The Phoenix Advisory articles bring together our writing for founder-led businesses. Baseline, the weekly read, anchors it: the developments worth a founder's attention each week, and what they mean for a growing business. Insights sits alongside it: occasional first-person pieces on finance, endurance and building the business behind the numbers.
Every Friday, Baseline covers the macro, sector and regulatory developments that matter to founder-led UK Ltd businesses, weighted toward health optimisation brands. Each edition turns the week's headline numbers into the questions worth acting on.
Occasional longer reads from Ross Radford on finance, endurance and building founder-led businesses. Where Baseline reads the week, Insights steps back.
The list populates from published posts, newest first. Baseline editions and Insights pieces both appear here, each on its own page.
Shop price inflation slowed to 0.9% as retailers held shelf prices through promotions while their costs build, Amazon’s online store sales rose 15% with everyday essentials growing fastest, and the UK manufacturing PMI was revised down to a four-month low.
The MPC held Bank Rate at 3.75% on a 6-3 vote with the dissent arguing for a rise, online took 29.4% of June retail spending, its highest share since April 2021, and Shopify opened pay-per-sale Shop Campaigns to UK merchants.
Pay growth cooled to 3.4% as the jobs market loosened, inflation eased to 2.6% ahead of the Bank’s 30 July decision, and functional health drove an 18% rise in UK food and drink M&A.
Two habits from Dame Prue Leith’s Xerocon conversation: selling your own work, and growing on money you already have.
The economy edged back to growth in May, the Chancellor added £6.5bn to the Growth Guarantee Scheme, and the supplement market kept reorganising around GLP-1, with a course record on Corsica to close.
What Louis Theroux’s conversation at Xerocon says about running the numbers without losing the reason you started.
A line from Xerocon on where the value of AI actually sits, and a session that showed what it looks like in practice.
A quieter news week, so a look further down the track: the Bank of England on where debt-servicing pressure is building, HMRC’s finding that smaller companies are now most of the tax gap, and a consultation that could make Direct Debit mandatory for VAT and PAYE.
Real household income and the saving ratio both fell even as GDP grew, June retail trading was the weakest for the season in over two years, and businesses are still weighing conflict and energy risk into their plans.
A talk on resilience, and the financial practices a business leans on when pressure arrives.
A second month of contraction with services at a three-year low, a change of prime minister and the planning question it raises, and Goldman calling the pound the most overvalued currency in the G10.
Two ideas from Andrew Huberman’s HX26 talk, applied to how a founder runs the numbers.
Inflation steady on the surface while services run hot and the Bank holds, the ASA's latest rulings turning ad claims into a spend-and-risk question, and what Danone's move for Huel says about building for exit.
The two races a founder runs, and why the second is a financial one.
April's first monthly contraction of the year, a global whey shortage pushing protein costs to record highs, and the margin squeeze sitting under a smaller-price-rises headline.
The week's labour-cost signal, the pricing warning under a strong manufacturing figure, and where challenger supplement brands are taking share.
A strong quarter with a softer picture underneath, the cost-base question inside the Employment Rights Act, and the cash-flow pattern beneath rising confidence.
A single month of easing against the Bank's own profile, the detail hidden under a weak retail headline, and where the sector is placing its growth bets.
Why I'm building Phoenix Advisory, and the thread running through it.
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