From Royal Engineer To Running A 6-Man Heating Business w/ Brent Songhurst

'Cause some people are happy where they are. Some people are happy to be a sole trader. They can earn good money. I think for me, I found where I was in life or in business, it was extremely difficult and I had to go either backwards or forwards. And I had to have a really honest conversation with myself. I was doing so much that it isn't always about the money. It's your quality of life and time and your health and mental health. And I had to really sit with it and say to myself, like, am I self-employed or do I want to own a business? Sometimes you have to, you have to take that risk, otherwise you stay where you are. Like you say, you hit a ceiling and the only way of breaking through that ceiling is thinking outside the box a little bit or taking that risk. And it's either going to pay off or it's not.

This is the Gas Engineer Podcast. I'm your host, Tulloch Priest. And today I'm joined by Brent Songhouse, Managing Director of JJS Gas and Heating at Medway, Kent. Brent started JJS as a sole trader when he was 24 years old and nearly 11 years later, he's running a team of 6 with his sights set on earning 7 figures. Welcome to the show, Brent.

Thank you very much. Thanks for having me.

A lot of engineers talk about wanting to grow, but Brent's actually done it. As a former Royal Engineer who transitioned into plumbing and heating after a military career, his career path has been different, to say the least. Today we're going to get into how we built JJS from scratch and what a scaling trades business actually looks like when you're in it. In a sentence or two, why should people care about this conversation?

I think people should care about this conversation because they get some insight into the, the background of a business. They get to see or hear about the highs, the lows maybe, and it can be inspiring for anyone that's looking to start their own company, I guess.

Yeah, I think also is there's, there's kind of a decision point, you know, if you're a sole trader, whether you're looking to hire the next person, you, you're at kind of fork in the road there. Do you stay as a sole trader or do you actually actively grow? So I think if you could provide some insights on what it's actually like, that would help people with their decision making.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. I'm happy to do so.

Tell us a little bit about your journey into the trades. You were a Royal Engineer before you became a gas engineer. How did that happen?

I always— my family has a background of military. My dad was in the army. His dad was in the army. I never actually knew a lot about it. Or the engineers being the home of where I grew up. I was born in Chatham. It was just something I wanted to do at a really young age. I guess I was sold the dream, right? Just travel the world, meet people, learn skills. I wasn't a big fan at the time of going to university or college. I wanted to get away, explore the world, and learn some skills along the way. So I left— well, I actually started my enlistment at around 14, 15. I think it was work experience. A teacher put me on a Look at Life course with the Army for a week, and I started my process straight away. I think my enlistment was ready to go at 15, and I had to wait until 16 and 4 months of minimum age to join my Phase 1 basic training.

And what do you do in the Royal Engineers?

So the Royal Engineers consists of becoming an infantryman to start with, then you move to your Phase 2 in Gibraltar Barracks. Where you learn all sorts on power tools to demolitions to bridge building. Quite a lot of stuff in the field that you carry through your career. And then on your Phase 3, you can go to your trades school, right? So my Phase 3 was in Chatham doing a trade training where they have bricklayers, plumbers, surveyors, painting and decorators. And then from there, you move to your first unit. Which mine was Hammel in Germany at 17.

Okay, so that would have been quite a change of scenery for you.

Yeah, definitely. I still remember my first day traveling. I still remember being at the end of my Phase 3, 6 months training, where you receive your posting, right? And there was actually a guy on my course that got the same posting to Hammel in Germany as well, so we traveled together, which was nice.

Apart from the actual specific training with the heating and plumbing, was it— did the other kind of skills sort of carry over into sort of running a business?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the engineers is so broad, and I was lucky to do so many different things. Even my first posting to Germany was— I posted to a squadron, an amphibious squadron, which is like the the lorries on water that build bridges. But within that squadron, there was different sections. There was field sections and trade sections, and I was lucky enough to go around the lot. Quite a lot of engineers would tell you that they don't necessarily touch their trade, you know. I was lucky to do a lot of demolitions, a lot of explosives around the world, from Wales to Africa, part of training teams. And I was really lucky to do a lot of trade work as well. I did 2 construction tours in Kenya, Africa, where we did where we lived on site, just building, doing building works from the ground up. It was a hell of an experience, and I believe that there's so many transferable skills. I think that's why soldiers were so popular years ago, and potentially now, because of the training they get given, you know. And I even promoted in the Army, so your management leadership courses where it's about managing small teams of people, leading by example, let alone a lot of the core disciplines values and standards, how you carry yourself, how you work, your work ethic. I think it's definitely helped me with my, with my career for sure.

