#12 - Discovering Leadership - Andrew Hulbert

Welcome to Episode #12 of The Facilities Management Exchange

Today we’re joined by Andrew Hulbert — entrepreneur, investor, culture-builder and one of the most recognisable figures in UK FM. Andrew is the founder of Pareto FM, a business he grew from a laptop in his bedroom into one of the industry’s most admired companies, ultimately exiting in a deal worth $100 million.

This episode is an honest, energising conversation covering entrepreneurship, culture, politics, pressure, sacrifice… and the mindset required to build something truly exceptional.

In this episode expect:

• Why showing up — literally going to the office — is still one of the most underrated success strategies in business
• How Andrew built the company from a laptop in his bedroom
• What made Pareto FM different — adaptability, treating people right, and building a culture where anyone could call anyone out
• The realities of running an FM company in today’s volatile economic environment
• The personal cost of ambition — relationships, loneliness, sacrifice
• The deeper meaning of wealth
• Professional vulnerability: why great leaders don’t need all the answers
• Andrew’s biggest leadership mistake — and what he’d do differently if he 
• The advice he wants every entrepreneur — and every young person entering FM — to hear

This is an episode packed with insights, honesty, humour, and hard-won wisdom from someone who built, scaled and exited one of the most transformative businesses in FM.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:07

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages, welcome to another episode of the Facilities Management Exchange. This episode is actually quite interesting because we're going to be speaking to just one person today. We wanted to do a different series within the series of the Facilities Management Exchange to give people a real in-depth insight of what leadership looks like across the facilities management sphere. This is the first time that we're recording a leadership episode as part of this series. So I'm very, very pleased and proud to have joining me today Andrew Hulbert, who is the chair of the Institute of Workplace and Facilities Management. And also founder of Pareto FM. How are you doing, Andy? That's right. Thank you so much. So I'm the first guest you've had one-on-one. Well, not the first we've had one-on-one. Okay, because I don't want to lie to you. No, no, but the first person across the leadership series. Fantastic. Which is which you know, which is something we're very proud to bring to our audience.

SPEAKER_01 1:08

I better come up with some good leadership advice then, if that's what we're talking about. That's what we're talking about today. We've had a bit of a chat before the podcast.

SPEAKER_00 1:15

We've been here for an hour.

SPEAKER_02 1:18

I don't learn everything apart from cheese high, which is good. Yes. So how's your day been?

SPEAKER_01 1:22

Uh yeah, amazing. I happen to be lecturing at Brooks today. So I was uh Brooks have a real estate course there. So I was lecturing to third year real estate students. Yeah. And amazing, right? They're all 21. They've got it all to learn. I had to laugh. I I love to ask questions like you'd only know about in business. So you got them all there. They've been studying three years. I said, Do you know what NPS is? No. No. I was like, cool. Do you know what EDI means or do you know what ESG means? They have absolutely no idea. You know, like yeah, they there's a long way to go. The the uh lecture I did today was about the S in ESG, so doing social good as part of business. Yeah, so they were learning about it. But what's brilliant about that group is they know about facilities management. Yes, you know, they're real estate students, they're gonna go and be some of our clients in the future when we're working for managing agents and things. But I love it. And I actually the thing that we got talking about, I love to ask like difficult questions, but how often do they want to be in the office? They're saying two to three days a week. Really? Yeah, these 21-year-olds, and we were just talking about it before, but these are the Gen Z that we're talking to now. Yeah, the generation alphas that are going to come in after these kids, they're not gonna have been impacted by COVID in the same way, and they're probably gonna want to work four or five days a week. Yeah, and by the way, for anyone listening who wants some advice about how to get ahead in entrepreneurship or in business, go to the office five days a week. Yes, go to the networking event, write the articles, do the awards, be present, be part of presenteism, which we know is really important in a management perspective, as tail as old as time, because a lot of the generation isn't gonna do that. And actually, so like no disrespect to anybody who only wants to work two or three days a week in the office, but five days a week in the office could be a really powerful place to be, especially with just sort of getting to know people. And I always I I did a lot of networking in my time, I still do now. Same. I I still I still think the most valuable time to network, say you've gone to an event and it's eight o'clock, you're tired, everyone's tired, you're just about to go home. Yeah, you walk out with somebody else, and in that sort of four or five minute walk where you drop your guard a bit, maybe you've had some wine, you're gonna get on the bus or the tube or the taxi or whatever. I just think that's a real rich time to chat to somebody because you're thinking about your kids, you're thinking about getting home, you're thinking about what tomorrow looks like, what annoying emails have come through while you've been focused on what's happening there. So, like, I just think there is so much power, and there is what, a hundred years of management that we know about, and actually being present and being with people and create creating real connections with each other is one of the most powerful things.

SPEAKER_02 3:49

It's very true that you know, like I mean, we we have this discussion quite a bit on the podcast around flexible working and people returning to the office and things like that, and what you tend to fight like yours is a voice that isn't heard as much anymore, Andrew. I'm being completely honest with you there. You know, probably 80% of the people we have this conversation with will be flexible working's great, it gives people choices and things like that. But your statement's very powerful because what you're fundamentally saying there is that yes, you can have a flexible work arrangement, however, you're probably not gonna meet the level of success that you want to because you're not present, you're not in the office on a daily basis. Is that accurate?

SPEAKER_01 4:26

It is, but also it uh each version of success for each of us is very different. So actually, like I'm not saying everybody has to do it, but if you're really young and hungry, well not even, excuse me, if you're just hungry and you want to try and grow something and meet more people, you have to be out there. You have to be out there, and like you will not network at home. And I, you know, we all we all went through the COVID situation together when we were working in this sector, and actually, I was having to sell contracts worth millions of pounds on camera. We never got to meet these people as well. It was weird, wasn't it? It was, it was weird. But the connection wasn't as genuine, and I I just think to like Zoom calls and stuff, you go on maybe 30 seconds after it started, so you don't sit in the awkward waiting period where you're waiting for people to come on. Yeah, yeah. You do the call, the call finishes you go. You're all scrambling who can turn it off first so that no one's awkwardly left on there. Yeah, Xerox back in the 1980s. What they told us, and there's a white paper on this by um the author called Or, O R R the best way to transfer knowledge between two people, and they had engineers at Xerox, was at the water cooler when they're in the office. So all the engineers went round fixing the printers, they came back to the office, they chatted to each other in the queue, they had a drink of water, they're having a coffee or whatever. Xerox could not create a program that transferred information better between each other than that chat there. Really? Now, what worries me about people being at home all the time is that incidental chat of just walking to the toilet, going to get the door, I don't know, making a coffee. It doesn't happen. No, and I genuinely think there is now competitive advantage to going back and being in the room. I don't disagree. And when I was at university, I studied uh Japanese working culture from like 90s. Yeah. And actually, even in Japanese culture, then they were talking about leave a um leave a coat on the back of your chair. So even if you're not in the office, somebody knows that you're there. And that whole presenteeism thing was real. And like uh in I mean, this is outdated now because I was studying in like late 90s as the era I was studying. Yeah. But if you fell asleep at your desk, that was considered a sign of you were brilliant, you were working really hard. Really? And you were committing yourself so much to the business that you fell asleep at your desk. Now, uh, you know, there's a massive generalizations in all of that, but that's the sort of theory around it. And I just think that economies are circular. And actually, with now, say, a big chunk of people being at home again, go back to the office, be there.

SPEAKER_00 6:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:45

And uh and I I yeah, I uh I always used to love Friday drinks, right? It was always Friday drinks, but now there's no Friday drink. No, it's Thursday. Thursday drinks. Yeah. Because occupation levels, you know, broadly across on a Friday are like less than 15%.

SPEAKER_00 6:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:57

And I also think for those that drink alcohol, if you go and get pissed on a Thursday night and you're a bit hungover on Friday, well, you've probably got an extra hour and a half in bed because you're not having to commute to the office. Of course. And that sort of changes people's mindset on it. So yeah, if I was starting again, and I get as an entrepreneur, I get asked a lot if you were starting again, what would you do? Yeah, my single word is network. Yeah. I'd be out there and I'd be able to do that.

SPEAKER_02 7:18

Well, Andy Andy, tell us a little bit about your history first. Okay, yeah. Okay, so tell us about how you well obviously we know that you went to university, but tell us about how you started in the industry, okay, how Pareto became to become Pareto, what was the journey like there, and what what your exit was like fundamentally.

SPEAKER_01 7:34

Well, I mean, look, how long you got, but I'll give you the uh I'll give you the short version. Give it the abridged version, yeah. I so I went to university and I studied business, yeah, and in the second year of university, I went to the Careers Advisory Service and they said you need to get some work experience over the summer. This is 2007 that I'm talking now. Yeah, and I went through a scheme run by Shell, their oil company, that was called Shell Step, and it connected second-year undergraduates with small businesses in industry, yeah. And I got connected through there, and I got connected to a company called RollWright, and Roll Right at the time was a six million pound little FM business. And Charlie Sinton and Clive Granger uh took me on a journey with those guys. I went and did eight weeks with them and I did a competitor analysis. And what I learned in that summer was the industry was massive, yeah, it was full of massive businesses that didn't particularly do very well in terms of what they were doing to the customer in terms of services, yeah. And it was just this behemoth that actually I thought was there for the taking in terms of could be improved. So I did my eight weeks, I loved it, I love facilities management. I actually I am the one that came into this sector because I wanted to come in. I didn't fall into it. There's not many, Andy. There's not many. There's very few that do it. Anyway, finished my degree, uh, got my first, went back and called up Charlie and said, Hey, I'm available to work. And he took me on. And I started on, I think, 17,000, 18,000 a year as an account manager. And then they taught me all about commercials and operations and finance. And by the time I knew it, I was 24. I was ops director. I had 250 staff. That's how bad is it? No, I was working hard, but uh I was self-delivering cleaning, engineering, catering, security, self-delivering all those things by the age of 24. Yeah, yeah. And a team of 250, that was hard work. But the the working class background that I'm from and like council of state origins, it was just about hard work, is what we did. Yeah, gosh. And and if they wanted to give you more responsibility, I didn't ask for more money. I just sort of like, yeah, I'll do it, I'll do it, I'll do it. So I got this paid ops director. Yeah, I know, yeah, it was it's true, it's true.

