How a break from Lord Sugar changed the fortunes of this young entrepreneur

It takes hard work, determination and talent to achieve startup success, but getting an early break from a major business leader like Lord Alan Sugar can be a real game-changer, as entrepreneur Ross Testa, founder of video and social media agency 3 Heads Agency discovered.

At school, Testa had no idea where his future career lay. While his friends pursued predictable routes into law, medicine, and journalism, he admits that his plans were non-existent. Everything changed when, aged 18, he decided to organize a charity week at school to raise money for the Teenage Cancer Trust after one of his closest friends, Ellis Haggith, was diagnosed with leukemia.

He says:

“I was determined to make it a success, and it was: the campaign raised just under £5,000 in one week. We had support from a lot of businesses and celebrities, and the experience made me realize this was what I wanted to do as a career. I approached several businesses, offering to create content for their social media, and when one, a barber’s shop, got back to me, and I had my first client.”

He launched his video and social media agency while still at school, but at that stage wasn’t ready to commit to working on the business full time. He decided to go to university to study business management and run his agency in his spare time. Keeping all his options open, he also took a full-time job with Microsoft.

Testa, now 23, says: “I applied for the job at the start of my first year, and while I waited to hear back from them, my business starting to grow. When they offered me the job, I was caught between three amazing opportunities, growing my business, studying at university, and working at Microsoft. I wanted to continue with all three, so I was working flat out at Microsoft all day, and running my agency, and studying for my degree at night.”

In the final year of his degree, however, the pressure to juggle all three became too much to handle. “Microsoft was amazing, and as an entrepreneur, I learned so much about how the organization operates and how the teams all work towards one vision, but I needed to focus on my business and the final year of my degree,” he says.

Then in 2018, aged just 21, Testa got his big break when he was asked to produce a video for one of Lord Sugar’s businesses. He had been working with Andrew Bloch, Lord Sugar’s PR agent and the CEO of Frank, creating video content for their campaigns, and doing everything from car launches with Volvo to World Cup campaigns for Clas Ohlson with John Barnes.

“My first opportunity to work with Lord Sugar was when Andrew arranged the press launch of 2017 The Apprentice winner Sarah Lynn’s business, ‘Sweets in the City’,” says Testa. “They needed a video to showcase both Lord Sugar and Sarah Lynn speaking about the products. We shot and edited it in in one day, before it was shared across press and social media.”