About Me

Used to cut grass when at school, did driving test as soon as I could, passed test around a month after age of 17, started business immediately (in 2004). Grass cutting and basic gardening jobs. Started with £1000 grant from PSYBT but had nothing else – no wealthy background to support financially.  Money earned went into buying next lawnmower, trailer, etc.

Soon started doing simple landscaping jobs and where lacked knowledge would bring in others with skills and labour for them to learn.

Got more into landscaping and still put money back into business to buy equipment, IE mini digger, chipper etc to try to have things others in the area didn’t.  Also got into tree surgery more so and did training for this. In winter would sell logs too when landscaping work was quiet.

Worked ar building up landscaping, taking people on, doing bigger projects etc.

In 2014, put all my savings into a deposit to buy a business in Glasgow (tool hire, sales and repair workshop) and buildings. This was to be something more scaleable and to eventually stop landscaping (which was hard to scale on) Took a lot of work on projections, business plan, etc to get bank on side. Turned out to be conned into it and very quickly realised this once taken over, that things were hidden and the figures I was shown were not a true reflection of the business performance-  the seller was a crook. 9 staff TUPE’d over and I soon had to be back out on the tools landscaping to be able to pay the staff wages in Glasgow. Couldn’t pay people off due to TUPE – couldn’t afford redundancy.  Too proud to pull the plug (but probably should have). First year, loss of £76K. Second year due to a lot of changes and downsizing/cutting overheads (and services not worth doing) was on track for profit of £6k.  Before this went any further biggest customer stopped paying us and this tipped it over the edge and it went into voluntary liquidation. It was alway going to stubble to survive and looking back it was just pride and stubbornness that kept it going for a very hard 2 years.  It was not however 2 years wasted in a dark place, it was a education in areas of business that most people never have to go through.  Over just over 2 years I came away with £6k out of that situation and lost a lot more in what I had spent buying it.

Off the back of this set up a new tool hire business in Perth as I was determined I could do a lot better with lessons learnt and a

Busienss set up the right way with the right branding and image.  It was going ok but I closed it a year and a half in due to continued staffing problems and not being able to be there enough myself.  I was still landscaping too, to build up capital for buying equipment and keep myself supported.
Back to landscaping – bigger projects etc and in 2019 bought another business to go with the landscaping business (grounds maintenance).

Change in 2020 to land clearance and more forestry / vegetation clearance work.  More machine based and niche services away from a saturated market and tighter customer budgets in landscaping.  Also less people required in what is,a very hard place to recruit skilled manual labour.

Set up new business in early 2020 just before covid in waste/recycling  sector.  Set this up with a business partner, who had been looking to do his own business for a while but was on good money and was afraid of the risk of not having a income or the business knowledge to get set up.  I set up the company, put investment in, bought equipment required to get going, used my network to set up branding, accounting system, website etc. He was able to go from a job to being a director in a business that was half his.  He was the face of the business and day to day, but I was doing more of the ‘Business’ in the background and in regular communications about (and working on) what we were doing and planning forward, recruiting, growing etc.  This went from nothing in Feb 2020 to Turnover of £351k with a good profit, 2 years on, despite being in a pandemic.  I then sold out my shares recently to my business partner so he can now continue the business moving forward the way he wants to.  Maybe shorted that to bullet points and not too easy to work out who he is.