Steph.

This is my wife, Steph.

It's her 40th birthday this week so I thought I'd give her the present that money just can't buy. A dedicated Linkedin newsletter.

If you type Molzi into Google, you'll see quite a few articles. Most of them involve me, but none of them mention Steph.

The reality is that Molzi wouldn't have had the success it did without her.

For my entire Molzi journey, she was a cheerleader, a critic, an enthusiast, a therapist. Whatever I needed her to be, she was, without me knowing I needed her to be.

Oh, and the idea for Molzi was actually hers too...

But it's not until I've embarked on my next business ventures that I've realised how much more she did during those crazy 4 years of growing Molzi.

During those 4 years I had days where I would look after our daughter. I did my share of school pick ups and drops offs. I tried to avoid missing kids bedtimes. And I'll be really honest now, I thought I was a bit of a hero for doing it. In my head I was pretty much taking on my share of the load, while also growing a business.

I was physically doing things. But mentally I was fully absorbed by Molzi. I took no responsibility for what days the kids had clubs after school, when they had playdates, what days they needed packed lunches, when they needed their waterproof coat. I had the luxury of fully checking out of home life and back in to work life whenever I needed. And I thought nothing of it. But without Steph taking on that load and allowing me the luxury of prioritising Molzi we wouldn't have grown the business the way we did.

Add into that the mental load of all of my problems that Steph had to understand, diagnose and support. It must have been absolutely exhausting.

Since selling Molzi we have split the responsibilities more evenly. Physical and mental. I'm pretty sure it's still nowhere near 50/50 but we're getting there. And now that I've started up my new businesses FounderON , Kitchimo and The Ten Club I'm realising how difficult it is to manage work and life. Not in terms of time, but in terms of brain space.

My ambition when I left Molzi was to create a new business that I could run for the rest of my life. Something that's not designed to quickly grow and sell. A company that the kids could be involved in one day if they wanted to. But most of all, I wanted to build a business with Steph. A business where she's at the forefront of the articles and not supporting in the background. After 2 years of me pitching to her (I think I'm genuinely exhausting to live with) she's agreed. Together we will be launching a business called Cassidilly and I couldn't be more excited. Not just at the prospect of creating another amazing business, but mainly about doing it with my wife and best friend.

Happy Birthday Steph. I think you're mega. Even if you're not cool enough to actually use Linkedin. Oh, so you'll probably never see this. Ah well, the thought that counts...

If you liked this newsletter, you might also like my blog where I talk about the many highs and lows of starting, scaling and selling my business.

Check it out here - www.founderon.com/my-blog