Building Luxury Homes in Wales: Andy Green's Journey

0:00You know, if everyone had a new bike, my parents didn't have the money to buy me a bike and I had to work out for myself how I was going to buy the bike. So that was the, you know, I certainly wasn't going to go without a bike. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? I was like, so that was the kind of, that was the driving force then behind, oh, I want to, I need to earn some of my own money and then learning different ways to do that. There was some funding in place to do it at the time, like apprenticeships were well funded back then. Yeah. So it was like a kind of a, almost a no-brainer. Like someone wants me to do this job, it's too much work for me to do on their own.

0:33I need some help, I need to employ someone. It was that, go back to that ethos of, I don't want to do this on my own. It's really hard to do if I do it on my own. Actually, I can employ someone else. And even if I'm not going to earn more money, they'll get paid, I'll get paid. And we'll have good fun. So there was quite a wrestle then where every client wanted you. And when you're scaling, that's not possible. You know, you can be there for problems and you can be there for any issues. You can be there to manage the team and make sure that things are done the way you want them done. But you can't be on every site working every day.

1:06Welcome back to Brave Bold Brilliant. I am here today with the wonderful Andy Green of Greens Construction Limited. Now, Andy is not only the managing director, but he's also the founder of the business. And here we are in the wonderful Green showroom. And today's conversation is absolutely going to be a real corker because we're talking all about Andy's entrepreneurial journey. We're talking about starting a business, scaling a business, raising finance, building a high performing team. You name it, there is so much in this. So I know you're going to really enjoy today's episode with Andy Green.

1:44But let me just remind you, if you are not already subscribed to Brave Bold Brilliant, remember to hit the subscribe button on YouTube or if you're watching this on social media, let's get connected. And of course, don't forget, if you prefer audio, you may be listening to the podcast on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. So wherever it is, hit subscribe. Now let's get into the show. Well, welcome to Brave Bold Brilliant. I'm here today with Andy Green, the MD, the founder of greens now i can't actually say the company name because it's growing so much that over the last few years andy but nice to see you yeah nice to see you guys uh too fantastic so listen we're going to cover off so much we're going to talk about your entrepreneurial journey we're going to talk about early life we're going to talk about how you're scaling up the business uh because you're doing some really pretty groundbreaking things here in wonderful mumbles um but let's start early life where did you grow up andy and what was those early years like for you became this fantastic businessman that you are today um so i'm a swansea swansea boy through and through um most people would label me as like a through and through gower boy i actually grew up on the east side of swansea so i did zero to eight uh six or seven years old on the east side of Swansea um and then my parents would have bought a place down in Park Mills for Down Gower then uh and I saw that through until I was like 16 17.

3:10Right but so so early schooling um do you like school how was oh no no no so no no I was not I'm not a school guy um so uh I'm pretty badly dyslexic uh one of the reasons that my parents moved is I wasn't doing very well in school um so my pet my mom was having some difficulties in work at the time she was a school teacher dad was a technician she left teaching on ill health and i was getting into a fair bit of trouble in school at the time so um a couple fights at a young age sort of led from one thing to the other so i ended up out of school for pretty much most of my tail end of junior school right so I I went back into junior school in Pennard the year before I went up to college so what you know I find really fascinating when I have these kind of conversations is that people look at you now and they'll see you know this fantastic business that you've got but they don't always know what's gone into building the business how early life was like and so that must have been quite difficult for you like growing up in that environment with all that going on and then of course your parents make a dis move you know deciding to make a move and stuff yeah so to be fair i think the move would have been tailored around me um birch grove there was trouble to be had if you wanted it down in park mill there was trouble but not the same kind of trouble you know like i made friends with some really lovely people uh i worked on a farm uh you know trouble was like going poaching pheasants it wasn't like you know doing sort of things you do in a housing estate you know yeah um so there was more room for me to sort of just go out and expend the energy that I had and a lot more learning opportunities to learn the work etc um uh as well as a far nicer school environment to be in as well yeah well I mean that is because when you well your environment and the people you hang out with make a massive difference and we would talk a lot about influences and people in our lives that really make a difference you know and you can get in with a bad crowd or you can get in with a good crowd I think the same is true in business as well right sometimes you need the right people around you to help you yeah well i think to get along um you know someone said to me once that like people do business with people they like um i think i learned that at quite a young age so being in school i was quite popular uh um i got in with a few different groups of people i liked sport i also liked art and sort of that kind of side of stuff and i kind of got people to help me with the bits that i wasn't very good at myself so with the reading and writing side i always had someone who would help me and i learned i think Like, if you've got that entrepreneurial sort of spirit, that is employing people.

5:44You're asking someone to help you on an element that you're not so good at or you need some assistance in or you can't do because it's too much work. Yeah. So I think actually being dyslexic lent into being an employer. Yeah, yeah. It's funny, isn't it? Because some of the most famous dyslexics are, you know, Richard Branson is the obvious one that people always question it. but it does really show that, you know, regardless of where people start in life or how academic or non-academic someone might be, does not set the tone for what their professional life can be. And actually, you've done fantastically well, even though in those early years, it would have been quite difficult for you, I assume.

6:23Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was. Yeah, and like, you know, I grew up in a very religious family and that was based around reading and writing and stuff as well. So a lot of that was going on in my life was something I was completely not interested in, probably the weakest part of my sort of characteristics at that point in time as well. Yeah, so you talk then a little bit around entrepreneurial, you may use the word entrepreneurial, which is an interesting concept, isn't it? Because an entrepreneur, depending on the definition you take, often takes risks, is prepared to, you know, normally is quite creative, lots of different things going on you know and um and kind of motivated to push the boundaries a little bit so so in those early years were you already feeling that you had this entrepreneurial kind of spirit you might not have labeled it as that as such maybe it was just survival and wanted to make a bit of cash or you know like i don't know i was i was aware i was wired differently like so i was aware i didn't know anything you know sort of early on about that that sort of side of stuff i was aware probably from the age of about five onwards that i wasn't learning like other people were learning and my my thought pattern was to challenge not accept so i was in a classroom and like the teacher would say something i wouldn't take everyone else to take it as gospel i would be like it doesn't sound right and i'd want to challenge it um so yeah so probably five or six i realized that like my thought patterns didn't work like everybody else's port patterns um uh probably entrepreneurial would have been on the move so when i was in birch grove we would have been in a uh my sisters both had moved out when i was around that era uh they they are 10 and 12 years older than me and so i um effectively in birch grove we would have been a relatively well-off family both parents uh not divorced both working um and when we moved down gower then we'd have gone the other way so ultimately we'd been uh they moved before the boom which was a great move for them but i went to a school then when you know if everyone had a new bike my parents didn't have the money to buy me a bike and i had to work out for myself how i was going to buy the bike so that was the you know i certainly wasn't going to go without a bike yeah do you know i mean i was like so that was the kind of that was the driving force then behind I need to earn some of my own money and then learning different ways to do that.

