I'm Just a fuck-up, who kept getting back up.

I am really looking forward to the 8th of December for the Great British Entrepreneur Awards finals, just five days before my 40th birthday.

I’m nervous, anxious, excited, baffled, honoured, grateful and hopeful!

Whatever the result, it’s just a great honour to even be in the finals amongst so many amazing businesses and entrepreneurs.

Taking a moment to reflect on this journey, I wanted to share some insights.

OYNB is my sixth start-up adventure!

At 14 I wrote a letter to Richard Branson. I told him I was going to change the world one day and I looked forward to having lunch with him.

I set up my first business at 15 selling and servicing PCs on my home island of Mull. This was my first lesson – I clearly needed to learn how to sell!

Then I spent 11 months selling door to door in Glasgow. I learnt how to sell and I learnt that it’s a numbers game. I also learnt how to overcome rejection (such as “will you FO”!)

I joined Caterpillar and sold plant machinery for three years, where I learnt how to sell to corporates, doing one of the biggest deals my area had seen in decades.

I felt I’d mastered sales and set up Briaf, a sales outsourcing agency in Edinburgh. At its peak, we employed ten people and I kept that going for three years. There, I learnt to never have your accountant write your legal contracts.

I set up an ISP next, and learnt that partners need skin in the game. While trust is great, a contract is better.

I co-founded another sales agency and learnt you can’t pay yourself more than the revenue you are generating.

We tried to launch a Scottish IT distribution centre - where I learnt you have to make sure all the stakeholders clearly understand the plan.

I got accepted for Series 2 of The Apprentice and told the world about my future stardom, only to be let down in the final seconds as the filming began.

It was through this rejection I bumped into an oil broker and my life took a U-turn.

I started as a gasoline broker and on the day they sacked me, one person gave me a lifeline.

My oil broking career was bumpy, but my teacher saw the diamond in the rough and thanks to his guidance over the years I built one of the most successful businesses while working at the world’s largest oil brokerage.

When we started OYNB, the first website never worked.

The second platform launched when it was broken - it took six months of working 20 hours a day (ten as a broker and ten fixing problems with OYNB). It nearly killed me, it nearly broke my marriage. It was helping so many people but tearing me apart.

We hired, they failed.

We built, it failed.

It failed, and failed and failed and failed. And yet it grew.

And now I’m nominated as a finalist for a Great British Entrepreneur award.

I’m not a great British entrepreneur.

I’m a serial failprenuer.

A failure, a fuck-up, a brash, rushed, mistake-making fool that made the same mistakes again and again and again.... just a little bit less each time.

But most of all, I never, ever, ever, ever gave up.

Of everything I’ve learnt, that’s the biggest lesson.

Don’t give up.

Keep failing, keep fucking up.

You never know where it will take you.

Ps - join me at the free event on the 8th of December here

https://hopin.to/events/great-british-entrepreneur-awards-national-final?fbclid=IwAR0YDvunIP5GJCBuTFVwJ20LlDnURwzLTOnU9VkAMuI0I9gTn0mTHW5GP8o