For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to run my own business. Even as a five-year-old, I would print out little mock-up business cards that said "Consultant." But while I've spent the past 15 years or so either investing in startups or trying to create them myself, with varying degrees of success, I've always had to juggle my passion for entrepreneurship with the demands of a full-time job. Work.
That's until now. I've taken time out of office life to devote myself to Color Your Streets, a start-up I launched a year ago with my broadcaster wife Emma Barnett. To do this, I gave up a six-figure job in The Economist Intelligence Unit, where I was head of product. Prior to this, I worked at companies such as Reed Business Information and Deloitte.
People say the UK is no longer a good place to start a business, but that's not been my experience - although there are some things I haven't tried yet, like raising capital. What I can say is that there are very few barriers to getting started and there are a lot of great tools available.
I had to quit my job because what started as a spark of an idea had become a full-time job in itself.
In 2023, Emma and I shared maternity and paternity leave. Our five-year-old has developed a hobby of coloring books, and to keep him entertained we wanted to find a book that would allow him to color in pictures of the local area - Herne Hill, south London. We were surprised to find that something like this didn't exist, so we set out to make one ourselves.
Little did we know at the time that this idea would eventually take over our lives. I started by taking some photos of the neighborhood with my phone and then used AI to generate a book template. It was my first time trying to print a book, but at the time I didn't know anything about paper quality or anything like that.
Still, it's exciting to see this idea become a reality for just a few hundred pounds.
We no longer use AI – now we work with a handful of designers – but it has been a brilliant and effective tool from the beginning. You can ask it to suggest color palettes for kid-focused brands and it will give you great suggestions. This is especially helpful considering I'm color blind.
I'm convinced we're onto something special. We created a second batch of books, expanded the areas we covered, and started showing them to friends and their children. There was an immediate positive response, especially among children. When you show something to a five or six year old, you know immediately if they like it. They made no secret of their reactions - they were brutal. It was interesting to see how they immediately connected with their area, buildings and landmarks, even something as simple and unassuming as the bench they sat on outside the station. It means more to them than the average thing.
Next, we started thinking about stocking them in the store. Our local gift shop loved them and immediately took them out - there's nothing more exciting than the first sale. But this is just the beginning of the avalanche. Everywhere we went, people said yes because they love their area.
Notably, we find that people of all ages are now using and buying our products, whereas initially we thought these products would be primarily targeted at five, six and seven-year-olds. In fact, we have a lot of adults who really enjoy it. People often buy these books out of nostalgia. For example, a woman from New Zealand contacted me about a Clapham and Battersea book. She had lived in the area 35 years ago and wanted to see the architecture again. This all happened very early in the journey. We can feel it accelerating.
Quitting your corporate job is not a big, dramatic exit, and giving up the salary your company offers is not a big, dramatic exit. Quite simply, I realized there was little I could do to stay because the demands of the coloring book business had become so great. In a very short period of time, we transitioned from a kitchen table business (where we did all the fulfillment, printed shipping labels, and delivered the books to the post office) to using a warehouse and outsourcing our customer support.
Now, we are on track to have a turnover of £2 million to £4 million next year, which I think is achievable. We have created around 150 books for communities across the UK and have even launched some international titles for cities such as New York, Paris and Barcelona.
Starting a business always comes with certain risks. But I think the way we did it - I continued to work while the project was starting - de-risked the entire project from a financial perspective. It's a different story if you go from a stable, monthly job to a business with no revenue or growth.
That’s not to say we don’t face challenges. When it's your own business, there's always more work to do. You never want to say something can wait until tomorrow - it's endless. You have to learn how to focus on the strategic things that will really make an impact, rather than spending your time in a mountain of emails.
Because Emma and I work together, we also have to make sure that it doesn't completely consume our lives and that we remember that we are primarily husband and wife, not just business partners. There were a few times last year that we did over-veer that, but that was because we were all so excited about it. Our skills complement each other: she excels in PR, branding, and product visual design, while I focus more on running the business, creating a new book, building a website, and improving our metrics.
The lack of bureaucracy is striking. Working in a company, you have to think about communication and stakeholders and all these things. Now we make decisions very quickly.
To those who want to take the plunge and try starting their own business, I would say, just do it. I find that what typically distinguishes entrepreneurs from everyone else is the leap they make from idea to reality, no matter how small that leap is. You can test a lot of ideas for almost no money – just time and dedication.
Jeremy Weil is the founder of Color the Streets. As Daniel Wolfson says.
Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month and get unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive apps, money-saving offers and more.