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It's a, it's a pretty phenomenal kind of grounding, you know, when you first started, you know, your business at 24. So not many 24-year-olds have that level of exposure to, you know, building in Africa and, you know, elsewhere.

Yeah, I think that, I mean, the Army break you and build you up to how they want you to be. The British Army is, is be the best, you know, the, the work ethic is, is insane. They teach you your limits physically and mentally, and I believe I just had such an aura of confidence at such a young age. I, I become a dad really young, so when I decided to, to leave and it was a time for a change, I, I was extremely driven I had a lot of good people around me, plus courses in the Army, and they do support you leaving on whatever career path that may be. And I worked so hard day and night to— I decided quite quickly what I wanted to do, and the guy that trained me to get my gas tickets was phenomenal, and he encouraged me a lot to go on my own, which really helped. I don't think that happens quite so often. And I think through that confidence and inspiration from him, it helped me build— I built the business really quickly, if I'm honest. I believe I had left the army in July and it was ready to go. I was working from day one and my termination date wasn't until the middle of October. So I was kind of paid for a couple of months from the army as well when I started the business. So that really helped me.

What did those kind of those early days look like and how did you get those first customers and kind of get the ball rolling?

I believe I built everything within about 6 weeks. I had a friend of mine that was willing to help me with a website. I had a friend of mine that just qualified as a chartered accountant. I decided to purchase a new van that had slime writing on there and we had designed the look of the van. I designed the profile, the colors, the image. I used a company online to design my logo. For me, branding was really important. And when you look back at 11 years ago, it probably wasn't as much. I think there was only a few companies really doing that. Larger companies, of course, but smaller companies, or tradesmen at least, I think were maybe a little bit behind. In that business sense, potentially, if that's right to say. Compared to nowadays, you can see quite a lot of sign-written vans on the road, you know. I was advised against that. There was a couple of companies out there like MyBuilder or CheckerTrade, which were good in their day. I think social media was important at the time as well, a lot of community groups. And look, I did it the hard way as well, you know. I printed business cards and went around all the service stations and garages in my area handing out business cards. You know, I literally really did work day and night. I was pretty good with my figures. I knew what I needed to earn a day. I wouldn't say I had loads of work at the time, but it felt like it. And I did, I did have work every, every single day. I think I reached out on a few local groups where people were really supportive and were like, yeah, we can offer you a job, or this needs doing. In the beginning, because I had a vast range of trade skills as well, I was quite open to doing everything originally. I kind of really liked the idea of doing bathrooms and kitchens at a young age. I had a friend of mine I used to meet up with, and we always spoke about having businesses what we would like to do. And we both said the bathrooms and kitchens, you know. And it wasn't long before I worked out that you need to kind of specialize in one field. And I think that works within our industry as well as a plumbing and heating engineer. I think you either tailor more to do bathrooms, general plumbing, or gas and heating, gas boiler installations. And I was good on the gas side of stuff, but it was what I had the most interest in You know, I think to try and calculate how a boiler works and find out how it would be broken down, just like any engine, I suppose, is what gives me a lot of interest.

So over time, so originally you were basically, you were just hustling, you were just—

Absolutely.

As much activity as humanly possible, night and day.

Yeah.

And then as the business grew, you specialized more into the gas And then did you specialize into more kind of like servicing or installs, or you do both, or how far did you take that specialization?

I would have said a long— for a long time, or very early on, that I really enjoyed installations. I would have always said at the beginning I was a really good installer. I obviously started to build a service portfolio, and we was doing boiler services and gas certificates as well, you know. But I kind of didn't really mean to, but it does kind of happen in our world as well. We just ended up, and we still kind of do, mainly reactive work, all the emergency work, you know. So the boiler breakdowns, no water, no heating, gas leaks, you know, it's really reactive work, which is extremely challenging. We would never— we never really had massive projects or could book out the diary months in advance. It just wouldn't happen. But I kind of preferred that at the time, which is why I ended up pulling away from bathrooms and things like that, because we was building such a good client base for being so reactive, to be there when they needed us there, you know. So yeah, that's the kind of road I took down.

