Gérard is a former youth professional footballer, having played for Halifax Town along with trial spells at Stockport County, Doncaster Rovers and Mansfield Town, he was once identified as one of England's young talents having attracted interest from Middlesbrough aged 16 and Chelsea aged 17, having also featured in the world's biggest football magazine FourFourTwo age 19, but unfortunately got released around same time.

Having gone on to study at university on BSc (Hons) Sports Coaching & Performance, Gérard established his first business called the Gérard School of Football Ltd aged 19 years with his father Bryn in February 2009. He is now the entrepreneur behind a fast-expanding business which provides specialist football coaching to children aged 4-15 years, having grown the business from humble beginnings to now seeing over 1500 pupils in the Humberside & East Yorkshire region go through its programs each week.

Gérard School of Football is one of Britain's leading specialist football development centres, ranked in the Top 100 Best Business Start-ups List in UK 2010, now working in partnership with Arsenal FC Plc, third richest club in the world valued at $1.2billion, operating Arsenal Soccer Schools, one of the largest soccer school programs in the world with an active presence across 23 countries. This made Gérard, who is still only 21 himself, the ‘Youngest Director of Football' for Arsenal Soccer Schools in history to date.

Following on from his impressive enterprising journey, Gérard has been awarded ‘Ambassador' status for Enterprise UK, national campaign chaired by Peter Jones OBE which see's him deliver inspirational guest speeches throughout the UK to increase entrepreneurial and enterprising behaviour among people, along with being a speaker for ‘School Speakers' founded by Claire Young. He is that good; bookies William Hill have given odds of 1000-1 to become the future England Manager!

His top tips for setting up an Enterprise;

• Research every detail
• Be confident in everything you do
• Don't let obstacles get in your way
• Never give up

How you can become more enterprising;

• Become more driven
• Set targets high
• Act on your own initiative
• Become a bit of a maverick
• Do not let anyone say "No You Can't!"  ... "If they Do...Say I'll prove you wrong!"

TURN EVERY NEGATIVE INTO A POSITIVE
He say's "getting money is the key to keeping a start-up business alive and moving, without it, you will die!". He follows this with "People start a business usually to make money, but they can get lost in the ‘must make millions' attitude and forget about what it is that's good about their offer, that's the most important thing in business ‘Your Offering' and if your good at what you do, your customers are happy and YOU enjoy doing what you're doing, then everything else will come naturally as a by-product but you must focus on doing something you love and passing that on to others".

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