Successful Berwick entrepreneur gives speech to inspire school students

That was the core message shared with Longridge Towers School pupils at the school’s Founders Day event.

Michael Brennan has started two businesses, raised several million pounds and is now living with his young family in London, but he explained to the pupils how it all started with him leaving Berwick Academy intent on being an entrepreneur.

He told the current Longridge leavers: “I looked back this week at what I wrote in my leavers book when I was your age, and it was – ‘I don’t know what I want to be when I’m older, but I want to start my own business, and I want to be worth fifty million pounds’.

“I don’t know why I came up with that figure and I’m nowhere near making fifty million pounds, but I know where I want to go and I’m having fun on the way.

“I’m working hard, being curious, getting out of that comfort zone and that includes standing here very nervous today, shaking.

“But I’m doing it because I want to inspire you guys to try. If I get one person in the room to get excited and go home and try something new tonight or over the summer holidays, then hopefully I’ve done my job.”

The 36-year-old never harboured ambitions to be a professional athlete, but instead idolised Virgin owner Richard Branson.

When it has come to dreaming up products he could develop, he turned to his own experiences.

Michael said: “I see myself as a Berwick boy now, but I started out in Essex and I experienced bullying down there.

“When I was Head Boy at Berwick Academy, I realised that there wasn’t an easy way for young people to have a safe space in a digital world to report things.

“So, with social media exploding and concerns and cyberbullying all around them, myself and my school friend Kieran Innes saw an opportunity to provide children with a voice but also link it to the safeguarding lead in schools to provide an early intervention opportunity.

“The government programmes provided good evidence with Tootoot proving to be four times more likely to help a child to report a concern at the earliest opportunity, and a reduction in large-scale issues in schools by up to 20%.”

Tootoot is an award-winning safeguarding and anti-bullying platform now promoted by the UK Government and used across 14 different countries.

A few years ago, Michael left Kieran to continue to develop Tootoot and Stribe, an off-shoot for school staff, and sought a fresh opportunity to create something new.

He and two co-founders launched ‘Bob’, a refillable body wash, in February 2025, and they have now got 25,000 subscribers.

Michael added: “What is more valuable is that here was me, a young lad in Berwick who wanted to be entrepreneurial, and I found a way to do that.

“I have made mistakes, but learned along the way and my key message to the Longridge pupils was not to be scared of making mistakes.

“There are so many opportunities out there, but you’ve got to go and hunt for them – they’re not going to come to you.”