WHEN Jan Ward was 15 her life took an unexpected turn. Discovering she was pregnant and determined to keep the baby, she begged her mother not to tell her school so she could take her O-levels.
However, her mother told the school, which refused to let Ward stay and so she left without any qualifications. She married the baby's father and when her child was 18 months old took a part-time job in the local Co-op supermarket.
One of five children, Ward, now 52, was born in Southampton, where her father was a steel erector. She was not an easy child, she said: "I wouldn't do as I was told. I constantly wanted to do things I was not allowed to do and as soon as I perceived that I was not allowed to do something, I definitely wanted to do it."
Her mother became ill when Ward was 12 and she took over the running of the household. "My dad used to give me the housekeeping money at the end of the week. It was brilliant. I was in charge and I absolutely loved it."
At the age of 20 Ward got divorced and decided the best option would be to leave her child with her husband. "It was probably one of the hardest things I have ever had to do," she said. "To this day I wish I could go back and change it because I hated being away from him for all that time. He was only four and it was horrendous."
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She sought refuge with her family but her mother refused to let her stay so Ward slept on a park bench for two weeks until a friend found a room for her to rent. She spent the next six months getting the qualifications she had missed and then got a job with a distribution company, Tube Sales, which sold steel tubes to oil firms.
She ended up staying there 10 years, in which time she got custody of her son and remarried. She also began to make a name for herself in the Middle East market.
Ward was briefly poached by a rival company, but at the age of 30 returned to the first company. Then, at the age of 33 and by now with a second child, she left again to start a new company for someone else.
She loved the experience. "My recommendation for anyone who wants to start a company is to go and do it on someone else's money first. Make all your mistakes with their money."
When the parent company started to flounder, she decided it was time to go it alone. With no savings, she obtained a £20,000 overdraft facility from the bank.
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Ward started her own firm in 1992, taking three colleagues with her and giving them a quarter share each. With 20 years' experience, she decided her Southampton-based business, Corrotherm International, would sell metal tubes and pipes to the Middle East, specialising in high-grade materials able to withstand corrosion and heat in the oil, gas, petrochemical, power and desalination markets.
"If you are going to do anything you really have to know the industry to be successful," she said. "I was doing something that was very familiar and I was dealing with customers and suppliers that were very familiar to me, and I knew how to set up a company. I had learnt all those lessons so I wasn't doing anything that I didn't know about." In the end she never needed to use the £20,000 overdraft because a customer placed a big first order.
There were a few bad moments - at one point the firm nearly went bust after a lot of expensive material was stolen. Ward also admits making a few mistakes. "I wasn't bold enough at the beginning with people," she said. "I accepted the fact that we were a speck in the ocean and we didn't have any money so I didn't really demand too much from manufacturers. Also I let my team talk me out of doing things a couple of times when I shouldn't have done."
Her personal life, too, has thrown up unexpected sadness. In 2004 her younger son Ben died at the age of 15 from a genetic condition nobody knew he had.
Corrotherm, though, has survived and thrived. It is expected to have a turnover of £18m this year and employs 20 people.
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Ward said there had been several advantages to working in such a male-dominated industry. "Men are sometimes intimidated by women who know what they are doing - which can be an advantage. I also get a lot more attention than a man would. I get invited to a lot more things than my male colleagues."
She thinks the secret of her success is determination. "I won't take no for an answer and I won't accept that I can't do something. I get to a point and then, rather than sitting back and saying that's good, well done, I say, right, what's next then?
"I like to do something new and I get bored very quickly. If I live to be 180 it still won't be enough time for me. I still have so many things that I want to do."
Last year Ward won the NatWest everywoman award, which champions female entrepreneurs. She has this advice: "Don't take no for an answer and don't accept that you can't do something."