My Egg Noodles

When I was 12 my Dad’s business went bust and the mortgage company rebosest our lovely house and put us into one of the worst state run flats in the area. The area was disgusting, an area no parent would want to raise their kids in.

My Dad grafted every hour of the day in the spare room starting a new business, to get us out of the shit-hole we were in. He partnered up with a guy who was based in Manchester, which meant Dad was traveling up and down the country every week. I clearly remember when he let me come along for the ride during school holidays – it was great fun. I can remember one particular trip when my Dad didn’t have enough money to get a hotel room, so we slept in the office on post sacks – I’m not sure if he enjoyed that night, but I certainly did!

Luckily the business took off to become a multi million pound turn over company with 600+ staff and it wasn’t long before we moved into another great house – where I would spent the rest of my childhood with my parents.

I’m lucky that I got to see my Dad turn around his, and my familes life around – from living in the worst area of London to building relationships with Britain’s most successful businessmen – and the great thing was he took me everywhere. At 16 I remember sitting in one of the most impressive offices in London, it was located on the top floor and I clearly remember the guy had a very sexy PA who handled everything – got the coffee’s, sorted out documents and generally took care of all the time consuming jobs – I wanted the same there and then. That guy was Stan Myerson, the CEO of the Express group. I was just a spotty teenager at that time but Stan took a good hour chatting to me about what I wanted to do with my life and threw in some good wisdom as well.  The value of learning business at such a young age taught me many things, in particular the true value of sitting at the top of the tree.

One thing for sure is that when I have kids, I’ll be teaching them about business as soon as they can talk and encouraging and explaining about everything I do.

Thanks Dad.