About us
Leonard John is an engineer turned small-business advocate, which probably explains a lot.
Before TradShack, his working life involved engineering, medical computing, and space-structure projects for UK and US contractors – the sort of work where details matter, systems matter, and getting things wrong is generally frowned upon. Somewhere along the way, he discovered that small business is every bit as complex as engineering, just with fewer manuals, less margin for error, and considerably more coffee.
Since then, Leonard has spent more than two decades working with businesses across a surprisingly wide spread of sectors. These have included quarrying, mineral processing, architectural restoration, and scientific computing — which is a polite way of saying he has had a long-standing front-row seat to how very different businesses try to survive, improve, and make sensible decisions in the real world. At one stage he also helped build a UK scientific workstation vendor into a European distributor-of-the-year, which was no bad result for a business environment where nothing much happens by accident.
Through TradShack Independent Media Studio, Leonard’s focus has increasingly settled on the smallest firms of all: the owner-managed business, the specialist operator, the microbusiness, the person doing five jobs at once and still being told by the internet to 'scale faster' and 'crush it'. TradShack was built around a fairly simple idea: small business is not a mini version of big business. It is a different game with different rules. Different pressures. Different advantages. Different risks. And far too much of the advice out there either ignores that reality or talks as though every business has a marketing department, spare staff, and a weekly strategy retreat. That is not the TradShack view of the world.
The work here is built around practical thinking for real small businesses – especially the kind that do not have time for theatre, jargon, or fashionable nonsense. That includes website design and hosting, digital publishing, audio field guides, online promotion, and commercially grounded content designed to help smaller firms present themselves more clearly and compete more intelligently. The tone is straightforward because the subject deserves it. The work is taken seriously. Nobody here is under the impression that pretending to be a Silicon Valley visionary is required.
Behind the scenes, TradShack is less 'shiny agency lifestyle' and more working studio: ideas being tested, scripts being developed, websites being refined, audio being edited, and the occasional strong opinion being formed about the state of modern business advice. It is thoughtful work, but not self-important work. Leonard’s role in all this is part strategist, part writer, part producer, part translator of business fog into something a normal human being can actually use. The mission has stayed remarkably consistent: help small businesses compete, thrive and win – not by copying bigger firms badly, but by becoming clearer, stronger, and more deliberate in the way they work.
That, at least, is the plan.
Anita Ibanez brings a designer’s eye to TradShack
Which is useful because left to their own devices, some people would happily build an entire brand around whichever font happened to be nearest at the time. Spanish by birth and originally from the Lavapiés area of Madrid, Anita comes from a background shaped by graphic design, fashion, style, and branding – which means she has a well-developed instinct for how things look, feel, and present themselves before anyone has said a word.
That is not a small skill. In business, people often pretend presentation is superficial right up until the point where weak presentation starts costing them attention, trust, or sales. At TradShack, Anita helps bring visual discipline to the proceedings. She understands that design is not simply decoration, and that style is not something sprinkled on top at the end to make everything look 'creative'. Done properly, it helps shape identity, clarity, and the signals a business sends out into the world. Behind the scenes, she is part aesthetic compass, part brand translator, and part quiet corrective to visual chaos. Which is another way of saying that if something looks better, feels sharper, and appears more like it knows what it is doing, Anita has probably been involved.
Daniel Morino is the marketing and promotion professional in the room
Which is reassuring because 'just post more and hope for the best' has never really counted as a strategy. With an established background in marketing and promotion, and a BA (Hons) in Business Management and Marketing, Daniel brings commercial structure to ideas that might otherwise remain enthusiastic but slightly under-armed.
He understands that promotion is not just about making noise, and that good marketing is usually less about shouting louder than everyone else and more about saying the right thing clearly enough for the right people to notice. That makes him a useful presence at TradShack, where much of the work revolves around helping small businesses present themselves more convincingly without disappearing into hype, jargon, or fashionable nonsense. Daniel’s contribution sits in that important space between message and momentum: how something is framed, where it is placed, and how it gets in front of the people it is actually meant for. Behind the scenes, he is part strategist, part organiser, and part steady reminder that promotion works best when it has a clear signal to carry. Which, in practical terms, means helping good ideas avoid dying quietly through lack of visibility, structure, or follow-through.