Defining Moments
- Author:
- Alistair McLean
- Business:
- Activities Abroad
- Published:
- 10/11/2008 11:14:00
I never had a vision to be self employed, but that was before I realised I was in actual fact, unemployable. You hear about Peter Jones setting up his own tennis academy when he was sixteen. It would never in a million years have occurred to me to even sell sweets to my classmates in school or something. But there does come a time when you realise, you just can’t work for anybody but yourself.
Sat in my parent’s house with no money, no job and no prospects. I decided to get a blank piece of paper and just write down what I liked doing. I was thirty years old and thought my destiny should be defined by now.
On the top of my list were travel and adventure sports. I enrolled on a travel and tourism management course at Northumbria University, after which I got a couple of jobs with some local tour operators.
I had a great boss; he was a brilliant energiser and a fantastic ideas person, but a bit frustrating to be his right hand man. One day he called me into his office and started scrolling on these post it notes saying do this, do that, and I kind of snapped. I told him to stuff his job and I walked out.
I went home to a really quite unhappy wife, then woke up the next morning and surprise surprise I was unemployed. That’s when I sat down and really thought seriously about what the hell I was going to do with my life. I realised that I was unemployable; quite simply, I couldn’t work for anybody else. So I set up my own travel firm in Newcastle in 2000.