--- title: "Monthnotes – October 2026" url: https://www.simonwakeman.com/blog/2026/10/31/monthnotes-october-2026/ description: "Consultant and fractional COO for scale-up businesses. I help founders, leaders and investors in scaling businesses create sustainably high performing organisations." published: 2026-10-31T00:00:00+00:00 modified: 2026-10-31T00:00:00+00:00 author: Simon Wakeman --- # Monthnotes – October 2026 ![St Michael's Bridge and church in Ghent at night, with kayakers on the river below](https://www.simonwakeman.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/ghent-st-michaels-bridge-night.jpg) ## Monthnotes – October 2026 In many ways October continued in much the same way as September. Lots of client work happened, plenty of progress happened (usually but not exclusively in the intended direction) and AI continues to be something I’m helping clients with a lot. And as part of that I wanted to do some active learning, so over the course of three weeks in October I’ve turned a simple budgeting tool I created for our new home project into a secure multi-tenanted SaaS application – now live at [www.selfbuildbudget.com](https://www.selfbuildbudget.com). It has a full help site that’s automatically generated from the user stories behind the SaaS tool functionality. It has CI, full automated browser testing and a robust Stripe integration. I’m not expecting it to make a meaningful business as the total addressable market (TAM) is small and I suspect the pricing is going to be a challenge against customer acquisition cost (CAC). But I want to see how building a one-person AI-first business works in practice to help me be a better consultant for my clients. With Self Build Budget I’ve set myself a constraint that everything has to be done via Claude prompting and wherever relevant it should be automated. I’ve used my usual time tracking tool and have spent around 16 hours of my time on it so far. Doing this little side project has excited me about the potential for change for many of my clients’ businesses but also has really hammered home how some of the work that digital agency businesses rely upon is going away very fast. I also replatformed three of my WordPress sites in a morning. They’re now hosted on Vercel using Astro, fully managed via AI. I’ve done design, accessibility and content audits on each. The power of using Claude to manage sites is something that has seriously impressed me. In my client work, I wrapped up a fascinating operational consultancy project with an 80-person experiential business. It included a full operational review, new operating model design and some senior team org design too. I’m looking forward to helping them turn this into real change in their business in 2027. It was also good to catch up with a former founder client of mine – the first business I worked with since going independent. Working fractionally I helped him exit an underperforming MD and then restructure the business both financially and structurally. Once we had a new MD in place I shifted to be non-exec chair, helping lead the sale of the business this summer. As with most M&A work, there were some pretty hairy moments when it felt like it could all fall apart, but we had a good team in place and my client sold successfully. He’s now enjoying his retirement and looking forward to not having to worry about the stresses of running his business. That felt great to hear as it was a good reminder of how my work can really help founders achieve what they seek. My _Build_ newsletter continues to go from strength to strength. I welcomed my first paid sponsor (thanks Jeremie) and have been publishing a full essay weekly since the summer. And among all this, I managed to take a few days off in half-term with my wife. We hadn’t made any plans so ended up making a last minute decision to go to Ghent and Antwerp in Belgium. We weren’t disappointed. We really enjoyed exploring the cities and having a change of scene. Away from work the house project continues to progress at a slightly-faster-than-glacial pace, which I have to remind myself is a difference between tech-led business and construction. We’re hoping to be on site in March 2027, all being well. I also managed to get out on a 50 mile gravel ride on Salisbury Plain with my friend Jen earlier in the month. It was good to ride somewhere new and experience the wide open tracks and smaller wood paths of the plain. Today I’m out for a 70-mile ride around Kent with a family lunch stop in Tenterden. The forecast is good so hoping to make the most of the weather before things get really wet and autumnal. **Cycling this month…** 201.5 miles – enjoying some unexpected extra late season miles **Running this month…** 24.8 miles **Music this month…** More old school house – this time from [Tim Ryan @ Wobble](https://www.mixcloud.com/tim-ryan/dj-tim-ryan-wobble-the-big-one-dead-wax-birmingham-2026/)