In order to get the business off the ground he leafletted in the road where he lived, he put a pack together for workplace pensions and hit industrial estates local to him.
He also sponsored his local football team and got involved with a Parent Teacher Association at his kid's primary school, all to make sure his name and brand were out there.
"I have no problem pulling together a pack, putting together some information...'Hello I am..., can I leave this with you?'," he says.
"For me if I'm setting up my own business, brand awareness, name awareness, just do it.
"Get involved with local radio, I did that too. I had the money man slot for an hour once a month....it's just a great way to get yourself known locally."
Business networking events helped too, he says.
But perhaps equally important, his decades' worth of experience at banks meant he knew how to keep the financial institutions at bay.
He says: "With my 18 years of being in a bank I knew I needed to call the bank and let them know what was going on and what was happening and why it was happening.
"So I took 20 minutes out of my day to make phone calls - to not get a day's worth of phone calls.
"And slowly over time those calls I had to make reduced and after about year four I've never had to make a call."
He adds: "And then I went on to that [social media post's] person's website and saw their fixed fees were five figures and when I looked at myself in the mirror, I could see donkey ears coming off my head and I cried and I screamed at the same time that I'd allowed myself to be sucked into that line of work."
The issue was not the fixed fee itself, he explains, as he believes fixed fees are a better way to charge after all - but at the right time. Had he introduced it after breaking even, he would have been fine.
But the experience taught him not to listen to others over his own intuition ever again.
His message to other business owners is: "Be true to yourself. It's all stuff you know, absolutely believe in what you're doing and believe in you. There will be other people that will tell you that what you're doing is wrong because it's not what they're doing. But that doesn't make it wrong. It just means you're doing it differently."
Though he admits he'd made mistakes of his own accord as well. If he was to set up the business again, he'd want to have at least £20,000-£25,000 in savings, not the £8,000 he'd had.
