is willing to show you the way out. Or commit to the patience. Build your buffer slowly. Protect it fiercely. Use it only when absolutely necessary. But don't convince yourself that bootstrapping from zero margin is a badge of honor. It's just a very precarious way to run a business.

I've always seen my job as removing obstacles. Not creating strategy. Not setting vision. Removing what's in the way. In every business I've built, the moment things started feeling simple to customers was when we'd spent weeks clearing out the friction points they'd never see. My team knows what needs doing. They're capable. What slows them down isn't lack of skill, it's all the small things that get in their way. Unclear processes. Confusing handoffs. Systems that don't talk to each other. Approvals that take three days when they should take three minutes. Most leaders think their job is pointing the direction. I've found it's more about clearing the path. Your team already knows where they're going. Make it easier for them to get there.

Simple doesn't happen by accident. Every business I've built, when something finally felt easy for the customer, it's because we'd spent weeks sorting through the messy bits behind the scenes. The customer never sees that work. They shouldn't have to. I owned a hotel for several years. Guests were there round the clock, ready to notice anything that didn't work smoothly. Making their experience feel effortless meant my team and I spent countless hours on processes they'd never think about. Clear systems, people who knew exactly what to do, constant attention to anything that created friction. That investment pays off because people remember how you made them feel, not how difficult it was for you to deliver. The lesson: if your business feels complicated to customers, you haven't done enough work yet. Simple is what you earn after putting in the hours they'll never see.

If you want to know what's broken in your business, map the customer journey. Not the product. Not the team structure. Not the marketing funnel. The actual journey a customer takes from first contact to final delivery. When you walk through it step by step, you'll find every place where frustration builds. Every gap between what they expect and what they get. Every moment that makes their experience harder than it needs to be. I've seen businesses spend months debating strategy when the real problem was buried in step three of their customer journey. A confusing form. A missing confirmation. A point where no one tells the customer what happens next. The customer journey works like an X-ray. It shows you exactly where the problems are. Fix those friction points one by one and suddenly your business feels world-class. Not because you hired brilliant people, but because you removed the irritations that were holding you back. Excellence lives in the details of how your customer experiences you. That's where good companies become great ones.

Private equity came into one of my businesses and immediately started planning how to buy back our franchise network. We had this UK-wide network of franchise businesses. The plan was to bring them back into the company so we could approach insurance companies with a consolidated operation. The board sat there calculating buyout figures, discussing how much capital they'd need to raise, and mapping out the financial engineering required. I'd been working with these franchise owners for five years by that point. So I told them I'd get the franchises back without spending that kind of money. They looked at me like I was mad. Their entire model relied on capital deployment and financial incentives. But I'd built actual relationships with these people over half a decade. I understood what they wanted from the business and what concerned them. Money wasn't always the main issue. Most executives think every problem can be solved by throwing money at it. Sometimes the real solution is knowing people well enough to have a conversation that doesn't start with a price. The downside of my approach is it doesn't scale the way financial engineering does. You can't systematize trust and rapport. The upside is you often solve problems for a fraction of the cost while keeping goodwill intact. So yes, I tend to value relationships over financial tactics. But I'd rather spend five years building trust than five million pounds buying cooperation.

Learn more about Team-Trak below: team-trak.com

You're losing five hours every week to tasks that shouldn't exist. Let me show you where they're hiding: Hour 1: Chasing Timesheets Monday morning. You're texting workers asking them to remember their hours from last week. Half don't reply. The other half gives you estimates. Hours 2-3: Creating Invoices You're matching hours to clients, calculating totals, and creating invoices one by one. Each invoice takes 10-15 minutes because you're cross-referencing multiple sources. Hour 4: Payroll Processing Now you're creating payslips, making sure everyone's hours match what you invoiced clients. The numbers need to balance, or you'll hear about it. Hour 5: Resolving Disputes A client questions the hours. Your worker insists they're right. You're stuck in the middle with no clear evidence either way. The Solution: Team-Trak eliminates all five hours. GPS and QR check-ins create the record automatically. The system generates timesheets, invoices, and payslips without manual work. What You Get Back: Five hours every week to find new clients, train your team, or actually grow the business. Built for service businesses where workers travel to client sites.

