Defining Moment

I spent seven years studying as an engineer and aimed to gain chartership, and also spent a year’s placement with Shell Oil in Aberdeen. Whilst I was studying I was diagnosed with dyslexia. I went through this government grant scheme where I was… read more

Lifestyle Story

It did feel like a risk. I remember when we got all the money transferred into the business bank account. I’d never seen so many zeros in my life in an account I owned, although it was all debt. But then we had to spend it all. We spent it all on kit… read more

Lifestyle Story

I feel like we’ve got a pretty large responsibility to our client base, and we have an enormous investment in being able to provide the best level of service for them. I often think, if I was getting this level of service when I was a student, would I be… read more

Lifestyle Story

In the beginning I think I spent too much time working. My girlfriend wasn’t happy and I didn’t spend enough time just having fun. But that’s getting a lot better now. We’ve reassessed the staff situation, making sure that everyone gets some fun, and… read more

Lifestyle Story

The rewards you get at the end of the day, even if you haven’t made any money, are fantastic. If you’re leaving work and someone rings you up saying, “That system you delivered a month ago was unbelievable; it’s helped me so much. I can do this, I can… read more

Mistake To Avoid

We’ve made so many mistakes in setting the business up. We’ve done some bad negotiations and some bad sales deals. I’m not sure what the biggest one was because there’s been so many, but one that sticks out was when one of our largest sub contractors… read more

Secret

I’ve got a business partner, Sheldon, but we don’t have a 50/50 split. I’m not sure about other businesses, but I think it’s important not to split equity down the middle. You need to have somebody that, when it hits the fan, turns round and makes the… read more

Secret

You’ve got to be able to take risks, and to stand right back up again whenever you get knocked down. Business isn’t smooth. When we faced all those challenges at the beginning, we just had to get our head down and persevere. We’d jumped in really deep… read more

How I...

Because I wasn’t sure about being in business, and didn’t actually know for sure if business was for me, I gave myself three rules. The first one was to never ever give up. If I was going to do it, I was going to do it properly. The second was that I… read more

How I...

I started to set up the company whilst I was still at uni, but when I graduated I had to take a job to support myself. So it was really long hours, all very tiring. It was supposed to be a six month placement but I actually quit two months early so I… read more

How I...

In terms of finding contacts, I find the best way to create relationships is to do it face to face, not with the telephone and you can’t build a relationship with emails. My plan was always to identify the person that makes the decisions and then try and… read more

How I...

In terms of building a client base, we made a list of everybody we had an opportunity to do business with, then whittled that list down to which ones were going to be the cheapest to serve. It’s a lot cheaper for us to serve Newcastle than it is to serve… read more

Pearl Of Wisdom

If you’re thinking of starting your own business, I would say it’s not easy, but it’s definitely worth it. So you’ve got to know you can do it, stick to what you believe in, and if you are going to bite the bullet, you’ve got to do it 100%, and keep… read more

Challenge

I’d never studied anything to do with business, finance, negotiation, marketing, personnel , contracts, etc; or anything whatsoever to do with business, or computers, or disabilities. I’d studied engineering, so I was starting right from scratch in my… read more

Challenge

When we started, our biggest competitor, the one who was turning over £5.5m, came after us quite aggressively, more aggressively than I calculated they would. We were stealing less than 5% of his business away from him but he dropped his prices by 35%.… read more

Challenge

We weren’t allowed to trade without having everybody in our company disability quality trained. There was a high degree of certification that we had to get in, and we had to go to the manufacturers of the PCs to authorise us as trained professionals… read more

Challenge

It was a real shock to go from student straight to employer. I don’t think I’ve quite got my head around that fact yet. First of all I was responsible for a business, and over time I was responsible for a lot of staff. It was a bit of a case of flying… read more

Success

The rewards you get at the end of the day, even if you haven’t made any money, are fantastic. If you’re leaving work and someone rings you up saying, “That system you delivered a month ago was unbelievable; it’s helped me so much. I can do this, I can… read more

Support Story

Having a mentor’s fantastic and I’d recommend it to anybody. Somebody just to throw your ideas at, and who’ll come back and say, “Have you thought about that, this could really cause a problem in the future?” I was often saying, “No actually I haven’t.”… read more

Support Story

Trying to set the business up was a bit like being a rabbit caught in the headlights. But that was partly because I vastly underestimated how much support there is out there. We managed to raise finance from the likes of Business Link and Project North… read more

Support Story

We get a lot of support from the two non execs that we have in the business. It’s been so important to us to have them there and I would not have achieved what we have without some strong mentors behind me. The fact that these people are on the end of… read more