SPEAKER_02 9:31

No, but it's true, like when yeah, because I'm very similar, but I'm from that background, you know, and I'm a grafter off the back of it. Like I will work and work and work, yeah, yeah, and I enjoy it, you know. But you know, similar thing, like as I was going through my career, if people said, Oh, can you do this? Can you do this? You go, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:46

But like they uh they say give work to busy people, and I was the busy people because uh they knew that even if I was working at 110% already, if they gave me something else, I would also get it done. Yeah, I I'm a real interesting one. I am both the most driven, hardworking person you will meet, and I'm also the laziest person you will meet. So depending on if I have 500 things to do, I'll do 498 of them. If I have one thing to do, I'll do nothing. Yeah, it's like a real extreme between the two. Yeah, so uh uh Roll Wright grew to about 12 million, and then Rollright got sold to Billfinger, uh, which is now Appleona these days. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um so Billfinger did an entire acquisition, they bought Europa and GVA at the same time, and then they merged all those together. Wow. Uh so I was part of that sort of merger of everything. I was still very young and working it all out. Uh I did two years with Billfinger, and actually, to be honest, I didn't enjoy the big business mentality. We we'd gone from being a 10 million pound business to an 8 billion pound business overnight. It is, and it was a construction-based business and it was a European business. So no slight on the business at all. It was a good business, but for me personally, it just wasn't the environment that I was thriving in. I think when I was 24 and I was, you know, effectively working for the board and I was looking after everything. I I felt great in that because I could make decisions and generally they would go with what I asked them to do. If I wanted to sponsor an event we could or write an article we could, I was in in charge. Right. So yeah, so I did two years as a director within uh within Billfinger, and then one day I was uh I woke up and I was 27 years old, and I'd always wanted to run my own business from the age of about 15. That was just what I wanted to do. Yeah, and I could see that this sector that I'd been in for six odd years now, the bigger companies were getting bigger, yeah, the acquisitions were getting more, and I just felt there was room for a smaller business that could go and target high-end customers who really wanted something special and something different. Yeah, but these big businesses, respect to them, but big businesses, couldn't adapt themselves to do what the smaller what the customers wanted. And I'm talking massive, massive brands. Like go on your phone and look at the brands on your phone. I'm talking those ones, yeah. But the big businesses, as great as they are, were not able to adapt themselves to what those organizations always wanted.

SPEAKER_02 11:51

Because usually those organizations have to adapt to the big brand because they're they're geared and set up in such a way that they that you know, it's that's that older day, isn't it? Yeah, that oil tanker. Yes. How long does it take an oil tanker to turn round? Yeah, probably about 15 mile swing. You know, it's it's that kind of scenario, isn't it? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:06

But the the whole point was that actually I I thought that the sector had got it wrong from a service provider perspective because big businesses would go to a customer and say, if you want to work with us customer, you need to do it our way. Yeah. This CAFAM system, this process, this finance process, this HR. I was like, no, no, no. Let's ask the customer what they want. Really simple. Ask the customer what they want, let's build something that works for them. Yeah. Now that's okay, but you need a business that's so flexible that it can adapt itself around what the customer needs. And as Pareto got bigger and bigger, uh, it becomes much more difficult to be totally adaptive because when you get to, say, 50 million turnover, there's only so much adaption you can do at that stage. Which is very true. You start to understand what the big boys were worried about in terms of what they do. So, yeah, I it the story is true. So when I was 27, I I handed my notice in. I literally started from my bedroom with a laptop. I had nothing. I had no I had no sponsors, no clients, no investment, no processes, no risk assessments, no bank. I literally had nothing. What was the first thing you did, Andre? The first thing I did was called an old customer that I knew. So you knew you were talking about Black Book, right? I went to the Black Book that I'll call number one on the Black Book. Yeah. And uh and he said to me, he said, I love the concept of what you're discussing, but I've just taken three weeks off to redecorate my kitchen, so you'll have to speak to me when I come back. That's true. Fair enough. And um, and actually, so the first thing I did was I go, right, yes, I started from scratch, but for six years I've been networking my ass off. Yeah. And actually, I had built a personal brand before personal brand was a thing. I didn't know, I didn't know that's what I was doing. Yeah, but at that stage, I'd um I'd written like 150 articles in the press across the five or six magazines. Yeah, I'd won like nearly 10 awards, I think, at that stage. Wow. And I had um I'd been to every networking event that you possibly could do. So IWFM, my journey started right at the beginning with the rising FMs. I was part of the group there, and as the kids now were on risings and they're moving through. Of course, yeah. So, like, yes, I'd been working hard, and yes, it was all very lucky that we grew quickly from the start. But for six years, while someone else was paying my salary, I went out there and I networked, and I had a network to start from. So the fact I even had someone to ring on day one was the whole point. Now, luckily for me, what happened on that same day? An old contact I had from networking, they were the head of FM somewhere. They just left their role, left a vacancy in the head of FM. They didn't want to backfill it. So he very kindly put me in touch with the finance director of that organization, client side, and said, Have a chat with Andrew. He's just started up, you should bring him in for consultancy services. Right. So literally on the afternoon I started the business, I won my first contract. Wow. Which was the um some consultancy services, and I didn't know it was going to happen. Yeah, literally, it all happened completely from there. Now, what was beautiful about that was it was based in London, it was five half days a week, and it was in Waterloo. So that meant five half days a week, someone was paying me to go to Waterloo. I had an office, I had a location, I had somewhere I could collect posts and to send posts from. I had a reception team, I had email, it was amazing. And it was like that was literally the first day. And then from that moment, we have grown every single year for 10 years straight. And Pareto, the concept of Pareto was to be a brilliant business that could adapt itself to work in the way the customer wanted to, to have an amazing social heart to look after its people.

SPEAKER_00 15:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:22

Having my mum grew up, my mum worked in Sainsbridge for 30 years, and my dad was in a factory for 46 years when I grew up, right? So low, low-wage income workers. Yeah, of course, yeah. They worked incredibly hard, amazing people, proper working class mentality, but they didn't always get treated very well. And actually, I sort of had this chip on my shoulder that I if anybody in my business was towards lower wages, I wanted to treat them really well. I mean real basics, like say you get paid wrong on payday, that same day it gets rectified and the money goes in your account. If your expenses are due on the 10th, they get paid on the 10th. Real basic stuff.

SPEAKER_00 15:54

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:55

Which actually, in a lot of bigger businesses, that doesn't always happen. It doesn't always happen. And there was a scenario I was aware of where if your pay was wrong, the business would then pay you the next month with a correction. Now I don't I can't wait till the next month. No, of course not. And actually, so is that that sort of ambition for me? And it was really the rise in ESG at the time. So being socially good and being environmentally good was also incredibly important as well. So I think that that's really where Pareto came from. And look, we went on this amazing journey over a 10-year period. We grew from nothing, literally from my bedroom. Yeah. We got to about 50 million turnover, 500 odd staff. And um, and yeah, and we went through an investment event in 2023. So we went to private equity. Yeah, um, that created wealth for lots of people within the team, which was amazing. And uh actually, you know, many people in FM will know my team, but I hired a team of about 15 people. Yeah, uh, they were like the C-suite and the senior team that ran the organization for us, and um, and in that team of 15, I didn't lose a single person in 10 years. Oh, brilliant. Hired them all personally, was part of their journey, and we really affectionately referred to Pareto as the home of the broken. Yeah. So if someone had wronged you in some way, you came to my team in Pareto, and I was the most broken of them all, by the way. Right, okay, okay. And we had this amazing camaraderie that was just so deep. And in all of the people who are in facilities management watching this now, FM isn't a nine to five job. No, FM is a 24-7 job. And if you're in cleaning in particular, that's a 3:30 a.m. that the calls are coming in because things are going wrong, they can't get in, there's an issue, whatever. Um, so actually, for us, I expected that team that if I called them on a weekend, they'd answer the phone. Yeah, we didn't have a central like um help desk overnight. It was our team that would answer the phone because if a customer was in distress, we wanted to make it work and work it out for them. So I I think for me that was the concept of Pareto. It was about being this brilliant business. And in the end, we delivered 150 different social initiatives, yeah, right from being one of the first businesses to be carbon neutral on scope one and two, yeah, uh, to being the first company that will be net zero in 2027, uh, to things like planting wild gardens and forests and raising money for charity and giving away interest-free loans to our staff. We just did amazing things.

SPEAKER_00 18:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:06

And we then managed to build up a customer base that was real high-value tech businesses, uh real high-profile businesses that wanted to come on the journey. Yeah. And they supported us. And I think on my fourth or fifth customer was Twitter back in 2016. Oh, wow, really? Yeah, and like Twitter was an amazing business to us. And on our fifth birthday, we had a big party. Twitter hosted us for free. Oh no, yeah. This is true, we had 150 people in Twitter's office in Piccadilly. Wow. And they gave us all the food was free. They made us our own um cocktail, the Pareto Blue, they called it. Pareto blue. Pareto blue cocktail, all true. Sounds good. Sounds good. We just had this amazing time. My mum and dad were the people of honour that turned up at this thing. Um, my wife and uh a guy called Bill, who was my right-hand man, they got a cake made of my head. Oh, lovely. And they all took it in turn to stabbed me through the eye. Uh it'd been a fucking hard five years. Sorry, Miss Red. It's been a hard five years. And um, but yeah, so like it was beautiful, and that was it. But businesses grow, and as you get bigger, business is hard, uh, and all of the flexibility and the people management they change, and the industry changes and the sector changes, and Trump comes in and starts to roll back all the ESG and EDI stuff and it makes investment challenging and all those different things. So yeah, so that's a Pareto journey.

SPEAKER_02 19:16

With regards to that, I asked this question once. How do you think the UK marketplace will react to the fact that Trump is sort of wheeling back these um these practices and these processes? Because obviously, what tends to, you know, when when when you know when America catches a cold, we tend to have a sneeze, you know. Do you think that that will impact us over here? Because obviously there's a lot of American businesses that work here, you know, and there's a lot of changes in those businesses as direct results. What's your take on that? And I know it's a bit of a segue, Andrew, but I'd love to hear your opinion on it.

