How I took over a small business and scaled it to 21 staff with 15 vans on the road

Taking over a business, from paycheque to profit with 21 Staff & 15 Vans. It was all or nothing; I had to make it work 

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Hugh didn’t have a stack of cash, but he had the drive to take a risk. 

What started as a role within someone else’s company quickly turned into an opportunity to take over the business. 

Now, he runs a high-performing operation with 21 staff, 15 vans on the road, and thousands of jobs completed every month. 

We discuss openly what it takes to transition from employee to owner — the leap of faith, the buy-in process, funding the takeover, scaling up, hiring a team, and managing growth. Whether you’re thinking of taking over a business, buying out a partner, or want to understand what that transition looks like behind the scenes, this episode lays it all out. 

Expect real talk on: 

✅ Taking over an existing business (without a big budget) 

✅ From employee to business owner — the mindset shift 

✅ Building a team from 0 to 21 people 

✅ Growing operations with 15 vehicles 

✅ Creating systems that handle thousands of monthly jobs 

✅ The emotional and financial pressure behind taking the reins Hugh also shares his personal story — why he made the move, what went wrong, what worked, and what he’d do differently if he had to do it all again. 

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Chapters

• 0:00 How I took over a small business and scaled it to 21 staff with 15 vans on the road
• 1:22 Meet Hugh McCulloch
• 2:40 Business Evolution and Growth
• 3:26 Ventilation Solutions and Services
• 6:35 Challenges and Strategies
• 7:47 Personal Journey and Business Buy-In
• 14:52 Staff and Operations Management
• 20:57 Three to Five Club and Personal Development
• 26:26 Immersing in Mindfulness and Fitness
• 26:55 The Power of a Positive Mindset in Business
• 27:19 The Role of Fitness in Mental Health
• 28:13 The Impact of Media Consumption
• 28:53 The Importance of Reading and Continuous Learning
• 30:21 Early Career and Sales Experience
• 33:09 Challenges and Rewards of Business Ownership
• 34:24 Navigating Business Partnerships and Buyouts
• 43:49 Recruitment and Staff Retention Strategies
• 51:55 Balancing In-House and Outsourced Work
• 53:31 Final Thoughts and Reflections

Transcript

 

Introduction and Overview

With 15 vehicles on the road, we are solving thousands of ventilation issues on a monthly basis. When you're in a partnership with somebody, it's like sometimes jumping off a cliff with your hands tied behind your back, trying to swim with your hands tied behind your back. I firmly believe if you deliver a valued service, the money comes as a result and this, and we need money to run a business, don't get me wrong, but if you're concentrating on it all the time, it's not a great strategy to have.

If you have a negative mindset running a business, everyone in the business will will run with a negative mindset. I firmly believe. That if you invest in your people, understand what their wants and needs and requirements are and and focus on helping them achieve that, think it's linked to a successful workforce.

And the best thing that people can say to me now is, you, off you. 

What about, do have you ever thought about ban into a business and taking it over? In the day's episode, we'll be talking to Hugh. Condensation solutions, and he did just that. Now, before we get into the podcast, let me tell you about the sponsor.

The channel is sponsored by Jobber. Jobber is my go-to software, was on the scheduling, my invoicing, my quoting. If you're a really busy business owner and you don't have time for anything, well then I suggest that you have a look at Jobber. Now, there is a unique discount code down in the video description 

to get the threshold Premier Loans discount.

It's Premier loans. Dot Link org slash jobber you. 

Meet Hugh McCulloch

Would you like to introduce yourself to everybody and just tell us a little bit about yourself? 

Certainly. I am Hugh McCulloch. I am the managing director of Condensation Solutions. We run a ventilation business, so we would go into houses to solve problems whenever people have like black mold pouring gear in corners of rooms and condensation forming in windows.

We go in, we would conduct a survey, then we would specify high quality products and we would install them the way they should be installed to help those people alleviate those issues. That's one part of our market. The other part of our market is putting in a, a system into like a new build house so that they don't then have condensation and mold issues and giving them a more energy efficient, um, solution As far as ventilation's concerned.

To give the audience a bit of background, what sizes you. What is, what size of your business? At the minute? 

The business has grown dramatically, I suppose, over the 10 years. I suppose in the last year it's grown and the last two years it's grown, so we have 21 staff members. I do believe now at this point, with 15 vehicles on the road, we're solving thousands of, of ventilation issues on a, on a monthly basis.

So it's. We're on quite a substantial level now at this point. 

Business Evolution and Growth

Over the last 10 years, how has your business 

evolved? Okay, so 10 years ago when I came into the business, or 11 years ago, whatever, whatever it may be, we were very much like just selling products to suit the need. So people had conversation issues, were very much just selling them the products that they needed.

Yes. We weren't going into the detail of whether the house had other conditions. We weren't looking at installing it on a, on a massive basis, and that's just because when I came in, my old business partner, Patty Gallagher, had evolved the business just by, by basically selling solutions, box selling. I suppose you could, you could say, so we have evolved.

Ventilation Solutions and Services

In that time that we now have like nine to 10 ventilation engineers on the road every single day, our surveyors, and I suppose what makes us unique as a ventilation business is our surveyors would go out to a reported fault of condensation and mold. They'll do like, they can do different levels of a survey so they can do basic, general call in mold, identify that it is mold, rule out everything else.

If it is something else, we'll signpost the others, work in conjunction with some great companies. On, on, on other signposting means we'll identify what it is, give them a solution, then we can take that survey up a notch. We can do like thermal images of, of areas. We will test extract fans. We'll test the humidity that's prevalent in the atmosphere in the house.

We'll do reports for people selling houses. If a, if a. Structural engineer goes in and says that they have mold issues, but then we'll do a report to help the seal go through. So it's on a sort of legal Yeah. Basis and stuff. So it's different levels of surveys just to make sure that the problem is related to the products that we provide 

and a, and a complete, and a, in a, in a complete 

package complete solution.

