At 11, Channel 4 called him “Britain's naughtiest kid”.
I lost my dad to alcoholism when I was nine, and after that I stopped listening to anyone. I was fighting, climbing out of classroom windows and swearing at teachers. A few weeks before I was due to leave primary school, I was expelled.
My mum spotted a Channel 4 programme in a magazine, Mr Drew's School for Boys, and put me forward. I was 11. The show labelled me “Britain's naughtiest kid”, and that label followed me around for years. Secondary school lasted three months before I was expelled again.
I got my GCSEs at a specialist school and studied business at college, but my temper was still in charge. In 2020 I was convicted of GBH and given a suspended sentence. Ten months later it happened again, and I was sent to a young offenders institution for 18 months.
Prison gave me something I'd never had: the same timetable every single day. Eat, train, walk, read, sleep. With an ADHD brain, I found that a relief.
“I found more peace in prison because I had structure.”
Tom Roberts, speaking to Yorkshire Live
I read every self-development book I could get hold of, and somewhere in that pile I worked out what had been wrong all along.
I'd never been short of motivation. I'd been short of structure.
I walked out of HMP Hindley in March 2023 with a routine I could stick to and a plan for what came next. I worked with mentors, turned the routine into a system, and in December 2023 I launched Generation I from Koh Samui in Thailand.
Generation I has coached 300+ people and brings in around £30,000 a month. The national press covers my story now for a very different reason.
If a timetable and a row of ticks could do that for me, starting where I started, think what they could do for you, starting where you are.
