My story.

I have built, bought, sold and closed businesses across property, hospitality, retail and services. Some succeeded well beyond what I expected. Some failed. Every one of them taught me something that still shapes how I make decisions.

I fixed computers before I could drive. I started The Tech Nerds at 16 and ran it until I was 21, picking up customers while I was selling electricals at Dixons and studying at the same time — Dixons taught me what it takes to be trusted by a stranger in ten minutes. I drove for a Saudi royal household and then built a chauffeur company off the back of it. I bought a milkshake bar advertising a million combinations on five ingredients, stocked what the menu promised and opened when I said I would. I built a dry cleaning chain to 5 shops, then a 3,000 sq ft plant that processed for 30 more, including my competitors. I ran a family office covering everything from buildings to cars.

I studied automotive engineering and business management at university and came out with a BSc. I have never spent a day working in automotive. What the engineering gave me was a habit of chasing a cause rather than treating a symptom, which turns out to be most of the job in buildings as well. The business half only confirmed what I already knew: I was always going to run my own.

Property came to me sideways, and slowly. I got into it because of a computer. I was still running The Tech Nerds when I was sent to fix a machine at a West End property developer, and I stayed past midnight until it worked. That got me an invitation to come back when I graduated — about three months away at the time. I did, and that is the entire reason I ever worked in property.

A commercial managing agent had an office in the same building, and the Danish investment portfolio was run from the office next door — so I knew everyone on that floor years before any of them was a client of mine.

By the time I left I was building a chauffeur company and taking work from wherever it came. I have never turned down work. So when someone at the managing agent asked me to cover their reception desk for a day, I said yes. I sat there, went through the service charge folders, found ways to bring the costs down, and asked whether I could take on the contracts if I delivered the savings. I was told to go for it.

That firm is still a client 18 years later, and still the source of introductions to others. A job I got by not going home, and a client I got by not turning down a day’s work. There is no cleverer version of the story than that.

Around the same time came a flat in Little Venice with a heating fault nobody could solve, where everyone agreed the answer was to rip the system out. I opened a wall instead, and found a switch.

That is the thread. Most things people call impossible are things nobody has looked at properly yet. I would rather investigate for a week than spend someone else’s money in an afternoon.

Not all of it worked. COVID took businesses I had spent years building. Some ventures I sold, some I closed, and one or two I should have closed sooner. I would rather say that plainly than pretend a straight line got me here.

It is the whole of what I sell, in the end. When somebody gives me a job they treat it as done. They do not have to chase me for it, and they do not have to check it afterwards. Everything else on this website is a consequence of that.

Botan Hourami