Okay, so you kind of moved away from the bigger stuff. Was that kind of partially like a business kind of thing? Because that, you know, the larger jobs, you know, the income, the risk and stuff is a bit lumpy. Compared to, you know, the smaller jobs.

Absolutely. Yeah. For me, it was kind of like if I couldn't get back, get to that customer that was calling as quick as they needed me, I would lose them. So like you say, it was harder in the beginning to have a layout of bigger projects or upfront big jobs. I never really wanted site work. I remember someone telling me really early on not to almost do the domestic world. No one wants to do domestic. They like being on site, so bigger projects, doing this, doing that. So I just took that as a market that's open, and I really wanted to kind of be around homeowners, the general public. I wanted to serve that purpose that I thought was available.

Well, your reviews online are phenomenal. So, you know, it looks really good.

Thank you. Yeah, it's something we don't probably ask for enough, really. In the last few years, I have got like on our lanyards with our gas card one side, we do have a Google Tap review. That was probably a mistake on my part. There were so many things I wished I did sooner, you know, without a doubt. Like, I was 24. I've learned the hard way in every way, shape, and form.

I think it's like a really tricky thing. Like, you know, as a business owner, yes, you could look back in hindsight and go, oh yes, I could have done that. But you You just gotta be really careful about the context. Like, the context of where you are now was really different. When you were starting, I would imagine you're in a survival, and the most important metrics and stuff is just activity, lots of it, because you don't know what you're doing. You know, you don't know what's going to work, so you just gotta throw stuff. But yeah, you just, you know, we do it for our own business. You know, we've been running for 13 years, and then yeah, you just need to be quite careful about looking back and And saying, I should have done that, should have done that, why didn't I see that sooner, etc.

So absolutely, like, I mean, but don't get me wrong, I don't, I don't hold on to it by any means. I think you've got to— funny enough, I did a podcast a few weeks ago and I've said like owning a business will be the biggest personal development journey you ever go on and you've got to be so headstrong. And I think in any given situation, it's always solutions, not problems. And how can we learn from this experience no matter how bad it is? So either it doesn't happen again, or you get to really move on from it and use it to your advantage, right?

Yeah, I would definitely agree with that. It is, you know, weird. The businesses are just a reflection of ourselves. You see our own values in the companies that we make, and also we're also limited. The businesses are limited by, you know, how much we know and how much we've grown. So yeah, I'd definitely be on board with that. There's a kind of a point where most sole traders kind of hit where they're making sort of reasonable money, but can't actually do any more work. Could you tell us a bit about when you kind of hit that milestone, that ceiling, and what made you decide to kind of push past it rather than just sort of staying comfortable?

I think I hit it a few times, and I'd imagine a lot of business owners, if they were honest, would say so, you know. I think I learned again at a young age. After a good few years of being in business, don't get me wrong, I think I was quite fortunate within a year or two, I was looking to employ my first second engineer, and that happened really quickly. I was really good at taking those risks early on. There was definitely mistakes along the way, but I—

Sorry to interrupt, but you know, you're kind of taking business risks. How did your military kind of background, you know, where life is— the risks are more life and death, you know, did that kind of help you, or did it make you more relaxed about sort of the business side?

I think it does help, you know, because I think being in the military is the biggest risk, right? And you, like you say, it's sometimes you— it could be life or death, or you're putting yourself on the line. I think in business it could cost you money, it could cost you time, but they can't take your blood, you know? And like, sometimes you have to, you have to take that risk, otherwise you stay where you are. Like you say, you hit a ceiling, and the only way of breaking through that ceiling is thinking outside the box a little bit. Or taking that risk and it's either going to pay off or it's not. And quite often than not, it probably won't to start with, you know, until you get it right. And I think that's just a cycle of life and learning. But yeah, going back to the question, I think that I had so many different people. I had an engineer for a while, then he left, and then I had different laborers or skilled tradesmen that would, would help me. And like you say, you get to a point where like I was doing so much myself that I, I I really struggled to break past that. So I needed to look at it and think, okay, what do I need to change here? Where's the bottleneck in the business? Who do I need to bring in that's going to help me expand for a start? And I had to have a really honest conversation with myself. I was doing so much that it isn't always about the money. It's your quality of life and time and your health and mental health. And I had to really sit with it and say to myself, like, am I self-employed or do I want to own a business? Like a proper business. And for me, a proper business is a company that will run whether you're there or not. So, you need to be able to employ the right people to do the right job so you don't almost have to, and then your job becomes managing the team or the people, right? And that's extremely difficult. I'm not saying that's easy by any means.

