Meet Mike Foster

 

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Mike Foster. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Mike below.

Mike, we’re thrilled to have you on our platform and we think there is so much folks can learn from you and your story. Something that matters deeply to us is living a life and leading a career filled with purpose and so let’s start by chatting about how you found your purpose.

My purpose comes from the identification that many of the positive moments in my life came from when I was helped, supported, championed. Not from when I was used or stabbed in the back!
The help started from an early age when my dad used to help me complete 3 paper rounds a week!
After damaging my knee playing football, I threw myself into my voluntary work and saw the impact I could make by helping others either in a group or as an individual. In my own businesses I always saw the impact of being supported by a business coach.
Therefore, today my purpose is to help someone every day. That is primarily in my work as a business coach, but also as a friend or a volunteer with charities, sports clubs, events and projects.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

I left school immediately after my O levels as I had a strong desire to earn money over further education. After joining Barclays I quickly grew an interest in Business Banking and after my initial time as a business start up adviser, I became an area manager for the business start up market. My role included external relationship building with organisations such as Business Link and that eventually led to me being asked to join a start up leisure business spinning out of South Oxfordshire District Council. After 2.5 years in the leisure industry, I had the strong desire to start my own business. My first business was a Bookkeeping and Accounting business serving local small business owners. During conversations with my clients and my network it led to me to identifying market opportunities for further businesses to fuel my entrepreneurial spirit. From 2003 to 2013, I also started and grew a marketing support business, a training company, a networking membership organisation, a health & safety support business and an indoor soft play centre.
Many would feel that 5 businesses at once was too many, too much focus, but for me it suited my mind and my personality as no two days were the same. I could choose which business I’d support and when, but have great people running them for me on a day to day basis.
In 2012, my son was born and it was a moment to realise that I’d missed the early years of my daughters life. Therefore, I highlighted buyers, prepared the business for exit and sold two businesses in 2013.
Since then I’ve invested my time as a business coach / mentor, supporting other business owners to start, develop, scale and grow their own business.
No two days are the same as clients have different businesses, goals and challenges.
I self published my first book “105 way to accelerate your business success” and I have recently been commissioned to to write a new title for the well-established FT Guides series “The Financial Times Guide to Starting a Business” that will be released later in 2025.
My professional focus and daily measure of my own success is how I make an impact to progress those that I support.
I love entrepreneurship and supporting others. I am fuelled by sharing and celebrating the success of others. Therefore my role as a mentor for other entrepreneurs is perfect and serves my personality trait for variety.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

Mindset – In my early days I was simply positive in my thinking, but I learnt that my mindset had to be much more that this. I learnt it had to stay strong, remain positive, and be future thinking with a growth mindset. As an example, I am a very trusting person and quite often too much so! This has been to my detrement many a time and each occasion it could have easily derailed me or thrown me into a tailspin without a mindset that accepts that every outcome is a learn and its more about what we do with that learn. Running a business is often a lonely place and your mindset has to be right to maximise your time and at the same time be fair to yourself.

Resilience – The start up phase of the business is quite exciting but, from my observations, one of the key factors for business failure is the inability, or the lack of desire, to ride out a “hump”. We know the business journey from A to B is not a straight upward line and we will face both positive and negative moments, many up and downs, many highs and lows. When running the indoor soft play centre I recall moments when every morning I was checking the bank balance and then the weather. Not just for rain but the right rain! For me, resilience is the ability to successfully adapt or react to difficult or challenging life experiences, bouncing back from adverse moments and maintaining our psychological well-being. It’s a muscle we continue to develop through our life experiences and not one single event should cease that learning.

Open minded to learning something new every day – You will never know everything or even enough. I am always thinking about what I need to learn next? It may be to extend my knowledge, skill or expertise or in reaction to a question that I need a deeper answer for myself in first instance. My advice is to always ask: How can you better yourself, your business, your solution for your customers?

To close, maybe we can chat about your parents and what they did that was particularly impactful for you?

It is always an interesting conversation with my parents, when they see me speaking on stage, receiving recognition for my work or hearing what I’ve achieved. They often comment “I don’t know where you got that from, it’s certainly not us!”.
Whilst in fact, it was 100% those early days that formed the character and my strengths from which I have shaped my personal brand and knowledge to support others.
My childhood was structured and well disciplined. My exam results were very good but I had to work hard for them. I had to study with discipline and my parents created my learning framework, environment and time discipline.
Both of my parents are hard workers and have always put others before themselves.
My mum would have a few self employed jobs whilst being employed. One memory I have was going to one of her clients houses and whilst she was working on his finances, I was having my first experience with a ‘Commodore’ PC!
When I was young, my dad worked at the British Leyland car factory and I always remember watching him go off early each day on his moped. He was also my football coach and this shaped my competitiveness. Not to just win, but to do more, as I felt I had to help my dad justify picking me in his team each week.
This helped me to identify that I had to be committed and structured to maximise my time, but I didn’t want to work as hard as they had to for my financial and life rewards.

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images taken by Akki Agarwal

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