Origin Story
I was born and raised in Bristol, in a bubble.
I went to nursery, primary school, high school, college and university all just 5 minutes from my parent’s house, where I grew up in a box bedroom that could only fit a single bed and was small enough that you could lie out and touch both sides.
I dropped out of uni with the idea that I could work for myself.
With no entrepreneurial n network around me, I started my first business while working part-time for more than 3 years, using the internet to teach me the skills I needed.
While working part-time, I went from stacking shelves in Sainsbury’s, where I earned ‘produce champion’, worked at RBS, where I beat the teams' record of loans sold in one month and finally moved into property lettings, where I beat the record for most properties rented in one month.
It seemed I was rather good at sales.
I had many ideas, and as a marketing agency was the first business I started, had the unfortunate ability to bring them to life as brands.
I loved the buzz of starting things but had never experienced growing things. I loved the buzz of sales. I loved building relationships and making people happy.
While building my business I realised I had no one to speak to about it. My friends didn’t get it. Neither did my parents (who undoubtedly hoped I’d get over this phase and “get a real job”).
So I started a meetup.
Being someone who had become good at creating brands, I made this non-existent event look serious. I called it an ‘Association’ and branded it as ‘YENA’ — a group specifically for young entrepreneurs to meet.
I did this to connect with like minds and also to find customers for my marketing work.
About 5 people turned up to the first event. They really enjoyed it and wanted to meet again. I organised this for a month or so later and they continued to run from there.
People started to come from all over to attend these events. Someone even drove from Sheffield and back to Bristol for one which is around an 8-hour round-trip. Clearly, we were scratching a bigger itch than I realised.
In reaction to this, we started to grow into new cities. First Bath, then onto London, Manchester, Birmingham, Cardiff, and others.
I was driving to every single event, every month, on my own dime. The events were free and I wanted them to always stay that way so that anyone could attend without having to worry about budgeting for it. I would drive to Manchester and back in one night, get home around 1 am and get up for work the next day.
I don’t know why I was doing this, I just knew it needed to be done.
After a few years of this, we grew internationally too, starting with Melbourne (I’ve never been to Australia) and people started to ask what we sold — the answer at the time, was “nothing, but what would you want if we did?!”
People mentioned all types of things relating to supporting their business & the events themselves. This was very much a case of “ask people what they want and they’ll tell you more horses”, but I started by providing the proverbial horses (i.e. what they wanted) and intended to learn what they actually needed as quickly as I could.
We launched with a membership of £15/mo, and — to my surprise — people actually signed up. We were making money. I could sell it. Actually rather easily. It quickly became more of a question about ROI on time spent vs. The actual ability to convert (not to mention my obsession with ensuring we were providing actual value vs. alternatives who were providing what felt more like lip service and snake oil).
Over time we won enough members for me to decide to go full-time with the business. I stayed living with my parents to keep my costs down while we continued to experiment. In hindsight, this probably kept my brakes on a little but aside from not being able to date (who wants to go out with a broke guy that lives with his parents at 28 years old?) I didn’t really regret it as I had a bigger vision ahead.
From there, we developed into what you see now.
A few pivots, one pandemic; more events, then zero events, doubling down on digital, then back to the real world again and everything in between.
We are still default-alive. In a new phase and even had an offer or two to be bought out too (which I considered but felt that owning the organisation meant more in the form of opportunities to me for now).
So what’s next?
Well, all will become clear. Or already is if you’re subscribed to the videos I’m now posting on Youtube.
Stay tuned for the next decade in business. Things are about to get interesting…
This post originally started as an exploration of confidence, purpose and audacity, prompted by the ever-inspiring newsletters of Dr Julie Gurner. I started writing and realised it had become somewhat of a blog post. So here we are. What’s your origin story? Comment a link — I’d love to read it!
