About Dean

Built by a founder who's been there, designed for brands who value clarity and commercial thinking.

Several large paper mail bags and two shopping trolleys filled with wrapped packages and parcels, some with purple tags, are stacked at a postal or shipping area indoors.

From Scaling a Brand to Building a Better Way

The E-commerce Journey
I started in e-commerce because I thought I could do it better than what I was seeing from my desk at a digital agency.

In 2018, I opened a menswear retail store in a small market town. The plan was always to fund an online business. By 2019, I'd launched the footwear brand. By 2020, I'd found the niche.

What followed was 0 to £250k per month in revenue in 6 months. With a team of 3.

That kind of growth with that lean of an operation doesn't happen by accident. It happens because you obsess over the details. Process. Operations. Systems. How orders move. How quickly you respond. How you eliminate waste and friction at every step.

It also happens because you understand your numbers. Margins. Cash flow. Customer acquisition cost vs lifetime value. What you can afford to spend to acquire a customer. What profitability actually requires, not just what revenue looks like.

That obsession with efficiency and commercial thinking became the foundation for everything that followed.

The Fulfilment Business
Through the e-commerce community I was part of, other founders started asking if I could handle their fulfilment too.

So in December 2020, almost by accident, I started a fulfilment business.

At the peak, I was processing 1,000 orders per day with 4 team members, across 10,000 square feet of warehouse space, serving around 30 clients.

That business validated something I already suspected: I wasn't good at selling product. I was good at building systems that worked under pressure, at scale, with limited resources.

Every wasted second, every inefficient step, compounded across thousands of orders. So I obsessed over shelf space, location mapping, movement patterns, warehouse layout, technology. Every detail mattered.

In 2020, I won Young Entrepreneur of the Year at the Action Coach Business Excellence Awards. I was a finalist again in 2021.

From the outside, it looked like everything was working. But on the inside, I was holding all the strings. And it was coming at a cost.

A group of runners participating in a marathon on a city street, with a man in a blue tank top and black shorts leading the pack.

The Turning Point
I'd built these businesses through self-sacrifice and sheer force of will. That worked, until it didn't.

The businesses were profitable, but the path forward was clear: bigger warehouse, bigger lease, bigger team. More of everything. And I had to ask myself if that's what I actually wanted.

It wasn't.

In April 2022, I went on a health mission. Lost 5 stone. Found myself again.

That wasn't just about weight. It was about understanding who I wanted to be, how I wanted to show up, what habits and behaviours would actually serve me, my team, my clients, my family.

It was about building boundaries. Filtering decisions through a simple question: is this going to harm me in the process?

That shift changed everything about how I work today.

A man with glasses and a beard wearing a black jacket, talking on a cell phone, standing on a city street with old brick buildings and a church in the background.

A woman with brown hair sitting on black stairs outside a house with a green door, smiling and resting her chin on her hand, wearing a black leather jacket and a patterned skirt.

A young woman with glasses and long, wavy blonde hair sitting in a restaurant with floral wallpaper and framed paintings on the wall.

The Pivot to The Hubb
So I made a choice. I sold the footwear business. In March 2023, I sold the fulfilment business.

I focused entirely on The Hubb, but rebuilt it around one principle: I wanted to work the way I wished agencies had worked with me.

Today, I'm a team of 5, working with around 40 clients, managing ad spend from £300 to £150,000 per month. Everyone works remotely. Everyone has flexible hours.

I work alongside my team, not in some hierarchy, because we all do our best work when we have the freedom to do it on our terms.

And that same principle applies to how we work with clients.

Why This Model Exists

The Hubb isn't built like a traditional agency because I've never believed traditional agencies go deep enough to make sustainable growth.

This model exists because of what I learned scaling my own businesses, and what I wish had been available when I needed it.

A man sitting at a wooden table in a cafe, talking on a mobile phone, with a laptop, a cup of coffee, and a small potted plant on the table. He is wearing glasses, a black jacket, and white sneakers.

Why Fractional

When I was scaling the footwear brand, I didn't need someone to just "run my ads."

I needed someone who understood my margins. Who could forecast what scaling would actually require. Who thought commercially, not just tactically. Who could plan months ahead, not react to last week's numbers.

But I couldn't justify a full-time hire at that stage. And agencies treated me like a number. I got stacked into their system, assigned to endless team members, and given cookie-cutter strategies.