SPEAKER_01 19:45

No, I've seen it, it is it's real. So the biggest challenge is like wording and phrase all phraseology. The UK, the challenge the UK has is a lot of investment that comes to the UK is from American funds. Yep. So and American funds want to control where their money goes and what the rhetoric is that goes with that money. So it's even down to like not using the words ESG or environmental social governance, not using words around LGBT plus, and about removing all of that and just calling it sustainability. Yeah. Almost going back to corporate social responsibility like we used to have, doesn't mean doesn't mean anything, right? CSR. No. Um I've seen it, I've seen websites change, I've seen companies change their branding, I've seen policies change, not within Pareto, but wider within the sector. And um, that's been very difficult. And actually, you know, I'm a massive like EDI advocate, and I've been part of the IWFM EDI group for a long time. I was part of the formation of it, and actually talking to people within that group and understanding what these changes mean is very difficult. And like trans rights in particular, just negative, negative, negative. And now we go into this situation, you know, where there's war with the Middle East and all the bad stories that will come out with that. And well, that that's I mean, that's going to be very challenging as well as I think like over the next um several weeks and months, you know. It's um so um so yeah, I I think it's real, and unfortunately, and then when like Farage comes in and starts adding additional rhetoric to that from a UK perspective, but I even look to like my own parents. So my my mum in particular, proper working class background, Labour voter her whole life, right? Yeah, her her father, so my grandfather was big Labour voter, you know, all that sort of stuff. She would consider reform now, my mum. And it gets to people like that.

SPEAKER_02 21:24

Well, the the issue is I mean, I'm northern as you probably tell you know what I mean. I I come from uh you know a town that would would vote Labour and things like that. But Labour unfortunately has horrendously let down um what are the working classes, and let's not forget about one thing you know, the working classes make up the majority of this country. A lot of people think that London London is the beating heart of the UK, but the reality is the rest of the country is working class individuals that get up at five in the morning and so on and so forth. And and and Labour have just gone, I think, too far. It used to be a party for people. That that's how I would describe it, it used to be. And I'm no reform. I'm a common sense person, me. I'm I've I've always kind of sat on the fence and you know, I'm not left right. If it makes sense to me, I'll vote for it. And if it's good for my children, does that make sense?

SPEAKER_01 22:12

Well, it sounds like a good sales answer to me.

SPEAKER_02 22:14

Yeah, but it's true, it's true. It is it is fundamentally true. No, it's not true. If it's good for my family and my children, I'll vote for it. Yeah, but but they but they've let down such a large subsection of society that I don't see there being any way coming back. So I can understand why your mother in particular would kind of because they remember, you know, they you know, if you're of a certain age, let's say you're in your 60s or 70s, you know, you grew up in the 70s and 80s, you know, which was a very different time period. Houses were cheap, fuel was cheap, food was cheap, everything was cheap. Now we live in a world where everything's expensive, yeah. And especially if you're going on to a pension, you know, it's it's crackers, isn't it? Like I how do you how do you fix it? I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 22:48

Well, uh, I don't know. I had to laugh because my mum was also a Brexit voter, and uh so like I um I recently came, I went to Norway, uh with Norway and back. So you get to Norway, we can't go in the EU queue because we're now in the non-EUQ, fine. Yeah, come back to the and it took me ages to get through with my family, with my kids, yeah, come back, and now all of the Europeans are also in the same queue that I'm in. And I'm like, Mum, this is what you voted for. I now have to queue to get out of the country and to get back in again. I am not a Brexit voter, and I'm completely against it. But actually, like this is the worst of both worlds. And like you thought you're gonna get 325 million back to the NHS because it was on the side of a bus. You know, it was that sort of scenario, but um, I'm actually not deeply ingrained into politics, and I uh I uh I don't know where my vote would be today in terms of all those things. But I know like people like my wife, she has been like Lib Dem and Green all the way through. So the fact that the green uh woman got in, the woman plumber who got in recently and uh you know beat reform and everything, that was like an enormous celebration amongst that community.

SPEAKER_02 23:46

Crazy though, isn't it, in terms of the change, yeah, because it used to be conservatives and labour, and now you know it looks like the next election is going to be greens and reform. I mean, that's yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:54

Just crackers, yeah. And old Corbyn might come back as well.

SPEAKER_02 23:57

Yeah, well, he might do, who knows? He'll he'll be off nationalising the railways and all that, which to be I'm not adverse to. Do you know what I mean? Like to be there. Um, but it is, and and why are we talking about? We're talking about this because let's be honest, it has an impact on business. Oh, massive. Um, and it will impact how we do things um across the industry, yeah, the decisions that are taken, the strategy that we go into. And let's be honest, we've had a few shakes over the last five years. We've had COVID, um, we've had wars, now we've got another war, yeah, and now we've got you know mass migration issues. It's just it's such a volatile time to do business, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 24:32

Like well, and look, if I may, so we ran a uh breakfast seminar last week. So Pareto, IWFM, and HSBC. Yeah. The stats around wage growth because of policy change in government is quite incredible. So in the last five years, there's been a 46% increase in minimum wage. Yes. Now, us within the sector and cleaning in particular, we know how hard that is to go and recover that from the customer. Of course. Um, what HSBC are able to show is two things. Proportionate to GDP, the UK has the highest wage growth in the world of any country across the last five years. Wow. That's amazing. That is brilliant. So when you're sat there, uh uh all the people within facilities management thinking, why are we not making as much profit as we used to, go and have a look there first because it's been enormous. And most of it's driven by policy. Yeah. And also you would have seen recently BrewDoc is going into well, Brew Dog's gone into administration and they're buying it out. Yeah, yeah. And it was once valued at 250 million and it sold for 33 million, whatever. Yeah. But I think in the last six years, the all-in cost for like an 18-year-old was about 19 grand a year. Right because today it's 29 grand a year. Yeah, it's crazy. And it's going to go up again in April. So it becomes much more difficult. It's easy to understand how costs have come up. What HSBC can also show in trend analysis is costs are rising proportionately more than our ability to charge that cost back to customers in every sector. So margins are being squeezed. Yeah. So basically your cost is going up faster than your ability to charge the customer, whether that's products or services or whatever. Now, we're already in a low margin sector. We are. I mean, and we're not even in construction, which is even worse than what we've got. But facilities management is struggling around, say, four or five percent EBITDA. And actually, if that is being squeezed and customers' expectations are higher, and actually people costs are more, and then you throw in that there's going to be a policy change so that after someone's been employed for six months, they can sue you for unfair dismissal. Yes. You can see how it becomes difficult for businesses.

SPEAKER_02 26:25

There's changes on sick pay as well, regardless of the side. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:27

And obviously then national uh in national insurance.

SPEAKER_02 26:31

There's new legislation coming in around employment rights and things like that. So it's difficult for business, isn't it? It's very difficult.

SPEAKER_01 26:37

And it just as the real kicker, and I'm a I'm a UK through and through guy, right? But as a real as a real kicker, uh, I was talking to a very, very large service provider. They had about£25 million of increases through the national insurance changes. Crazy, isn't it? Huge. Any business, I don't care who you are, 25 million is massive. Yeah. They passed on about half back to their customers. Okay. Yeah. The other half, the customers said no. Yeah. And you know who the customer was? The UK government. The UK government. Crazy. So the UK government can change policy and then not allow people to charge on the changes. And actually, as a businessman and an entrepreneur, I struggle with that concept. I do as well. That's horrendous. Yes, I'm critical of big business within FM sector, absolutely, but I'm with them on that one. If there is fundamental statutory policy change from the government, the government should be the government should be the first one that says yes. Okay, we're going to be able to do that. Well they should be leading it. They should be the example. Yes, there's an ethical thing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:33

But but that's the but that's you know that that that goes to what that that kind of goes down to our political system, doesn't it? Because you've got local authorities and councils that can vote and make their own decisions with the budget that they're allocated by Westminster, and the government can't mandate to those councils, you have to accept these changes across all of your contracts. It's a decision that they can take, which is once again crazy.

SPEAKER_01 27:56

Yes, isn't it? Now look, I'm never going into politics because I don't understand it. I don't I don't have a huge political affiliation, and actually I enjoy the UK. I think it's a great place to be, and you can start a business here, and I don't mind paying tax. I'm not going to go to Dubai and get a six-pack and all that sort of stuff. That's not that's not me. It's not where I am. I don't aspire to do any of that.

SPEAKER_03 28:14

No.

SPEAKER_01 28:14

I believe we should pay a fair amount of tax. I believe in the welfare system, I believe in all of those things. I'm one of the biggest blood donors in the world at the moment. I saw that today. I saw your medal. Congratulations. Thank you. But like the NHS makes that possible. Yeah. Right? And like so these things are absolutely incredible. So like I believe in all of that, but we cannot take away from it's hard for businesses. No. Uh and we are in a sector in particular that it's extra hard for because we're already starting at a low level. And and I know anyone listening to this podcast that has been in the facilities sector and delivering, customers generally want more for less. Of course they do. And it's only so long you can do that before that. But customers they're not being unreasonable. No. They're just they need they have their own FDs that are giving them giving them a hard time about it. And actually, I think this that that's always a thing to remember. I also love about this sector that we flip between service provider and contractor side sometimes. And client side sometimes. So actually, I was talking to someone just last week and they were saying, Oh, what's it like on client side? What's it like contractor side? And there are frustrations in that on every side. But as a sector, we have to stick together. We have to do the right thing by us, we have to do the right thing by our people. We have to keep supporting things like IWFM so we have a collective voice on what we're doing here. Completely agree. And that that's really important to us as a sector. But if you thought it was hard, it's going to get harder. And actually, ultimately, what will happen is we know that there's 124,000 service providers in this sector. We know MA activity is still very high.

SPEAKER_00 29:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:45

So of the 124,000, 93% of the businesses are less than a million turnover. Wow. So only 7% of businesses in our sector are over a million turnover. So that means two things. The big companies don't have many other big companies to buy. So if you look at the acquisitions of OCS and Italian service last year, which was done by private equity, created a behemoth business, which can compete with CBRE and JLL on like a global scale now. But also in the mid-market, call it£20 million, 30 million pound businesses, there are thousands of£1 million businesses out there to buy. And often what you do within within facilities in particular, you try and buy those at three or four times EBITDA. Yeah. You group them all together and you sell them for 10 times EBITDA. Of course. And that arbitrage is a great way that investors make money in the sector. It doesn't mean it's easy and you can easily buy bad businesses and deals can go wrong. Yeah, of course can. But that MA activity, I think, is here to stay. And I think the big ones will get bigger because when they're looking around, who else can they buy? They've got to start buying each other. And actually, if there's billions of private equity money in the sector, which there is, then some of those deals can be done. But I really believe if you've got a 10 million pound business and you can do a couple of like cheap acquisitions, it's a great way to grow the business within the sector. Yeah, of course. And actually, I think the money you can make on the arbitrage on the multiple change is significant. And that's why I love FM. Because I love it as an FM person, as a practitioner personally, but also as an entrepreneur.

