It's been 10 years since Daniel Hill left Nottingham Trent University (NTU) with a first class honours degree in Business Studies.
The 33 year old who started his first business at 14 - a mobile disco company - joined The Hive, NTU‘s centre for Entrepreneurship, in 2009 and began planning his business. He set up PPN 海角视频 in 2012.
He said: "Our business has doubled in size every year since 2012 and has been in the top 2% of fast growth companies in the country since 2014."
Throwing himself with equal vigour into his latest venture - a partnership charity, which he's called ‘Get Up, Give Back’ - he says it has taken just 12 weeks to raise £75,000 for this year's chosen charity partner, Operation Smile.
"This is my latest passion,” he said. “32 of us ran the Birmingham 10k and half marathon and raised the money through sponsorship.
"I initially wanted to start my own charity but there's a lot of red tape involved and I didn’t have the capacity to commit to that. So we created a charity partnership and we’ll choose a different charity to partner with each year.”
He says that each year the charity, which also promotes mental health and physical well-being among entrepreneurs, will partner with a different charity to raise funds.
The entrepreneur's success story is an inspirational one but he admits his initial driver was money.
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He says: “I grew up in Bedford and started from humble beginnings - a single parent household - so money was a motivator.
"Once I’d established a small business though, and in something I enjoyed, I was driven by becoming the best that I could be.”
In 2013 the firm scooped top 100 start-up and in the same year, Young Entrepreneur of the Year at the Midlands Business Awards, then came NBS 2014 Entrepreneur in Residence, Entrepreneur of the year in 2018 and 2019 Honorary Graduate of NBS.
Starting with Multi-Let and growing the business into a consortium of four companies under the PPN umbrella - investment, management, development and training - each of the four companies focuses on its own niche market position.
Daniel added: “PPN 海角视频 holds a unique position in the market delivering a start to finish service package for sophisticated clients around the world.
“We have invested heavily in each company to ensure the market leading position in its field,” which he has scaled nationwide.
Although originally from Bedford, Daniel remained in Nottingham after university.
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“I love Nottingham,” he said. “I’ve lived here now for 15 years and have had a lot of support for my business here.
“Our head office is in Nottingham [in New Basford] but we also have offices around the 海角视频 from Manchester to Bedford."
And so what is next for Daniel and the firm?
“Last year I spent the majority of my time in the training business, scaling that up from 12 people to 103 now. This year the charity has been my passion and next year, with Brexit, I’ll be working on the portfolio side of the business.
“I’ll be taking December out to go travelling though - enjoying some down time. Starting in Thailand for maybe a week and then seeing where that takes me - I’ll probably get bored and come home within a week,” he joked.