What I needed was a fractional partner. Someone who dedicated themselves to my business as if they were in-house, but brought the pattern recognition and expertise from working across multiple brands.

That's what I wish existed. So that's what I built.

You get the commitment of an in-house paid ads lead, with the broader perspective and strategic depth that comes from seeing what works across dozens of brands at different stages of growth.

"Thank you for everything you're doing with my account, it's AMAZING!"
- Wishstrings

A man with glasses and a beard working on a silver laptop at a wooden table in a cozy cafe. The table has a cup of coffee, and there are a small potted plant and a larger plant on the window sill. The background features a pink wall, white shelves with books and glass decanters, and a framed clock.

Why Not Traditional Agency

Most agencies optimise for their business model, not yours.

They stack clients high to justify overhead. You get assigned to whoever has capacity, not who's best suited. Strategy gets templated because bespoke doesn't scale for them.

And they optimise for metrics that make them look good, not metrics that drive profitability for you.

I've been on the other side of that. I know what it feels like when your agency celebrates ROAS while your cash flow suffers. When they push for more spend because it benefits them, not because it's the right commercial decision for you.

This model exists because I refuse to operate that way.

We take on clients selectively based on fit and capacity. We embed properly. We think commercially. We optimise for your profitability, not our convenience.

Person working on a laptop at a round marble table near a window with a plant beside it.

Why Structure and Planning Matter

Growth without structure is chaos. Scaling without systems is gambling. Performance without profitability is insanity.

I learned that scaling a footwear brand from 0 to £250k per month with 3 people. And I learned it running a fulfilment operation processing 1,000 orders daily with 4 people.

You can't sustain that kind of performance without obsessing over process, efficiency, and planning.

The same principles apply to paid ads.

Clean data. Commercial alignment. Intentional experimentation. Forward planning.

Most brands skip foundations and try to scale. They chase tactics without structure. They react to weekly performance instead of planning by quarter.

And then they wonder why growth feels fragile.

Structure and planning aren't bureaucracy. They're what allow performance to compound. They're what make scaling feel controlled instead of risky.

That's what I bring to every client. The same obsession with systems and commercial thinking that let me scale businesses with tiny teams. Applied to paid ads.

"Sales are up 69% and 171% increase on traffic from Facebook"
- Lucy Loves This

A young man with glasses and dark hair smiling, talking on his cellphone on a city street with old buildings and a church in the background.

The Team Behind The Work

While I'm the strategic lead you're working with, I'm supported by a tight-knit team.

We're not a traditional agency hierarchy. We're a group of people who love what we do, work flexibly, and feed off one another's strengths.

The team handles delivery, execution, and day-to-day optimisation. I handle strategy, planning, forecasting, and client partnership.

That means when you work with us, you get the benefit of a full team's capacity and expertise, but the continuity and strategic depth of working directly with me.

You're not passed around. You're working with someone who's built and scaled businesses, who understands the commercial reality of growth, and who's invested in making this work long-term.

Backed by a team that ensures delivery is consistent, professional, and aligned with the plan we've built together.

A man with glasses and a beard talking on the phone while sitting at a table with an open MacBook laptop in a dimly lit room.

What Drives Me

I'm passionate about helping brands who are serious about growth.

I love offering a service that supports brands getting started with paid ads, because I wish this existed when I was figuring it out myself. Not everyone is ready for deep strategic partnership, and that's fine. But everyone deserves professional support that's structured properly from the beginning.

That said, what really lights me up is the deep work.

Getting into the numbers. Crunching forecasts. Building plans. Working closely with founders who want to understand what's actually driving performance, not just hand it off and hope.

While many people in this industry are looking to remove themselves from delivery and scale their teams, I want the opposite. I want to work closer with clients. I want to be embedded. I want to make a real difference.

Because that's what actually moves the needle when scaling.

Understanding the business deeply enough to make commercially sound decisions. Planning far enough ahead that you're not constantly reacting. Building systems that compound performance over time.

That's the work I care about. And that's what working together looks like.

"With your help we have beaten our annual forecast by 110K, incredible"
- The Yorkshire Tile Co.

Work With Me

If you're looking for someone who thinks like a founder, understands the commercial reality of scaling, and is willing to embed properly into your business, let's talk.

Book a discovery call. We'll work through where you're at, what you're trying to achieve, and whether the way I work makes sense for your business.