Building Momentum: My First Steps into Entrepreneurship

I’m Adam Thornhill, an entrepreneur and investor based in Dubai, originally from Liverpool, England. This series looks back at the early stages of my career – the businesses I built, the mistakes I made, and what those experiences taught me about building something that lasts. I hope you find these lessons useful. I’d love to connect with you if so.

How I Learned to Take Risks

By the time I turned seventeen, I had already spent a couple of years working and learning through hands-on experience. I understood responsibility, long hours, and earning money through effort. What I didn’t yet understand was how unpredictable the world of business could be.

Keen to take risks and build something of my own, I started buying and selling cars. This venture started small, mainly through platforms like Tuebrook Auctions, eBay and Gumtree. 

My budget was limited, so I focused on cheaper vehicles that needed minor repairs – work I could either do myself or organise through people I knew. Each sale taught me something new, whether it was negotiating, managing risk or understanding how quickly markets could change.

What started as a side gig quickly became more serious. As I bought and sold more vehicles, I started building connections within the motor trade. 

I learned quickly that these relationships mattered just as much as the cars themselves. Access to the right information, the right people, and the right timing often meant the difference between profit and loss.

Gaining Independence and Responsibility

Just three weeks before my eighteenth birthday, I moved into my first apartment. It was above a hairdressers on Breck Road, with single-glazed windows, old carpets and wallpaper that needed replacing, but it was mine. I was determined to fix it up, and so I did.

Living independently brought a different level of responsibility. Rent, bills and daily costs meant that my income couldn’t be inconsistent for long. Around this time, I decided to leave Quality Fireplaces and commit fully to buying and selling cars full-time.

For a while, things went well. After around six months, I had managed to save a decent amount of money. But my income was really unpredictable. 

Some weeks, I would sell two or three cars, and other weeks I would sell nothing at all. The highs were good, but the uncertainty made it clear that I needed to build something more sustainable.

Forging a New Path: My Taxi Business

Before long, I bought my first taxi – a pink vehicle with a PrettyLittleThing advert on the side, complete with a part-time night driver already in place. This felt like a different kind of business venture entirely – and it wasn’t exactly easy to get started.

Most insurance companies simply didn’t understand why someone under 21 was trying to start a business like this, and several refused to insure me altogether. Eventually, after a lot of persistence, however, I found a provider willing to take the risk.

Within another six months, I added a second taxi, which helped me to generate consistent income. I allowed myself to enjoy some of my newfound success and moved into a penthouse near the Metquarter.

Over the next few years, I continued buying and selling cars while gradually expanding the taxi fleet. For the first time, my business felt stable and scalable at the same time.

Then COVID arrived.

Almost overnight, everything slowed down. Taxis sat idle, drivers returned vehicles, and car sales dried up. Like many business owners at the time, my income plummeted while all the same fixed costs remained. 

This forced me to take a step back and reconsider everything. 

The Valuable Lesson I Learned About Stability 

Looking back, this stage of my life taught me the difference between making money and building something sustainable. Buying and selling cars showed me how to create opportunity quickly, but the taxi business showed me the value of consistency and recurring income.

This was also the first time I experienced how external events that were completely outside your control could change your business overnight. 

COVID forced a shift in my thinking. Instead of focusing only on what I knew, I started looking more broadly at industries that had been disrupted and where new opportunities might emerge.

That mindset change became important later. I became less attached to individual businesses and more focused on understanding markets, timing and adaptability. 

Entrepreneurship stopped being about a single idea and became more about recognising when to move and when to change direction.

Pivoting in the Face of Great Change

When people look at my business background now, they often see different industries and assume the path was planned. In reality, much of it came from learning through experience and adapting as circumstances changed.

Starting businesses young meant learning quickly about risk, responsibility and uncertainty. Those lessons still shape how I approach opportunities today. I tend to focus less on short-term wins and more on whether something can operate consistently over time.

If there is one good thing to come out of losing my taxi business to COVID, it’s that it influenced how I work with other founders and operators. Many businesses go through periods of growth followed by sudden change, and having experienced that early on makes it easier to stay practical and calm when circumstances shift.

It was during this period, as industries adjusted to the impact of COVID, that my attention turned to travel – an industry facing significant disruption and uncertainty, but also one that presented an opportunity to build something new…

If you’re inspired by my story, please get in touch – I’d love to hear from you.