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9:32Now, let's get back to the show. Effectively. Yeah, that work ethic, though, where did that come from? From my dad. so my dad my dad my mom um my mom is a very driven person but the work ethic would have come from my dad so my dad's a very very very hard worker but he would do things the hard way um so if you're digging a hole he wouldn't hire a kangaroo hammer he just he'd just swing a pick at it for days you know um whereas my mom is more intelligent in the way she does things and she's more logical she's very good with i say good with money she will make her money go a long way she never invested or she was never taught about money all that side of stuff so i probably like the work ethic will have come from my dad the sort of more thinking about stuff would come from my mum really a good combo then yeah some fields yeah yeah so so starting out then we're in the i mean obviously you've built this really incredible business now with greens yeah It's got multiple different aspects to it.

10:35And actually, this is a good opportunity to just say a little bit around what the business does today and the different elements within it. And then I want us to loop back around to the start of the journey and how you started Scaled and the different phases. But Greens today, Andy, just for anyone that doesn't know, explain what you do, what you cover, et cetera. Okay. So we're a group of businesses. um we'd be around a team of 250 a day um 100 would be directly employed so you've got 25 uh offers uh members of the office staff um it's big payroll to make these days uh and we do predominantly a construction company was the foundation of the businesses but we we slowly sort of took out the supply chain and added in some side some other parts so we're a kitchen supply manufacturer so we have our own sort of factory workshop where we make kitchens and fit kitchens and furniture um we distribute appliances around the uk so kitchen appliances a separate business we um we design and supply bathroom suites so standalone and within our construction company we build uh effectively um sort of wales version of grand designs houses um uh so we build one-off fantastic houses then as the predominant on the construction company and we have a maintenance company that works out the back end of it that looks after the houses once they're finished plus it does some commercial contracts as well so it's so it's really grown into a portfolio of different businesses within the parent company now is that yes isn't it yes you sort of diversified over the years different streams capturing as much of the share of wallet as possible Andy yes exactly that so you spend in I think when you own a construction company you spend vast amount of money with different suppliers and things like that and you see sometimes what you're doing is very complicated and what they're doing is not and they're earning the lion's share of the money uh out of some of the stuff so um uh and i thoroughly enjoy it i'm someone who can't do something that i don't enjoy yeah so i love building i love making things and i i love business i love talking to people i love like season opportunity i enjoy sales so for me it kind of ticks all the boxes in in in the itches that i have yeah yeah but the early so starting out from from day one uh you know when you actually so carpentry yeah so i left school at 16 i had one particular teacher in school that took me under his wing uh so you kind of have what like i think they call it pastoral head of pastoral there so i had like i did most of my lessons in learning sport through comprehensive so it was me in a class of maybe four or five for some of like all the english lessons and the sort of mainstream lessons and he took me under his wing realized I was just dyslexic and put me into mainstream for my GCSEs and then I had great GCSE results um okay great so uh I was just fortunate that I went into a school where someone recognized that and he when I would question him rather than thinking I was just being like you know just being awkward he would reason with me and we learned to negotiate on things and then I sort of respected him for that and I was able to sort of he was able to point me in the right direction within school.

13:46I think he's done that for several kids out of that school. Andrew Thomas, his name is, in Bishopston. So I probably would have left, I would realistically have left Bishopston with nothing had it not been for Andrew. I've never used my GCSEs. So I went straight into carpentry apprenticeship. We're into carpentry and bench joinery. I kind of cheated that a little bit, if I'm honest. so i again sort of revolution like i i love new things so anything that was coming out new so i imported the first sort of cordless power toolkit from america um and i bought it via ebay and had to wait for it to be shipped over from america so when i was building stuff in college like all the guys had like a hand screwdriver and i was there with like an impact driver and a cordial circle sword so yeah all like that yeah so and i had some money myself from being in school selling suites i'd made um you know i was i was clearing 350 pound a week in school and you know i had other kids selling suites for me and you know quite a good side of stuff and i had a car washing around at the same time so i'd exited the car washing around in the second year of my apprenticeship so but i sold that i sold that to someone um so i bought that i bought those tools when I'd have been 16, 17 in my first year of my apprenticeship.

15:11So I was able to, because I was doing things quickly, I was able to do a carpentry apprenticeship and a bench joinery apprenticeship. So I was a qualified cabinet maker as well as a carpenter. Yeah, and it's funny, isn't it? Because you're talking about Andrew Thomas, right? Yeah, yeah. Andrew Thomas, who recognised, you know, a lot of people would give up, wouldn't they? Because you don't fit quite into the system. you don't fit into the neat little box but actually when someone like that comes into your life it's pivotal isn't it because they see something in you that they're that he was you know understood and then actually work with you and got the best out of you because to to come out with great gcse results yeah you know it's quite something actually when you you know you've got that backdrop yeah i mean yeah i was got the seeds in english but i was a stars then so it was yeah it was i would never i was aware i was never dull but i also if i didn't i didn't see the value in it yeah you know i really fell out my mother my mother was a teacher but i had never as i said she stopped teaching from the age of when i'd have been five and she was just on ill health yeah uh so i just didn't see the value in it for me i didn't see the value of going through all the stress and all the hassle let's not say to anybody that you shouldn't but for me i just didn't see i I couldn't see the value of going through all of that for what I was never going to realistically require.

