Table of contents

• My Love of Cars: Where It All Began
• My First Lesson in Vehicle Loss
• From Driver to Trader: Getting into Business
• The Land Rover Discovery TD5: Learning to Improve Value
• The Subaru: Discovering Restoration and Patience
• A Crucial Realisation: Overlooked Vehicles Present Real Opportunity
• The Fiesta ST and Letting Go
• Returning to Cars in Dubai

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

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.

Throughout this series, I’ve written about calculated risk, resilience, and long-term strategic decision making. We’ve discussed my health, my hobbies and my entrepreneurial pursuits, and it’s been great to share my story publicly.

Long before I started building companies, consultancies, or investment portfolios, however, there was something far simpler I was drawn to – something that taught me early on about independence, profit and loss. Cars.

My Love of Cars: Where It All Began

Even as a child, I was drawn to cars. It wasn’t just about the flashiest models or how they looked – it was how they worked, the intricate mechanisms under the hood.  

I was fascinated by the idea that thousands of individual components could function together as one system. When maintained properly, it boggled my mind that this machine on wheels could take you anywhere you wanted to go, and that you were in complete control.

While most people saw cars purely as transport, I saw them as mechanical systems that could be understood, fixed, improved and, in some cases, rescued. This curiosity led me to study a BTEC in Vehicle Technology at school, which later inspired my first taxi business.

Then, at sixteen, I bought a scooter and completed my CBT. It wasn’t glamorous, but it gave me something far more important: independence. For the first time, I could move without relying on anyone else.

My First Lesson in Vehicle Loss

At seventeen, my uncle, who was a motor trader, gifted me a Renault Clio he had picked up from auction. The car was far from perfect – the alternator was failing and it had its own quirks – but it was mine.

I learned to drive in that Clio. Every stall, every smoother gear change, every small improvement happened inside that car. Passing my driving test felt like independence officially earned. But a week later, my beloved car was written off in an accident.

It was an early lesson that freedom can be temporary, and that loss doesn’t ask whether you’re ready for it.

From Driver to Trader: Getting into Business

With limited money, I bought what I consider my first real car, which was a Vauxhall Astra. By modern standards, it was pretty basic, but it represented momentum – a life moving forward.

I soon discovered that although I loved driving, it wasn’t enough for me. I wanted to be more involved, and somehow combine my passion for cars with my aptitude for business. 

I started going to auctions, just observing at first. I watched experienced traders evaluate vehicles in seconds, making decisions quickly and without emotion. Gradually, I started participating, buying, and selling on a small scale.

Not every deal worked, and some mistakes were expensive. But every misjudgement refined my instincts. Cars became more than transport; they became my first experience of buying low, improving value, and managing risk – all crucial entrepreneurial lessons. 

The Land Rover Discovery TD5: Learning to Improve Value

One of the most memorable projects from that period was a Land Rover Discovery TD5.

I purchased it as a project vehicle and converted it to make it more capable off-road, preparing it for events I planned to attend. This was the first time I was able to take something functional and improve it through effort and understanding. 

The TD5 was a huge milestone for me and reinforced a principle that has stayed with me ever since: value is often created through intelligent improvement rather than initial perfection.

If you buy correctly and make calculated upgrades, you can increase both utility and appeal, but if you over-invest emotionally or ignore margin, the numbers rarely work in your favour. That balance between passion and practicality is something I still apply in business today.

The Subaru: Discovering Restoration and Patience

Around the same time, I completed a full restoration on a Subaru. Restoration teaches patience in a way few other projects can, because shortcuts reveal themselves later, usually at a higher cost.

Working through that process strengthened my appreciation for doing things properly the first time. It also highlighted something important: effort compounds. The more time you invest in understanding a system, the more confident your decisions become.

A Crucial Realisation: Overlooked Vehicles Present Real Opportunity

Not all the vehicles I worked with were exciting: Ex-Royal Mail vans, Peugeot Partners, Transit campers, and Hackney cabs formed part of the mix. These were vehicles most people overlooked, but they taught me that assets don’t need to impress – they just need to perform. That distinction later fed directly into my first taxi business, where vehicles became income-generating tools rather than passion projects.

There is a difference between loving something and monetising it, and learning that difference early shaped how I evaluated opportunities moving forward.

The Fiesta ST and Letting Go

Just before leaving the UK, I bought a Ford Fiesta ST. This purchase represented progress – it was one of those cars you looked forward to driving, not because you had somewhere important to be, but because you enjoyed the experience itself.

Not long after buying it, however, it was stolen and never recovered.

The financial loss was frustrating, but what stayed with me was the personal element. It symbolised a chapter of work and independence, and losing it created a strange sense of closure.

Looking back, that moment became one of the factors that pushed me to leave the UK. Sometimes losing something creates the space for something new to begin.

When I moved to the Netherlands, cars became distant for the first time in years. I drove rentals when needed, but ownership creates a different level of connection and responsibility.

I also noticed how significantly more expensive vehicles were compared to the UK. Cars that would be affordable at home carried substantial premiums there. It reinforced an important lesson: geography shapes opportunity. The same asset can carry different value depending on location, demand, and regulation. 

Returning to Cars in Dubai

When I moved to Dubai and decided to stay long-term, my love for cars returned.

Dubai is a city built for driving, and I enrolled with Copart locally. Following the floods, there were significant numbers of damaged vehicles entering the auction that many people avoided.

But years earlier in the UK, I had learned how to evaluate vehicles quickly and without emotion. Assessing damage, calculating potential repair costs, and weighing risk against margin felt less like starting again and more like returning to fundamentals.

What Cars Actually Taught Me

Looking back, cars were never just about transport for me. They were my first exposure to risk management, loss recovery, margin awareness, and opportunity recognition. They taught me how to detach emotion from investment decisions and how to improve an asset rather than simply consume it.

But most importantly, they gave me independence. Perhaps this is more meaningful to me because I was born with clubfoot and movement was restricted, I don’t know. 

All I know is that before offices, before employees, before consultancy or investment portfolios, cars gave me movement. That movement created autonomy, autonomy created confidence, and confidence made entrepreneurship feel possible.

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

The post What Cars Taught Me About Risk and Independence appeared first on Adam Joseph Thornhill.

Table of contents

• How I Learned to Take Risks
• Gaining Independence and Responsibility
• Forging a New Path: My Taxi Business
• The Valuable Lesson I Learned About Stability  
• Pivoting in the Face of Great Change

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

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.

The post Building Momentum: My First Steps into Entrepreneurship appeared first on Adam Joseph Thornhill.