Getting off zero

I posted this on Linkedin too, in the hope someone will read it and give me a million dollars - is that you?

This week we're thinking out loud and writing about getting off zero...

<clears throat>

Getting started is the hardest part, but there's no time to waste.

There’s a concept in investing called “getting off zero.” It refers to the hardest part of any investment—not scaling, not optimizing, not even picking the right asset—but simply making the first allocation. The mental hurdle of starting. Once you’re in, the rest follows.

I’ve been using that phrase a lot lately at Mumba Cloud. Because in this role, we’re starting from zero on almost everything. No funnel, no campaign history, no brand guidelines, no pre-existing strategy, no momentum. No smooth on-ramp, just an empty road and the expectation to start moving.

There’s an odd mix of excitement and weight in that. The freedom to build, but also the pressure to show progress, fast. And the only way forward is to get off zero.

Starting From Nothing

When you step into a role where everything needs building, you realize quickly that structure is a luxury. Every decision—from what tools to use to what priorities matter—has to be made without precedent. It’s overwhelming, but it’s also liberating. There’s no baggage. No politics around “how we’ve always done things.”

But it does mean you have to wear every hat...

So, I'm. Wearing. Every. Hat.

I’ve worked with a lot of different kinds of marketers. There are;

• Technical Marketers—experts in a field or discipline of marketing - often I encountered the dichotomy of 'performance vs brand' - but there are many more. This marketer obsesses over a single domain

• Builders—often he heads of or CMO's, but not always. These were the big-picture thinkers who organise the teams, effortlessly articulate the processes and infrastructure of the marketing function.

• Collaborators—the ones who work well within the systems and structures - they navigate internal politics and stakeholder expectations. Brilliant at moving the ball down the field, because the field has been painted for them.

• Doers, the ones who just get shit done, make things happen but not always the best things or the right things - but man is that to-do list ticked off.

• Fame Chasers, who are in it for the big wins, the recognition (industry and organisation), and the award-worthy work. They chase after the biggest opportunities and take the biggest swings. We loved them in agencies.

Many marketers pick a lane, or two. They find their type and specialize. But when you’re starting from zero, you don’t have that luxury.

I have to be all of them.

One day I’m writing strategy documents, the next I’m troubleshooting our CRM setup. I’m designing decks, writing copy, architecting campaigns priorities, meeting with stakeholders, shipping assets, figuring out where we can get some quick wins.

There’s no roadmap. Just forward motion.

The Emotional Cycle

Momentum isn’t constant. The first few weeks of building something has been heavy on the adrenaline (and terror, as I'm not sure the big picture, or if anything will work).

Everything is fresh, problems feel like puzzles to solve. Then, reality sets in. You don’t know everything. You hit walls. Some ideas flop. Some things take twice as long as expected.

There’s a moment where you think: is this working? Do I even need to do this?

The only answer is to keep moving. Keep solving, keep iterating. The middle is messy, but getting through it is what separates people who build from people who hesitate.

There’s a lot of pressure to move fast. And you should—zero is an unforgiving place. But speed without direction is just wasted energy. The trick is knowing when to slow down. When to stop and structure something properly. When to push for iteration instead of perfection.

A lot of early-stage work is about balancing urgency with sustainability. Moving fast, but not so fast you break something you’ll regret later.

Building, learning and sharing... in public

Something anathema to agency world that I've long suspected to be right: there’s no benefit to waiting for perfection. Sharing work early—internally and externally—keeps things moving. The longer something stays in draft mode, the less likely it is to see the light of day.

I've extended this to my LinkedIn and this blog writing - my ambition is to write and share my learning and reflections in public, get feedback, and get better.

A “perfect” strategy, idea or plan, held too long, is just an untested theory. A half-baked campaign in market can teach you something real. You have to get comfortable with iteration. With course correction. With showing your work before it’s polished.

Rediscovering the joy in constraints

I have a budget to work to, and this simple framework of dollars to spend, combined with time, is a remarkably powerful organising framework.

There’s something clarifying about limitations. When you have all the resources in the world, you can spend forever debating the best approach. When you have none, you just have to make something work.

Some of the best creative work doesn’t come from excess—it comes from scarcity. Fewer options force better thinking. When everything’s a constraint, you focus on what actually matters.

Marketers and agencies could stand to think more like product people. SaaS companies operate on a model of iteration: ship, test, refine, repeat. That mentality works for marketing and creativity too.

The best teams I’ve worked with borrow from this software mode—launching, learning, optimizing—not like big one-off moments. Perfect planning is a myth. The best results come from testing, gathering real data, and adjusting.

At Howatson+Company they had a philosophy of 'no big reveals'–I'm a big believer.

It's lonely at first - defining success has kept me company

Starting from zero means traditional benchmarks don’t always apply. If there was no funnel before, how do you measure early progress? If brand awareness was nonexistent, how do you gauge traction?

Success needs to be flexible. Early indicators might be qualitative—internal buy-in, team alignment, signs that things are moving. Then you build toward harder metrics. Success isn’t one number, it’s a progression.

When you’re the first in a role, or the first to take on a new challenge, there’s no one to follow. No blueprint. No templates. It’s freeing, but it’s also isolating.

You have to actively seek out community—whether it’s others in the industry, peers doing similar work, or just a Slack group where people get what you’re dealing with. Going it alone is an option, but not a great one.

At some point, the early-stage scrappiness needs to evolve. Building everything yourself isn’t scalable. Priorities shift from “doing” to “orchestrating.” Hiring, delegating, systematizing.

The hardest part of going from zero isn’t starting—it’s knowing when to let go of the small things and focus on the bigger picture.

Prioritisation=power

When you’re starting from zero, everything feels urgent. It’s not. Prioritization is what separates effort from impact.

The best way to fail is to try to do everything at once. Running fast in multiple directions just means you’re running in circles. The real skill is figuring out what actually moves the needle, and focusing on that.

But there's another magical element to prioritisation—it's freeing. I've crafted my areas of prioritisation, my projects, and chunked them down into tasks. That's been shared and endorsed by the CEO. Incoming daily requests are triaged, and some are actioned, many are added to backlog.

I have my directions of travel, and I'm broadly sticking to them. You never say that in agency life. No isn't in the vocabulary.

Puzzling or defining strategy through action

In agency life, strategy was always operated under the duress of urgency. The worst thing a planner could be accused of was overthinking something, or being stuck in analysis paralysis.

So you often took shortcuts, worked at pace and went into a grab bag of useful strategies that most briefs fit into. It became a little formulaic, rather than a genuine joy of discovery like putting a puzzle together. Armed with a picture in mind of the end goal, you resort to sorting puzzle pieces—organising by colour, analysing the picture and optimising speed by assembling section by section.

Now? I don't have a picture to lean upon. I'm grabbing for edge pieces, and jamming things together until something clicks. It’s chaotic, but it works.

Are they fitting? Not always.

Will there be rework? Of course.

Am I making progress? I think so.

Am I having fun? Fuck yes!