About
Everything I teach I learned the hard way.
Hi, I'm Steve. I mentor founders who have already built something real and know they have another level in them. Mentor, founder, author.
I was born on a council estate in Wales. In the 90s I left the Armed Forces, found my way into sales and grafted up from the bottom. Then I got overlooked for the job I was already doing. Apparently I wasn't ready. That was the moment everything started.
Over the next 20 plus years I built, bootstrapped and ran businesses, several into multiple seven figures. I also had the liquidations, a catastrophic failure and a bankruptcy. I made the expensive mistakes and paid for them. The MBA came too, if you want the certificate behind the experience.
In 2016 I exited, and I was a little lost. I knew I had more to give. Twenty-five years of experience, the good, the bad and the genuinely ugly, sitting there going to waste while capable founders made the same mistakes I had already made and paid for.
That felt wrong. So I started mentoring, and I have worked with some seriously good founders across the UK, Ireland and the USA.
What I didn't expect was how much I would love it.
In a culture that thrives on knocking others, I love seeing good people do well. When we are in a session working through something that has blocked you for months, and it finally lands, you see it change in their eyes. A silence, then an almost audible click as it falls into place. That is everything to me.
I care about results, so I do not turn up and go through the motions. I lie awake working through your problems and opportunities as if the business were mine. When I take someone on, it is. And I will tell you the truth, even when it is not what you want to hear.
Credibility
Track record at a glance
MBA
25+ Years as a founder
Successful Exit in 2016
Armed Forces Veteran
Author Above The Line
Today
Working closely with a select few.
I work with a small number of elite clients, a maximum of five at any one time. That's it. The time, preparation, and energy I put into each person do not allow for volume. It demands quality and focus.
The founders I work with are already successful, but they remain hungry and driven. They are always pushing for something. Perhaps it's a number, a million, five million, ten million, an exit, a legacy. They want accountability, and they value someone who has walked a little of the road they are on to bounce ideas off.
All of them know there's more to come. They have enough ego to back themselves and enough self-awareness to know they don't have all the answers.
I help through my Above The Line Mentorship Program and one-to-one coaching, built around my Four Pillar system. This isn't just theory or a register-and-forget course, and I am not some bloke who read a few books and got a coaching certificate. I am someone who sat in that chair you are occupying now for over twenty years and carries the hard-earned wrinkles and grey hair to prove it.
If you're a successful business owner and founder who is serious about what comes next, let's talk. Book a call or drop me a message here. Let's have a conversation about where you are and whether I can help unlock a new level for you.
That's what I'm here for.