Fin Dearsly, Founder @ Breakspeare Energy

Welcome back to another episode of The Graduate Guide. Today is a very special day, joined by Finn. Finn, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks, Pete. Thank you for having me.

Yeah, well, I'm, uh, very excited to get into this episode. I feel like it'd be very relatable for students, uh, looking to do entrepreneurship as a route. And I think we could just start off by, uh, if you can at all try and explain the whirlwind of a journey you've been on with your company and where it's at right now.

Uh, yes, so I'll try and get into a short condensed story, but essentially when I was at university in my second year, I wanted to get a job, so I'd applied to Sainsbury's, Lidl, Aldi, stacking shelves, cleaning, whatever I could get my hands on. Got rejected from everywhere, but a mate of mine was doing this door-to-door sales job in Nottingham, so He had said, "Oh look, Finn, you can do this door-to-door job. There's a guy in Leicester that does it," which is next to my uni, Loughborough. "I'll put you in contact." So he put me in touch with this chap, Joe, who's actually now my business partner. And I started doing 3 afternoons a week of going around door-to-door selling these free government boilers. About 1 month in, I went full-time, gave up all lectures at university, still carried on my degree, trying, but went full-time, literally 7 days a week, selling these boilers, making good money, and that was basically the whole of my second year at university. Then I was meant to be doing a placement in London which got cancelled because of COVID which is I think a nightmare for a lot of people in my year group, and the uni basically said to me, you've got the option of either coming back to do your final year or you can do this year in enterprise, they called it, where essentially you set up your own business So at that time, I was working for a middleman who was like, had his own lead generation company. So he, we were selling the leads into him, and then he was selling them on to energy companies. And I had, I'd brought on a load of university students to like work with me for him. So I was like, right, maybe I should try and go direct to the energy companies. So I started ringing around all the energy companies in the UK and started realizing there's a hell of a lot more money than what we were getting because we had this middleman taking all the cut. So I set up with these other companies, brought on about 20 self-employed lead gens throughout the Midlands area, mainly at my university, and that's what I did throughout that third year at uni, throughout my placement. And we did, I think, £100K turnover in 6 months, so it was growing really quite quickly. We were doing a lot of money. And it was all going great, but a large part of my business model was customer referrals. So when we would install a boiler for someone, I would ring them up and say, look, if your friend or family member is interested, I'll give you £100 for everyone that you can send my way if it leads to an install. So I was ringing up all these customers, and at the start it was going okay, but then I kept getting feedback saying 'These install companies are not very good, Finn. We want to work with you directly. They're missing survey appointments, there's gas leaks, you know, how can I recommend you to my friends and family when I'm not having a good experience?' And I said, you know, 'Fair enough.' And they're literally like, 'Finn, please set up yourself and then I'll refer you to anyone.' So, and this one customer promised me, he said, 'I'll give you my entire phone book.' He had like 400 contacts. He said, 'I'm going to give you my entire phone book and I'm going to send a message to every single one of my friends and family in Leicester if you set up your own business. And that was kind of the get-go for me to set up the installation company. So me knowing nothing about boilers or insulation or anything like that, I said to my mum, I was like, "Mum, I'm going to set up this install company." And she was like, "Fin, you're bonkers." But yeah, a couple months later we were set up, we had all the accreditations, qualifications, found a load of subcontractors in the area, and we started installing. And it was probably a couple months after that, I was going back into my final year now at this point, and I just brought on my first employee. I was thinking, how on earth am I going to, you know, juggle my degree with the business? So I went to my mum, who was in between jobs at the time, she was on like gardening leave, and I said, Mum, I need you to help me while I'm doing my degree to help run the business with me. So she said yes, so she came into business full-time, and the university said that they would let me do my final year over 2 years to help keep the business going.

Yeah.

So a few of the elite athletes were doing it, all the rugby players, you know, they'd do their final year over 2 years, and they said, you know, Finn, we'll let you do the same. So that year we did, uh, just over £2 million in turnover from a standing start, pretty much, which was kind of insane. Hired 16 full-time employees, double my age. I'm like 21 at this point, I'm like, what the hell is going on? And everything was going really well, we were on track for doing, I'd said to you earlier, 8 figures the following year, and then we got news that the government were ending this scheme that we were working on, and at that point we only had this one revenue stream. We didn't do any private work, we didn't do any contract work, so we literally, over the course of 3 months, had to let off every member of our staff and begin the closure of the business. So that was from like mid-2022, and that was a really tough period in my life.