Then. It cuts down on the time that the customers, you know, so if you have condensation and mold issues, where are you going to go? It's not apparent, unfortunately, just at the minute where you would go with that. So you'll speak to a builder down the road, or you'll speak to a plumber or window cleaner off the street, knows somebody that does it, whatever the case is.

Then they'll just give their opinion, which isn't really qualified advice in it. You see in lawn treatments or something, if you ask a gardener there, he's only giving you what he thinks. He knows it mightn't necessarily be the way, the way to do it. Very, very much. In ventilation, we're we're we're similar.

You need to know what you're doing. You need to know those why these things are happening first and foremost. And then you need to know what product is best suited. The end, it needs to be installed properly. Well, thankfully, we have built our business around those principles we have. Fantastic. And one of our values of our business is building close personal relationships, not only with our customers, but our internal staff members.

Staff is the most valuable asset of of any business. A hundred percent. Definitely our business percent, but also the manufacturers. So we have several different manufacturers in environment, and Harrogate would be one of our, our main manufacturer trusted partners. Brink in Holland would be another, a name of a couple of different suppliers of, of, of products just to facilitate what, what we need to do.

I'd imagine that whenever a business is your size, you'd need to have a really good supply team in there to keep everything flowing. 

Absolutely. It makes, it makes all the difference. I personally have gone and stewed on the production line in the environment factory and made up the fans and made up the PIV units that we do positive input ventilation systems.

So it gives me an understanding of exactly what components go into it. So it makes us as a business understand better. If a customer has an issue or a problem, something goes wrong. And again, take that back to like somebody going online maybe. 'cause the online market is buoyant. There are ventilation companies here in Northern Ireland that are very successful online sellers.

Challenges and Strategies

How do you find competing against them? 

Well, that's, that's the thing, the trusted partnership that we have. So God forbid if you buy something online. Is it warranted? Is it guaranteed? Is it a legitimate source environment of a big, big problem with like theft and that theft, then going out onto eBay and stuff and they're very regimented on their serial numbers and stuff off the back of it.

But when you buy it with us, you have the food warranty, the food guarantee, but also if you have a reported problem, we can solve that problem. Or, or have, 

I suppose the other thing, like you say, if somebody goes to sell their house afterwards. Then it's all documented there for them. Whereas if you buy it online, then you don't have that level of 

abs.

Abso absolutely I can, I could phone in to million people in environment. No. If I had an issue, we did a test call yesterday in the office actually into the environment Technical help desk. 

Yeah. 

And they answered the question immediately, which was fantastic service. But if I hadn't have got the answer, I could have went straight into the, the direct point of contact and the technical manager who would have those?

Relationships built up that you can solve these issues. It just means you're more efficient as a business. It's something we highly value is those trusted partnerships. 

Personal Journey and Business Buy-In

What attracted you to this business to, to buy into this business? 

Okay, so I was working for a company, I suppose it's a bit of a long-winded story, but I was working for a company who sold vacuum systems, the built in vacuum systems that plug under the wall and, and mostly newly built houses.

With the downturn, the market back in like 2008, 2007, 2008, 

nobody was, nobody was banning like that. 

Absolutely. It went and it was the first thing that went off the budget, but they were very forward thinking and a fantastic company. Even to this day. They were very forward thinking that they then progressed into ventilation.

So they sent us sales reps at that stage out to investigate the Margaret Place as far as ventilation was concerned. So you were finding out, then when you spoke to builders, like I would've gone to somebody and they would've said, spent 3000 pounds on, on the ventilation system back then, 3000, 4,000 pounds, whatever the case is.

And you looked up into the attic and it was just like a sequence of flexible duct all just fucked up and, and whatever way it landed, that's what way it was fitted. So you tried to pull more information out to ask who was it supplied it there, who was it fitted at, what system are you going for? And the customers didn't know they were making investments into their houses at that sort of value.

And they didn't know anything about it, how to service it going forward. They didn't know the history of any of it. The guys I was working for at the stage progressed into ventilation and just, I had ran my, my time with him, I suppose, and childhood. One of my best friends as a child. It turned out his brother was running condensation solution.

One of the suppliers in environment were supplying him. He was the main supplier into Northern Ireland of a product that we were also selling. Within that old business that I worked for, there was a wee bit of a connection. Connection, both on a personal level, but also on a professional level. So started talking then and developed a bit of a relationship.

Then the manufacturer were putting pressure onto him to do something. So the old business partner, Patty, was in the fire service. And he was, uh, being promoted. 

It never feels tome me the amount of people in the fire service that run a second business. 

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. 

I suppose it's, it really, it gives you a lot of flexibility and freedom for it, but Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. And when, at the earlier stages when he was like three days on and four days off. Suited him to run the business, but as he became more and more suppose of an influencer in the fire service and developed his own career within it, then he had less and less time. The manufacturer environment at that stage were wanting to promote their business as much as possible in in Northern Ireland, so they were putting a bit of pressure onto him to act and do something upon it.

Listen, at that stage, it was just the perfect sort of chance for me to go in to run my own business. When I say a perfect chance, some of the challenges I had, I, I was building my own house, setting out on a life of my own, uh, a bit of security. I had a full time job paying a constant salary. 

There's a lot of, there's, there's a lot of convenience.

Having someone else pay your own salary. 

Absolutely. Absolutely. Did. 

Did you have any other experience running a business before you jumped in? 

Not really. Just look, I've always been an enterprising, um, person. Always just trying to push on and do what I've done. I always had great ideas, but never had the confidence, I suppose.

Talk about your mindset a lot in the tell. 

Absolutely. Big, big, big part of my agenda in my life in in general, but what's a better word for balls, I suppose. Courage. Bravery. I didn't have it, but I 

had all sorts of ideas. Takes a lot. Takes a lot, a lot of the time for the leap of fifth. 

Absolutely. Most, most absolutely.

Most definitely. And it's only by personal development that you can, that you can develop that yourself as well. 

I've wanted to work for myself for years and never really had the chance, and then sort of a dumpty then I, I stepped over the line and stepped full, full time into their business. I made the switch.

