TikTok entrepreneur Simon Squibb: 'Money won't make you happy – but it gives you choices'

Hi, I’m Raees Ahmad. I am 14 years old and from Bolton, and from a young age I’ve been obsessed with numbers, money and being successful. And I’ve always wanted to start a business. It’s the dream. However, my family isn’t stable enough to live the luxury life. I want my children to live the life that brings luxury. 

I’ve realised I want to start a clothing brand. This brand is called Styluxe. The slogan is: ‘Elevate your Wardrobe.’ This is a clothing brand that sells clothes like suits, jackets, coats, blazers, trousers. Or you could say ‘smart clothing’. By 2029 I would like to be a millionaire, and by 2036 I would like to be in the tens of millions or hundreds of millions. 

I came across Simon Squibb from TikTok. He experienced homelessness at 15 following a family breakdown, then went on to found 18 businesses and fund more than 70 others. Now he has almost seven million followers.

What grabbed my attention was that he is an investor and involved in multiple businesses to make people’s dreams come true. I interviewed Squibb about how I could make my dream a reality. 

Raees Ahmad: My dream is to be insanely rich so I can help generations to not fail when AI takes over, because I think that AI is going to take over. I know that you went from being homeless. I was homeless when I was 11 or 12 years old. How did that inspire you? 

Simon Squibb: I don’t know if it did inspire me, to be honest. It felt like an experience that showed me another side of the world I didn’t really understand. It gave me frustration with the school system I had just left. I was 15. I didn’t know what money was. I didn’t understand how money worked.  

No one had taught me anything to do with sales, marketing, how to hire people, how to build something. I couldn’t get a job because I didn’t have an address, I didn’t have a National insurance card, because I was 15 and homeless.  

It was the first time I realised I needed to create wealth, not extract wealth. It was the waking up of what I call the ‘entrepreneur muscle’. That was a turning point, that moment of pain. 

I was homeless for eight weeks. There’s a lot of good people I met when I was homeless. You have this image that the homeless world is awful. People were actually kind and tried to help me. 

I think pain is actually, in a weird way, a useful thing sometimes. At 14, I was not purposeful. I was just about survival. I have dyslexia as well which is, I think, a superpower but it was a weakness when I was younger. Teachers were saying I was stupid because I can’t read. 

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Do you think school failed you? 

Yeah I do. I think the school system fails a lot of people. Someone’s decided that an A in biology is important. Really all it is is memorising something you’re probably not interested in. I think we should teach sales in school. I think we should teach marketing, business and how to manage money. 

What was your turning point from being homeless to business? 

It was a very slow progression out of the situation. I stayed in a friend’s garage at first, and then I slept in a park for a little while. And then I had friends who let me stay on the sofa. But I didn’t feel stable. 

For the first time, this entrepreneur muscle talked to me. It said: ‘That’s a nice big house. They must be rich.’ And then it said: ‘That’s a messy garden.’ And then the muscle said to me: ‘Maybe they will pay you to tidy up the garden.’  

This muscle started talking to me, not because I was particularly brave, but because I had no choice. It was desperation. I walked up the driveway and knocked on the door, and the person answered.  

I said: “Hi, I’m Simon Squibb, and I’ve got a gardening company.” Not very confidently, to be honest. I think they took pity on me. I said: “Maybe I can clean up your garden and you pay me?” They said yes. Eventually, I was taking care of a lot of people’s gardens. 

I’m not a very good gardener. I’d never done gardening before. I didn’t realise how hard it was. So I took some of the money, the cash that I’d been getting from these people, and gave it to other people to help me. 

You started a gardening business? 

Exactly. I went to social services for help, and they told me just to go back home. I couldn’t. Those systems that I thought were part of the way the world works weren’t an option for me. 

So you think the government fails children? 

I mean, I can’t talk in general about the government, because I always think it’s very complicated. I feel with the social service system, they’re overwhelmed, so I don’t want to blame them, but the system is not really able to help those that fall through the cracks. Organisations like Big Issue are trying to solve those problems. 

