10 years of Rebel

Rebel Business School (RBS) is 10 years old!  I can't believe it has been 10 years since I started RBS with Simon Paine.  Of course, it wasn't called RBS back then and the course was "marginally" different, but the key principles of debt free start up and anyone can build a business and make money are still the same 10 years later!

To celebrate I have a huge announcement for you at the end of the article.  It is customary to give away a gift on your birthday, isn't it?

​But first, let's back up to how Rebel Business School begun and how I went from frustrated Entrepeneur to global movement. 

Alan got fired

Basingstoke Jobcentre

Shocking I know!  I was fired from my last job.  I can't tell you about it for legal reasons (seriously).  I tried my hardest but wasn't always the best employee.  They paid me to leave, and I was on my way.

That led to me searching for a new job.  My mum told me to sign onto the dole and collect benefits as I had paid into the system, and they had opportunities there.  So, I did.  I went to the job centre once a fortnight to see my job coach and I searched tirelessly to find a new job.  I just couldn't find anything I wanted to do, or that would have me.

Every time I went to Basingstoke job centre, I would have the life sucked out of me.  Imagine the scene, you walk up to a 60s grey concrete block, security checks you on the way in, the smell of alcohol and weed would hit you.  You are grilled by the job coach about what you are doing, where you are searching and how hard you are trying.

I always left that job centre down and feeling like I wasn't trying hard enough.  I had the energy sucked out of me.  ​It would take me two days to recover, build up my energy again and go back at it before repeating the same process the next fortnight.  

At that point I was inspired to learn and grow.  I had been on an NLP training course; I had read Tony Robbins books and I was desperate to get a good job and work on my life.  I found a training course I wanted to do called the NLP Train the Trainer course.

At the time it was 2 dollars to the pound (the opposite of now!) and it was actually cheaper to fly to America to do the course than it was to do it in the UK!

I would be away for two weeks and would miss one of my job centre appointments.  I knew if I missed one of my appointments that I would lose my benefits so I went to my job coach to ask if I could miss one appointment and still keep my benefits. 

They grilled me about the course and then told me that the system didn't work like that and if I didn't come in, I would lose my benefits.  I was so annoyed as I explained I am doing this and paying my own money to learn and grow so I can get a job or start a business and get off your books.  My job coach didn't understand me in the slightest and just turned me down. 

I was so angry at the system.  It felt to me that you were rewarded for staying unemployment and turning up every week rather than trying to make shit happen. 

This was a huge turning point for me. I had a choice to make.  Ditch my dream of going to America to learn and stay at the job centre in Basingstoke for my £56 benefits a week or leave the job centre, pay for my own flights and course and see where it would lead......

You can probably already tell what I did.  I told the job centre where to go and left for America to try and make my dreams come true.  It was super scary; I had some money from being paid to leave the last job, but I was giving up the benefits that were sustaining me. 

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Learning to present 

I travelled to Orlando, Florida to do the NLP Train the Trainer course. I learnt so much and made incredible friends. I didn't realise it when I booked the course, but it was nearly all about running training courses and educating people.  

The experience of being in America and learning, surrounded by people trying to better themselves changed my mindset forever. 

I came back from America inspired, believing anything was possible and ready to launch my own business training people.  I wanted to share the ideas that had made such a huge difference in my own life over the years.  

​I was inspired and excited. 

My first big deal

I was just starting out my business and I wanted to find clients, so I went networking.  I found this networking group called BNI and found they had a chapter near me, so I booked a free first session and went along to the golf course in Odiham, Hampshire for the first breakfast meeting.  I was super scared of the networking to start with, but I knew I had to find clients.

After months of networking one of the group told me about a friend that needed help.   The friend's name was Mark, and he was an IT teacher that had been told by the government that he had to run an entrepreneurial programme for his cohort.   

I met with Mark, and he told me that he had been to school, got good grades, been to college and got good grades and then immediately returned to school to teach.   He had never been out of education, but they had given him a budget to hire someone to help run the entrepreneurship programme for the kids. 

At the time it was the biggest deal I had ever done.  I designed an outline lasting 9 months for the students from 3 schools in Hampshire.  The three schools (a mainstream secondary school, a pupil referral unit and a special need school) would come together and I would run sessions for them.  The rough outline was:

1. Big kick off event - get everyone excited, set the project, introduce business mentors which were my friends from networking at BNI and Toastmasters!
2. Confidence workshop - we would teach the kids about confidence and then do a board break exercise to show them they could break through any barriers. 
3. They would meet people who had started businesses and learn about what they had created
4. Ideation: we would come up with business ideas and they would start to launch their own business
5. Coaching: they would design a product and get it ready to sell and we would help them on the way
6. Dragons Den / Shark's Tank: at the end of the project the teams would pitch their ideas to a group of businesspeople. I borrowed the conference room at Sun Microsystems, and we ran a huge event for them. 

