This is not a conventional founder story. It is the story of someone who has faced brain cancer, bankruptcy, personal loss, and reinvention, and who found his vocation not in spite of those experiences, but because of them.
I was born in Southampton and raised in Skelmersdale, Lancashire. Largely by my grandparents, who gave me the stability and values that have shaped everything I have done since.
I left school with no qualifications. Not because I lacked intelligence, but because life intervened early and often. At eleven years old, I was diagnosed with brain cancer. I spent nearly a year away from school. When I returned, I could read, write, and count. And for the next four years, I quietly chose the farms over the classroom.
At fifteen, I realised I needed a Leaving Certificate to get my National Insurance number. I went back to school for the last two days. Then I left.
What I did have was a book. Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill.
That book started my business education at an age when most people had not yet considered having one.
My grandfather asked me what I planned to do with my life.
When I said I would stay on the farm, he looked at me and said: If I thought he had raised me to think like that, he had failed. Get a trade.
So I did.
I served my apprenticeship as a carpenter. At nineteen, I started my own joinery company making windows. At twenty-one, I joined the fire service. And kept the joinery going on my days off.
In 2000, I was diagnosed with testicular cancer. I came through it.
By 2003, I had started buying property. By 2008, I had a portfolio of 35 houses and was on the verge of closing an enormous hotel deal in Turkey.
Three days before completion, one of my investors pulled out.
Against the advice of four world-renowned mentors, all of whom told me to walk away, I pushed forward.
Then the banking crash happened.
I lost everything. Including my own home.
I went back to carpentry. And while I rebuilt my life with my hands, I started building Babysteps Publishing on the side.
December 13th, 2013. 11:11 in the morning.
For several years, I had been quietly asking the same question every day. What is my purpose in this life?
The answer came through a man named Martin Ward.
Martin was eighty years old when he came to me with a manuscript he had carried inside him for most of his life. It had taken him sixty-five years to finally write it. When Martin was three years old, he lost his mother. His father was a soldier who could not raise children while serving. Martin and his brother were sent to a Catholic care home in Dublin, where what happened to them was something no child should ever endure.
When I read his manuscript, I had to stop several times. I had never felt such emotion from a book.
Martin did not have much money. I published his book for free. Not because it made business sense. Because it was the right thing to do. And, I felt compelled.
The book launched and reached number one in multiple categories on Amazon.
A few days later, I drove to Martin's home. Six months earlier, he had lost his wife, Maureen, after sixty years of marriage. I opened the laptop and showed him the rankings. He looked at the screen for a long moment without speaking.
Then he said: Kevin, for over sixty years, I have had immense pain inside me. There was material in the book that Maureen never knew about. I can go to Maureen now with no pain. You have set me free.
I did not say anything. There was nothing to say.
In that silence, the question I had been sitting with every morning finally had its answer. The Universe spoke to me and said. Now you know what your purpose is.
Helping people write their books was not publishing. It was helping people release their truth into the world. And sometimes, helping them find peace.
From that moment on, what I was doing stopped being a job.
It became my vocation.
From 2013 onwards, I developed the Codified Authority Framework™, the structured methodology that sits at the heart of everything Babysteps Publishing does today.
I also built Global Gravitas, my coaching company, which applies the same principles of structured authority and deliberate positioning to business development and personal growth.
In 2019, I left a long and difficult marriage and started a new life in Portugal. A country that has become my spiritual home. I am not religious, but I am deeply spiritual. I have been a certified NLP Master Practitioner for over 35 years, and I apply those principles to everything I do. In business, in client relationships, and in my own life.
I am also a committed manifestor. I believe with complete conviction that clarity of intention, structured action, and genuine service to others create outcomes that most people would call extraordinary. I call it a system.
I will never retire. This is my vocation. And I intend to spend the rest of my life helping serious professionals be recognised for what they are genuinely worth.
Author of 11 Amazon number one bestselling books
Knowledge Deserves to be Recognised
Authority Through Authorship · Authority That Converts · The Power of Authority ·
From Doubt to Domination · Infinite Possibilities · The Book Boss Bootcamp ·
Business in a Box · 7 Reasons to Write a Book · The Babysteps Roadmap series
Over 700 Amazon number one bestsellers launched globally
Clients across the UK, USA, Europe, and Australia
Paralympic gold medallists and elite athletes
C-suite directors and blue-chip company founders
Solicitors, barristers, and legal professionals
Chartered accountants and financial advisors
Management consultants and strategy advisors
Executive coaches and leadership specialists
Actors and public figures
Entrepreneurs and business owners
NLP Master Practitioner — 35 years
Awarded Best Book Publishing Company 2019 and 2024
Author — Authority Through Authorship plus 11 #1 bestsellers
Founder — Global Gravitas
Mark Colbourne MBE Paralympic Gold Medallist. World Record Holder. London 2012. Appointed MBE by King Charles III.
Testimonial coming shortly.
Kate Markland, Chartered Physiotherapist. Business Person of the Year. Author — The Adventures of Gabriel, international number one bestseller on Amazon USA. Featured on BBC News, UK Parliament, UNICEF, and British Psychological Society.
Kate wrote the foreword to Kevin Long's book Knowledge Deserves to be Recognised, and her own publishing journey with Babysteps Publishing became the foundation of a methodology now proven across 465 children in 9 schools internationally.
"Kevin was right about all of it before any of it was proven. He saw the global movement before I had allowed myself to imagine it. That conviction gave me the courage to keep going. None of what followed would have been possible without him."
I work with a limited number of clients each year. Not every application is accepted.
If you have expertise that deserves greater recognition, and you are ready to invest in positioning it correctly, the Authority Clarity Call is where that conversation begins.