16:32Yeah. So, yeah. So, yeah, it was someone just sort of just calming down a little bit on that side and go, well, you know, you can come to school, you can have a good time, you can still do all right and make life easy for yourself. I was like, oh, that makes sense, doesn't it? Yeah. You know, like, don't, you know. So, yeah. So that was, yeah, that was that. But, yeah, you have different people that sort of thinking from it, from a business perspective i never really had that so the first years of business for me would have been quite difficult i had one particular client who really sort of opened my eyes um i had some lovely clients but they were sort of your standard sort of homeowners and stuff you know but so there was a fellow called dave mallor and he was the financial director of water glass worldwide and we built a holiday home for him and he gave me some business learnings um um yeah yourself actually as well interviewing people and employing people that was years ago now but just the bits you don't know no one teaches you no exactly well we all only know what we know that's why i would love to have been taught in school yeah well i mean like that's um yeah yeah and this is the thing because i think the education i won't get onto the education system in closer detail but but it's not fit for purpose for a lot of people and actually you often learn more by surrounding yourself with the right people as we've said and if you've got a natural interest in something and you can self-teach yourself and actually just kind of go on that entrepreneurial journey.

17:55Because from starting out, you learn a trade, so you always knew you were going to be able to have work, right? So that's kind of big tick, isn't it? Start off. Well, I think school for me, I learned an exchange of services. Yes. Yes. So that's why I learned from school, because I couldn't do it. Yeah. So for me to get along in school, I had to ask other people to do stuff for me. Yeah. And it was like, you know, I had like a rucksack full of cans and sweets. It was like, right, you do my homework and I'll sort you out with some, you know, Astro belts or whatever. Like it was literally an exchange of services.

18:22Yeah, yeah. Well, that's business. That's what I'm saying, yeah. So from that perspective, like subconsciously, I would have learned a fair bit, but that was because I wasn't really able to do a lot. I wasn't able to follow that mainstream path. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that's a smart thing to do. And that's what building a team. You know, we talk about leadership. We talk about building high-performing teams. That is all about surrounding yourself with people that are smarter than you in lots of areas and being able to equip them with the tools, give the direction that's needed, but get out of the way, let them get on with their job.

18:54And you learn that very, very early, actually, whereas some people might spend 10, 15, 20 years in business and still don't quite get it and they're still micromanaging and not actually letting their teams do what they should be doing. So I think there's a good lesson there for other people as well. so so from the tools um the shift into becoming a business owner and those early years so so we you've got a good track record you've got your trade you've got a great reputation you've had some solid people in your life to kind of give you a bit of guidance yeah at what point did you think actually i want more there's more in me um than doing lots of nice jobs for people and doing a great job and enjoying what you're doing what point did you say actually no i want to be a business owner i need to approach this in a in a different way was there a moment or was a creeping kind of realization it was a bit of a creeping realization i don't really i try to reflect on sort of what happened when and how it happened um i would have gone self-employed in 2009 um uh you know took on someone immediately so that was like oh you know you can take someone on and they can do this for you there was some funding in place to do it at the time like apprenticeships were well funded back then yeah um so it was like a kind of a almost a no-brainer like someone wants me to do this job it's too much work for me to do on their own they need some help i need to employ someone it was that go back to that ethos of i don't want to do this on my own yeah it's really hard to do if i do it on my own actually i can play someone else and even if i'm not going to earn more money they'll get paid i'll get paid and we'll have kind of principle initially um and then it was like well what can i build that was the next sort of thing is what am i capable of building and then there was a team started to grow around that principle and then i realized there's a hole in the market down where we were for a contractor yeah um so i probably realized that only two years after going self-employed um and i did have a bit of a strategy around it which um yeah so the initial part would have been very difficult being self-employed so no understanding of you know how i'm going to do this i've got limited tools i've got like a cordless toolkit but not enough to be able to competently carry out lots of work so learning how to fund things when you don't have money behind you was like one thing so i learned the usually 30 days credit with your merchant so that was probably my first point of learning to be able to develop so you know i just started doing a fence in gow row to gowton or somewhere on one part of swansea and so it was like 1200 quid fence um i had a merchant's account opened i remember driving around in like a citron sack so trying to find the builder's merchant like when i first was where do i buy my materials from because i I did my apprenticeship in Carmarthen.

21:52Right. So my contacts were that I knew were in Carmarthen. So, you know, I opened an account with LBS at the time. They give me a little bit of credit. I had like three grand credit or something like that. So I could go to someone, your fence is£1 ,200, take a£600 deposit, the materials would get delivered to site. I'd use£600 to go and buy chop saw. And then I'd build the fence, get£600, go and pay my merchant's bill, and maybe have£100 left over. but now i had a chop saw yeah yeah so that was like my first learning and basically i rinse and repeat that and you know 15 20 fences later you've you've got a van and and it's full of tools and an apprentice who can build fences and that was the principle of of what we were we were doing then you know um and learning about overheads and and then strategizing how your growth goes probably the biggest point of success i think is the opposite to what anyone i don't know maybe coaches will tell you this now but everybody start i'm going to start a business um and then all right i need a brand i need a website i need this i need that the first thing you need to do is be very good at what you're doing yeah so that's the first thing and that takes time so you know i did not brand until 2015 but i was six years of being self-employed running a small team if you're a builder or you're doing anything like that you're good at what you do you just get work you get a referral you don't need multiple projects going on just two or three at the same time and you get work and um that would be my first thing so if you brand as a building contractor or any kind of contractor whether you're a roofer a plasterer whatever you are and you're not actually very good at what you do or your jobs that you're doing at the time are the lower level jobs your brand will be associated with those lower level jobs so and it'll take you a long time to beat the curb and get up to that high level project so what i did i didn't brand i drew the brand when i was in school and i got a graphic designer the sort of thingy for me so i always had a bit of an idea that i wanted to do something and um i gathered a portfolio of work through sort of lacquer gowerton all that sort of other side of swansea on lower valley projects i cut my teeth learned my mistakes did it on a scale that i could repair them and make sure that the projects were right got to what i was doing and um i then effectively bought some work so i would have gone in not when i say bought it i'd have priced it cheaper than i normally would yeah Because at that point, I'm the new kid, right?

