Currently...

I run an education company, whose main product is tutoring. Well, that's my working life. I'm also trying to learn French, playing lots of table-tennis and reading lots of blogs.

Due to some masterful re-structuring, I now have to do very few of the things that used to give me great grief - keeping accounts, sorting out tutor bookings etc. My loosely-defined role is "growing the company".

It is necessarily varied: sometimes I'm writing 11+ English manuals, sometimes I'm interviewing tutors. I meet lots of schools and other people "in education", and try to find time to teach as well. I have managed to carve out a fluffy hour per day to think about how we can make the company better.

Before I escaped...

I tutored and wrote "Fitzgeraldian" short stories (my own description). I also presented a laughably disorganised documentary in Peru on the Ashaninka tribe - a poor man's Bruce Parry.

I set up Keystone about nine months after leaving university.

My moment of truth...

I spend most of the day dreaming, but about nothing as specific as what I'm doing now. Its development has been organic and weirdly passive.

• 1/8th Dragon's Den.
  
• 3/8th sitting through a really turgid and depressing training day for another tutoring agency.
  
• 4/8th talking with my friend Rich one evening about cycling around London with flyers (something I only ever did in the end for about 15 minutes).
  

Planning for it...

Luckily, it required little up-front funding. I was still in the after-glow of my History degree, so I researched it for about 6 months - something I enjoyed greatly.

My key move was speaking to as many people as I could who were keen to give advice: lawyer friends, headmasters, friends who had worked for other tutoring agencies etc.

As I said, luckily the start-up costs were minimal (internet connection, phone lines) and I was blessed to have my parents' house in London from which to run it. There was little pressure to make for the company to be immediately profitable, having no "dependants".

The worst and best bits...

Hardest: Not letting everything spiral out of control (keeping focus), and breaking into a market that was dominated by word-of-mouth (although, paradoxically, this is of course now our biggest driver of new business).

Best: Working with intelligent and friendly people; having ideas that are immediately realizable.

Best advice...

• Keep your integrity.
• What - really - is there to lose?
• Always be narrating your work to friends, elders - anyone that will listen and challenge you.

Useful resources and information...

• www.preoccupations.org is a constant source of inspiration
• Loosely (if unhelpfully): the blogosphere