You've almost been exposed to every stage of business by the age of 21.

Yeah, kind of the highs and the lows. Yeah. So it was really tough. And for me it was this— I lost the sense of identity, you know, I was kind of known as this business guy that, you know, the kid at uni doing his business. And I was like having to come to terms with the fact that, oh, that might be gone now. I might have to get like a normal grad job. And I think that was a real struggle for me. But I used the time to go travel. I went around Asia, which is great. And when I came back in 2023, they'd set up a new scheme, so I started doing my research into it, and a few months down the line I was like, okay, there's some potential here, maybe we can, you know, start a new company or build the old company back up. And literally that's what I've been doing for the last year, is building back up to where we were 2 bloody years ago. So, but We're now, we've got 10 members of staff, we're on track to do really well over the next few years, we've had confirmation that the scheme's going on to 2028, so we know that we've got the longevity there. And I think my big learning is don't rely on one revenue stream. So that's sort of a change that I'm adopting this time, is look into other areas.

I think in that whole story, one thing that I've massively identified is that you kind of adopted this, uh, can you do this, can you jump this high? Like, yes, of course I can. Like, some level of delusional optimism in yourself, which I think is like necessary for a founder to succeed. Like, backing yourself more than necessarily you have the means to at the time.

And for sure, where do you think that makeup's come from?

Has it always been like that for you?

Uh, I think, yeah, I mean I started when I was at boarding school. I started selling these fizzy drinks and sweets. That was my first business venture. And then I went into selling Yeezys on Depop, and then I tried out social media and personal training. So I think I've always been quite entrepreneurial.

Yeah.

But I think that's come from a space of being a big risk taker. I'm very comfortable taking risk.

Yeah.

And I think my philosophy always has been the biggest risk is not taking risk, because the worst thing that can happen is you fail, but failure's feedback, feedback's knowledge, knowledge is, you know, power. So I've always seen it as like, make a decision, do something, rather than don't do anything.

Yeah, I'm curious with your story, like, what came first then? You said you had an entrepreneurial desire, but you've also sort of identified that grad jobs and, you know, sort of normal jobs isn't for you in the same process. And I think like everybody kind of gets that realisation when they come towards the end of university, like the reality of, okay, you've done this degree, but like what do you actually do of it now?

Yeah.

Which one came first for you, do you think?

As in, what do you mean? Sorry.

Yeah, so like you are entrepreneurial, by nature, but then you've also identified that, like, okay, when the business sort of collapsed, you, you looked at more corporate jobs and more graduate jobs. You're like, okay, that's not for me. But do you think, like, you identified that in that process, like, I have to be— it's only entrepreneurship?

Yeah, yeah, not necessarily that. I think it was, um It's hard to explain. I think I would feel like a failure if I didn't give it a go.

Yeah.

And I think I'd already taken that route, and then to come back and have to restart almost, you know, I'd climbed the ladder a bit and done well, and then to reel it back in and start again, that would have been quite difficult to get my head around. And yeah, as I said before, it's, you know, I'm comfortable taking a risk. You know, when I set up the first business, which was the lead generation company, I'd made about £40 grand profit in those 6 months, and I reinvested every single penny into starting the new company. And I was very comfortable with that. I think it comes from a sense of backing yourself and having a bit of self-belief. Yeah, but then as you said earlier, blind optimism, like, you know, believing it's just going to happen.

Yeah. And this time around, it seems like you've recently been venturing into the personal branding space and trying to—

trying—

yeah, like, sort of tell you— tell your story. And I guess it's not like at all completely like related to what your business does, like, that's not why you're doing it. But do you think— what have you seen the benefits of building your personal brand in this time around?

So I'd say already from a recruitment perspective, you know, when I've put job ads on LinkedIn, I get quite a lot of interest, or I've had more interest since I've started building up myself, my personal brand. And then, you know, my DMs are just flooded with so many uni students like wanting to set up their own businesses or wanting to work with me and do some door-to-door sales and stuff. So, you know, the people that you're connecting with are all like-minded, who you've got the potential of collaborating with, either, you know, within the company itself or helping them further down the line. So, you know, it's just broadened my horizons massively. And I think also given the business, even though I don't talk about the business, it's given that some— it's generated some credibility for the company from my personal brand. Um, so yeah, I'm just trying to build on that really.

