ADVERSITY NEEDED…

I think it’s safe to say that many business owners are seeing the lockdown as their darkest time but, with determination, adversity can bring out the greatest in us.

I’m an intensively private person, my story does not get shared around but as it’s #mentalhealthawarenessweek, lockdown has yet to end (and it’s also my birthday) … I thought I’d share my journey with you.

When I was 18 my father died of cancer. 2 weeks later my mother found out that his 2 partners had asset stripped the business (which employed 60) whilst he was ill. They started up on their own as soon as he died whilst we faced losing the family home and my dream of university looked lost. 

My response to this was to start my own business… 7 months later I was able to start university and my mother kept the family home until she downsized 6 years later. At 23 I talked my way into a job as Financial Controller at a national firm (roughly ￡50m p.a. turnover in todays money) - ignorant of corporate politics I devised a complete restructuring plan off my own back and took it to the MD. Amazingly he loved it, and so did the 2 biggest shareholders — 6 months later I was made FD of the company and over the next 18 months the profits increased 600%.

All was going well until I lost my fiancé of the time to cancer… soon after that a friend asked me to join his new accountancy firm as a partner. Wanting change, I accepted, but one month later his father died and he went back to his native New Zealand.

So, at 26 I was once again facing a complete change. With no experience of a traditional accountancy business model I developed my own… with fixed rate billing and no unexpected fees charged (completely new for accountancy at the time, it has now become pretty much standard).

That practice built up to over ￡1m+ fee income. I met up again with a childhood sweetheart, got married, had two children… and then it was my turn. This time both bowel and prostrate cancer.

The practice was sold to a national firm and I took two years out to beat the cancers (taking a couple more degrees in the meantime)

Then I started it off again, building another ￡1m practice, a multi-million tax service etc and helping build clients businesses and their wealth… creating 23 millionaires to date. Each major adversity has helped to direct me towards helping others reach their business goals.

If you are determined (and have the right strategy) lockdown can work to push you forward… onwards and upwards. Even after all I have done it has helped me format a new strategy — this time via Les Robinson Strategic, which re-launches next week with a low cost solution to getting top business and strategic advice (along with business recovery help) to the companies that need it.

To paraphrase Churchill “Lockdown may seem like the end, but it is not the end, nor the beginning of the end, but it is perhaps a new beginning”

Les Robinson