So who am I?
Born in High Wycombe England in 1974…………….
Left School with no qualification………………
Teenage tearaway…………..
Father at 19………..
Bounced from job to job………….
Spent 10 years in sales………….
I’ll leave all the above for my book when it’s worth writing.
Since the recession hit in 2008 I have learned more about what I am capable of, than I had in the previous 34 years of my life.
Prior to the recession I was the General Manager of a large building company based in my local town of High Wycombe. The Founder and my future next business partner Matt started the business in 2002 as a soul trader; we eventually took the turnover to £1.5 million. After 2 years of fighting and working our fingers to the bone and getting into a comfortable-ish position the banks went belly up, companies that owed us vast amounts of money were falling around our feet, the unforeseen happened. The company went into administration in August of that year leaving me with little or no potential to find work.
In November 2008 along with a business partner Matt, we launch A3 Ltd. A3 Ltd was originally formed to carry on from the previous business almost as if nothing had happened, If only!!!
Myself and Matt after about 2 months soon realised that we really needed to start right back at the beginning, if were to survive. Over the next couple of days we gathered together what tools we had between us and jumped in the van and went out to work asbuilders.
This was a massive culture shock and reality check. We would work all day on the tools and market the business in the evenings, whilst paying ourselves enough money to just barely survive. The rest of the money was stored for future opportunities. This format continued for the following 6 months. As the workload increased we started again to take on more and more casual labour working alone side us. Towards the end of the summer of 2009 we took our first gamble, we would use the money we had saved and pay ourselves as non profit making staff working out of a small bedroom in Matt’s house. This would allow us more time to grow the business.
During our ‘bob the builder’ months we had worked with a couple of Interior Designers on several of our refurbishment projects and it soon became apparent that this was not “rocket science”. With that, we made the decision to become Interior Designer ourselves, we both signed up for a home learning Interior Design Diploma and within a month we got our first job. The Diploma was a 12 module course, we hadn’t even finished our first one but hey, what was the worst that could happen? With lots of guts and a bit of ‘Forest Gumping’ we presented the customer with a mind blowing design. This now gave us the financial platform to push on a bit more, and cover our wages for another 2 months.
I soon realised that Interior Design wasn’t for me, but Matt loved it and continued with the course. Matt has now completed most of the modules achieving 100% in all of them. I, however, was still craving information, so I started to read and read and read. I had only at this point only read one book in my life. I started to read books by Seth Godin, who is a marketing guru and life coach. His books are ok but after a while they become a bit repetitive. Then it happened, I stumbled across a book by a guy called Napoleon Hill, the book was called “Think and Grow yourself Rich”. This book would change the way I think forever. After reading Napoleon Hill I craved more books on personal development and inspirational people. For anybody who is open to personality change then I would highly recommend “how to win friends and influence people” by Dale Carnegie, again this was written in the 30’s but his formula is timeless.
It’s October 2009 and things are going ok, we have just secured a project that will carry us through to the New Year but the office in Matt’s house is now struggling to accommodate our needs, so its gamble time again!. We move into a serviced office in High Wycombe, this not only gives us more space to think and work but give us a professional business address which is imperative for the future plans of A3 Ltd.
The office proves to me a massive success, not in financial terms but in terms of business growth. While Mattcontinues to dominate his Interior Design Diploma, I embark on a CIM Professional Certificate in Marketing course 2 nights a week. The Marketing course becomes a bit of a calamity, the day before we are due to start the tutor quits, and the first 4 lessons are cancelled. Finally we have a stand in teacher who has never taken the subject before and she begins to fumble her way through it. Finally just before Christmas, she quits, we miss a couple more lessons and she is replaced by a new teacher, and I mean NEW teacher, he has never taught this or any other lesson before. They say this course has a 50% failure rate…..I’ll let you know!
Sorry, I went off on one for bit. Right, back to growing a business. With a million new ideas being thrown into the pot, the hardest obstacle to over come is Money. We kept having great ideas but all would stop at the big financial brickwall. Don’t get me wrong there was more than enough options for “fee earners” who are happy to help, everybody wanted to build us a website and the whole of Manchester wanted to put us on the front page of Google. Websites became our biggest issue as we didn’t have two to three thousand pounds to spend on a website every time we had a new idea. We needed a different angle if we were to move forward.
“How hard can it be to create your own website?”
