Success is a great teacher, but failure is a better one. This is a story of an ordinary man’s journey, a rollercoaster ride between success and failure, between elation and misery. Most of all, it’s a book about resilience, not the kind theorised by academics but real, down-and-dirty survival after having been kicked when we are down.

Too many businesses start on a dream and end in a nightmare. The parables woven within these pages serve as a road map which shows the rocks and pitfalls that await the unwary. It shows that there is almost nothing that cannot be overcome. It helps turn those rocks into stepping stones.