A Manchester man who was expelled from school aged 14 and left with no qualifications now runs three businesses with a combined worth of more than £20 million.
Adam Deering, 36, was kicked out of his all-boys school as a teenager after vandalising a car.
But thanks to the help of a good Samaritan, Adam went from being a troubled teen to a successful businessman, opening his own business aged just 21.
Adam Deering, pictured right, aged 19 in a job as a doorman. Adam was expelled from school at the age of 14 without a single qualification, and now runs three businesses worth more than £20m
Adam, who grew up with his grandparents from the age of 10, admits he was unruly as a teenager.
After his expulsion, he joined the RAF aged 16, but when it didn’t work out he returned home to Urmston, Greater Manchester and his life began to spiral out of control.
‘My education was that bad I didn’t even know the difference between odds and evens until I was 18 playing roulette at casinos’ he told the Manchester Evening News.
‘So when I was 16 I went into the RAF, as I thought, right that’s my life sorted for nine years. I thought that’s at least my 20s sorted. But when I joined the RAF I started drinking, and when you put alcohol on top of a troubled kid it didn’t really work out very well’ he added.
He returned home after three years of military service and got stuck in a cycle of ‘bumming around in rubbish jobs and getting fired.’
Adam, joined the RAF aged 16 after being expelled from school. Pictured here with his sister
Adam’s fortunes began to change when a friendly neighbour moved in down the street, and gave the teenager a job walking his dogs.
‘This guy called Chris moved on our street and he had a BMW, well, nobody had a BMW on my street, it was like a spaceship! So I got a job walking this guy’s two dogs and he always looked out for me’ Adam said.
‘I grew up in Urmston back in the 80s and 90s and there wasn’t a lot of money around back then, well there certainly wasn’t on my street.
‘When I left the RAF and I was 19 I got back in with some of my old mates, and was going off the rails, I was drinking, getting into trouble as teenage boys do, and he heard I was messing up a bit, bumming around in rubbish jobs and getting fired.’
Friendly neighbour Chris, who ran a marketing company, took Adam out for a meal, and set him straight.
He wrote Adam a CV, claiming he had worked for him for a year, lent him a suit and coached him for interviews.
‘He was really there for me’ Adam said.
Adam returned home after three years of military service and got stuck in a cycle of ‘bumming around in rubbish jobs and getting fired’ before a neighbour changed his fortunes forever
‘I was going for interviews for jobs on £35-40k, which I’d never get I was only 19, but he’d say it was good experience for me to keep doing it and I ended up getting a job at a paid directory service in Salford Quays.
‘Chris said to me: “Look you’ll be really good at sales if you tone down your Manchester accent a bit you’ll be really good!”‘.
Within two months of starting, Adam was the company’s top salesman.
He was then head-hunted to another company, running their debt management department.
A year later when Adam was turned down for a pay rise he decided to leave the company and aged just 21, set up his own business.
‘There were knocks, there was failure. My first office was in Stretford. It was when computers were like £2k we had a computer on credit from PC World, we only had enough money for one desk and chair. We couldn’t afford marketing, so just went through the Thomson Local ringing people up.
The entrepreneur, now 36, escaped a troubled upbringing to now sit at the helm of three Greater Manchester businesses with a combined turnover of over £20m
‘I just taught myself pretty much. There were years of struggle, it wasn’t easy’ he said.
Three years later, Adam set up another debt management company, just as the credit crunch was about to hit.
At age 26, he had 100 staff, and admits despite being ‘in awe of what he created’ he wasn’t that confident.
Now with money and a successful business, Adam fell back on old habits and began drinking in excess, spending money on ‘ferraris, drinking and partying’.
By 2012 Adam could see that his drinking was becoming a problem and he checked himself into a treatment centre in Thailand for a month to detox, and five and a half years later, he remains sober.
He says it’s ‘no coincidence’ that in the business success mostly happened when he stopped drinking.
Adam now runs Globe Net Solutions, an IT business with 30 staff and a turnover of £8m, Hanover Insolvency a debt management company with 65 staff and an £8m turnover and funeral planning business Pride Planning with a staff of 40 with a turnover of £6m.
Even now, as a successful businessman, Adam keeps in touch with his first mentor Chris, who just asks him to ‘pay it forward’ and ‘always help if you see a kid in trouble.’
Ultimately, Adam sees his tough upbringing as something that’s helped him get where he is today.
‘I think it’s important to go through a bit of a struggle. That hunger, the desire, you don’t want to go back where you’ve come from whereas if you’ve got a mum and dad who have paid for your degree do you have that hunger as much? Nobody pays my bills for me.’