Yeah, there's quite a good quote, it's a bit harsh, but it's basically, you get the people you deserve. Yeah, the insight is that, you know, if our leadership skills are not good enough, then the people that you attract and the people you retain, you know, kind of match that. So you have to grow to actually, you know, build the team properly.

One of the biggest takeaways I remember from a management leadership course I did in the army, which does sound harsh, but if I explain it, it makes sense. And I remember him saying to me before I went on my course, He said, use people to your advantage. And that was just basically using the qualities that other people have that maybe I don't have, you know, to help me get to where we need to be. And in the Army, it was maybe someone that was good at map reading, you know, who's your point man, or who's good on a radio, or who's going to be your medic in a section. And it was— that was the ideology of using people to your advantage so you don't you don't do it, you know, essentially. And that's probably one of the hardest things that I think business owners may struggle with, because they believe that they can do it all. They believe that they can do better than anyone. And sometimes you need to employ someone, take that risk, take a step back, and let them learn the job. They're going to make mistakes, they're going to do things their way. It might not always be your way, and you have to kind of find that middle ground to work together.

Well, that letting go is just, especially if you can do the job faster and quicker and better initially, but yeah, it's quite a challenging thing just letting go and letting other people do it a different way, so yeah.

It is, and I think that's just because we take it so personally. A business is like your baby as such, you know, you've when you've built something and you've created it and it's your image, you almost become it. Like, I was JJS, you know, everyone just see me as the company and I had a reputation to withhold and people to support and people needed us there. So it's extremely hard, especially when no matter who you employ, sometimes it's really difficult for them to have the same sort of beliefs and drives that you do. Everyone has their own personal drive., and you've got to be able to support that as well. But I think it's sharing a vision. For me, I've figured out and worked out that I almost sell the dream to my employees. You know, this is where we want to go. This is where we want to be. This is where I want you to be. This is how we can all win from it in a certain sense. And that to me isn't always money. It's just being in a job you enjoy, being around people that you like and love. And it's a family-run business as well. So like I say, quality of life is, is important, but you're going to have to go through hard times together to kind of build that so that you could then potentially give them the vision that someday people could be there to support them and they could maybe go through the ranks, or they can be in a management position one day, or they could have a flexible lifestyle. There's many things to it, isn't there? You know.

Yeah, and that personal growth is always in there. So that is definitely giving people a chance to grow and give them more responsibility.

Yeah, I mean, like they say, that the journey is more important than the destination sometimes, you know, and that's so hard to see when you're in the thick of it or crawling through the mud, for sure. But you've got to go through the motion. I think it just comes part and part with business, isn't it? You know, people see it as if you have a company that you're successful and it must be easy for you and your life must be amazing. And it's more often than not so far from the truth, like really.

Yeah, I'd, well, this is a bit of a tangent, we could go on for a while, but I think, well, for me personally, that personal growth, if you're not learning, you know, you're dying. Yeah. And that personal growth and just learning in general, it makes me happy. Could you walk us through managing a team of 6? What actually looks like on a day-to-day kind of basis? Compared to what it was like when it was just yourself?

Yeah, it's different for sure. I think in some ways it's a lot easier, in some ways it's a lot difficult. I think if any successful business owner— and I'm not saying I'm successful by any means— but I believe that everyone would say people are the problem in some respects in a company, and that's who you have around you and your clients too. But managing us, how it looks for us day to day, is Now we have some systems in place where everyone can communicate, everyone gets to see what's happening every day, everyone kind of knows their job role. And to be honest, I don't really like to oversee or dictate too much. I kind of give people a little bit of freedom and just expect them to do their job as well, right? You know, so for me, day to day, it can be a little bit easier, and it's— that's kind of where you want to be sometimes. I mean, it's harder now. I am— I have been back on the tools a bit this year, which was by choice, but that makes it a little bit harder too. But yeah, I kind of think that it certainly helps that everyone's got their role and they get to do that, you know. But along with that, when managing people, they've kind of— they're individuals too, and they have their own life, they have their own things going on. Sometimes they might have stuff going on at home Sometimes they might need time out or a day off, or everyone can sit there and do numbers quite easily when you're doing calculations in a business. And you say, if I had X amount of people, we could earn X, you know, like, and it's not always the case. It's, there's so many unforeseen things that come up and challenges that you do have to manage day in, day out, and you just have to, you have to, you have to roll with it.

