It was 2012 and I was choosing what to study at university. I thought a Sports Science degree would be a good marriage of my passions, but I had only gotten 44 per cent in my Grade 12 exams, and I needed at least 65 per cent to get into Sports Science. Surely I could find a way. I picked up the phone and called the convener, negotiating with him that I would help to better the look of the degree to other students, and would give as many volunteer hours as needed, in return for a place. He was impressed with my guts and that I was committed to adding value to them by helping out for free — so he gave me a place! I was pumped.

I set my sights on a 10-year goal of finishing my Sports Science degree, doing a Bachelor of Physiotherapy, and then opening a franchise network of physios around Australia. But just like I hadn’t done well academically at school, university turned out to be no different. The one thing I did well was connect with people at my uni, both in my peer groups and among my teachers. My nickname from high school, ‘Mick on the go’, carried across to uni. I was known for my high energy and passion, and that I was always on the go. Socially, things were great. I was young, single and ambitious. I was learning a lot about life really quickly: learning what I wanted and what I didn’t want.

I remember one special day, walking into a class and seeing blond hair, beautiful blue eyes and a gorgeous, smiling girl. I immediately introduced myself. Alicia was lively, fun, smart, beautiful and super chilled out. We became really close friends, studying together regularly and adventuring when we weren’t at uni. She was my type of girl!

By the end of my first semester I felt unsatisfied. Sports Science just wasn’t right for me. I decided to change to an International Business degree. I had the idea to brand coffee cups (an underutilised advertising space), or to create a printed T-shirt business. I thought ‘On the Go’ would be a great business name that could easily be applied to anything. I had $150 in my bank account, and I spent $142 of it registering the name. Around this time, I found out that Alicia had a boyfriend she had been with since her teens, which was disappointing because I really liked her. She had only seen us as friends, and when she realised that our relationship might be developing into more than that she thought it best to end our friendship. I thought she was amazing, but I accepted that nothing was going to happen with us. I had no hard feelings. In life that’s what happens sometimes; you just have to say, ‘It is what it is!’

Ten T-shirts and 400 jerseys

One day a uni friend came to me because he needed 10 printed T-shirts for his soccer club, and I’d been floating the idea of starting my On the Go printed T-shirts business. I told him I’d do it, and outsourced the printing while designing my ‘ONTHEGO’ logo. Once they were printed, Mum helped me rebadge all the labels with an ‘ONTHEGO’ label, and I packaged the T-shirts in beautiful boxes, then personally delivered them. My mate loved the T-shirts, and it turned out that one of the guys on his soccer team was involved in a cycling race the local council was organising and they needed jerseys. I received a call on a Thursday.

‘Hi Mick. I’ve been forwarded your details by John. We have a cycling event coming up in just over three weeks, and we need 400-plus cycling jerseys manufactured by then. We thought they had been ordered, but our team member in procurement left his job without placing the order! We’ve researched everywhere globally, and only a few places say they can do it, but it will take them 12 to 14 weeks, and we only have three. We heard your company is quite experienced in this area of fast-turnaround custom products. We need a solution because we don’t want to let the riders down — nor the charity involved!’

‘That sounds like a big challenge, but I think I can help. I’ll chat to production and the design team to see if this is something we can realistically do, and let you know tomorrow.’

I was in my parents’ living room and Mum shook her head in exasperation. ‘Mick, please be careful. Are you sure you can organise this? You can’t even do up the button on your polo shirt, let alone manufacture an expensive fashion item!’

I just grinned. ‘Leave it with me.’

Overnight I researched manufacturing, and after being told by numerous factories that I was crazy and had no chance of getting it done in three weeks, I finally found a factory in China who said they could do it if I gave them a hand with the digital files. Plus, the owner’s brother-in-law was in Sydney! I couldn’t believe my luck. I called the brother-in-law. His English was great, and he said they could do the order — but we were already behind schedule and the clock was ticking. He also explained that I would need to pay 50 per cent upfront, which was more than $5000 — and I had only $500 to my name.

I thought it through. Considering these jerseys were custom made, I could ask for 50 per cent upfront from the council myself. Otherwise the risk would be too big. Dad had taught us kids to ‘always know your risk’.

First thing on Friday morning I called the council back, my heart racing. ‘We can do it in three weeks for you, but I’ll need a 50 per cent deposit.’

‘No worries. We’ll transfer the full amount today. You’ll have it this afternoon.’

