From a Yorkshire fruit and veg shop to CEO of a £300m global company. Now back in Yorkshire, working with the kind of owners I grew up around.
Andrew Jackson. Founder of Straywise. Peer Board Chair and Coach to SME owners.
The turning point came in the back of a taxi in Dubai at 2am. I'd flown half the night from Singapore, fallen asleep the moment I got in the cab, and woke up not knowing which country I was in. Somewhere in that fog I thought: what the hell am I doing with my life? Within three months I'd quit.
I took a year off. Reconnected with family. Worked out what I actually wanted. The clarity, when it came, was simple: a business should serve its owner's life, not consume it.
Today I chair a peer board and coach owners of established businesses, mostly in Yorkshire. I bring the lessons of leading at scale together with the reality of running and investing in SMEs myself. Straight-talking, practical, and rooted in genuine experience.
Straywise is named after The Stray, the common land at the heart of Harrogate. It also means what it sounds like. Most of us, years into running something, have strayed from what we set out to build. Straywise is about finding your bearings again.
-
I started in the mailroom. I ended up running a global business. Then I walked away.
Not because I failed. Because I succeeded, and realised it wasn't what I actually wanted.
Over twenty years I worked my way from the bottom of a corporate organisation to CEO of a £300m global company. I lived in The Hague, spent four years in Singapore, travelled the world, led large teams, and participated in a management buyout. On paper, it looked like the dream.
But it never really felt right.
I was good at it, and I want to be honest about that. I learned how to build teams, delegate properly, and lead at scale. The lifestyle was relentless, though, and the more I achieved the more complex and consuming my life became.
The moment everything changed
The turning point came in the back of a taxi. I was flying home from Singapore via Dubai, with a day of meetings in Dubai before the final leg. I got off the first flight near midnight, climbed into a cab to my hotel, and fell asleep within seconds. When I came round it was 2am and for a few moments I genuinely couldn't tell which country I was in. Whether I was in a hotel, at home in my own bed, or somewhere else entirely.
That was the moment. Properly awake, still disoriented, one thought arrived with complete clarity: what the hell am I doing with my life?
I cancelled my meetings the next morning and spent the day on the hotel balcony just thinking. Not about the business. About what I actually wanted, and how far I'd drifted from it without noticing.
I didn't walk out on the spot. It took three months, because I owed it to my team and the business to leave it properly rather than abandon people who'd backed me. But the decision was made on that balcony.
I took a year off after that. Reconnected with family and friends. Rediscovered a normal pace of life. The clarity, when it came, was simple: a business should serve its owner's life, not consume it. Growth for the sake of growth isn't the goal. The goal is building something that gives you the freedom, fulfilment and financial security you actually want.
Why SMEs
This wasn't a choice I made after corporate life. It's where I come from.
I grew up in a family of SME owners. My family ran a chain of fruit and vegetable shops across Yorkshire. From the age of ten I worked Saturdays in the shop. Before I joined ICI, I worked there full time, going to the fruit markets at the crack of dawn and learning how a business actually operates from the inside out.
So when I left corporate life, returning to that world wasn't a consolation prize. It was coming home. I've since built, run and invested in my own SMEs, which means I understand the reality from your side of the table. The personal stakes, the weight of decisions that land entirely on you, the fact that there's rarely anyone in your corner telling you the hard truth.
That combination of corporate scale and SME reality is what I bring to my clients.
Who I work with
My clients are owners of established businesses with a team around them. People who've been running something long enough to know what they're good at and what they're not.
Some are at a turning point and privately know something has to change. Some are growing fast and want sharper thinking around them. Some have a settled business and want peers and a coach who'll push them rather than agree with them. The common thread is wanting honest thinking from someone who's been in the same chair, with no axe to grind and no competing interest.
They're based in Harrogate, Leeds, York and the surrounding area. They take their own decisions, they care about the people around them, and they want the business they're running to serve the life they actually want to lead.
If any of that resonates, we should probably talk.
What I'm not
I won't tell you what you want to hear. I won't give you a generic framework and call it a plan. I won't make vague promises about transformation.
What I will do is ask the questions you're not asking yourself, hold you to the commitments you make, and back you to create change that actually sticks.
I bring real experience. Not just of business, but of getting it wrong, figuring it out, and finding a better way.