Here are some of the pictures I had from the first big event!

The end event was so much fun!  The kids through themselves into it.  They all dressed up smartly (back then I thought you had to wear a suit to be in business!) and the pitches were so much fun!  The judges deliberated and you can see the Winners on the left. 

​I have since learnt that Dragon's Den type pitches are the worst thing you can do to inspire kids but that is a whole different story. The event was a huge success and I had so much fun running it.  The feedback from other teachers in the school was they could tell the kids that had been on my programme because of the increase in confidence and energy.  The teachers, the kids and the parents all loved it and so did I. 

​I was on cloud 9 and addicted to helping people.  I could see the difference I had made in these children's lives. 

​This high led to ................

My worst year in business ever

As I drove away from Sun Microsystems after running the last event, I was on one of the biggest highs.  I had a product that made a huge difference in people's lives, I had been paid to run it and proved the impact. I had raving fans and was ready to turn this into a hugely successful business.  

It was at this point I went to the British Government for help turning it into something.  They gave me three workshops.  

1. How to write a business plan - super exciting
2. Finance - which is just a code for debt and where to get it
3. Marketing - how to produce flyers

Then they gave me a coach to support me that did more to put me off running a business than help.  I was cold calling schools, I was writing letters, I networked all the way from the local teachers to the top of the Department of Education in the UK and I got nowhere. 

I didn't matter how passionate I was, how much I knew I could help or what I offered.  Education didn't have money they wanted to spend with me, and I was not going to go into debt like Business Link wanted me to. 

I was left destroyed.  I wasn't making enough money to live.  I had given my heart and soul to this project, and no one wanted me.   I made a loss that year and my reserves of cash were nearly out. I was running out of time and money...........

I went up to London to see one of my mentors and on the way, I was listening to a Brian Tracy CD set about goal setting.  I remember breaking down on the way to London and crying to myself that I had been setting goals for years and had not reached them. 

I sobbed on the train as I felt there was no way forward.  Business Link was telling me I had to get a loan and build a big business, the market was telling me they weren't going to pay for my product, I was FAST running out of money. 

Brian Tracy was telling me to set HUGE goals and follow them.  I had constantly set the goal of making £100,000 a year and chased it.  That year I made a loss and felt like it was impossible to achieve a goal.  I was confused, lost, desperate and left feeling that it was impossible to get ahead. 

​In this moment of desperation, I wrote a letter. A letter that would change my life forever. 

The complaint letter

The letter I wrote was to the guy in central government who was responsible for the business support package called Business Link.  He had funded the £40 million project in the south of England.  

I wrote three handwritten pages explaining my frustration, where I had come from, what had happened and asking for help!  I think I pleaded for support finding my direction.  

I sent the letter and didn't think about it again.  I didn't expect a response.   I just had to let it out. 

A couple of days later I got a call, and I couldn't believe it.  It was the guy, Glen, that I had written to.  He spent an hour on the phone with me understanding my position and what was going on with me and coming up with ideas.  At the end of the call, he said he would find someone within Business link to support me.   He ended the call with "We aren't all bad!"

My faith had been rejuvenated. Maybe there was a way forward?  I was still lost but at least I had a way forward.  I got a call to organise a coffee meeting with someone from Business Link and I readied myself to drive to Winchester Starbucks. I expected another suited bank manager who had never started a business in his life. 

The meeting that changed my life

I arrived at Winchester Starbucks early and got myself a giant latte.  I sat in the corner reading and waiting to see who would turn up.  A guy walked into the coffee shop looking around and I knew it was the business advisor, but he looked different.  There was no suit and shiny shoes, he wore trainers, a t-shirt and a jacket.  Something was different.  He got a coffee and joined me, and we started chatting.  

I started asking about him and his position, what he worked on.  I was just curious.   Eventually he asked me about my experience with Business Link and we talked about loans and business plans having the opposite to desired effect.  They put most people off starting a business rather than help them.  He had come to the same conclusion from his work in disadvantaged areas of the south of the UK. 

He started to give me different ideas for my business, and we chatted for what seemed like seconds but was actually hours. That coffee meeting ended up being one of the most inspirational meetings and the business advisor set up to meet me again in two weeks' time.   

We met every two weeks from then on and started discussing, self-development, how to help people and business ideas.  He gave me the Four-Hour Work Week to read from Tim Ferriss and we discussed it after I devoured it. 

From service recovery to business partner

Simon Paine and Alan Donegan running an important Rebel Meeting together

Do you know my current Business Partner Simon Paine?  He and I build Rebel Business School together and over the years he has become one of my best friends. We have been on some crazy adventures over the years.  Let's switch to Simon's side of the story. 

