In 1976 I started secondary education at the excellent Bishop Challoner RC Secondary School also in South Ham. The school was and still is, a wonderful supportive extended family environment providing both first-class education borne out by fantastic outcomes for students over decades and the sort of family community ecosystem that brings many former students such as myself back to educate our own children and to give back to the school community by volunteering for PTA and Governance Duties.

Being part of a huge family has its benefits but also, it’s downsides and at 16, I wanted to leave home. My eldest stepbrother had already gone to join the Royal Navy some years early and in 1981, I decided to follow in his footsteps, joining up and taking the Oath and the Queens Shilling at HMS Raleigh in Plymouth in July as an Aircraft Engineer.

It was in the Royal Navy that I really found myself, and the recent TV recruitment tag line of …………“Born in Wimbledon and made in the Royal Navy!” ……..could never be more true for me!

Being in the Royal Navy is at times extremely dangerous, but it’s also exciting, and I loved it. As well as training me to become a first-class Sea Harrier engineer, the Royal Navy taught me how to be a leader, and how to nurture and see the potential in others. I met a lot of different people during my time in the Navy, all with their own unique and different qualities and personalities and all of whom needed to be handled differently. There were those with strength in creativity, those who showed strong leadership qualities or those that could follow orders and knuckle down and those that needed the freedom to learn. The Navy showed me how to get the best out of these different characteristics and personality types and to lead them in a way that was fitting to their personalities and the requirements of the service.

My last posting in the Navy was two years with the Fleet Air Arm Field Gun Crew, my greatest achievement in my naval career. The ultimate team sport and ultimate team building and leadership evolution, taken from the service and the country by Blair in 1999. In 1993 I was selected for the competition. (Read more about the Royal Navy Field Gun Crew)

In 1994 after 13 years in the Navy, I decided it was time to leave. It coincided in a period where post-Cold War Europe the armed forces were looking for volunteers to take redundancy under a program called ‘Options for Change”. I wanted to start a family and couldn’t imagine being away from my wife and a young family, so I walked out of HMS Daedalus on 30^th November 1994.

I immediately applied for a job at a company who specialised in audio-visual installations as an internal service engineer, a role which I felt well equipped for and which suited the skillset I had developed during my time in the Navy. Reflex Ltd were and still are today a cornerstone of the audio-visual industry in the UK. The opportunities and experience there came to me at a fast and furious pace, Pre-Installations Manager, Installations Manager and Project Manager in the space of four years. The mentors in that business at that time were extremely important to my civilian second career development and I owe much to Andy Brymer, Andy Read, and Mike Nield.

In 1998, I set up Focus 21 Visual Communications Ltd, with Nigel Warrilow, who I worked with at Reflex. Nigel and I were from very similar military backgrounds, he served with the Royal Air Force on Tornadoes. The next 20 years saw Focus 21 achieve fantastic growth and success, winning many awards, and leading the way with personal and team development along the Infocomm (now Avixa) Global Industry Standards and acquiring two additional companies to expand and improve our offering across the UK which lead us to being one of the largest privately owned audio-visual installation companies in the country. The core of our success was down to our team of more than 100 people who under our guidance and nurture really became the backbone of the business. In 2018 Focus 21 were acquired by a global giant in the audio-visual industry and I made the decision to exit the business I had set up more than 20 years earlier.

After a short break in 2019, I decided to set up A10 Consultancy Ltd, fuelled by the belief that every business could benefit from an outsider’s view and that I was uniquely placed to provide simple, tangible but expert advice. My skills and experience mean that I can selectively mentor and coach business leaders and individuals with the knowledge I gained from walking the path from start-up to exit, an award-winning project and service-based business. What I have learned since 1981 isn’t from a textbook or by qualification but from my own personal journey experience.