The first business venture I tried was selling sweets at school.
At the time I was looking to buy a PlayStation,
and I wanted to buy it myself, with my own money.
At that age
people were not allowed to go outside of schoolgrounds
during the school day,
so I thought "perfect. I've got a captive customer base."
My first tip is...
Eat the frog means start your day with the hardest task you have.
And it means the rest of your day
becomes a lot easier and smoother.
In sixth form you'd have free periods, for example,
and there was times where I would sit in the free period
and do financial forecasts,
people would look over my shoulder and think I'm insane.
But it was difficult to explain,
but I thought if I'm prioritising this now
because I know I've got a due date for an essay in two weeks,
and it's just about managing that workflow.
...is my next top tip.
Both my parents are deaf,
so my older sister and I have been carers to them our whole lives.
I think we matured a lot earlier as children because we had to.
If I went all the way back to the start of Doorsteps,
that starts when I moved house when I was about 10 or 11 years old.
Being carers for my parents
we got a bit more of a hands-on experience
of the whole property move.
So I tried to understand the break-down of costs
and a big one inevitably was estate agency fees.
So a few years later
we learnt about different disruptors in different industries,
taxi driving for Uber,
shopping with Amazon,
this is where I thought, "actually, why don't we try and connect
buyers and sellers directly?"
My next tip is...
For me that was Michael O'Leary's biography
about when he started Ryanair.
A good biography is really, really motivating.
It shows you that it's doable,
it shows you that actually the people that started
these insanely successful businesses were normal people
and they've decided to step out of their comfort zone and take a risk,
and that's really inspiring.
...new things, is my next top tip.
I think without teaching yourself, it's difficult to start a business,
because you need to understand every aspect
and whether it's your forte or not,
and understanding that means you can test the business cheaply.
And for me that was learning floor plans from scratch,
photography from scratch, things I didn't have experience in.
So one thing I couldn't learn myself unfortunately
at that point was learning to drive.
That's because I was only about 16 or 17,
so to get to my first property
I did have to pay my sister's boyfriend to drive me
down to the property in East Sussex so I could then go and do the visit.
My next tip is...
I've understood that my Mum
95% of the time is right, and she is wiser than yourself.
So my Mum has been very influential, well both my parents have.
They've never let their disability stand in their way.
Seeing that work ethic especially tracing back to migration for example
for my Dad, from Africa into the UK.
It's not easy,
and they've actually managed to get our family to the stage
where we are now
where I'm actually able to take a risk in my own life
because I know I've got this stable family background.
To be honest the success and the money
hasn't made a difference to my life.
I do still live at home, still live with my parents.
I still go to the same type of places that I used to,
I still don't have a car.
It's difficult to actually take a step back
and look at the progress you've made
because I'm always kind of moving the goalposts further away.
So at the moment we're a start-up, we're in the midst of growing,
it's really, really exciting stages,
but I think we've got so much more to give.