At the time Simon was working for an off-shoot of a government department trying to help people in disadvantaged areas start businesses.  He was sat in the office one day minding his own business when the CEO of that organisation stepped out of her office, holding a letter and looking for someone to help her. 

Simon looked up at the wrong time gaining eye contact with the CEO.  She walked to Simon's desk and handed him a 3-page handwritten letter saying "We need to perform some serious service recovery here, this has come straight from central government"

Simon read the letter and his heart sank.  He thought to himself "we let this guy down and this is a going to be a shit meeting!"  Let's get this over with.

He organised to meet the disenchanted customer in a Starbucks in Winchester at 8am, thinking "let's get this out of the way".  He arrived at the meeting and was taken back by the positivity of the person he met, they shook hands, got coffee and the first question the guy asked was "How can I help you?"

Simon was thrown back thinking, "I was sent here to help you, not the other way round".  What followed was an inspirational meeting discussing what stops people starting businesses and confirmed a lot of what Simon had already discovered in this area.   Simon thought "This is not a normal meeting" and organised to meet me (Alan) again in two weeks. 

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The original idea

We spoke for hours about traditional education and how it doesn't seem to give you what you need to be successful.  I wasn't that successful at the time by traditional measures, but I had landed a few big clients and was starting to make things happen.

The skills that were helping me be successful were confidence, positivity, sales, marketing, time management and how to get things done.  None of which I had been taught at school. 

At the time there were very few routes for people leaving education, go and get a degree, get an apprenticeship or trade or get a job.  That was about it.   Simon and I wanted to give another option and we envisioned a Business School that actually taught you what you needed to be successful in life. 

We wanted to Rebel against traditional education and become the only business school that you made money going to rather than costing you money.  We imagined a school where people came and learning was centred around building businesses, entrepreneurship and what you needed to get going.  

I imagined workshops on confidence, inner dialogue, creativity, inspiration and more.  We imagined a school where you were given the keys to the building on your first day, where it was promoted to get your phones out to look up answers, where we worked together to be successful.  

The Rebel Business School was born, and we worked out that we needed at least £250,000 to set it up.   We were back at the same initial problem; we needed money to get going and I didn't want to go into debt at ANY COST.   I was stuck again! 

Can't afford that "Let's PopUp"

We sat around thinking about how we could do it, "maybe we could PopUp and borrow other people's spaces?" I said.   Simon had done some previous work with Housing Associations in the UK and said maybe they can pay for a course, and we can run it in one of their buildings?

In that moment Rebel Business School got put on hold and PopUp Business School was born.  I sold the first ever event to Michael William's from Alliance Homes.  We travelled to Weston Super Mare and managed to get 40 people to show up for the first course.  

I wrote a course outline with Simon, and we turned up just wanting to help.  I remember saying to people on the course I don't really care if you start a business, I just want to help you make progress.   This started the idea that the course sold itself as an entrepreneurship/business course but really, we talked about what people really needed, confidence, self-development and help overcoming their most challenging problems/fears in life. 

The biggest challenge in starting a business is rarely the "how to"; it is nearly always confidence, fear or motivation. 

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Mistakes

We made a lot of mistakes along the way.  We learnt a huge amount about what worked filling and running courses and what didn't.  Some of the things we learnt:

1. Our lowest attended course in the UK was in a university.  We found that the people we wanted to attract to the course just didn't see themselves learning in a university and didn't come
2. Comms Teams at Housing Associations, Councils and Corporate organisations don't actually do promotional work, their mission is to stop damaging communication going out.  I spent so much time fighting to get them to do anything to promote our courses
3. Before you can do anything, you need to build trust.  The people who turned up at that first course had never heard of us and didn't trust us.  We had to work so hard for the first few days just to build the trust to get people to open up so we could help them
4. You can't help people until you sell something.  If I didn't sell PopUp Business Schools, then I had no one to help.  Sales is how we go about changing the world.  The more courses we sell, the more people we get to support.  This is a large part of the reason for our sales first philosophy.  The opposite to most business education which is research / debt first. 
5. Confidence and belief.  If you don't have confidence in yourself, if you don't believe in the product / mission then how are you going to get anyone else to believe in you or back the project.  Confidence is something I still work on to this day. 
6. Communication.  If you don't tell the customer what you are doing, then they don't know you are doing it.  In that very first course we did so much to support people after the course but didn't tell the customer, Alliance Homes.  When we went back to sell another course a year later the customer told us that our follow up support was bad.  From their perspective it was because we never told them we did anything!

From PopUp to Rebel

This year we turn ten years old, and we are finally getting that permanent building to run a Rebel School that we wanted way back at the beginning.  With the support of Westminster Council, we will be opening Rebel Business School (more on this soon). 

