From Liverpool to Dubai: Adam Thornhill’s Multi-Sector Entrepreneurial Journey

“The people I work with aren’t coming to me for theory. They’re coming because they want to talk to someone who has actually done it, someone who has made the mistakes, dealt with the surprises, and come out the other side. That lived experience is the only real value I bring,” says Adam Thornhill, founder of Relate Consultancies, a Dubai-based business consultancy supporting foreign nationals and international businesses looking to operate in the UAE with practical support around company formation, relocation, and ongoing administration.

Founded in early 2023, Relate Consultancies stemmed from the growing demand from expats and overseas entrepreneurs trying to navigate the complexities of setting up a business in the UAE.

The consultancy’s values-in-action approach extends beyond its core service during one of the region’s most anxious periods. When tensions between the US and Iran created uncertainty for British expats in the UAE (many of whom found their travel insurance inadequate), Relate stepped in to offer direct support to those who needed it.

This UAE-based business is not Thornhill’s first venture into entrepreneurship; he has built companies across transport, travel, property, and consultancy—and, by his own admission, he is far from finished.

Born and raised in Liverpool, Thornhill left school at fifteen and started work immediately; first as a laborer at Quality Fireplaces, then as a Gas Engineer Apprentice when he turned sixteen. Before long, he was traveling to jobs independently in a transit van and quietly building side ventures in whatever time he had left. He started advertising outdoor tap installations on Facebook, bought chimney-sweeping brushes to upsell before fireplace jobs, and began setting money aside for his first business venture.

“The trades taught me something school never really did,” he reflects. “There’s no ambiguity with laboring. You either finish the job or you don’t. That link between effort and outcome has stayed with me through every business I’ve built. It’s just something that really motivates a brain like mine.”

By seventeen, Thornhill had moved into his first-ever home, which was a run-down flat with single-glazed windows, old carpets, and wallpaper that needed pulling down – work he promptly did himself.

Around this time, he also started buying and selling cars through sites like eBay and Gumtree. It was scrappy, unpredictable work, but it taught him how to negotiate, how to read a market, and how to move quickly. These skills would become vital over the next few years of entrepreneurship.

Buying cars soon led to leasing taxis. His first vehicle (a pink cab with a PrettyLittleThing advertisement on the side) came with a part-time driver already in place. The problem was, insurance companies were skeptical of a teenager building a taxi fleet, and several refused him outright.

Never one to back down over a solvable problem, Thornhill persisted, eventually finding a provider willing to take the risk. Within six months, he had purchased a second vehicle and was already generating consistent income.

It was the first time his business felt both stable and scalable, the first time he was making real money on his own terms. Then COVID19 hit.

“Overnight, everything stopped. Taxis sat idle, drivers handed back keys, car sales dried up. Like a lot of business owners at the time, I was sitting there watching fixed costs continue while my income disappeared,” he says.

“But it also changed how I thought. I became less attached to any one business and more focused on markets, timing, and adaptability. Entrepreneurship stopped being about a single idea and was more about a way of life.”

With the transport businesses disrupted, Thornhill turned his attention to travel – an industry facing some of its most severe turbulence in living memory. In 2021, he co-founded Source Travel alongside business partner Heather Fletcher: a UK-based online travel agency offering holidays, flights, hotels, and cruise packages.

Neither Thornhill nor Fletcher had travel industry experience. They started from scratch, growing through word of mouth and creative routes to market, including influencer collaborations and a commercial partnership with Mansfield Town Football Club, becoming both the club’s official travel partner and sleeve sponsor.

The business also carried a values-led thread that would come to define Thornhill’s purposeful approach to entrepreneurship. As part of their offering, Source Travel introduced tree-planting for every booking made.

“I’ve always believed that if you’re earning, you should also be doing some good. That’s not a tagline. It’s just how I think business should work,” he says.

The travel business eventually took Thornhill to Dubai, where he found himself navigating company formation, visa processes, and banking as a British expat for the first time.

Before long, he started helping others in the same position, often for free, through Facebook groups and informal conversations.

“I didn’t realize at the time that sharing what I’d learned with other Brits living in Dubai could become my next business,” he says. “I was just helping people because I knew what it felt like to be lost in a new system.”

That led to Relate Consultancies and UAE property investment consultancy L5 Properties, and Thornhill remains focused on supporting other founders, sharing lessons from the ventures that worked and, just as importantly, from those that didn’t.

This reflects a defining trait of Thornhill’s character—an ability to spot opportunity everywhere and help others act on it. It’s a quality that earned him the nickname “Delboy,” after the lovable, eternally optimistic wheeler-dealer from the classic British sitcom Only Fools and Horses.

“It was never meant as an insult,” he says. “Delboy was always hustling, always spotting angles, always convinced the next big thing was just around the corner. That’s genuinely how I think. I’m always asking: what’s missing here? What could work better? Who needs something that doesn’t exist yet?”

His purpose-driven approach has always echoed across his portfolio. At AJT Hire, his transport business, he offered drivers free vehicle settlements over Christmas. At Source Travel, he planted trees. At Relate, the team partnered with Her Game Too, a UK-based charity working to tackle sexism in football.

“I’ve always believed that if we’re earning, we should also be doing some good,” he says.

“Not every venture goes the way you expect. But each one teaches you something you carry into the next one. I became less focused on individual outcomes and more focused on whether something can genuinely operate and grow over time.”

When asked about the future, Thornhill is characteristically open-ended. He enjoys the challenge of different industries. He is drawn to environments others find difficult. He does not rule anything out.

“I’ve never had a ten-year plan,” he says. “What I’ve had is curiosity and a willingness to back myself when something feels right. That’s taken me from a fireplace apprenticeship in Liverpool to a consultancy in Dubai, with a taxi fleet, a travel agency, a football sponsorship, and a Patterjack somewhere in the middle of it all.”

If the right challenge presents itself, here is little doubt that Adam Thornhill will find a way to make it work. 

And more often than not, that idea will begin to take shape during one of his walks with his dog, Penny.

Penny is a Patterdale Terrier and Jack Russell cross (a Patterjack!) who arrived during COVID and has been by his side ever since. She has travelled across most of the UK, spent time in the Netherlands, visited Paris, and now lives with him in Dubai. She is, he says, his best idea generator.

“Some of my best thinking happens on walks with Penny,” he says. “There’s something about being outside, away from a screen, not trying to solve anything. That’s when the ideas actually come. I think a lot of entrepreneurs underestimate how much clarity you get when you stop forcing it.”