24:31So what have you got? You've got to differentiate in some sort of way to what everyone else does. So what I was like, right, I know I can deliver. I've got some money behind me. I can afford to go in cheap, cover my bases on these projects if I can, work exceptionally hard on them. And I won two or three projects in the right area, nice projects that were associated with what I wanted to do. and I branded my vans my uniform and the sites and all the boys at the same time and effectively then my brand was associated with that type of work and it just blew up yeah yeah because and it is your name it's your name above the door you know because the choices when you make when you decide what you're going to brand you know yeah you know our brand brave bold brilliant I started with my name Jeanette Linfoot Associates originally when I was doing consortium post post-corporate life but there is a choice when your name's above the door yeah you know you're intrinsically the front man um in every shape or form of it so was it always going to be your name and did you bounce around other i bounce around a few other bits and pieces but and i kind of i knew that there'd be a bit of a wrestle i didn't realize how bad the wrestle would be and if i did it again i would consider use not using money but i'm on it yeah that's an interesting choice yeah so uh because i knew that i could do things so that that was like right i can i can lean on that so you know it's greens andy green yeah so but what that did capture is the first five years of getting my name out there the five years to tell so i've been trading for since 2009 so what's that 17 years so the only the last seven years of people actually gone probably six or seven years people have actually gone use greens yeah not andy so there was a quite a wrestle then where every client wanted you and when you're scaling that's not possible you know you can be there for problems and you can be there for any issues you can be there to manage the team and make sure that things are done the way you want them done but you can't be on every site working every day yeah that's not that's not possible so you know i i i am where i am now i don't regret what i've what the way i've gotten there but i would consider you know if i was to do it again at the point and i probably wouldn't associate anything to do with my name it's an interesting one isn't it because what what what what you've got is your reputation yeah your personal brand which I know sounds a bit a bit sort of twee but it is a personal brand and all your values and everything that you bring with you is is intrinsically linked with the business um but I also what I was as you were talking what I find interesting is the point around you can't do everything and as you scale up because a lot of the a lot of people watching this or listening to this you know they're they're potentially at a stage where they want to grow they know they know what they need to do but they struggle to let go and this whole concept of working on your business not in your business but being able to get the balance right i always think in leadership i use this a lot i say you've got to be like a helicopter you know you've got to be there hovering above looking out the horizon making the big decisions observing what's going on on beneath but at the same time you've got to know when to land get stuck in because maybe there's an opportunity or something's gone wrong and then you've got to know when to take off again and this constant adjustment between you know being in and i think it's even harder for you because as you say it's you know you are linked to it but people start saying green's not andy now which i think is shows that the shift you've made did you struggle or how did you manage to remove yourself from the day-to-day you know so my first set up of office back office was a failure right so um why was it a failure so the the core business for us is residential so i really know what i'm doing with residential yeah i set up an office and i thought and like the advice you know i had people around me at the time and probably not the right people um and they were like oh you need people with all the qualifications you need this you need that you need everything else like that now if i and what i did is i brought those people in and they were as an amazing business what an opportunity we have here let's let's broke out in different things right so but what they were looking at is targeting was commercial work right so like we put bid in for underhill underhill to build a rugby club underhill we put a bid in for building a community center up in flindra we put loads of different bids in for stuff and it was just during that inflation period and um half of the stuff didn't get built you know and ultimately we were we were the new kids on the block we were never going to build it you know you don't go from zero to building a five million pound project you work your way up there yeah yeah i kind of knew that in my heart but i just wanted i didn't know if i wanted to let it play out but i just thought these guys are way more qualified than me i'm gonna sort of let it let it let it it should you know they should we'll see how it goes yeah what happened is that we geared up heavily so we have our overheads were really heavy at that period of time but we didn't win the work yeah so um i mean i had to let a lot of that office staff go um and i was left with the skeleton crew and we went back to knowing doing what we knew what we're doing and i've built my i've rebuilt my crew but around more confidence in myself and i know what i'm doing like just because you've got letters after your name yeah yeah like does not make actually and i don't want to offend anyone again with this but quite often the more letters you have after the name the more time you spend in education and less time you've actually spent doing something yeah very often yeah so um you know i think a business is very simple um we make it complicated so in construction you need the right people and the right materials there at the right time with the right detail and any office that you set up should facilitate that it should never be the other way around where you have an office of people who think they're so important that everything else needs to facilitate them the office or anything you set up should enable the core objectives of a business yeah it should never be the other way around yeah yeah tail wagging the dog otherwise yes tail wagging the dog yeah and you end up with lots of talking about stuff and no one actually doing anything yeah um and i think i think the other thing which is quite interesting because for anyone that's sort of listening you've got to understand where you play you know what you're good at what you're known for what you want to been over yes you might have a plan to be you know for a growth plan and a vision for the future and all that good stuff and that's really important but I think fundamentally you've got to say what's my core business what are we all about what do we stand for and and really get that really solid and then after that like you've done you know you've expanded you've added some extra bits on but if you lose sight of the purpose the why the who you're for who you're not for piece I think then you can very easily get get sidetracked on on different things that actually is not really where you want to be positioned or where you're going to win the best right yeah like yeah i did the definition of winning so everyone has a different objective of winning like so i've got my my three core responsibilities oh not responsibilities my core objectives in pretty much everything i do finance is important so like making a profit is really important but product is the most important thing for me so the quality of whatever we're making whether it's a massive house we're building whether it's a kitchen that we're making products really important client satisfaction so the client's journey you can make the best product in the world but if it's a rubbish journey for the client i'd even just buying it and getting it delivered yeah then it spoils the product half the time and the other thing then is the guys that work for you they've got to want to work for you yeah it's got to be a nice place you've got to create a nice environment and you've got to try and sort of uh you know make that as good as good as good an opportunity for people as possible and then the fundamental core business that's the model has to work yeah i think so many people go into business without you know a basic understanding of turnover overhead split percentages current market rates of what it's competitive to be like in in a market and isn't Especially around, I think, manufacturing and things like that, I don't know, from my experience, have been a little bit easier.

32:56You can systemize stuff, especially in construction. You know, in Australia, in America, you have to have a degree to be able to go and become a contractor. You know, in Britain, you just buy a van and stick your name on the side. Yeah. And then you mess around with someone's life savings. Yeah, yeah, exactly. um so you know you really you can you have the opportunity to to ruin or make someone's life um when with them trust you know the trust that goes in into what you're doing for them so um yeah that's uh that's you know i think when people say you're winning i think you have to establish what winning means for you yeah yeah so like what winning winning means for me is like having happy staff that are getting on really well enjoying what they're doing a happy client base I'm building beautiful projects or building great kitchens or beautiful bathroom suites and having enough money left over at the end of the month to pay the staff and have a bit to do some stuff with.