SPEAKER_02 31:11

Yeah, but I would say as well, Andrew, sort of touching on that because you are right, there isn't really that middle ground anymore. You've you've got a lot of very small companies and then a few massive behemoths. But that for me, I think, creates opportunity for businesses that sit within that middle ground with customers that want something different, you know, that they want that that that that that that client-led approach, they don't want that, you know, behemoth.

SPEAKER_01 31:37

It's a bit like NJC now. You're at that 20 odd million pound level, great level, great size. You are big enough that you are not a risk in terms of going bust, or everyone's gonna go off on holiday tomorrow and it's all gonna fall over. Yeah. But you are small enough that actually you can do what's right for the customer. Yes, of course. And and I think when anyone gets past, say, the 20 odd million level, it's a really nice size for a business. The challenge then is how you go from 20 to 50 and 50 to 100, but that's tomorrow's problem. Yeah, of course it's. But like right now, I think if um when I started Pareto, we called 20 million the Premier League. So we were like, right, we want to get to the Premier League. We don't know how we're gonna get there, how long we're gonna take. It took us about five years, roughly. You were like the Wrexham of uh. Well, yeah, we're the Wrexham. Oh yeah, I don't know who else is. I like to think of the Oxford United being an Oxford boy. Uh they were in League One at one point. Yeah, yeah. But um, but yeah, so we got to, you know, we got to that level and actually our growth exhalerated. So we in over three years we grew from like 18 million to 42 million because actually that growth came really quickly. It was off the back of COVID. We'd been incredibly flexible in COVID with all of our big customers that we were working with, giving credits left, right, and centre. We weren't making any profit on the stuff we were doing. It was all about helping people to get through that time. Yeah, but our growth just exhalerated off the back of that, and that was a deliberate investment from our side when we took that plan. But yeah, I I think um FM remains the land of opportunity. If you are grafting and you're in your early stages of your career, whatever your background is. Of course, yeah. I talk about young people, but actually, say you've been in the military for 20 years and you come into FM, it's exactly the same for you. Yeah, and you've got 20 years experience and world-leading leadership coaching behind you as well. So I think like I just love it. And I love that it doesn't matter if you've been to university or not, if you could have got A levels or not, it's all about actually just being a fantastic communicator, hard worker, being available when other people are not, yeah, and busting your ass. And anybody can do that, and I love it. And my daughter, who's six now, I'm really encouraging her to go and be like a mechanical engineer because I can't find any good ones.

SPEAKER_02 33:34

So do you know something? Yeah, you'd be interested. I read an article not that long ago that basically turned around and said engineers and electricians, especially with the advent of AI and so on and so forth, will be the next generation's quarter of a million pounds a year jobs, just because there are not enough of them across any industry. I believe it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:52

And actually, the UK is talking about future nuclear programs and building all sorts of stuff. Yeah, we do not have enough of the skill set. Right. Um, one of Pareto's, and this is in the press, one of Pareto's long-term customers is London and Whipsney Zoo. Yeah. Now that's a 700-acre estate that has 20,000 animals in it, right? So you've got to get it right in those places. Of course, yeah. But that's not your typical office. That's you need to weld the fence correctly so the lion doesn't get out. And eat someone. And literally eat someone. So, like the the standards are so high and the expectations are so high, as they should be, because animal life and human life is at risk if you get it wrong. Oh, of course. And it's a stunning contract, an amazing place to be. But you have to get it right. Now, I'll tell you, one of the biggest problems you have in somewhere like that is where's the next generation of welders coming from? You know, who goes to school now and wants to be a welder? And actually, fence builders, these sort of real proper old school, like you like like you say, you know, in a very traditional way, proper northern trade that you would get in a proper working class scenario. It's not there. And actually, like it's going to take 15 years for the government to push it to make sure enough go through apprenticeships to come out with that skill set. But they're still not doing that, are they? No, no, and they're not pushing it enough, and like there's the whole university debate now. Again, chatting to those uh young people this morning in the Brooks lecture, they're all coming out with at least 50,000 of debt. It's crazy. It is crazy. And I um I came out with about 14,000 of debt when I did it, and it still took me a while to pay it off.

SPEAKER_02 35:17

My wife hasn't paid us off. Yeah. I mean it was subsidized, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_01 35:20

Um yeah, so basically, we uh you get a student loan and uh you pay minimal interest on that student loan. But as I understand it, now that those loans are getting more significant, the interest rates are going up, and I think over a time it's gonna take you a long period of time. When I did it, um you could earn up to£25,000 before you started paying anything back. Yeah, anything you earn over£25,000, 9% of that went back to paying off your student loan. Right. So if you didn't earn, you didn't pay. So it's the best loan that you could get. Yeah. Now those thresholds still exist but slightly different now. But because the debt is 50 grand, you let's just say the threshold is 30k, I don't know what it is now, but 30k. That's an amazing job value. To get that salary is great.

SPEAKER_00 36:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:01

Now you need anything over 30 grand at 9%, say. It's gonna take you a long time to pay that off.

SPEAKER_00 36:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:07

The reality is millions of people will never pay that off.

SPEAKER_00 36:10

No.

SPEAKER_01 36:10

And actually, it sort of the way the government have done it is to fund people through university to create the knowledge economy and keep people going through it. But more and more people I talk to now, and my kids are 12 years away from this decision, they're not gonna send them to university, they're gonna do apprenticeships. And you had Ella Gladwin on here before as uh Ella is doing a degree apprenticeship, so simultaneously she is studying at university for a degree and doing her operational experience. Yeah, I think that's the way forward.

SPEAKER_02 36:36

I agree, I agree, I think it has to be too. Yeah, I mean, I've I've I've got I've got a 13-year-old son, you know, he wants to be an electrical engineer, um, and I've said to him, Go and get the practical knowledge. Like if there's an opportunity to go to a school which teaches you that, yeah, go and get that, and then get a job and maybe go to school or do the theory one day a week because the reality is, I'm a firm believer. I mean, I didn't go to university actually, but I've I've done all right, you know what I mean. I've I've got a good career.

SPEAKER_01 37:01

Um, you know, in our sector, I don't think going to university is a benefit. I think it's just you may have gone through that path. I don't think you need it.

SPEAKER_02 37:07

But I think as well, I think I think back you know, 20 years ago, I think in university, there was and even now, probably the last 10 years, there was a lot of universities having what I would call predatory courses, predator predatory degrees, whereby they probably knew there's nothing at the back end of this. But let's get everyone in university so they can have a good time. You know, and there's a lot of people like that that have come out and they're now, you know, they're working in jobs which they weren't expecting to work in. So naturally, across society as well, that there's a huge dip in terms of dissatisfaction, mental health, and things like that that comes with it. So it just seems like there's just been a plethora of wrong decisions. I remember multiple industries.

SPEAKER_01 37:46

So I went to university in 2005. There was a genuine course that was clown studies. That's crazy, isn't it? You could do three years in clown studies. Well, crazy. Yeah, yeah. But hey, look, we need clowns, right? But the uh there are plenty of clowns out there. We met we met a few. Um but no, actually, I I think my point is back when I went to university, so I was the first one in my family to go. My mum and dad didn't want me to go because it didn't feel like the right thing for our family to meet for me to go down that route. Right. They weren't trying to block me, they were just saying, Andrew, look, we both work in like trade-style businesses, you need to go and get a trade. A very traditional working class conversation that you'd expect. But because I got into sixth form and all my like middle classmates that I then started hanging around with were all going to university, I wanted to do the same. Fair enough. Yeah, and actually, when I went to university, I thought I'm just gonna go and have a good time, and I was going to Essex and all that sort of stuff. And I met my wife on the first day, and actually, it ended up being what made me. Going there is what made me, and actually, without it, I would have had a very different like path in life. Although I like to think as an entrepreneur, you would have ended up doing something anyway, and that that's just uh life. But I I don't know right now. So the German model is exactly the Ella Gladwin model, as in you go to university and you study and and you work at the same time.

SPEAKER_02 38:57

That makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 38:57

It does, and because imagine now you're what 22, 23 years old, you have four years of work experience, and you have a degree behind you, maybe even a master's. Exactly. Perfect, puts you in a brilliant position. It and actually, like I I just said I was asking some of those students real-world questions today, and they don't know. I I studied business for three years. I remember going to Roll Wright and someone talking to me about tupee and purchase orders. I was like, I don't know what tupee is, and I have no idea what a PO is. Yeah. Actually, you realise immediately POs make the world go round. Yeah, they do. So in a three-year business degree that I just studied, why did no one tell me about purchase orders? That's crackers, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, but actually, like that practical advice is a real thing. Um I think um, yeah, and the other thing was universities are not making any money. That's the other challenge for the UK. I have a friend who advises universities uh from like a consultancy level. They're gonna merge more and more together. Because so Essex, where I was, was 50% international students. Because when I studied it was three grand a year, but an international study student was 12 grand a year. Right. So, of course, if you're a university, take as many internationals as you can because it's literally four times the income of what an English one was.

SPEAKER_02 40:01

Makes sense, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:02

It does, and it was great because Tuesday was Latin night, Wednesday was Afro Beats, Thursday was Asian night. It was absolutely fantastic. Yeah, and that was before the weekend. And uh so, like, um, but actually, yeah, that I I really believe in that. And partly my social upbringing and the diverse background and everything I've had was because of that experience at university. Because I I went into a halls of residence with 30 other people where half of those weren't from the UK. Well, that is a brilliant environment to be an 18-year-old working. And certainly that we had a lot of contingents from China and Japan and Korea, and actually and South America and Africa. It was amazing. A great group of people, and you're all 19, you're all trying to work it out, and you're all drunk. So you had a great time. So you have a good time.

SPEAKER_02 40:41

Yeah, that's what it's all about, isn't it? Breaking down barriers, as they say. Literally, okay, so one quick question. I always like to ask people this whenever I'm talking to somebody that's either started a business or anything like that. How did you come up with the name Pareto?

SPEAKER_01 40:53

Uh uh, yeah, I ask myself this question sometimes because uh it's pronounced Pareto, right? Pareto, sorry. No, no, no, please. Um I always mispronounce it, I'm known for it. This is the whole point, right? If anyone wants some business advice, business advice, choose a business name that people can pronounce because I still have Pareto clients today that call it Parento. So we used to say Pareto Eto or Pareto Potato, is what my kids say. Pareto potato. Um so Vilfredo Pareto, he was a philosopher and civil engineer in the early 1900s. So Vilfredo Pareto, and he came up with the 80-20 rule, which what he realized back in the 1900s was 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population. So he called that 20% the critical few. So the idea was that 20% of the population owned 80% of the land. So if you wanted to make a change to land ownership, you go to those 20% of the people.

