Simon Haines — Founder of Serious
Bish Bosh Boom
SimonHaines.
From the working-class streets of Liverpool to the boardrooms of the world. This isn't a biography. It's a warning.
Who Is Simon Haines?
The short answer? The bloke your competitors wish they'd hired and your HR department wishes they hadn't. Founder of SERIOUS. The voice behind BISH BOSH BOOM. Management consultant, army veteran, serial entrepreneur, and professional irritant to anyone who thinks "we've always done it this way" is an acceptable business strategy.
The long answer? That requires a timeline. And a strong stomach. Because this story doesn't start in a corner office with a view. It starts on the streets of Liverpool, takes a detour through a war zone, and ends wherever Simon bloody well decides it ends. Which, knowing him, will be never.
"I wasn't born with a silver spoon. I was born with a clenched fist and an unreasonable refusal to accept mediocrity."
— Simon Haines
BORN. BRED. WORKING CLASS.
No silver spoon. No trust fund. No "gap year finding myself in Bali." Simon Haines was forged on the working-class streets of Liverpool, northern England — where the only career advice was "get a trade or get out." The kind of neighbourhood where you learned to read a room before you could read a book. Where your mouth could start a war and your wits had to finish it. Where karaoke on a Friday night wasn't entertainment — it was combat with a microphone. And young Simon? He didn't just sing. He owned the room. Aged fifteen, while his mates were nicking sweets from the corner shop, he was already running his first hustle. A teenage entrepreneur before the word "entrepreneur" had been ruined by LinkedIn influencers. Buying, selling, trading, grafting. Not because some business book told him to. Because the streets taught him the only lesson that matters: nobody is coming to save you. Bish.
DRAWING LINES. BREAKING THEM.
Before the army, before the boardroom, there was architecture. Simon studied the discipline of building things that last — structures that don't collapse when the wind changes direction. It taught him precision. It taught him that every line has a consequence. That you can't bullshit a load-bearing wall. Architecture wasn't just a career detour. It was the blueprint for everything that came after. How to see what others can't. How to design under pressure. How to build something from nothing and make it stand when everyone said it wouldn't. The buildings were temporary. The mindset was permanent.
SIX YEARS. NO EXCUSES. EVER.
At an age when most lads were deciding which university pub to haunt, Simon Haines signed up to serve. Six years in the British Army. Not a desk job. Not a ceremonial posting. The real thing. The kind of service where "team building" means trusting the person next to you with your actual life — not falling backwards into their arms at a corporate retreat in the Cotswolds. The army didn't teach Simon leadership from a textbook. It beat it into him. 4am starts. Kit inspections where a single crease meant the whole platoon paid the price. Standards so high that "good enough" was a disciplinary offence. This is where "no passengers" stopped being a phrase and became a religion. You carry your weight or you endanger everyone. There is no middle ground. There is no participation trophy. There is only the standard — and whether you meet it. Bosh.
COMBAT. AMBUSH. THE PRICE.
Northern Ireland. The Troubles. This wasn't a training exercise. This was real combat, real danger, real consequences. Simon Haines didn't read about ambushes in a strategy book — he survived one. The kind of moment that strips away every pretence, every comfortable illusion, every layer of bullshit you've built around yourself. When rounds are coming in and the world narrows to a single point of focus, you discover exactly who you are. Not who you think you are. Not who your CV says you are. Who you actually are when everything is on the line and there's no time to consult a committee.
The pain. The agony. Watching mates go through things that no human should have to process. The kind of experiences that don't make it into motivational Instagram posts. The kind that wake you up at 3am twenty years later. But here's what the comfortable people will never understand: that crucible — that furnace of absolute chaos — is where the barbarian was forged. Not in a boardroom. Not at a conference. In the dirt, under fire, with everything to lose.
We move forward. Always forward. Because the alternative isn't an option. It never was.
THE CONCRETE JUNGLE. DIFFERENT WAR. SAME RULES.
London. Civvy street. After six years of military discipline, Simon walked into a world where people called themselves "warriors" because they survived a Monday morning commute. Where "under pressure" meant their latte was late. Where "leadership" was a title on a business card, not a responsibility earned in blood.