33:52Yeah. That for me is winning. If your objective is, I just want as much money as possible. I think, you know, you said it very lonely. Yeah. Yeah. In that, like in that environment. I don't think that that, I think that's driven a lot at the moment in, in, in, in objectives of people in business in business coaching is are you know it's all about you know growing the business need this turnover you need that for what yeah yeah yeah you know for for for what like so you can be in a massive house on your own one day yeah i mean like what's like what why are we why are we pushing that that's a massive that's a that's a big story it's a big no-no in it yeah i think you're right and and and and actually just being really clear that you've articulated it really simply because you said earlier business we overcomplicate it and i agree with you I mean, I always think if you focus on the right things, the money will come.

34:43You do a good job. You have the reputation. You provide beautiful homes for people. The money will follow naturally. If you chase money, then you're probably looking at the wrong things. You're chasing the wrong thing. And I agree with you. I think that's the same for most businesses. But people get under pressure, don't they, about the number. And they'll say, what's the saying? that revenue is vanity and profit is sanity. There's a saying around that. And I think that's right. You know, know your numbers, make the profit, yes, but do it in a way that's congruent with what you're all about. Yeah.

35:16Because your name's above the door. Yeah. And you should do anyway, whether your name's above the door or not, as a business owner, you know, it's really important. Yeah. And Andy, I want to ask you about taking risk, because you've had all these difficult challenging times as well. I mean, let's not forget, global pandemic was really hard, raising finance to scale up the business. And we'll talk about the different options that you looked at there when it came to sort of making sure you've got liquidity in the business and stuff. But, you know, what's been the hardest for you in terms of taking risks?

35:50What are the biggest risks that you've had to take, would you say, on the journey that you've been on? Taking risk early on is easier because you don't see the consequence. So I think difficulty in when I first started doing anything was actually just working out how am I going to do it. There wasn't even a thought of the risks involved. Do you know what I mean? Like that wasn't a consideration really. I knew I was, sorry, if I was building a fence, I knew I could build a fence. So there was never a risk, you know. I'm just going to use a building a fence analogy because it's a thing. But let's say I was building a small extension for someone.

36:27I knew what I was doing. So I knew that there was limited risk in it. But... when you get to a point where you're making decisions about adding additional overhead which means requiring a different either so if you add more overhead so if i employ somebody that works in the back office i don't charge for them so they're just a direct expense that go into it now something like so we something we've done recently we've employed full h full-time hr manager so it's a sort of make sure that people in our business have got a career path are like it's just been neglected yeah you know you're so busy you think oh we'll just do it as a group of directors but no one ends up actually doing that you need someone to make sure you know i've got guys that have been working for you for 10 years plus now 15 years you know so um that that that that's something that you need to make sure that they've got a career path ultimately they're going to be here probably for another 20 years they're going to spend their entire life working for the business and they've got to you've got to have they've got a career path to take so you add an expense of you know x salary to the business now if you're working on a margin you've either then got to increase your turnover so if you're working on i make the maths easy right say someone's on 50 grand in a salary in a back office don't pay my hitch on that but

37:44but if i if i was you know if i was to pay that and i'm making you know 10 i've got to turn over an additional 500 grand yeah do you know i mean to make that work or i've got to get another you know percentage two three percent of margin out of what i'm doing yeah which means having so imagine infrastructure but i'm also putting a requirement in to work harder do more or work smarter yeah so that risk sits heavily with me now um the reason that sits heavily with me is you know hundreds of boats sink every year people don't talk about them people talk about the big ones so people always talk about the titanic because it was the biggest boat of the year and it sunk so the bigger the ship gets the more people want to see it sink like people don't talk about small ships that sink they talk about and like i'm not a big business owner you know we we're on our way to you know what 15 20 million the next couple of years kind of turn over on a yearly basis i'm not a big business owner but there is no there's no safety net for me so um that is something i can that that weighs on my mind a lot now i'm a lot more calculated in decisions i make than i would have been in the early years of business yeah and you've got more people relying on you know you've got more people relying on me i don't take that i don't take that when you go i don't see that in business if i'm honest um if you've got two people around you've got 100 people around you've got people relying on you yeah yeah okay right so that makes that for me makes no difference i don't think of that any different to to to to that sort of side of stuff so uh and and the guys that work for me are so skilled right that if this ship was sinking it'd be like you know the the crows are circling all the time there's always someone trying to pick up somebody that works for us because they're good at what they do you know so i don't worry about the guys the guys will get new jobs like that tomorrow yeah yeah so i don't worry about that it would be that you know there's consequences for clients you know we're in the middle of their projects if if anything was to ever happen that i think about that a lot you know i've never taken on a project and let someone down you know like um even through like you said you know great success for us in 2018 um having some bad accounts prior to that and then having like all of our finance recalled at once and i fortunately have enough cash to trade my way through it um that was just on on having a bookkeeper not an accountant do some stuff wrong for us literally just file our accounts at the wrong date and then have them returned yeah but me not pick it up you know that ultimately that was i did you know you think i've hired an accountant i've done my bit no you you owe the business it's up to you which accountant you hire you've got to make sure stuff gets done properly you know so you know i didn't realize the consequence of that at that time i now know that consequence and i've been you know going then you know into oh we're doing really well we're doing loads of work because guys working for us covid fell into that horrible size of business where the small southplug guys had loads of grants the big business we looked after we just fell into that middle side of stuff i had 100 of my overheads going out so i'm still paying for my vans pay for all my insurance paying leases on warehouses all that kind of side of stuff half my staff on furlough not doing any work not knowing whether i was going to be able to you know the government didn't pay the employer furlough you had to pay your staff and then try and claim furlough back yeah yeah it's cash flow again right it was like how do you how do you how do you not run out of money yeah you know during that period of time i had three four houses at that time that i'd sort of was building alongside i sold all three including the house i was living in to to to to keep the business alive um during that period of time um and uh you know i traded my way through it and then i had all of a sudden big success again you know i mean like really big sort of success um straight off the back of being one of the guys that was still alive yeah yeah you know i mean at the end of of that like right okay they've they've really cut their teeth through covid and they've delivered some amazing projects like they're a pretty safe bet you know um so that that was you know really sort of thing then losing loads of stuff so you know those guys trying to get people back from furlough they'd been off hobbling so working for people doing stuff and then like when you're trying to get them back into work then they were like oh we're gonna go self-employed and do our own business and stuff like that you know so that that was just an absolute sort of uh minefield coupled with my dad getting diagnosed with alzheimer's doing all that period of time and my sister having breast cancer so it was kind of like um a lot a lot yeah it was a lot to sort of take in so yeah now i'm a lot more i'm a lot more calculated in the decisions i make i've always liked spreadsheets i've always liked numbers and i've always liked that kind of stuff but i think about things a lot more before i do them and now i generally if i've got a problem I identify the problem and if it requires employing someone I will go and find the right person and I've built a strong enough brand that I will generally be able to attract that person into the company whereas prior to that I would just wait until someone said oh can I come work for you and then I find them a job yeah yeah yeah you know so my my mentality has probably become slightly more clinical yeah um focused yeah yeah and and through those difficult times and obviously it wasn't easy and you know thank god you survived right and come to the other side um but people don't always see this do they see what's uh you know people see here the beautiful showroom in mumbles amazing projects you do the great brands your vans driving around you know this they see all that but they don't hear or hit or see those challenging times how did you manage to keep yourself in a good mental physical space when you've got all that that when you have that situation going on with personal professional business worry because i think as business leaders sometimes we don't look after ourselves as well as we should when especially when we're the chips are down and we're sort of you know how do you manage to keep yourself so there's a very big divide in there in the uk particularly at the moment between employee and business owner so as an employee you swim with armbands on uh inside a shark net with lifeguards watching you as an employer as an employer you you get cast out you're a mile out the sea and you either you either swim home you either keep swimming or you drown yeah so when you have no other option That's what I said.

