8th March 2026

A Ghost Town in Battersea

This week I popped into the Apple shop at Battersea Power Station to get my phone sorted out. It was Tuesday afternoon around 2.30pm.

What struck me immediately was how much the place felt like a ghost town.

Most of the shops were fully staffed, but there were hardly any customers. Staff standing around, security guards doing very little, beautiful shops… but no real energy.

Perhaps the trade comes at the weekend and makes up for the quiet weekdays. But standing there, it didn’t feel like a thriving retail environment.

And something else struck me as I walked through the building.

All the shops looked the same.

The same design language.

The same layout.

The same formula.

It was as though they had all followed a textbook on how a retail space should look and feel. The result? Blandness. A soulless environment.

You can spend millions designing a beautiful shop, but design alone doesn’t create atmosphere.

People create atmosphere.

If staff can’t engage with customers, if there’s no warmth, no interaction, no personality, then all the expensive design in the world won’t save the customer experience.

The Landlord’s Dilemma

I sometimes wonder what landlords in places like Battersea Power Station must be thinking.

They are constantly searching for exciting new brands to fill their spaces. But genuinely innovative brands rarely have the financial strength landlords expect from tenants.

So what happens?

The spaces get filled with established brands that are financially safe but creatively tired. Brands that follow the same retail formula, which leads to a feeling of sameness.

Retail only truly works when customers come back again and again.

When people return repeatedly, you know you’ve cracked it.

But if people only visit because a place is on their bucket list — eventually you run out of customers.

Battersea Power Station may be a lovely place to visit on a sunny day. But the real question is:

Will people keep coming back?

What Makes an Entrepreneur?

Seeing those quiet shops also made me reflect on another question I’ve often wondered about.

What actually makes someone an entrepreneur?

I’m not convinced you can teach it.

You can teach theory.

You can teach finance.

You can teach marketing.

But the entrepreneurial spirit — the willingness to endure pain, anxiety and uncertainty — feels like something much deeper.

Something embedded in your soul.

Understanding Your Own Motivation

One of the luxuries of getting older is the ability to reflect.

What actually drove me to become an entrepreneur?

Why did I choose this path?

For a long time I couldn’t answer that question properly. But eventually I realised something very simple.

I wanted to create a world where I had control, rather than allowing the outside world to control me.

And deeper than that, I had something to prove.

The Walk That Changed My Life

I grew up in Small Heath in Birmingham. As a young black kid it quickly became apparent that being black could be a barrier in wider society.

One incident has stayed with me all my life.

When I was 18, I was desperate for a job. I had an interview for a labouring position, but I didn’t have money for the bus, so I walked five miles to get there.

All the way there I rehearsed what I was going to say. I was determined to make the best impression possible. I just wanted someone to give me a chance.

When I arrived and told the receptionist I was there for the interview, the look of surprise on her face said everything.

She immediately told me the job had already been taken.

The truth was obvious.

I hadn’t even been given the chance to sell myself.

But the hardest part wasn’t the rejection.

The hardest part was the walk home.

A five-mile walk in hope is manageable.

A five-mile walk in disappointment is something else entirely.

During that walk I made a promise to myself.

I would never put myself in that position again.

Instead of waiting for someone to give me a chance, I would create my own opportunities.

Looking back now, I believe that moment was the birth of my entrepreneurial spirit.

And ultimately the birth of The Black Farmer.

Proving a Point

From the very beginning, The Black Farmer was about proving a point.

Being black is not a disadvantage.

Creativity has no colour.

Ability has no colour.

So every time someone from any background buys our sausages, visits our farm shop, or enjoys what we’ve built, that 18-year-old boy inside me celebrates.

Because the point has been proven.

Entrepreneurs Aren’t Driven by Money

People often assume entrepreneurs are motivated by money.

I don’t believe that’s true.

If money were the main motivation, most entrepreneurs would have quit long ago.

I think most entrepreneurs are driven by something deeper.

They want to prove a point.

Positive Stress vs Negative Stress

This week I was up at 4am helping the team prepare breakfast for an order of more than 60 covers.

That isn’t my natural time of day.

It was stressful. Hard work. A lot of pressure.

But it reminded me of something I’ve always believed: there are two types of stress.

Positive stress is when the pressure could lead somewhere meaningful — a result, a breakthrough, an opportunity.

Negative stress is when problems appear that distract you from the real objective.

The danger is that we often focus on the negative stress, the obstacles, the frustrations.

But if you let that dominate your thinking, you lose sight of what you’re actually trying to achieve.

And that’s when people give up.

Closing Reflection

So this week left me thinking about two things.

Why so many modern retail spaces feel empty and soulless.

And what truly drives the people who build businesses in the first place.

For me, the answer is simple.

Entrepreneurs aren’t driven by the promise of wealth.

They are driven by the need to prove something — sometimes to the world, and sometimes to themselves.

And every now and then, that journey starts with a five-mile walk.

Onwards.