But London in the 90s was electric. The internet was arriving like a freight train and most people were standing on the tracks arguing about whether it was real. Simon saw it. Not the technology — the opportunity. While the establishment was still sending faxes and booking meetings to discuss meetings, he was already in the trenches of the digital revolution. Learning. Building. Moving at a speed that made the old guard nervous. Because that's what soldiers do — they adapt, they overcome, and they move faster than the enemy expects.
THE INTERNET. THE IT SECTOR. THE BEAUTIFUL CHAOS.
The 1990s internet was the Wild West, and Simon Haines rode in like he'd been born for it. The IT sector was exploding. Every week a new technology, a new platform, a new opportunity for anyone with the guts to grab it before the committees finished their feasibility studies. This wasn't the sanitised, venture-capital-funded tech world of today. This was raw. Unregulated. Dangerous. The kind of environment where a working-class kid from Liverpool with military discipline and zero patience for bureaucracy could outmanoeuvre every Oxbridge graduate in the room.
And then came Y2K. The greatest con in the history of technology. The millennium bug. The digital apocalypse that never happened but generated billions in consulting fees. While the world panicked, Simon watched an entire industry sell fear like it was going out of fashion. It was the first time he saw corporate cowardice monetised at scale — and it wouldn't be the last. That experience taught him something invaluable: most of the business world runs on manufactured urgency and collective delusion. The people who see through it? They're the ones who end up running things. Boom.
NEW CONTINENT. SAME BARBARIAN.
Australia. The other side of the world. A decision that most people would deliberate over for years, consult seventeen friends about, and ultimately never make. Simon made it the way he makes every decision — fast, committed, and without looking back. New country. New market. New rules. Same relentless, take-no-prisoners approach that had carried him from the streets of Liverpool through the British Army and into the chaos of London's tech scene.
Australia didn't soften him. It sharpened him. A market that rewards directness. A culture that respects people who do rather than people who talk about doing. The perfect environment for a barbarian who'd spent his entire life being told he was "too much" by people who were too little.
WORKING FOR THE MAN. THE TAKEOVER. THE PRICE.
For a time, Simon played the corporate game. Working for the man. Sitting in meetings that should have been emails. Watching decisions get diluted by committees until they were unrecognisable. Tolerating the kind of mediocrity that would have got you binned in the first week of basic training. But he wasn't just sitting there. He was learning. Watching. Cataloguing every weakness in the system. Every inefficiency. Every comfortable lie that organisations tell themselves to avoid doing the hard thing.
And then came the takeover. The moment when Simon stopped working within the system and started building his own. Not a gentle transition. Not a "phased approach." A takeover. The kind of move that makes enemies, burns bridges, and separates the people who talk about ambition from the people who actually have it.
Was there a price? Of course there was a price. There's always a price. The question isn't whether you'll pay it — the question is whether you're willing to. Simon paid it. In full. With interest. And he'd do it again tomorrow without blinking. Because the only thing more expensive than the price of action is the price of inaction. And that's a debt that compounds until it buries you.
SERIOUS. BISH BOSH BOOM. THE BARBARIAN.
SERIOUS isn't a company name. It's a statement of intent. Built from every scar, every lesson, every 4am start and every bridge burned with purpose. Simon Haines didn't build SERIOUS by following best practices. He built it by being the best practice. By setting standards so high that people either rise to meet them or remove themselves from the equation.
And BISH BOSH BOOM? That's the philosophy distilled into three words. Identify the problem. Attack it head-on. Obliterate it. No committees. No "let's circle back." No death by PowerPoint. Just decisive, violent action followed by results. The kind of management advice that makes HR departments nervous and makes businesses profitable.
This is the origin story of a man who was never supposed to make it. Working-class kid. No connections. No safety net. Just an unreasonable refusal to accept mediocrity and an absolute certainty that comfort is where empires go to die. Liverpool to the army. The army to London. London to the world. And at every single stop, the same message: get Serious, or get out of the way.
