Brad Burton – from £25k debt to millionaire businessman

This is a version of ‘I turned my life of addiction and £25k debt around and became a millionaire businessman’ published on Metro.co.uk on 22/09/22

Brad Burton and 4Networking

1^st August 2022 was a momentous day for Brad Burton. He sold his majority shareholding in 4Networking Ltd, a business he had built up over the last 16 years.. Having run one of the largest networking organisations in the UK, Brad leaves a highly successful business behind him to focus on his work as a motivational business speaker, coach and trainer.

He’s living very happily in his Taunton home with wife Kerry (40) and his three children of 8, 13 and 18 and has a 26-year-old son from a previous relationship.

But it wasn’t meant to turn out like this. On paper Burton was destined for a life of drugs and crime and possibly not even reaching his 49 years, let alone living a fulfilling and financially successful life with a loving family.

Life as a child for Brad

In 1973 his mother, having saved £1 a week for 6 months, gathered the courage to leave his father and moved in to a women’s refuge in Salford, with her 6-month-old infant.

He left school with no qualifications but he sees these as unimportant, conceding that “Unless of course you’re a Doctor or Pilot, in which case I’d quite like you to have the 7 years in Uni!”

Partying and taking drugs in his 20s

During his early 20s he was part of the popular “rave” party scene, taking Ecstasy tablets at weekends. He was addicted to drugs again in his late 20s, when he dabbled with cocaine.

In the Summer of 1995, at the age of 22, a member of his family was abused by a family “friend”. Brad was shot at to intimidate the family into dropping the case. They didn’t and Brad moved from Salford to Somerset. Why Somerset? “I just stuck a pin in a map, it could have been anywhere, although it was actually Bristol but my Mum had been to Weston-super-Mare on holiday, so I moved it a little bit”, Brad recalls.

Having lasted just 2 hours as a window cleaner, he lived off benefits and spent most of his time in the gym for the first 2 years. He then got a job as the manager of a local games shop. Whilst working in the shop a friend introduced him to Kerry, who became his girlfriend and later his wife.

Brad Burton in debt

A few years later, £25,000 in debt, Brad lost his job due to restructuring. He’s very candid about this time, though. “I was spending money on all sorts of stupid stuff such as drugs, daft cars and TVs but it was all fun and games at the time.” Reality had kicked in, though, with big debt and minimum payments on the credit card of £800 but only £160 benefits coming in per month. “I seemed to be in an impossible situation with absolutely no sensible way to pay it back” he recalls. But he credits his “daft decisions and tough days” as playing a huge part in making him what he is today.

He walked into a dot.com job and was later promoted to become the company’s Director of Marketing in the Summer of 2004. But “On a point of principle”, one fateful day in December 2004, Brad told his employers to “Shove the job up their arse”. He continues “I’d had enough. A wonderfully liberating and fulfilling experience, until of course I arrived home.”

When he got home he turned the key in the door, to be faced with Kerry, their baby son, in her arms. She said, “You’re home early, is it to look after Ben while I do the shopping?” Brad quips “That was one way of looking at it. Another way was I’d just quit my job.”

Not holding back with her opinion on his announcement, Kerry yelled at him, “You’re an idiot! Why couldn’t you just have kept your mouth shut for another five days? You could have had your Christmas holiday pay and then sorted out what you wanted to do in the New Year.” She had a point.

Brad dreams of building a business

But Brad had visions of starting his new business in the New Year. His understanding of this was that it was “All private numberplates, fishtanks, spinny chairs and BMW 5 series.” He looks back at these early years slightly differently now. “The reality is it’s more low sales, no sales and in my case a whining wife!”

In fact, Brad was delivering pizza to keep his fledgling business afloat. Whilst using his experience in marketing, Brad started 4Consultancy, with four elements: sales, new-media, creative and marketing.  But this reality gave him material for his first book, “Get off Your Arse”, published in 2009.

Brad didn’t let go of his dream of building a business. He wanted to appeal to the mainstream of networking. He felt that on one side it was all just nice and chatty but not productive and on the other was hardcore. Forceful. “Where’s your leads? Where’s your referrals? You have to attend, you have to bring visitors.” So, he set out to create what was missing.

 

The beginning of 4Networking

On 16^th February 2006 Brad opened the first meeting with the words ‘Welcome to the future of business networking’. A table at the back, with two men from a rival network, sniggered. But he proved his critics wrong. Within 4 years he had a national network, running 5,000 events each year across the UK generating over £2 million in turnover.

In 2007 he married Kerry. Unconventional as ever and never one to miss an opportunity, they organised Wedding4Networking with what he calls the world’s biggest “bumf table”, where members of his network could do business at the wedding. 100 networkers attended and the event also gave Brad his first experience of working with radio and TV.

 

Things were on the up. After having a second child with Kerry in 2009, Brad finished paying off the debt in 2011. “It’s only now I realise just what an achievement that was”, he reminisces.

4Networking and lockdown

With thousands of members, generating hundreds of thousands of pounds of business, 4Networking had the expected ups and downs until that unforgettable day, 16^th March 2020 when people’s lives changed forever. That historic order from the Government to “Stay at home”.

4Networking relied on doing the exact opposite. Holding roughly 500 meetings every month in restaurants and pubs across the UK, it went to £0 income overnight. Head Office premises were closed forever and thousands of small business members were unable to network and generate income. Yet again, Brad showed his resilience and fought back.

Brad steered his team into fast-tracking the network online. After stressful long days and nights, the business was back up with the first meeting held just days later on 23^rd March 2020. It was the first network in the UK to go online and it worked.

Brad Burton post lockdown

From 25k in debt, drugs and no future, to millionaire, Brad Burton has certainly shown his critics (and there have been many from the early disbelievers to the many trolls he wisely ignores) who the leader is. Those two men who laughed at that first meeting later apologised and joined 4Networking.

Asked what’s next for him, Brad says that he tried retiring in 2016 when he was 42. “After 3 months of going to the gym and playing the PlayStation I realised it wasn’t as fun as I believed it would be, we all need a purpose.” He started with another business, this time with himself as the “Product/Service”.

Using the adversity he’d encountered to turn his life around, he forged a path as the UK’s number 1 motivational business speaker. Businesses such as JCB, Bentley, Costa, the NHS and Xero started to book him and Brad was back.

And he’s also currently writing book number 5, Lifemaker. His first for 8 years.

Advice for businesses

Well placed to give start-up and small businesses advice, Brad imparts some of his wisdom, warning “It’s not going to be like those sugar-coated Instagram posts. It’s going to be tough. Here’s a wake-up call…It’s probably going to take you four times longer than your business plan for the bank says it will. Business is hard, anything worth going for, generally is, so get ready for the daily battle and remember certainly early on, that the best thing about being self-employed… you get to choose which 16 hours a day you work!”

Brad says that he started his business to create a better life for his family. “I achieved that and now, as I near 50, it’s about making a difference, redefining cultures, enthusing people and their businesses and remaining content and comfortable.”

He’s adamant that we should always recognise that things happen for a reason. “If it wasn’t for the worst day in my life back in the 90’s, I would never have moved away, never met my wife, never started a business, never written 4 books and never spoken to thousands of people on stage! And that’s why as difficult and challenging the last few years have been for us all, we’ve all been affected, mentally, emotionally, financially, physically and even spiritually – you have to find some positives from it, and they will exist.”

Brad Burton business books

Brad is also the highest rated & reviewed 5* Amazon business author. He has four best-selling business books** under his belt.

 

 

*Affiliate links

Brad Burton talks to Helen Dewdney on East London Radio

Brad Burton Interview