22/05/2026
The task I kept avoiding was the one I should have done first.
Swoop.je has been live in Jersey since the start of the year and it's going well.
The plan was always to launch in Guernsey next.
We had the website ready, I was about to book flights to meet lenders over there. Momentum was building.
But there was one task on my list I kept pushing to the bottom.
A small piece of research.
Nothing exciting.
Just checking whether Guernsey had any regulation around mortgage comparison websites.
I didn't want to look because I didn't want it to be true.
Jersey doesn't require a licence for what Swoop does.
A couple of people had mentioned that Guernsey might be different. I parked it.
Told myself I'd get to it. Kept focusing on the exciting stuff instead.
Eventually I sat down and spent five minutes researching it.
Five minutes.
That's all it took to confirm that Guernsey's Lending, Credit and Finance Law almost certainly means we'd need a licence to operate commercially there.
Weeks of planning.
A ready-to-go website.
Flights nearly booked.
And the answer was sitting there the whole time, waiting for me to ask the question.
Could have launched in the Isle of Man first.
Could have adjusted the strategy months ago.
Instead I let a plan I'd committed to in my head override the research I should have done at the start.
Why?
Stubbornness, partly.
But also something more honest than that.
I didn't want the answer to change the story I'd already written.
The plan was Jersey then Guernsey.
I'd told people that.
It felt like the narrative, and I didn't want to rewrite it.
Founders do this more than we admit.
We mistake commitment to a plan for commitment to a goal.
They're not the same thing.
The unsexy task, the boring bit of research, the question you're quietly hoping nobody asks, that's usually the one you should do first.
What's the task you've been avoiding?
