Paves the Way to
Forge Ahead.

I grew up on a council estate in Lowedges, Sheffield — Haslam Crescent, South Yorkshire. Working class, tight streets, three generations packed under one roof: my great grandmother, my nan, my mum, and my brother. My dad left early. I'm not going to analyse that — he left, and life went on. What I can say is that growing up without a father in the house shapes you in ways you don't fully understand until you're old enough to look back. The quick temper, the need to prove something through sport, the restlessness — none of that came from nowhere.

Saturday mornings at the school playing fields, sport on the concrete, belonging to something. I played football for Brunsmeer and from the age of 12 I was representing Yorkshire at badminton and tennis — picking up national, county, and regional awards along the way. I finished playing football at 16, just before Buxton. I grew physically not long after that, which would have been useful on a football pitch. The timing was, as with several things in my life, not ideal.

I played rugby too. Had my front teeth kicked out by our own hooker in a scrum. Our own man. And I made one tackle the whole team celebrated like we'd won the World Cup. That's what belonging to something actually feels like, not the big moments, the ones where the people around you decide it matters.

Jordanthorpe Comprehensive — sport constantly, a quick temper, fights, friendship, belonging. Then I bombed my O Levels. Lost interest right at the end — right when it mattered most. That pattern — getting close to something and then sabotaging it — would show up again.

At 16, I went to Buxton Sports College. First real structure around something I loved — how to officiate, how to coach, how to teach what came naturally to me. From Buxton I went to Huddersfield to train as a tennis coach. That love lasted twenty years. The game became my identity, my career, my life. But I need to be honest about this period too — it was also when I started to slowly derail. Alcohol, fighting, poor decisions. I managed to keep my job, but only just.

In 1991, partly running toward something, partly running away from everything, I got on a plane to America. The coaches at the Tennis Camp could see what I could do. For the first time, someone told me a scholarship was possible. For a kid from Sheffield who'd bombed his O Levels, that wasn't a sentence I'd ever expected to hear. I sat the testing. I passed. Good schools showed genuine interest. Then the Chemistry O Level came back to haunt me, one failed exam from a teenager who'd stopped caring six years earlier, and the door closed. That one stung.in a way that took a long time to shake.

In 1994 I landed in Perth, Western Australia. Played State League tennis, worked at clubs across Perth. On my first night out — Novaks in Northbridge — I met the woman who would become my wife.

My visa ran out. She joined me in England. I became Head Coach at Beauchief Tennis Club — the Sheffield club where I'd first picked up a racket as a kid, back where it all began. We got engaged. Two years later we moved back to Perth to get married. I was 28.

By 30, I was a father. By 37, I was a father of five — and running a tennis coaching business across 13 clubs. The career had grown in ways I hadn't planned: WA talent scout, captain and coach of regional and state teams. I applied for the WA State Coach position. I got to the final interview. And I blew it.

I didn't quit that day. The doubt started there — but it took weeks to finish the job.

What I didn't realise then was what quitting tennis actually meant for my body. Nearly thirty years of competitive sport had left it sore, worn, and done — and the relief of stopping came with a price I wouldn't understand for years. From that day until my redundancy, there was almost twenty years with no physical activity in my life. A couple of bad games of golf a year, if that. It wasn't a decision. It was just easier not to move.

It was close to the redundancy before I even looked properly. My frame had grown to a whopping 99 kilograms — and that number wasn't the start of feeling like shit. It was just further down the hole I was already in.

I became a salesman. New homes. I did okay — but after ten years across several builders, I knew with certainty that it wasn't for me. During this time, my doctor told me I was suffering from depression. The main driver was the financial pressure — the weight of not earning what I felt I should be, of watching the gap between what we needed and what I was producing. I didn't want medication. I went to see a psychologist, specifically to talk through the anxiety and hopelessness that came with our financial situation. I was told the sessions were free. The first thing she asked for was payment. I walked out and never went back. That was a mistake. Seems I've made a few of them.

I went to work for a friend at a startup I believed in. I gave it five very difficult years. Then the new investor pulled the plug. And then — almost simultaneously — my wife left and took the kids.

My world fell apart. Properly. Everything at once.

I showed a strength I didn't know I had. I won her back. It is, without question, the thing I am most proud of in my life. The investor sorted me with a new job as promised. For the first time in a long time, I started to feel secure again.

Then, out of nowhere — a few years later — I was made redundant.

Quitting tennis was a mistake I wouldn't understand for years. It gave me structure, identity, a reason to get up. The State Coach interview planted a doubt I couldn't shake. The overload, too many clubs, too many roles, had been building. Then I held my fifth child for the first time and something in me broke open. Fear of not being enough, not earning enough, not providing enough. I quit the same day. Not because I stopped caring about tennis. Because I'd convinced myself, in that one panicked moment, that caring about it was the thing standing between my family and being provided for.

In the weeks before I started walking I was angry. Not at anything specific. Just angry, the way a man gets when he has stopped moving and doesn't know why.

The first walk felt different. Not dramatic. Just relief. I was actually doing something. That sounds small. It wasn't.

Then the podcasts arrived. The Diary of a CEO was the first one that made me feel like something was possible. It was almost deafening, this constant message of have a go, do something, what are you waiting for. The curiosity came back. Slowly at first, then properly.

The weight came off the same way, not as a project, not as a goal, just as a side effect of finally moving again after twenty years of not.

The important people noticed. I'm forever a work in progress.

The moment the Forge was born