Can you tell me about the first business you started at age thirteen?
My first business started when I got sent a link from a friend. It was a TikTok video from a group of friends who were going to golf clubs, finding golf balls, cleaning them up and then selling them as ‘used’ to people on social media. So me and my friend went to some parks to find some footballs and do the same thing. We found loads of them in these bramble bushes behind goalposts, which we took home to do up a little and then sell. And I was making, as a thirteen-year-old, ten, twenty, thirty pounds here and there which stacked up over a few weeks. We saved all this money we were making and decided to buy around one hundred and fifty footballs in bulk, which cost a total of nine hundred meaning four hundred and fifty pounds each for both me and my friend. That was all of our money back then, absolutely all of it.
All the balls were deflated when sold, and we planned to put a sweet inside of each package as we were confident that this would give people extra encouragement to buy. However, we got just one sale. In reality, we had a rubbish website. We had rubbish branding. We had rubbish marketing. We also found out way later that even the supermarket Tesco sells the same football for cheaper, which just shows our lack of market research.
I couldn’t possibly fit everything I wanted to do business-wise into that one to two-hour time period, hence why I would very often stay up all night, and then sleep at school. Or at least try to sleep, it’s not too easy with the teachers waking you up all the time.
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How many businesses have you had since then?
A lot of them weren’t big businesses but I started, tried and failed so many times with multiple different business models. This enabled me to learn a significant amount and develop immensely as an individual both with new skills that I had developed and also physically and mentally. I’ve tried businesses from e-commerce, to SMMA, to affiliate marketing, to trading. I’ve tried I’d say at least sixty, seventy, eighty percent of the different business models out there.
I believe it is quite good to have had that experience of trying so many different businesses because I believe you gain a much better understanding of the overall business market, the different opportunities out there, and also how different people work, think, act, react and their different perspectives on certain situations – all of which are very important skills to develop in both life and business. You’ll be able to understand people and situations much more resulting in you being able to build and nurture business and personal relationships better.
Why did you leave school at 16?
Why did you leave school at 16?I’ve never liked school. I was always under the table on my phone in school during year nine, year ten and year eleven. I just absolutely hated it and I had this mentality where if I have to go to school, I’m just going to work all night on my business and then sleep at school. It felt like the only logical option since when I went to school I’d have to wake up at seven, be there at eight-thirty, and I would only get home just before four. I would then go to the gym, have dinner and by the time all of that was out the way I would only have one or two hours maximum until I would need to sleep in order for me to get enough sleep before waking up again at seven, for school. I couldn’t possibly fit everything I wanted to do business-wise into that one to two-hour time period, hence why I would very often stay up all night, and then sleep at school. Or at least try to sleep, it’s not too easy with the teachers waking you up all the time.
I of course wasn’t learning much of what they were teaching. I was unfocused, bored, asleep or half asleep which understandably did not leave a good impression of me to the teachers. They were far from impressed, especially my English teacher. It was understandable.
Subjects like Science, English, Maths, RE and all the rest of them just never interested me and most of which I didn’t feel were very applicable to real life let alone to what I wanted to do. It only felt like I was being forced to write down facts and then waste my time pretending to absorb them.
I just like taking a business from nothing to something. I think it’s one of the greatest challenges and personal development journeys anyone could ever really pursue.
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And what did that mean for you? For some people, it might mean ‘I can just relax now’, whereas for you, it seems like it would mean something very different.
Well, I woke up the next day full of energy, I sat straight at my desk and just started attacking the day. I had even more drive than before to build something big.
And so what was that first project that you started when you didn’t have to go to college anymore?
I was building a marketing agency.
So, the one that you have now?
Yeah.
So how long have you been building that for?
A year and a half.
Why a marketing agency?
When I had been doing all these mini projects from age thirteen, and in every single business model I had tried, marketing was one of the biggest aspects and the leading factor to how well that business performed. And it got to a point where I’d had so much experience in doing all the different marketing methods, like paid advertising, organic advertising, influencer marketing, traditional marketing methods, email marketing and SMS marketing. By that point, I had done almost all of the different marketing for quite some time and also had success in some of them, the very first being scaling my social media brand to 1.3 Million total followers across 3 platforms. I then thought if I can do this for myself, why not do it for others, help them with it, and then charge them for the service? It’s mutually beneficial.
On facing business set-backs and failure, some people might opt for a nine-to-five job. What makes you keep pushing forward, rather than just getting a normal job?
A normal job doesn’t interest me, and I just don’t see for me, personally, a life worth having where I’m just working a job and getting up every single day just to contribute to someone else’s dreams and aspirations. I would just feel like a number. People work for companies with hundreds of thousands of employees, maybe tens of thousands, or even a thousand. How can they not feel like a number? If they were to die, sure it would be a big deal for a few days, but then the company would find a replacement for that person’s job role within a week and then that person would be very soon forgotten about. This is because they haven’t left a legacy. As cruel as it is, most people are just born a number, live a number and die a soon-forgotten number.
I want to achieve absolutely everything I want to achieve and to leave a legacy. Or I want nothing. No inbetween, no job, nothing. I refuse to settle for a mediocre middle-class life, it’s not for me. By nothing, I mean I’d be living on zero income on some random island – I’d still be happy but nowhere near as fulfilled as I’d be to hit all my current goals of building the life I want.
I think purpose is very important. I strongly believe a lot of mental health issues would be fixed if those individuals had some kind of purpose.
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If you’re making a lot of money to then go live on an island, why would you not just go to an island and skip the making the money part? What drives you to want to succeed in business rather than just retire somewhere now?
Because I don’t like seeing my parents working a job. Just like the majority of people, they’ve been working a job for most of their lives and throughout my whole life have of course provided everything for me for example food, a house and clothes. They’ve taken care of us for a long time so It would be amazing to be able to give back to them and give them a life that they would deem unrealistic, a dream. Everything that they could ever want and to be able to do things they maybe could never have done – because they couldn’t.
I would also like to build something big for other people, give other people big opportunities and make a big change. I couldn’t do any of this chilling on an island. Besides that, it also wouldn’t fill me with purpose. I think purpose is very important. I strongly believe a lot of mental health issues would be fixed if those individuals had some kind of purpose. In most cases, if you take a look into a person’s life who is depressed they are often lacking a lot of purpose hence why they feel that way.
It wouldn’t satisfy me, fill me with purpose, allow me to achieve my goals, or put me in the position to change lives and leave the mark on the world that I want to leave.
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With your business right now, what do you think is the most interesting and exciting thing about it?
I just like taking a business from nothing to something. I think it’s one of the greatest challenges and personal development journeys anyone could ever really pursue. It’s very difficult but with time, consistency and dedication very easy at the same time. I love the beginning stages of owning a business where you have to be the head of all of the different departments within your business. You’re the sales team, you’re the marketing team, you’re the human resources, you’re the recruitment – you’re everything. Everything is on your shoulders and down to you.
If you get in the position where you need to hire someone to do something for you, maybe you have fifty-sixty interviews. You do all of those interviews yourself whilst of course still running the marketing, closing the deals, fulfilling the services and completing all the other smaller petty tasks simultaneously.
Is there any advice that you would pass on?
Most people have a limiting belief system and don’t think a lot of things are possible. They think people get lucky when in reality luck doesn’t exist. If anything, they made their luck by putting in the hard work and doing what most people don’t want to do, to get to where they want to be.