Well, what would you, what would you say was the hardest kind of thing about managing engineers that you didn't expect?

I guess people's— everyone's personality is different, right? And especially in this day and age, if I can say so. There's some, some people might have a bit of an ADHD brain, some people might have a little bit of autism, some people react differently to sort of different work environments. Like, you kind of got to give them the right sort of setting, try and support them to how their day would look instead of how you would have your day look if they was— if you was doing that job, you know. I think that's hard. Like you said, I think that's where it helps, where you have to have your own personal development, you know. You need to kind of try and understand people, how people work, emotions, feelings, all of that, to have a greater understanding so you can react in the right way when things maybe don't go your way.

Yeah. And I think, you know, that earlier quote, I forget the exact wording, but you know, the best qualities of your team, you know, if you are, you know, if you're able to spot them, you know, and get the right people on the right kind of seats on the bus, you could say, you know, it does help. It does help a lot.

Yeah, definitely. Like, I've studied personality traits, you know, I can't remember the theory now, you know, you have like the colour system where if someone's a blue or a green or a yellow, you know, I've looked into all of that as to where they would best be, do you know what I mean? There's different things you can look at.

There's so many of them.

Yeah, of course, yeah, you know.

You've recently moved into a bigger office, brought everyone together under one roof. Do you want to just tell us a bit about that decision and what actually changed?

It was a little bit of a dream for me, if I'm honest. We are on Medway City Estate. It was always part of the vision. I think one thing I really like doing is almost visualising a future, visualising where I wanted to want to be and aiming towards that. And if I can achieve that, it's kind of really satisfying. I think where our location is, is very central to our working area. I think that times change too. To do. So during, obviously, my fifth year point was a massive struggle when COVID hit and a lot of people started working from home, and I supported that idea. The guys could be out on the ground and the admin could, or marketing could quite easily work from home, and that wasn't a problem for me. But then things evolved, and I think you have to. And I really liked the idea of having a home base, really liked the idea of bringing people together again a little bit. And we're not fully there yet, we're not, I like the idea of having some stock somewhere to put things, somewhere to put tools, because obviously the bigger we grow, the more jobs we have, the more things we need. You do need storage, you need a location, otherwise you, like we said, you hit that ceiling. And funny enough, my friend I said about that I met at a young age when we spoke about business, his office is two doors away. He actually owns a really successful air conditioning company, and he rang us up and said, Brent, there's a space that's come up 2 doors down. Do you want to come and look at it? And it was almost at the time an offer that was too good to be true. So once again, it probably wasn't the right time for us. It was about this time last year, I think I come and viewed it and met the owner of the building who was fantastic and really wanted us in here and just really supportive, you know, and he helped get it up to scratch for us. And yeah, we've never looked back since, really. We're still building. We've got a down— we've got— so we've got the downstairs space at the moment. The owner is upstairs and his idea was that in a year or two he's going to be moving away anyway. So then we get to branch out upstairs as well. So it was just perfect for me, really, you know.

Has that— I suppose it's a bit too early, but has there been kind of a noticeable difference in how the business runs now? Sort of being in a location?

Yeah, definitely. And I think so. I employ my sister, she's kind of head of HR and admin. She really prefers being in the office to being at home now. Again, she was very similar, she didn't mind being at home, she had a desk at home, but then now she likes to come into the office. She feels like she gets more done. We obviously have the Wi-Fi, printers and everything we need for them. For the day. So, and like I said, it's just so easy. Like, one of the engineers rung me up the weekend saying, can I go down to the office on Sunday so I can sort my van out ready for Monday? I've got a big day Monday, is that all right if I do that? And I'm like, absolutely, of course you can. It makes your day easier on Monday, that's amazing. It helps managing time, doesn't it? I always say like concurrent activity, and if you can have more moving parts working at the same time. It's great. It's just so many things to it. Deliveries, you know, having someone here that can accept deliveries. We can order stuff to here online if we need to, rather than relying on a supplier solely. And it's helped us so much. And we probably still haven't seen the full benefits yet.

I would also say that, you know, because if you're working alone all day in a van, you know, you have that, you need that social element. You need to see people occasionally, your colleagues, not just customers.