So where did you get the funds to buy into the, assume you, you bought in as a director when you moved in? No, at 

that, at that stage. I didn't buy in at that stage. I came in as. Well, he actually wanted me to come in as a, as a self-employed sales rep. Obviously for good for him. No, absolutely. Absolutely. And listen, why would he not, he's trying to think, um, strategically himself.

I, I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't take the risk unless it was something that was gonna be possibly life changing, I suppose. Um, my wife at the time, she, she wouldn't have probably let me any anyway, so I forced the issue and I was coming in as a, as an equal director. So my buy-in was my, your time. Time basically.

Your time, your expertise to evolve the business to, to what it is. And then also, he wasn't working on the business. I just had to have a, a frustrating phone call at half five every evening. 

Was he more working in the business than on the business? Would that be a 

Yes. He was supposed to. He was. He was supposed to be.

Listen, it suited both parties at the time and, and, and were forged a way forward and. And started to progress it a little bit. We are where we are today as a result of it, thankfully. 

And what size many sort of employees did you have back then? Whenever you came in as a 

0, 0, 0, 

you were the first one. 

So in the infancy it was just, it was just me.

And then a year or two later, like I remember going with Patty and I to buy a car, just to go out on the road, just to get front facing with customers. I can't remember, maybe it was 6,000 pounds or something for the car back then. But I remember that was a, like a nearly a, a life changing decision. And even to get him to make that decision, he was very cautious on it.

It was like flipping, hitting a micro robot crowbar. And we were, we're funding it like it was a loan. With him having the history, it was obviously a loan in his name. More so than banks. So suppose fair bit of the risk. It's on him. Carried with him. Take him. Today's market where buying vans. We've just renewed.

The fleet of vans are, and you're buying funds at 30 and 40 grand on on without even gonna, the second minute thought 

on that note. The buyer lease. And what, what's your thinking behind? 

So I try to buy. I suppose it's the old Irish way of think and you're better off buying it, but there is a bit of, have 

you ever considered leasing?

Have you ever done leasing before or try to, 

so the account advised me to go for cash flow purposes, go like HP on on some funds. So I have a little bit of a mixture on fairly funded funds and then some of the purchase agreements. Then 

I'd imagine your game is very similar to my game. For long car gardening, the vans might take a bit of abuse and it doesn't really sit, listen.

Yeah. 

Uh, very, very, very much so. You're putting people into vans and as I say, we have 10 and upwards of fitters. There are now at the minute you're trusting them to get into their van and look after it. And they have had challenges. Everyone's different. Some of the vans are immaculate, some of the vans you get into and you find all sorts of things lying all over it when you can tell people just generally aren't taking care Yep.

Of their. 

Employees. Employees generally don't take it isn't not bad, bad, not bad, but employees generally don't take a good care now. 

Staff and Operations Management

But if you have 10 vans in the road, how do you manage your scheduling and your written and all that fun stuff 

with great difficulty sometimes, to be perfectly honest, just employed, uh, a very good guy.

Irvine Boyd, who's just come into the business with a wealth of experience and, and Openreach on the scheduling role. So we're developing that at the minute, but we'll have somebody specifically looking after the scheduling and then very closely linked them would be the debriefing of jobs. So the following morning.

Or that evening on an urgent basis, possibly you identify maybe something wasn't done or something additional needed carried out, and maybe you didn't have the materials or the time to do it or you couldn't get into the address, which happens fair often in in the social housing marketplace. In in particular, for some reason.

So the debrief then the following day is, is a very, very important role to help the schedule then. And it's just get somebody getting in and knowing what they're doing and really focusing on it, I find helps the efficiency and effectiveness of the road. Yeah. And what software do you use to manage that?

We use a software system called simPRO. Currently they are, well, we went out and spoke to a couple of different people at the time. One of the, uh, ideas I had at that time was even to try and develop our own software. simPRO, to be honest, has become quite expensive. Some challenges within it, like on the accounting side, it wouldn't be fantastic, but we were able to see exactly what items sitting in stock at any given time.

Through the mobile app where they can allocate that stock to their job, 

you would know what it goes far as to know which bit of stock was in the van. Semi Van ab. 

Absolutely. So what we do is we set up different warehouses as per year registration. Then as somebody takes out, again, this is only as good as it's, it's managed.

But the idea would be like if you had 10 extract fans in the main warehouse, you would transfer them over into one of the registrations of one of the vehicles. So you'd know at any given time exactly what that engineer has sitting in his vehicle, I suppose. But again, it's only as good as, as how good it is in the point of contact and flowing within it.

Yeah. And we have two stores as well with the main store and then with a store in Temple just outside Belfast. That makes us a wee bit more accessible. So if somebody needs a, a length of pipe. So 

you guys are, you guys are in Castle well, is that right? 

We are based in Castle. Well, yes. Burn Railroad Castle.

Well. Lovely part of the country, but not just the center of the universe. It is for Castle Island people. It's where I 

grew 

up and kku people where, where, where my little village is from. It's just not accessible for somebody working on the far side of Belfast or or further afield. So 

I can see having, having your own store in Belfast.

So Temple brings us a wee bit closer. It's only five minutes, 10 minutes out the road, really. Um, and we're just trying to develop that now at the minute. But the idea will be to have like workshops on ventilation because we wanna raise the ventilation industry to where it should be. We just don't want to set an offer, a service.

We want to bring the ventilation industry help as high. As it can go, 

but the sounds of it, you, you are actually offering a really good, a really good service, probably mild above most of the other people within the industry in Northern Ireland. 

Absolutely mild. I remember speaking to one of the guys in one of the housing associations, one of the main purchasers in the, in one of the housing associations we deal with, and he told me in the meeting that he searched the length of breath of Ireland.

He couldn't find a company that is so defined as, as we are in the ventilation marketplace, that we do exactly what we do because you have some of the ventilation suppliers or companies here that just go out that don't sell the lower priced products because they wanna make as much money and get the big hit on it.

