Not Too Early. Not Too Late. Right On Time.
Martin Brown didn’t plan to become a CEO. He just kept showing up—and doing whatever it took to stay in the game.
At 12 years old, he was delivering newspapers in a small town south of Liverpool. Rain or shine, he’d get up at 6:00 AM, bike to the shop, load up his bag, and make his deliveries before school.
"I don't even know if kids do that anymore," Martin says. "People don't really read newspapers now."
He wasn’t chasing a big dream. He was learning something simpler and harder: discipline. And that habit—of just getting up and doing the work—would carry him a lot further than he realized.
After high school, Martin didn’t have a master plan. While his sister had always wanted to be a teacher, Martin never had that clear “this is it” moment. He loved sports. Played soccer for Chester City’s youth team. Dreamed of going pro. But like most kids in most sports, he got cut at 16.
"I wasn’t good enough," he says.
So he kept moving forward. Took his coaching licenses. Came to the U.S. at 18 to work summer camps. Made a little money. Fell in love with the idea of entrepreneurship—almost by accident.
"The owners of the company I worked for had started it from nothing," he says. "I got the bug."
It wasn’t about being flashy. It was about building something real, from the ground up.
After a couple of years working for someone else, Martin took his first real swing: he co-founded a youth soccer company. It lasted four months.
"It was a complete disaster," he says. "We didn't get along. We had different visions. No one really knew their role."
He tried again. Another company. Lasted nine months. Same story.
Most people would have quit. Martin didn’t.
He gave it one more shot—this time with just one partner, clear roles, and a commitment to doing whatever it took.
"I handled all the back-end—paying bills, accounting, ordering equipment, marketing," he says. "He coached."
It wasn’t glamorous. To pay rent in the early days, Martin picked up every odd job he could find: cleaning out a burned-down building for $10 an hour, working shifts at an airline food factory flipping trays.
"I'd take that money and use it to print flyers or buy equipment," he says. "Whatever we needed to keep the business alive."
No shortcuts. No secret hacks. Just stubbornness.
The breakthrough didn’t come overnight. But over time, Jersey United Soccer grew—from a handful of camps to a full training business to eventually fielding teams under their own brand.
"In 2007–08, we realized if we kept just being a training company, we wouldn't survive," Martin says. "We had to make the jump to fielding our own teams."
It was a massive gamble. They were essentially competing with the very clubs they'd been serving. But Martin had a gut feeling—and he listened to it.
"I sat down with my partner at a Panera Bread, laid everything out, and said: this is where we have to go," he says.
The bet paid off. The shift gave the company another decade of growth.
By 2018, Jersey United had grown to around ten employees and seven figures in revenue. When Steel Sports approached about an acquisition, Martin knew it was time. He sold the company—and joined Steel full-time.
Today, he’s the CEO of Steel Sports, overseeing operations across ten states with hundreds of coaches and staff. But he doesn’t see himself as a “traditional CEO.”
"I still see myself as an entrepreneur," Martin says. "I'm not just a manager. I want to know how everything works."
And he still works from the same core mindset he built delivering newspapers at 6:00 AM: show up. Solve problems. Keep moving.
Now, Martin's world is bigger—national footprint, corporate backing, strategic planning at scale. But the foundation hasn’t changed.
"You’re going to screw up," he says. "It's going to cost you money. But if you dwell on it, you’ll never move forward."
Keep learning. Keep taking swings. Don’t overthink it.
You’re not too early. You’re not too late. You’re right on time.
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