I've been delivering products and services to people my whole working life.
Roadside assistance to stranded drivers. Holiday travel insurance to caravanners heading to Europe. Pizza to front doors on a Friday and Saturday night.
I don't say that last one as a throwaway line. I say it because it matters and because it gets to the heart of why I'm building MyTrustList.
Every interaction is the one that counts
For a stretch of my career I was an Operations Manager at Allianz, responsible for a 24-hour roadside assistance operation for Mercedes Benz customers. High-end service for customers with high expectations. The kind of work that requires systems, processes, and genuine care running in parallel.
At the same time, because I wanted to fund holidays I loved taking with my wife and 2 boys, I was delivering pizzas for Pizza Hut.
Two jobs, opposite ends of the service spectrum. And here's what I found: the standards I held myself to were identical.
Whether I was presenting to a board of directors, managing a team of fifty, fielding a call from a distressed driver on the M25 at 2am, or handing over a pepperoni pizza at a front door I wanted every single person to feel like their interaction with me had been worth having. That their day was a little easier, a little better, that something had been resolved or delivered or sorted, and that they'd felt looked after in the process.
I've held onto that through every role I've had and every company I’ve started. Through employment as an operations manager in roadside assistance and as a Business Manager looking after members travelling across Europe. To my own ventures, surveying and treating Japanese knotweed and completing an apprenticeship in pest control as well as spreading festive cheer in supplying and installing Christmas trees; because I'm restless, because I like learning, and because whether you're helping someone find and prevent a rat infestation or getting their claim processed in a crisis, or making sure they have the perfect Christmas tree in the perfect position, the job is the same: leave them better off than you found them.
Not every conversation is glamorous. But every conversation matters.
The seed that was planted fifteen years ago
Here's something I didn't connect until recently, and I think it's worth sharing.
Martin Spencer, who came up with the idea for MyTrustList and pitched it to his business partner Jamie Richards and me, is one of my oldest friends. We grew up together in Croydon. Kicking footballs around on the local green, shooting hoops in back gardens and blagging our way into dodgy Croydon nightclubs.
This was just before mobile phones were a fixture of teenage life. You'd know which house your mates were at by the number of bikes piled up in the front garden. No bikes? Move on to the next street.
About fifteen to twenty years ago, Martin and I were throwing around a business idea. Nothing polished. Nothing with a proper mechanism behind it. Just: what if we could help businesses in their areas of specialism get more of the right work? We had a name, it was “My Piece of the Pie”, but not really the concept, not the technology, not the means to build it. Life moved on. Careers accelerated. The idea got filed away and largely forgotten.
When Martin pitched MyTrustList to me, I was in. Immediately. And it was only much later, sitting with it, turning it over, that I realised we hadn't started something new. We'd reconnected with something old.
The seed had been planted over multiple phone conversations and emails a decade and a half ago. It just needed the right soil to grow in, as did we.
The closer reason and the one that's most personal
About ten years ago, my wife made a significant career change.
She had built a brilliant career in radiography working across the NHS and private sectors, carrying out X-rays, CT and MRI scans, caring for patients while doing technically demanding work to the highest standard. She was knowledgeable, dependable, trusted by patients and respected by peers and Consultants above her. She was, by any measure, excellent at what she did.
And then she decided to retrain as a counsellor and hypnotherapist, following a passion she had since she was a teenager.
She left radiography to study and complete her qualifications. She set up her own practice. She has not looked back once.
What she has built since is something I find genuinely remarkable. She has deepened her expertise constantly, never stopping studying, never settling for where she is, always looking for ways to be more skilled, more knowledgeable, more useful to the people who come to her.
She has built a network of fellow therapists around her, people she refers to when someone needs something she can't offer, people who refer to her for the same reason. Her clients trust her completely. Her peers respect her deeply.
And watching her navigate that world, the world of therapy, with its dozens of modalities and approaches and specialisms, where the right therapist for one person is completely wrong for another, I kept coming back to the same thought. How does someone find her? If they don't already know her, if they don't have a personal connection to someone who does, how do they even begin to find the right person? How do they know who to trust with something that personal?
I had always said to her: we should build something. A platform. A directory that helps people understand the different approaches to therapy, the different techniques for different situations, and most importantly helps them find the right therapist, with the right skills, for their specific needs. Matched by trust, not just proximity.
When Martin pitched MyTrustList, I knew within minutes. This was the platform I'd been thinking about. Not just for therapists, for every good business, in every field, that deserves to be found by the people who need them most.
Why we built it together
Martin brought the idea. Jamie brought the technical vision. And between us, we shared the conviction that it was solvable and the stubbornness to keep going until it was.
We started planning. Designing. Building. Reviewing. Then replanning, redesigning, rebuilding, reviewing again. We've done that cycle more times than I can count, and we'll keep doing it as the platform evolves and the network grows. That's not a sign that we haven't got it right, it's a sign that we care enough to keep getting it more right.
When I look at what we've built and where it came from, two things stand out.
A half-formed idea, filed away and forgotten, waiting for the right moment.
And a woman building a career on trust, referral, and genuine expertise, in a world that made it far too hard for the right people to find her.
MyTrustList is the answer to both.
What I believe
I believe that the best businesses, the ones that are genuinely good at what they do, that treat people properly, that deliver what they promise deserve to be found.
Not because they've spent the most on advertising. Not because they've accumulated the most reviews. Not because they've played the algorithm or paid for visibility they haven't earned.
But because someone who knows them, and trusts them, put their name to them. And someone who knows that person found exactly what they needed at exactly the right moment.
That's word of mouth. It's always been the answer. We're just making it work at a scale that casual conversation never could.
That's MyTrustList. That's why I'm here.
Join us at mytrustlist.com
James Goodyer Co-Founder, MyTrustList