Along with the day to day running of the business, the Interior Design Course and going to college, we set upon learning to build our own websites. This didn’t prove as hard as we thought; it was the add-on’s that took the most effort. Once you built it what do you do with it, it needs hosting and optimizing. Without the use of a server, hosting would need to be outsourced and for little cost, it is very easy to set up. Our first website was now fully operational www.a3maintenance.com and bringing in new business, business that we would have never had. A3 Maintenance has been set up initially to look after Letting Agents and Landlords, but is now moving into small private commercial building.
After finishing the first website somebody casually ask in a smart cocky you don’t know what you are doing kind of way “is it optimized properly, what did you put in your meta tags, have you done your site map?”
They may well have been speaking “Klingon”, so naturally I replied “of course I have, what sort of idiot do you take me for”.
We purchased “search engines for dummies” (seo’s) and off we went again. This proved to be a whole new ball game, too many people have too many opinions on seo’s and it was difficult to find info without selling your soul and paying yet another fee earner. With weeks we had inputted our meta tags and site maps and the website was now in a much better shape for Goggle to find it.
It was now new business time again; we were not getting enough Interior Design enquiry’s as our A3 website (which was created by a fee earner) didn’t have enough information about any of our services.
Matt came up with www.mattandglossinteriors.com this would be a tailored made Interior Design company with a difference. The difference being that we had the skills to not only design a project but carry it out to completion.
Its now early January 2010, outside looks like a scene from a disaster movie, nobody can get anywhere, there are more cars abandoned on the side of the road than are actually driving on it. Work has now slowed down again, we are still in recession, everyone has got the post Christmas blues and to top it off there’s a blizzard outside. “Great” more time to work on new things.
As I spoke about earlier our main A3 site www.a3ltd.co.uk (which was created by a fee earner), wasn’t specific enough. History had proven that we didn’t get enough “run of the mill” “bread and butter” building jobs. With a bit of head scratching we came up with ibuild. (www.ibuildteam.com). At the time of writing this ibuild has been launched for about 7 days and has taken 3 new enquiries.
This is about as far as the story goes for now, we are about to launch ibuild, a3 maintenance and Matt & Gloss in 3 new area’s whilst working on a new idea called Splash Bathrooms. I will indeed update everybody on our progress and should you have any questions or advice on any part of my blog please get in touch.
Colin Rooney
Director A3ltd
[email protected]
www.ibuildteam.com
Born in High Wycombe England in 1974…………….
Left School with no qualification………………
Teenage tearaway…………..
Father at 19………..
Bounced from job to job………….
Spent 10 years in sales………….
I’ll leave all the above for my book when it’s worth writing.
Since the recession hit in 2008 I have learned more about what I am capable of, than I had in the previous 34 years of my life.
Prior to the recession I was the General Manager of a large building company based in my local town of High Wycombe. The Founder and my future next business partner Matt started the business in 2002 as a soul trader; we eventually took the turnover to £1.5 million. After 2 years of fighting and working our fingers to the bone and getting into a comfortable-ish position the banks went belly up, companies that owed us vast amounts of money were falling around our feet, the unforeseen happened. The company went into administration in August of that year leaving me with little or no potential to find work.
In November 2008 along with a business partner Matt, we launch A3 Ltd. A3 Ltd was originally formed to carry on from the previous business almost as if nothing had happened, If only!!!
Myself and Matt after about 2 months soon realised that we really needed to start right back at the beginning, if were to survive. Over the next couple of days we gathered together what tools we had between us and jumped in the van and went out to work asbuilders.
This was a massive culture shock and reality check. We would work all day on the tools and market the business in the evenings, whilst paying ourselves enough money to just barely survive. The rest of the money was stored for future opportunities. This format continued for the following 6 months. As the workload increased we started again to take on more and more casual labour working alone side us. Towards the end of the summer of 2009 we took our first gamble, we would use the money we had saved and pay ourselves as non profit making staff working out of a small bedroom in Matt’s house. This would allow us more time to grow the business.
During our ‘bob the builder’ months we had worked with a couple of Interior Designers on several of our refurbishment projects and it soon became apparent that this was not “rocket science”. With that, we made the decision to become Interior Designer ourselves, we both signed up for a home learning Interior Design Diploma and within a month we got our first job. The Diploma was a 12 module course, we hadn’t even finished our first one but hey, what was the worst that could happen? With lots of guts and a bit of ‘Forest Gumping’ we presented the customer with a mind blowing design. This now gave us the financial platform to push on a bit more, and cover our wages for another 2 months.
