Hi, I’m James 👋
You’ve found my corner of the Internet.
Fàilte (welcome)
Encore
I’m the founder of and CEO of Encore, a marketplace for booking incredible live musicians, bands & DJs. We’ve helped over 50,000 customers book live music for the biggest days of their lives, and have helped our artists earn over £25 million.
Encore was acquired by Mixcloud in September 2024.
When I get a moment, I try to write about the lessons learned along the way.
Endurance Sport
I love exploring my limits, and have completed two Ironmans and a few marathons.
I’ve also done some stupid stuff, like cycling up the same short hill in London 55 times in a day. Click here if that’s your cup of tea.
Music
I’m a multi-instrumentalist and singer. I began writing my own music in my mid-20s, and I’m close to releasing my first EP of ambient piano music., Adrift.
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Completing an Ironman – why bother?
Answering a question that I get asked a LOT. An Ironman involves: 🏊 Swimming 3.6km🚴 Cycling 180km🏃 Running 42km (a marathon) and takes anywhere from 8 hours (7h51 world record) to 17 hours (the cut-off time). But the race is only the tip of the iceberg. Friends and family will see race day and the…
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Athens Marathon 2019 (3:36:47)
My first marathon was a humbling experience. One of the greatest and the worst runs of my life. Flying until 25km and on track for 3h6, then got a massive stitch in one side that wouldn’t go away and slowed me to a walk for longer than I’d like to admit. First ever marathon and…
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My Personal OKRs framework
I published this guide to Personal OKRs back in 2018, and it resonated with a lot of people: How to Set your Personal OKRs and stick to them It’s since been viewed over 87,000 times on Medium, and I frequently hear from people who have found the Personal OKRs templates helpful. I hope you find…
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Protecting your Focus: My Top 5 Tactics
I recently came across a Tweet by a journalist asking for productivity hacks from entrepreneurs, which resonated with me. I wrote them a short list of tactics that have worked for me, which I’ll get to in a minute, but first — a quick diversion… I’ve always been interested in improving my own effectiveness and…
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Celebrating Encore’s 3rd birthday
A nostalgic post I wrote back in 2017 on Medium: https://medium.com/@jamsusmaximus/celebrating-encores-3rd-birthday-80237847117b
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Going from 0 to 10,000 musicians
Tomorrow, if everything goes to plan, we will welcome our 10,000th musician to Encore, and for that reason, I cannot sleep. It’s hard to believe how far we’ve come in such a relatively short space of time, and I’m having a tricky time wrapping my head around the idea that 10,000 people have invested their…
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Startups, Burnout, and Running
Almost exactly a year ago, I joined Entrepreneur First with three intentions: The last year has been exhilarating, euphoric, and anything but boring, and I’m so proud of everything we’ve achieved with Encore so far. That said, startups are fairly fashionable and often glamourised these days, and something people can be reluctant to talk about is how quickly they…
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