hoto Credit: Peter Hellberg

Alan Manly, Entrepreneur, Company Director & Author.

Alan is one of those exceptional entrepreneurs you have never heard of – unheralded – uncelebrated – unlikely – quietly going about the task of creating a viable, thriving business out of thin air. He founded Group Colleges Australia – a group of five colleges offering courses to domestic and overseas students. The courses are business oriented ranging from Certificates and Diplomas in Accounting, Business, and Travel  to, Degrees in Accounting, Business and a Masters in Business Administration  that has an emphasis on entrepreneurship. 

His start in life was anything but promising. Alan grew up on a small farm on the outskirts of Bacchus Marsh in the North West of Victoria. After dropping out in Year Nine, Alan worked as a postman before securing an apprenticeship as a television repairman. Unfortunately, his employer went broke, was convicted of fraud and committed suicide. But the great bureaucracy of the apprenticeship system swung into action and he gained employment in a Melbourne factory. Later, he was offered a much better job as a computer engineer with the Digital Equipment Corporation. They promoted him to sales and marketing and sent him to Boston for training which included a mini-MBA course at Harvard. After several years with Digital Alan became involved with a company which was developing its own software products and also operated a computer programming college.

It was during this period of his career that Alan became embroiled in the legal nightmare which is the subject of his book “When There are Too Many Lawyers…There is no Justice”. 

Feedback from the first book suggested that there was a second story in the book of an unlikely entrepreneur who succeeded against to odds. Alan second book “The Unlikely Entrepreneur” was launch in May 2017