44:26There's no safety net. So you either work harder, work smarter. There's just a wall. You either go over it, under it, through it. You've just you just but you've got to get the other side of the wall. I think that's just a mentality, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. But I think also, you know, we can sometimes think we're invincible. We can sometimes say we can, you know, do we have you ever been at a point where you've been close to, you know, burnout or thinking, oh, my God. right okay i'm just pushing pushing the you know burning both both ends of the candle and i'm you know you're you're struggling yourself as an individual as a leader has that ever happened to you it's happened to me a number of times through my career where i've sort of thought just keep going i've bloody got this and you know and then all of a sudden my body's gone whoa hang on a minute so my wife will check me so my wife we're polar opposites yeah so my wife will check me and she's like you know you've you've you've you've done seven days for the last you know you're not you know you're not not looking at your phone you're not doing this you haven't you haven't been fishing you haven't done that so you'll sort of check me um and then have a moment if i do as well it's like normal normal husband-wife relationship and it you know but the um um so my wife is great in that perspective i think if there was two of us at this full time there'd be potential i'll be honest for me my brain is pretty dangerous when It's not busy.

45:47Okay, right. Interesting, yeah. So, like, you know, the saying of the devil makes work for idle hands. So for me, as long as I've got good things that I'm working on and my brain is busy, that's the way I need to be. Generally, I will go and find some sort of things. If I've not got something constructive to do, I follow my diary religiously. I don't book my diary in. Someone else does. We talk about our objective as a board of DOAC. and I'm the ideas guy. Do you know what I mean? I'm the guy that like pokes around things. I'm just all over this AI at the moment. AI is just, you know, it's just transforming the way we work as a business and, you know, trying to get some of the older guys that have been doing things in a huge length of time.

46:32I'm like, you could spend the day doing that or you just watch them and show you how to do this, chuck it in here, do this, this, and this, and I'll do it for you, you know? So I like new stuff. I like change. I like development and I like, you know, I like the chaos. Yeah, yeah. You know, I like the chaos of it. It keeps me ticking over. Yeah. I am whole opposite. I actually think that if it's quiet and things are too calm, I don't like that. Okay, yeah, yeah. That's probably a weakness in a sense of sometimes you can push that too far. Yeah, I think so. But then equally, you've got to know yourself, haven't you?

47:11You've got to know your own mind, your own body and i think that that's the thing isn't it self-awareness and knowing what works for you and what doesn't work because it is really important i think where people sometimes get it wrong in in leadership roles or as business owners is they're not that self-aware actually yeah um and and therefore they can end up you know going down a rabbit hole and before you know it something's kind of exploded and it's it's a problem but um i think you should give your what your your lovely wife is called tiffany tiffany yeah tiffany well done on keeping andy um in check it's a dirty job you've got to do but someone has to do it so well done sir yeah i've got you know with dyslexia like i think adhd is something that's bounded around a lot these days um i'm the old school one do you know what i mean like i was the kid with the blue tongue and uh sort of like i was loved you know i love sugar i love adrenaline i like fast cars i like you know anything that i can get a buzz out of um is sort of thingy and you know there would have been a point um in my relationship where i needed to become more self-aware i took some i did take some counseling okay great on that period of time and to realize that uh people talk about adhd and all this kind of side stuff and all you know it can be scared it can be bad it can be everything else i think like the negative effect it can have on a relationship people need to be aware of yeah yeah and your ability to keep focused keep attention stick in power um you know i've been married for i've got married when i was 20 i'm 36 so we're 16 years into it now um you know we're very different people to what we were when we first met you know she's part of my you know she's been older than me she's part of my lunch to go to college so um yeah so um it's that's something that you know i think your spouse people say you choose your spouse um and you choose your business partners you know i spoke to someone uh on on business side of stuff and it's no point in going into business for someone who does the same thing as you i mean like that is just if you're both if you're two cartons you're both on tools what what yeah what are you going to do just like both of you are going to work on two so you may as well just have your own business yeah i mean like there's no point in doing that so i think there is sort of similarities between your personal life and relationship and people say i'll keep it all separate i mean they've obviously never run a business in their life of this you know i mean whoever says that so you know tiff um we've we fought over the business like she's not worked in the business she's worked in the business she's we've done all sorts of side of stuff on that parts of it um she you know we are literally polar opposite she can do something in 20 minutes it takes me four hours but she's not motivated to do it i am so it's i think that that is a positive i don't see that as a negative because sometimes you need to do something in 20 minutes yeah yeah yeah i'm like i can go i really need help with this and she'll she will help you know she will help she'll give an opinion she doesn't she doesn't come into the office she's not in the day-to-day so when she talks about stuff there's no politics involved or anything like that so yeah i think you know i see that as a positive and she's enabled me she's put up with me uh you know i put up with her even we put up with each other um and we've like you know it's that's definitely a root of my success yeah yeah well it's interesting as you're talking i'm smiling because chris and i are complete polar opposites yeah and so yeah well you know chris and sometimes And I'm like, Jesus Christ, how have we stayed together for 21 years?

