The Truth About Starting A Business From Nothing

Starting a business didn't begin when I registered a company or built my first piece of software. Looking back, I think it started when I was eleven years old, long before I knew anything about entrepreneurship, sales or business. It started with a football and a lesson that has stayed with me for the rest of my life.

Like many founders, my journey wasn't straightforward. My parents separated when I was fifteen, at a difficult point in my life as I approached my final years at school. It was a challenging period, but even before that I had already discovered something about myself that would shape the rest of my life. I wasn't naturally gifted, but I was prepared to keep showing up.

Football was everything to me. I watched old matches for hours, spent every school holiday with a ball at my feet and dreamed about becoming a better player. The reality, however, was very different. I wasn't one of the best players. I wasn't even close. I made the school team, but most weeks I was the substitute, happy just to pull on the shirt and be part of it.

Then one afternoon everything changed. We reached the school cup final against the strongest team in the tournament. They were filled with talented players who represented local clubs, while I had never played organised football. With only minutes remaining and the score level, my teacher unexpectedly called me from the sidelines. I had no idea why. I was simply grateful to be given the chance.

A few moments later the ball arrived at my feet on the edge of the penalty area. Without thinking, I struck it as hard as I could. Even now, decades later, I can still remember watching it fly through the air, hit the underside of the crossbar and bounce into the goal. We won the cup, and I had scored the winning goal. It lasted only a few seconds, but it changed how I saw myself forever.

That goal didn't make me the best footballer in the school. What it gave me was belief. Soon afterwards I joined my first local football team, improved year after year and eventually played semi-professional football. Looking back now, I realise football wasn't teaching me how to win matches. It was teaching me persistence, consistency and patience. Years later, those same qualities became the foundation for building businesses. Talent might open a door, but persistence is what keeps you moving forward when nobody else believes you can.

Sometimes You Have To Lose Your Way Before You Find Your Purpose

Leaving school didn't give me a clear direction. If anything, it left me feeling completely lost. I finished with no qualifications, not because I wasn't capable of learning, but because I never fitted into an education system that expected everyone to think the same way. Looking back now, I realise I was never comfortable following other people's rules. I've always preferred to find my own path, even when it was the harder option.

After school I tried everything. I spent a short time at college, but hardly attended. I worked as a waiter, at McDonald's, in a linen factory and in a clothing factory. Some jobs I left because I wasn't enjoying them, others I lost because I simply wasn't the employee they were looking for. At the time it felt like failure, but in reality I was searching for something that gave me purpose rather than just a wage.

Life became increasingly difficult. I spent time unemployed, mixed with the wrong people and, like many young men, was more interested in enjoying life than thinking about my future. My parents had separated years earlier and, after an argument with my mum, I found myself with nowhere to live. For a short period I slept rough before my dad stepped in. He lived in a small one-bedroom flat and gave me a place to stay. For the next two years I slept on the living room floor, making my bed up every night. Looking back, I don't think either of us realised how important that decision would become.

My dad worked for a packaging merchant as a buyer. One evening he told me I was coming to work with him the following morning because the company was looking for someone in telesales. I didn't know anything about selling and, if I'm honest, I wasn't particularly interested. But I had nothing to lose, so I went.

On my first day I was handed a Yellow Pages directory and told to start calling businesses. In the afternoon I was asked to contact old customers who hadn't ordered for years. I was given a script, but I don't remember relying on it very much. Instead, I spoke to people like normal human beings. By the end of that first day, I had reopened five dormant accounts. My dad couldn't believe it. Neither could the owner of the business. I was offered a full-time job that same day, and although I didn't know it then, that moment would shape the next thirty years of my career.

Looking back, I don't see this period of my life as wasted time anymore. I see it as the point where everything started to come together. Sometimes your biggest breakthrough begins on the day you finally discover what you're naturally good at.

Thirty Years Of Experience Before I Built My First Real Business

Looking back, I don't think I became an entrepreneur when I started my business in 2021. I became one over the thirty years that came before it. Every role, every mistake and every opportunity taught me something that I would eventually use to build my own company.

After joining Proton Supplies, I discovered that sales wasn't simply about making telephone calls. It was about building relationships, understanding people and solving problems. Those first two years gave me the foundations of business development and opened doors that would shape the rest of my career.

From there I spent five years working in recruitment, eventually becoming a Branch Manager before moving into face-to-face business development within the corrugated packaging industry. Over the years I worked for family-owned businesses, independent manufacturers that produced their own cardboard from paper and, eventually, two of the largest packaging companies in the world. By the time I reached the position of Strategic Business Developer, I was operating at the highest level of my career and learning skills that simply couldn't be taught in a classroom.

My first experience of owning a business came in my early thirties when I started selling cosmetics through Amazon and eBay. The business was successful, but I wasn't ready for it. I enjoyed the income, but I didn't understand how to build a business properly or how to make money work for me. Looking back, I don't see that venture as a failure. I see it as the first brick in the foundations of the entrepreneur I would eventually become.

The biggest transformation came later when I joined global organisations, particularly Smurfit Westrock. For the first time in my career I had leaders who challenged me, developed me and believed in what I was capable of. They helped me discover abilities I didn't know I had. During my final two years there I finished inside the top fifteen sales performers out of more than two hundred business development professionals. More importantly, I finally understood what great businesses looked like from the inside.

When I turned forty-five, everything changed. I often describe it as my reset. It wasn't just a career change; it was a complete change in mindset. In 2021 I began building my own business. I had no experience in marketing, couldn't write software and had never built a digital product. All I knew was that this was what I wanted to do. More than that, it was what I felt I was supposed to do.

Since then I've taught myself marketing, coding, software development and operating system design. Between September 2021 and today I've rebuilt products hundreds of times, written hundreds of blogs, recorded hundreds of videos and changed direction more times than I can remember. There have been moments of frustration, exhaustion and even tears, but every setback has strengthened my belief that building a business isn't about getting everything right the first time. It's about refusing to stop learning until you eventually get there.

People often see the business you launch, but they rarely see the decades of experience, setbacks, mentors and personal growth that made it possible. My journey didn't begin in 2021. That was simply the moment everything I had learned finally came together.

Every Business Has A Story. This Is Only The Beginning Of Mine.

If there's one thing I've learned throughout my life, it's that success is rarely a straight line. Every setback, every failure, every opportunity and every lesson has played a part in shaping the person I am today. Looking back, I wouldn't change any of it because every experience has brought me closer to where I am now.

This blog only scratches the surface of my journey. Over the coming months I'll be sharing many more stories, from growing up and finding my way in business, to working for global organisations, building my first companies, learning to code in my late forties and creating the software platforms I'm building today. Some stories will be about success, others about failure, and many will be about the lessons I learned along the way.

My hope is that by sharing my experiences openly and honestly, they'll help someone else who is just beginning their own journey. Whether you're thinking about starting a business, already running one or simply trying to find your purpose, I hope you'll discover that you're not alone. Every founder faces moments of doubt. The difference is simply whether you decide to keep moving forward.

Over the next few months, I'll continue sharing my founder journey—one story at a time. Not because my path is unique, but because every entrepreneur has experiences worth sharing, and sometimes one story is all it takes to inspire someone else to take their first step.