- Tom Lewis started freelancing at 15, writing travel content, and grew to earn £20k per month by 2020
- He later founded a confectionery business and learned advertising on social media platforms, eventually specialising in ad consultancy
- Tom co-founded an ad agency with Steven Bartlett, moved to Dubai for business, and now runs a growing company with 15 employees
Tom Lewis runs a business that has generated over £75 million for clients and makes seven figures, but a few years ago, he was just a teenager looking to earn some cash.
When Tom’s dream of becoming a pilot was dashed after it became clear he couldn’t afford the costly training, he needed a new goal. He often saw his entrepreneur dad using Fiverr — a website that allows freelancers to offer digital services — and so Tom pondered what service he could charge for.
‘Don’t ask me why, as I still don’t know to this day, but I landed on writing travel content,’ Tom, from Worcester, tells Metro. He would write articles for boutique hotels and create unique itineraries for tourists, charging £50 per task.
Recalling the summer of 2018, Tom, now 22, says: ‘I would shut my bedroom door and sit at my desk for hours on end. My mum would come in and remark, “Wow, it’s absolutely boiling in here.” I’d be sweating but so focused that I wouldn’t realise.’
As well as working from his bedroom, he’d use any spare time at school to rack up further hours. ‘I was best friends with the librarian, Mrs Jeffrey. She didn’t know what I was doing, but we would chat every lunchtime while I was at the computer,’ he recalls, adding that classmates just thought he was ‘studious’.
By 2020, Tom was in sixth form and earning an impressive £20k per month, after increasing his prices by 500% within a year. While his mates were taking trips to potential university options, he had other ideas.
‘University was pushed down your throat, but I thought, “Why would I get myself into £70k worth of debt to do a normal 9-5?” Freelancing helped me to see outside of that,’ he remembers.
After finishing college, Tom started his own confectionery online business, using his savings to import American sweets. When his first order came into his estate on an articulated lorry, and half-mounted on the pavement, his shocked dad said: “Oh God. How much stuff have you ordered?”, he recalls.
Undeterred, Tom put in the work to sell all the product being stored in his parents’ garage. ‘Whether it was rain, sleet, or shine, I took 50-60 parcels, in three or four trips a day, to the courier on my electric scooter,’ he explains.’
In late 2022, Tom wanted to branch out and started his own online shop – but not everything worked. His worst, investment was a portable dog water bottle that sold so badly his mum eventually made a pity purchase. His curse was broken by Bluetooth earbuds, which eventually earned him around £200 each day.
During this time, Tom became familiar with how ads operated on Facebook, Instagram and Messenger (also known as Meta Ads), as he relied on them to get about his products out, and in 2023, using the inheritance from his grandmother, he enrolled on a specialised course.
Tom then went back to Fiverr, this time as an ad consultant, and while at a networking event, he met a colleague of Dragon’s Den star Steven Bartlett.
Through this connection, Steven’s brand, Diary of a CEO, became one of Tom’s clients and the pair soon hitting it off, and together investing in an agency that develops ads, called MetaStat.
‘Steven invests in entrepreneurs, not businesses,’ explains Tom, who adds that the star ‘helps when help is needed’.
Tom now lives in Dubai, as he believes this is the best place for his business to grow. He compares moving across the globe to leaving for university, but insists he didn’t find it hard to leave friends.
‘My circle is small. It probably sounds very unsociable, but I have very few close friends just because I’m so focused on building my company,’ Tom explains.
‘I haven’t got anything against people from school, I just don’t align with where they’re at in their lives. All the friends I have now are in their late 20s or early 30s.
‘To start with, I was very drawn towards employing Gen-Z people. Now, as the company grows, getting people with more experience is super important. It’s essential to have a balance.’
His company has gone from just three colleagues to 15 people in the last 18 months, and Tom intends for the team to keep growing.
‘We have had exponential growth since we started. That doesn’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon,’ he says.
Working 12 to 14 hours weekdays and most weekends means that he has little time for much else, stopping only briefly to play paddleball.
‘I do that in the very early mornings, when everyone is asleep in the UK, so my phone’s not dinging with messages,’ says Tom. ‘I’m almost obsessed with the business and how we can grow it, so that occupies my brain most of the time.’
He adds that he believes anyone can start a business, but says it’s easier if you have worked as a freelancer in the field. ‘Do a course, and learn a valuable, niche skillset that you can later monetise. Nine times out of 10, you can start making money from that.’