Our driver is never making money. I, I firmly believe if you deliver a valued service, the money comes as a result. And listen, we need money to run a business. Don't, don't get me wrong. But if you're concentrating on it all the time, it's not a great strategy to have and it doesn't pay and it doesn't serve you, I find anything.

Yeah, and in the 

long, in the long run as well, isn't it? Absolutely. Yeah. Because if, if a customer gets the best value, then absolutely. That's, that's speak volumes. 

And, and that goes for like some of the employees that we've had in, we we're very lucky in the early days that we didn't have any sort of staff turnover or staff turnover was extremely low.

But as we grow as business, and I suppose speaking to business, other business owners. This is what they say that staff does become more of a an issue in retention. 

What message have you put in place to keep your staff happy? As your team is skilled and growing? 

Again goes back to closely linked to the personal development stuff.

Find out what their thinking and things is, find out what their goals and strategies are. I firmly believe if you help people thrive within their own personal life and their own contentment, because as much as a job takes up a fair bit of your life. It's only part of your life to facilitate your actual personal life, your family, or your outside hobbies.

I firmly believe that if you invest in your people, understand what their wants and needs and requirements are and and focus on helping them achieve that. I think it's linked to successful workforce, but also making things as clear as possible and identifying what role they're coming in to do and making it absolutely crystal clear and giving them every.

Resource to have to facilitate that role. 

Do you have any software to manage that? I recently talked to another company and he skilled this business quite quickly and he, he uses software and he records everything. So he doesn't need to be there for the 

Yeah, he has, he 

has, he has a video of everything.

Yeah. So he, he basically records himself 

Yeah. Yeah. Doing 

the task. And then that's on air manual. Air manual, maybe air manual and, and then he can push it out to anybody, so anybody coming in. It's basically the standard operation pages for. How to do that specific job. We'll show it them, and then it's something for them to go back to and if they have any questions, if nobody else is about, they can go back to that to make sure that they're doing the process correctly.

Suppose a 

little, a little bit like the three to five club. 

Three to Five Club and Personal Development

I know you're a member of that. Do you wanna 

Yeah, 

we can talk about that now or so. We'll talk about later about having your, 

so we don't have any software demands that, but it'd be very intrigued to find out more about that. Aaron? Emmanuel, that sounds really, really good because what I'm doing at the minute is I'm recording videos on um, WhatsApp.

Recorded a video actually on the way down, thanking the guys for their effort yesterday where we were managed to be successful and attend our process yesterday for one of the big housing associations here that deliver their ventilation requirements for the next two years. We went in last night and delivered a great presentation at the Lanie Event Landlords Association, Northern Ireland, and basically.

Prove to them that we are the guys to come to and, and that they need to seek an alternative rather than just throwing in a, a pure extract fan fitted by the gardener up the street because they thought he knew. No disrespect. Gardener was gonna say, dig. So I would be a Loom. I used Loom, if you've ever heard of Loom for making videos and stuff, right?

No. You know, so I can, so if I'm throwing somebody on the screen, I can hit record on Loom. And again, then feeding into the three to five club. It was only some of my contacts through the feed three to five club. I think that Johnny had told me about the Loom videos. 

I know you're a big three to five club advocate.

Do you want to tell the viewers exactly what that is and how that's helped your business? 

Yeah, absolutely. And again, fell by the three to five club by chance, I suppose. We were buying a product and there was a guy, um, associated with that product that was running the three to five club here. In Ireland.

So the three to five club was the mastermind of a, of a great guy, Chuck Blakeman, who's an American entrepreneur, I suppose. He has 13 successful businesses in his past, won all sorts of awards. Wrote a book called Making Money Is Killing Your Business. Have you read it? Nope. It's absolutely unbelievable.

It can be a bit frustrating 'cause it's a bit of a workbook and you have to keep going back, go back to this chapter, go there and stuff, but persevere with it because it's really, really good. And the idea, suppose Chuck's mastermind in that in this is to get every business owner with a two page strategic plan.

Your vision, your mission, where you're going, what you need to do today to get to your lifetime goals, basically, and then your lifetime goal, your business maturity date. So. Business maturity date can mean whatever you want it to mean. To me, a business maturity debt is having a business that's totally self-sufficient and self-sustainable, that you can go and enjoy the time and money that you Yeah, because a lot, because 

a lot of, a lot of people just work, work, work, and die.

Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. And they say that, I can't remember who it was that said it, but when you're young, you have all the energy. You have all the time, but you have no money when you're middle aged and running a business. You have the, the energy, the money, but no time. And then when you're retire, you have the money and the time, but no energy.

Yeah. 

So it's important to, to, to focus upon that. And a lot of business owners run their, run their time because they've no succession plan in place. Like there's plumbers and joiners and really, really good plumbers and joiners down near us that have very, very successful businesses. I was speaking to a guy the other day, a kitchen guy, and I was just thinking there's no succession.

And they're, these are unique businesses with No, so once that person either gets fed up because they're. Spending all their, their time at this business and not able to get talk about being on the business treadmill. Yeah. And if you can't, 

if you can't sell it on either for if, if you can't, 

yeah, absolutely.

Because you are the business basically. So you're not gonna sell yourself unless you're on the streets of Amsterdam. 

I don't think anybody turn up. I can't be one of those very special Al windows. 

Yeah, so the three to five club I found extremely refreshing with, of great guys, Henry McCrory as as very well.

Henry's been gonna say, Henry has been very good to me over the years. 

Yeah, so John Henon, Henry McCory, two massive influences, two massive influences is on my life the way I would describe the local three to five club. Would be like a counseling service for business owners. So you, if you pro, 

it can, it could be lonely, from lonely and talented on their own business.

If you have 

problems with your business, who do you speak to? You can't speak to your employees who you're with because you might unnerve them or you might scare them with some of the ideas.

