#123 From £0 to £100K+ recurring revenue: Andy Jones' Journey to Building Twin Sun Heating

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Welcome to off the Tools podcasts.
If you're partial to a swear word, then stick around.
If it offends you, then maybe you might need to go somewhere
else. Only joking.
We try not to swear too much, but we do.
We do swear. We're normal people, so we're
just going to relax and have a conversation.
I want to introduce a very special guest today.

(00:22):
Some of you will know him, some of you won't.
He started off as a client of mine, a mentee, so he come and
joined off the tools alliance and over the past couple of
years he has become a Co host inmany occasions in person and in
zoom and and and everything. And he's also become a friend.

(00:42):
So, Andy Jones, welcome to the podcast, Finally.
Two years overdue. Yeah, just a bit.
I've been. We've been trying to get this
done. You know how life is.
Life's busy, but we're finally sat down.
We're finally going to have a conversation.
We're finally going to learn a little bit about who Andy Jones
is, where he comes from, what he's been doing over the past

(01:03):
few years to to get himself and his business thriving.
So yeah, just tell us. Let's go back.
Just tell us who you are now. So explain to the listeners.
Who we are now. So I am a dad of two, I have
twin boys. So that's where the twin son

(01:24):
name came from. A little play on words.
So it's TWINSUN. And that was done so we could
implement some unique branding. So we have two sons on the logo,
things that were essentially he was born from.
I have two, two currently 5 yearold twin boys.
But a little bit about me. So I've been a gas engineer for

(01:46):
about how long now? About 15 years I've been in the
trade and I've been a gas engineer for about 11.
And then I fell down the route of becoming an emergency call
out engineer and I did that for quite a few years.
And then when the boys came along, I sort of realised that

(02:10):
this is not sustainable. It's provided a good life for me
till now, but it's no longer sustainable.
The going out on demand, weekends, evenings is not
something you can really do withkids.
So I thought I need to get out of this.
I actually left the game for a little bit.
So I delved into the interestingworld of wealth creation and

(02:34):
property investment, and I started a business doing
property trading and sourcing. I did that for about a year, and
while the business was not particularly successful, it did
teach me a lot of things about business.
I'm sure we'll come back to thislater, but one thing you don't

(02:55):
learn as a tradesman is how to run a business, which is
essentially the crux of your business.
But what it did teach me is thathow antiquated the trades
industry is, especially the heating industry, and how by
leveraging some modern systems and things like that, we can

(03:18):
create a business to beat the rest, let's call it.
Definitely. I'm going to slow you down a
little bit there, Andy, Any of that, any of you that know Andy
will know that Andy loves to talk, which is fantastic.
I'm not not not taking the Mickey there, but I want to keep
it focused because I want to make sure that we're getting all

(03:38):
of the all of the journey. I don't want to just hear the
highlights. I want to hear the early days.
I want to hear a little bit moredetail, more than just an
overview. So it's given us a bit of a, a
snapshot of what you're doing, where you at.
What I want to do is I want to take these the people listening
to this backwards. So tell me a little bit about

(03:59):
how you're how you grew up, whatwas your family life?
How was school, how you what youdid for a little bit after
school and eventually how did you get into the trade to take
me through that that sort of early parts of teenage life into
a young adulthood? So this is an interesting one
actually when it comes to an upbringing side of things,

(04:19):
because I had a very, I'll be honest, they're very nice
upbringing, very comfortable upbringing.
I've got a brilliant mum and dadwho are now brilliant, well,
phenomenal grandparents. And it's always an interesting
situation with that because whenyou have a very nice,

(04:42):
comfortable upbringing with a bit of conformity to the general
system, you know, go to school and things like that, I think it
can delay some potential in someways.
So because you get conditioned to live that comfortable, normal
life. But the reality started to set

(05:03):
in. Probably there was hints of it
when I was first, when I was in school.
So secondary school were the ADHD traits were sort of showing
a little bit. You know, I always remember back
when I was in high school, I would sit down to an exam and I

(05:25):
would, you know, fill in maybe the first page and then I'd find
myself just like, you know, looking at that over there,
looking the birds outside, just daydreaming.
And, and that was a bit of a common occurrence, I think, with
my School Report to, you know, he's a good lad, but he's often
daydreaming. And I think that was the start
of the the entrepreneurial sort of thinking about things that I

(05:47):
want to think about, I'm interested in, but not the task
at hand. So in this case, it was school
after that then sort of a typical teenage lad of not quite
knowing the path that I wanted to do.
So it became a bit of an elongated education journey.
So I did because I did so poorlyin school, which is again

(06:09):
probably ever so common among the trades.
I ended up then having to do 4 years a typical college to to do
a foundational 2 year course before I could do some A levels.
Managed to scrape together enough A levels to go to
university and I lasted about. I barely made it through the
first year I. Didn't even know you went to

(06:31):
university. For me, I cannot do this.
I just don't have the attention span on the capacity to do, you
know, dissertations and things like that, so.
What was it you did that? Like what?
What? Of course.
So I did at college, I did business and iti just called ICT
battling and then I have a reasonable aptitude for

(06:55):
mathematics. So I was kind of ushered into
doing accounting and finance, which.
Is the wonder you left? Even decent to mathematics to
try and do that, what you get taught at university, It was
just like, yeah, I can't, I can't do this stuff.
So I try to continue down the finance route by getting a job

(07:21):
at in the finance department of a pharmaceutical company which
was about 20 minutes from where I lived.
I lasted about probably about four months there till I
realised I can't do this either.And then one of my close friends
had just come and managed to geta place on a full time college

(07:44):
course as an electrician. Bearing in mind at this point I
am 23 so I'm too old to get an apprenticeship so I had to think
outside the box a little bit. So I contacted the college and
they said they have one space onthe electrician's course and one

(08:05):
place on the plumbing course. And no word of lie, I flipped a
coin and it landed on the plumbing side and then we went.
Now that was the simple as the decision making was for that.
Fantastic. So I I wasn't due to start till
the September and at this point we're at sort of like the July

(08:26):
and then I funny story, hopefully it won't route back to
the company. But I rang in sick and then went
on holiday for a week with my mum and dad and then got all
that set up. And then bird in mind had only
been there a little bit and I'd come back to a letter of don't
come back, that sort of thing. So I was wondering about for a

(08:48):
bit and then away we went. Yeah, so full time college
course. So it's a.
So you weren't, you weren't getting any on site experience
at this stage? So yeah, an interesting
conversation and bone of contention with some of the
seasoned tradesmen, let's call it.
But I again was too old to get an apprenticeship at this point,

(09:10):
so I kind of had to take what I could.
So I took the full time college course to employment.
And again, and we spoke about this with your, your lad
starting with me a bit older, that at that age being 23, I'd
got rid of a lot of that sort ofteenage attitude, let's call it,

(09:33):
when you're sort of 1617, whatnot.
Because the lads, most of the lads on the course who were that
age with her, because their dad had said, oh, go and be a
plumber, gas engineer, because you can make some good money.
Whereas me and the other lads are a little bit older.
There was a lad there who's in his 30s, a lot in his 40s.
They've already made a personal decision to be there.

(09:54):
And I think that's a substantialthing in this game that if you
can sort of move through those first few years post school of
getting, you know, through the shit and dicking around so to
speak, and then make your decision.
Because I'm not, I don't know any 1617 year old lads who

(10:15):
really know what they want to dowith the life.
No, exactly. And and it's something that I,
I've just recently done with my son is I've waited basically we
put him on a football course fora couple of years basically,
hopefully hoping that giving himthat time, he will realise what
he wants to do. And he's he's chosen to come
into the industry now, but as an18 year old.
So hopefully we'll have that little bit more maturity

(10:40):
approach to it, you know. Yeah.
So I definitely agree with that.And for as far as I'm aware, the
lads who were there who were 1617 when they started at least,
didn't actually really make anything.
There was only me and a couple of the other older lads who got
somewhere with it. So I did two years ago, managed
to get a job for a supermarket chain delivering shopping in the

(11:05):
evening. So it was a pretty long day.
It was, you know, 9 till until four.
It was at college and then I'd start the job at half five.
So it was shoot home, throw somefood down my neck and then head
to work. So I did that three days a week
and I was going to the gym in the, in the, in the gaps in
between. And then, yeah, just just

(11:26):
ploughed on really for a for a couple of years.
So then I did did the two years of plumbing the and then it was
because I was so dedicated to doing it again because I wasn't
there messing around. I moved through the quick, the
curriculum in about 18 months. So I had six months where I was

(11:47):
able to start dabbling in some of the more heating side of
things with a little bit of timewith some of the tutors working
on the stuff that you would normally then do out in the
field with the gas side of things.
And then when I'd finished there, essentially went straight
out on my own just doing plumbing.

(12:07):
And I probably did then about togo back to that as well.
And this is where the lack of time on the tools can can give
you a dent. I my my first job on my own was
swap in a kitchen sink and a tapand it took me all day.
I bet it bloody they're bad enough today.

(12:31):
And that was a stressful time totry and teach yourself stuff
like that. And then?
So, so, so just to just to clarify then, so you basically
did the course and then, then, then then basically got out
there and started, started hustling, started started to, to
learn how to, how to, how to do it all.

(12:53):
Basically, yeah. So I just ploughed through.
I kept that part time evening job for a while to try and
obviously pay for well my car atthe time.
So then I pulled the trigger. I sold the car.
It was a nice carried out at thetime because obviously I've been
earning prior to going back to college and then sold the car
for a van and again carried on working on that part time job.

(13:16):
So I was doing these bits of plumbing in the day, started by
just chucking Flyers out bits ofplumbing in the day, then go go
to work in the van, got my part time job in the van, do a few
hours at that job and then come home and sort of rinse and
repeat. All right.
Well, so that gets us up to whatage are you at this point then
at this? Point I would have been 25. 25

(13:43):
so you see you're starting to starting to get a bit older at
this point. What were the what were the next
stages then that took you from sort of having the two jobs in
plumbing and delivery driving? What, where, how, and when did
you make that jump into self-employment?
Or did you go employed first somewhere along the way, or?
No, so I've actually never had ajob in there.

(14:04):
That's amazing, strangely enough.
So the, the thing that got me sort of settled and positioned
in the, in the trade was actually bathrooms.
So bathrooms are a bit of a lovehate thing in, in this game with

(14:24):
other lads and other companies that are doing it.
But the benefit, especially starting out with bathrooms is
it's the ability to take, you'llonly need a few bookings worth
of bathrooms and the next thing you know, your two months worth
of, of work in advance. Yeah, so that was what I started

(14:45):
to do. I had a lot of time available in
the diary to do it because again, all the only advertising
I've been doing was just dropping out some leaflets, you
know, You know, get some Vistaprint leaflets and away you
go. Yeah, so fell down the route of
the bathrooms and again, Bernie,man, I'm a young lad at this
time, so the graft didn't reallybother me at this point.