SPEAKER_00 41:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 41:48

And my first logo, which never made it out, was like a circle with 20% highlighted out in a different colour. And it was all about the critical few. So the phrase initially we used to use was the trivial many and the critical few. And for me, it was about being intelligent and focusing on the critical few. And very quickly, the word Pareto just became synonymous with our business style. Yeah. Because Pareto was a very like multicultural place, it was very open, inclusive, diverse, uh, really represented its values very well. And we would use this phrase, are they a Pareto person? Because Pareto just represented something. And I go back to the home of the broken and what that meant for us all. Of course, yeah. So very quickly, Pareto became an adjective for what it meant to work in our culture within the business, which was so powerful. Because again, when people talk about how do you build a culture and what does it all mean, the word Pareto and the colour, the blue that we used to use was really quite powerful for that. And the other phrase we used to have, you'll like this one. We used to have a phrase in Pareto was we don't employ dickheads. Yeah, yeah, I like that. That was the uh the don't employ dickheads thing, which was really powerful for us. Because look, as a highly strung uh entrepreneur in my uh early 30s as I was running through everything, I could be a dickhead, believe it or not.

SPEAKER_02 43:02

Well, I've been we we all have our moments. We all have our moments.

SPEAKER_01 43:05

And I hope the management team would attest to this, but we had an environment in our senior team where if any of us were being too much or we were being too hard or gone down the wrong route or just going over the top, we'd say, Hey, look, you're being a dickhead. It says on the wall we don't employ dickheads, let's just all get back to that point together. Yeah, and that was really powerful. And I talk about that group of 15 people, it was so special because any of us could have those type of conversations. Even me, even as the founder and the CEO, you could have those conversations, and that is what culture should be about. I agree. I don't believe in this idea of being scared of people above you, and actually like the flat structure that we used to run was very real. Now, whilst on paper a structure may not look flat, how one interacts with each other, how people interact with each other is what makes it flat. Well, of course, yeah. And and I loved WhatsApp. I mean, uh as I started Pareto, WhatsApp was really coming to the fore, and um it was good and bad because it meant I could never switch off.

SPEAKER_00 43:58

Yes, never, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:00

And uh for ten years I didn't have a personal phone number. I just had my work number. Because it didn't matter where I was, it didn't I need I didn't need a personal number because all I was doing was work.

SPEAKER_02 44:09

Yeah, see my mine's kind of like that, but it's the other way around. See, my personal phone over the years has just become my work phone because like one you know, you network, you meet clients, you get to know people throughout the year. And I'm like, oh I can't bother having two phones. Yes. I felt like a drug dealer for one thing, which was just too much. Yeah, I had three at one point. Yeah, and it's just so much, it's so much easier. So I get it completely.

SPEAKER_01 44:29

Like that is so what you're talking about isn't brilliant advice for someone who's trying to create boundaries. No, I agree. Because there are no boundaries, and actually the the whole point was, and for me, look, I was always on. It didn't matter what time of day it was. Um, Bill, my right-hand man, who ran all the finance and the ops and all of the processes in the business, he would stay up until about three in the morning. That was his like natural time, he would stay awake until. And I would wake up about 4:35 in the morning. So it was only about an hour and a half a day that someone wasn't awake that was in like an authoritative position. And my phone would be on the loudest it could be. I'd have a backup charger behind the backup charger to make sure that it was always on. Now I did that for nine odd years, and that's okay, and it sounds like nice, but actually that's hard work. It does, you can never switch up. I didn't have any grey hairs before I started. Now I'm almost exclusively grey. I I was laughing on my socials because I talked about retiring at 37 and someone said you look 57. It really tickled me. I don't think you look that old. No, no, it just it really tickled me because I I love negative comments on social media that people take the time out to do it. I'm laughing now. It really tickled me. Yeah, and I was like, if I dyed my beard, I wonder if I'd go back, but I never would. So um, but yeah, like just for men.

SPEAKER_02 45:43

Yeah, just for men, just right there.

SPEAKER_01 45:45

But um, look, it sounds great, but actually you sacrifice an awful lot in that time. And actually, you sacrifice relationships and like friends as the first one you say no to because you're not seeing your family enough, and then you've got obviously your immediate partner, if you have kids, that's a thing. You've got your mum and dad and your sisters and everything, and like so. For me, I wasn't always a great person to be around when I was under that pressure. And also, people ask me this a bit as well. I never really stop to celebrate success, and I really mean that because actually, every time we won a big contract, and like say we once won a contract that was 30 million pounds a year, uh 30 million pounds over like a five to six year period, big numbers. You don't think, yes, I've won a contract. You think shit, how am I gonna deliver this contract? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's entrepreneurship, yeah. And then you're looking around going, oh, we shouldn't have got rid of that person, we need to hire someone else, or we haven't got enough engineers, or who's which welder's coming in, you know, all those all those different things. But there was never ever a moment where you just patted yourself on the back and go, Oh, we're really good at this. Yeah. Because it was always about what's next, what's next, what's next. I I completely I I I understand. And that's sales, right?

SPEAKER_02 46:48

Yeah, you're just relentless. Um I get about five minutes to say, yeah. Well done. Well done, too. And then next, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 46:54

The other thing as well, which again I I think is decent advice, but you need to get over the bad things that happen pretty quickly. When you're growing really quickly, yeah, you just need to get on with it. Bad stuff happens. And I think that I'm gonna butcher this quote, but Winch and Winston Churchill says, you never move forward if you stop to throw rocks at every dog that barks at you. That's the quote, right? That's true. And like, if you stop to have an argument with everyone who is trying to bring you down, yeah, you are never gonna move forward. No, agreed. And that is such an important thing for me. And I have this Kevlar where do whatever you want, right? I'm my own person. I hold myself to a lot higher standards than you could ever hold me to. So say whatever you like. Call me a 57-year-old with a grey beard. That's fine by me. Um, but actually, um, that was really important to me. And I think that people need to get that because if you stop to argue, that is you just get in the way. And then, but that's every aspect of life. I I nearly got into a road rage incident this morning because someone pulled out from me and I thought, oh, we're stuck in traffic now, I could get out and knock on their windows. Yeah, yeah. That wouldn't be the right thing to do. No, God no. And who cares? Yeah, right, in terms of that. It's um, I talk about coming from the council estate. It was my grandmother's funeral who moved to that estate just on uh yesterday. I spoke at that funeral, which was a really like meaningful time and really important time to sort of reflect on where the family had come from. Yeah. But my nan was she was in London as an evacuee. She came out to Oxford uh in the Second World War when she was a teenager, hiding under the stairs. She gets a caravan on a council estate in the 50s with my granddad, and they go on to create this legacy of a family. And it's crazy. And the most powerful thing I saw yesterday. So at the funeral, there were three people there who are in their 60s now. But my mum, my nan and grump ran the um uh they ran the community centre there, and there was also a children's home in that area as well. And my grump in particular just said to the kids in the children's home, You want to have some food, just come into our kitchen, just take what you like. The door's never locked. This is the 60s, right? People just come in and out. Yeah, the good old days. Yeah, the good the proper old days when you didn't have to worry about your phone being stolen. You didn't even have a phone. No, there was no phone. There wasn't even a phone. No, no, they didn't. Well, I mean, my grandparents didn't even have a house, it was a caravan to start off with. But actually, so like um, and they were just seen as like the most brilliant people on the estate helping everybody out. And even yesterday, these 60-year-olds, there were three of them, they were three children from the children's home. And they still refer to them as mum and dad now, even though they both passed away. Absolutely true. And uh, that was so powerful for me. And that whole sort of like working class council of state mentality, starting from absolutely nothing and going to deliver something, was just personified in that conversation with those three. Yeah, and they were absolutely like they could remember going into the kitchen, and one of the guys was telling me one of them would wait by the door, one of them would run into the fridge, take some stuff, throw it to the guy at the door, and they'd run away with it, even though they didn't need to. That's just what they felt they were doing. Yeah, it was so powerful, and it just reminded me all the way through why I started Pareto and why social mobility is so important and the legacy I want to leave for my own kids. It was so, so powerful. So I'm very philosophical and reflective about that at the moment because that was only yesterday.

SPEAKER_02 49:53

Yeah, well, that's fair. Yeah, I I completely understand it. I think when you look back on on like your because I I I look back sometimes and look, I haven't started my own business or achieved what you've achieved, but I'm still very proud of what I've achieved, and my mother's very proud of me as a as a human being and a professional. That's more important to me than anything. You know, it really is, you know. Like my like my mum will say it to me sometimes, she's like, you missed a podcast. And she watches them as well, and she'll like text me. Why has she not been a guest yet? No, she should have been guests. She lives in New Zealand. Now imagine bringing you up though. She's got a lot of uh stories, she's got a few great hairs as well, Addie, to be fair. Well, she does, she watches it, but it gives you a sense of pride, I think. And it's it's it's not to me, it's not about the income that you earn or anything like that. It's more about the work that you do, the fact that you make a difference, that you're making the right decisions, and you're completely right about the type of organization that you want to be. Um, I think you know the business that I work for has has been that kind of business for a long time. In fact, it was founded on those principles by Connie 41 years ago, and it's managed to retain those principles for all those years. So it's really great to see somebody who started their business back when you did. Yeah, which isn't that long ago. No, no, no, it's 2014. But but to start your business with similar principles and maintain it throughout that process, I think is brilliant. And all all fair play to you. You know, thank you.

