We've owned the shops, filed the patents, appeared on national TV, and built the software. Now we help small businesses do the same.
The Growth Brothers exists because we've both been the person we now help, a business owner with too much to do, too little support, and no one around who's actually been through it.
Ian Hoban
Retailer · Real Estate Founder · Channel 4 · AI Developer · SaaS Builder
My first business was a physical one. I owned and ran Pagefield Off Licence in Wigan for six years, six years of understanding margins, stock management, local marketing, customer relationships, and the unrelenting pressure of keeping a retail business alive when something always seems to be going wrong.
From there I co-founded Estupendo Real Estate in Puerto Del Carmen, Lanzarote, from scratch, with no local brand, no existing client base, and no playbook. We started with long-term rentals, expanded into property sales, and eventually became the island's recognised leader in commercial property and bar sales. What drove that growth wasn't luck, it was hands-on digital marketing, local SEO, content strategy, and social media that I built and ran myself.
That direct route to market-leadership through organic search is exactly what now underpins our Managed SEO packages. I didn't learn this in a classroom. I learned it by watching our listings outrank competitors across Lanzarote and seeing the enquiries follow.
- Owner of Pagefield Off Licence, Wigan (6 years of hands-on retail operations)
- Co-Founder & Director of Estupendo Real Estate, Lanzarote (built from zero to island-leading commercial agency)
- Drove all digital marketing, SEO, and social media for Estupendo, directly scaling organic reach to market leadership
- Featured twice on Channel 4's A Place in the Sun alongside Jasmine Harman and Jonnie Irwin, establishing Estupendo as the go-to agency for buyers from the UK market
- Specialist AI developer: workflow automation (Make, n8n), LLM applications (Claude, ChatGPT, Google AI Studio), and vibe-coded web apps (Cursor, Lovable)
- Founder and creator of Sleyp, a live SaaS product built and taken to market
- Six Sigma Green Belt (Black Belt trained) with hands-on warehouse and production process experience
Ian Hoban on set with Channel 4's A Place in the Sun presenters Jasmine Harman and Jonnie Irwin
Why this matters for your SEO: The organic growth that took Estupendo to island-leader status on Lanzarote was built through the same content, local SEO, and authority signals we now deploy for clients through our Managed SEO packages. This isn't theory, it's a proven approach tested on a real business competing in a real market.
Building in the AI era: Ian's current development focus is AI and workflow automation, designing custom internal tools, automated lead capture systems, and app prototypes for small businesses. His live SaaS product, Sleyp, is a working example of taking a concept from idea to live product.
Peter Hoban
Traffic Safety Engineer · Inventor · UK Patent Holder · Product Commercialiser
Peter's background is in the physical world — 25+ years working in traffic management and site safety, where the consequences of cutting corners aren't lost revenue, they're lives at risk. That environment teaches you to think systematically, prototype rigorously, and get things right before they go to market.
The product that defined his entrepreneurial path is CoverMe, a telescopic pole system that eliminates the need for ladders when covering and uncovering traffic lights during roadworks. The idea came from watching maintenance crews take unnecessary risks at height, day after day, across the industry. Peter designed the solution, prototyped it, and took it all the way through the UK patent application process.
He now runs IRSS UK, the company behind CoverMe, managing everything from product development and compliance to sales and operations, the full journey of taking a physical product to market and keeping it there.
- 25+ years of traffic management and site safety industry experience
- Inventor of the CoverMe no-ladders-required traffic light cover system, designed to eliminate working-at-height accidents in signal maintenance
- Official UK Patent Holder. Patent GB2583069, covering the CoverMe telescopic pole mechanism
- Full product lifecycle experience: concept, design, prototyping, compliance, IP protection, and commercialisation
- Founder and Director of IRSS UK, managing product operations, sales, and market development
- Practical IP strategy experience: knows what to protect, when to file, and how to build defensible product moats
What Peter brings:
If you're developing a physical product, navigating IP, taking something to prototype, or figuring out how to manufacture and commercialise an idea — Peter has done it. Not as a consultant who advises on it. As a founder who lived it and now sells the product he built.
We don't work with small businesses because it's a market. We do it because we've been them.
Between us, we've managed the overheads, the cash flow stress, the hiring mistakes, the marketing guesswork, the product failures, and the wins. We know what the inside of a small business actually looks like.
We've run the shop
Ian owned a retail off-licence for six years. Margins, stock, local competition, quiet weeks, the lot. We know what it takes to keep a physical business alive day to day.
We've built market leadership
Estupendo Real Estate went from unknown to island leader through content, local SEO, and social media, built from scratch, no agency, no big budget.
We've invented a product
Peter designed CoverMe from a real problem, prototyped it, patented it, and commercialised it. We understand product development from problem to shelf.
We build with AI right now
Ian is actively building automation workflows and SaaS tools for real clients. We don't just talk about AI, we use it daily to solve practical business problems.
We know credibility matters
Two Channel 4 TV appearances don't happen by accident. Building trust and authority in a market, online and off, is something we've had to earn ourselves.
We work inside real budgets
Everything we recommend to clients has been stress-tested against the reality of small business spending. We don't prescribe what's expensive. We prescribe what works.
Between us, we cover what most small businesses usually have to outsource.
Work with founders, not account managers.
Book a free 20-minute call. No agenda, no pitch deck, just an honest conversation about where your business is and what's most likely to move it forward.