To Learn More: team-trak.com

I served a four-year apprenticeship starting at sixteen, and the structure surprised me. The first year, we couldn't be trusted with anything. We spent our days in the company's training school making our own tools and learning the basics of electricity. Our time was split three ways: working for the company, a weekly college day-release, and night school. I actually enjoyed it. Most of the lecturers had worked in the real world and could tell us exactly what to expect once we were out there. They spoke our language, and I listened. At the end of the first year, I won the prize for best student in our year. My mother and I only found out at the graduation ceremony itself. She was completely overwhelmed. After that year of training, we were let loose to work alongside electricians in customers' homes and businesses. The company was heavily unionised. Breakfast at the local café after clocking in, long tea breaks, early finishes. Everyone drove their own car and claimed mileage. It drove me mad. I never joined the union. As soon as I qualified, I asked if I could be given a company van and more than one day's work at a time. I knew I could complete a week's work in less than three days and still get home early. Change was slow, and I was restless. I'd learned my trade, but I'd also learned that working to someone else's clock wasn't for me. That split between working, college, and night school taught me something most people miss: learning works best when it's tied to real application. The lecturers who'd actually done the work could explain why things mattered, not just how they worked. But the bigger lesson came from watching everyone else coast on union time while I wanted to move faster. Systems built for the average will always frustrate the people who want to operate above it.

Too many people stay stuck in planning mode. I've watched it happen over and over. Someone has an idea, gets excited, then spends months mapping out every detail before taking a single step. I've always believed done is better than perfect. You can fix a bad idea once it's running. You can adjust the pricing, change the product, or pivot the approach. But you can't fix something that never got off the ground. I've started businesses without proper plans more times than I can count. Some worked, some didn't. But every single one taught me something I wouldn't have learned from another month of planning. The market tells you what works. Real customers tell you what's missing. Actual revenue tells you if you're solving a problem worth paying for. None of that happens in a planning document. So if you've been sitting on an idea waiting for the perfect moment or the perfect plan, here's what I'd suggest: start badly. Launch incomplete. Test the smallest version you can manage. You'll learn more in the first week of doing than in six months of planning.

One of my most profitable ventures came from an idea people laughed at. But they weren't the customer. The people dismissing it weren't the ones who had the problem I was solving. They were just loud. I've learned that feedback only matters from people who actually live with the pain your product addresses. Everyone else is just noise. When you build something, you'll always find critics. Some will tell you it won't work. Others will suggest seventeen ways to do it differently. Listen to the people who need what you're building. Ignore the rest. The loudest voices are rarely your customers. Your customers are too busy dealing with the problem you're trying to solve. If your idea addresses a real need, the criticism doesn't matter. The solution matters. Build for the people who'll use it, not for the people who'll comment on it.

I've never believed in "million-dollar ideas." The same idea in two different hands produces completely different results. I've seen this for over 40 years and 30-plus ventures. Someone comes up with what they think is brilliant, expects it to print money, and then watches it collapse because they couldn't execute. Meanwhile, someone else takes an ordinary idea, something people have done a hundred times before, and makes it work because they follow through. I've started businesses in industries I knew nothing about. No special insight, no proprietary advantage. Just saw something that needed doing and committed to doing it properly. The idea was never what mattered. It was showing up every day, fixing what broke, learning what customers actually needed, and not quitting when it got difficult. Most people protect their ideas like they're precious. I've always thought the opposite. Ideas are cheap. Execution is everything. If you're sitting on an idea waiting for it to be perfect before you start, you've already lost to someone who started six months ago with a worse idea and better commitment.

People reserve the word entrepreneur for the startup founder raising millions or the person standing on a stage talking about scale. That is backwards. The cleaning company owner with three or four employees. The building contractor running five sites. They are not "just" running a small business. They are hiring, finding customers, managing cash flow, dealing with complaints, and keeping everything moving while competitors undercut their prices. Then at the end of the day, they are still doing timesheets by hand, creating invoices, and chasing hours worked. That is who I built Team-Trak for. Service businesses where workers turn up at job sites. QR and/or GPS check-ins prove they were there. Automated timesheets and invoices replace the evening paperwork. Everything exports to accounting software. The goal is simple: Automate the back office so they can focus on growing the business instead of drowning in admin. The real entrepreneurs are often the ones nobody writes about. Build for them.

