I’ve never seen myself as an entrepreneur even though I obviously am an entrepreneur. Was thinking back on my life and it’s surprising how long it took to start my first real business (~28 years old).

My business and work history

My elder brother at school age worked on a milk round and sold scratch lottery type tickets door to door. At around the age of 13-14 I also sold the scratch lottery tickets door to door and would make a few quid a week. Interesting fact: I realised the winning lottery tickets had print errors (the winners had all been printed on the same machines :-) ) and I could pick out all the £1 and £5 winners out of the packs I sold!

I didn’t do well at school, wasn’t that I couldn’t do well, for example in the exams I took at around age 13 in areas like maths and science I scored in the top 5% for the entire year (ex grammar school as well), but I came from a background where education wasn’t considered important (I went to an art exam with just one blue pencil and refused to complete the music and metal work exams!). At 16 I mentioned to my Mother that I was thinking of staying on at school to do A-Levels and she said “well I’m not paying for it!”, today the family I came from would be labeled as Chavs.

By 15 I’d already had a 24 hour attendance center order (like the Cadets for young criminals, not much of a punishment really) and spent 2 months in a detention center (prison for young offenders, was hard going) for a string of burglaries and by 16 years of age I was looking at a life of crime or unskilled factory type work as I had two low level CSEs (2 in maths and 4 in physics)!

At 16 1/2 I’d realised my mistakes and wanted a career, I tried to join the army, but because of the detention center time I couldn’t join until I was 17 (couldn’t join within a year of a detention center order).

Got a job working on a road as civil engineers assistant (carry the equipment mostly) for very low pay (£1 an hour). At the same time started a Maths GCSE at night at a local school, though didn’t complete it. Did a few other unskilled jobs as well.

At 17 did an unsupervised MENSA IQ test and scored high, IQ 149: top 2% and high enough to join MENSA if I had sat the supervised IQ test. You would not believe the boost in confidence that gave me, in hindsight it’s not that important (high IQ means you are good at doing IQ tests). Still, it gave me the confidence to go full time back into education (GCSEs, A-Levels and Open University courses) and eventually study a degree in genetics at University (went to Uni at 21). Everything went wrong mind you because of my health, but I was more than capable of studying at that level (actually I was very surprised how dumb some of the people at University with me was!).

Had to leave University at 24 because of my health with just the final exams to sit to get a degree in genetics (I literally could not site exams)! Spent a year or two waiting for a cure that never materialised (still have the back problems now). If my back had held out I’d be a research geneticist now, probably working on curing a disease like AIDS/HIV.

By ~26 I’d realised I wasn’t going to be able to finish my genetics degree, but I also couldn’t work in a traditional 9-5 capacity (I literally couldn’t sit in a chair beyond 30 minutes!).

That’s about 13 years ago and the Internet was taking off in a big way and saw the Internet as my route to earning money.

Started an Illegal Business!

At around 26/27 years of age I stumbled into an illegal business selling pirated CDs online! I had three children who we home educated, but had no money to buy them educational software (was on Income Support on medical grounds). Bought some cheap pirated educational CDs (compilation warez CDs) and started trading pirated educational CDs (bought a cheap CD writer) with like minded people to get my kids educational software.

In no time at all I had one of the best pirated educational/children’s software collections on the warez scene (no one else offered educational CDs) and people started offering to buy the CDs :-) Within a year trading standards knocked on the door, took my CD copying equipment and about 5,000 pirated CDs and I was in court for trademark infringements etc… In the local papers they were talking about my illegal business making hundreds of thousands of pounds, I was selling CDs for £2.50 each from a bedroom on a PC!

I didn’t make a great deal of money (it was worthwhile), to some degree I was happy I was doing something productive even though it was illegal, really does suck to feel useless when you can’t work!

I was very lucky, the magistrates court I first went to didn’t think the maximum 2 year prison sentence they could give was harsh enough so referred the case to the the crown court!!! The crown court saw things differently, before trading standards stopped my little illegal business I’d already been looking to close it down and move into a legal business and before the case came to court I’d started a new business, I received a suspended sentence and a fine (could have got 10 years!). I think it helped that it was educational CDs I was pirating and why I got into it.

I can’t regret the illegal pirated CDs business as it helped with my children’s education (educational software was expensive) and I realised I was bloody brilliant at dealing with customer support and the experience taught me some valuable lessons I still use today. I’ll add, warez might be illegal, but the people I dealt with as customers and traders (other pirate CD sellers traded freely: a one for one CD swap trade) were really friendly.

My First Legal Adult Business

At around 28/29 years of age I had my first legal business, I started an online ecommerce store selling adult sex toys and sexy lingerie. I had NO interest in products like those, but the mark up is AWESOME: 50p vibrator sells for £5!

Learnt search engine optimization on the ecommerce site (the ecommerce software I used was almost anti-SEO, so I had to learn fast) and my first full years trading was ~£80,000.

Really enjoyed search engine optimization, but didn’t enjoy dealing with adult products. The SEO for an adult website means gaining links from adult sites, so you tend to spend a lot of time on porn sites etc… which is not me. Add to that dealing with returns and it’s not a business I’d choose to do if I had alternatives.

Moved into offering SEO services and have never looked back.

My point of posting this is to highlight how long it took me to realise I could even start a business let alone run one and I’m sure just reading the above will inspire some to realise there’s nothing special about starting a business.

How Hard is it to Start a Business?

When I was young I had a view people like me (poor people) do not do well in life and they certainly don’t start their own business, I’d never even considered University until I was 17!

If you’d have asked me when I was a teenager what you have to do to start a business I’d have guessed it required going to University, having a LOT of money and registering as some sort of company. Knowing the right sort of people would also be helpful.

When I was looking into starting my adult toys/lingerie business I contacted Companies House (place for registering businesses) for information on how to register a business. Yes, at 28 I thought to own a business I had to register it with a place like Companies House and I’d have to have solicitors etc… to form some sort of limited company or something (I expected to have to pay a lot of money as well). I even went as far as to get information on forming an offshore company! Basically I didn’t have a CLUE how easy it is to start a business in Britain!

Truth is to start a business without forming a limited company etc… (you can form a LTD, but you don’t have to), you register as self-employed, fill out one form that you are now self-employed and that’s it, you are now in business.

Took me months to work that little bit of useful information out (seemed to easy :-) ).

If at 17 years of age I knew what I know now I think I’d have started a business at 17 rather than only go to University (might have still gone to Uni, but I wouldn’t have relied on it as I did).

I never saw a window cleaning round, cleaning cars, digging gardens…. as a business when I was younger, but they are. Before going to University I was making ends meet by going to auctions, buying damaged TVs and videos and repairing them: I’d buy old portable TVs at auction that worked, add a cheap TV aerial and sell them to a local second hand shop for ~£5 profit. I didn’t make a lot of money, but it was my first steps as a young entrepreneur. When you are studying full time an extra £10-£20 a week makes a big difference.

Do you have an entrepreneur in you, just waiting to get out?

David