The police knocked on my door…

One cold October evening, my world changed forever in a split second. The Police knocked on my door to tell me that my fiancée had suddenly passed away. My legs crumpled underneath me. It felt like an out-of-body experience.

I might be mad, but I decided I'm going to share some things that I've never shared professionally before… in the hope it might help somebody else who feels like they're a bit lost in life right now.

But to make sense of that night and what followed… I have to talk about what happened before the worst night of my life.

On holiday with 'Baby Adam'

I was absolutely and disappointingly bang average at school. When I was younger I struggled to revise and retain the necessary information to pass exams. So when it came down to it, my results at GCSE were really poor.

I still remember results day and thinking I'd messed up my whole life. I felt embarrassed at telling my parents my results and what was worse, was the feeling I knew I could have done so much better.

I'm now 47 years old and I really feel that the 'education system' in the UK is completely broke. Many successful people did nothing at school, but then flourished later in life.

At 17, I was lost and had these useless exam grades staring back at me on my CV. All my friends went to college and I went and got a YTS job on £40 a week. (Remember them?)

My YTS (youth training scheme) job was gardening for the local council. I actually really enjoyed it and went on to become qualified in amenity horticulture at Reaseheath college.

Me on the left in the local newspaper (with very bad hair OMG!)

When I say 'enjoy' obviously it was no fun in the pouring rain or blizzard conditions in the winter. I don't miss not being able to feel my toes and fingers on the cold winter days.

But I did know pretty quickly that gardening was never going to give me a decent enough income. At least not to live the life I wanted to live.

I soon left, in the search for better pay. I wanted to be able to buy guitars, go out with my mates, and have fun on the weekend, and so I ended up doing various jobs in logistics and warehouses for a few years and went from job to job.

It was slightly better pay than gardening and dry being indoors, but still nothing much more than minimum wage. The work was often boring and mind numbing and it was just a 'means to an end.' I was that person that lived for my days off and fell into that trap of hating five days a week and living for two.

I felt in my early twenties like my exam results really did affect my chances in life. I regretted not trying harder and doing more. I felt like I was always just going to 'plod along' in jobs I just didn't enjoy. I couldn't see any other way for me.

But good timing was on my side. I met an amazing woman and luckily I managed to somehow get on the property ladder and buy my first house with my fiancée. We soon found out we were pregnant and life suddenly felt like it was finally coming together for me at last. I had my own house, I was a Dad and I had a fiancée.

Adam, just minutes old!

And then came that cold October night I started with.

My fiancée was on her way home from a works conference, she stepped off the train and just collapsed right on the platform. She had a fatal heart defect that cut her life short. She was just 28 years old. The coroner put it down to 'sudden adult death syndrome S.A.D.S'.

My whole world came crashing down and I went from feeling like my life was finally coming together to being completely and utterly broken into a million pieces and in that moment, I also became a single-parent overnight. My son was a week away from his first birthday when this happened.

I remember the next morning, the house felt empty (I was empty) and I remember getting my son out of his cot and unbeknown to him it was now a very different world he was waking up in.

I was at this point completely and utterly broken, just dazed and in shock. It didn't feel real, none of it, how could it be real? Why wasn't she coming home to me? I couldn't understand it. She was only 28. It was so surreal for months after.

I'll be honest, this period of my life is now all a bit of a blur. I found it unbearable at times. One day led to another and then another and months passed by. I had all my dreams wiped out and taken away from me in a split second and I had this new role as a single-parent to try and cope with and the grief too.

I remember getting through the long days and just lying in bed every night, thinking… What the hell do I do now? How do I live? How do I move forwards and build a life again? I just felt so empty for a long time.

It was late October and the shops were full of Christmas. It just felt odd that everybody else's life carried on like normal. This Christmas was going to be very different for me. The previous year we were both new parents and it was amazing to think about our future as a little family.

It was without doubt the worst time in my life and it could have broken me for good. It nearly did.

Pro Headshot (trying to be professional)

Thankfully, I eventually managed to get myself back on my feet and I started, after months of navigating this, enjoying life again. It was only thanks to my family and friends and a lot of two steps forward, three steps back, that I pulled myself out of a very, very dark hole.

It was over the next few years I decided to set about learning about property and investing. I had a passion for it and wanted to follow a passion, because life was just too short to waste doing something that did not light a fire inside me.

I loved watching all the property programs that were on TV and loved the idea of doing houses up and converting things too.

When I found love again with my now Wife (Claire) we decided that I would move into her home and I rented my home out to tenants. I became what people call an 'accidental landlord.' This was my first step into investing and property (kind of).

Later, I learned about these crazy things people did called 'creative property strategies'. I became obsessed with property sourcing and deal-packaging and trading properties. It was this that flicked a switch in my head. I knew I could do this and make good money.

It amazed me that you could make money from property that you didn't own, if you knew how to apply certain strategies. I knew a few guys at this time who were making money sourcing, and I definitely found it all very interesting whenever we chatted about what they were up to.

It was also around this time I got asked to work a Saturday at the last minute by my boss at work. No notice at all and what was worse, I'd already made plans with the kids and family. I told my boss enough was enough and I knew that I just had to go full time in property. I never worked the Saturday and never worked for anybody else, ever again.

Not my finest hour, but the fear of HAVING to earn money really does have a way of focusing the mind. But I don't recommend it to anybody, let me just put that out there.

This was the moment my life changed again, but this time, for the better.

I slowly began property sourcing and with my first deal I sourced a title split and made about £17,000 and that took me around 10 weeks to do. That deal felt like winning the lottery.

I also managed to then build a small rent-to-rent HMO portfolio and that gave me income that dwarfed any day job I'd ever had. There was no looking back when I got to this stage, I was finally in control of my life and my income.