SPEAKER_01 51:14

Please don't get me wrong. Success is what we all feel in here. Yeah. Success is not a financial number. No. Because there are many, many uh something I talk about a bit with entrepreneurship is when I went through my exit, I didn't go through depression. But they say 87% of men who sell businesses go through depression. Really? Yeah, because a lot of people think that you get tens of millions or whatever your number is, yeah, and you're gonna go and sit on a beach in the Bahamas forever. Yeah. Cool. You go and sit on the beach, you're there for two weeks, you got your tan, you've got your all-inclusive, you're putting weight on, you're not meet, you're not seeing anyone. No, that's true. And actually, as someone who finished work towards my late 30s, it wasn't as if all my mates were just like, oh yeah, come and come around on a Tuesday afternoon. That wasn't true. Because they're all grafting, they're all grafting, they've got kids there working and all that. And actually, you have to sort of redefine what success means to you. And I I go back to my mum and look, my mum's still my best friend, right? And on all of that, and I uh everything I did, my mum was a massive motivator, motivator for me because my mum had to sell some shares and things so I could go to university and fund for me to go. Oh, that's fantastic. So when I got my first lot of millions, the first thing I did is I went and bought my mum and dad their house. I bought my sisters their house, I bought my own house, and literally I went to the bank and I took quarter of a million pounds out in cash on a quad bike, in flip-flops, in a hoodie. It's true. And I got a Sainsbury's bag and I put quarter of a million pounds in a Sainsbury's bag. I drove to my mum and dad's house and I poured all this money over the floor, gave my dad a card and said, You're retiring today five years early.

SPEAKER_00 52:37

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 52:37

Now that feeling is a lot better than when I went and bought a bright yellow McLaren 570S for a hundred grand in the showroom. Yeah. That then when I sat in it, because I didn't even drive it, I just went in, I went in to buy an Aston Martin, saw the McLaren, bought it in cash because I just wanted to buy it. Got when it got delivered to my house, I sat in it and my ass was too big to fit in the seat. Now, I promise you the feeling of giving my dad that money and buying my mum her house and buying my sisters their houses and everything, and being at home in the morning when my kids come to cuddle me and having an amazing relationship with them is worth a million times more than a thousand yellow McLaren's or Ferraris or Aston Martins or whatever. It isn't about wealth, no, it's uh and financial wealth, it's about time, relationships, warmth, and knowing what's important to you. I couldn't give a shit about how much money you earn or not. And there are many people who have made hundreds of millions and still want to go and do more and still keep going. But that's cool, that's their choice. I have no problem with that. But actually, for me, I I got to a point where my family became more important, and grafting and working as hard as I was was fine for a period, but now I have to go back and focus on the children and being there as well.

SPEAKER_02 53:45

What a great time to be able to do that as well, though. Given the because you are quite young, you're still 37.

SPEAKER_01 53:50

I'm I'm 39 now, yeah. So two years ago. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 53:52

So so be to be able to actually spend that quality time with your children after setting up Pareto. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 53:59

Couldn't have called it Parento, I would have gone with that as well.

SPEAKER_02 54:01

But you know, I I would love that opportunity, you know. I mean, I'm I'm quite lucky in terms of my role, you know. Like I get to see, I've got a five-year-old daughter as well, as well as two older children. Um, but my five-year-old I get to spend a lot of time with, you know, because I can work from home, it's quite a family-oriented place. I'll use it, I can take her to school, I can pick her up from time to time. So I'm very, very lucky um in that sense. I miss bedtime a lot just because of networking. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 54:25

Um, but but you know, uh, can I ask you a question? So when you do the drop-off in the morning, are there many other dads that are doing the same? Is it predominantly mums? Predominantly mums, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 54:33

Not as many, um to be fair, for a large part, because my daughter started school in September. Yes. Um for most of that period, it's been me that drops her off at school and not a mother, and then we'd have somebody who looks after her after school pick her up because Kelly works certain hours. Now Kelly's sort of changed that now. She's working, she's gone on onto a part-time schedule so that she could be picking her up at school and things like that. But yeah, predominantly mums, but more dads than I expected.

SPEAKER_01 54:57

Yeah, if I'm honest. And actually, I I have the same. I reckon it's probably 70% mums, 30% dads, and I would say that's probably a good and but actually it's not always uh that, it's some parents, and look, no judgment on parents, parenting is hard. I don't pretend to have the hardest job in the world. Yeah, I don't pretend to have any answers on that. But some parents, and bless them, they run to the school gate, they throw their kids in because they've got to get back for nine o'clock because they've got to be on a call or whatever.

SPEAKER_02 55:21

They'll be on a teams call or something like that, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 55:23

And the privilege I feel to be able to stand there, waving my kid in, bringing some sausage rolls for the mums and all that sort of stuff, and just creating those things is really powerful. And actually, once uh my son, at when he was at nursery a couple of years ago, they had a stay and play at nursery. It was on like a Thursday afternoon at two o'clock or something really inconvenient time for most parents to do it. I was the only parent that went. Really? Literally, and as I walked into that nursery, my son Luca, the look on his face as I walked in, he was so happy to see me because I was the only parent there. And he walked in and he gave me a cuddle, and he I sat down on the mat with him and I was reading a book. Yeah. And so I was reading the book with him. I had five kids on my shoulders, they wouldn't leave me alone. So I was like this enormous beast of a man of six foot three and eighteen snow. They've never seen someone my size before. And I was like, I haven't even been CRB checked. No children should be touching me at this stage. Yeah. But I'm sat there reading this thing. I I think back to that moment. The look on his face when I went in there, and if I hadn't have got to the position that I was, yeah, I never would have been in that room. Yeah. And as many other parents couldn't be there. And I understand, I get it, um, but that's incredibly special. You can have all the millions back. More of those sort of things is what I'm trying to do, and that's what life is uh is about.

SPEAKER_02 56:32

Yeah, because I I see as well in terms of because I know that obviously, you know, you you might we're talking about FM here, but there's quite a bit you do around entrepreneurial things. So I just want to talk about some of the things that you do on LinkedIn, which I find really interesting. Right. Um, you tried to travel across Europe for a budget of£100 and£181 to go down Eastern Europe.

SPEAKER_01 56:49

To go down Eastern. How many countries did you visit? Only so I did three. So that was Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania for£181.

SPEAKER_02 56:55

Well, that was funny. Yeah, yeah, yeah. People like that really got people's attention. I watched that and I kind of thought to myself, that takes some discipline actually. Yeah. Because you know because you because you've got the funds to be able to do it a little bit differently if you want to. So to stick to that budget and do it, I think, I think is quite interesting. Um obviously we we talked about um your your your your blood donating, but for everybody out there, um Andrew got his medal today because he's actually donated blood over a hundred times, and as a direct result of that blood donation, you've actually saved a thousand lives. Yes, correct. Yeah, um which I think is commendable. Yes, certainly. That really is. But well, just uh the to because a lot of people who don't donate blood probably don't realise how long it takes. Because a pint of blood is actually quite a bit.

SPEAKER_01 57:35

Yeah, more than you realise. If I may just talk about blood briefly, just to promote it, because the there are about 1.5% of the UK population donates blood. Yeah, there are thousands of reasons you cannot donate blood, and and no slight on anyone that can't.

SPEAKER_00 57:48

Of course, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 57:48

But those who are, and this is generally to men, men under 40 years old who are relatively healthy and haven't have any reason to not, that's the blood they need. And actually, the UK only has stocks of about six or seven days of blood for every blood type that we have. So if there's a major incident, and look, there's a war going on in the world at the moment, yeah, we only have seven days of blood, and actually they need more. So there are 800,000 donors in the UK, and there's a population of what, 70 million? And now, many, many people can't donate, so I have to understand. So um the uh what I do is I donate every two weeks. Now, the uh the point of donating every two weeks is I have to live my life in a certain way to be able to donate. I don't know if you saw the long list of things you can't do. Some of them are not uh broadcastable. Um but basically things like drugs, things like using prostitutes, things like certain types of um pills that you can't take in terms of paracetamol and stuff, yeah. You can't have a cold. I've been donating blood every 15 days for two and a half years.

SPEAKER_02 58:44

I didn't know you couldn't have a cold. Why is that?

SPEAKER_01 58:46

Um you can't have a cold because it can impact the uh the platelets and the plasma in your blood. So if you go in there with a stinking cold, they'll turn you away.

SPEAKER_02 58:52

Oh, I did not know. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 58:53

And uh and actually they're really strict because you you cannot, it's the quality of like, especially with platelets in particular, which is what clods clogs your blood, um, imp it it impacts that. But I have not had a cold in two and a half years, and I have a child in nursery and a child in school. How have you managed that? Uh it's a literal chemical weapons. It is a literal miracle, and it out of everything that I say about entrepreneurship and the tens of millions, that should be the most unbelievable thing that I say.

SPEAKER_02 59:20

But that is absolutely true. Are you sure you didn't just fall asleep for a week once or something? No, I know absolutely not true. I don't see how that's possible.

SPEAKER_01 59:26

So, literally, not had a cold for two and a half years, and uh over Christmas, of course, everyone gets a cold over Christmas.

SPEAKER_02 59:32

Oh, I feel I feel like I'm working with some kind of sickness for the majority of winter every year, to be fair.

SPEAKER_01 59:38

And I wasn't any different. I used to be the same. I spoke to a GP about it because actually, after I exited and I wanted to calm down a bit, I went and got because I mean I've got so many stories for you, but um in the lead in the lead up to selling the business, I lost nine stone in seven months. What? Yeah, so I just one day that's also true. I woke up one day and I just went on a 500 calorie a day diet for 150 days straight. And people around me know know what I'm like and they know that's true. Yeah, no, I lost nine stone in seven months.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:04

Blah dear.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:05

No tablets, no Manjaro, no sewing my stomach up or anything like that. Um, I actually, this is also true, I got to a point where I got so thin, my wife said, I don't find you attractive at this weight. You need to put a little bit of weight back on it. Really? So I just absolutely decimated my body. And if anyone wants to go and find it, Lad Bible ran the story. Yeah. And uh 40 million people on Lad Bible saw it, saw it. Really? And if you want to have thick skin, go and read 2,000 comments about people calling you a fat whatever on Lad Bible is a really interesting thing to do. Because Lad Bible made it look like I'd put on nine stone in seven months in the headline. Oh then people are going, oh, this fat, whatever. But actually, I'd lost uh lost it. And if you look at the photos of me on D all day when we exited, you you can see a marked change. I put about two stone back on now.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:49

Uh because my my wife mainly, I still wanted her to be attracted to me.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:52

