3rd May 2026

Opening Reflection 

One of the things I pride myself on today is this:

I left school with no formal qualifications.

I’m dyslexic. School, for me, was a nightmare. The system didn’t work for me — and if I’m honest, I didn’t work for the system either. I was disruptive. I made my teachers’ lives difficult.

Looking back now, 60 years on, I don’t see a difficult child.

I see a boy struggling to cope in a world that measured intelligence in a very narrow way.

Back then, we were told one thing over and over again:

Education was everything.

Get good grades.
Go to university.
Become a doctor, a lawyer, an accountant.

That was the path to a comfortable life.

So How Did I Make It?

By all logic, I shouldn’t have succeeded.

Everything — the evidence, the system, the expectations — would have suggested I’d struggle. And to be fair, many people I grew up with did struggle.

So why did I manage to build a business that is still standing 25 years later?

It’s not because I had some hidden superpower.

I believe it comes down to two things:

Passion and focus.

Passion is powerful because it defies logic. It doesn’t need justification. It drives you when reason tells you to stop.

And focus — in today’s world especially — is the ability to block out the noise. The constant distractions. The endless opinions.

To focus on what matters most.

Escaping the Educational Funnel

Now, with the benefit of hindsight, I’m actually grateful I didn’t succeed in the traditional education system.

Because education, by its very nature, teaches you how to think within a framework.

It replaces instinct with reason.
It prioritises explanation over intuition.

And while that has its place, it can also have a consequence:

People stop trusting their gut.

They are conditioned to believe that if they can’t explain something logically, it must be wrong.

But life doesn’t always work like that.

The Power of Instinct

Everything I’ve built has come from trusting my instinct — what I call my second brain.

That gut feeling.

That sense that something is right — even when it doesn’t make sense on paper.

Now, let’s be clear — your gut isn’t always right.

Sometimes it reflects bias. Sometimes it misleads you.

But that doesn’t mean you ignore it.

It means you learn to understand it.

To know when it’s guiding you — and when it’s not.

Where AI Fits In

This is where things get interesting.

Because now we have AI.

When I was at school, I struggled with the mechanics — spelling, structure, putting arguments together. Those were barriers for me.

AI removes those barriers.

It helps me articulate my thoughts.
It helps me structure ideas.
It helps me communicate clearly.

But here’s the key point:

AI doesn’t replace instinct.

It enhances expression.

My gut still leads.
AI helps me explain it.

A Question for the Next Generation

So here’s something I’ve been thinking about:

Now that we have tools like AI to support reasoning and communication…

Should we be teaching people to trust their instincts more, not less?

Because your purpose — your direction — often comes from that inner voice.

And too many people ignore it.

They follow logic.
They follow data.
They follow what they’ve been told is “right.”

And in doing so, they lose something important.

Defying Logic

When I look back at my life, I can see that many of the decisions that shaped my success didn’t make logical sense at the time.

They were leaps of faith.

They went against advice.
Against evidence.
Against expectation.

But they felt right.

And more often than not, that feeling was enough.

Because if you only ever follow logic, you’ll only ever go where logic allows.

And that’s rarely where breakthroughs happen.

Closing Reflection

So here I am, at 68 years old, reflecting on a life that by all conventional measures shouldn’t have worked out the way it did.

And the conclusion I’ve come to is simple:

Trust your gut.

Not blindly. Not recklessly.

But with confidence.

Because your gut — your instinct — is often the thing that sees what logic cannot yet explain.

So to anyone out there — especially those thinking about starting something, building something, taking a leap:

Don’t get lost in the research.
Don’t wait for perfect evidence.

Sometimes, you just have to listen to that voice inside.

And go.

Onwards.