I soon realised that Interior Design wasn’t for me, but Matt loved it and continued with the course. Matt has now completed most of the modules achieving 100% in all of them. I, however, was still craving information, so I started to read and read and read. I had only at this point only read one book in my life. I started to read books by Seth Godin, who is a marketing guru and life coach. His books are ok but after a while they become a bit repetitive. Then it happened, I stumbled across a book by a guy called Napoleon Hill, the book was called “Think and Grow yourself Rich”. This book would change the way I think forever. After reading Napoleon Hill I craved more books on personal development and inspirational people. For anybody who is open to personality change then I would highly recommend “how to win friends and influence people” by Dale Carnegie, again this was written in the 30’s but his formula is timeless.
It’s October 2009 and things are going ok, we have just secured a project that will carry us through to the New Year but the office in Matt’s house is now struggling to accommodate our needs, so its gamble time again!. We move into a serviced office in High Wycombe, this not only gives us more space to think and work but give us a professional business address which is imperative for the future plans of A3 Ltd.
The office proves to me a massive success, not in financial terms but in terms of business growth. While Mattcontinues to dominate his Interior Design Diploma, I embark on a CIM Professional Certificate in Marketing course 2 nights a week. The Marketing course becomes a bit of a calamity, the day before we are due to start the tutor quits, and the first 4 lessons are cancelled. Finally we have a stand in teacher who has never taken the subject before and she begins to fumble her way through it. Finally just before Christmas, she quits, we miss a couple more lessons and she is replaced by a new teacher, and I mean NEW teacher, he has never taught this or any other lesson before. They say this course has a 50% failure rate…..I’ll let you know!
Sorry, I went off on one for bit. Right, back to growing a business. With a million new ideas being thrown into the pot, the hardest obstacle to over come is Money. We kept having great ideas but all would stop at the big financial brickwall. Don’t get me wrong there was more than enough options for “fee earners” who are happy to help, everybody wanted to build us a website and the whole of Manchester wanted to put us on the front page of Google. Websites became our biggest issue as we didn’t have two to three thousand pounds to spend on a website every time we had a new idea. We needed a different angle if we were to move forward.
“How hard can it be to create your own website?”
Along with the day to day running of the business, the Interior Design Course and going to college, we set upon learning to build our own websites. This didn’t prove as hard as we thought; it was the add-on’s that took the most effort. Once you built it what do you do with it, it needs hosting and optimizing. Without the use of a server, hosting would need to be outsourced and for little cost, it is very easy to set up. Our first website was now fully operational www.a3maintenance.com and bringing in new business, business that we would have never had. A3 Maintenance has been set up initially to look after Letting Agents and Landlords, but is now moving into small private commercial building.
After finishing the first website somebody casually ask in a smart cocky you don’t know what you are doing kind of way “is it optimized properly, what did you put in your meta tags, have you done your site map?”
They may well have been speaking “Klingon”, so naturally I replied “of course I have, what sort of idiot do you take me for”.
We purchased “search engines for dummies” (seo’s) and off we went again. This proved to be a whole new ball game, too many people have too many opinions on seo’s and it was difficult to find info without selling your soul and paying yet another fee earner. With weeks we had inputted our meta tags and site maps and the website was now in a much better shape for Goggle to find it.
It was now new business time again; we were not getting enough Interior Design enquiry’s as our A3 website (which was created by a fee earner) didn’t have enough information about any of our services.
Matt came up with www.mattandglossinteriors.com this would be a tailored made Interior Design company with a difference. The difference being that we had the skills to not only design a project but carry it out to completion.
Its now early January 2010, outside looks like a scene from a disaster movie, nobody can get anywhere, there are more cars abandoned on the side of the road than are actually driving on it. Work has now slowed down again, we are still in recession, everyone has got the post Christmas blues and to top it off there’s a blizzard outside. “Great” more time to work on new things.
As I spoke about earlier our main A3 site www.a3ltd.co.uk (which was created by a fee earner), wasn’t specific enough. History had proven that we didn’t get enough “run of the mill” “bread and butter” building jobs. With a bit of head scratching we came up with ibuild. (www.ibuildteam.com). At the time of writing this ibuild has been launched for about 7 days and has taken 3 new enquiries.
This is about as far as the story goes for now, we are about to launch ibuild, a3 maintenance and Matt & Gloss in 3 new area’s whilst working on a new idea called Splash Bathrooms. I will indeed update everybody on our progress and should you have any questions or advice on any part of my blog please get in touch.
Colin Rooney
Director A3ltd
[email protected]
www.ibuildteam.com
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