You can't 

speak to your, your wife or your lady, a husband or, or whatever goes these days because you're coming home. That's not fair. Maybe they've had the kids all day. They're handing you the kids as you go in the door. So the challenges that we'll have, it's good to go and speak to like-minded people who maybe understand and maybe within the meetings, within the three to five meetings, they're giving you weak tips, help advice.

And the teachings within it. Every business is the exact same and it follows the same sort of structure and the same sort of elements. And it's just putting them all together in a regimented way, I suppose. And staying focused and staying determined 

to get you where you 

want to be. 

The last thing as well is, is meeting people that are a couple of steps ahead of you.

Absolutely. Yeah. 

And how am I gonna get there? Back to your vision, how am I gonna get there? Absolutely, 

definitely. 

We recently talked to a hypnotist and he came. He came in and gave us advice and. He was all about, look, you need to see yourself where you want to be. Yeah. Before you can know how to get there.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Visioneering very, very, very much so within the personal development field. 

Immersing in Mindfulness and Fitness

And go even further than that and understand and, and see yourself in that and absorb all the senses, smell. If it's by the sea smell, the sea air and, and that, all that type of thing. It's, it's all part and.

Big, big part of it. 

Just, just on the scene, know, I know you're a big, you a big fitness fan and, and swimming and we usually, we talk about this towards the end of the podcast, but I think as well, while we're talking about mindfulness, it's important to talk about the keeping yourself fit. If you're, if you're looking to expand or run your business, 

The Power of a Positive Mindset in Business

listen, in my opinion, your mind is absolutely, and again, when you're running a business, the people see a negative mindset is very, very quickly.

Caught on too. If you have a negative mindset running the business, everyone in the business will will run with a negative mindset, so it's absolutely paramount. I wouldn't just go as far as the swimming, I take the kids swimming, but that's basically the, the farthest I would go. 

The Role of Fitness in Mental Health

But I'm in the gym at six o'clock every single morning.

I registered to, to perform at a, a High Rocks competition here in a couple of weeks time. So I'm doing a bit of running and preparation to it, but I find that as my big, big release, like people would go meditate, and I, and I, I honestly try to meditate as often as I can. I. Also I go and I have, but basically the gym is my meditation.

It's my form of release and go there. Just 

time out, time out, no 

work. And it's only half an hour, 40 minutes work. But I give it everything a half hour, 40 minutes, and it's just a complete release and it's scientifically proven to, to do whatever it does to your mind. Supplements take Lands Man, and as. It helps your cognitive abilities.

Yeah. I do believe, again, I'm no expert. I know it works for me. These, these things I'm focused on. Like people say, tell me what you're reading and tell me the company that you keep and I'll tell you where you'll be from five years from now. So what you're putting into your mind. 

The Importance of Reading and Continuous Learning

I personally don't watch the news.

I don't, if news comes on on the radio, I'm sweat at the end of it, switching it off. 

I used to always watch the news myself, but you've absolutely no control over, yeah, over what happens or if you watch it. Absolutely. 

Very rarely you see good news these days. It's always, yeah, it's all, there's never anything positive or it's people having digs at other people.

It's, 

it's doom, doom and gloom. Yeah. I am surviv, haven't into the house, and my mom always said, what about all those fires in California or whatever. I, I didn't know moment. I, I don't know what you're talking about. She just, if you, nobody was in the news. I just don't, I just switch it off. In fact, during day I'm driving about and I'm just absorbing it within my own thoughts.

I'm just, uh, gathering. 

Are you a big reader? You, do you read many books? Yeah, 

absolutely. D didn't in the past, but now I do. It's all business oriented books or motivational books. I'm, I'm, I'm reading two books at the minute. I'm reading one that Henry told me I had to get on audio. So doing it was some first audio listening books.

So what's that traction? Very, very good. You would actually think that it's been written by somebody who's come in and looked at our business, the way our business is sitting just at this moment in time. Yeah. So it's fantastic. But I'm also reading Self-Made in America by John McCormick, which was again, a, a referral by John in the three to five club, and I'm finding it unbelievable as far as determination, preservation, things that you really need that keep driving it.

Ian, it's not easy running a business sometimes. Sometimes you need to go home, dust yourself down and, and have the determination to get up and give it your, your all the following day. And that's just, and once you get into that habit and regime, it just becomes second nature. 

And what. Platforms. Do you listen to your audiobooks on the Spotify or this is 

the first one that Apple, this is the first one that I've done.

So it's eBooks on Apple that have, 

I'm gonna give a wee shout out if you're watching the video now we're listening to, on a podcast channel, make sure to smash the link button. 

Yeah, give us some comments in the bottom as well, if they 

give some comments or if you're on Spotify, make sure to give us the Spotify Apple.

Give 

us a wee review as well. 'cause that really, really helps the channel out. 

Navigating Sales and Early Career Challenges

Did you have any sales experience or what experience did you have before buying into this company? 

Yeah, so I suppose in my, in my working career, I always wanted to go for the, the next sort of big thing that would make me the most money as quick as possible.

And I didn't finish my school the way I probably would've wanted to because exams and stuff wasn't for me. So I went and started working in a warehouse at a young age, which helped me with my organizational skills and the distribution skills that I now possess. Within the business. I worked for a great company back then they were called Source Supplies.

And I worked my way up in that business up to like an operations assistant warehouse manager. I think it was assistant warehouse manager. They were an IIP benchmark company. So you've seen different processes and procedures put in place firsthand, so that that's probably why I'm so process driven.

Mm-hmm. 

And what we do. My first sales role came then when I had the opportunity to work for a little. Company who a very successful company based in Oma. So I had to drive up the Oma every Friday. They were called Community Directories, Northern Ireland. So they produced Wi afe Berg. I remember the one was called in this area, but they would've had different localized books.

So Lagging Valley and the Coil would've been near in morn would've been the ones I would've been focusing on. So you were calling into businesses like I would've called down here and tried to say, Louis advert of. Whatever, whatever would've been, that gave me a fantastic foundation in sales because you would've gone in and people were like quite ignorant 'cause they'd maybe had a bad experience with this company and they were basically making new pay for it.

