Creator of Taking Action Online
1. Can you summarize for our audience what you and/or your business does?
I help beginner solopreneurs get started online with blogging and YouTube and content creation. I also teach them how to use email marketing to generate consistent income and build a long term and sustainable business online.
2. Is there a story to tell about your journey to success that might inspire others?
I started from scratch, with no money or hope of succeeding back in 2012. After 4 years of struggling with budget constraints, having a full time job and lot of personal problems, I managed to make a breakthrough. The tables turned in 2016 when I decided to move back home to my parents to live rent free for one year. I cut off all contact with the outside world and worked 7 days a week, nothing else. I knew it was the right thing to do, so It was an easy decision, regardless how humiliating it was to live with my parents as a 33 year old man.
3. What’s your vision of the future for your business and yourself personally?
Personally, I am currently travelling around the world as a nomad, that will not change for a while. For my business, I will keep refining my courses and coaching programs to ensure my customers get the most up to date and genuine training available.
4. What change would you make in the world if you had the power to change anything you wanted?
I would re-shape the education system to teach all children about personal finance, investing, and compound interest. This would end so much misery and slave like existence for many people around the world.
5. What’s the most interesting, unexpected, or quirky thing we don’t know about you?
I’m not sure. My life is exceptionally boring. I work all the time. I love working; it is what I do. I guess the most unexpected thing people experience when buying a course of mine is that I tell the truth, which is rare in my niche. There are no shiny cars or nonsense marketing. Just the cold, harsh truth of “most of you will fail” coaching, which most people are both shocked but also appreciative of.
6. Who or what do YOU look to for inspiration?
I love watching interviews with actors who have got 20+ years behind them. They always have incredible stories of epic rejections, years of failing forward and interesting stories on how they got their big shots. All their struggles are relevant to business and how my students feel and I use examples all the time to showcase the need to keep pushing, even in the face of absolute failure and rejection.
7. What’s the greatest risk you’ve taken so far and why did you take it?
In 2018, I decided to fly around the world to meet 30 of my students face-to-face for free. It cost me $20,000 in flights and hotels and the travel damn near killed me! Haha! I literally flew around the world, covering the USA, India, Sweden, New Zealand, Australia, the United Kingdom and Ireland. I flew to New Zealand from Scotland for a 4 hour meeting, when I think about it now, it was insane! Haha! But it was well worth it, and I learned so much. When I was in America, I did 14 flights in 21 days, it was brutal. It was a risk, but I knew the value I would bring my students would be life-changing.
8. Please briefly describe the most innovative or impactful project you’ve worked on to date, the one that grabbed your attention and you just knew you had to go all in.
I am currently working on developing a software that user AI to generate lead magnets that can be instantly shared from one dashboard. Their links are tracked and the conversion templates inside ensure massive list growth. I am really excited about this because it uses brand new technology and it is a tool I will love to use myself and I know my students will love it too! Working with the developers is a real challenge, but I am stepping into the unknown, which is exciting and fun.
9. Do you have any recent wins you’d like to share, feel free to boast just this once?
In August of 2023, I sold all my possessions and my home and left the UK. I became a digital nomad. This was an huge decision but 10 months later, I am living a surreal life and I could not be happier. I set up my company in Dubai and I have opened up 100 new doors in business opportunities which normally I would never have access to. Incredibly scary, time consuming and challenging, but worth every minute. Took me 3 years and 1000s of hours to build up the knowledge and courage to pull the trigger on leaving the UK.
10. On reflection, what would you have done differently if you had that time again?
I would tell myself to stop overthinking and do-do-do! Just go for it. Stop worrying about the nonsense that will never happen. Fail harder and faster. I would read more and not shy away from anything that “normal people” considered stupid or lame.
11. What advice would you give to inspire someone who sees what you’ve achieved and might want to model your success?
Just start. The only way to succeed is to fail hard and fail fast. Be self aware so you do not make the same mistake again and again. I am not special. I am average in every way possible. Most of the things I try, even now, do not work the way I hope. I am still failing forward, even though I am 12 years ahead of most people. That never ends. Had I learned this sooner, I would have known that “successful people” keep failing daily. That is how you grow.
12. Where can our audience contact you or find out more about the products or services you offer?
Head over to www.takingaction.online, or you can follow my Facebook page