The Survival Guide
Coming in 2027
The Survival Guide
A day-to-day companion for the first years of business: somewhere to plan, track and reflect as you go.
Media
Ideas. Insights.Inspiration.
Practical content for the first years of business, whether you're commuting, walking the dog or sitting at your desk.
Real lessons.
Every Tuesday
The Wilderness Weekly
Your weekly field note for building a business that survives. Honest, useful business thinking from Katie, straight to your inbox every Tuesday.
A taste of what's coming
- Your business shouldn't depend on you remembering everything.
- Busy isn't a business strategy.
- The £100k month problem nobody talks about.
- What I would do if I had to start again tomorrow.
On YouTube
Coming soonSurvive & Thrive
Real conversations. Real businesses. Real progress.
Business Bites
Short, practical videos on one thing you can do this week.
Business Audits
Real businesses, looked at honestly: the four compartments, the bottleneck and the next 90 days.
Founder interviews
Real founders on the first few years: why they started, the hardest year, and what turned it round.
The podcast
The Shortcut
Skip the mistakes. Keep the lessons.
Conversations with business authors who have actually run businesses. The book is the way in, not the subject: Katie gets under the framework, tests it against real businesses, and pulls out the one thing you can use.
Coming in 2027- The framework
What the author built, and why it works.
- The Stress Test
Katie tests it against the businesses she's run and supported.
- The Shortcut
The one thing to take away and use this week.
Books and guides
Field guides for the first years
Backpack Guides
Coming in 2027
Backpack Guides
Practical workbooks, one for each stage of the climb: Pitch, Year One and Gap.
Want to hear first? Get the Wilderness Weekly.
Speaking
Invite Katie to speak
Practical, warm and straight-talking. Katie speaks at founder and small business events, on panels and at workshops, and teaches from the terrain, not from a textbook.
Does your business need CPR?
Most businesses don't fail from one big mistake. They fail from reacting instead of responding. Create, Plan, Respond: how to build the right business, know where it's heading, and correct course when the terrain changes.
Before you scale, make sure you can survive
Start, scale, sell is the wrong default story for most new founders. Why the first years are about survival, foundations and profit, and how to build a business that can carry you.
For press and media
Business survival, from someone still doing it.
Katie Birkett is The Business Survivalist and founder of Wilderness of Business. She has spent 27 years starting, building and running businesses, and helps founders in their first years build the foundations, knowledge and support they need to survive and thrive.
Katie can talk about
- Business survival in years 0 to 3
- The accidental business owner
- Why founders build themselves another job
- Feast-or-famine revenue, cash flow and profit over turnover
- Founder isolation and why everyday struggles need normalising
- Building to your chosen size, without burnout
Practical knowledge. Real-world experience. No business-guru BS.