I was stunned. I quickly got an invoice template from my brother, Nathan, and sent the invoice through. Then a lady from the council who worked in accounts called to say my ABN was wrong. ‘I’ll just put you through to accounts’, I said. I paused, and putting on a different voice let her know that this was very strange and we would get the correct details through, but could she please not delay the deposit. In actual fact I didn’t even know what an ABN was! I went to Google and quickly learned it stands for Australian Business Number. ‘Yeah, right, Mick, you’re really ready for this’, I laughed. I called an accountant friend of mine who helped me register for my ABN straight away which, luckily, is a speedy process. That same day I was able to send through the corrected invoice and they transferred the money instantly. ‘Wow!’ I thought. It was a real deal now. I had to make this happen.

I studied how to do the digital files for the factory, and worked like mad over the weekend to get them ready in time. On the Monday I had to transfer $5000 to the factory in China — to people I had never dealt with before. It was a massive leap of faith. You’ve got to roll the dice sometimes, and manage the risk the best you can. I knew the factory would not require the other 50 per cent until they had completed the order, so I went for it. My banking was not set up to do international transfers, so I had to go to the bank and set it up there, figure out the swift codes and transfer the $5000. Today our company pays tens of thousands of dollars a day to multiple countries overseas, with a dedicated accounts team, but back then everything was brand new to me.

I immediately sent the factory the digital files, that I had to learn myself, and worked with them on their workflow, studying every possible way we could do things differently to get the jerseys manufactured in the short time frame. Cycling jerseys are a complex garment to manufacture because of the technical material used, the number of panels, the function of the pattern required for a cyclist, the print process that diffuses the ink into fabric for the lifetime of the garment, and the technical features of having multiple panels with a lighter mesh that breathes — not to mention the three-quarter hidden zips. Complex, right?

Every day I learned more from the factory, and every day I was researching everything I needed to know. I spent hours and hours on the phone learning about freight, import licences and that I would have to pay customs duty. It was all new to me. It was exciting. It was a thrill to dive into the deep end, totally outside of everything familiar. I loved product, and I loved technology. I was working on my iPhone in between university lectures because I was midway through lectures and exams, and I was obsessively documenting every part of the supply chain to make sure every step was processed. I thought I could be onto something massive if I got this right.

I spent those three weeks living and breathing the project. In those three weeks I learned everything about the apparel industry: to pull it off I had to be an importer, a graphic designer, a fashion designer, a manufacturer, an import broker, a currency converter and a banker. By the end I had learned how the whole custom apparel manufacturing industry works, and I realised that anyone with the baggage of industry knowledge would never have taken on the project. My naivety for the industry and my passion and curiosity for the customer helped me to pioneer something very new for the market. It was an intense three weeks.

The cycling event was on a Saturday, and I had to pick up the jerseys from the DHL in Mascot, Sydney, at 6 am that day. I was praying my 1990 Ford Laser, which I had bought for $1500 the year before, would make the three-hour drive from Canberra to Mascot, and the two-hour drive from Mascot to Goulburn where the race was starting. I left at 3 am, got to Mascot on time, piled the car with the boxes of jerseys and took off for Goulburn. The charity cycling ride was massive: 1000 people riding together to raise money for a local leukemia foundation. An hour before start time everyone was still waiting for me. They were ready with their bikes and backpacks and supportive family and friends — but no cycling jerseys. My Ford Laser held out, and I arrived 30 minutes before start time to 400 people cheering madly. They couldn’t believe I’d pulled it off, and were over the moon to have their jerseys. My mum couldn’t believe it when I told her I’d made it just in the nick of time. She was always saying, ‘What are you going to do if they don’t turn up?!’ I told her I knew they would.

It was moving to watch 400 people put on jerseys I had made happen. There was jubilation in the air, with cyclists wearing their branded ‘Another OTG Product’ jerseys with pride as they rode off to raise money for the charity. I saw my product as a part of bringing people together, a part of making money for charity, a part of being active and outdoors. I loved it. This business made sense to me.

The following week I was in an accounting class, bored out of my brains. My lecturer was explaining things too ‘by the book’, and I had the distinct feeling that he had never run a business before. I felt my business studies were flawed, only preparing me to become an employee of a big company, not self-dependent or entrepreneurial. I had had enough. I walked straight out of that accounting lecture and never went back. I had profited $25 000 from the cycling jersey order, which was enough capital to launch ONTHEGO as a proper business and tell my parents I was going to go fulltime to make this dream a reality. The economy was on its knees, but I had to go for it. If Goulburn Council had had this problem, surely there were others having the same problem? I had learned that the custom apparel industry was very ‘top’ heavy, with too many steps to be followed to get things done … and with the many steps getting in the way of the customer getting what they wanted, when they wanted.

