Work and Ideas

• I’m an entrepreneur and brand strategist based in Farnham, UK. Here’s a short summary of what I do.
• This journal is my daily reflection on my work, progress, failures, and new ideas. Not the recycled theory you read everywhere else.
• I share real decisions, lessons, and strategies for entrepreneurs, marketers, and designers who want to build businesses, brands, and products that actually succeed.
• I don’t post on social media. My accounts exist, but everything points back here. This is the only place I write regularly.
• For all enquiries, email me: edwin@schofield.xyz. I read and reply to everything.
• I am dyslexic, so I use AI to help with spelling and grammar. I write every post in full myself, then put it through Google Gemini as a proofreader. You may notice some American spellings or the occasional em dash — I try to remove them all.
• There are no images in this journal; here is why.

Latest posts by category:

Latest Decisions

• Do We Still Need Offices in 2026?
  Do we actually need offices in 2026? Or has the world of work become more nomadic, more fluid, and frankly more sensible? From my experience, the value of having a dedicated office with your entire team sat in it full time has massively diminished. That doesn’t mean offices are useless. It means the old assumption, that serious work only happens… Read more: Do We Still Need Offices in 2026?
• Why Admins Can’t Choose Their Own Passwords at Comus
  People really don’t know what’s good for them. I tell clients all the time: use a password manager, and make every password unique and complex. Do they listen? Rarely. Put simply, about 60% of people whose passwords I know are neither unique nor complex. At Comus, we handle sensitive data for every partner we onboard. Some sell thousands of tickets.… Read more: Why Admins Can’t Choose Their Own Passwords at Comus
• Why This Journal Has No Images
  I made a deliberate decision not to include images in this journal. Here are the reasons why: I’m a designer Most of my day-to-day work is visual. I spend my time building brands, designing products, and thinking about how things look and feel. I don’t need this space to do more of that. This journal is for thinking Once images… Read more: Why This Journal Has No Images
• Complete Overhaul of Yazaroo’s Services and Market Positioning
  For 10 years we have provided web design, hosting, website support, graphic design, brand design and print. We have since added to this typeface design, SEO, and PPC. I have made the decision that starting Q1. 2026, we will offer a reduced service line of web design, WordPress support, web hosting and search marketing. The reason being is very simple,… Read more: Complete Overhaul of Yazaroo’s Services and Market Positioning

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Latest Lessons

• Why I’d Rather Have 1,000 Small Customers Than One Big one
  In ten years of running agencies and businesses, I’ve seen every model there is. The one that sticks out like a sore thumb, and the one I avoid at all costs, is the “Big Client” trap. Unless you are in a highly specialised manufacturing niche where that’s just the nature of the gig, having one or two customers represent the… Read more: Why I’d Rather Have 1,000 Small Customers Than One Big one
• Betting on the Person, Not the Plan
  If you look at the “official” way to start a business, it’s all about the pitch deck. You’re supposed to show five-year projections, market analysis, and a bulletproof business plan. But in 2018, when I decided to go into business with Neil Phillipson, I didn’t have a deck. I didn’t even really have a plan. What I had was a… Read more: Betting on the Person, Not the Plan
• Fiscal Restraint Is the Difference Between Looking Successful and Being Successful
  I have a good friend who has run a lot of businesses. He’s probably one of the smartest people I know. He’s interesting for a lot of reasons, but mainly because he gives excellent business advice. Not because he’s good at business, but because he’s failed at almost everything. I have never met anyone who has started, run, and failed… Read more: Fiscal Restraint Is the Difference Between Looking Successful and Being Successful
• The Risks of Relying on a Small Number of Large Clients for Your Business Revenue
  The Agency Obsession With “Big” In the agency world, there’s a constant undercurrent of pressure to be servicing bigger clients, more famous clients, growing your team, and dealing with bigger budgets. Every agency event I’ve ever been to is punctuated with the same questions:How big is your team now?Who are you working for? These are almost always followed by the… Read more: The Risks of Relying on a Small Number of Large Clients for Your Business Revenue

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Latest Building

• Comus: Event Ticketing Without the Fluff
  In 2025, Alex Clarke and I launched Comus. After years of navigating the events industry and seeing how bloated software platforms operate, we realised there was a gap for something that actually worked for the organiser, not just the middleman. What is Comus? Comus is an event management platform built for one purpose: to make selling tickets and marketing events… Read more: Comus: Event Ticketing Without the Fluff
• Ten Years in the Trenches: This is Yazaroo
  I started Yazaroo in 2015 with a bit of help from The Prince’s Trust and a lot of cups of tea. Back then, I was just trying to prove that you could build a digital agency that didn’t rely on fluff and jargon. Ten years later, we’ve moved through offices in Albury Park, Cranleigh, and now Farnham, and the core… Read more: Ten Years in the Trenches: This is Yazaroo
• The Archive of Flavour: The Thinking Behind The Fifth
  With The Fifth launching soon, and knowing you can’t actually see the platform yet, I wanted to document the “why” behind the brand. I’m not going to bore you with every technical detail. It’s better to let you see it for yourself. But here is some food for thought. Who is this for? This is a marketplace for the person… Read more: The Archive of Flavour: The Thinking Behind The Fifth
• Overcoming My Dyslexia to Finally Get Yazaroo Blogging Again
  For well over a decade, I’ve been telling business owners the same thing: the best way to drive traffic to your website is through blogging. Specifically, by posting authoritative, SEO-optimised content targeted at the search terms your market uses when they have a problem you can solve. This isn’t new, nor is it radical. It’s boring, repetitive, and slow, but… Read more: Overcoming My Dyslexia to Finally Get Yazaroo Blogging Again

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Latest Notes

• Productivity Matters More Than Almost Everything in Business
  Of all the things I care about when running a business, productivity is right at the top of the list, second only to cash flow. The two are closely linked. If the cash is flowing, profit can usually be found through productivity. Doing more with less. Running lean. Removing friction. Automating everything that doesn’t need a human brain involved. That’s… Read more: Productivity Matters More Than Almost Everything in Business
• Why Most Business Networking Is a Waste of Time
  I find networking to be hit and miss. Mostly miss. The best networking I’ve ever done has never been labelled as networking. It’s been meeting like-minded business owners while doing something else entirely. Shared activity first, business second. Organised breakfast meetings, on the other hand, tend to attract people with nothing better to do. A cheap breakfast. A forced smile.… Read more: Why Most Business Networking Is a Waste of Time
• There is ZERO business experience in the UK cabinet
  Our economy is funded by businesses. That’s a fact. Businesses generate wealth, jobs, growth, and technology. They are the beating heart of the economy and essential to its survival. You only need to look at the failure of the Soviet experiment, or the way China has embraced business over the past twenty years, to understand that. In 2025, we have… Read more: There is ZERO business experience in the UK cabinet
• The Risks of Imitating Industry Giants in Your Business Strategy
  In today’s world, there’s a lot of online business coaching, often emphasised on social media, that urges small businesses to adopt strategies from massive companies like Apple, Nike, Starbucks, NVIDIA, Tesla, and Google. The prevailing advice is to mirror these giants in hopes of achieving similar growth. But this approach is fundamentally flawed, and this post explains why. Many business… Read more: The Risks of Imitating Industry Giants in Your Business Strategy

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