When I was at the University of Bradford
I had a great time there
I don't think I was exactly the model student
I got a very happy 2:2, I think.
I studied Mechanical Engineering four-year sandwich course at Bradford.
It was really tough, actually, I found it very very difficult
very technical, but now obviously I've been out in industry a wee while,
it's been a great foundation for me to build on.
And also not perhaps just the technical parts of the subjects
but the general work ethic and the process that I used to get the end result
is very much a helpful thing.
In particular I was really in to writing software code
and whilst I did Mechanical Engineering a big part of that was around programming
that's really helped me with my software business.
Within my LNT Group I've currently got five main trading businesses.
We employee about 2,200 people.
We have the care home business,
where we operate care homes,
we have a construction business
that designs and builds the care homes,
we've got a software business
that writes apps and does a lot of the techie video things
and software, also for care homes.
So that's a little bit of glue between the three businesses there
generally in the care sector.
I have Ginetta cars that designs, build and sells
road and race cars all over the world.
Ant the last company is LNT solutions,
which is a chemical company and that company does
bespoke chemicals for industry
that keeps transport moving.
The care home business was really interesting
it was originally set up by my parents
and I took over the business
and expanded it but what became really apparent to me
very early on was, well because I was writing software
for the care home business, which I had learnt how to do
at university I understood the business side of it
and I very quickly realised that you couldn't deliver the correct kind of care
in converted building, so I used my engineering knowledge
to then start designing the building around the people, so from the inside out.
So whilst it wasn't particularly mechinical engineering
the mechanics of understanding engineering
and what the building needed to be helped me through that.
Well everyone seems to think my big passion is cars,
but it's absolutely not.
I'm passionate about business
but I do happen to own Ginetta cars
here in Leeds, where, we're told now
that we're the third largest manufacturer of race cars in the world
by volume
and that's really exciting.
But what's exciting again for me is that we
were employing British people, British engineers
we are using British components and we're doing again
vertical integration, designing and building our own engines in-house.
So when you buy a Ginetta car, race car or road car
you're buying a truly British product own by a
British entrepreneur who is interested in it from start to finish.
I got into racing cars through buying a business.
In under two years I was on the starting grid of the
Le Man 24-hour race driving in a TVR.
And we finished the race in 2004, which is an achievement in itself actually,
the team and I won, the Team LNT won Le Man in 2006 in the GT2 class
which was, you know, incredible really as I had only been driving,
well certainly under four years.
I did Mechinical Engineering at Bradford
it was a fantastic course; it set me up in life.
It was a difficult course, don't bother doing it if you want to doss around
I only just scraped through but it was a great grounding
for the start of my business career
both in making me become a more grown-up and sensible person
but also gave me the technical ability I needed in business as a whole.
So mechanical engineering is a fantastic degree.