The barbarian isn't a persona. It's a promise. And Simon Haines keeps his promises. Every. Single. One.
Bish. Bosh. Boom.
That's not a catchphrase. That's a life.
The Playbook
Core Management
Philosophies.
Thirty years of building, breaking, and rebuilding distilled into the principles that separate the people who run things from the people who attend meetings about running things. These aren't theories. They're scars with lessons attached.
Standards Are Not Negotiable.
Michael Jordan once punched Steve Kerr in the face during practice. Not because Kerr was bad — because Kerr wasn't matching Jordan's intensity. That's not violence. That's a standard being enforced. Simon Haines doesn't punch people. He doesn't need to. The standard is communicated once, clearly, without ambiguity. You either meet it or you don't work here. There is no "developing towards the standard." There is no "journey." There is the line, and you are either above it or below it. Below it means gone. Not coached. Not mentored. Not given a "performance improvement plan" that everyone knows is just HR theatre before the inevitable. Gone. Bish.
The moment you lower your standard for one person, you've lowered it for everyone. Every exception becomes precedent. Every "just this once" becomes "always." The best people in your organisation are watching. They're watching whether you hold the line or whether you fold. And when you fold, they leave. Not loudly. Quietly. To go work for someone who's actually Serious.
Fire Fast. Hire Slow. Regret Neither.
Every leader knows who the problem is. Every single one. They've known for months. Sometimes years. They lie awake at 2am thinking about it. They vent to their spouse about it. They write passive-aggressive emails about it. What they don't do is fix it. Because fixing it means having a conversation that makes them uncomfortable. And most leaders would rather let an entire team suffer than endure ten minutes of discomfort. That's not leadership. That's cowardice in a suit.
Jordan demanded the Chicago Bulls trade Dennis Rodman's replacement when the player wasn't meeting standards — mid-season. Not at the end of the year review. Not "when the time is right." Now. Because every day a wrong person stays in a role is a day the right people question why they bother. Bosh.
The kindest thing you can do for an underperformer is let them go. You're not doing them a favour by keeping them in a role where they're failing. You're just postponing their opportunity to find somewhere they might actually succeed. And you're definitely not doing your A-players a favour by making them carry dead weight. Stop being kind to the wrong people.
Comfort Is The Enemy. Destroy It Daily.
Jordan famously fabricated grudges against opponents to fuel his own intensity. He'd invent slights that never happened just to give himself a reason to go harder. Most people think that's insane. Simon thinks it's genius. Because comfort is where ambition goes to die. The moment your team feels "settled" is the moment your competitors start eating your lunch.
In the army, you never got comfortable. The moment you relaxed was the moment you were vulnerable. Business is no different. The companies that get disrupted are the ones that got comfortable. The leaders who get replaced are the ones who stopped being hungry. The teams that underperform are the ones where nobody's scared of the consequences of mediocrity.
Create productive discomfort. Move people into roles that stretch them before they're ready. Set targets that make them sweat. Celebrate the win for exactly five minutes, then raise the bar. If your team isn't slightly terrified of what you'll expect next, you're not pushing hard enough. Boom.
Lead From The Front. Or Don't Lead At All.
Jordan never asked his teammates to do anything he wasn't already doing ten times harder. He was first in the gym and last to leave. Not for the cameras. Not for the culture piece in the company newsletter. Because that's what leadership actually is — doing the hardest thing first, doing it better than anyone else, and then having the moral authority to demand the same from others.
Simon learned this in the army. Officers who led from behind got people killed. Officers who led from the front earned respect that no title could ever manufacture. The same principle applies in business. If you're not willing to do the work you're asking your team to do, you don't deserve their respect. And without respect, you don't have a team. You have a group of people waiting for their next opportunity.
Show up earlier. Stay later. Know more. Care more. Outwork everyone in the room, every single day, and then — only then — do you have the right to set the standard. Management isn't a title. It's a daily proof of concept. And if you're not proving it, someone else will.
Decisions Are Made. Not Discussed To Death.
