Forged in Fire
Operator · Author · Advisor
I help owners step out of the day to day without losing control, and build a business worth more when they leave.
The Story
I started at sixteen in professional kitchens. Michelin-trained, then private yachts feeding heads of state and billionaires. The lesson those years gave me, and that business books rarely teach, is that standards are not aspirational. They are operational.
I founded On Air Dining and built it into the most recognised brand in private aviation catering worldwide. Around it I built a portfolio of operating companies: One Fine Dine, On Air Interiors, On Air Laundry, and other ventures across hospitality and logistics. I survived near-bankruptcy, a global pandemic, and every operational crisis in between. Then I sold the group, and walked into a silence nobody had warned me about. Who are you when the thing you built is gone? That question, and the brutal identity shift behind it, is now as much a part of my work as the building was.
I am not a theorist. Everything I teach, I built. Everything I advise, I lived, including the part that comes after.
Track Record
The Book
The chef who built the world's most exclusive private jet catering company. The build, the exit, and the brutal lessons.
One unfiltered field manual for operators who build real businesses in the real world, not the sanitised startup mythology that fills airport shelves.
From mise en place to M&A. From a kitchen at sixteen to an international exit. Every framework, every failure, every lesson that actually matters.
Written for founders who are already in the fire.
Join the Launch ListForged in Fire
Cook.
Build.
Exit.
Repeat.
The chef who built the world's most exclusive private jet catering company. The build, the exit, and the brutal lessons.
Work With Me
I meet the same founder every week. Good business, solid team, decent numbers, and every decision in the building still routes through one phone. Theirs. I spent twenty years building a company that ran to a standard whether I was in the room or not, then I sold it. Now I do that work through Ironmark: I get inside the business with the founder, and our build team builds the system across it.
For owners of operationally heavy businesses with a growth push, a deal or an exit ahead. It starts with the Review: two days on site, where we find where the business leaks and where it depends on you, set up your own AI, and you leave with a build plan. Then we build it. AI is already deciding which businesses grow, which get bought, and which get left behind.
Built for EO, founder forums, and executive audiences. Not motivational content. Operational frameworks from twenty-five years of high-pressure business building, the kind of talk people are still quoting six months later.
TopicsSelective non-executive roles for businesses that want a founder at the table. Someone who has made the decisions, not just studied them. Most relevant for founder-led businesses approaching scale or exit, where I prepare the founder as well as the business, including the part nobody talks about: what comes after the sale.
EnquireThe Proof
When I sold On Air Dining I had over a hundred people doing what every business needs done. The books, the rotas, the marketing, the chasing, the reporting. Then the company was gone, the team with it, and it was just me. I did not build another company. I took every one of those jobs and rebuilt them as a company of one, on an operating system I designed and built myself. My morning briefing lands on my phone before the coffee is made, and nobody sends it. The numbers, the pipeline, the follow-ups: handled, checked, logged, every day, without being asked.
It runs on the same discipline as a kitchen. Mise en place. Everything in its place before service begins, so when pressure arrives the work is already done. Yes, some of it runs on AI. That is the least interesting thing about it. The tools change every year. The discipline is what I am actually installing.
You have already met the people selling AI. Most of them have never run anything. I ran a company through near-bankruptcy, a pandemic and an exit, and I hold these tools to the same standard I held a brigade: the work done properly, every service, no excuses.
If you want to see it, ask. The demo is my phone.
“Chaos is not trained in chaos. It is trained through systems, repetition, and the deliberate automation of everything that can be automated, so the brain stays free for real decisions.”
The Operating Philosophy
The frameworks I built come from kitchen discipline applied to business operations. Many of them were stress-tested at On Air Dining over twenty years, all of them refined across twenty-five years in the trade. Mise en place is not a cooking technique. It is a philosophy: everything in its place before service begins, so that when pressure arrives, execution is already automatic.
The businesses that survive are not run by the most talented people. They are run by the most prepared.
Remove choices before they need to be made. Systems over instinct, always.
You are only ever as good as your last service. Quality is architecture, not aspiration.
Train the calm before the storm arrives. The Central Governor is trainable.
The business that cannot run without you is not a business. It is a job.
Speaking
EO · Founder Forums · Executive Retreats · Industry Conferences · Workshops
Featured Keynote
Most leadership talks tell you how to lower the temperature. This one tells you the opposite. Built on a back-of-house operating system that ran one of the world's most recognised private aviation catering brands, through near-collapse, a pandemic, and the Queen's funeral, the talk delivers the four operator principles every founder, CEO and PE partner needs to install before the heat comes.
Additional Topics
“The kitchen broke me. It also built me. We've taken those environments away, and called it progress. It isn't. We've raised a generation that doesn't know how to take a hit. And it's costing them more than they know.”
From the keynote: Embrace the Heat
Get In Touch
Whether you're a business looking for operational expertise, an event seeking a speaker who delivers substance, or a board considering a non-executive seat, the conversation starts here.
That runs through Ironmark. Start at ironmark.ltd, or book thirty minutes and we'll look at where your business stands.
Available internationally. Keynotes, workshops, and founder forums. Lead time of 4–8 weeks preferred.
Selective non-executive appointments. Particularly relevant for founder-led businesses at scale or approaching exit.