Peer Effect
Best way to scale? Your peers have the answers.
This is the podcast for scaleup founders looking for insightful, actionable wisdom from some of the best operators around. Each week we’ll explore one secret that other founders and experts are using right now and how to implement it.
It’s practical wisdom to build the company AND life you want. Hosted by renowned founder coach and advisor James Johnson.
You’ve survived to £1m, now let’s scale to £10m+.
Peer Effect
Rebuilding and Automating a Business From the Ground Up, with Tara Button
"I had to let everyone go and run the entire business myself."
Tara Button's Buy Me Once had raised £3 million and grown to 14 staff. They were burning through cash faster than they could raise it. The choice: close the business completely or go solo with AI automation.
The result? Q4 2024 revenue exceeded Q4 2023 (with the full team) and they made their first profit ever.
In today's episode, I'm joined by Tara Button, bestselling author and founder of Buy Me Once, a mission-driven e-commerce business finding the longest-lasting products on the planet. When facing a critical cash crisis in 2024, Tara made the radical decision to let go of her entire 14-person team and rebuild the company using AI automation, despite having zero coding experience.
Together we unpack:
- How to identify which business tasks are truly critical (hint: it's less than you think)
- The step-by-step process she used to replace entire departments with automations
- Why she worked 16-hour days building email scrapers and inventory systems with ChatGPT
- How founders can start implementing AI automation without ripping everything up
👆 If you're a founder feeling overwhelmed by operational complexity or wondering whether AI can really replace human work, this conversation will open your eyes to what's possible.
About Tara Button
Tara Button is the founder of Buy Me Once, an e-commerce platform dedicated to finding the longest-lasting products on the planet to combat throwaway culture. After her business idea went viral in 2016, she raised over £3 million and authored the Amazon bestselling book "A Life Less Throwaway." When her business faced a cash crisis in 2024, she made the bold decision to rebuild it as a one-person operation using AI automation, resulting in their most profitable quarter ever.
Connect with Tara Button on LinkedIn.
More from James:
Connect with James on LinkedIn or at peer-effect.com
