After leaving school at 16 because of bullying, Liv Conlon never imagined she'd be running a business that turns over £1million per year by the age of 20.
The teen showed her entrepreneurial spirit from a young age, starting her first business at just 13 years old. It involved importing nail foils from China and selling them on online auction sites in the UK for a much cheaper price than people could get them for in salons.
The young businesswoman made £5,000 and decided that running her own business was what she wanted to do with her life.
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A-grade student Liv enjoyed studying but not the enforced structure that came with it and that, coupled with being subjected to bullying at school, encouraged her to make the decision to leave school at 16 before her final year to start her own interior design company.
Speaking to Pretty 52, she explained "I'd been bullied my whole school life through primary and secondary school."
"I wanted to leave as soon as I had done my A levels and got the A grades I'd hoped for."
She launched ThePropertyStagers, which furnishes empty properties, without financial backing or help from the bank of mum and dad.
Under the direction of its teenage boss the business made a healthy £30,000 in its first year, and turned over an astonishing £1million in its second.
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She told us about the business' rapid expansion, explaining: "It felt amazing and slightly overwhelming as our biggest issue then became how to cope with the amount of business we got."
Liv now furnishes over 300 properties every year and has hired a team of 10 people - including her mum, Ali, and older brother, Jack.
While many millennials and university graduates are struggling to get on the property ladder Liv has already bought a one-bedroom flat and and, ever the business woman, has renovated and doubled its value to £100,000.
She believes daily bullying for years, although harrowing helped her to succeed: "It really motivated me and contributed to my drive. I think when someone tells you that you can't do something it makes you want to go on and prove that you can."
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And she certainly proved her ability. The idea behind the ThePropertyStagers came after Liv asked her mum, who ran a successful training business at the time, if she could furnish a property for her that she'd been struggling to sell for three months.
Liv was trying to find a property-staging company to make the hard-to-shift home more appealing to potential buyers and get a faster, more lucrative sale, but she couldn't find anywhere that would do what she wanted for a reasonable price - so she decided to do it herself.
Liv furnished the property and sold it within three days for above the asking price - and the buyer paid extra for the furniture and accessories she'd provided.
This was the gap in the market the #girlboss had been waiting for so ThePropertyStagers was born.
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Liv works hard for her business, working 18-hour days six or seven days a week and won five awards for her venture and entrepreneurial spirit in 2018.
So how did she make sure her venture so successful? Liv first generated clients at local networking events, but admits because of her age, she wasn't taken seriously.
But it was when Liv became more active on social media that she really began to see the business take off and give her property-staging enterprise the edge over other its competitors.
Liv's first paid job was staging a one-bedroom property in Glasgow. She kitted it out with all the flatpack Ikea furniture she could fit into the back of her Vauxhall Corsa.
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As the company grew Liv realised she needed help and employed her mother as operations manager to help out.
The mother and daughter duo jumped at the chance to work with one another and, despite Ali being the boss at home, Liv makes the final decisions in the office and, she admits, earns more money.
She enthuses: "I'm so grateful to work with family. It's so much fun getting to work with the people you love everyday."
Ali has always been supportive of her daughter's ambitions, taking her to a business conference in LA when she was just 15 and encouraging her to listen to audio books by business gurus and motivational speakers.
Even though ThePropertyStagers is now enjoying financial success, it hasn't all been plain sailing.
In the early days, Liv admits she sometimes felt as though she was winging it. One day when she made a mistake getting furniture picked up by a courier. When they wanted to charge her extra she drove three and a half hours to put the furniture in her car, two hours loading it into her car and then carried it up a flight of stairs - all to save £40.
While she doesn't splash her cash on designer clothes and handbags she does enjoy the odd margarita and instead reinvests money back into the business.
Over Christmas, Liv spearheaded the #100HomeChristmasMakeover in Glasgow - transforming the homes of 100 families living in temporary accommodation to make their digs more homely.
She explains it's taking part in initiatives like this that make her feel most fulfilled.
Something that is close to her heart, is becoming a motivational spokesperson for other young people, to show them that going to university isn't the only route available after school.
Speaking about her plans for 2019, Liv said: "I want to watch the business grow even further and I'm looking to franchise a sector of it too.
"I'm also planning to present at a lot of events on entrepreneurship and hopefully inspire millennials to be more business minded.
"In 5 years, I hope ThePropertyStagers will have gone international and I'll have time to personally mentor young people from disadvantaged backgrounds about how to start a business." she explained.
So what would she tell her younger self? "I would tell myself to feel gratitude for the people in my life - these people are in my life for a reason," she explains. "I practice a lot of gratitude, it's so important to focus on what you have every day."
Featured Image Credit: ThePropertyStagersTopics: Life News, News, Life, Real Life, advice