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TONY JACOBS
Tony Jacobs speaking with a handheld microphone to people in a lounge venue

TONYJACOBS

I build businesses, teams and ideas — then share what actually worked.

Customers. Leadership. AI. Growth. Reinvention.
And what it takes to keep building without losing yourself along the way.

Author of How to Make Your Customers Work for You ↗
Explore my workInvite me to speak

Things I've actually done

$4.7M+
B2C product scaled from MVP to $4.7M+ revenue
7
Funding rounds secured
3
B2C products successfully pitched
MBA
Distinction – AI transformation research

I’m interested in one thing more than most:

Why people do what they do.

  • Why customers buy.
  • Why they stay.
  • Why they leave.
  • Why teams perform.
  • Why businesses stop growing.
  • Why some ideas survive and others don't.

And increasingly – what happens when AI changes the way all of that works.

I've spent my career working inside those questions — building products, teams, customer systems, businesses and, occasionally, things that failed completely.

What I work on.

  • How people become customers — and why they remain customers.

    Acquisition · Psychology · Experience · Retention · Reactivation · Loyalty

  • Building teams that perform without treating people like resources on a spreadsheet.

    Leadership · Culture · Motivation · Recruitment · Performance

  • Taking an idea from “what if?” to something people actually use and pay for.

    Products · Ventures · Experimentation · Growth · Commercial models

  • Using AI to redesign work – not simply bolt another tool onto it.

    Automation · Customer Service · Operations · Efficiency · Scale

  • How to keep moving forward without eventually becoming the thing that breaks.

    Motivation · Failure · Reinvention · Growth · Resilience

What I'm thinking about now.

Short ideas from the things I'm reading, building, testing and learning.

Customers

Why customers really leave

Coming soon · Instagram

AI & Work

The AI tool is not the strategy

Coming soon · Instagram

Leadership

Teams aren’t spreadsheets

Coming soon · Instagram

Ambition

What 30 “no”s taught me

Coming soon · Instagram

See all ideas Instagram ↗LinkedIn ↗
Tony Jacobs on stage with a microphone and tablet

Speaking

Put me in
the room.

I speak about things I've actually built, led, tested, failed at and learned from.

Keynotes · Corporate Events · Conferences · Leadership Sessions · Workshops

  1. 01

    Customers Who Stay

    What customer psychology, loyalty and retention actually look like beyond dashboards and NPS surveys.

  2. 02

    Work After AI

    How businesses can redesign routine work, automate intelligently and scale without simply adding more people.

  3. 03

    Sustainable Ambition

    Building careers, businesses and teams without eventually exhausting the humans behind them.

“He's a brilliant presenter who can captivate an audience with his insights and ideas.”
— Jason Johnson
Chief Marketing Officer | Growth & Revenue Executive
Invite Tony to speakExplore workshops

Some ideas need more than 60 seconds.

Tony Jacobs reading his yellow book on the beach

The book

How to Make Your Customers Work for You

A practical book about turning customers from the final step of a sale into part of the growth engine itself.

“Informative, relatable and eye-opening... I’ve started using the book as a real tool.”
— Reader review
Get the book on Amazon

Currently writing

Book Two

The next one is already underway.

Still building.

Talking about business is more useful when you're still inside the arena.

What I'm building now

Unplain Media logo

UNPLAIN MEDIA

We help businesses strengthen the journey from being discovered to being selected – and use AI and automation to scale the work behind it.

Visit Unplain Media

Get found.Get chosen.Get paid.

That's what I'm doing now.

But it didn't start here.

If you're curious, go backwards.

Go back

Going backwards

Now

Tony Jacobs by the turquoise waterfront

Now

Still building.

Business leadership. Writing. Speaking. Unplain. AI. New ideas.

Tony Jacobs leading a session in a modern conference room

2021

One pitch changed the direction of my career.

Pitched a product directly to the company founder.

The next chapter became product building.

Recreated memory: a Limassol bus stop in 2014AI-recreated memory

2014

Start again.

Left Cyprus and moved to Moscow.

New country. New career. Corporate customer management.

North Ethnik album cover

2010–2011

For a while, music was the plan.

Album. Live performances. Radio. Local television.

Then Twin Fold Executive: a record label. I signed another artist and financed his first single.

Recreated memory: a late-night studio mixing sessionAI-recreated memory

2009

Delivery driver. Audio engineer. Producer.

The careers didn't exactly match.

That was part of the fun.

Recreated memory: riding a delivery scooterAI-recreated memory

2007

I got fired.

For my attitude.

A week later I was delivering pizzas.

Recreated memory: walking along Limassol's seafront looking for workAI-recreated memory

2006

The walk of shame.

I walked down Limassol's seafront asking business after business whether they needed staff.

More than 30 said no before somebody eventually said yes.

Recreated memory: carrying rubble on a construction siteAI-recreated memory
Recreated memory: a teenager cleaning a swimming poolAI-recreated memory

2001

Before I managed teams, I carried rubble.

At twelve, I decided I wanted my own money.

Construction work came first.

I cleaned swimming pools too.

Recreated memory: a boy selling hand-drawn lottery tickets by a village kioskAI-recreated memory

1995

My first business made exactly zero sales.

I drew lottery tickets by hand and tried to sell them outside a village kiosk.

The prize was my remote-controlled car.

Nobody bought one.

Recreated memory: two boys with a home-made wooden aeroplaneAI-recreated memory

1995

My first product didn't work either.

A friend and I built an aeroplane from wood, nails and old stroller wheels.

The wings were too wide for the garage doors.

We removed them, rebuilt the plane outside...

It still didn't fly.

And then

Still building.

There are a few ways we can work together.

CONSULTING

For organisations dealing with complex questions around customers, products, retention, AI-enabled operations or growth.

Discuss a project

WORKSHOPS

Practical sessions built around problems teams are actually facing — not recycled motivational material.

  • — Customer psychology
  • — Customer retention
  • — Sales & persuasion
  • — Leadership
  • — AI-enabled work
  • — Resilience and performance
  • — Handling difficult customers
  • — Customer experience
Plan a workshop

Looking for execution rather than advice? Work with Unplain Media →

Tony Jacobs looking out by the sea

I'm still figuring things out.

I'm building businesses, writing, experimenting, reading, speaking — and occasionally discovering that something I was certain about was completely wrong.

That's probably the interesting part.

Follow the journey

contact@thetonyjacobs.com