Enterprise Story: Bradleigh Buckley

Posted on: 25 November 2023 by Richard Finch in Enterprise

Bradleigh Buckley is a Class of 2022 Business Management graduate who has set up his own business, ONW Drones.

I decided to go self-employed to follow my dreams of running my own business. I’ve faced many challenges in life, and I thought I would take on the biggest one yet. I wanted to better myself and follow my passion.

I got to where I am through hard work, determination, making a lot of mistakes and taking a lot of risks. It all started in lockdown when I had the vision of starting a business. I graduated and left my job in the July of 2022 to go full time building my business and it was daunting at first but 12 months later I’m where I am now and I’m very appreciative for it.

My favourite experience was when I went to my first networking event. I felt great to show people what my business does and have people interested and ask me questions. It built my confidence and helped me grow.

I found most challenging was the sacrifice of my social life. I learnt that by building my business I had to sacrifice a lot of my nights, weekends and pretty much any free time I had towards editing, networking, communicating with clients and finding new ways to improve my business. "Set a goal and remove all distractions. I always tell myself one thing, when something distracts me from my goals and it’s “get your head in the game”. It’s so easy to procrastinate and lose sight of what your goal is but the faster you realise to stay focused the better you will be at what you are striving towards.

Only you can better yourself and the sooner you realise this the sooner you start to improve. For far too long I’ve relied on others to help me and lend a hand when in reality only I can help myself. You’ve sometimes got to become more selfish and work on yourself in order to progress to that next level.

Stop looking at what others are doing and thinking they’re ahead of you. Everyone is running their own race and the only opponent you have is yourself. Everyone is on a different path with different goals. I always got overhelmed when I looked at what everyone else was doing rather than focusing on what I had to do. It changed my life when I realised this.

But also, another tip is it’s okay to take a breather, we can’t always be full on. It’s okay to take a step back, take a break and stay at a consistent pace of work. My dad always told me the runner who is at consistent pace will travel a lot further than the runner who sprints at full speed.