About Initial IT

From feeling stupid to finding my potential

At thirteen, school had already crushed my confidence. I was repeatedly told I was not smart enough, that I was destined for the dole queue or a dead-end job. I was not academic, and the constant struggle to keep up with subjects I had no interest in completely destroyed my self-belief.

For years, I carried that feeling. That I was not good enough. That I did not have what it took to succeed.

Everything changed when I got to college. For the first time, I was studying something I was genuinely interested in, and it was like a light switch flipped. I shot to the top of the class, and for the first time I started to believe in myself. Teachers and classmates saw potential in me that I had never seen.

That experience taught me something I have carried ever since. When you find something you are passionate about, you can achieve things you never thought possible.

The struggles of starting out

At twenty-four, I was sat in my childhood bedroom launching Initial IT, buzzing with excitement and hope. I thought, “This is it, my big break.”

Reality hit hard. Clients did not magically appear. I felt invisible, unheard, completely lost. Every day, I would wake up with a knot in my stomach, wondering if I had made a huge mistake. The doubts crept in. What if I was not cut out for this? What if I failed?

But I had been here before. That feeling of not being good enough, the world deciding my worth before I had a chance to prove myself. So just like in college, I decided to fight back. I threw myself into networking events, handed out leaflets, offered my services for free to build credibility, cold-called, sent hundreds of emails.

Progress was painfully slow. Each day felt like an uphill battle. But I had learned something back in those school days: when you find something you are passionate about, you do not give up.

Kidney failure, dialysis, and the gift of a lifetime

While my wife Corinne was pregnant with our second daughter, Mia, I was diagnosed with kidney failure. By the time Mia was six months old, I was on dialysis. It hit our family hard and began a never-ending juggling act between a strict medical routine and a full-time workload. I would often finish dialysis and head straight to client meetings, running on sheer determination.

The lowest point came during a hospital stay with a life-threatening infection. I was exhausted, physically and emotionally. Corinne was holding everything together that we had worked so hard to build.

We refused to let kidney failure define our lives. We pulled together as a family and we kept going.

On 8th January 2010, Corinne gave me the ultimate gift. One of her kidneys. Her selflessness gave me a second chance at life, and I vowed to make it count.

Building, then almost losing it all

With renewed purpose, I threw myself into work. I co-founded an IT business and, as CEO, grew it from zero to a million-pound turnover in five years. To the outside world, I was winning. I was successful. I was on top.

Behind the scenes, I was struggling. The relentless pressure, long hours, and constant stress took a toll on my mental health. Depression and anxiety took hold, and burnout pushed me to my breaking point. One day, Corinne found me under my desk, overwhelmed and in tears. I felt completely broken and I could not go on.

Walking away from the business I had poured everything into was devastating. It put me in a dark place.

But in that moment of despair, I realised something powerful. If I could build a successful business once, I could do it again, on my own terms. I was not starting over. I was starting stronger.

Initial IT, reimagined and reinforced

After leaving my previous venture, I made myself a promise. I would not repeat the same mistakes. I threw myself into learning, studying leadership, marketing, sales, and the everyday skills I had once overlooked. I was not just rebuilding a business, I was rebuilding myself.

Over the past twelve months, I rebuilt Initial IT from the ground up. I refined every process, invested in better tools, and tightened every layer of cyber protection. When we relaunched it was a sharper, calmer business than the one I started with. Our clients today get the benefit of that.

I couldn’t have rebuilt the business without my sister Emma and my brother-in-law Satish. Satish is one of the best businessmen I’ve worked with, and the way he thinks about strategy has changed how I run Initial IT. Both of them backed me when the easiest thing would have been to step away. I won’t forget that.

The values that run every Initial IT account

Going through all of that changed how I think about success. Today, success means helping clients grow without technical headaches, giving my family a good life, and running a business that’s a decent place to work for the team behind it.

What clients get from Initial IT is a partner who has done the hard yards. We’ve been through enough to know what good IT support actually looks like, and that’s the bar we hold ourselves to on every account.