(15:06):
And again, the guys that do fullbathrooms know the graft
involved with it and I was taking on basically everything.
The only thing that wasn't takenon straight away was the
electrics, my best mates an electrician, but then that
quickly phased to then, well, all you really do in generally
bathrooms is some spotlights andthings like that.
So then I started doing that andwe would do full tiling as well.

(15:28):
So there's no need for a plasterer.
I'd do the joinery and everything else myself.
So it literally was a full job, two to three weeks per bathroom
and I was still living at home at this time with me, mum and
dad. So again, my outgoings were
minimal. I was paying a small amount of
rent. I'll keep, if you will, to me,
mum and dad. So what it started to allow me
to do is even though it wasn't really earning much money from

(15:51):
them, started to build up a little bit of a pot and then
basically did that for about a year and a half non-stop.
I was actually very, I don't like to use the word lock, but
the timing was right. Let's say a bathroom company

(16:13):
that was blew up online. The base was in Wigan, OK, And
they had a showroom in Wigan, and I started going in there to
buy bathrooms for jobs that I'd had myself.
And then they started recommending us as a fitter.

(16:34):
Yeah. And it blew up from that.
And then at one point I think about six months worth of work
booked in in advance. Sounds amazing but.
We see our seems great, but thenyou're making such a minute
again. If it wasn't for the fact that I
was living at home with just a cheap paid for van, yeah, I
obviously wouldn't have been able to sort of squirrel a bit

(16:54):
of money away. Then I started to outsource the
tiling. That was the big step forward a
lot, who was a close friend at the time.
I'd gone self-employed and he was a tiler.
I started to outsource the tiling to him and that started

(17:15):
then to free up time and then I would fit in more heating type
jobs, cylinders, radiators, things like that in the time
that I created. And again, at this point,
you're, you're learning as you're going because you've not,
you've not had a job, you've nothad a safety net of, of having
different people around you and,and learning.

(17:36):
So I can imagine that there weresome stressful days and late
nights working. That's the thing.
Another thing with the bathroomsas well is that you think, oh,
I've done all right for that from this job, you know, we've
made, you know, X number of 1000LB from it.
When then you break it down, you'll actually have worked two
weeks, 3 weeks, whatever it's been depending on the size of
the bathroom and you've and the the long days high with the

(17:59):
bathrooms. Like, but once I started
dabbling with the heating stuff,it kind of started to open that
pathway then because then you toswap around, you got to top the
boiler up and then you'd be like, go on and the customer.
Oh, can you service it for me aswell?
And I'm not not Gas Safe yet. So far, when that needs to be
the next move, it's it's generally the move for for most

(18:19):
people. So what I was able to do is set
me that set that goal of, well, what do I need to do again?
I can't. The only way I can get my gas is
to do a fast track cut offs. And my trump card with it,
though, was the fact that I'd spent these years doing most of

(18:40):
the other stuff anyway. Yeah.
And he always laughed because when I managed to get on the
course, there was guys on The Who were, and this was at the
time where it was really blowingup in the media of, you know,
guy quits being a solicitor to be a gas engineer to double his
money like sort of thing. And there was guys on there from
all walks of life who didn't know a spanner from a pair of

(19:02):
grapes. Like shit, you know, with that,
like he was like, remember the guy asked him once, like, we've
done some stuff on a boiler. And then the tutor realised like
one of the compressions was leaking and he asked one of the
guys who I think was a postman, I'll just nip that compression
up before we before we, you know, do a test on it, whatever
it was like, what's a compression?

(19:23):
And that's the thing. Obviously the the fast track
costs is get so much shit, but alot of guys that will use them
do have a background in the trade anyway.
And I stand my ground on the fact that most guys who've done
a fast track course, most is probably a strong word. 50%

(19:48):
let's say, of the guys that havedone a fast track course of have
more potential to be a better engineer than the guys that I've
done than 20 years in the game because they've made the choice
to do it. And that, to me, is more
important. Because if you've been drove

(20:08):
into it by a parent or a family member or whatever it might be
and you're just doing it and youonly see it as a job versus the
guy that's wanted to create a better life for himself or his
family or whatever it might be, he's going to go into that from.
A head by yourself 100% yeah. OK, you're going to lack some
skills for a period of time, butwhat?

(20:30):
And then this is what I did withit afterwards is you can then as
opposed to doing an apprenticeship where you'll
cover everyone, like you said yourself, you covered every
single aspect of the game. If you come out of it with a
little bit of a mindset of, well, I want to niche down into
something specific, you can thenuse that instead of being doing

(20:52):
100% of the game and using 100% of your time for it.
Actually, I'll use 100% of my time to just pull 1020% of the
game out, whether it be breakdown or, you know, heat
pumps or whatever is it as you choose to do.
If you put all of your focus into that, then you're going to
be better at that than the guy that's the to use the old quote,

(21:14):
the Jack of all trades. So for me it was like, well, I
don't have the all the experience of the big
conventional systems, whatever, you know, you want to break it
down to be what can I do that's relevant in now?
So burn in mind, we are. So I'm sort of like 26 now at

(21:34):
this point when I've got my gas.So what's relevant at the time?
So that's like 13 years ago now.What's relevant at the time?
Combi boilers are the big thing now.
Everyone wants to get one or everyone's got one.
They're getting pushed as the the ultimate UK.
Save money on your building moreefficient.
Yeah, don't heat a cylinder if you don't need to.

(21:56):
So I was like, well, this is where things are going to go for
the next X number of years. So then I just started to hammer
all the trading costs. Yeah.
So I'll be going a bit. You know, we're I'm based in
Wigan, so we're, you know, boxesin Warrington shoot down to
Worcester, up to Valent in Leeds.
So it's like there was. Yeah, plenty of options
available. Spent quite some time just

(22:19):
hitting these breakdown service type courses and went down the
route of that. Thought if I I've got potential
because with a more slightly more technical background with
like I said, what I did at unionstuff, maybe breakdown service
and is the better choice for me.And then hit that for a while.

(22:41):
And then the next big, big shiftfor me is I met a guy called
Martin Smith. OK, let's just hold fire there
for a second. I just want to just to jump in
and just something I've noticed and it's very common is
everything up till now has been focused on creating the hands on
skills that you need to do the job.

(23:04):
But you've worked for yourself now for a good few years and
you've not once mentioned any level of business training, any
level of marketing training. I'm guessing you just didn't
really think about that. You were just busy learning the
skills and trying to get the jobs over the line just from
your your own natural sort of instincts.
Yeah, so probably the most common denominator in the entire

(23:26):
game, isn't it? Is that there's.
And we'd spoke about this earlier, didn't mean that it's
there's so the bulk of everyone,everyone's energy is always
going to be to becoming a betterengineer or the best engineer
you can be, but there's never any input.
And that that has a like a snowball type effect because as

(23:49):
I said before, I'm there's probably less people that
travelled the path that I did because it was a bit scattered.
And you're going to college and that most guys who are in the
trade that I've spoke to and I know have usually done it from
school. So the becomes a you haven't had

(24:10):
anything business related because you've been in the game
since you were 16. You just you've learned from a
guy who didn't have any businesstraining.
You learn training so on and so forth.
So and it just goes on from that.
And then you might do a little bit, you might do some Flyers
over that. But again, the standardised
growth in the game is word of mouth and everybody wears it.

(24:32):
The older guys especially were it like a badge of honour.
So that's what gets passed down,isn't it?
To be the best engineer you can be, be good at your job, charge
for, be nice to people and in time they will pass your details
on to other people and so on. So you hope?
Yeah, that's how you used. To a wishing of prayer.

(24:53):
Look at him is different. So, so, so yeah, I just wanted
to be cleared on, on that. So you you mentioned that you
then met a gentleman called Martin Smith.
So do you want to just explain alittle bit about how that
changed the, the, the, the routethat you were going down at that
point? Yeah, so I actually met Martin
through a guy called Lee. Unfortunately Lee's no longer

(25:15):
longer with us, but Lee lived very close to to me and we would
cross paths in the gym, things like that.
And he was gas engineer as well and he was doing his own bits of
emergency plumbing in Wigan. And he was doing work for Martin

(25:36):
Smith who owns a company called EPHG Limited, which is an
emergency call out company whichis now national.
And they were saying, Oh yeah, Ido these bits, I'm getting a bit
busier myself. Do you want to get in?
Do you want to get involved in it?
So I started doing some and thenwhat I actually ended up doing
is I got so invested in it so quickly, I actually pulled the

(25:59):
plug completely on the bathroomsand went full tilt into the the
emergency plumbing as well. But mostly emergency boiler
breakdowns, burst pipes, things like that.
And I got to say built up a goodstrong relationship with Merton,
so much so that I essentially became the main engineer for the

(26:24):
Northwest for EPHG. And my days would consist of
doing back-to-back emergency call at work around the
Northwest. But actually a funny story, I
can't remember for the life of me what year it was.

(26:44):
I think I want to say it was sort of 2017 actually won an
award which was emergency Plumber of the year.
Oh wow, again, never knew that. Still get some random phone
calls that I mean obviously I don't answer the phone much
anymore, but I still get some random phone calls that have

(27:06):
come from the back of that. Really.
Someone types an emergency plumber in a certain location.
It's still sort of somehow Sao triggers something.
So yeah, funny story with that. But that was, again, just like
the dedication to the game. I didn't have any kids at that
point and it was just like, yeah, let's go and earn some
proper money. Yeah.

(27:27):
Well that, that was the the nextquestion.
I can imagine if you're doing emergency work you're now
starting to probably earn some half decent money, which again
on the surface sounds amazing, but can can trap you in there a
little bit, can't it? So I was probably making close
to six figures, which sounds amazing, especially when there's

(27:47):
no marketing costs. But factoring in, I was probably
working, well, I was working seven days a week, but I was
probably working some days, maybe 14 hour days.
Yeah, sometimes back-to-back jobs.
Back-to-back jobs. So again, it's.
If you broke the hours down, it probably wasn't as as as good as

(28:08):
it maybe looks. Because there's no travel pay
involved. So you might think, well, it's
good. I've done, you know, 7 jobs
today, you know, 100 and a poundan hour.
But then I've like looked over here and then drove here and
then drove here. So, but it was the best move I
could have made have to be in a bathroom for yeah, there's

(28:28):
nothing, I couldn't think of anything worse now than having
to go back to doing that. And then so yeah, the next big
shift was having the twins. So twins came in the back end of
2019. They they were a bit of a battle
before because they're the IVF babies.

