You Don't Need Permission. You Need a Plane Ticket.

Seven years ago this month, I left my job in buying at Marks and Spencer to start Endless in the UK.

I have photos from those early days - travelling to Paris Fashion Week, door-knocking to persuade brands to take a chance on an entirely new start-up, an entirely new concept, before we even had a website. No deck full of traction. No proof points. Just vision, conviction, and a whole lot of belief.

Thankfully, three brands said yes. We launched our site that March.

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People see Endless now and sometimes assume it was quick, easy, or lucky.

What they don't see:

Seven years of showing up. Seven years of learning the hard way. Seven years of ups, downs, pivots and persistence. Launching a business, navigating Covid, and later starting again in a brand new region.

Every relationship, every opportunity, every yes - I went out and earned. Built from scratch. Grown into.

None of it was luck. All of it was choice.

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I read something recently: the most successful people share one trait - they move fast. They don't overthink. They don't over-plan. They don't wait. They act.

While most people are still drafting their perfect plan, the doers are already testing, learning, and improving. The gap between the idea and action is tiny for them. This isn't recklessness - it's effectiveness.

I know this to be true, not as philosophy but as lived experience. I have never once been in possession of a complete plan. I have always had a direction, and I have consistently chosen to move towards it rather than wait for the conditions to be perfect.

The conditions are never perfect. Move anyway.

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The version of this story that gets cleaned up in interviews has a turning point. A dramatic moment of clarity. A reason so clear and compelling that the decision to leave was obvious.

The honest version is quieter than that.

I had a good job. A good career trajectory. A life that any earlier version of me would have been genuinely pleased with. And I kept coming back to the same feeling - that the work I needed to do wasn't the work I was doing.

I didn't wait for permission. I didn't wait for a complete funding picture, or a team, or an ironclad business plan. I decided. I moved. And then I started working out what the decision actually meant.

That's the sequence most founders don't admit to. You decide first. You figure it out after. Waiting to have everything clear before you act is usually just a longer way of not acting.

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If you're sitting with a decision right now - a move, a business, a version of your life that you know is the right one but can't quite justify yet - I'm not going to tell you it will all work out.

I don't know that. I couldn't have guaranteed it for myself seven years ago.

What I can tell you is that the permission you're waiting for isn't coming. The people who love you can't give it to you, because they're not the ones who have to live with the version of you who didn't go.

The version of you who buys the ticket - who goes to Paris with a business that doesn't have a website yet and knocks on doors until three brands say yes - that version earns something that can't be given.

Stop planning. Start building. Move now.