Press

Peter Watson has spent over fifteen years building businesses and has sold three of them: an advertising agency he ran for nine years, an online pharmacy, and an online mortgage company.

He is the author of The Niche Influence, on how businesses build genuine influence rather than borrowed attention.

He now publishes daily on the economics of Britain's high street: what a pint costs to pour, what a shop pays in business rates before a customer walks in, and what happens to your money after you hand it over. His videos reach hundreds of thousands of people, and his audience submits stories about independent businesses worth saving at keepthemopen.com.

He is also the founder of Overtime, an AI platform that runs advertising accounts autonomously.

Keep Them Open is a campaign backing Britain's independent businesses. Britain loses around thirty seven shops a day, according to the Centre for Retail Research, and most of them are independents. The campaign publishes the maths behind the high street, where the money in a pint, a haircut or a takeaway actually goes, and tells the stories of the people keeping shops, pubs and trades alive. Members of the public submit stories about businesses worth saving at keepthemopen.com. The best are told to hundreds of thousands of people.

The ask is deliberately small: move five pounds a week from a chain to an independent. Not a boycott, not a donation, not spending more.

Television, radio, podcasts, panels and written comment.

Peter is available at short notice for reaction to high street news: closures, business rates changes, Budget measures affecting small business, bank and post office closures, and corporate acquisition of family firms.

Topics he speaks on:

• The economics of running a small business in Britain today
• Business rates and what a shop pays before it opens
• Corporate consolidation of family businesses, including vets, funeral directors and garden centres
• Bank branch and post office closures, and what replaces them
• Where consumer spending goes: chains versus independents, and the local multiplier
• Building and selling companies, and what founders actually learn
• Building an audience from nothing, and content as a business tool

Based in the UK and abroad. Available for remote and in-person.

For interviews and comment, DM on Instagram.