50:51You know, somehow it works. It works for us. But, yeah, very, very different. Very different approach. But shared values around what's important, you know. So you can be very different personalities and approaches differently. But I think you're right. We don't always give recognition for our, you know, better halves. And choosing your life partner is arguably the most important decision you will ever make, actually. and people talk about other other choices but i think that's a really important one to know yeah i'm not i don't you know i'm not being around for enough years to see certain things but i've certainly seen other people choose a life partner that's ruined their life yeah so you know inside and outside work you know um absolutely so we're both very lucky i think rather sounds as though yeah um and and i've just one one last question i've got before um we asked a few closing questions andy greens has got a great reputation you produce high-end beautiful homes kitchens bathrooms everything you do is done with finesse and style and the customer journey and the experience is a class act 100 and you do play in that luxury space yeah right was that a conscious decision when you did the positioning of the brand and all of that.

52:15But you also don't just do pure high-end luxury because what's the definition of luxury? So talk a little bit around the positioning and kind of the luxury element versus actually some of the broader projects that you're doing. So I don't see a model where you scale small value work in construction. So I see a maintenance company, no problem at all. So, you know, you have a day rate or an hourly rate and you have 10 guys that work for you. You cover£5,£10,£20 an hour profit on those people. It feeds back in, covers your overheads and they sort of book in daily. You just book them in as a calendar.

52:52I see that's very successful. You see lots of companies do it. I think there's a reason you don't see big companies taking on 30 grand, 40 grand, 60 grand jobs. So if you're a builder and you're looking to scale, you go, I want an office and I want this and I want that and everything else like that. You can't do that in 150 grand jobs. No. It just doesn't work. You can have a kitchen company that does luxury kitchens with some associated building work. That works because you're making the margin on the kitchen. But you've got to make a margin somewhere. And when I price work now, so I've always tried to keep my overheads at sub 12 % of my turnover.

53:30So if I'm turning over a million pounds, I've got 120 grand to pay my overheads. So when I price a project, so I work out what it's going to cost, then you add your overheads and your profit onto it. So if you're a small builder and you're, you know, you're like, you're thinking, oh, you know, I want to earn this much money, but you're only covering, you know, between£802 million in turnover. And you're trying to have an office with a couple of guys working in it and you've got vans running around and you've got a yard and all this kind of side of stuff. You cannot add enough profit on. So you can't go, this is what the job costs.

54:05So we all pay our brickies the same. We all pay our cartons the same the late the materials cost the same actually for us we probably pay less because we buy on such volume yeah um so you you have to have a good fundamental turnover of projects you know big value projects to have a backbone of a business to run a sizable company in construction if you do five or six projects you need an office you need someone to pick up a phone and stuff all the time if you choose to do that in a hundred thousand pound projects and you're doing them six monthly you're only going to do 1.2 turnover. And if you're pricing that work, you'd have to be pricing it and trying to mark it up by 50, 60 % to cover the overheads.

54:44And then you become commercially too expensive. So that model doesn't work. So that model doesn't work. And people don't talk that. You see all these coaches online and everything else like that. So a model works where you are small and you've got two or three guys that work for you. You're on the tools yourself. You're happy to go and price the jobs in the evening and you get good at that. That works really well. Sort of five guys and less with you guys working, no office, no overheads, keep it minimal. And I think as a builder, you can earn very good money doing that. Especially if you start buying some of your own properties and doing them as you go along, that works really, really well.

55:20The next model doesn't work until you're 20 boys. Yeah. So 20 boys and some good subcontractors and stuff alongside that. And you've got a model of about 4 million upwards. 4 million upwards, you price your project. You know, if you go, all right, price of your jobs plus 10 to cover your overheads that gives you 400 000 pounds to pay your overheads for the year yeah and you can actually write that pays for a yard that pays for the mans that pays for a back office the bit in four million to to the the bit in the middle that is not a model that i've seen anybody work make work in construction yeah so it so that it was a conscious choice to say right okay we want scare we want to be getting to this this kind of positioning in the I'm a spreadsheets guy, just work it out.

56:03And the numbers say this, so therefore the title. So if I want to do that, if I want to have a quantity surveyor on that all the time, I want someone to pick up client relations. I want someone to start looking after some concept design and maintenance and things like that. So I've got five or six guys that I'm not billing out to anybody, plus an office, plus a yard, plus 10 vans, plus your insurances and your tools and stuff that go alongside that. I was like right I worked that out and I'm like right that's 350 grand a year okay so I've got to do you know three and a half million turnover to support that yeah so I took a plunge where I basically what the first plunge was really successful so I worked it out and I was like I've got to win three and a half million quits worth of work in as fewer projects as possible to fund the office and that was why I did the first office and then didn't run out of money when it didn't work but i was left with a core team that could actually do that and then the turnover went up and up from there yeah but and then i'm at a point now where actually we we're more competitive yes yeah yeah yeah absolutely so the you know the turnover in construction i said in a rolling 12 months from now we'll be eight to ten million now the overheads that are there you know are sort of probably running about a million pound at the moment so you know i i'm starting to creep down into instead of being 12 i'm down into eight nine percent so i can add 10 12 on the break even plus five percent and five percent net profit on 10 million is a lot of money whereas five percent net profit on two million yeah and when you might not even get there is not enough money no no exactly exactly so you get the you get the economies of scale but also you you're able because of the quality of what you deliver you stand out in the market yeah and like you you don't the the area of market you work in if you build a nice house you'll sell a window package and you'll add your 15 20 overheads and profit onto that right and um the window package down you'll be like 30 grand upwards the window package in a sort of you know a more cost effective part of where we work in that window package will be 10 grand so you're in 20 of 30 grand or you're in 20 10 grand but quickly it's still going to build the wall you're still paying the same yeah the same for the blocks over there as you do over here so um the other part that i looked into is like do you go into contract work so you know do i go work for a bigger company but i was very aware now that i have say 15 of the 15 20 projects on the contracts on they're all different client bases they're all generally a lot of them are self-funding but otherwise they are funding with a bank and it's safe money if i work for a big company and they have a change of direction i might be able to tie that into a one to five you a contract but ultimately if they want to change it they're way bigger than us they'll just out us yeah yeah so i build a whole business that relies on one other one other um entity and i don't have diversification across things so i'm in a position now if one person does pay us we're not in we're not in trouble yeah two people don't pay us we're not in trouble and the likelihood of three or four people not paying us or five people not pay us in a month you know that's the world going wrong yeah yeah you know i mean so like that was a strategic um you know thinking Yeah.

