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31 January 2022

Sixth Form students were delighted to welcome Alan Bevan to Birkenhead School, to deliver a Nicholls Lecture entitled 'Life Lessons from Business'.

By Sienna Walters, Upper Sixth student

To begin his talk, Mr Bevan plunged right into giving students advice on running their own business, such as depleting the common myth that to build up a successful business, you must have a new idea. He suggested that it’s actually much better to spot a gap in the market and do what others are, but better.

With his own business in the property market, Mr Bevan is no stranger to the ups and downs that come along with it, explaining that it’s not all as glamorous as it seems, with a cynical nature, linking the recent impacts of COVID on his business, and describing how he overcame the challenges he was displayed with.

The students were presented with the strong message that success breeds complacency, and complacency breeds failure. Alan went on to describe his own experiences where his business was put at risk and he became complacent himself, but he described this as a turning point in his career, as it allowed him to master the skill of taking calculated risks as he found results in his failures and learnt that procrastination is an overlooked error in all businesses.

To pass on his lessons from his experience in the world of property, Alan introduced his ‘5 life lessons’ to the Sixth Form, which included the fact that luck plays a huge part in success, quoting ‘the harder I work the luckier I get’, illustrating that luck rewards those who are determined. Other pieces of advice included taking well-timed to risks, planning and researching as it rarely results in failure, not to be complacent when something works in your favour and most of all not to procrastinate, but to adapt a ‘just do it’ attitude.

Following the lecture, Sixth Form students joined Alan as lunch guests to further discuss his City Residential business and how they can apply his lessons to different areas of their lives and possibly their own futures in business. I would like to extend my thanks from the entire Sixth Form community to Alan, for an inspirational and engaging lecture that every student can take from and apply to their own lives.

Alan is the Managing Director of Rogerson Bevan Consultancy, a leading advisor/agent in the sale of ground rents/freeholds across the Northwest.