Home Interior design.
Chapter 3 How Music pulled me through.
After keeping on all my crew in our home refurbishment company my strategy for maintaining the staff initially seemed like a good idea, naturally as previous years the development of the home refurbishment sector was booming. With the value of property going through the roof, low interest rates and large salaries meant that everyone had lots of disposable income and the facility of raising their mortgages. My company still rapidly carried on growing, although the balance sheet no longer looked so attractive after propping every one else up through the winter. This is the underlining factor of the slippery slope I began to descend. A bad project in 2007 dealt the company a 40k loss, and then another bad winter and a company going bust owing us 18k didn’t set us up well for 2008. We still managed to push forward with home refurbishments turning over 1.4million employing over 40 guys’ on site, renting an office with six staff.
Then in September 2008 after 6 yrs of hard work and dedication my world was turned upside down, all the banks where in trouble especially ours RBS. All larger organizations stopped paying us, leaving us with a large number of debtors. Our home refurbishment and Hotel refurbishment was coming to an end, although we had projects lined up, they where a month away and we couldn’t bridge the gap with our cash flow. So I had to put the company into voluntary liquidation. This is a terrible experience, no one you work with, suppliers or contractors or your customers are expecting it, when you have 40 -50 employees and over 100 suppliers you can imagine the impact when you suddenly one day tell everyone “its game over”. The only thing I can compare it to is a bomb going off, a large bomb! Then all the fallout raining down in thousands of pieces and your trying to work it out “where did I go wrong”, “what am I going to do now”. The hardest thing is going around you company telling everyone to their face its all over, that’s really difficult. I did have support from my wife who gave me all the comforting you need and also my current partner Colin. Colin was a Director in the former company, he and I together started to pull it together and work out away to carry on.
We wanted to carry on in business as a home interior refurbishment company, so we set about starting another company. With the help of another associate of the old firm in the way of an investment the three of us worked out a the percentages of shares etc pulled our sleeves up and began to make pans.
I then had to do stacks of work for the administration while myself and Colin tried to set up the new company and carry out the manual work too. Setting up a home interior company was relatively easy but by this time the recession started to take a strong hold and winter was coming, still shell shocked and licking our wounds we were not really in the right frame of mind. We had to find money to pay administrators, help the administrators collect money from our old debtors and go to meetings with our old clients then be interrogated by the creditors. While all this was going on I was worried about my personal status, I had secured loans and borrowed money to try and keep the old company a float. In February 2009 I was made personally bankrupt, I lost a house that the company used to rent as I had used it to secure the bank overdraft and my car was towed away. My wife stood by me and bit-by-bit we worked our way through it, I don’t know if any of you have ever been bankrupt but it cost me 3000 pounds, but I was already broke? How did I do it? I don’t know, just sheer will and determination and all the love of my wife kept me going.
The 20 k investment we had from our partner dried up in March, Colin and I had no work we where not taking a regular wage with no money left in the business. You could say this was one winter is one I will never forget. Still we where as optimistic as ever and never in our wildest dreams think for one minute we couldn’t pull it off.
Hurray we landed our first home interior refurbishment! March 2009, I started the lounge and Colin upstairs in the bathroom. It was particularly warm for this time of year, the whole time we worked on this home interior there was a blue sky and the sun shinned! I had gone full circle, 7yrs of running a business that was really too difficult at times, I was back at the start, back to where I was in 2003. On the tools, but I felt like the weight had been lifted from my shoulders and felt a great sense of freedom, after having my head pounded day after day, the phone constantly ringing and the chaos of running a large company.
This was a defining moment in my life, I felt like I was in a different universe, the complexity of my previous lifestyle with its buying and selling property, the loans, the credit cards, the business. It was all quiet and serene, I felt like a had landed somewhere else or I was one of the last survivors after a big bomb, it was so peaceful. This was new chapter and I felt really happy, while we worked away on this home interior the radio blasted away and throughout the project two tracks where constantly played – The Kings of Leon (Revelry) and The Fleet Foxes (Mykonos). These tracks are powerful and always take me back to this time of my life a very defining moment, the light at the end of the tunnel.
Fleet Foxes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DT-dxG4WWf4&feature=related
Kings of Leon
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZyGWg0uqkw&feature=related
I then completed a diploma in interior design, after years working with other interior designers on many home refurbishments I was frustrated with their lack of building knowledge so we have come up with a new concept a company that Designs and Installs, all in one house, its easier for the client and we have the building skills to make the designs work.
Matt and Gloss Interiors is born!
www.mattandglossinteriors.com
What ever you lose no one can ever take your music it’s yours forever!
Author – Matthew Austin.