Well, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:54

Yeah, it was an important part of uh of that, an important part of the last couple of years of like reconnecting and all that sort of stuff, too. So um, like I just think like all these things are mindset-based, and I and I I think they're entrepreneurial-based, and like I've completely lost the trail of where I was going. But for me, like I want to tell the stories of these things. Now, I do not suggest you go on a 500 calorie a day diet, but I I went to the doctors, that's what it was, and I had a full-body health check, everything, including prostate, testicles, absolutely everything. It's important that men realize you need to have a finger up your ass occasionally to check that everything's gonna be alright. We should care about men's health because that's what we should. There is something in when I was 37, I went to the doctor to have my prostate checked, and it was a middle-aged woman doctor, and they say, Do you want a chaperone to come in? Do you want to do that? That's a really awkward situation to be in. But I was what, 37, I'd never had my prostate checked. It's an important thing to do from a cancer perspective. Women are really good at going to have their breasts checked on a regular basis. We don't do that as men so much. Um, so yeah, I think on like the blood donation stuff and the weight loss stuff and checking on your body and being healthy, like all those things are important. But I put all of that off for nearly 10 years because that wasn't what my focus was. My focus was growing the business and trying to be successful. And then when I could see that we'd sort of got over the main bit of the business and that we'd be exiting at some point, I put my weight back at the focus of what I was doing. And look for uh for the truth of it. After 150 days of being on that calorie level, when I started eating normally again, I'd given myself IBS. And when I was eating food, my body just couldn't process it. So it took me nearly about six weeks to get over that. So I didn't put weight on very quickly because without going into too much detail, but if I ate something, my body would just reject it because it had it wasn't used to it for the six months before that.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:39

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:39

Um, so yes, um, although everybody likes the idea of losing loads and weight very quickly, that is the way to do it, but maybe not 500 calories a day. Maybe go 1500 calories and go from there. I was starving, but also I cut out alcohol, sugar, carbs, and caffeine at the same time. Wow. And I was running on maybe four or five hours sleep. I wasn't always the nicest person to be around, if you can imagine.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:02

I bet you felt like absolute shit.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:05

Excuse my language, but I bet you did. Sorry, I've sworn a lot more than that. Uh I mindset-wise, yeah, was so driven that things like hunger and things like being tired, you just got over it. Just got on with it. And um, for anyone that does go on low calorie diets, your body does get used to it quite quickly. Does it really? Yeah, you need a lot of water because your body needs water, but um, I think you can go without water as a human for like two days. Yeah, you can go without food for like a week. Yeah, you can do, yeah. And people like, I mean, even Rishi Sunak, he used to go on a 50-hour fast. He used to, on a Saturday evening, he would stop eating and he wouldn't eat until Monday morning again. Really? Yeah, yeah, a self-imposed thing. So I I do the same. I I just fasted sort of 22 hours a day and ate in a two-hour window. Um, but partly also for anyone who does go and sell a business and go through quick growth, you feel like you're losing control a lot of the time. Uh and actually, so my food and my eating to some but to some degree is like a disorder level, was that I could control what I was eating. And I could weigh myself in the morning and in the evening, I could put it in a uh a line graph and I could see how it was changing and I could see the point I was trying to get to.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:10

Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:11

Um, but yeah, go and look at it on Lad Bible.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:13

So a quick question had you become quite healthy, unhealthy from a weight perspective before you decided to do that.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:18

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I got to 24 stone, so I was a BMI of over 42. That's in hell, really. Yeah, yeah. And I got down to about 15 stone uh in that time, so that's the nine stone difference. Yeah, uh, I was still over my BMI. But like BMI, I'm six foot three, nearly six foot four. So like BMI is not really a thing for people of this height. I am BMI because I'm five foot seven, so it doesn't matter how much I lose, and I'm I'm I'm obese. Yes. Even even after I'd lost nine stone, technically I was still obese. That's crazy. It is crazy. But actually, I went I um I put on a couple more stone, like I mentioned, after my wife had had a word with me. Yeah, I went and had my health check. The doctor said, You're a really healthy weight, this is great, stay around this level and you'll be okay. Um, but if we uh if we have this discussion, for the previous six years, I had gained and lost six stone a year for five years in a row, five or six years in a row, I'd gained and lost six stone.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:09

So you'd really yo-yo'd then.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:11

Massively. And and what is not good about yo-yoing is the risk of diabetes. Yes. Because your insulin resistance is impacted because it's up and down. Yeah. Now, what we did in Pareto every September, we did a skydive. So we did a hundred skydives in Pareto. Now, the reason my weight went up and down every year is because I used to get down to 18 stone to do the skydive, because that was the weight limit. And then after that, literally, as I hit the ground from the skydive, I'd have donuts there waiting so I could start putting it all back on. I'd eat whatever I wanted until April. I'd put on six stone, and then from April to September, I'd go on a diet again, lose it all, do the skydive. Five or six years in a row, we did that. Wow. Yeah, I don't I am an unbalanced person in many, many ways. Um, but that's what makes me a great entrepreneur. Yeah. Um, but not always a great person.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:56

Well, it's it's what's quite interesting there is is the mentality. The mentality seems to be evident in each element. So, you know, starting and growing the business, the weight, there's a mentality. The blood donation, the blood donation, one of the biggest in the world, yeah. Yeah, I mean, to be fair, a hundred is you know, that that's real commitment. Yeah. And commitment over a sustained period. Um, which which I think is probably one of the things that people should probably learn about leadership because a lot of what leadership is is commitment.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:23

Yeah, you know, it's I forgot we're talking about leadership.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:26

Is that what we're here to talk about? What should we start? No, no, but no, no, but the this is the thing, it's been such a um such an open, transparent conversation that everything around leadership has kind of come out anyway, Andrew. Yeah, yeah. And and do you know what? What a great way for it to come out as well. Rather than me just directing questions at you, it's been a conversation between you and I. Yeah, and we've got to really know you as an individual. And I think that that's far better for the audience than what's your favourite thing. Yes. Do you know what I mean? That's kind of scenario.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:55

If I may, just on leadership, what worked incredibly well for me was what I would call professional vulnerability.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:01

You don't have to have all the answers, you don't have to pretend you know it all, you don't have to pretend you're always happy or that you're you know how you're gonna get yourself out of a situation. In your leadership style and with your team, be vulnerable to them. Let them know that you're pissed off about something or that this has upset you or that you're feeling nervous about this. Or when I used to go into sales pitches, I would hype myself up. I would get really sort of I would only focus on that. That hyper focus was something that I was very good at, which made me good in terms of delivery. But in the lead up to it, I would be a bit down, I'd be sort of very insular, focused on what I was doing. I'm very the same. And that and that's how we prepare for this. I'm in my head. Yes. And but actually, and then like when people start being annoying and stuff, you can be a bit snappy because you're like, no, I'm trying to get in the zone here. So yeah, I think for me, like, be vulnerable. It's okay. And also just like be flexible with people. Like, I would if I called someone at 11 o'clock on a Saturday night, I would expect them to answer the phone in my senior team. That is the expectations I have. But if they called me and said, look, Monday morning, sorry, my kid's sick, or my dog's sick, or my wife's done this, or my husband's done that, cool. Yeah, you sort yourself out, come back and let me know when you're ready. We'll we'll hold the ball for you in the meantime.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:09

Yeah, of course, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:10

So, like that like vulnerability and flexibility and giving the benefit of the doubt to people, yeah, um, goes a certain way. But I mean that you know we all meet people who are not sincere, and you need to be very careful about who you trust and who you bring into your circle of trust. But that's leadership.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:25

But as well as well, you know, people can be sincere for a period of time and then those people can change. Yes. Um, because because their agenda no longer fits your agenda or whatever. So it's yeah, it's it's complex, is it? People look, let's be honest, people are weird, you know. And where are we? Back as that that old that old York you're saying, there's not what's queer as for. Absolutely, you know, and it's very, very true. One quick one question I'd like to ask you, Andy. Um what would you say your biggest mistake from a leadership perspective was? What what what if you have one that you look back on and you go, uh I made many, many, many mistakes.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:58

I tell a nice story, but you make mistakes every day. Yeah, the biggest mistake I made, I took too long to hire good people in senior roles. Right. I was a classic micromanager from the very beginning. It took me maybe six or seven years to start letting go. Oh, really? And you know, I mentioned we grew from 18 to 42 million in two years. Yeah. Had I have let go earlier than that, and by let go I mean hire senior people and put some money into the overhead and actually bring that team in. Had I have let go, say, in year four instead of year six, I think we probably could have gone faster in what we were doing. Really, right? So my biggest mistake was not spending more money on overhead and good people because I was so obsessed with doing it myself and doing it my own way.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:39

And that's why then I ended up working on Saturdays and Sundays every weekend. Sundays, I used to sit and write tenders. Because this is before AI, right? You remember the days we used to sit and write everything. I still do it now, mate. Oh, well, yeah. I mean, yeah, yeah. That's a different podcast. You shouldn't do. Um, but like that my whole point is that was not just sit down and knock something out and chat GPT. That was sit and write for six or seven hours. Yeah, yeah. And it was exhausting. It was, it's time because you're brain capacity. Especially then if like um an argument I used to have with my wife was I used to take Saturday afternoon off. I like football, I'd watch final score, I'd go eat something. Yeah, but um, but on basically on Sundays I'd work.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:19

Now on but what would happen is on Sundays, uh sorry, on Saturdays, that would when she did ballet in the morning, but I'd work in the morning. And I so I couldn't see her on that time because I was working on Saturday morning, and she's saying, Well, can't you change it so you're off at the same time I am? And I'm like, no, no, that's the time I have to work because of what I'm doing. And actually, so I was already sacrificing at that stage when she was asking me to be available on a Saturday, and I wasn't available. And she was like, Oh, why can't you just not work on Sunday instead and we can be together on Sunday? Um, those things could be really hard. But actually, my my wife, we've been together 20 years now. Nine of those years I wasn't really here in the marriage because I was so busy with everything else that was going on. She's the hero of the story because how you keep that marriage together, you get rejected consistently, you're not prioritized in a relationship, you bring children in, and then that person's not there as well. That's hard work. And actually, the last two years, a big chunk has been about making it up to her to say thank you for what's happening. And um, hopefully she feels that things are better these days, but you'll have to ask her. And just Eve, just a real example. Today I had a gap between doing the Brooks lecture and coming here. Yeah, so she came over to Headington where I was doing the Brooks lecture. I love it. And we went and walked around the field for an hour in uh around um uh your park in that area. Amazing, right? Just having an hour together, no phones, holding each other's hand, walking around. We've been together 20 years. You know how romantic that is. Yeah, of course. And it's about creating the time for that to happen. Yeah, but I didn't do that for a long time. So, like I tell wonderful stories, but the reality is uh it's hard, hard work, and how the marriage survived was was really quite lucky.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:50

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:50

But really down to her.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:51

But it's good, it's great to hear you actually say that, to be fair. Because I I I don't think anybody can achieve any amount of success unless they've got a strong partner behind them. Actually, yeah, propping that individual up and helping them do well.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:04

Yeah, I I said on a different podcast, uh it was a bit dark actually, but I was like, where if you're gonna run your own business and you know that before you get married, you need to look at your partner, whether you're a man or a woman, I don't care, look at your partner and go, in the darkest times when you are not there, yeah, are you is your relationship gonna survive it? Because many entrepreneurs end in divorce. That's just what happens. Yeah, and actually um you need to create the really when you're thinking about saying I do, when they say you know, for for sick or for poor and all that sort of stuff, are you really gonna be able to do it? And I I uh yeah, I count myself as lucky from that perspective.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:40

Yeah, well that's great to hear. So if you were to do it all again, Andy, and you may well do because you're only a young chap. I uh who knows in a couple of weeks there could be a new a new FM based off some kind of early early 19th century engineer's name that kicks off. If you were to do it all again, what would you do differently?