There were the salespeople who would get the order, the designers, the pattern makers, the guys who made the digital files, the makers and mass producers, the shippers and too many questions back and forth between them — all of which blew out the time frame. What if everything could be seamless? What if customers could order fewer items more easily than ever before, and have their goods delivered quickly and on time, and in their own designs? I was sure technology could enable more efficiency in what seemed to be an old-school industry where the customer wasn’t first. It was very hard for customers to get custom-designed products in a short time without ordering in the thousands of items to get exactly what they wanted. This was where I could make big things happen. The industry was ripe for disruption.

So I opened my first ‘office’ — a small, 4-square-metre space in Dad’s old woodturning shed — nervous, but knowing I had to trust my instincts. To hotspot the internet, I had to hang my phone out the window because I couldn’t access the house’s Wi-Fi from inside the shed. But phone reception was never reliable: I would often have to run to the front of the house with my computer to get enough Wi-Fi to send and receive emails.

ONTHEGO® Custom Apparel (OTG) has been in business since 2012. The first three years were tough. I barely took an income. I was only just able to pay for rent and food. I never socialised unless people were paying for me. I put everything back into the business. And then we gained some real momentum! In 2016 (around the time I was on Shark Tank) we had seven staff and were doing $1 million in sales. Now we have over 40 team mates and ONTHEGO® is growing rapidly, with our enterprise valuation (EV) now in the tens of millions, and over 1 million products delivered across 710 cities.

Shark Tank: why I passed it up

After I did the deal on Shark Tank with three of the ‘sharks’, I was funnelled into the hands of one of the sharks’ accounting/investment committees. They began a standard, thorough due-diligence check, which was highly intensive — and which took our small team a long time to complete.

I had agreed to sell them a discounted amount of equity on the basis that for 12 months they’d give a day a month of support to the business, but I was later told the sharks couldn’t legally commit to time. This frustrated me as I’m a big fan of having people close to you when you need them. It’s what early-stage companies need, and ironically what the sharks promised.

We finally completed due diligence in March 2016, and I was told the money would be transferred in June or July of that year. OTG was growing too quickly for us to continue waiting for their investment, and I was starting to feel that the sharks’ values didn’t align completely with mine, so I decided to thank them and move on.

As it turned out, not partnering with them was the right decision. They would have received 30 per cent of OTG — and our company’s valuation today is around 16 times higher than it was at the time!

You only live once

‘Start before you’re ready’ is one of my biggest mantras. I wasn’t ready to manufacture 400 cycling jerseys in just over three weeks, but I dove into the deep end and made it happen.

Remember: the decision you make is always the right decision. Because when you decide to jump, you’ll find a way to make it work. You’ll surprise yourself. It’s exciting, it’s daunting, there’s nerves and fear — but it’s an adventure. Feeling that something is right in your gut, following your instinct and making things happen is part of the magic of life.

People often think that to launch a business you need huge capital and a business plan, or to work in a desired role you need X experience and Y credentials. The truth is, you don’t. Some of the best businesses in the world started in a garage or dorm room, and people land jobs every day without having every set of criteria ticked. Apple started in a garage in 1976 when friends Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak had the dream of making a personal computer. Dell Computers was started in 1984 in Texas by Michael Dell, who worked out of his university dorm room. Oprah Winfrey was born into a poor family in Mississippi, and at age 19 became a TV correspondent, despite a life of adversity. I got into uni despite having a score 16 per cent under the requisite. Never underestimate the power of school dropouts. Some of the most successful people I’ve worked with or employed didn’t pass Year 12 or university. I look at some of the ‘geniuses’ I went to school with — who got a 99 per cent study score and were always under lights — still battling away. Then I compare them with great buddies of mine like Peking Duk (Australia’s top DJs and multi-platinum record sellers), who were disruptive, like me, and ended up following their hearts — and by 28 years of age were killing it.

Starting before you’re ready doesn’t mean not bothering to prepare; it means instead of waiting, jump. Use the preparation you have and figure out the rest as you go. I took a leap when everyone was telling me to play it safe. I started long before I was ready, with no plan. But I had a vision, my habits and work ethic, my mind and my health — the things I could control.

The big, important changes in our lives are either due to our own making, or they happen through circumstances we could never foresee. Starting before you’re ready is about the changes, decisions and commitments you make happen. Unless you’re living deliberately, life can feel like it’s stuck in a rut. It just keeps on as it has always been, with nothing changing. If you’re feeling unhappy about it, it’s time to change. It’s easy to say, ‘I’ll save up some money and then I’ll do that’, or perhaps ‘when I meet the right person, I’ll make that change’, or ‘it’s just not the right time right now’. The truth is that there is never a ‘right’ time, person or place. Sometimes things happen easily; sometimes they don’t. The one constant is that the only person who can change your life is you. Accept your situation, make a commitment to take the leap and work for the life you want.