Yeah, I think it's probably quite unique where students often find the concept of putting something out on LinkedIn or building that personal brand difficult because you think, oh, what do people want to hear about me? I've not actually done anything, I'm just a student. But I guess for yourself, you've got a whole like catalog of experiences that you've already had before you even started putting your personal brand out there. So yeah, yeah, I mean, the challenge almost becomes like, who are you trying to like help with your, with your learnings? How are you trying to like tell your story through your experiences? So yeah, what, what are you trying to, yeah, like make your personal brand into then?

Yeah, so I hear probably just like you, and the reason you set up this podcast is you hear of so many people, friends, and you know, people in younger years who are sort of struggling to find that purpose and sense of identity. And for me, having had a, you know, a time in my life when I wasn't sure what I was going to do, which was like my first year of university, I managed to get out of that situation and I want to try and help others, you know, find their purpose. I see the period of like 18 to 25, I call it like the quarter-life crisis, right? Where you're, you know, you've left the conveyor belt, the early conveyor belt of life where it's like school, college, university, grad job or whatever, and you sort of get into real life and you're like, what am I actually going to do? What am I passionate about? You know, what can I see as my career in the long term? And I think I've been lucky to stumble across it from this door-to-door sales job, but I feel like through both the business and also all the self-development I've done on the side I've got a better understanding as to how you can quickly find that, and I want to sort of share that with other people. And the lows as well. I think, you know, on social media these days everyone's sharing all the good parts of it. I want to try and be very relatable and real, as in, you know, entrepreneurship is this sexy term, whatever, where everyone thinks it's just easy money, freedom, holidays in Bali, working for your lap— from your laptop. Yeah, it's not that. But actually the beauty is in the journey and overcoming the struggle, and, and that's great itself.

Yeah, I think one thing that's really difficult at university is, you know, if you're going into entrepreneurship, I think giving yourself that accountability, whether it's even just getting your academia work done or anything extracurricular, like you were saying, you go from like school where you have all the structure and your teachers will tell you off if you don't do X, Y, and Z, whereas at university it's all completely up to you. You don't go to lectures, that's on you. If you don't submit the work, that's on you. Nobody really cares. And the same with a business, it's like you— it— the drive needs to come like within, you know. You can't just like— to generate that level of accountability, there's got to be a more of a guiding star than I just want to make money, I just want to be an entrepreneur. So I think, yeah, for you, how did you actually give yourself the accountability to persistent with the idea and keep growing it in the way that you did?

Yeah, so I've spoken about this on my LinkedIn, and it's— there's a lot of advice online of follow your passion, um, and if I'm honest, I don't agree with the advice because I think passions are fleeting temporary interests in something. I think if you search definition of it online, it's like uncontrollable emotion. Okay. And I'm not sure that's what you want to build a business and a career or whatever. I think instead what I focus on is finding a purpose, and I see it as two very different things. I see a purpose as sort of a long-term commitment that you make of doing something, and I think if you look at the definition of purpose online, it's the reason for which something exists. So you have passion, which is uncontrollable emotion, or you have purpose, the reason for which something is created or existed. And it's like purpose seems a lot stronger, and like, I'm not passionate— I shouldn't probably say this, but I'm not that passionate about the energy sector or environmental and all of that, but I get a hell of a lot of purpose and fulfillment and drive from building a business, building a team, and trying to accomplish something. And so I'd encourage people to focus less on the passion side and just find a reason for doing something, and that might be from demons, you know, insecurities, you know, being bullied at school. That was part of my purpose, proving those people wrong. But, you know, it doesn't have to come from a positive place. It just— you need to utilize those tough times as fuel for that purpose that you're trying to do now.

Yeah, do you think that thick skin that you've developed through, you know, whether it's bullying or just general, like, societal pressures has made it easier for you to then start posting your experiences online? Because I think, like, that is a reason why, you know, you can tell a student time and time again, like, the benefits that having a personal brand has for, you know, your interviews or even getting into any kind of job, like, the ability to tell your story and, and show someone that you're, you're not, like, bullshitting when it comes to— yeah, your interest in something, right? Like, that's one of the main things, LinkedIn. It shows that you've separated yourself from other people and because you're actually putting it out there for the world to see. And I think, yeah, the reason why people don't actually go ahead and do that is because of those societal pressures. Like, how do you think for you, you just overcame that and just started posting? Was it from building that thick skin beforehand?

