Turnarounds: 8 proof points
Every row that fits this shape of role: the rows the facts page shows first, then the rest in content order. Tom's own account of it: Turnarounds. All shapes, the facts page.
| Role | Product | Situation | Task | Action | Result | Year | Skills |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PM/GM at LEO Innovation Lab | TREAT TREAT, an app addressing underlying causes of inflammatory conditions through personalised nutrition advice, delivered as a decision-tree chatbot with nutritionists behind it. LEO Innovation Lab's first and flagship product. | The flagship product had a lot of attention, but was in trouble behind the scenes: massive tech debt, massive churn, no prioritisation, flaky metrics, unclear reporting lines and responsibilities, and no pathway to profitability. | Parachuted in with a 6-month mandate to stabilise it and assess viability. | Everything was on fire. Let some things burn and watched long enough to see which big patterns were broken, then started at the top of the funnel and worked through. Paused the service to refactor faster. Defined the value proposition and put KPIs into the daily workflow so the team steered by numbers. Set an experiment-led rhythm. Two levers: finding the fit before sign-up, and finding the fit inside the product. | Halved customer acquisition costs. Increased activation 7x. Both levers worked. | Nov 2016 - Aug 2017 | healthcare, ways of working, growth, activation, retention, funnels, experimentation, KPIs, roadmap, launch, 0 to 1, team leadership |
| Marketing Director, EuroDNS | EuroDNS EuroDNS, an ICANN-accredited international domain registrar specialising in unusual domain extensions. Customers included MailChimp, Lotus F1 and Time Warner. | Four years of decline when Tom joined: traffic dropping, online sales down, a legacy website, and SEO damage left by a previous agency's black-hat work. | Turn it around. | Restructured the marketing department (four direct reports), implemented KPIs and rebooted every marketing channel including the website, in under 8 months. Remediated the black-hat SEO damage. Analysed user flow and redesigned the website and ecommerce funnels. Collected customer feedback and repositioned the product. Launched over 500 new domain extensions, repositioning dry domains with Creative Commons photography of the world. First provider to offer a free SSL certificate with every domain. | Decline reversed. Organic traffic doubled in 12 months. Bounce rate halved, from about 60% to about 30%. | Feb 2013 - Nov 2014 | turnaround, growth, conversion, SEO, funnels, KPIs, launch, marketing, ecommerce, domains, team leadership, international |
| Acting Marketing Manager US, UK2 Group | US Marketing department Managed all online and marketing activity across 5 web properties | Run remotely from the UK, with a team never met in person. | Rebuild the underperforming US Marketing department before recruiting a US-based successor. | Created the marketing strategy, implemented a reporting structure, set and met budget targets. | Bounce rate down ~15%; sales conversion nearly doubled; product roadmap created and 8 products launched in 10 months. | Feb 2009 - Feb 2010 | turnaround, growth, conversion, roadmap, launch, marketing, team leadership, remote, international, budget |
| Head of Marketing, TwentyThree | TwentyThree TwentyThree, an integrated video marketing platform for digital marketers | A global launch six weeks out and at risk, and a marketing team of 10-12 that needed stabilising. Joined on a short contract to get it over the line. | Rescue the launch on the 6-week deadline and leave the team with a structure that held. | Implemented OKRs, crystallised the USPs and introduced a lightweight reporting and planning structure. Produced video content. Set up a content and events calendar, including quid-pro-quo streaming rights for TechCrunch Disrupt. | Global launch rescued on the deadline. Team stabilised. The contract was extended to the end of the engagement. | May 2016 - Oct 2016 | turnaround, launch, marketing, startup, team leadership, deadline |
| Head of Group Strategy, UK2 Group | Midphase pricing Midphase, UK2 Group's underperforming US hosting business unit | The US unit had a downward revenue trend: two flat-rate monthly accounts, very few customers on the top one, high churn. Tom was the CEO's troubleshooter across the UK, US and Ukraine offices, working remotely from the UK. | Diagnose the unit and reverse the trend without a new product. | Lifecycle analysis of the customer base. Restructured the two flat plans into tiered accounts with term-based pricing (3, 12 and 24 months), framed so longer commitments were visibly cheaper per month. Ran an anti-churn programme for existing customers: free upgrades to the new plans, added features such as backup to justify the structure, and switching costs such as losing the free domain on downgrade. Repositioned the brand and marketing and created a product roadmap. | ARPU up, customer lifetime extended, recurring revenue locked in. Downward revenue trend reversed in 6 months. 8 products launched in 10 months. | Sep 2008 - Sep 2010 | turnaround, retention, roadmap, launch, brand, marketing, ecommerce, domains, web hosting, team leadership, remote, international, budget |
| PM/GM at LEO Innovation Lab | TREAT team TREAT team, about 15 people including a product lead and a product manager | Brought in to troubleshoot the flagship product. The existing team were passionate but struggling to fight fires, and already had their own product lead and PM; it needed delicacy to keep their passion and expertise while helping them out. | Take over the team without losing it. | Started as a consultant for the first month, then proposed as the lead with the team reporting to him; that needed trust and humility, so the team got the option to veto. They went ahead. Fires, chaos, blurred reporting lines, people problems; the service paused to refactor faster; morale at rock bottom. Kept the faith: new cadences, new ways of working. | The team came out the other side intact and stronger, with real trust, and then halved acquisition costs and 7x'd activation. | Nov 2016 - Aug 2017 | healthcare, ways of working, activation, retention, roadmap, launch, 0 to 1, team leadership |
| PM/GM at LEO Innovation Lab | TREAT closure TREAT, LEO Innovation Lab's flagship product | Six months in, the metrics were transformed: acquisition cost halved, activation up 7x. The product had a lot of attention inside the lab and was the first thing LEO Innovation Lab had launched. | Answer the second half of the mandate: is it viable? | Looked at the unit economics rather than the growth curve. As customers increased, nutritionist costs grew with them. The 1:1 model did not scale, and the technology to replace the nutritionist did not exist yet. Recommended the business be closed. | The recommendation was accepted and Tom wound the project down, preventing further sunk investment. Turning around the metrics is not the same as proving viability; sometimes the right call is to stop even after making things better. | Aug 2017 | healthcare, ways of working, growth, activation, retention, roadmap, launch, 0 to 1, team leadership |
| Marketing Director, EuroDNS | EuroDNS SEO remediation EuroDNS organic search | A previous agency had used black-hat SEO. The damage was part of why traffic had fallen for four years. | Repair the search footprint and get organic growth back. | Implemented remediation for the black-hat SEO damage, analysed user flow and redesigned the website and ecommerce funnels on the back of it. | Organic traffic doubled in 12 months. Bounce rate halved, from about 60% to about 30%. | Feb 2013 - Nov 2014 | turnaround, growth, conversion, SEO, funnels, KPIs, marketing, ecommerce, domains |