Went in to port it down and they one of the shops and ported down. One day, I'll never forget it, the guy had left me standing there for about an hour. Purposely, and then he came out and used a few exploitives and told me to go back up the road and tell my boss never to send anyone into this shop again.

And again, you have to dust yourself down and get out and get the next opportunity and move forward again. I. Negative and the positive. It taught me so much. When I pull back to that story, manys of time, take it. You didn't turn 

talk him around now? 

Not at that stage, no. I probably would try, but not, not at that stage.

But it, it gives you a listen. It gives you, you have to do the, the hard miles as is the say in anything to fully understand what it takes to get to the next level. 

It sounds like from from when you left school, from ever job you've gone into, you've always had the drive to progress onto the next. You've had the drive to push yourself forward.

Yeah. Uh, listen, absolutely. I'm a very, very driven person in everything I do. I'm very competitive person. I need to get the reins on. Sometimes I do push as much and as hard as I can. And did that 

help? With the, going into buying the business and becoming the leader slash director sort of role? Yeah, 

yeah, absolutely.

Taking the Leap: Buying into the Business

So back when I get into the business, initially, as I say, I had to take the leap of faith. I suppose it was a risk back then. And I suppose when I had bought, I had built the business up to basically what it is now. I, it was, it was basically myself. 

Yeah. 

My old business partner Patty, he, he would say the exact same and.

And he did throughout all the negotiations. He always said to you, this is your business. Whatever we do here is, is completely up the earth shelf. But again, it was a big risk. And, and when he floated the idea of, of wanting to get outta the business or exit the business, he had wanted to sell the different people and stuff and.

That was okay to him because it's like selling not cup to me. It wasn't to me, to me, it's my absolute life, and it's not only me that I'm taking into consideration, it's people who've been there with me. Like if my, my work wife as some, as some people refer to her as, uh, bro or right hand woman in the business, it's where would she be if, if I had a sold out to somebody and maybe that company are coming in and keeping me on or, or whatever.

It might have been very attractive to me at the time, but. I had to take into all these considerations and morally I wouldn't do something that I didn't wholeheartedly feel was the right decision for everything. For staff as well. Absolutely. Very, very much. It 

sounds of it, when you went into the business that you went into sort of a partnership and then did you end up buying your partner out?

Yes. And how was that funded? 

Yes. So first of all, it was to try and agree on a, on a rate that I suppose he was happy and content to take. And I was happy and content to pass over, which can be two drastically different figures. 

So especially if you put them the groundwork to start with. Absolutely.

Absolutely. Because in my mind, uh, like I've built it up, I could close it down tomorrow and start up again and gradually build it back up to what it, what it was. Here. You paying money out for nothing basically. But with the integrity that I have, he did have it going like we're 30 years in business this year, 1995.

He had started it up in the infancy, so we're 30 years in business, so I had to do common respect for him. I felt that I had to produce some form of a, and I didn't have it in my back pocket, unfortunately. So I did have to go to different sources. Banks obviously were one source and thankful and lucky, I suppose, that we had the banks offering.

Aster Bank and Bank of Ireland, I do believe locally offering different. 

Were they providers that you used for your banking services? 

Yes, we were banking with, with those guys at that time, and our credit seems to be fairly good, sort of all sorts of people offering money at that. At that point, I went down the road of remortgaging the house because it's still on a, on a good rate, so I remortgaged the house to find most of the money.

There was still a shortfall, so I went to friends, family, anyone that. I thought maybe I had a few pounds sitting. And in fact, you do get, when you're in that situation, you get your eyes opened. Some of the people I had gone to weren't forthcoming when unfortunately had a sword. Some of the relationships since then definitely wasn't the intention.

Maybe it was my approach, I don't know, but I don't think the baseball bat went down too well, but. Um, no, you get your, you definitely get your eyes open to, to, to certain things. And again, my father-in-law at the time, Mark Kent, um, came and lent me. And if I had, I asked him for whatever, I don't know how far he would've stretched, but he came good for me in the end, and then I paid it back to him as quick as I possibly could.

Then in good faith also. So 

the buying was like an initial lump sum out. It wasn't spread over us, period. It was 

just, it was a clean cut. Yeah, just a clean cut missile lump sum out. I did look at different things because when you're in a partnership with somebody, it's like sometimes jumping off a cliff with your hands tied behind your back or something, trying to swim with your hands tied behind your back.

You have to go back to get sign in for banks with dual users, and we have discovered that. Seriously challenging over the last year. That is one piece of advice I suppose I would be looking to give to somebody who would be in my position in the future. What's that is, make sure you have all that ironed out.

Make sure you have all those things properly ironed out before that other person exits the business because it, it, it had just delayed things, 

have a plan and pla to make sure the plan, make sure to plan for it, 

and definitely the banking, many of the legalities I suppose, and the banking. So part of the buyout, I was going to try and withhold 10% or whatever the case would've been just until those things were ironed out.

He convinced me just to. Pair up and get a clean cot move on, and I suppose in some ways that's positive as well. I, I don't even know if, if some of our online banking passwords have been sorted out to this day when we're now 14 months down the line or 13 months down the line, whatever it would be. That would be definitely advice I would give to somebody.

Start planning early. And would you include the business partner in that, or would that be something you would just do in your own, if you were thinking about, I suppose it's, it's a sort of joint conversation, it be a joint conversation, it would be something you would have to really just game out yourself.

Yeah, absolutely. It would definitely have to be a joint conversation, but it would. I suppose have to be part of your plan and your vision. And I suppose looking back, what I could have maybe done was put myself a year forward. You know, you should always make decisions of where you want to be rather than where you've came from.

I suppose, and I'll go back to that in a minute, but if I had to put myself a year forward and said, right, what does this look like? And, and. Basically went through a working day in a year's time and did, did the online banking and signed into this and signed into that and jumped into email accounts and for saying, if this old number rings, where does it go to?

And, and different things like that. If you try and. Have a bit of a vision of how that looks like and then strip it back and put things into place that will ensure a smoother transition, I suppose. 