Over the next few years, I got myself educated in other areas of property and I focused on building my income further. I worked every day of the week for years, apart from the odd family holiday. But it never felt like work to me. I turned my hand to flipping and really loved the process of taking a beaten-up property and creating something new and homely.

I also became an estate agent too and that's when sourcing and working with investors really took over my life completely as landlord clients were asking me to help them with their portfolios.

Then fast forward to 2017, along with two other guys who were also sourcers, we got together in my estate agency office one night and we decided to set up a kind of property sourcing / estate agency model and then (if it was successful) we would franchise it around the UK and scale up.

The business model did change slightly as we got started, but over the course of a few years we became the UK's biggest property sourcing network. As a franchise we went from zero to 50+ offices all over the UK within 18 months.

This business was called 'Sourced' or 'Sourced Franchise' back then.

My Wife was actually involved too, and she was the franchise manager. I remember her target was to sell 10 franchises in year one. She managed to do 50 in less than 18 months. She reminds me of this fact most days, but to be fair, without her in that business it wouldn't have been what it was.

We were scaling fast and I spent a lot of time travelling and getting involved in multiple projects with our franchisee network. I discovered I loved the coaching side of things and also teaching the strategies we had used (sourcing, lease options, assisted sales, flips, developing and r2r) and I also took real pleasure in watching people do well for themselves.

We eventually went on to launch a peer-to-peer property platform called 'Sourced Capital' that has gone on to fund £85 million pounds worth of property projects in the UK.

But in 2019 I decided to step down as co-founder and property director and exit the businesses. I was proud at what we had achieved and loved what we did as a business and a group but ultimately…

The decision to leave was purely down to me not enjoying it anymore. If I'm being completely honest… I'd become jaded with working on the business all the time and I always said, when I felt like I wasn't enjoying it anymore, I would walk away.

My shares were worth (a few quid shall we say), so I made the decision to realise my ultimate dream. But first… selling out of the businesses meant that I could at last, enjoy the luxury of taking some real time out.

New York Times Square

I holidayed with my Wife and kids and enjoyed some overdue quality time with my family. It felt so good to just completely unplug from everything and switch off after years of hard work, stress and late nights.

My kids always say that those holidays were the best we ever had, because as parents we were just focused on one thing… having fun and enjoying life and being present.

Holiday in Turkey with Adam

Holiday in Turkey with Ash

But I couldn't just retire and hang up my boots in my early forties. My brain soon began thinking about new projects and possibilities I could get my teeth into, and that's when I started 'PSN Property Education.'

With the idea that I would create affordable property training and mentor people and help them in their business all without charging silly sums of money, like a lot of the big-name property trainers you see plastered all over social media these days.

I've sat through all the property education seminars and webinars over the years from the big names in property education and I was always annoyed at how they sell and how they pitch certain strategies as 'a way to print money at lightning speed'. Then they have people handing over tens of thousands for courses thinking they will be financially free in no time at all.

I wanted to just bring something else to the table and be ethical about it too. It had to be priced sensibly and give people real value for money. So that's what I've been doing with my time ever since 2019 and I really enjoy mentoring people.

In my personal life things were changing… my kids left home in late 2021 and this enabled me and my Wife to finally live our dream and emigrate overseas, and we bought our forever 'dream home in the sun'.

Off to view properties as Covid restrictions lifted finally!

I now work a few hours a week supporting people on my property mentorship program and I consult for a couple of UK based start-ups too. The rest of the time is mine and I love that freedom.

I'm now 48 years old and so thankful I got into property and changed the path that I was on in life. Things could have been very different.

I do look back sometimes and feel like I'm living someone else's life. It's madness.

I'm living and breathing proof that ANYBODY can change their life. If they REALLY want to.

I'm nothing special at all, yet I did something that meant I could say to my Wife, 'Why don't you just quit work and retire'. That felt so good to give her that option, after she supported me for years.

It was our time to live; enjoy the sun and do all the things we always dreamed we wanted to do with our lives. I'm now able to live anywhere I want in the world and do whatever I want every single day and that never gets boring.

At home in the pool

Please (if you're still reading) DON'T ever let others limit your potential.

I used to go around saying I'm retiring early, I'm going to be financially free young enough so I can enjoy it. Certain people said to me 'you won't retire early', but for me it was an actual plan. (NOT A DREAM).

It wasn't a case of hope or wishing it would happen. I had a plan and that plan became my reality, through hard work, and a lot of lessons learned the hard way.

So never let other people (including family) put you in a box. Those people that said that to me had a limiting belief, so they couldn't see it being possible for them. But I knew it was possible for me and I knew that it WOULD happen.

I hate it when people say… 'Oh you're so lucky'.

Luck has zero to do with how things panned out. It has EVERYTHING to do with not settling for less and being determined and consistent with goals and actions.

I see lots of people struggling day-to-day and I just thought posting about where I came from might help and maybe even inspire some people into thinking, actually there is another way to live your life and yes I do want to give it a shot as I'm only here once.

If you feel like you're a million miles from where you would like to be right now today, then just know that things will not change for you, unless you change what you're doing.

One step at a time, one day at a time, small changes compound over the year.

I've had this blog written for some time and I haven't wanted to share it for some reason. I'm an introvert 100% and not a big one for sharing too much online, especially the really personal stuff like this, it just feels a bit weird sharing something so private.

I just hope somebody who reads this will relate to it and see there are always options for you in life and always choices to be made, and those decisions you make in life can lead to a completely different future for you, like it did me.

So, if anybody is still reading… thank you and I hope you see that no matter who you are, where you live, what's in your bank today, life is all about choices. You either stay as you are OR you fight to change things for the better.