59:16Well, lesson here for anyone. Know your numbers. Very clearly as demonstrated. So as you move into this next phase, what's the roadmap ahead then in terms of the business? Where are you going next? So I don't want to grow the construction company anymore. So basically, you know, we've won some fantastic projects that literally are coming through the door right now. I keep thinking I'll never build that's it now I'll never build one more than that and it's just they just keep coming so you know I don't know where that will take us I'm not pushing growth I'm just pushing efficiency systemization integration of AI yeah and we're building apps and things like that which is really cool and we're speeding things up making we're trying to make our client experience better and long-term career powers better within the business I'm working really really hard to try and get apprenticeships back into the business the government have just completely messed that up um part of what i wanted to do was was you know when i left school i had to go to camarbon to get a good apprenticeship there was no one in the area there was no good business to go work for in the area it was like work for the council or go work on these kind of side of stuff or it was like you know if i wanted to find a one a builder that was building luxury residential houses there wasn't one yeah so um you know it was like belway homes and stuff like that but ultimately you spent three years pushing a brush around um so i wanted to create a business that was like a better building company not just for the the the product but for the guys that work for it and and career pubs and apprentices we've had an incredibly successful apprenticeship scheme up until about four or five years ago the last batch of apprentices that we took on four years ago have now finished and we are literally in a situation where we can't take on anymore so until they sort the the whole apprenticeship scheme out yeah and start back in employers i do not and people will go oh you you know you're doing really well what you what you're talking about everything else like that now they they just you do not understand now that as a as an employer if you take on apprentice you have to pay them 28 days holiday you have to pay them for the days that they go to college you only get them on site for a fraction of the period of time that you'd get a standard employee.

1:01:27And then when they were on site, you now have to set up a video camera like this and they video what they're doing on site, which stops that whole site from working. Plus you have to have someone showing them what to do. Now that is not achievable on a construction site. No. With all the health and safety regs and everything else that are going on and being videoed as well and all that side of the site, that side of the thing, it is just not practical to do. You can't do it. So they need to change that. And then people go, oh, well, you can fund it. why why why are the government willing to fund someone to not go to work but they are not willing to fund an apprentice to learn a trade it's the best return on investment the government will ever have yeah great okay if it was if they funded them 100 and they put a hundred thousand pounds into funding an apprentice and they just paid the apprentice and they they subsidize some of the time lost to the employer right that apprentice in his lifetime i think it's like something like about 1.6 million in tax revenue what a return on investment absolutely like if i if i had the ability today to put in you know 100 grand into something and i knew now over the next 20 years it was going to pay you 1.6 million pound back i would be liked but there's a there's a mountain to climb but legacy leaving a legacy there is what i'm hearing in terms of where you want to take the business so in the construction side i just want to get apprenticeships back in i don't want to grow the business i just want to execute well yeah uh the bathroom side of our business is growing lovely we're going to be opening a new showroom in narbath um so it's kitchen and bathroom showroom um the kitchen side of the business again we don't want to take over the world but we we we just want to some sort of nice organic growth that's going to come around that um the maintenance part of the company we are looking to grow so we're looking for more commercial contracts um to to sort of thing we at the moment travel uk why do we look after Starbucks as one of our biggest clients on that side of stuff.

1:03:21So we're looking for more commercial contracts. And yeah, and the design side of the business is probably a new avenue, which is going to really take off. So we've got our own in-house chartered architect now, who's the best architect that I've worked with. So he works for us full time. We've got a suite of interior designers, concept designers, technical designers. And, you know, I think that the construction industry will change significantly in the next 10 years where you'll have a company like us that you'll come to when you want to do a project you'll set your budget and then we'll design something that works rather than you go into an architect who designed something gets planning permission it goes out to tender you can't afford it it gets redesigned and that whole plonky way that things have been done for many years have been thinking so we're kind of kicking the trend on that already and most of what we do is design and build now yeah brilliant no so it's exciting time yeah it's really cool yeah well you feel really proud and you started away where you where you are now where you're headed so over all these years you'll have had loads of advice yeah can you think of a standout piece of advice follow your gut that's like my biggest one is when you think something's too good to be true it will be um just because someone has got vast it's very important to listen to people don't blindly follow someone who thinks that they know it all or they're older in business or anything else like that like that that would be my my biggest piece of advice is follow you get listen and there's lots of learnings you don't have to make your own mistakes but you know make your own decisions don't be bled by people yeah no that's very very good excellent that's helpful for anyone listening 100 and for this year if you could describe this year in one word andy what would it be oh it's mental yeah yeah it's just this year's i mean everything's blowing up again really i think we had a really slow year after the labour budget that came last year so a lot of projects were went sort of into re-budgeting because the call costs went up and stuff like that again i think a little bit settlement in government and stuff has helped with that all the projects that didn't start last year are now underway and we've got a really good pipeline coming through in all sorts of areas so it's yeah the world's the world's great at the moment it's been the best summer ever isn't it yeah well exactly yeah pencil in a good way yeah so we have a spotify playlist andy what song are we going to add from you uh we'll go ever long by the foo fighters why that song and why the foo fighters oh i don't know i've always loved the foo fighters and uh that particular one particular song i think like uh sort of my first success when and brought the board of directors on.