les calvert - entrepreneurs - ifwecanyoucan.co.uk - inspiring entrepreneurship in the north east

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Thu, 15 May 2008

My Businesses and Ideas

I thought I'd just update my blog with a history of my attempts at trying to succeed and how they turned out.

I suppose I had always known that I wanted to work for myself - I enjoyed the freedom to think and make my own decisions good or bad - I think it's what moulds a person.

Following a long spell working in the travel business both in the UK and overseas as a rep, then resort manager I finally moved back to the UK and decided that I wanted to work for myself.

At this time Ceaucesu the Romanian dictator had been overthrown and through my involvement with CARC (Cleveland Aid for Romanian Children) I found myself working in Romania helping to renovate old orphanages and hospitals - it was heart wrenching stuff but really brought home to me what life was about. I spent a total of about 6 months tarvelling backwards and forwards to Romania before I returned back to my working life. (see video below)

My Road to Business and Freedom

My first real venture was setting up an 'Olde World Sweet Shop' in Hartlepool selling the old fashioned sweets in jars, we had hundreds of different varieties all lined up side by side in an authentic bowed window - it was great in the winter with the snow on the windows it really brought your childhood days back.

We sold this a couple of years later and I set up a fruit and veg shop almost opposite, renovated the building and won an award from the Hartlepool Civic Society for bringing the building back into use. I used to drive to the Fruit Market in Middlesbrough at 4.00am almost every morning and deliver fruit and veg as far away as Normanby and Guisborough - I had contracted nursing local homes and was supplying them with fruit and veg at first but then progressed in to milk and dried produce. It was quite a handful - the hours were long but the job satisfaction was very rewarding.

Once again I sold the business onto a local woman and bought a couple of taxi's and set about learning the knowledge with a couple of the towns biggest firms. This naturally led me to acquire what was then BJ's Taxis and turned it into Sovereign Taxis. We recruited a number of private drivers and acquied minibuses and we were off. In addition I also set up Sovereign Travel a coach company with a friend and this ran alongside the taxi business.

Sovereign Travel was great we both sat our PCV exams and passed and I sat my Transport Managers exam and passed and we hired a couple of additional drivers and started planning trips and holidays abroad advertising via the local press.

In addition we set up and started a regular bus shuttle service through the Channel Tunnel - we use to pick up from Cheriton in Folkestone and take daytrippers through to France 4 and 5 days a day. This was great we were the only company doing this until the Tunnel fire closed the tunnel over the Christmas period - when we went back down following its reopening the place was crawling with local companies so we came back up north and concentrated on contract work.

I eventually sold the taxi firm and the coach business drizzled out so I went back to a normal job - I returned to travel as a telesales person in Peterlee. I loved the job, the people were great (hi guys) and the money was terrific.

The Birth of Property-Abroad.com

I had built my interest in computers and the emerging internet during my days with the taxi and coach company and was keen to introduce my new employer to the internet. This naturally led me to side stepping from sales into an IT position. I ran the company's IT department as well as implementing the website and all corresponding tasks surrounding it.

During this time I had started buying domain names for myself and stumbled across http://www.property-abroad.com/ so I bought it and threw up a really amateurish website and forgot about it. Then one day out of the blue I received a phone call from someone at the Times asking we had a press office that could comment on the growth of the Bulgarian property market. When I enquired as to how they had found us she replied we were top position generically in Google for the search phrase -and from then on I started to take things seriously.

I continued to work at the travel call centre whilst building my own business and would often spend late nights catching up at home until it got to the point where I needed to leave work and spend more time on the business. I had a highly paid job at the time but by this time I had married and we had a little one so I didn't want to leave work without some financial cushion. It didn't take us long to build up a couple of years wages in the bank and at this point I left the safety of my paid job - I was on my own again. It was great!

My wife never returned to work after maternity leave and we concentrated on growing the business. We had an outside developer help us with software and I started buying more domain names on which to showcase the properties we had for sale in different countries around the world.

Soon our position was strengthened and at one point we had 8 out of the the top 10 positions in Google for certain keywords and phrases associated with the overseas property market. We went on to build property rental websites and holiday websites with some great names and then we turned to the home market. We bought local names like http://www.hartlepoolproperty.com/ one for Stockton, Middlesbrough, Durham, Darlington and Tyneside with the idea of offering local properties for sale from local agents - this is ongoing.

We have bought a high street shop in Hartlepool and will be moving into it this summer with the idea of offering property for sale in the UK and overseas. There are three floors in the building so we will be moving the whole operation into the premises and expanding the workforce appropriately. If you are nearby and would like any details on the overseas market by all means drop in for a coffee and a chat.

I hope I haven't bored you too much and that you have enjoyed a brief insight into my history.

Les Calvert

posted at 12:59:00

Wed, 14 May 2008

Welcome to my Blog

Hi and welcome to my blog - I will add regular updates to this blog and if you find anything of interest then let me know and I'll try to keep it updated with useful information. I also have another property related blog called My Property Abroad which talks about anything property or real estate related so you are more than welcome to take a look and leave any comments.

Don't forget if you are interested in buying an overseas property you can always visit my company website www.property-abroad.com.

posted at 20:10:00