On that note, do you think you would, have you ever bought over another business? Would you think about B over smaller 

competitors?

I. I haven't really give it much thought, to be honest. We have been that, uh, fit the federal health fair leather in the last, no, there's no need. There's, 

there's no need. 

There's no, if anything, we would be developing the business from within rather than, than buying over. But it's not to say in the future that if the right opportunity came along, I wouldn't be looking at something.

Again, it goes back to mindset. People say, I was lucky to do this, and I was lucky to do that. Certainly I was lucky at that stage to get into condensation solutions, but I needed to have the right mindset to make the decision, to make the leap of faith. 

The harder you work as well, the luckier you get.

Absolutely, absolutely. You, you do make your own luck, but you need to be in the right mindset to make use of that opportunity when it does come along. And again, going back to what I said originally, had all sorts of ideas. Like I was gonna open a gym in St Field at one stage and coffee shops and second high end secondhand closed shops and things that I was planning and thinking about, but never really made the next step and pushed on.

And that's because it wasn't in the right frame of mind, I 

think as well. 'cause it does, it does come up an awful lot. And that the small business mindset that you can't move away from just, you've obviously done it, you've pushed through I can't do that, or I couldn't, I couldn't grow that. 

Yeah, absolutely.

And it's something that takes a lot of courage and determination, and again, I can't stress enough surrounding yourself with like-minded people. And I suppose you need to be careful o on the other side, like a lot of people will be there to try and the greed would come in into wee, but people are there.

Maybe it's translation in some certain instances, so you need to look for genuine people. I feel that I'm fortunate enough that I would be quite a good judge of character in the gym. Circles, like in the healthier circles tend to be positive people wanting to better their lives. The three to five club?

Absolutely. Business owners wanting to make themselves better, but not in a sort of competitive way. They're trying to lift everyone up. Is it a, a rising tide lifts all ships that sort of a. Saying bring everyone up. And it's the same as what I say about our staff members. If I help them achieve their goals and help them do what they want to do in life, then they're more inclined to come and give everything they have, the compensation solutions to make it work.

So it's a two-way process. 

And what systems did you put in place while you were banned over the business? To make sure that the, the ship didn't sink. 

Not enough, I suppose. 

And what would you do, what would you, if you, if your younger self or if you were to advise somebody, what would you say to do? Is there any, is there any things that you could have done better whenever you were banning with the business?

I 

Managing Business Transitions and Staff Retention

suppose maybe go and do a bit more research as into, like for example, we had some key members of staff left fairly quickly after Patty had exited. So it put a lot of strain on the business technically because I was the most experienced point of contact on a, on a technical basis. So I was just being saturated constantly with, with that.

So I would maybe go and look maybe statistically on what happens whenever there is a buy in, a partnership, do a bit more research into, because again, the history is there of these things happening, and it's a proven fact that when a business owner es or leaves, yeah, there is like a mass exodus or a, a little bit of an exodus for your, your staff maybe.

Seeing that business owner as the, as the good cop cop maybe or, or whatever. I liked his way of management and, and his structure and then, and then left the exit door. So it did leave us under a bit of pressure as far as a business, 'cause all that experience going at, at the same time, just put a little bit of pressure on again.

Then that gives you the, the positive side where you can refresh and, and, and bring in people that are, that are more suited to different roles. And again, going back to the book that I'd mentioned earlier and the in traction, I. It speaks a little bit in the opening chapters about getting the values of your business.

Hiring people with the values of your business in mind and don't get into it because I could have fallen into desperation at certain times, right through my time and condensation solutions. You can fall into a bit of desperation. You have a hundred jobs on and you're already getting 50 of them done.

How do we get the other 50 and just put in any, any person and has haven't 

on that basis side, how do you find the recruitment of staff? Do you have a many challenges recruiting the right staff? Have you any different ways than just like advertising? The work? What's your sort of recruitment process look like?

Yeah, so I think the challenges of recruiting staff is, is like a worldwide problem at the minute. But we have been very successful recently and people always blame like external uh, influences. I suppose sometimes you need to look at your own ethos as far as a business is concerned to make sure when you do bring in high quality staff you can make sure you have a process to retain them longer and that type of thing.

But generally, we would go out on different platforms. We'd post jobs on LinkedIn, which has been successful. Facebook wasn't just so successful because I think it closed, it maybe down geographically. And again, we are in Caso Island, which isn't the, the Metropolis. So you're closing down your, your reach for people, recruitment agencies, again, contacting the three to five club, Michael.

Okay. In has been, um, very helpful, right, in recruiting some people for me, and again, there's a, there's a fantastic thing that the Three to Five Club brings you, it brings you access to different people in different businesses. Not just the sort of mindset, business coaching, counseling, service that it gives me also.

But yeah, listen, staff is, is a major issue worldwide. We're, we're not the only ones suffering, but again, we've been thankful that we've got some really good staff members. Just in the last year, when we look back at photographs of probably Patty's leave and do, and our Christmas party. Had the go-karts in URI in December last year.

There was like seven people or whatever, get people possibly standing on the podium at the end. There's now 21 people who've moved into new offices. Unfortunately, the go-kart place in Uri burnt down since as well. So things move forward. Things change, and you have to be, 

what did you do for your Christmas party that year then?

No, no. Go-karting. 

Oh, with too many staff members now who didn't have a Christmas party. No, we'll have to edit that then out. No, absolutely. We, uh, I put, I brought everyone down the burn deal, so we had a local thing, so we thought we'd do a more sort of intimate local thing. So brought everyone down to the burn deal.

I booked a Airbnb house, four bedroom, six bedroom house, not too far away from me. In between me and the bedale, the pit. People up that were far away. I put others up in the burn. Dale, we had our dinner at the burn deal. There was a e quiz on, I even ended up in the hot tub at the house. I stayed up in the house and they ended up in the hot tub.