The average corporate decision goes through seven meetings, three committees, two consultants, one "alignment session," and a partridge in a pear tree before anyone actually does anything. By which point the opportunity has been seized by someone who made the call in thirty seconds and moved. That someone is usually Simon Haines.
Jordan made split-second decisions under pressure that changed the outcome of entire championships. He didn't call a timeout to "align with stakeholders." He read the situation, trusted his preparation, and acted. In business, the cost of a wrong decision made quickly is almost always less than the cost of the right decision made too late. Speed kills. Hesitation kills faster.
If you need more than one meeting to make a decision, you either don't have enough information or you don't have enough courage. Get one or get the other. But stop scheduling meetings about meetings. The world is run by people who show up and decide. Not by people who show up and "circle back." Bish. Bosh. Boom.
Accountability Is Not A Buzzword. It's A Blood Oath.
Every organisation on earth claims to value accountability. It's on the wall in the reception area, right next to "integrity" and "innovation" and all the other words that mean absolutely nothing because nobody enforces them. Real accountability means consequences. Not conversations. Not "feedback." Consequences. You said you'd deliver by Friday. It's Monday. Where is it? Not "what happened" — where is it?
Jordan held teammates accountable publicly. Not to humiliate them — to establish that the standard applies to everyone, everywhere, all the time. No exceptions for talent. No exceptions for tenure. No exceptions for the CEO's nephew. The standard is the standard. Miss it and own it. Miss it twice and you're having a very different conversation.
Simon runs SERIOUS the same way. Every promise is tracked. Every commitment is recorded. Every excuse is met with the same question: "So what are you going to do about it?" Not "what happened." Not "how do you feel about it." What are you going to do about it. Right now. Today. Because accountability without action is just a diary entry. And Simon Haines doesn't keep a diary. He keeps a scoreboard.
Win. Then Win Again. Then Win Harder.
Jordan didn't stop at one championship. He won six. And after each one, he came back hungrier. Not because he needed to prove anything to anyone else — because he needed to prove it to himself. The greatest competitors in history share one trait: they are never, ever satisfied. Satisfaction is retirement in disguise.
Most businesses celebrate a good quarter like they've won the war. They haven't won anything. They've won a skirmish. The war is every day, every quarter, every year, forever. The moment you start celebrating past wins instead of chasing future ones, you've already started losing. You just don't know it yet.
Simon's philosophy is simple: the scoreboard never stops. There is no finish line. There is no "we made it." There is only "what's next" and "how do we do it better." If that sounds exhausting, good. It should. Because building something extraordinary is exhausting. And if you wanted easy, you should have stayed in bed. But you didn't. You're here. Reading this. Which means somewhere inside that comfortable exterior, there's a barbarian trying to get out. Let it out. The arena is waiting.
"These aren't management tips. They're the rules of engagement. Break them and you break your business. Follow them and you break your competition."
— Simon Haines, Founder of Serious
The Philosophy
Why Serious Exists.
"I built Serious because I was tired of watching talented people get managed by cowards."
— Simon Haines
Every business Simon has built, broken, and rebuilt taught him the same lesson: the difference between a good company and a great one is never strategy. It's never technology. It's never the product. It's the willingness of the people at the top to make decisions that hurt. To set standards that feel unreasonable. To demand more from themselves than they demand from anyone else — and then demand more from everyone else too.
SERIOUS is the distillation of thirty years of doing it wrong, doing it right, doing it again, and refusing to stop until the job is done properly. It's management advice for people who are actually serious about winning — not people who want to feel good about losing slowly.
And BISH BOSH BOOM? That's the delivery mechanism. Three words. Three steps. Identify. Attack. Obliterate. It's how Simon runs businesses. It's how he writes. It's how he lives. And if that's too intense for you, there are approximately four million other management consultants who'll happily charge you the same fee to tell you what you want to hear instead of what you need to hear. Simon Haines isn't one of them.
Simon Haines
Now You Know
The Story.
What's Yours?
Simon didn't get here by reading about other people's journeys. He got here by living his own — violently, unapologetically, and without asking permission. If you're ready to stop spectating and start competing, the arena is open.