‘You can do anything if you put your mind to it’

Entrepreneurial spirit can come from anyone, from any background, growing up in any town, even Berwick-upon-Tweed, if you are prepared to go out and show it.

That was the core message shared with Longridge Towers School pupils by this year’s Founders Day speaker, Michael Brennan, who has started two businesses, raised several million pounds and is now living with his young family in London.

He told the current Longridge leavers: “I looked back this week at what I wrote in my leavers book when I was your age, and it was – ‘I don’t know what I want to be when I’m older, but I want to start my own business, and I want to be worth fifty million pounds’.

“I don’t know why I came up with that figure and I’m nowhere near making fifty million pounds yet, but I know where I want to go and I’m having fun on the way. I’m working hard, being curious, getting out of that comfort zone and that includes standing here very nervous today, shaking.

“But I’m doing it because I want to inspire you guys to try. If I get one person in the room to get excited and go home and try something new tonight or over the summer holidays, then hopefully I’ve done my job. If I can do all of this, imagine what all you can do.”

Using personal experience of bullying to make schooldays better

These days the 36-year-old is married and lives in London, and his wife Amelia recently gave birth to their first child, Sophia. He is not a Longridge alumni, instead attending Tweedmouth Middle and Berwick Academy, where he was Head Boy, before going on to study Business Management at university in Edinburgh.

Michael was a good rugby winger at school and at Berwick RFC before work took him away from the pitch and he spoke of his on-field jousts with Longridge Head of Pastoral and former Scotland Sevens cap Andrew Skeen. He told the pupils that he never harboured ambitions to be a professional athlete, but instead always wanted to be an entrepreneur and instead of idolising sports stars he looked up to Virgin owner Richard Branson.

When it has come to dreaming up products he could develop, he has turned to his own experiences.

“I see myself as a Berwick boy now, but I started out in Essex and I experienced bullying down there,” he explained, “and when I was Head Boy at Berwick I realised that there wasn’t an easy way for young people to have a safe space in a digital world to report things.

“So, with social media exploding and concerns and cyberbullying all around them, myself and my school friend Kieran Innes saw an opportunity to provide children with a voice but also link it to the safeguarding lead in schools to provide an early intervention opportunity.

“The government programmes provided good evidence with Tootoot proving to be four times more likely to help a child to report a concern at the earliest opportunity, and a reduction in large-scale issues in schools by up to 20%.”

He and Kieran came to Longridge when seeking help to develop ‘Tootoot’, working with pupils to understand the challenges and how it could be effective. From launch in 2013, Michael and Kieran (pictured) raised over £2m to develop the App into an award-winning safeguarding and anti-bullying platform promoted by the UK Government and used across 14 different countries. They were recognised as Forbes Under-30 Entrepreneurs of the Year for their success.

With that success under his belt, Michael left Kieran to continue to develop Tootoot, and Stribe, an off-shoot for school staff, and sought a fresh opportunity to create something new.

Improving the environment and men’s skin key to ‘Bob’

“I was keen to try something else,” explained Michael, of his move, “and use my creativity to come up with something in a completely different sector.

“I looked at things we all use and when I looked at men’s body wash I did some research and found there had been no real innovation in that for the last 50 years.

“We are more environmentally friendly now and yet we have tons of plastic bottles in the shower that get thrown to landfill or even up in the sea. So, I set up ‘Bob’ – welcometobob.com – and created a refillable body wash, and we spent a lot of time looking at finding the right ingredients for your skin.

“We launched it last February and after about 14 months we’ve got 25,000 subscribers, and some great investors across the UK and internationally. We’re on track for around £3m pounds of revenue and the business is valued at £12m.

‘Those are just numbers – more valuable is the journey’

“But those are just numbers. What is more valuable for youngsters from that journey is learning that here was me, a young lad in Berwick who wanted to be entrepreneurial, and I found a way to do that.

“I have made mistakes but learned along the way and my key message to the Longridge pupils was not to be scared of that, of making mistakes. There are so many opportunities out there, but you’ve got to go and hunt for them; they’re not going to come to you.

“Some people are fortunate to have the networks and connections, and some people are not. I wasn’t. I had to find them. And when you’re in a rural area, you might have to travel that bit further to find the opportunity, but you have to be prepared to work. If you are and you do the opportunities are out there.”

‘You can do anything if you put your mind to it’

Michael recently completed a phenomenal charity effort, running seven marathons in seven days and raising £20,000, so he is certainly not sitting back on his laurels and with a newborn daughter at home his time to drive a new business is only going to become more challenging.

But he is undaunted and left the Longridge students and, particularly the departing Upper Sixth Form, with a clear message.

“You can do anything if you put your mind to it,” he concluded. “You have this summer holiday to research something you’re interested in or learn an incredible skill that others that are older don’t have time for.

“No-one’s going to do it for you. You can keep asking parents or guardians; you can blame them for it not happening. The faster you realise that you can do anything if you put your mind to it, the faster the opportunity to find success.”