The social service system spat me back out. Eventually, they caught up with me again and offered me accommodation. But by that time, my business had started to work, and they told me that they would only give me accommodation if I didn’t work.  

I’d already got a taste for that independence. My little gardening business was starting to make money to pay my bills. I enjoyed sales, knocking on doors, building something. When they offered me accommodation but not to work, I didn’t want it.  

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Being young, I was kind of privileged. My mum spoiled me. I used to model. My mum and dad broke up and we moved houses, then we got evicted, and we were put in a homeless refuge. We were there for nine or 10 months. I think that was my turning point. I have to escape this when I’m older. I don’t want to live here. I thought, how am I gonna escape? It was always being a footballer. Then I realised that wasn’t going to happen. I thought to myself: business. Styluxe is a clothing brand for less fortunate people to feel involved in the crowds. Personally, I would like to be a millionaire or billionaire, the most successful I can be. With the money I make, just like you did, I’d use that to invest in other people’s businesses so it makes their dreams happen. The dream right now is to be successful, help my family, and then after that, help other people achieve what they want to do. 

What do you see as the first step to make it happen? 

Find an investor. 

In the UK, there’s a problem with the way that everybody thinks about how to start a business, and it’s because of Dragon’s Den. Everyone thinks they have an idea, then go to a dragon and say: ‘Give me money.’ You don’t need money to start a business. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t ask. But you don’t want to keep asking people, and they keep saying no. That’s going to waste energy and time. You might need investment in the future, but to get started, you don’t. 

If I asked you, how much could you pull together today, what would it be?  

£10.  

You could go to a charity shop. I found a suit in a charity shop the other day for £10 that brand new is £300. You could buy it, sell it for double, and give the money back to the charity shop. That’s a great video. You make money by putting it on TikTok, or YouTube. It takes a bit of time to build that channel up. But there’s no reason you can’t follow this cycle. 

You mentioned earlier about helping people when you’re a multi-millionaire. You can help people straight away, and it can be good business to do good things. You’re 14. Your costs are low. You don’t have rent or bills to pay. You can start small and go big. All the businesses you see today – Google, Gymshark – all started in someone’s spare room. They didn’t go and get big fancy offices. 

I went and cleaned gardens. Then I realised I’m not good at it, so I got people to help. You could do the same. You could clean cars. You could do a mobile carpeting business. Where you start doesn’t mean that’s where you’ll finish. 

It doesn’t sound like the clothing business, but let’s say you just did social media for up-and-coming clothing brands. You meet founders, you interview them, you learn how they’re doing it right and how they’re building up their clothing brand. 

I think I’m going to start with the charity one. I’ve got other responsibilities. That’s not an excuse. But I’ve got family responsibilities and school. But I’ll make it work.  

I don’t know a thing about your life, so fair enough. I have a seven-year-old son. I homeschool him. I had to leave him to come here today. There’s always going to be that element of balance that you need to figure out. But I’m sure you could do this now, take an hour, and you’d have fun doing it. 

You bought a staircase for £25,000 for people to walk up the stairs and pitch their dream. Did you buy that staircase for more views and social media attention?  

Yes, I bought it for more views and attention on social media. There’s nothing wrong with that. But it’s there to help people pitch their dreams. How do I help someone with their dream if I don’t record their dream and put it up on a platform that’s taken me five years to build? 

Trust me, fame on its own is not worth it. I don’t need views for money. I need fame to have an influence on fixing the education system. If I could have no fame but influence, I’d take it. I have people knocking on my door. I have people stopping me in the street. I can’t even go to the toilet any more without getting stopped 20 times. Fame is not worth it. 

Money will not make you happy, but having money allows you to have choices. It can make you happier, but I know people that are rich who were unhappy before they were rich and after they got rich, they are even more unhappy. I think what makes you happy is having a purpose, and often the purpose is bigger than you. 

Find out more about Simon Squibb.

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