Uh, yeah, I think, uh My early years weren't the easiest. Bullied at my previous school, parents got divorced, didn't see my dad for 11 years, so I had a lot of challenges earlier on in life which made me feel— I got comfort and reassurance from myself. I was very self-reliant and I think that developed a thick skin itself and then When I went to my secondary school at Repton, boarding school, I set up, I got into the gym, set up a gym account online, and everyone within 2 weeks found it and was taking the piss and all of this because I was a skinny tiny boy at that point. And a year down the line, I tracked my progress, and a year down the line I had 10,000 followers and I'd done this crazy transformation and everyone started being like, oh my God, that's incredible.

It's always that way, isn't it?

It is, yeah, yeah. And then a year further down the line, I had 50,000 followers, you know, I'd got a modeling agency I was working with, I was making hundreds of pounds a week from doing personal training, and loads of boys at school started setting up their own gym accounts. So it's like, first they laugh, then they admire, then they copy. And realizing that at the age of 16, 17 helped, was super helpful in developing that like, um, lone wolf kind of like follow your gut. If they're laughing, that's a good thing because it means they, they can't do what you're doing and you need to push down that route more.

Yeah, I find it's really interesting, um, where you can make such profound learnings for yourself by experiencing things. And like, often you actually can't really you know, you can't really truly know something unless you've been through it yourself. But yeah, there are so many, like, yeah, skills that come through hardship and whatever. But I wonder if there's any way now that, say, in your business you identify somewhere that you want to progress, or you, you need to build out, uh, you know, a certain part of it, but you're not quite being, like, prompted into doing it yet. Like, you know, things that you— you know, maybe it's like Managing the quality of the installation, so how do you make sure that all the team are keeping to that, that high standard you're setting? Like, for example, you might have to actually wait until something goes horribly wrong to know what it looks like to have consistency, but is there any ways that you're sort of like prompting yourself or trying to generate that consistency in output in your business?

Yeah, as in like incorporating new things into the company maybe? Yeah. Yeah, I think when it's— even though the business has been going on for 4 years, we kind of went through that startup phase, went back to the start, and we're rebuilding back up again now. So at the moment it's very much all hands on deck, firefighting every single day, resolving problems there and then. There's very limited structure and process in the company, which is what my main focus is over these next 6 to 12 months is to incorporate process, to start working 2, 3, 4 weeks out in advance so there's less craziness. You know, I'm sometimes working 1 and 2 in the morning, but yeah, I think when you're starting out, you know, there is that— you've got all these ideas and all these things that you want to implement, But ultimately, you've just got to survive, and that's got to be the mentality for those first couple of years. And I think if you can survive and get through that, and you can start bringing on the people and resources to help manage the day-to-day, which is where I want to be in a year's time, that's when you can start implementing these ideas, you know, looking at the installation quality, reviewing that, you know, doing experimentation, looking at the results and stuff. But you've got to survive first, you've got to get through that period, you've got to prove the concept, make sure that you've got, you know, customers coming in, you're making some money, you can bring people on, and then you can worry about, you know, perfecting the process and building.

Yeah, on a more personal level, I think business can often be quite manic-depressive, like week to week you might be making more sales one week and less the other, and I think over 4 years you've probably made a lot of learnings in keeping your sort of personal lifestyle and like general well-being on like more even keel. So what's some big advice that you could give to students in, you know, still pushing yourself to— because you have to push yourself to achieve big things in business— but keeping yourself happy and motivated throughout it?