Credits to Colin, Nick and especially Rachel xxx
Chapter 3 How Music pulled me through.
After keeping on all my crew in our home refurbishment company my strategy for maintaining the staff initially seemed like a good idea, naturally as previous years the development of the home refurbishment sector was booming. With the value of property going through the roof, low interest rates and large salaries meant that everyone had lots of disposable income and the facility of raising their mortgages. My company still rapidly carried on growing, although the balance sheet no longer looked so attractive after propping every one else up through the winter. This is the underlining factor of the slippery slope I began to descend. A bad project in 2007 dealt the company a 40k loss, and then another bad winter and a company going bust owing us 18k didn’t set us up well for 2008. We still managed to push forward with home refurbishments turning over 1.4million employing over 40 guys’ on site, renting an office with six staff.
Then in September 2008 after 6 yrs of hard work and dedication my world was turned upside down, all the banks where in trouble especially ours RBS. All larger organizations stopped paying us, leaving us with a large number of debtors. Our home refurbishment and Hotel refurbishment was coming to an end, although we had projects lined up, they where a month away and we couldn’t bridge the gap with our cash flow. So I had to put the company into voluntary liquidation. This is a terrible experience, no one you work with, suppliers or contractors or your customers are expecting it, when you have 40 -50 employees and over 100 suppliers you can imagine the impact when you suddenly one day tell everyone “its game over”. The only thing I can compare it to is a bomb going off, a large bomb! Then all the fallout raining down in thousands of pieces and your trying to work it out “where did I go wrong”, “what am I going to do now”. The hardest thing is going around you company telling everyone to their face its all over, that’s really difficult. I did have support from my wife who gave me all the comforting you need and also my current partner Colin. Colin was a Director in the former company, he and I together started to pull it together and work out away to carry on.
We wanted to carry on in business as a home interior refurbishment company, so we set about starting another company. With the help of another associate of the old firm in the way of an investment the three of us worked out a the percentages of shares etc pulled our sleeves up and began to make pans.
I then had to do stacks of work for the administration while myself and Colin tried to set up the new company and carry out the manual work too. Setting up a home interior company was relatively easy but by this time the recession started to take a strong hold and winter was coming, still shell shocked and licking our wounds we were not really in the right frame of mind. We had to find money to pay administrators, help the administrators collect money from our old debtors and go to meetings with our old clients then be interrogated by the creditors. While all this was going on I was worried about my personal status, I had secured loans and borrowed money to try and keep the old company a float. In February 2009 I was made personally bankrupt, I lost a house that the company used to rent as I had used it to secure the bank overdraft and my car was towed away. My wife stood by me and bit-by-bit we worked our way through it, I don’t know if any of you have ever been bankrupt but it cost me 3000 pounds, but I was already broke? How did I do it? I don’t know, just sheer will and determination and all the love of my wife kept me going.
The 20 k investment we had from our partner dried up in March, Colin and I had no work we where not taking a regular wage with no money left in the business. You could say this was one winter is one I will never forget. Still we where as optimistic as ever and never in our wildest dreams think for one minute we couldn’t pull it off.
Hurray we landed our first home interior refurbishment! March 2009, I started the lounge and Colin upstairs in the bathroom. It was particularly warm for this time of year, the whole time we worked on this home interior there was a blue sky and the sun shinned! I had gone full circle, 7yrs of running a business that was really too difficult at times, I was back at the start, back to where I was in 2003. On the tools, but I felt like the weight had been lifted from my shoulders and felt a great sense of freedom, after having my head pounded day after day, the phone constantly ringing and the chaos of running a large company.
This was a defining moment in my life, I felt like I was in a different universe, the complexity of my previous lifestyle with its buying and selling property, the loans, the credit cards, the business. It was all quiet and serene, I felt like a had landed somewhere else or I was one of the last survivors after a big bomb, it was so peaceful. This was new chapter and I felt really happy, while we worked away on this home interior the radio blasted away and throughout the project two tracks where constantly played – The Kings of Leon (Revelry) and The Fleet Foxes (Mykonos). These tracks are powerful and always take me back to this time of my life a very defining moment, the light at the end of the tunnel.
Fleet Foxes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DT-dxG4WWf4&feature=related
Kings of Leon
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZyGWg0uqkw&feature=related
I then completed a diploma in interior design, after years working with other interior designers on many home refurbishments I was frustrated with their lack of building knowledge so we have come up with a new concept a company that Designs and Installs, all in one house, its easier for the client and we have the building skills to make the designs work.
Matt and Gloss Interiors is born!
www.mattandglossinteriors.com
What ever you lose no one can ever take your music it’s yours forever!
Author – Matthew Austin.
Credits to Colin, Nick and especially Rachel xxx
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