"Now we have our own building we can't really be called PopUp can we?" I said to Simon.  That led to us re-branding as Rebel Business School a couple of years ago and a lot of new projects. 

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Rebel Business School now

Now Rebel has turned into a global movement helping entrepreneurs to build their businesses without debt.  We operate in New Zealand, Colombia, France, Morrocco and more.  The Rebel Entrepeneur podcast has had nearly 1,000,000 downloads in 50 countries, and we have touched people around the world. 

I have spent 6 months in Colombia helping the team their Business School.  Now they support victims of the armed conflict and people displaced by the problems in Venezuela. 

Alan presenting Rebel Business School Westminster to an audience of 100

​Katie (my lovely wife) and I create Rebel Finance School teaching people how to take control of their finances three years ago and have helped over 3000+ in the first 4 courses. 

We are so excited about the future of Rebel.  Helping people to create extraordinary lives.   Supporting the people that need it the most around the world. 

It all started from a complaint letter

Don't accept things the way they are.  This incredible global movement I started all happened because I wasn't willing to accept how things are.  I wasn't willing to accept that you needed a business plan and debt to build a business.  I wasn't willing to accept the traditional advice thrust upon me by the British Government.  I wasn't willing to accept my station in life and get a job and put my head down.  I wanted things to change. 

You don't have to accept the way things are.  If you don't like them change them.  Find someone that feels the same and work with them, find someone already working to change things and join them or just do it yourself.   Don't accept life the way it is, create the life you want.

The Big Announcement

Which brings me onto the big announcement. 

I wanted to do something HUGE for our tenth anniversary of Rebel Business School.  For 10 years we have been helping people to build businesses and make money doing something they love, and we have given away every single course we have ever run.  

I am so proud of the fact no one pays for our education.  In a world where education is increasingly becoming a for profit business that looks to take from students, we have bucked that trend and remained true to the mission of help the people that need it the most. 

I always used to say I don't care who you are, where you are from or what your past is; I just want to help you make progress on creating the life of your dreams. The same is just as true today 10 years on from that very first course. 

To celebrate 10 years of Rebel Business School we have been creating and writing a new course for you.

I have realised over the years that my real mission is to help you create the life you want.  My driving phrase over the last decade has become "The Extraordinary belongs to those that create it"

I truly believe that no one is going to hand you an extraordinary life, you have to build it for yourself.   I have also realised that what defines an extraordinary life is different for everyone.  One person wants to build a business, another wants to get a cool job, another wants to retire early.  

​None of these versions of an extraordinary life are wrong.  They are just all different. 

The Donegans in Bogota creating the new course. Post-it notes out and getting creative

Simon, Katie and I have been writing and creating a new course for you.  We have nicknamed it the Extraordinary Life Course.  The purpose of this course is to give you the lifestyle design tools to be able to create the life of your dreams. 

Completely free

We want to help you set yourself up for the most incredible 2023 and beyond.  Starting Monday 21st of November we will be running a 5-week online course with the sole purpose of helping you figure out what your version of an extraordinary life is and then create it. 

This is my tenth anniversary gift to you.

Katie and I have got pretty good at creating extraordinary.  Katie took charge of her finances to a point where she was able to retire from corporate life age 33, she broke a world record, delivered a key-note speech at a woman's summit in Namibia and co-build Rebel Finance School with me.  

Simon is average at best.  Don't let that put you off. 

Simon and I built a global movement together.  I "retired" 25 years earlier than average in the UK and became nomadic travelling the world having cool adventures.  

We have been building our own versions of extraordinary for several decades now and we have learnt a thing or two along the way.  This is what we want to give you. 

This is our tenth anniversary gift to you.  A course designed to help you figure out what extraordinary means to you in every area of life. 

The tools, techniques and ideas designed to help you go about creating from scratch your version of extraordinary.  

All you need to do is sign up and come along and we will help you with everything else.  

The course will be every money for 5 weeks starting on the 21st of November.  Each session will be 90 minutes long and cover different areas of life design.  

If you can't make those dates don't worry.  We are streaming it to YouTube Live so you can watch on catch up.  All you need to do now is sign up!

Coming next..........

Thanks for reading the blog post, thanks for being on my mailing list and being part of the Rebel Gang.  We have so much to share with you coming up!  Look out for a post about the history of Rebel Business School, Katie is working on new financial charts to help you understand index investing, we are going to be on ChooseFI podcast soon talking about index funds and so much more!

Our big project for the end of the year is the extraordinary course for you.  Katie, I and Simon will all being doing the exercises and course alongside you as we will be working out what we want our 2023 to look like. 

THANK YOU for reading. 

The biggest gift you can give me for our tenth anniversary is your happiness.  For me please start working on your happiness and creating the life you want.  Come along to the course, bring your friends, family and start creating extraordinary. 

​Alan