This photo is of me and my extended family, taken around the time of "COVID Christmas" 2020 AKA one of the weirdest years on the planet, ever, and all bar Megan & James (my eldest daughter and her partner sat at the back) all of our kids still lived with us so as you can imagine "working from home" took on a whole new meaning in 2020/21!
According to Myers Briggs I'm an ENFJ-A AKA An Assertive Protagonist*
*...meaning I feel called to serve a greater purpose in life. I'm thoughtful, kind and idealistic, forever striving to have a positive impact on other people and the world around me. I rarely shy away from an opportunity to do the right thing, even when doing so is far from easy. I'm a hard working, family man with 5 1/2 kids (and no that's not a typo) just doing what I do because I love IT! The Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator is a self-report inventory designed to identify a person's personality type, strengths, and preferences. The questionnaire was developed by Isabel Myers and her mother Katherine Briggs based on their work with Carl Jung's theory of personality types. Today, the MBTI inventory is one of the most widely used psychological instruments in the world.
Hi I'm Neil.
I'm just an ordinary guy who believes anything is possible and that anyone can do anything - just not everything. No matter how hard we work, the day will come when we'll leave this world behind, and rest assured, there will still be items left on our to-do lists.
After leaving school at 16 I went onto to college to study technical art and design and then started my career within the print trade, like my father before me and his before him. But this was the dawn of the digital age and the print trade was fast becoming obsolete so I left that behind after 3 short years and decided to get into retail just as Next Plc hit the high street.
As enjoyable at that was,I found myself wanting more.
Switching Retail for Technology I joined Alcatel Lucent (now part of Nokia) in 1992 and over the next 7 years worked my way up from a field-based Sales Consultant to The Head of Sales (UK-SME) managing a team of 50+ with a combined sales target of c£20m. I was lucky enough to get professionally trained in the art of sales and marketing and quickly gained recognition as a top achiever (1994/5/6), winning UK Salesman of the year in 1997.
in 1998 I joined Alcatel's Global Club Elite for having secured over £1m of new business in a month, which at the time was a pretty big deal.
Life was good.
In 1999 I decided to leave the corporate world behind and start my own business, and so began my entrepreneurial journey. I was just turning 30 and figured it was now or never. At the time I was recently married with 2 kids, a small mortgage (£28k I think from memory) and a six figure corporate salary. Yep, I was earning well over £100k a year when I said "f*ck it, I'm doing this thing", so leaving the "security" of my well paid corporate job didn't go down that well with everyone within my family circle but I knew I had to follow my heart, or was it my head?
Maybe it was both.
You know what I mean.
Truth be told It was actually a colleague of mine that pointed out to me "you'll never earn any money working for someone else" that led me to finally make up my mind, hand in my resignation and go it alone. I later learnt that statement was a total and utter bullsh*t but it sounded about right at the time.
Little did I know it would go on to shape the next 20+ years of my life.
So this is what happened....
I founded Futurcom (my 1st business) with £50k of my own money and set about becoming a trusted ICT solutions provider specialising in mid-market, multi-site technology solutions. I quickly grew sales from zero to £1.4m before successfully exiting the business through a trade sale.
So far so good :-)
I was young, what did I know?
I certainly didn't know much about running a business, or different asset classes and investment vehicles but thankfully I knew that every businesses needed to communicate, which quickly led me to think BIGGER, after-all this was the time of dot-com boom!
So, having been approached by PwC to pitch my 2nd business to a group of investors, I headed off to The Strand to pitch FOCAS (Free Online Communications Advisory Service) in an attempt to raise....
Wait for it...
Two hundred and fifty THOUSAND pounds!
Doh!
Not knowing a thing about venture capital needless to say I didn't get the money. They politely told me I should've asked for £5m or £10m and had I have done they'd have signed me a check there and then and we'd have been off to the races.
Mind blown!
£5m -£10m, for a teeny tiny piece of my little ol' business, WTF just happened?
I couldn't comprehend it. I left that day, feeling somewhat bewildered and deflated, with a book the size of the bible on "Knowing your IP (Intellectual Property)" and off I went back to my life to try and wrap my head around it all.
I struggled, a lot.
But like I said, I was young, I thought I knew it all and I figured I was already pretty well off.
Ha, little did I know.
Because next came the dot-com bust.
Oh sh*t, now what?
Well that was 2002 and we're now in 2024 so if you're really that interested you can read up on what happened over the next 20 years on my LinkedIn profile but to cut a long story short that one question that I was asked as I stood in front of my peers, namely "what is it that you really want" stuck with me, led me to question everything I knew, everything I had, everything I didn't have and ultimately went on to shape my future in unimaginable ways.
So, what would you do if money we're no object?
Having enjoyed (financial) success at quite an early age I later went on to lose pretty much everything I'd ever worked for, including my marriage, my home, my businesses, all my assets and most of my friends.
They Say That what doesn't kill you makes you stronger...
I stopped working for money and instead started to work for satisfaction and after some serious realignment of my life goals and priorities I'm pleased to say that I am now very well balanced, happier, healthier, wealthier and far more content than I've ever been in my entire life.
Nowadays I'm simply too blessed to be stressed and I so don't worry about anything, ever.
It's not been an easy ride for me but no-one ever said it would be. Honestly, I wouldn't change a thing. I'm here now, I love what I do and I have a great work-life-balance.
That's me, what about you?