(28:49):
So that started to like take up some personal time and that was
probably the start of it. And then when they came to to to
note a key point, obviously having twins becomes quite
demanding, especially with nightly feeds.
So I'm still out doing emergencyjobs and I 90% fell asleep at

(29:16):
the wheel once in the way back from a job.
And then I thought, that's it. Now I can't do I can't do this
and. Something's got to change.
So then again, while that nearlysick nearly six figures some
sounds phenomenal once you knockthose hours down South, removing
all the evening night time stuffbecause used to go out at night
a lot as well because the pay went so high.

(29:39):
But then that was writing me offso I couldn't do the feeds.
And then again, you start to getdown that realm of, well, do I
really want to be going out and not seeing, you know, spend a
bit of time with the babies? And so then you pay when like
sliced in half essentially. Then if not more I was like
shit, I can't like sustain. Live the lifestyle, but yeah.

(30:02):
Yeah, at this point as well, gota decent house, sort of decent.
I had a car like a hot, not Superman, so anything special,
but I had a Civic taper and a newer van because again, like
you say, the lifestyle of earning that kind of money.
But again, it switched off at the drop of a hat.
So I sold the car and whatnot and just to keep them cost down

(30:24):
as I actually know we're going to end up in a bit of a spotty,
I'm going to end up back doing all these emergency work.
She comes back to them to what Iwas saying before it reached
that point. So we've come full circle now
we've reached that point where Iwas like, right, OK, what can I
do to create a bit more stability without having to work
all these hours? And I felt like I'd become out

(30:47):
of fell out of love with the game.
And I think it was just out of love with what I was doing, a
particular Ave of what I was doing.
And then again, an all too familiar thing with lads in the
trade is the thing about property, right?
Because obviously when you work for yourself, you don't have a
pension. Most guys don't have a pension.

(31:08):
So it's how can I create a pension?
And that's how then guys, most go down.
Most guys, sorry, go down the property route or they back and
make enough money to have an extra pot and then I can buy a
couple of houses by the time I'mat retirement age, then I'll
have these two houses that are giving me a trickle of money or

(31:29):
I can sell one of them or whatever it might be.
So that was where that idea was born.
So I'd I'd had some money set a little bit of money saved up
from selling the car and I threwit at some property training and
I didn't actually set out with any intention of of starting a

(31:52):
property business, but I that was the route that I went
flowing down let's. What year would you say we're
we're now looking at like where?Where are we at in your journey?
Was 2021. OK, cool.
So we're starting to catch up to, to today then?
Yeah. So the boys are sort of toddler

(32:12):
kind of age then and I, so I went down this route and it was
again, it was for the idea of learning just what to do with
property, so to speak. So I don't know, buy one, do or
not put a tenant in it and try and do it again.
But further down that rabbit hole that I went, the more you

(32:36):
sort of think, well, actually, Ican make some money here that
can potentially replace my income.
And you know, again, we've spokeabout this, the wealth creation
industry many times and it's a, it's a bit of a minefield to
negotiate. But again, as I said before, I
did set up a business doing thatand made some money doing so.

(32:59):
But it was the realisation, the realisation number one was
actually, it's took me, I could have earned more money fitting
boilers. The one I've done doing this.
So that's a problem #1 problem #2 is the, it's, it is a tricky

(33:21):
industry to navigate. And again, so then I'm also
like. Lots of shocks I'm there's.
People are very apprehensive of anything like that.
So it's like, well, one, I can earn more money not doing what I
already know and for all intensive purposes, it would be
easier to, to penetrate that market.
So, and again, I, I continued down that route for a while and

(33:43):
it wasn't so much with the intention to make money from
that point. There was a specific point in
time, and I don't know when it was exactly, but it was about a
year down the line from startingthat.
The property stuff, I was on some mentoring at the time,
which was about six months into.And I was like, actually all

(34:05):
this stuff that I'm learning, I would be better setting up a
heating business and implementing it into that.
So bear in mind this time that by now I was completely removed,
18 months completely removed from the heating game.
I would do the odd emergency jobif the time permitted, but I was

(34:27):
obviously trying to do this stuff.
So I was doing a lot of house viewings, doing a lot of
meetings, Zoom calls, investor calls, things like that.
And I was earning enough betweendoing that, you know, maybe one
job a week and doing the the property source and to just pay
the bills essentially. So then I spent the remaining

(34:48):
six months of the time on under the guise of the mentors, just
trying to learn to go back to what you're saying before trying
to learn what occurred in that time frame frame about business
like, and not so much the back end stuff because anything like
like, like you're saying like the property, it's very much,

(35:10):
very much the front end and how it's represented and delivery of
certain things. So rather than the the back end
numbers and profit and loss sideof things, it's all about like
systems and processes and and scaling and things like that.
So then that was then the seed was sown then and then it became
so then Fast forward to the end of that mentorship and then so

(35:34):
now we're in the back end of 2023.
And then what I then did is I remortgaged my house and I was
able to pull out about 30 grand and went full tilt.
So set up the company. So Twins on Heating Limited was

(35:56):
born and stuck to mark my goals.So then.
So, so let's, let's just slow, slow it down, slow it down there
a little bit to, to let everyoneelse catch up with the with the
journey. So we've gone all the way from
sort of when you were younger, how you got into the industry,

(36:16):
some of the trials and tribulations along the way with,
with certain things. So by the time you obviously
took that decision to remortgageyou, you sort of accepted that
maybe property wasn't the best vehicle for you at that point.
And you are now going to put in put your, your 100% of your,
your efforts, so to speak, into this new formation of a, of a

(36:38):
plumbing and heating company, a heating company.
So before, before you tell us much too much about that, at
that point, what was the, what was the goal of this heating
company? If you remember back to then not
now, try, try to separate the the the way you are now to to
back then when you were making before you have that 30 GS hit

(37:01):
your bank from the remortgage. You know, what was the vision in
your head? What, what did you think you
were going to do with that money?
What did you think you were going to try and build in the
heating? Company, I mean, truthfully, we
haven't despite a few wobbles along the way, we haven't
deviated too much from the original goal now.
But the, one of the key things that I did pull away from the

(37:23):
property stuff and which is generally like the core of of
getting like let's say rental income is the recurring revenue.
That's becomes the, the substantial thing with property,
like the old idea, appreciation aside, is to get some recurring
revenue to live off. So the only real way you can

(37:44):
implement that in this heating industry is through a variant of
and you've got all the names under the sun.
But whether it's home care, service plans, care plans.
Maintenance agreements. Plans, boiler cap, boiler plans,
whatever you want to call them, British Gas through them within
so broad statement, but British Gas offer them home, serve offer

(38:06):
them, etcetera, etcetera. And then I started to look
around. It's like this is an untapped
resource in the game given the fact that my background is then
in maintenance that is the very core of service plans, curb
plans, etcetera anyway. So why not build a business that

(38:28):
is entirely geared towards recurring, either recurring
revenue through the plans or recurring work through
servicing. Maybe a little bit of landlord.
I'll just go back to what you said about the plan.
Then there was a lot more emphasis on landlord.

(38:48):
Naturally, I guess coming out ofthe the property sort of
environment. Off the back of that being
surrounded with them people and again focus on the fact that
they are committed to doing thatyear on year for the legal side
of things. So obviously I'm not talking
about no pricing structure and and how some people as landlords

(39:08):
especially resilient to investing money into things like
the boilers, but it was a very laser focused, laser focused is
the good way of saying it may perhaps a little bit tunnel
visioned, but it was service repair service plans.
That was, it was all it was going to be with a plan to then

(39:28):
later down the line to then get involved with installation work
and use the profits from that then to really start to scale.
And it was a vision that I had as as wanting to be unwavering
with it. We're not going to do any

(39:49):
plumbing work, you know, sauce, heat pumps, whatever it might
be. And we're going to, we're not
going to actively advertise and do any marketing for.
And the main objective of that was for that recurring revenue.
Is that right? Is that that's where you wanted
to, you wanted the business to have stability.

(40:09):
You didn't want it just to be a generic plumbing and heating
company that that one month turns over 1000 LB, the next
month it turns over 10,000 and and everything in between.
So the image I had in my head was like imagine a triangle
spread split up into with lines,horizontal lines running up at
split intersections with the large triangular piece at the

(40:32):
top being like boiler installation kind of work but
the bottom being the lower the lower like lower value work but
is channelled towards that work.So I'd say service service work
was going to be the car because it would be intrinsic to the

(40:55):
service plans. You can't really do service
plans unless you have a good structure as a servicing
company. They become intrinsic to
themselves. So it was like, let's build a
foundation as a service business, service and repair
business or maintenance businessbecause it all becomes geared
towards fuelling the service plans themselves.

(41:18):
Then we can then give people theoption of whether they want to
go on to a Service plan immediately or they want to
experience our service and then look to go on it a plan later
down the line. But everything had to be geared
towards driving towards the recurring revenue to build that
foundation. That was sort of Part 1 of it,

(41:41):
Part 2 of it. Again, while installation does
provide the larger chunks of of profit, they, because they take
up more time in the engineer's Diaries, customer acquisition is
going to be much slower. When you're doing installation
work, if you've got a system conversion, you're taking two to
three days to do it because you know, just converting it,

(42:03):
putting some rads on whatever itmight be, you might only be able
to do that and then maybe a combi swap, whatever that week
you might only have two to threecustomers into the diary.
So that's not going to fuel you very well later down the line.
Very true. As opposed to a service
business, especially service andbreakdown.
Obviously breakdowns tend to take a little bit less time.

