Southon is a serial entrepreneur, involved with many
start-up companies. He was co-founder of
The Instruction Set, a
Unix training company, in 1984. The company was bought out by
Hoskyns Group (now part of
Capgemini) in 1989. In 2002, he published
The Beermat Entrepreneur with Chris West. This book critiques the approach to entrepreneurship taught in many business schools as overly corporate, presenting an alternative model in which customers are identified as quickly as possible and formal business planning is only undertaken once the entrepreneur is certain of the product and its market positioning.
The Beermat Entrepreneur has sold over 100,000 copies internationally, and has been translated into Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Spanish, and Dutch. It was followed by several other books, including two 'Beermat Guides' in sales and finance. A revised edition of
The Beermat Entrepreneur was published in 2018. Southon has been entrepreneur-in-residence at
Bayes Business School, where he and
Chris West taught 11-week modules in 'Introduction to Entrepreneurship' and 'Marketing Strategy' to Business Management Undergraduates. He has been the Entrepreneur in Residence for the
City of Liverpool and the
University of Westminster. He has been an editor for
The London Business Journal, a columnist for the
Financial Times, and has written for
The Guardian and
The Daily Telegraph. His approach to sales has been covered in
The Guardian. He has been a judge for the British Business Excellence Awards. He has been an invited speaker at conferences. ==Personal life==