Yeah, it's a great question, Pete. I burnt out very much so most of that first year of the business. And if I'm honest, it was actually a relief when the scheme came to an end because I needed some time away from the company. I'd worked 100, 110 hours a week for a year, which is just unsustainable. Literally every single day. Sundays I'd maybe have half a day off, but I couldn't— it wasn't just the physical work, it was mentally, I couldn't escape, you know, there was no life, it was just work. Work was life. And I needed some time away to rebalance life and put things in perspective of what I really want here, because the initial drive was just money. And then I realized that actually there's a lot more to it and that you've got to take care of yourself in order to take care of a business. So I got a tattoo, 'balance,' in the middle of my chest to remind myself. But yeah, since then I think I've worked more sensible hours. There's been a more of a focus on working smart rather than hard. I've been better at delegating out to other people, whereas before it was like, let me do it, let me do it all. Whereas now it's like, actually, I can train someone up to do that. Let me go through a problem with them once and then they'll know for the future. So it's been about working a bit smarter. I was really into the gym when I was younger. When I started the business, I stopped gymming, didn't do any fitness. Terrible mistake. I think it's there's a massive correlation between people who are successful and the time that they spend exercising per week. I think there's some crazy statistics on it, but I work out at least once a day, and it's just that sense of break from work, and it helps me refocus. So yeah, I think looking after yourself is a necessity to make sure that the business succeeds.

Yeah, and you mentioned there with delegation, which I think is honestly, I've realized along the way, like, the most important thing for the scalability and longevity of a business. But I think it's quite hard to know when it's the right point to do it, um, yeah, especially when you're like so bootstrapped and there aren't investors telling you what's what. Um, so what, what have you found to be like a, a key sign that you should be delegating that? Is, you know, because ultimately people say, you know, you want to work on the business, not in the business. So I guess that's what you're probably struggling to do. Yeah, in the peak times pre, yeah, pre the government scheme ending?

Yeah, so I've always struggled managing people. It's not a strength of mine at all, but I've been working on that and I think what I've realised is I was so afraid to push my staff and my team and I take on all the pressure and stress myself thinking that that's the solution, you know, I don't want them to work overtime, I don't want them to worry about this or that. But actually, most of the team want to please, and they want to do well, and they want to progress, and they want to see the business progress. And what I now do is, very early on with new employees and new staff, I'll push them to the edge where they say, "Fin, I can't. I can't do any more." And that's where I know their capacity is. That's how far I can push them, you know, in terms of hours, in terms of for work that they're doing in terms of the mental stress and pressure, and I've got to find that point, you know, the scales at which they tip. And before, I was never testing people, and actually what I've realized is people can do it. I can trust people a lot more than I thought I could, and that they're capable of a lot more. And instead of taking that all on myself and then burning out and getting arsey and stressy, actually you know, let other people in on your problems. Yeah, yeah.

I think we've probably had almost the opposite way around with this, but obviously you started a business so young where probably the people around you and in your environment weren't doing anything at all similar or the same. But for me, I, you know, I was meeting business people and sort of advisory people before I actually had any business or business model. Um, and I think because, yeah, you were sort of propelled into business so young, you might not have had the mentors or the business people around you that you needed or wanted at the time. And I guess this time around, you know, are you making more of a push to put yourself in a less lone wolf environment and feel like you're, you know, yeah, in a more collaborative founder space? I guess that's what personal branding might have brought into the business.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. I think Yeah, first time around I did isolate myself, I took on the problems, whereas this time it is very much, uh, the team is the important thing. I don't want to just build a company, I want to build a brand, not just my personal brand, but build a company brand, um, and I want the team to feel a part of that. So I'm really encouraging them to start posting on LinkedIn, start, you know, having their own team meetings, you know, reaching out, networking, all of that sort of stuff, because we're on the same journey together. It doesn't matter if I'm up here, I'm the CEO and you're, you know, whatever, we're all on this journey together and I think that's made a big difference to both how I feel about the company and how the team feels.

Yeah, for sure, and as you've been really relatable to me and I'm sure very inspirational to a lot of our student listeners, and my final question to you that I ask all my I guess, is when you first started off your business or, you know, started off at university, you would have a certain idea of what a successful career would look like to you. But fast forward now with everything you've learned and the stage that you're at currently, what is your definition of success in a career?

Definition of success? I think it's that crossover between happiness and actual success or fulfillment, if you like, and I think you need both in order for it to be successful for your career. And I think I very much had fulfillment in the business before, but I think I didn't have that sense of happiness and enjoyment, and I think I've managed to bring that more into my life now, and I think it's trying to balance those two things, and it's hard because Happiness requires contentment, success requires ambition. They're two polar opposites, they can't really coexist at once, so it's a constant trial and improvement to try and incorporate both of those elements into the company. But don't just have money as the focus or a certain business size as a focus, you've got to enjoy the journey, don't just look for a reward at the end.

100%. You've been, you've been great. Thanks so much for coming on.

No worries at all.

Thanks, Pete.