(42:25):
You can do five to seven jobs a day potentially you're adding
five to seven jobs customers into the the the job management
system and then into your CRM. That's going to then compound
which is again why I mentioned that reverse sort of triangle
model of building that foundation.
The more customers you've got inyour job management and CRM, the

(42:48):
more customers you should be able to get moving forward
because you've got more customers to market to and again
to about to. I just said if those customers
are born from naturally recurring revenue based work
like servicing, landlord safety,certs, etcetera, you're going to
help to stack the business year on year as opposed to just

(43:13):
putting the boiler in. If you're a company that isn't
geared towards looking after that boiler, once you've fitted
it, you've put that boiler in for that customer, that
customer, you're not going to doa new boiler for that customer
for 10. 10/12/15 years. Yeah, very true, very true.
So you're going to be fighting that fire constantly of you

(43:33):
might do, let's say you're geared towards that putting
boilers in, you do 200 boilers that year, you still got and you
put, you don't touch service andyou've got to find another 200
customers for the following yearas was, you know, start again
from scratch. You've made revenue, generated
revenue, but you haven't createdthose customers.
Yeah, very true. So it was like, well, what can

(43:54):
we build that will be again, different to what other guys do
the build something that's goingto be slow to start, but then
really gain momentum with time. And then again, the recurring
work will fuel the the future engineers.
Again, a common problem of people wanting to take guys on,

(44:15):
but then we'll, I've not got enough work or I haven't got
the, the flow. How do I do it?
And that was again at the forefront of my mind.
Well, through the recurring revenue of the plans that will
help stabilise the business. But more importantly, how can we
create a model that will naturally grow on its own

(44:38):
through it through the recurringwork, while also continuing to
stack the new customers on, which then should become
somewhat self fuelling, Obviously customer retention
aside, but somewhat self fuelling to then continue to to
grow with less and less effort from the back end as the years

(45:01):
go by. That makes sense.
So, so obviously then you had that that was at the forefront
of the business that was going to be the the the services that
you offer the reasons why you were you've just you've just
explained to us. So what when you actually did

(45:21):
took the steps to do that. So you borrowed that, you
borrowed some money, you set, set the new limited company up.
Obviously at that point you've got no real reputation because
you've been out the game for a little while.
How, how, how and what did you do next?
Because it's easy to not easy, but to get some money, you know,
that's yeah. Set up a company do to do what

(45:42):
we've like. Yeah.
Take us through that sort of 1st, 1st, 6 to 12 months really
of of establishing Twin Sun Heating in, in in in Wigan.
So, and again, obviously you know me well enough to know me
right now to think well, my, my,my mind's an attitude towards it
was especially in the realms of marketing and it's, it's hasn't

(46:07):
actually changed that much to this day, but it's more is
always better due to exposure and market penetration that you
might not get with one particular type of marketing.
So more is always going to be better.
Granted, some avenues are going to be more fruitful than others,
but more is almost always betterunless obviously that it's

(46:29):
making a loss, a long term loss.But it was like, OK, what can I
use this money for? So obviously first thing was to
obviously get the website and the plans and everything like
that set up and built out. So I instructed a company that
was familiar with doing this stuff.

(46:51):
They made a start doing a website which we still have
today. It's changed a little bit over
the years. It's not an amazing all singing,
all dancing website, but it's very clear, it's very concise
and it's all LinkedIn nicely with the plans.
Does the job very well in my opinion.
And as a company, so we use a company called Built for Trades
and they have been a great company.

(47:12):
They are very, very responsive to any adjustments to it.
And just, yeah, the customer service has always been a 10 out
of 10 for me for them. That's to say there's fancier
looking websites out there. But as it does the job and yeah,
I'd say the customer service side of things is great.
So it was getting that done first, getting the Service plan
stuff ready, and then it was getting, you know, logo design.

(47:37):
So I got to the classic jump on fibre and get a relatively basic
looking logo done, which is still quite similar today.
It's just it's evolved a little bit.
I got a proper designer to to change it and tweak it and it's
very pleasing to the eye now, some colours and things like
that. But yeah, that was again, just
budget things like get, get something cheap, get a logo out

(47:59):
there. And it's a very similar logo to
what I had for the property training business anyway.
Just obviously it's been updatedand tweaked to suit the heating
business. Hit that and then made us start
on getting some marketing. So did the classic, you know,
primitive type stuff. And then it was just, it was a

(48:20):
long night's trolling. Just quickly, just not everyone
will understand that term primitive trying to just explain
what, what sort of primitive. So what does that mean to you?
What does primitive marketing mean to you?
So primitive marketing is essentially some might refer to
it as more traditional marketing.
So stuff think pre Internet, anything that you would have

(48:44):
done pre Internet, yeah. Great, SO.
Whether it's, you know, the the classically done stuff which is
still in today's Flyers, leaflets, magazine adverts,
billboards, card in a shop window business cards on the
tail of a local small business, you know beauticians, anything

(49:05):
like that. Love it.
Any companies that have a reception, anything on the which
is anything you can do. So it's it's a strategy that's
low cost, low investment into the market in itself.
So obviously leaflets are prettycheap to buy, but then they need
to be done on mass. So they're a bit bigger.

(49:28):
So the the sort of simple mathematics of it's a lower,
lower purchase price for the market in itself, but a much
higher time investment for it. So you can buy, you know,
thousands of leaflets for less than £100, but then it's going
to take you, if you're doing it yourself, obviously take you all
day to deliver them or whatever it might be versus, you know,

(49:49):
your, your online stuff where it's, you can sit and do it on a
on your phone for all intensive purposes.
So it's minimal time drain, but there's a much greater cost to
doing it. So it was getting the primitive
marketing ready first leaflets ordered, work were ordered,
things like that. And I'd say then trolling the

(50:11):
the Internet as to what the platforms are the lead
generation platforms that we're still a big advocate for today
because we're still on all of the ones that we almost all of
the ones that we got involved with at the time.
So just doing Google searches for, you know, things like
boiler service Wigan boiler repair, Wigan boiler repair

(50:34):
Northwest, anything like that. You know, all of those
surrounding areas that we were going to attack.
So yeah, you're saying telling your Warrington, your Preston,
your Liverpool, all of those surrounding areas, because it
was always the intention to growacross the entirety of the
northwest and never had any intentions and don't still don't
have any intentions of an inter of a national business and

(50:57):
spreading that far. Because again, from from my time
in the in the property stuff without going about on about it
too much that you do learn a lotabout the data side of things.
So just for the metric just wigging itself as over 100,000
houses, how many of those do yourealistically need?

(51:18):
And to go back to you're saying about putting the plan together
for why the recurring revenue, it was like, well, if I have X
number of plans at Y price, it will generate £10,000 per month.
And again, I was probably a little bit small, small minded

(51:39):
then. But I'm thinking, well, who
needs more than 10 grand a monthflowing in from recurring
revenue? Like you know, that's more than
you need to especially at sole trade a level like you're not
going to got any overheads, whatmore do you need?
And if for a number you needed 1000 Service plan customers to

(52:02):
get that figure, well, there's 100,000 houses in Wigan like you
want to want to spread a little bit further.
There's a million, there's abouttwo million houses within an
hour's drive on Wigan in that loop, if you will.
So I'm thinking there's really no need to go that much further.
So let's let's start penetratingthe local market 1st.
And then the other thing I did and we're still with them today

(52:27):
for to another primitive marketing local magazine.
They're taken really well by thelocal community and I've done
some work with them previously from the property stuff.
So we so I'd say we're still advertising that.
So they were the first things that we got going with.
So it was a local magazine and the fly drops the first thing we

(52:50):
pulled the trigger on and then to move over to the online
marketing stuff. So once the website was ready,
we then started to get involved with the what they call more
lead generation type platforms. So I mean, there's, there's

(53:10):
probably too many to list, but the more popular ones are things
like check a trade, trust a trader, rated people, my
builder, things like that. So we started getting involved
with those purely because as you've already mentioned Wayne,
because we were a start up, we had no customer base.
We were available to do fast andresponsive reactive kind of work

(53:37):
which a lot of those sites produce.
So it's like, well, the more established guys won't be able
to get to these jobs, we can setagain out to them.
So one thing I was always steadfast on and again, the
thing that sort of has put me ina good position with the
business is the time that I takeI took to be out of the

(53:58):
industry. Give me a complete reframing.
And it was, it was the mindset of, well, if I'm not making or
not going to make some good money coming back into this
industry, then why should I bother?
Why should I take on the headache?
And I know you've spoke about this many time, most guys in
this industry would probably make more money if they went and

(54:21):
worked for a company than what they do on their own.
So it was like, well, if we're not going to make some strong
money, there's no point in me doing it.
I might as well go and work for British Gas, clock off at the
end of the day, not worry about,you know, getting back to that
customer or, you know, asking someone for a review, whatever,
whatever it might be. And then not having to pay for

(54:43):
my own van to drive around. And it's like, well, go and work
for British Gas. I'll have a British Gas van.
I can still buy my own car. It'll be like a normal job and
then I won't have to worry aboutall the crap that comes with
running your own business or being self-employed.
So it was straight away, let's do a good job, make sure all the

(55:04):
back end is solid and present this as a premium business.
That was there's always the one of the fundamentals.
It's like, well, we'll charge premium pricing, but we'll do a
premium service. And literally the service thing
was, was the thing that was usedas that, as that metric.
So there's a funny one we've talked about as well, but we

(55:28):
only do on 1st visit full stripped down servicing unless
the boiler is under three years old, which is a bit of a unique
thing. So we're not gas analysing and
walking away. So it was like, OK, well that's
good that we're going to do that.
Customers will see the value, but we need to charge
accordingly for it. Otherwise there's no point.

(55:48):
You can't do full stripped down services that take an hour and
15 minutes and then only charge £70.
For it just not viable, is it? So yeah, we came out of the
blocks charging 119 plus that wewent back registered straight
away as well to just segue back into that to try and streamline

(56:09):
things moving forward. I didn't want to have the
website and all the pricing structure set as Novat and then
very quickly we have to become back registered and have to go
in and change everything. So despite some resistance from
the accountant, we went back registered straight away just

(56:29):
from a logistical point of view,because I know that we'd quite
quickly hit that point anyway. Makes logical sense, You know,
in hindsight, I wish I had done that, you know, because the the
efforts and and confusion it takes to then transfer six, six
months down the line because obviously you had ambitions to
smash through that threshold anyway you didn't you know so.

(56:50):
That's definitely the core of it.
Really. If you, if you did never want to
breach that point, then yeah, you're not going to be thinking
about that. But I didn't.
I never had that closed mindset of law when I fought to hover
under the threshold because thenit's a limiting belief.
You might as well just go past it.
And if you're going to go past it, then you might as well go
far, far past it. So yeah, we, we went straight

(57:12):
down the line with that £119 plus that plus the cost of a
burning gasket. So we, we went out strong and we
were, we started winning the work.
Yeah, when the book we were getting.
So surely, surely there was moreto more to the business than
just a bit of primitive marketing and charging like a

(57:34):
rhino, you know, like to justifythat charge.
Yes, you're doing a good job, but what about the systems?
What about how how you were dealing with the inquiries like
like tell us a little bit about the back end, the non sexy
stuff, you know? So it was a bit of a slow start
with some of that. And then obviously, so back end

(57:55):
of the very back end of 23 is obviously when we met.
So we started talking in December, December, yeah,
December 23. And then that was my first sort
of really in depth conversationsthat we started to have then
about software and about job management software.

