Where it all
comes from.
The early lesson
I grew up in Hartlepool, then moved to Middlesbrough for secondary school.
Working class background. Graft was not something we sat around defining. It was just how life worked.
My first high school was hard. I was bullied and eventually moved schools. Things improved, I found my people, and for a while life felt easier.
Too easy, as it turned out.
I stopped working hard. I convinced myself I did not need to. Then the results came back and I realised quite quickly that if I wanted real options, I had to start applying myself properly.
Sixth form became the turning point.
I put the work in, became Head Student, got my results and earned a place at university.
That was probably the first time I properly understood the difference between being busy and actually applying graft in the right direction.
Corporate sales
I started part-time in telephone customer service inside financial services.
It was relentless.
Target-driven, high-pressure and unforgiving.
I grafted, became one of the top sales performers and moved into leadership. I kept taking on more responsibility, kept delivering and kept pushing for the next step.
Over 16 years at Barclays, I learned sales, leadership, targets, pressure, structure and how to lead people in a serious commercial environment.
I also learned the hard way that graft in the wrong places can wear people down.
There was a period where the pressure caught up with me. Burnout, breakdown, the lot. I do not hide from that because it shaped how I lead and how I work now.
Coming through that period taught me something I have not forgotten.
Graft in the wrong order, without the right structure around it, does not build things.
It wears people down.
When I stopped grafting for the next promotion and started building properly for myself and my teams, everything shifted.
Three promotions followed. I ended up leading a national sales team of 150 people, which was the role I had always wanted.
Finding my home in startups and scaleups
After Barclays, I entered the startup and scaleup world and found my home.
The first step was setting up my own business, Embrace. It was an Emotional Intelligence and NLP-led leadership coaching business.
And I will be honest.
It was tough.
I thought I knew it all.
I did not.
Then the pandemic hit.
I was grafting hard, but no amount of graft prepared me for the fallout of the pandemic.
That period taught me more about being a founder than any training course ever could. The pressure. The uncertainty. The overthinking. The need to sell while also trying to deliver, plan, lead and keep going.
After that, I joined a startup SaaS business on a mission for good that had secured its first round of funding.
That pulled me properly into the startup and scaleup world.
Sales. Growth. Operations. Funding pressure. Founder pressure. Commercial delivery. All of it happening at pace.
I worked as Head of New Business. I worked as Managing Director. I supported triple figure growth in two businesses. I supported businesses in raising more than £2 million.
And through all of it, I kept seeing the same pattern.
The founder was grafting. The team was busy. The business had potential. But the structure was not strong enough.
That is where NG³ came from.
Not theory. Not hype. Not a clever framework for the sake of it.
A practical method built from wins, mistakes, pressure and real commercial work.
"Graft in the wrong order, without the right structure around it, does not build things. It wears people down."
