I was born in Burnley and grew up in a small two up two down terraced house in a very poor part of an old mill town called Nelson, in a house that was so bad that they had to knock it down.
I did terribly at school. Academically speaking, I was one on the worst kids in my class and I was also no good at sport either. In fact, I wasn't very good at anything at school. What didn't help me is I was forever skiving off, because I always thought that life looked far more interesting on the outside of the classroom window than being stuck inside with a pile of paperwork that I didn't much understand anyway.
My teachers thought I was going to end up a bum, or a loser, or worse. I know exactly what they thought because they weren't shy about telling me! This all meant that I left school with very few qualifications and I was going to have a tough start to my working life.
Luckily, I had my own ideas about the future and I wasnt going to pay too much attention to what those teachers thought. One of the main reasons I'd skived so much in school was because I was bullied. I was around 12 years old when I decided I'd had enough of them and finally fought back. Realising I wasn't made of glass and that I could stand up for myself and more importantly I could win! It was that day I learnt the most important lesson I took from school: if you don't believe in yourself, nobody else will. I've done that ever since. It's certainly been more useful than the three CSEs I took from school!
The day after I finished school I was sent to work as a builder's apprentice, and I was even worse at that than I was at school. I hated being on the building sites and I hated being told what to do. I was obsessed with cars, and I knew that was where I wanted to work.
One day when I was still only 16, something very important happened to me: somebody took a chance on me. I promised the owner of a little back street car garage in Nelson that if he let me take one of his battered old part exchange cars on credit, on the promise I would pay him back when I sold it. He didn't have to do that, but if he hadn't I wouldn't be here today. The minute I sold that car I pocketed the £27 profit (which was a week's wage back then) and I jumped on my little motorbike and set off on my way back up to pay him the £70 I'd promised, grinning ear-to-ear as I handed over the cash. And that was the beginning!
When I was 17 I left the building sites to focus on cars, and to this day I haven't worked for anyone but myself ever since. I found that with lots of hard work, a ton of northern grit and determination and not forgetting some common sense and most importantly a bucket full of self-belief! I then set off down the long and difficult road of starting my own business. I kept on buying cheap cars, cleaning them up, selling them for more and pocketing the difference. It sounds simple, but trust me, a lot of the time it didn't feel that way!
I then moved from cars to vans, and then eventually into minibuses. Now I am the largest supplier of minibuses in Britain and I also sell minibuses all over the world. I also have a property business in which I buy and sell property and then rent them out and I also have a commercial vehicle parts business that supplies van and minibus parts and spares and we sell them all over the UK and Europe.
Nowadays I've also got a few extra qualifications to go with the CSEs, including a pilot's licence to fly airplanes and a licence to fly helicopters. Not bad for someone who was definitely going to be "either a bum or a loser!" I bet those teachers will be gob smacked when they see I'm opening my own bank, but I want to bring the lessons of hard work, common sense and self belief that I've learned the hard way in business to banking. It seems like those are qualities sorely lacking in that industry, and I can't wait to take on one of the biggest challenges of my career If there is something you believe in then you must fight for it. Sometimes everybody will be telling you it's impossible, like they did when I said I wanted to open my own bank, but remember...
Never give up.
Never, ever, give up!
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