(58:19):
So again, I hadn't been made aware of CRMS and software from
the the other side of things with the property, but more
about the CRMS and marketing campaigns and MailChimp where
you can do bulk marketing, not so much about a job management
system. So then we had a chat about a

(58:39):
few things. I'd actually started to get set
up on gas engineer software justas we met and again, this was me
being a bit wet behind the yearswith it.
Once we'd had a conversation about it, I then through your
advice realised that gas engineer software will quickly

(59:01):
hit a limit. And based on where I wanted to
take the business, I needed something that I could handle a
lot more, more jobs, just a better software and something
that could handle a larger number of staff.
So we settled on a software called Service Mate, which can
run very effectively up to around 1580 members of staff.

(59:25):
And again, I don't have any intention of going beyond that.
So we settled on that and then started getting that set up.
And one thing that just say, talk about what you're saying
about just going in and chargingand doing a good job or how it's
never enough because of the world that we live in now.

(59:48):
Everybody wants everything rightaway.
So you order something on Amazon?
You. Get it same same day you order a
coffee from Starbucks, you can get it delivered within half an
hour or whatever it is. That's the kind of world that we
live in now and people are used to that.
So we need to be able to deliverto that market and offer the

(01:00:08):
same thing. Service mate fortunately can
deliver on those kind of things.So when you book a job in the
straightaway, they get a bookingconfirmation.
And one thing that is particularly special about it is
it provides a booking window. So one thing I didn't want to do
is like, again, the classic tradesman thing, you might be on

(01:00:30):
the phone to a customer and they'll, you'll say, Oh yeah,
we'll, you know, we'll come to you at, you know, 11:00 or
whatever. I've got a job before you.
I'll come at 11:00. Customers being customers will
cling on to that time like, you know, a monkey clinging onto a
tree. They just won't let it go.
So if you turn up at 10:50, they'll be oh, wasn't ready for

(01:00:55):
you. There's 10:50.
You told me 11:00 just as the same wave you turn up at 11:10,
they're like, well, well, you'relate, have been waiting since
11:00. So I wanted something that could
provide something as simple as abooking window, because you
always need to allow for, you know, whether it be traffic or,
you know, obviously in this gamea job can run over a boiler

(01:01:17):
might needed some extra parts, whatever it might be.
So that was the first thing, booking confirmation with a
booking window. I wanted to always operate on
booking windows to take some of the pressure off the team and
the business itself. And then one special feature as
it's not that special, but in the trade world is anything like
that is, is a notification when the engineer's on his way with

(01:01:40):
tracking. And that was Pro as probably and
probably still is one of the most fundamental aspects for
them. The customer side of things that
allows us to charge the strong pricing and customers to be able
to understand why, why we do because it's again.
Because but to to sorry to jump in mate, but to, to just to

(01:02:04):
justify being a premium business, you have to be doing
stuff that is different to average Joe.
You know to be that superhero superhero pro, don't you?
Average Joe down the road who answers the phone in his van and
writes your address down on a bit of paper and says I think

(01:02:25):
I'm available Friday afternoon, I'll come.
Then there's customers for average Joe, which brings me on
a little bit to that customer avatar thing.
What I quickly realised is doingthings the way we do, some
people appreciate it and some people don't.
So again, there's a customer forevery type of business.
So the average Joe, he's only going to charge, you know, £70

(01:02:48):
for a service but give you an ambiguous date and time when
he's going to come. Some people are happy to do
that. Generally that's that's elderly
people because they're retired. So they don't actually, they're
not particularly bothered about the booking windows because that
will have been all day anyway. Yeah.
Yeah. So that allowed us then to start

(01:03:11):
to target that kind of market a little bit more.
So again, the the, the customersbeing customers, you want things
right away. Let's talk about your younger
families. So, you know, both parents are
working. They might either they're
working from home taking Zoom calls or they've got to come
back from the office, whatever it might be.

(01:03:34):
Those are the the customers thatreally value something like that
software because they can say, oh, you're about to come out of
work or you know, I can see thatyou come in between, you know,
11:00 and 2:00. So I told my boss, I can't
answer the phone. I can't take a zoom call.
Yeah, window, I'm here and I'm working, but there's going to be

(01:03:56):
a guy I might have to come out and show him where the boiler is
and so on and so forth. And people really like that.
And again, the reason I wanted to really implement that really
effectively implement something like that is again, that all
becomes intrinsic to the model, the compound growth model.
Like if you're, it's all right, me having this vision of a
recurring model that's going to stack year on year.

(01:04:19):
But if you can't retain those customers, the model will just
fall apart and fall to shit. So we needed something that
customers go like, OK, this guy,this company is a bit more
expensive, but this is the service that they're bringing
got while we were still on the phone, we got a booking
confirmation with the booking window.
We got a reminder the same day that he was coming.

(01:04:41):
We got a notification to say he's on his way and he's going
to be 22 minutes. Very specific.
We could track him if we wanted to.
All of that allows them to tell the boss they can't take the
phone call or yeah, nip to the gym because.
It's making, it's making it easyfor them to use you, isn't it?
Rather than it, like all of us have used tradespeople where you

(01:05:01):
know you, they don't ring you back.
They give you, oh, I'll try and pop in Friday, 4:00 on a Friday
evening. You're like, where are they?
You know what's going on? And then they say, oh, sorry, I
couldn't come. I'll have to come next week.
And it's so frustrating, especially in today's modern
fast-paced world. It's ever more important, isn't
it, to respect these people's time and make it easy for them

(01:05:23):
to use. You and that's probably one of
the bigger failings from like the average joke and the guy,
he's still operating in a way that was you you could do 10
years ago. Yeah, you can't do it anymore
because people like except for the elderly people who are more
familiar with that time, people just won't accept it anymore.

(01:05:45):
And then you're going to get beaten by a company that does
offer it. So say that they'll be cheaper
companies, but there's people for them and then there's people
for us. Because that recurring model
you'll get people go, well, I could have got it done cheaper,
but there's a trade off now of, well, I know when these are
exactly when these are coming. I'm kept in the loop.

(01:06:06):
They answer the phone for Christ's sake when I ring.
But yeah, and then obviously we started getting more into the
realms of working together at the beginning of 2024.
So am I right, right in thinkingthat when you joined then you
joined the one to one programme with me, didn't you?

(01:06:29):
So you were having a monthly 1 to one session with me, is that
right? Yeah, So we were doing well.
We started out doing the monthlyone to ones didn't we on the
Zoom, but me being the ADHD and me her struggles sitting in
front of that Zoom call for an hour and focusing my time on it.
So we had a good chat about it and then we switched to doing

(01:06:55):
your in person days instead. So saving that time up and doing
the full, doing a full day together rather than spending
two hours on a Zoom call becausethat allowed that that's that
scale of time in one setting. AI operate better face to face
and B allowed enough time to getthings done.

(01:07:19):
So we do save it up for 1/4 and then we'd get that done and
there was enough time in the dayto take those breaks to realign
with the concentration and get work through everything.
And then obviously from that point, my vision and your
guidance allowed us to stay laser focused on moving forward

(01:07:40):
and then we started to dial in other aspects of marketing and
started to scale that way. Excellent.
So that takes us all the way up to 20 early 2024, so.
Sorry, early 2023. Was it yeah, I'm losing, I'm
losing track on yeah, it must begosh, yeah, the.
Inception of the business was. This was my mistake.
The inception of the business was the.

(01:08:01):
End of end of 2020. Two started working you December
23 and then obviously. So give us a synopsis.
Of January 23. Cool, give us a synopsis of how
that year went then. So 2023 you've now you're fully
committed, you've got money in the game, you're building a
business, you're working with meand off the tools Alliance.
What what, what happened in that, in that, that that first

(01:08:25):
period of, of, of growth expansion and, and what what
went wrong as well? So I think the biggest challenge
from that first year was trying to stay on track, knowing that
it's a very slow starting model.So being so being so niche with

(01:08:48):
the line of work that we do. So turning away general plumbing
work initially, turning away fitting radiators and things
like that to double down on the service and repair side of
things. That was difficult and started
to become a little bit frustrating because you're just
not going to start moving at speed again.

(01:09:10):
We could have deviated from the core model by we could have
stuck to the pricing structure and took on more lines of work.
We could have started to do, youknow, fitting radiators, could
even have gone further down the line and started to touching on
on some plumbing because plumbing is a bit more
consistent through the year. Or we could have gone the other

(01:09:32):
way, we could have stuck to the the original work model and
dropped our pricing structure, which would have increased the
conversion rate. And then we would have been
doing more work. But again, that comes back down
to the a lot of the failing in the industry, the need to fill a
diary and make yourself feel busy ends up creating or

(01:09:55):
actually, I'll charge this much charge a little bit, like maybe
even less than the competition in the area to, to win the work.
But all that happens is then become a bit of a busy fool on
paper or at face value rather, it will look like you're busy
and you're doing well. You might even get to capacity
for yourself quite quickly and then start to think about taking

(01:10:17):
someone else on. But if the profit isn't in the
jobs, you're just that busy foolas being busy for busy sake.
So we wanted to to be steadfast and be like ever knowing that
slow to start big later down theline.
Stick with it, stick with it. Love that.
And yeah. So true.
I see it obviously in my in my position, I see that all of the

(01:10:41):
time where that a lot of people will just end up trying to fill
a diary without any idea of or or without any value in is that
is, is that day in that diary actually making any profit
because we are in business to make profit.
People need to always remember that sounds really simple, but

(01:11:02):
trust me, a lot of people lose sight on that.
And yeah, you're definitely one that doesn't, which is
fantastic. Too much of just like seeing it
as a job, you know, because, andagain, this comes just to down
to generally a lack of, like yousaid before, a lack of business
acumen with so many people in the trade because they haven't

(01:11:22):
had that training or time out ofthe game, especially, you know,
they've done it since they were 16.
You're not going to be primed toto know that back end.
That's all you're going to ever going to know.
So with that lack of business acumen, you're not you're not
going to see the bigger picture.So it's like, well, I've got
free time in my day, I'm better going doing that by the service

(01:11:44):
for £60. They're not doing any work at
all. Not thinking about the long term
effects of building a 60 LB boiler service customer base
because then as you say, you endup with a full diary just doing
60 LB an hour services. You need to do obviously a lot
of them per day to generate anything reasonable.

(01:12:05):
And all that then happens is youget the compound effect of the
cheap pricing structure. You're going to grow faster
because your conversion rate is going to be better.
You're going to grow faster because you're going to get a
better word of mouth. Unfortunately, word of mouth
spreads better through pricing than it does through quality of
work. So.
Yeah, use Joe blogs down the road.

(01:12:27):
He only charged me £60 and he's a, he's a nice guy.
So then, yeah, you reach that point of being just a busy fool.
You'd think you're doing good because you're like, Oh yeah,
I'm not busy, I'm not busy. I don't need to advertise
because I'm not busy. And then like you start looking

(01:12:47):
then to take someone else on andyou've, you become, your hand
gets a little bit forced to takesomeone on because of work
capacity as opposed to taking someone on because there is
enough profit within the business to do it.
You better making more money, working less hours.
I always use the, the service example, like that 60 LB service

(01:13:09):
example to, to some of the otherlads in, in the group of, well,
the guy who's charging £60 versus the guy who's charging
120. You're going to hit that
capacity much faster. And that's not too bad when
it's, it's just you if you're happy doing that.
But then as that scales it completely throws off the

(01:13:29):
metrics then because you need twice as many services than the
60 LB job, than the £120 company.
Then you when you try and scale that and you take the next guy
on, you no longer can get away with just doing twice as much
work because your overheads haverocked it up.
You probably now need to do 3 times as much work.

(01:13:50):
And that just compounds and compounds and compounds until it
gets to a point where you're a company that's just got guys out
on the road who can generate 80 grand a year.
And he's costing you, you know, 80.
He's turning over 80 grand a year, 60 grand after after tax,
etcetera. And he's costing you 60 grand to
put him on the road. So then it's like, well

(01:14:12):
actually, there's not actually any point in doing this.
And that's why so many guys thatwill scale up to 3456 lads scale
back to themselves and an apprentice or the son who,
wherever it might be, and then say well actually I'm making the
same money or more. Doing a lot less.
Doing less, and that's like, notbecause of building a business

(01:14:34):
is fundamentally flawed, it's because the way you've done it
wrong. You know, you know, my, my, I've
been beating this drama about pricing for, for 6-7 years.
And I do understand that it's tough out there.
And I do understand that if you've got to put food on the
table, you've got to put food onthe table.
But fundamentally, most people, I don't know if you would agree,

(01:14:57):
are just building themselves thehardest job in the world rather
than building themselves an actual business.
So creating that job is just creating an anchor.
Whereas if you build a business,you're building an asset, aren't
you? And it's, it's sad to see.
It honestly is like I see the insides of lots of lots of
businesses. I get people, even people that I

(01:15:20):
don't work with, I see under thehood because they asked me for
advice, you know, send me documents to look at and, and so
many, I just aren't making the money they deserve.
And back to what you said an hour ago or whatever it was, you
know, most, a lot of them would be better off employed for the
hours that they work for the time they put into it.

(01:15:41):
So it's great to hear that you, that, that you had that strong
mindset around the pricing from the very beginning.
So to get back onto the timeline, because I appreciate,
you know, we, we, we, we both can wander off in different
directions. So I want to keep this timeline
going. So we're now let's Fast forward
to the end of 2023. You've had a year get

(01:16:02):
established by this point, you've worked with myself,
you've been part of the off the tools community, you've bought.
Obviously the experience you hadfrom the property industry,
What, what was the business looking like at the end of that?
That in essence first year of ofof trading.
How how did it go? So it was a slow year to be
first. So I'd been trying to do

(01:16:25):
everything myself for quite a period of time and obviously
carrying a lot of stress the young family and, and trying to
do everything. So again, the software side to
help. And then we'd by this point we'd
implemented a virtual assistant as well.

(01:16:47):
Just explain a virtual assistantlike is that like a call
answering service and stuff likethat?
Yeah. So obviously there's different
levels of of what you can achieve from call entering
services in Virginia. So you might have one that works
directly for you more of APA role, or you might just use one

(01:17:08):
of the many call entering services that are available.
And basically the role is to again, as little or as big as
you want, but it can be from as simple as answering the phone
for you or then they can also delve into booking in jobs for
you And like so you can, some guys will use people that they

(01:17:29):
know to do the same thing. But essentially the, the, the
shifting point for that is, is a, the obvious one of if you're
under a boiler, are you with a customer?
You can't answer the phone because you're busy.
And the other one being it's theprofessionalism that it
provides. So as I said before, by going

(01:17:49):
back registered, going limited, charging the bigger pricing
structure and representing everything as if we're a few
years ahead. And that's always been a core
thing for me. I always want to as a company
present that were where I want it to, what I want it to look
like at face value in two, 3-4 years as opposed to where it's
at now. And that I'll start with that

(01:18:12):
registered limited and having someone other than an engineer
answer the phone. Yeah.
Very important step. If you answer the phone in the
van, people know you're driving,probably going to know you're
the engineer and that's not going to represent like a bigger
company and that's going to, you're going to really struggle
to charge bigger company pricingwhen you're not bringing that

(01:18:35):
bigger company service and bringing that.
This is where so many people neglect because.
It's it's it's. It's impossible to put a
tangible number to that, to having a simple call answering
service. It's impossible to know what
that does. But what it definitely does is
it's just one extra perceptionalview of your.

(01:18:59):
Company being. Bigger, stronger, more
professional than average. Average.
Let's use another name, Average Pete rather than Joe.
Let's leave Joe alone. Poor Joe.
Joe's getting some shit today. Yeah.
Sorry to jump in. So.
So that was one of the first things You, you you sort of
delegated. Yeah.
So obviously delegation was always on the cards with this
business, wasn't it? Yeah.

(01:19:20):
So to to segue a little. Bit off off that current topic
again I'm while I'm good at breakdown.
I was always. And I still say it now, I was
always a pretty average engineer.
So my skill set lies in more of the entrepreneurial side of
things and the visionary side ofstuff, the front end business

(01:19:43):
stuff. So I always knew my time would
be wasted. I can find many much, much
better, better engineers than meto do that side of the work.
So I had to try and delegate as much and start to do to be
behave more like an entrepreneurand outsource all of the stuff
that I don't I'm not good at or I don't want to be doing because

(01:20:06):
it isn't a good use of my time. So answering the phone is never
a good use of any. One's time in this game because
you know like this, even the sole trader boys, you're gas
engineers. You shouldn't be wasting your
time answering the phone in my opinion, because all of the
other stuff we've just spoke about besides you're a master of

(01:20:27):
your craft. Let someone else do answer the
phone and, and, and speak to customers for you while you
carry on with your work. But it's a so that was that was
outsourcing physical outsource #1 Obviously the other
outsourcing was the software itself because it's sending out
stuff that people would do manually.

(01:20:48):
So you know, some guys who are maybe a little bit more advanced
than a, than a piece of paper. They might put something into a
digital diary and then manually send a text to the customer to
remind them service mates doing that automatically.
So again, it's taking free and up some Headspace software and
then VA next and then it had to go back on topic.

(01:21:10):
It had been a bit of a slow year, mainly because the
building of the business and doing all of the other stuff
took up so much time because of where I wanted to take it.
I was was unwilling to put too much time out on the tools.
And as you refer to it, I neededto make sure I was spending

(01:21:30):
enough time on the business and spending too much time in the
business would have killed that off.
So I was very compartmentalised with my time with it.
So I was doing 2, maybe 3 jobs most per day out on the tools,
usually in the afternoon. And then I was doing the
business back end stuff, whetherit had been a training call with

(01:21:52):
you or just helping my learning the software that was using and
getting a bit, looking at competitors, doing some
marketing, even going doing out some Flyers myself, whatever it
took to start to drive forward. And then obviously by this point
we're rolling into the the winter then.

(01:22:13):
And then naturally you get some sort of free momentum, so to
speak. As you know, in this seasonal
game that we're in, we got some free momentum that started to
push us forward and gain traction.
And I did spend a bit more time over the winter with a much

(01:22:33):
fuller physical diary. Yeah.
Because we'd, and again, we'd set that deadline together of we
need XY and Z in place before September, October, so that it
will allow you to allow me to just get out there and do some
work and let the back end that we've spent so long building do

(01:22:55):
its work. Yeah.
So yeah, rolled through the winter, got stuck in.
Servicing work. Converting customers onto to
service plans and you don't needto be precise, but do you know
roughly? What sort of numbers you'd got
signed up at this point to the to, to the recurring service
plans that was the core of the business we was probably about?

(01:23:19):
100. Maybe 100 ish give or take.
Yeah. So, so solid.
A good solid start, then to that, to that.
New business really we I did spend a period of time where.
We was trying to position it so that again like British Gas of
like kind of the only option we to the customer was become a

(01:23:42):
Service plan customer tested that.
That did allow that spike. Obviously we did lose a lot, but
we allowed that big jump forwardto get that magical first 100.
And then obviously naturally through a busier winter, we was
allowed able to start to add a decent amount more as we pass
through the winter, which then again allowed us to start

(01:24:04):
planning the next steps of the business really which is as
always the first engineer. So brilliant.
So. Would you say that was a
successful year? Did you feel like you were
making the progress that you wanted to make?
Maybe just not as fast as. Yeah.
So I I knew and we knew that it.Was a successful year at face

(01:24:27):
value and from a, let's say froma, just from an engineer
perspective or from a sole trader mindset perspective, it
wouldn't have looked like a successful year.
Yeah, because we for a period we're running at a loss.
So we're spending money on marketing and software and
things, but not bringing that money back in.

(01:24:48):
But again, the very nature of the business, we were always
geared towards that longer term goal.
But yeah, the marketing really started to kick in, so to speak
as we rolled into that winter. And I did forget to mention

(01:25:08):
before talking about full time engineer, we did already have
the two subcontractors involved at this point.
Yeah. So they were mainly dealing with
the the inevitable overspill of installation based things that

(01:25:28):
would come from the work. So let's say for example, we'd
go out to do a service or repairand customer would have a
radiator that wasn't performing for example.
So we would then get the subcontractors to fit new
radiators. So yeah, we went through the
winter with, with me service andrepair, the VA operating, the

(01:25:48):
software operating and the two subcontractors doing a mixed bag
of work while I try, I ensured Istayed late laser focused
because I was mindful. I didn't want to lose that work,
especially we were serving new Service plan customers, but I
didn't want to be delving down that route of doing it.
So yeah, next step was to sort of set a date in place to take

(01:26:11):
on the net. So this takes us into 2024.
So now you've got a bit of a reputation along this journey.
You implemented a very good review collection strategy with
the software that you use, like I can imagine.
Yeah, so well. Again, based on that long term
growth strategy and to to her back to the badge of honour of

(01:26:35):
the old school guys of I get allmy work through word of mouth
and reputation. The reputation in 2024-2025.
It's all about online reviews really because again, the guys
that were the the reputation word of mouth business growth

(01:26:57):
strategy like a badge of honour.I will always in this modern
time get destroyed by the companies who push the
marketing, push the online reviews, push that digital
presence because that's just theworld that we live in now.
So I thought, well, let's make the most of this large, the, the

(01:27:18):
fast-paced customer acquisition that we're getting through
online reviews because we can, we can very quickly go from
having a dead stop like a new startup business with nothing
out there to more reviews than the guys that are doing these
bigger jobs, whether it be bathrooms, heat and
installations, wireless swaps, whatever it might be.