It’s a good question. I believe that automation helps a business scale by allowing it to take on more work without adding administration at the same rate. The problem in many service businesses is not winning the work. It is coping with the paperwork that comes with growth. More staff and more client sites usually mean more timesheets, more checking, more invoices, and more opportunities for error. Automation removes much of that burden. It standardises routine tasks, reduces manual correction, and frees people to focus on customers and operations. That is how a business grows without becoming overwhelmed by its own success.

Every week, the same routine: Collect timesheets, double-check hours, calculate pay, create invoices, and match everything to clients. It takes half a day minimum. More if there are disputes or missing information. This is what keeps small service businesses small. The owner becomes the bottleneck because they're the only one who can piece together the payroll puzzle. Team-Trak automates the entire flow. GPS and QR check-ins create the record. Managers review and approve. The system generates timesheets for workers and clients, then produces invoices, payslips, and work slips automatically. Everything exports to your accounting software. No more manual matching. Your time is the most valuable asset in a small business. Protect it ruthlessly.

I didn't build my SaaS platform Team-Trak to be clever. I built it to solve a boring problem. Service businesses lose hours every week just tracking who worked where and for how long. House cleaners finish the job, then spend the evening sorting timesheets. Construction managers chase workers for hours logged. Home help coordinators manually create invoices for each client visit. None of that is exciting. All of it is essential. That's the gap I went after. GPS and QR codes prove your workers were on site. The system tracks check-in, check-out, and time spent. It automatically creates the timesheet, generates the invoice, and exports everything to your accounting software. The admin work that used to take two hours a night now takes two minutes. The lesson: unsexy problems often have the biggest market, because everyone else is chasing the flashy stuff. Learn more about Team-Trak below:

When the recession hit, our bank ran into liquidity trouble and recalled our £600,000 overdraft and loan facility. They demanded a three-year business plan prepared by a top-tier accountancy firm. Cash was tight. Confidence was gone. But I didn’t fold the company. Instead of stepping back, we stepped closer. We organised daily morning meetings with the bank manager. Not weekly. Daily. Each morning we showed exactly what cash they could expect that day. No forecasts. No optimism. Just reality. Over time, we paid back every penny. But survival required stripping everything back. I borrowed against my home to keep the company solvent. I didn’t pay the mortgage for six months. We convinced our largest supplier to extend credit from 90 days to 120. Another took stock back to reduce our debt. We closed offices. Sold vehicles. Took salary cuts. Nothing sentimental survived. People often ask why I didn’t just let it fold. The best way to explain it is with an image. Imagine a steam-powered yacht in the middle of the Atlantic. The fuel runs out. The owners still have champagne and caviar. They keep polishing the silver, expecting rescue. Eventually the food runs out. There’s another option. You throw everything overboard that doesn’t float or burn. Then you strip the boat itself. Panels. Fixtures. Anything that keeps it moving. What’s left is ugly. Bare. Unrecognisable. But it moves. Eventually, it reaches land. The yacht doesn’t survive in its original form. But you do. And once you’re standing on shore, you have something invaluable: a structure you can rebuild from. That was the rationale. Not pride. Not stubbornness. Survival. Because businesses can be rebuilt, re-staffed, re-financed, re-imagined. But only if they’re still breathing. Sometimes the bravest decision isn’t to walk away. It’s to strip everything back, endure the discomfort, and keep moving with nothing left but the frame. That’s how you get to shore. The business survived. It was later acquired by a listed company.

Most people think a bigger market means bigger opportunity. I've found the opposite works better. When a product can be sold to almost anyone, you need a massive approach to reach them. That's expensive and scattered. With Team-Trak, I know exactly who needs it: - Cleaning companies - Construction workers - Short-term rental owners who need to track staff working off-site Because the target is narrow, I can list every cleaning company in the country. I can send them a text, an email, or using my telemarketing company to ring them directly. That's controlled and measurable. Too many people start with "I've got an idea, I need a Facebook page and a website, and I'm going to make money." That's hoping for traction, not creating it. Go narrow enough that you can name every potential customer group.  Then you're not marketing, you're having conversations. Get started with Team-Trak today - Link Below: