A CLASS ACT
I left school at 16 to start my own business & now I run a £1m empire – mum struggling to sell her house sparked it all
Our expert explains why further education isn't for everyone.
GETTING good grades and going to uni used to be the traditional path everyone wanted to take.
And while many still make that journey there’s now more opportunity than ever to go from class to company owner.
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This week kids across Scotland got their exam results and are now considering their future.
And while university and college may be right for some, business owner Liv Conlon said it is possible to become a success without further education.
Glasgow-born Liv launched a property staging business when she was 16 and within a year it was turning over £1million.
Now living just outside Marbella, in Spain, she gives her advice to youngsters facing their future.
STARTING a business as a teenager may seem daunting.
But for Liv Conlan it was all she ever wanted to do - much to the dismay of her teachers.
The dogged Glasgow-born entrepreneur was a star pupil, getting an impressive four As and a B in her Highers.
But there was nothing her school mentors could do to persuade her she should go to university as she had a plan she was determined to see through.
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Liv, 25, said: “I didn’t want to go on and do any sort of further education or exams.
“My mum was supportive, she was like, ‘just do what you want, do something you love, you’ll be successful’.
I cried myself to sleep every night when I lived in a homeless shelter at 16 - now I’m a business owner running a successful shop
“School, on the other hand, were not so delighted about it. They said I was ruining my life starting a business, rather than going on to university and using my exam results. Many of them were trying to push me into maths or science, even though I was very creative.”
Liv had already dabbled in business, importing goods from China and selling them in the UK by the age of 13. She made £5,000 and bought her first MacBook Pro.
But she started in earnest at 16, when her mum was trying to sell a home and struggled to shift it.
Mum-of-one Liv said: “My mum had invested in a property. She’d refurbished it and was selling it but it sat on the market for three months with no offers.
“It was empty, so I decided to stage it, which is basically just furnishing and styling it.
“It went back on the market and sold in three days. So I realised this could really work and there was no one else offering that service.
“When I left school, I literally just started going to networking events and started speaking to people about what it is that I could do. And then one client led to another, which led to another, which led to today.”
It was a clever business model and proved super successful, seeing Liv rake in cash and awards within a couple of years.
The businesswoman, who was bullied at school in South Lanarkshire for her good grades, said: “We scaled it to seven figures by the time I was 19. So that was just a bit surreal. When a lot of people were just in their first year at uni, I was collecting awards - I was named The UK Young Entrepreneur of the Year.”
Liv’s firm ThePropertyStagers has now won 13 awards nationally and internationally, and it stages 400 homes across the UK every year.
She now coaches other women to get into the industry and follow her clever business model, which can see budding company owners start up with no capital.
And she had some advice for youngsters coming out of school who may not want to follow the traditional path of going to university.
Liv, mum to 14-month-old son Cash, said: “If you do something that you’re passionate about and you’re good at it, the money will come. And the money can come fast if you’ve got a skill set in something that’s unique.
“Now with social media, you can be directly into people’s DMs and messages and be making sales - it’s not like business used to be where you had to have all this stuff. You can literally start making money tomorrow.
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“School’s very much tailored for academic people. And I think it really loses a lot of people with so many creative skills.
"There’s so much money to be made, so much success to be had in social media, content, music, development, editing. There’s honestly so many roles like that out there now if you want a job.”