I nearly forgot – then my partner reminded me. The 2nd October was an important anniversary. No, not her birthday, or the day we first met – it was my business’s 10th birthday.
It made me look back at the path that has led to me having a successful business that I’m proud of.
I always wanted to have my own business, even when I was in my teens. The first time I considered starting a business was 25 years ago when my best friend and I tried to put together a plan, but it never got off the starting blocks. I ended up getting a job.
I’ve always worked in IT since I left school, my skills grew and I was in a good job, with a substantial salary. Then I found myself in a personal situation where I literally couldn’t afford to stay employed. It was decision time.
The idea of working for myself, with control over my own destiny, was still one of my dreams and I decided it was time to give it a go.
I stuck with what I know, I’ve got an engineering mindset – I want to see how stuff works – and there was no point in reinventing the wheel! Although I’d worked in the corporate environment, I was very aware that the SME market really needed IT support. I wanted to create an outsourced service that operates as though it is their own IT department.
The first five years were the toughest. I didn’t always make the best decisions, for instance, my accountant suggested that I registered the business for VAT, for credibility, but didn’t explain how it worked. I’d never had to deal with anything like this and didn’t realise how VAT operated, I just added VAT to invoices, but didn’t keep the records and a few months later, suddenly found I had a big bill to pay!
It was a sharp intake of breath moment, but it was also a learning point: understand why I need to do things and making decisions AFTER I know what I’m doing.
The first five years were challenging – and I had doubts at times, but I stuck with it. There are always highs and lows to every business, all small businesses go through them. Mistakes will be made and the secret is to survive them, learn from them and do better next time.
My business is on firm ground now and over the last five years, I’ve accepted that I can’t do everything – and I don’t want to do everything. I can’t be the support person I want to be, if I’m doing accounting, marketing, bookkeeping, and all those administrative tasks that need doing, but don’t have to be done by me.
I know I’m good at what I specialise in and I like having time to spend on developing my business, my team and myself. Now I have other people to do some of the technical support too, so I can manage the business. I have two young technicians who I’ve trained up; one of them is my son, so I’m already working on a succession plan!
I started out to take control of my destiny and, for many years I held the business at a level to provide me with enough to live on. But over the last three or four years circumstances have changed and the business has the brakes off.
My vision for the next five years is to see the business grow and move into our own premises with more engineers. I feel positive about the future and ready to step up another level.
My business has been built, initially, from contacts made when I was employed. Some became clients, some I sub-contracted for. Over the years word-of-mouth has brought new clients and I’ve got a lot of business from networking.
I don’t see other IT providers as competition, but as potential support. I believe that it’s important to collaborate, not compete.
Every experience has taught me something and I’m still learning. I’ll go a long way to find a solution for every client’s technical problem.