(01:27:40):
So we then we together built outa review collection system that
would then essentially automatically target every
single customer that we've done work for to collect to, to push
them, not push them, but to, to ensure that they know we've

(01:28:01):
asked them for review and that they've been happy with the work
without us having to do any manual work to get it.
And as a result, so we're a little over 2 years from
starting the business. And last to check for about 650
reviews, I sound going. Do you know there's there's
businesses that have been going?Decades with less reviews than

(01:28:23):
that. Shout out to South Line Software
for helping on that. Yeah.
So yeah, we'll go back to CRM ina minute.
And delve into what we use, but that's essentially across a few
platforms. And again, what that allows you
to do, you don't want to put allyour eggs in one basket.

(01:28:43):
So we have reviews spread acrossmultiple platforms.
So usual Google Trustpilot and stuff as well as the lead
generation sites. And the way we've done that is
using a software called Sales Lion, which obviously we've
built out together. And as I say, there's a

(01:29:04):
communication then between service Mate and Sales Lions or
the data for the customer and the work that they've had done
is passed through to the CRM, which is what we use as Sales
Lion. And then it will then request
that information. The review request will go
through to the customer and onceit's been done, then that job

(01:29:27):
will then be closed down and it's just a very hands freeway.
Obviously there's some front endbuilding, but once it's done you
can just leave it and let it run.
And as I say, every single customer that we do.
So even just for a single engineer, you could be doing
potentially 30 jobs a week. There's potentially 30 new

(01:29:49):
reviews that you could get and without actually having to do
anything physical manual from our end, they're just
automatically asked for it happening on autopilot.
So yeah, they're front end. Building obviously that.
We've we've sat down and done together, but then now it's just
running for itself and you can get it asking to do different

(01:30:10):
platforms for you as well. So as I say, we spread it across
a few platforms to give that spread.
When the customer hits Google for a search of your business
and the reviews, they're then going to get multiple hits
across the whole thing. So as I say, whether it's like
Trustpilot, Google, which whatever it happens to be.

(01:30:32):
The thing with reviews. Is if you don't have them at
scale and you're doing like the primitive marketing we were
saying before, it's not going tothe primitive.
Marketing only. Works in this day and age with
that review. It doesn't really.

(01:30:53):
Work sure as it out doesn't unfortunately.
Because again, we're just in. Different times.
Now, because people will get a leaflet or a booklet or whatever
it might be, and then the first part of that action then is to
just do a Google review. Let's see what these guys are
about. So that's why we were so set in
on on getting all those reviews A to help everything bring

(01:31:17):
everything together for the brand.
But more so I was, I've always been very mindful of starting
something from new. You're going to be coming up
against these more established companies and getting the
combination of the larger customer acquisition and the
heavy review requesting allows us to hack that essentially.

(01:31:41):
And as you've said, we've got more reviews now than companies
most for a decade. That's fantastic with a market.
Leader in our area on one platform in particular.
And as I say, naturally, where in my research days, I was
obviously looking at at the age of the businesses that I was
competing against and the some that are on there that have been

(01:32:02):
established just on that platform for 10 years like you
say. Yeah.
And you're now top of the pile. Love that domination.
That's what we want dominate that local area.
OK, so you took your first employee on We did so we.
We're obviously we're in 2024 now.

(01:32:22):
Beginning of the year, we set a start date for the engineer of
8th of April and he would be a specialised service and repair
engineer to obviously continue driving the business forward at
its core. I interviewed quite a few guys
to be fair, and so many were just general guys and it took me

(01:32:47):
quite a while to find someone who's had spent the last seven
years just doing service and repair so.
Yeah, and. One of the tricks that I
implemented, again, advice that I took from you was that I spent
two solid weeks out in the bandwidth and every day, not

(01:33:10):
just to show him the software that we use, but just to make
sure his goals were aligned withus and what we do.
And again, so I could get a feelfor the kind of guy that he is
and that I think that's been fundamental in setting that
precedent moving forward. You know, about how, you know,

(01:33:34):
how we greet the customer on arrival, certain, you know,
etiquette in certain ways of, you know, shoe covers on when
we're going in and things like that.
I'm just obviously making sure the customers fully aware of it,
customers, you know, customers get a welcome pack when we
arrive and things like that. So, but yeah, it's he's, he's

(01:33:58):
turned out to be a really great guy and he's now my lead
engineer out in the field. Excellent, excellent.
And so. Obviously that's freed up more
time for you. So over that course of 2024,
what, what were you doing? How did?
The business perform. What was the growth like for

(01:34:20):
you, for the, for it so then? And this is something that
obviously everyone needs to be prepared for.
There's always an awkward transition phase when you take
on a new engineer because especially that first full time
engineer, because the idea was that he would not take the work
that the subcontractors were doing because he would be a

(01:34:45):
dedicated service and repair engineer whose main line is
doing that and the breakdown side of things as well.
So that inevitable lull that you're going to get is, and most
guys will will have to, to, to wade through this and try and
prepare for it is they're essentially going to take on all
of the work that you was doing. So that becomes that you have,

(01:35:08):
you spend that a couple of weekswith that engineer and then you
let them go on their own. And then you find yourself OK,
what to do next. And again, that's probably 1.
But I mean, one of the challenging things is just that
constant pivot because I'd gone from being 50% back end, 50%
front end. Then I'd gone through the winter

(01:35:31):
of, you know, 90% front end out on the tools, geared up, got my
engineer out, spent a couple of weeks with him.
So then that was pretty much 100% on the tools, teaching him,
showing him what to do, how we do things.
Then it went went from 100% on the tools to 100% back end again
because then I let him go on hisown.

(01:35:52):
So then it was then getting thatback into that side of things.
And then just again starting to look at the business and how
then we're going to drive forward and essentially repeat
the process because that was then the plan for the first few
years the plan was going to be scale by taking on a new

(01:36:12):
engineer every year around the same period.
So spring, summer, that window of spring summer take another
engineer. And again, while to some people
that will probably seem. Like slow growth.
Some people probably see it as fast growth.
Again, one of the things with the service plans is there is an

(01:36:35):
uplift on revenue based on versus sorry, the the work
input. Because a big part of anything
home care Service plan related is the customer is it's like you
when you put any kind of care plan in place, whether it be on
a mobile phone or on, on your car, whatever it is, a large

(01:36:59):
amount of that value is born from the Peace of Mind knowing
that a repair will be done should it need to be done.
But it doesn't always need to bedone for the first year or two
years or whatever it might be. And that's, that's kind of the
crux of it. So there is an uplifting value
without the same value of upliftof, of demand on the business,

(01:37:22):
if that makes sense. So it was that, that's the model
that we're going to scale at that rate.
So we're going to spend the first few years taking on one
engineer a day a year, sorry, based on adding X number of
service plans per year to maintain that stability in the
business and not overload anyonevery strategic direction.

(01:37:45):
There. I love it.
Yeah. And then so we did.
We went through the summer. We're just the main engineer and
the subcontractors. And then as we started then to
approach service season and I'd I don't, I've made a lot of.
So to stay on timeline, I made alot of tweaks to the back end

(01:38:06):
over over that summer period. So we, we improved the job
management software a little bit.
We spent a lot of time improving, not improving, but
tweaking sales line CRM to, to make it better than what it had
been before. Now that we had that greater

(01:38:28):
capacity and we were, we also had the next steps of the
business in our sort of in our sights, got a lot of that
dialled in and then we sort of started to get into service
season then. So then obviously then the role
shift for me shifts again back to around 5050 at the beginning

(01:38:54):
of, of service season. And then obviously as the
weather started to turn, so around sort of November of 24,
we had some really cool spells. So again, there was a, it was a
pivot towards being a bit more on the tools.
And then just accepting that there is an element of this

(01:39:19):
trade, a big element of this trade is that it's seasonal and
you've got to be able to, part of the, the challenge is being
able to pivot. So like I do be willing to not
be out every day just so you feel busy during the summer
getting all of the back end tiedin and gearing up towards.

(01:39:40):
And if you like being on the tools, then then you dive out in
the winter and you get stuck in.But again, my mindset and my, my
vision has always been, well, let's use the seasonal nature of
the business to allow you to plan fair in advance with the

(01:40:00):
growth. So, so we've, we're looking to
take on the next engineer now inthe next few weeks to, to month.
So we then use the profit that is made during the winter to to
help to to fuel that next engineer, but also the the large

(01:40:21):
customer acquisition that you make through the winter.
Is also going to fuel the next engineer as well, so sometimes
you do have to get back in the trenches and there's nothing
wrong with that every like you know.
While you're building a business, you sometimes you have
to get dirty. Yeah.
And. Again, there's there's always.
Pros and cons of being. Able to be an operator in the

(01:40:44):
business that you create. So there's the the pros again is
that you can hit the ground running.
You can do the work yourself as well as running the business,
the cons, and I imagine this is something that you run into so
much with your clients as you get, you find it difficult to
then remove yourself from being the operator.

(01:41:05):
So like so you can, you can leverage it at the beginning,
but the challenge becomes can can you be willing to remove
yourself from the business and fight the lure of, well actually
I can go and do that combi swap and get £800 or whatever you
charge for it. That layer is strong.
That force is strong. I tell you, you know to to to

(01:41:27):
throw them tools in the van going that £800,000 for doing a
boiler install. It's hard to not really anything
other industry where you can do.Things like that.
Like you can, like you can be sat at home, you know, drinking
a coffee on your computer and then a job comes in that the
team's too busy to take. So you go, I'll go nip out and

(01:41:49):
get do that same day call outbreak down and get £200 or
whatever it is for it. But you have to always be
mindful of, well, that's good. And if you need to do it, that's
great. But is that going to drive the
business forward? And OK, there's there's going to
be times where it does because you need that revenue to make
those future moves. But if you're just going out

(01:42:10):
there and making that money and then not you, you're going to
use it for yourself. Yeah, not actually going by new
pair of trainers. Because of that money, then
you're not going. To it's pointless doing that,
you might as well not bother doing it like that.
Personal gratification. So to Fast forward, I appreciate
we've been talking a long time. This is probably the least
amount of talking that I've had to do on a podcast.

