OLLIE FORSYTH, PUBLISHER

WHEN OLLIE ENTERED his teens, his dyslexia was so bad that he could barely read or write. But it didn’t take him long to realise that he had a talent for business. At the age of 13, he noticed his history teacher was wearing a friendship bracelet that lots of the boys coveted. He went home, found similar ones online, and persuaded 10 different suppliers around the world to send him 10 free samples at no cost.

‘They gave me 100, so I sold them for £10 each and made my first £1,000,’ he tells me, seven years later. ‘I put all the profit in the bank, and then set about trying to grow it.’

His success inspired him to set up a website, Ollie’s Shop, for which he sourced other products to be given as gifts. Within the first year, he earned £13,000. The next year, turnover doubled. By the time he was 16, he’d earned £50,000 from his business.

Throughout those three years, he was also being physically and verbally bullied by boys at school. In retrospect, he thinks it spurred him on. ‘I was different to most people,’ he explains. ‘They saw that as the golden opportunity to pick on someone. But it definitely makes you more determined. I never thought I’d give up. I used to go straight home from school and work on my business.’

His work ethic paid off, and by the time he left school at 16, he decided to shut down Ollie’s Shop and move on to his next venture: an entrepreneur’s magazine. ‘The idea was to get high-profile entrepreneurs in the magazine and showcase that to students,’ he explains. ‘That grew to 50,000 readers in the first year, and though it didn’t make much money, we did get around £15,000 in advertising. At that point we had the reach to commercialise it, so I made it into a club.’

The club is ‘TV Club’, an entrepreneurs’ community online that currently has 20,000 users, and aims to connect people with buyers, fundraisers and potential new business partners. He has a team of eight people working on it full-time, and it operates in 14 cities.

After 18 months he claims his company is worth £2.5 million – but for Ollie, this is just the start.

‘I want to launch some kind of financial project where entrepreneurs can raise money quickly and easily,’ he says. ‘But the goal is to sell the company in the next five to seven years, for around £100 million, which I think is feasible. Then I’d want to move on to the next project, and do something around investments.’

They are ambitious goals, particularly as Ollie is mainly self-taught. His parents aren’t involved (‘They just said, great, get on with it’) and he moved out at 18 to a flat in London. ‘I sort of learnt by watching loads of Youtube videos about how to sell, market and recruit people. I learnt how to pitch from Dragons’ Den.’

Now he spends most of his time on his business, getting into work at 6.30am and leaving at 11pm. ‘It’s a lot, but I have the mentality that you should take advantage of the fact that your competitors aren’t working at that time, so it means you have more resources and can grow twice as quick,’ he says. ‘I last had a holiday four years ago and I pay myself just enough to live on. All the profit I make goes into the business.’

It’s an intense existence for a 20-year-old, especially as most of his friends are at university, and don’t understand his life.

‘It’s quite weird for a teen to have a profitable business at school, and some were quite jealous,’ he says. ‘But some said, “Where will you be in the next five to 19 years?”’ For Ollie, the answer is easy. ‘By the time we’re all 25, my friends will have just left university. Whereas I will be selling a company and setting up my next one.’

BUSINESS VALUED AT £2.5 MILLION AGE 20 EMPLOYEES

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