October 7, 2026 – Add then Multiply David Horne and Emotional Dictionary Doug Johnston

David Horne– Founder & CEO of Add then Multiply

Anything that reduces founder dependency increases the value of the business.

David B. Horne is the Founder and CEO of Add Then Multiply, a business growth consultancy that helps founders scale through strategic finance, fundraising, acquisitions, and stronger financial infrastructure. A PwC trained Chartered Accountant with more than 40 years of business experience, David has worked with companies ranging from entrepreneurial ventures to publicly listed businesses. Over his career, he has raised more than £120  million in funding and completed more than 30 acquisitions and exits, giving him firsthand experience in the financial and operational challenges that come with rapid growth. Earlier in his career, David served as CFO of two companies listed on London’s Alternative Investment Market, where he gained practical experience raising capital, acquiring businesses, integrating operations, and preparing companies for future transactions. One of the businesses he supported grew sales from approximately £1.1 million to £27.7 million in three years, a 25 fold increase. Those experiences became the foundation for the work he now does with founder led companies that have reached the point where organic growth alone may no longer be enough to achieve their ambitions. At Add Then Multiply, David uses his FACE methodology, which stands for Fund, Acquire, Consolidate, and Exit. The framework helps entrepreneurs think more strategically about raising capital, acquiring other companies, successfully integrating those acquisitions, and ultimately building a business with greater long term value. His approach emphasizes that buying another company is only part of the challenge. Founders also need the financial systems, leadership capacity, cash flow discipline, and integration plan required to make the combined business stronger. Add Then Multiply also provides fractional and outsourced finance teams to help growing businesses develop the financial infrastructure needed to scale. David is the author of Add Then Multiply: How Small Businesses Can Think Like Big Businesses and Achieve Exponential Growth, which won the Business Self Development category at the 2020 Business Book Awards. He is also the author of Funded Female Founders and the Founder of Funding Focus, a social enterprise created to improve access to capital for female and underrepresented entrepreneurs. His work with Funding Focus led to his TEDx talk, The Fight for Fairer Funding. Across his consulting, writing, and advocacy, David‘s central message is that ambitious founders can accelerate growth when they combine entrepreneurial vision with disciplined finance, strategic acquisitions, and a clear plan for building a company that can ultimately thrive beyond the founder.

D. Earl “Doug” Johnston – Author of Choosing Emotions: Thinking with Your Head and Acting with Your Heart

And the point being, you’re going to be happiest when you are the real you.

D. Earl “Doug” Johnston is a former business executive, banking and private equity leader, investigative business researcher, litigation support expert, lexicographer, and author of Choosing Emotions: Thinking with Your Head and Acting with Your Heart. Over more than 30 years in executive management, Doug worked across commercial banking, mergers and acquisitions, private equity, lending, due diligence, operations, and complex business transactions. His professional experience also includes research and consulting for national law firms involved in high stakes commercial disputes. He has supervised more than $5 billion in transactions over the course of his business career. After decades working in finance and business, Doug turned his attention to a very different subject: the language people use to understand and describe emotions. The project began after a conversation with his daughter led him to realize how difficult it can be to clearly explain even familiar emotional states. What started as a personal question developed into nine years of research across psychology, neuroscience, medicine, philosophy, linguistics, literature, religion, and the arts. Doug ultimately identified and organized 272 emotional states and conditions, drawing from thousands of observations and quotations spanning roughly 3,000 years of recorded thought. The result is Choosing Emotions: Thinking with Your Head and Acting with Your Heart, published by Western Gold Publishing in 2026. Designed as what Doug calls an “Emotionary,” the book examines emotions ranging from anger, fear, gratitude, confidence, and joy to more complex conditions including anxiety, procrastination, trauma, narcissism, addiction, and codependence. Rather than approaching emotions from a single academic discipline, Doug brings together perspectives from scientists, philosophers, psychologists, writers, spiritual teachers, and everyday language to help readers develop a richer emotional vocabulary. He argues that emotions function as a kind of internal operating system and as the “Gears of Life,” influencing how people interpret situations and how they ultimately behave. Doug‘s work has particular relevance for entrepreneurs and business leaders because he connects emotional understanding with communication, negotiation, leadership, judgment, and decision making. His central idea is that greater emotional vocabulary gives people more options for understanding what they are experiencing and choosing how to respond. Rather than treating emotion as the opposite of reason, he encourages leaders to recognize emotions as information that can improve self awareness and relationships when understood clearly. Outside of business and writing, Doug is also a world champion sailor, an experience that adds another perspective to his interest in judgment, preparation, performance, and decision making under pressure.