Name: Multi-millionaire at 19 - here are my 5 top tips | BBC Ideas
Uploaded: 2020-07-14T02:52:08.000Z
Duration: 3 min 59 s
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The first business venture--so to speak--I tried was selling sweets at school.

At the time I was looking to buy a PlayStation, and I wanted to buy it myself, with my own money.

At that age, people were not allowed to go outside of school grounds during the school day, so I thought: Perfect. I've got a captive customer base.

"Eat the frog" means start your day with the hardest task you have.

And it means the rest of your day becomes a lot easier and smoother.

In sixth form you'd have free periods, for example, and there was times where I would sit in the free period and do financial forecasts, people would look over my shoulder and think I'm insane.

But, you know, it's difficult to explain, but I thought actually OK if I'm prioritizing this now because I know I've got a due date for an essay in two weeks, and it's just about managing that workflow.

"Learn From Real Life" is my next top tip.

Both my parents are deaf, so my older sister and I have been carers to them our whole lives.

I think we matured a lot earlier as children because we had to.

If I went all the way back to the start of Doorsteps, that starts when I moved house when I was about ten or 11 years old.

Being carers for my parents, we got a bit more of a hands-on experience of the whole property move.

So I tried to understand the breakdown of costs and a big one inevitably was estate agency fees.

So a few years later, we learnt about different disruptors in different industries, taxi driving for Uber, shopping with Amazon, this is where I thought, "Actually, why don't we try and connect buyers and sellers directly?"

For me that was Michael O'Leary's biography about when he started Ryanair.

A good biography is really, really motivating.

It shows you that actually the people that started these insanely successful businesses were normal people, and they've decided to step out of their comfort zone and take a risk, and that's really inspiring.

Teach yourself new things is my next top tip.

I think without teaching yourself, it's difficult to start a business, because you need to understand every aspect and whether it's your forte or not, and understanding that means you can test the business cheaply.

And for me that was learning floor plans from scratch, photography from scratch, things I didn't have experience in.

So one thing I couldn't learn myself unfortunately at that point was learning to drive.

That's because I was only about 16 or 17, so to get to my first property I did have to pay my sister's boyfriend to drive me down to the property in East Sussex so I could then go and do the visit.

I've understood that my Mum 95 percent of the time is right, and she is wiser than yourself.

So my Mum has been very influential, well both my parents have.

They've never let their disability stand in their way.

Seeing that work ethic especially tracing back to migration for example for my Dad, from Africa into the U.K.

It's not easy, and they've actually managed to get our family to the stage where we are now, where I'm actually able to take a risk in my own life because I know I've got this stable family background.

To be honest the success and the money hasn't made a difference to my life.

I do still live at home, still live with my parents.

I still go to the same type of places that I used to, I still don't have a car.

It's difficult to actually take a step back and look at the progress you've made, because I'm always kind of moving the goalposts further away.

So at the moment we're a start-up, we're in the midst of growing, it's really, really exciting stages, but I think we've got so much more to give.