Attracting the Wrong Customers

31/12/2025

Today’s Jumpstart:

Discounts do not just cut your profit, they change who you attract. Lower prices often bring customers who care less about quality, loyalty or long-term relationships, and more about the next deal. The result is working harder, getting busier and feeling worse off, while customers disappear the moment the price goes back up. Cheap attracts choice, not commitment. Be careful what you train your market to value.

Why do I record these?

Let me be straight with you.

I’ve had huge success in business — and I’ve also made some absolute humdinger mistakes.

My life in business hasn’t been a straight line. It’s been a roller-coaster — big wins, painful lessons, and moments where I wished someone had pulled me aside and said, “Slow down. Think this through.”

Now that I’m older, I feel a responsibility to pass things on.

Not because I’ve got it all figured out — I haven’t. But because I’ve lived it. And if sharing what I’ve learned helps another business owner avoid even one expensive mistake, then it’s worth doing.

Later in life, I became a student again — and I still am. A day doesn’t go by without me studying for at least an hour.

I regularly learn from people like Darren Hardy, Napoleon Hill, Brian Tracy, and Jim Rohn.

Jumpstart is my way of passing those lessons on — quietly, simply, without the noise — so you can start your day thinking a little clearer than you did yesterday.

When you’re looking for business finance

Here’s something most people won’t say.

Bad business finance decisions are rarely made because someone isn’t clever enough.

They’re usually made because someone is under pressure, short on time, or trying to keep too many plates spinning at once.

Helping companies arrange business finance is my love and passion.

It’s my golf — I genuinely enjoy it.

Through Ringrose Business Finance, I help directors explore and arrange things like invoice finance, short- and long-term business loans, property development finance, secured lending — and often solutions people don’t even realise exist.

I don’t push products.

I don’t rush conversations.

I help people understand what’s available, what it really means, and what it will feel like living with that decision six or twelve months down the line.

If you ever want someone calm, experienced, and genuinely on your side when finance is on the table, I’d love to help and do the very best I can for your business.

Just to be clear — I only work with businesses that use one broker. Either me, or someone else. You wouldn’t use two electricians or two lawyers on the same job, and finance works the same way.

What other directors say

Most of my work comes through long-term relationships and recommendations. Here’s one example:

“Our invoice finance deal is now ten times better than it was before, thanks to Mark Smillie. You really need expert advice for contractual invoice finance and Mark is that expert. I have already recommended Mark to other business directors and will do again.”

— William Fulcher, FMS

(A different client comment can sit here each day.)

If this resonates, please pass it on

If Jumpstart has helped you — even in a small way — please share it with your business friends and fellow company directors.

Not as a favour to me.

But because it supports something that genuinely matters.

Every share helps support Success Without Exams — a project designed to help young people who were written off by exam results, but have real drive, ambition, and fire in their belly.

It’s about showing them: