If I could sit down with my younger self at the start of my career, there are a few things I’d say.
Although, knowing the younger me, I’d probably nod politely, ignore the advice and carry on doing exactly what I was doing anyway.
Like most people in hospitality, I started out focused on the day to day.
Running busy venues, building strong teams and trying to get through Saturday night service without something catching fire or the EPOS system deciding it had had enough.
Hospitality teaches you resilience very quickly. It also teaches you how to solve problems at speed, usually while three other problems are arriving at the same time.
Over the years, I’ve been fortunate to help build and operate some fantastic hospitality businesses, including 17 years with the Living Ventures group (The Living Room, Gusto, The Alchemist, New World Trading and many more).
It’s an industry that gives you a real education in leadership, pressure and problem solving.
It also teaches you that if something can go wrong five minutes before a full restaurant service, it absolutely will.
Looking back now, after more than three decades in hospitality, and the slightly unexpected experience of building a technology platform, there are a few lessons I wish I’d understood earlier.
The first is this:
The problems everyone accepts as ‘just the way things are’ are often where the biggest opportunities sit.
Throughout my career, one challenge kept appearing again and again, compliance.
Health and safety. Food hygiene. Risk management. All important things, but usually managed through a strange mix of folders, spreadsheets and bits of software that didn’t talk to each other.
Managers were juggling paperwork and checklists. Leadership often had limited visibility. And the shift manager was left wondering whether everything had actually been done properly.
At the time, we all just accepted it. It was part of the job.
Looking back now, that frustration was actually pointing straight at the opportunity.
Tech must be simple to use
The second thing I’d tell my younger self is this: if a system isn’t easy to use, people simply won’t use it.
This sounds obvious, but it’s amazing how often it gets ignored.
In hospitality, managers are already spinning about 15 plates at once. They’re running shifts, leading teams, dealing with suppliers, speaking to customers and occasionally trying to remember whether they’ve eaten that day.
If a system is slow, complicated or confusing, it won’t last long.
People will try it for a week, then quietly go back to whatever system actually makes their life easier, usually a notebook, a WhatsApp group and a lot of crossed fingers.
That’s something we’ve tried to stay focused on while building the Mercury platform.
The goal wasn’t to build clever software. That was just an added extra.
It was to build something simple enough that busy teams would actually use it.
The third lesson took me a long time to properly appreciate:
Tech shouldn’t replace people
Great technology shouldn’t replace people, it should free them up to do their best work.
In hospitality, the best managers aren’t the ones buried in paperwork. They’re the ones on the floor, leading their teams, talking to customers and keeping standards high.
But too often, people end up spending hours dealing with admin, chasing paperwork or trying to piece together information from multiple systems.
When technology works properly, it removes that friction. It simplifies the background processes so people can focus on running great operations.
The goal isn’t to automate people out of the picture.
It’s to give them the time and clarity to do what they’re actually great at.
That thinking is what shaped Mercury Support into a hybrid model, simple digital tools supported by experienced people who understand how hospitality businesses actually operate.
The final thing I’d tell my younger self is this: don’t wait too long to build something.
For years, I saw the same problems appearing again and again across hospitality and other operational businesses.
Eventually, we started building our own internal systems simply to make life easier for the teams we were supporting.
Those early ideas slowly grew into the platform we’ve built today, particularly after partnering with the brilliant team at Zapt.ai through the ASCEND scale-up programme run by the Greater Manchester Business Growth Company.
Looking back, the move from hospitality operator to technology founder wasn’t part of some grand master plan.
It happened because, after 30 years of seeing the same problems, I finally thought, surely there has to be a better way to do this.
And so, with my team and the talented people at Zapt.ai, we built a platform we’re incredibly proud of, designed not just for hospitality, but for any industry with compliance management needs.
So far, it’s been one of the most exciting and rewarding periods of my career.
And thankfully, slightly less stressful than a fully booked Saturday night service.
Bio:
Mercury Support is a one-stop shop for compliance needs, specialising in the hospitality sector.