(01:42:30):
So it's been absolutely amazing.We I want to make sure we get to
the complete journey for where you are right now.
I presume we're going to do 1 next year as well and see the
success that you have in. So overall, just summarise.
2024. And early 2023 to give us a

(01:42:52):
snapshot of Twin Sun heating andAndy Jones now.
So yeah, 2024. Was.
A sort of reset year of get back, get my head back into the
business side of things. Realign we've now got that full
time engineer taking on the workthat I did.

(01:43:15):
And again to use those figures that I was saying before when I
was 50% back end, 50% front end.Now that once I took that
engineer on, we'd already gearedup before and put the extra
marketing in place, that engineer then became 100% front
end and that's where we've seen the big shift then.

(01:43:38):
So we've, we've starting to, to essentially we was doing twice
the amount of work then once that engineer started plus the
work that I generated the year before.
So now we're starting to really see that momentum.
So that taking on one engineer per year is probably going to
the time frame is probably goingto be shortened as we move
forward because the we've we're past the point now where it's

(01:44:03):
really relevant that we're only two years old because we've been
so aggressive through various means, you know, the software
and the reviews and the way we've attacked the business that
we're now operating better, way better than a lot of the
businesses that have been around1020 years.
So we're as I said before, we'renow just about to take on an

(01:44:26):
over engineer. We now have an A premises.
So we've got an office space where the next higher after
this, this engineer is going to be a full time office and admin
person that will then allow me to do more of the growth side of
things. And again, just just carry on

(01:44:48):
doubling down on the Service plan work because that is again
the still two years down the line the absolute core of what
we do and where are we looking, what, what are we looking?
At number wise, obviously again it's, it's personal, you don't
have to be precise, but are we in, in monetary value?

(01:45:08):
Are you willing to share any, any sort of numbers of where
you're at at the moment or whereyou're heading or?
Yeah. So we've just hit a six figure.
Amount wow already per annum for.
The Service plan. Customers, that is amazing so.
That's the that is some aggressive growth that is

(01:45:32):
fantastic. And what's what's the?
Next target, what are you aimingfor?
Or it's the sky the limit with this sort of recurring.
Yeah, yeah, the the sky. Is the limit with it really the
next again being transparent? The next target really is and
again this is the one of the main reasons why so many guys do

(01:45:53):
service plans is to try and match the burn rate of the
business. So if anyone doesn't know what
the burn rate is essentially what it costs you to have the
business operating without anything coming back in and
taking off that that amount. So that's the next big target
for us because that was once youhit that, you're then.

(01:46:15):
In essence, for those that don'tmaybe understand that sentiment
is if he matches his burn rate, which includes all of his
salaries, all of his overheads, all of his marketing and all of
that, then the recurring monthlyrevenue will pay all of those
bills and your, your. Your your business is basically

(01:46:35):
operating. And anything you do on top of
that becomes, in essence, pure profit, doesn't it?
Yeah. Yeah.
So like say for an easy number your businesses burn rates 20
grand a. Month, if you've getting 20
grand a month of recurring revenue, including as you say
the salaries, you've already covered it on day one of the
month revenue, it's ready to go.Comes profit and it allows you

(01:46:55):
more choices than in the business like we've.
Talked about if you want to, to tackle that British Gas style
strategy of offering some, you know, free servicing or whatever
it is with, with new sign ups and things that you can do that.
But it's obviously money gives you choice and choice gives you
the ability to create the business that you want to
create, whether that's somethingbig or something small and

(01:47:18):
profitable, whatever you want todo.
But yeah, service plans has, hasbeen the, the key metric to
allow us to make those choices. Yeah, yeah.
And it's, it's amazing to see. See how you've stood firm with
it, Because I can imagine. There's been some moments.

(01:47:38):
Where you know, you just maybe would.
Want to go back to more? Traditional bit.
More, you know, we'll do I. Will do that plumbing job well,
we'll do them then radiate as ah, we'll do we'll do a bit of
everything because I need to fill that diary up.
So to to resist that is is very,very hard.
And I'm sure hopefully you well,I'm sure you do you have that

(01:48:00):
confidence in that model that yes, short term, it may be a
little bit more painful than it could have been.
You could have maybe took some easier paths, but over the next
year, two years, five years, that's where you'll see all of
the all of the repayment of these sort of more tough, tough
moments. Is that right?
And that's the one, yeah. So it's and it has been tough.

(01:48:20):
You're right, I might say it hasbeen very, very tough because
there's always been easier pathslike as to use that.
Analogy that you just use there.Is always an easier path than
just being laser focused becauseit's such a small.
Not only is service and repair work such a small portion of the

(01:48:40):
market, it's also one of the less lucrative ones.
You're not doing big jobs, you need to larger volume of these
smaller jobs. So it's been very hard to to
stick to my guns, but we've we have done and we're coming out
of the other side of that now. Excellent, excellent.

(01:49:02):
Well. I think we're starting to to get
to the to the end of this show. I think we're nearly in into two
hours. I've had a fantastic time
listening to hear listening and learning and finding out exactly
how you've sort of gone from zero to 6 figure business in in
such a short period of time. How would you would you?
Is there anything you'd like to any sort of lasting bit of

(01:49:24):
advice or guidance you'd like togive the people listening to
this to, to end the podcast on? Yeah.
So I'd say the main thing reallyis just.
Don't try to be busy for busy sake.
Like you know what I mean? There's it's.
And like we said before, the being busy for busy sake has
long term repercussions. If your pricing structure is not

(01:49:48):
right, then it's going to bite you in the ass later down the
line. Not now because you pocket in
the money, but then when you hitthat capacity and you're like,
well, I'm working these long days but I'm not making any
money. But I'm not and I'm not making
enough money to take on another engineer to buy some time back.
Then you've put yourself into anawkward hole.
So yeah, make sure you're pricing right and any lasting.

(01:50:13):
Sort of any big lessons that you've learned over these two
year periods that you'd you'd like to share?
Get yourself a. Mentor is probably #1.
Yeah, and shake off your limiting beliefs is number 2.
I love that. Let's do you know what?
Let's let's die. Let's push a little bit on that.

(01:50:33):
That deserves a little bit of air time.
So for those that have still stuck with us, we're gonna just
push on that limiting belief subject.
So what do you mean expand on that?
We should have touched on this earlier.
So sorry. Yeah, yeah.
We'll probably have to save a lot of this kind of talk for
for. A NAV Yeah, there's no back
story, but the thing limiting. Beliefs is probably the.
One of the most prevalent issuesin tradesmen, tradeswomen, but

(01:50:55):
trades in general because you'reusually the because you were
unsuccessful in the education system, which is fundamentally
fucked anyway, but usually here because of that.
And that in itself so was the seed of limiting beliefs.
I'm only a tradesman or I'm onlya plumber or whatever it might
be, so I can't charge that kind of money.

(01:51:17):
But at the end of the day, you're offering the service
which is is needed. When you look at the supply
demand curve, it's getting more and more in favour of the trades
anyway because the cost of entryacademically, financially for
university or higher education has dropped so much.
And it isn't a sexy thing to do going like fix a boiler and get

(01:51:38):
covered in heating water. Kids now like you'll adds a bit
of an exception, but most teenagers now, young adults,
they want, they see the Instagram lifestyle, they want
to be sat behind a computer. They want to look smart.
Yeah, I have a Lamborghini. But that supply demand curve
just fuels the fact that or the lack of lack of entry into the

(01:52:01):
trade now fuels the supply and demand curve even more.
So you just need to shake off the fact that, you know, you
know, of my competitors chargingXY and Z.
There's so much work out there. You can get it, you can charge.
What you see is right. There is a reason why Lidl will
be. Busy today and Waitrose will be

(01:52:23):
busy today. There is a market for low end
and there is a market for high end and you've just got to
decide if you try and float in the middle, that's where you run
the risk of sort of not being inEva camp.
You know, I think if you can commit and be a premium service,
own it, own it and go with it and and anyway, we're going off

(01:52:45):
on a completely different tangent there.
So that's a little teaser or maybe on an episode too.
Maybe we we we obviously won't need the back story.
We can just dive straight in in like with personal development
and and getting your mindset right to do a long talk about
mindset yeah in this game it's the.
Fundamental issue it is we get groomed from school.

(01:53:07):
Again, I'm I'm I'm trying to talk about stuff we just can't
talk about today, unfortunately so thank you, Andy.
Oh, sorry. Where can the guys and girls
that are listening, where can they they learn more about you
if they want to reach out where like social media are yes yeah.
So yeah, we're we're we're on Facebook.
We're. On Instagram, Yeah, just we're

(01:53:28):
in off the tools group as well. Yep.
So if you want to join in the Facebook group and you know,
just reach out or if you want toreach out to Wayne and and
connect with either of us, just drop one of us a message.
And yeah, if you if anything's perked your interest just about
business and and how we've got to where we have in in two years

(01:53:50):
from a from a dead stop or a dead start rather just yeah,
reach out. I'm much like you and I'd love
to give give back and and try and break that limiting belief
we've just spoke about among among other trades men and
women. So yeah, if anyone wants to to
reach out and chat, just connectwith us on one of those.
Excellent. Well, thank you very much, Andy.

(01:54:12):
It's been an absolute. Pleasure.
I hope everybody listening has found some value, found some
Nuggets of gold in there becauseI certainly have.
And if you are in business at the moment or looking to go into
business and you want to, you want a bit of help, you want a
bit of guidance, please, please look at off the tools
www.offthetools.co.uk. It isn't just the Wayne show,

(01:54:36):
OK? The group is 40 plus strong at
the moment and you are getting people from all walks of life
all over the UK, all at varying levels from startups to
£1,000,000 businesses. And we help each other as a
community. We help guide, we help avoid
common mistakes and we help support each other.

(01:54:57):
So please, if you are in business or want to be in
business and you want to not do it on your own, please head over
to the website offthetools.co.uk.
Thanks again Andy, see you all on the next episode.

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#123 From £0 to £100K+ recurring revenue: Andy Jones' Journey to Building Twin Sun Heating

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