SPEAKER_01 1:13:00

So good question. I right now, if I was doing it today, um so from IWFM, we know the top five things that our customer that the customer base is most interested in from a UK perspective is energy. Yeah. So it's utility cost, it's decarbonisation, it's reducing energy uh utilization, it's carbon neutrality, it's net zero.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:20

I'd go really hard in that area. So if I was running an engineering business, like I would almost call myself Green FM from that perspective and really go down the sustainability route because we know that's what customers are interested in. Yeah. We know, I mean, look, just from the Middle East stuff now, we know the price of gas has more than doubled. Yeah. Businesses do not have the money to pay twice the gas prices they were last week. Or in July it will change. But so yeah, I get sure that the pump's gone up by 12p in the last day and a half. I filled up on Sunday, luckily.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:49

So I wish I had that.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:50

In my Volvo my 70 leaks of tank in the Volvo of diesel. Um so yeah, like uh so for me, I go really heavy into that.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:59

Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:59

And um as an SME for small businesses, big businesses, big service providers, your competitors, have massive carbon footprints. Yes, massive, over a million tons a year, easily. Something we led on in Pareto, and I'm still incredibly proud of. Our carbon footprint used to be like 169 tons a year.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:20

Our competitors were a million tons a year. Yeah. So when I used to go into a sales pitch, what do you think I'd tell the customer? I'd make sure they knew that the other ones who'd just come out have a million tons of carbon tonnage.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:31

Well, we we do a very I mean we're we're the only cost-free cleaning provider in the UK. Okay, like without a doubt. Like we've rolled it out across our entire business. Um there are no there are no harsh chemicals in the delivery of our services across our commercial cleaning business. Um and and you know, it that does go down well. Yeah, and and that but that was a big investment by the business, yeah, Andrew, to actually take it.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:52

Because you've got to buy more expensive.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:54

Yeah, you've got to buy more expensive stuff. It's a bold step. We're also we've also taken um a significant amount of virgin plastics out of our supply chain. But but that is a bold step, you know. There's not many companies that do something along those lines, um, and it and it takes bravery to do because one, you don't know how the market's gonna react to it, um, and two, what about your current client base where you're now saying it's gonna be a little bit more, but this is the reason why. You know, it's a big rollout. So I completely understand what you guys did. It's so brave.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:22

That advice I just gave you is exactly what you're doing, you know, like you're leaning into the energy side and sustainability. Um look, I am a massive critic of net zero. The UK will not be net zero by 2050.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:32

Well it's impossible. The technology, the infrastructure's not there, are they?

SPEAKER_01 1:15:35

It's just not there. And Scotland.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:36

All we're doing is offsetting, which is well, and to be fair, we're sending it to countries that are producing the energy, but in a far dirtier way than we could produce it here. It's just it's crazy.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:49

It is crazy, it's crazy. And actually, um, that's why. So on the um I ended up with my money, I ended up buying a farm, and I have some acreage now over in Oxfordshire. Uh, so one of the things I did is I planted my own forest. So 1600 trees. I planted it last January.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:03

And would you believe we had the driest summer in history and 86% of them died?

SPEAKER_02 1:16:07

Oh nice.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:08

So I um so I had to replant them all again, cost me seven grand. Now, luckily I'm all right at selling things. So I went out to the market, I raised eight grand and I replanted, and I made a thousand pounds on my replanting for my phone. So we might replant it every year, no? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just too just to see.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:22

Well, if you didn't get any support from a like-minded organization, I'm doing we'd happy to come along and help.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:26

But you know, I uh even in Pareto, we used to plant trees in Peru. And I bet there were no trees. No, but it gave us a carbon offset. Yes. But I like this idea. I I'm being facetious about the money side of things, but there's genuinely people paid us to plant real trees on my land. Real trees they could come and see. That's brilliant. And they can even take a picture of it. And some of them have because it's been great um social media stuff for them. But like um, yeah, I just think there's a whole facade around green and sustainability, and it's not real. And I just wanted to cut through what was very real. And um, but just again, sorry for just people who are entrepreneurs who are listening, really basic stuff, right? Say you are a very small business, and maybe you have one office and you're very small. Change your provider to a sustainable energy provider, so you're buying sustainable energy, and put a statement on your website that we're 100% fueled by sustainable energy. Yeah. It's really basic stuff, doesn't have to cost you very much. And like um, I just that was very powerful. It's even like um Pareto's IT systems that we originally set up. Everything was cloud-based, everything was online. Yeah, similar to us, yeah. Even when we're a 20 million pound business, we didn't even have a router, we had no physical infrastructure for IT, no data centers, no nothing. Make these things basic for yourself and make it easy. People just overcomplicate business so much. Um, you start a business and you get excited and you're like, oh, that sofa's five grand, great, get two of them, get a uh ping-pong table, you know, get a living wall. Don't need all that stuff to start with. No, just go make some money. And then do it afterwards, yeah. And then get to that status point because that's how people run out of cash. And that's just a bit I have in my bonnet at the moment. I just see so much spent at a very early stage. Yeah, don't worry about it. Like you need to focus on cash at the beginning, not on profitability. Leave your sofas, leave your ping pong table, you can go back and get it at another time. Just get a decent coffee machine. We're gonna sell a camping chair from Tesco. That's right. Go to Glastonbury and steal a few on the way back up. That's a bit few tents there and get five.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:20

Absolutely loads on that side, so okay. All right, I do well. I think that kind of brings us to the end of our first episode of Discovery and Leadership. How have you found it?

SPEAKER_01 1:18:30

I mean, this is great.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:30

I didn't have we started yet, or is it no? We have we have but that that to me is testament of a good of a good podcast, mate, where you actually get to know the individual um on a deeper level and and really understand what makes them tick. And I think that that's something that's come across fantastically well um in this podcast. I certainly feel like I've got to know you, which is which is great.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:50

Uh I I think from my side, look, I I lean more into the entrepreneurial stuff now because that's the bigger part of my life. But FM is what made me, right? Of course, yeah. FM I will always hold dear. I love being the chair of the IWFM. I feel we're making some progress in some real areas. And IWFM in particular, I focus really hard on the commercial elements. We're we're gonna be in a surplus two years in a row, which the institute hasn't done for like seven years. So, like we're making real strides forward and using that entrepreneurial prowess to put back towards the sector. Yeah. Um, so you know, I love it, and I appreciate the opportunity to come and do things like this. But yeah, FM is where my heart is. I really believe in it. I would absolutely advocate for my daughter to come into the sector and try and be an engineer and my son as well. Yeah. So yeah, I love it. And I I appreciate you telling the story of FM because we need to do more podcasts and we need to encourage the 20-year-olds, you know, like I was talking to this morning, to come in and do it. So yeah, thank you very much for having me on.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:43

Well, listen, Andrew, to be fair, the great thing about the facilities management exchange is that you don't only have to come on once. Okay. We have a panel podcast as well, and we focus in on specific subjects across the industry. Feel free to come and join us again. You know, maybe we'll do something around ESG. Maybe we'll do something specific on something that um we could get you involved in, and you can join us again, mate. It'd be great to have you.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:03

I'll bring you some dead trees and we can talk about ESG.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:05

I did want to ask anyway, do you do do you have any do you have a lake or a river going through the property?

SPEAKER_01 1:20:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:10

Any fish in?

SPEAKER_01 1:20:11

Uh well, no, there are fish in it. Um, so where um it's a nature reserve I have on the side of the land that we have, but there's a naturally spring-fed pond that comes out of the ground. Nothing feeds it, it just comes out the ground. There are fish in there, four different types of fish.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:25

Oh, what type of fish go in there?

SPEAKER_01 1:20:26

I couldn't even tell you, but we never caught them. And I I'm actually one of the things we haven't done.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:29

Did you probably come and drop line in there?

SPEAKER_01 1:20:30

No, no, because I'm actually phobic of fish. That's the point, that's what we're going to end on. If you gave me a cod to hold in Tesco, I'd probably throw it at you and run away crying. I really don't like the way as a kid I used to go fishing. Yeah. And if I ever caught a fish, I wasn't able to take it off the hook. Because I wasn't able to touch it. So I had to go fishing with somebody else who could take it off. Um, so we love looking at the fish. It's interesting when like the uh we have egret birds we yeah in this nature reserve, we have amazing animals in there that is completely undisturbed, and we have camera traps and stuff that you can see that's going off. It is absolutely stunning. But when you watch like an enormous um one of those big birds that will just go in and take fish out and fly off again, it's amazing. And the egrets and stuff are back because they've but yeah, in in my house I have swift boxes, we have House Martins, we have uh swallows, we have absolutely everything. We got stables and acreage and paddocks and all sorts of things.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:20

So basically dot-to-do little then, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:21:22

Pretty much so, yeah. And if I start talking to the animals, that's when it's gonna be enough. I uh I need to start talking about it.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:27

I think we need to get you your own theme tune, mate, you know that's what we need, a theme tune to sort out, you know. But no, thanks very much. It was great to chat. Absolute pleasure, thank you, Andrew. All right, guys, that brings us to the end of the um the first iteration of Discovering Leadership. Um, I hope that you enjoyed the show. Um, I really enjoyed chatting to Andrew. Um it's been fantastic getting to know him. Um, and I'm sure that you learned some very interesting facets about his career, how he started, Pareto. And I'm sure that if you ever wanted to reach out, I know you do a bit of mentoring, I'm sure you wouldn't mind a message and he'd be more than happy to come back. But as ever, that brings us to the end. We must end it sometime, guys. But as ever, if you can't be good, be bad. Bye bye.