- Original Poster
- #1
Hi there everyone,
I'm Richard Myers Trading As Hertz Web Solutions, primarily Hertz Web Solutions is a web hosting business setup in May 2007 but I've grown the business into providing many other products and services. More about Hertz Web Solutions later... Now let's talk about me!
I'm 18 years old, from Hull in East Yorkshire (luckily I wasn't flooded out), my mum has been self employed for 13 years now and my step father has always ran his own business. So as you can imagine becoming self employed or setting up a business had always been an option I'd considered. In 2003 I was approached at school by my Religious Education teacher regarding Young Enterprise, this was to be the first year the school had ever taken part in Young Enterprise therefore they required a team. The team, KH Smilers, originally consisted of around 21 teenagers (due to my date of birth I was the youngest) and mostly females. I was the Finance director of the company, I'd never done anything like this before so the whole experience was a giant learning curve!
To cut a long story short by December only me and a fellow director remained in the team, everyone else had left. We had a £250 debt, I had creditors ringing me up at school during lessons demanding their cash which at 14 was quite scary! We managed to get a few people onto the team, including a new Managing Director and our fortunes slowly began to change. By March we'd taken orders for 3000 plants and was on course to make a very healthy profit. We entered the Young Enterprise competition and pretty much swept the board at each of the heats, and managed to get through to the national finals at the Savoy Hotel in London. Sadly we lost out to Underwood Visions, a Welsh team. However I do still hold the record as the youngest Finance Director ever to reach the National Finals.
At this point I'd like to say that the school in question is Kelvin Hall Secondary School, a government run school rather than a private school. And yes we wiped the floor with Hymers.
In 2006, after my first year of college, I dropped out due to anxiety/depression/agoraphobia. I won't go into details but I did get to a point when I couldn't walk/talk/eat/go to the toilet as my brain just seemed to stop working while I was on anti-depressants.
I suffered with the anxiety etc without medication due to the side effects therefore was unable to return to college or get a job in the 'outside' world.
This however didn't mean that I wasn't willing to work, not at all. In January 2007 I started researching setting up my own Reseller Hosting business to earn some money, and in May 2007 I did it. Straight away it was a great success so I went self employed with it, and since then it's been MAD!
I was awarded a grant for marketing fees for a whole year because when I setup the business I managed on a budget of £90 (my left over Christmas money) and built up the business from scratch into a profitable web host.
Now I am no longer a Reseller, I have my own servers. Hertz Web Solutions is going from strength to strength and has recently secured websites owned by a popular entrepreneur who has featured on Dragons' Den twice. I currently have around 70 clients hosted on my servers, and I manage various websites for small business.
If you'd like to know more about Hertz Web Solutions please visit hertzweb.net
As a young Entrepreneur I think it's important to help others with their ventures, I do have some Hosting Packages tailored towards all kinds of businesses at entrepreneur.hertzweb.net
I look forward to getting to know some of you and hopefully doing business at some point
I'm Richard Myers Trading As Hertz Web Solutions, primarily Hertz Web Solutions is a web hosting business setup in May 2007 but I've grown the business into providing many other products and services. More about Hertz Web Solutions later... Now let's talk about me!
I'm 18 years old, from Hull in East Yorkshire (luckily I wasn't flooded out), my mum has been self employed for 13 years now and my step father has always ran his own business. So as you can imagine becoming self employed or setting up a business had always been an option I'd considered. In 2003 I was approached at school by my Religious Education teacher regarding Young Enterprise, this was to be the first year the school had ever taken part in Young Enterprise therefore they required a team. The team, KH Smilers, originally consisted of around 21 teenagers (due to my date of birth I was the youngest) and mostly females. I was the Finance director of the company, I'd never done anything like this before so the whole experience was a giant learning curve!
To cut a long story short by December only me and a fellow director remained in the team, everyone else had left. We had a £250 debt, I had creditors ringing me up at school during lessons demanding their cash which at 14 was quite scary! We managed to get a few people onto the team, including a new Managing Director and our fortunes slowly began to change. By March we'd taken orders for 3000 plants and was on course to make a very healthy profit. We entered the Young Enterprise competition and pretty much swept the board at each of the heats, and managed to get through to the national finals at the Savoy Hotel in London. Sadly we lost out to Underwood Visions, a Welsh team. However I do still hold the record as the youngest Finance Director ever to reach the National Finals.
At this point I'd like to say that the school in question is Kelvin Hall Secondary School, a government run school rather than a private school. And yes we wiped the floor with Hymers.
In 2006, after my first year of college, I dropped out due to anxiety/depression/agoraphobia. I won't go into details but I did get to a point when I couldn't walk/talk/eat/go to the toilet as my brain just seemed to stop working while I was on anti-depressants.
I suffered with the anxiety etc without medication due to the side effects therefore was unable to return to college or get a job in the 'outside' world.
This however didn't mean that I wasn't willing to work, not at all. In January 2007 I started researching setting up my own Reseller Hosting business to earn some money, and in May 2007 I did it. Straight away it was a great success so I went self employed with it, and since then it's been MAD!
I was awarded a grant for marketing fees for a whole year because when I setup the business I managed on a budget of £90 (my left over Christmas money) and built up the business from scratch into a profitable web host.
Now I am no longer a Reseller, I have my own servers. Hertz Web Solutions is going from strength to strength and has recently secured websites owned by a popular entrepreneur who has featured on Dragons' Den twice. I currently have around 70 clients hosted on my servers, and I manage various websites for small business.
If you'd like to know more about Hertz Web Solutions please visit hertzweb.net
As a young Entrepreneur I think it's important to help others with their ventures, I do have some Hosting Packages tailored towards all kinds of businesses at entrepreneur.hertzweb.net
I look forward to getting to know some of you and hopefully doing business at some point