I don't drink anymore of give that up, which is part of my mindset journey, I suppose. But I was the driver in the facilitator after getting people home and, and that type of thing. So with a quiz, and then we did a wee bit of a company meeting and a development day the following day. And then conscious that when I was drinking, people might have been a little bit tender the following day.

I was gonna say the following after work day that whenever they fell, 

fell asleep during the presentation, they just sent them home. So we gave everyone the day off on, on, on the Friday as a, as a, we benefit new centers. Yeah, we, we went to the customer market this year. 

Yeah. 

Horrible. In fact, when you save it, the Christmas Margaret, I was in, uh, part partly to do with getting your banking, I suppose, ironed out.

I was in the Bank of Ireland, the, the building just behind the city hall and we were looking out, down onto the Christmas. Margaret Brona and I were in a meeting with the lady just trying to finally solve this, uh, online banking and the access codes and different things. I was looking down and it did start to snow.

So it was lovely. And, and Christmas, 

you, you didn't go down for, 

for 

an alligator burger run? No, 

no, no, no. Definitely, definitely not. When you're eating an alligator burger in the center of Belfast, it's time to start worrying. I think 

going back a little bit, 'cause you were already in the business that you were buying into, if that makes sense.

Yeah. 

How much warning or did you let the staff know that was happening and did you give them much notice before? Everything went through, 

to be honest. 

Effective Communication and Business Restructuring

The communication, and that is again, something that you, you ask what advice would I give to people in the Zoom organization? Communication would be absolutely utterly top of their agenda.

Something we haven't been strong on in a business. It's something we weren't fantastically strong on back then, I suppose. And just as you get into busy, it's something you do as a business owner, lose a bit of track of. I've restructured the business recently, and I'll tell you, tell you a little bit about that in a minute.

But the communication wasn't fantastic at that stage. Mm-hmm. But it does need to be communicated. Right, right down. I suppose it happened in the mouth of Christmas and just different things. The staff did know what was going on. We did keep them up to date, but probably could have done it a little bit better 

for staff.

Staff to wanna worry about their jobs and. 

Yeah, absolutely. I, I, I have reassured everyone through my whole time of condensation solutions and gain, if you just do the things that should be, do, be done, I suppose, and think on a commercial basis within it, and again, I don't mean that a greedy commercial basis, I mean not in a commercial viability that aren't called houses.

And 

I assume, would you tell the staff, uh, before the, those papers are signed in the dotted line? 

Again, it's a fine line because if you're doing it, and it hasn't, and it hasn't happened, and, and with a couple of sort of false dawns, one of the manufacturers we deal with were, were toying with the idea of buying us at one stage.

Like again, there would've been an awful lot of negotiating in on that. And the end and the end, it happened fairly quickly, so I don't think I told them until after the event and when we announced it at, at the time. I think there was a little element of shock, I suppose in our position. We were fairly unique or different that I was the one that was there every day running it.

I think I said to one of the guys who had just came in recently, by the way, I've bought Patty out and done. I passing comment, Bob Patty out and on. And he said, who's Patty? So Patty wasn't there every day. It was a little bit different in our scenario, I suppose. So maybe a 

lot, a lot of staff. Nothing really changed for them.

Absolutely, 

yeah. Most things just carried on. 

Most definitely. But communication is something that definitely needs to be given, um, a priority, especially when you start growing as a business. And again, it's something we've, we've, we've restructured, I've brought my ex-wife into the business now as human resources and communications director.

She looks after all those types of things. She's from a counseling background, so she would be more and on. Yeah. And more sort of thinking of how other people are thinking rather than me get the job done sort of thinking. And it seems to be working really, really well. Because if I'm taking some of the guys and some of the guys have started playing golf with us.

One guy in particular who's struggled through retire. He started playing golf and really gets a good thing. So we'll go out on a Sunday and have a round of golf, but then I'm texting through the next morning, why did you leave that line there? Why did you not get this done? So me doing everything and communicating everything and trying to be your friend one day and trying to 

be your Boston next, 

it's.

Challenging, but as I realized, I have really good people around me. I don't need to be getting involved in those. I had a conversation with somebody just in the past couple of days and said, listen, I've come to that meeting, but if you see the point where I don't need to be at a certain meeting, just tell me.

The best thing that people can say to me now is you off, you 

PO 

disappear. 

Let us carry on. Absolutely. Absolutely. Jason and I have a 

relationship like that.

What other, what other our systems are? How much stuff do you do in house and how much stuff do you farm out there? 

In-House vs. Outsourcing: Finding the Right Balance

You do your R in house. Your bookkeeping on account, is that farmed out? Is there an another? Your health and safety? 

Yeah, so we'll, we'll, we'll go outside for our health and safety. And again, we're just trying to find our feet really within, within it now and the best supplier for things like that.

I. We try not to form out a terrible amount of stuff. I try to do everything in-house as much as possible, but, but Kevin's done internally. The accountant we bring in to sign off with their payroll ourselves, try to, we try to do most things maybe too much. Maybe we do need to, I could form other things out.

But no, we try to keep everything internally. Subcontracting out work. I don't do, I had a bad experience in the past and subcontracting out work, so I don't go down that road. Core drill and holes, nobody in our place wants to do it, but probably don't have the right equipment to do it. So we would maybe farm a little bit of it out.

But then again, it's communication and it's making sure that the whole drills in the right place. 'cause obviously that can cause a bit of an issue. Maybe it's something as a business we possibly do need to look at going forward is what other services. There's something to be said for it again, that service John Henan provides in TDS where you, where you hold all your stock in a, in a satellite area and you, and you necessarily don't need to cer certainly say we, we do.

We need to see our stock. 'cause some of it's so unique, but there are certain items that we do have that we could maybe use in that basis. So I suppose it's about being open-minded and seeing what suits your business needs the best, and then just going with it. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. 

Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Listen, 

thank you very much.

No problem whatsoever. Thank you. Thank you for coming on. Thank you. Appreciate the 

time. Good, man. Perfect. Very good. Covered a lot of bases there I think. 

Yeah, it was good.