Yeah, I've employed people before that have struggled with that. I've employed people that have even been on their own, self-employed, and that's what they really struggled with. They struggled that they was doing it on their own. They struggled they didn't have anyone to talk to. They struggled that they were just in their van all the time. To be honest, I don't mind it when I'm out in the van all day. I don't really mind it at all, if I'm honest. But I obviously, I do love that we've got our office space. I love coming in here. Even some of the visions I had and the colors and how it looks like, I'm definitely proud of what we've done so far.

We did a business case with you and you said since using Gas Engineer Software, you've tripled your revenue and you're currently aiming for 7 figures. What are the kind of the next steps that you're actually going to do to get there?

Yeah, do you know what, like really early on, I'm probably such a big testament for you guys because I really did do handwritten certificates for so long, way too long than what I needed to. And probably one of the biggest kickers, if I'm honest, I think I was just really stuck in my way and someone introduced me to the Gas Engineer software and it was a complete game changer. It's so easy to use, like it is really beneficial. And if I'm honest, we've had a couple of meetings with you recently and I think Cara sat, sat down with someone last week or two. I did, because moving forward for us, I know that there's so many more capabilities and benefits within your software that we don't actually utilize. I'll happily hold my hands up to that. The last couple of years has definitely been tough. And building systems for me isn't my forte at all. No. So it's a bit of a dream that we do have you guys there to kind of help us, help us with that. And I think the next, because I know, like, again, we hit a ceiling, we hit a wall. I think that you hit a wall on your own. There's always ceilings, right? I hit a wall on my own. I hit a wall with the team of people I had. I hit a wall with the software we were using, like I've always hit a ceiling, sorry, I've always hit a ceiling and we've had to kind of find a solution for that. And the Gas Engineer software certainly helped me break through that, through one ceiling. I believe this software can still help me break through another two. I know that where we're at in business right now and to certainly get to seven figures, it is systems. It's having the right systems in place to have, like I said earlier, concurrent activity happening. If we can get more engineers on the ground, if the admins have got the right software to utilize so they can get their jobs done quicker and get jobs signed off, we're available to take more on. Keeping all the bookings and invoices and things in-house in a particular system is makes things quicker and easier and so much more practical. So yeah, I know it sounds like I'm blowing smoke, but it's true, you know, like it really is. And I knew that about a year or two ago that Systems were going to be my next ceiling.

Well, as you know, we really appreciate you being a customer and, you know, we definitely appreciate any kind of feedback, any suggestions. So yeah, no, we're We're, um, you know, really happy that it's helpful for you. Are you fed up with drowning in a pile of paperwork that comes with running your heating and plumbing business? Gas Engineer Software is an easy-to-use, all-in-one job management system made especially for UK heating and plumbing companies. From handling customer details to building quotes, issuing certificates, and sending invoices, Gas Engineer Software will help you save time, eliminate paperwork, and make running your business easy. Start a free trial by clicking in the link in the bio. What would be your advice for other engineers who want to kind of grow a team or sort of grow out of sole trader?

I think you've got to know where you're heading. I sat down with a sort of business planner as such a few years ago, and she said to me, like, Brent, let's work. The first question was, let's work backwards. Where do you want to be? And let's look at aiming to get there and start from the beginning. I think my advice would be to learn as much as possible. Get around the right people that have maybe done it, speak to the right teams out there, potentially like yourselves, that can assist and help with what they need. I think it was about, like I said earlier, you know, I had to really sit with it and be like, because some people are happy where they are. Some people are happy to build a small team and go no further. Some people are happy to be a sole trader. They can earn good money and they're okay with that. I think for me, I found where I was in life or in business, it was extremely difficult and I I had to go either backwards or forwards, and I really wanted to go forwards. I didn't— I knew I was young enough. I didn't want to live in regret. I really wanted to give it a good go. For me, like, it's been hard to try and find my job role, if I'm honest. Like, where do I want to be within a business? Because I could quite happily employ a manager and still be an engineer, or I ultimately do want to be a real CEO and employ all the right people. I love business. I love networking. I love trying to plan ahead. I love dealing with the challenges day to day. As much as it can seem chaos, like, I can thrive in it. I think that's my military background helps that, you know, keeping calm, steady in the ship. I think that people need to learn to be able to control their emotions too, and learning not to react. I think the longer time you take to react to any given situation, the better your response is going to be. I've learned that too. And listen, I've had many different personal coaches, business coaches, spiritual coaches, the lot to try and get me to where I want to be.

Yeah, well, kind of all the way through this podcast, you've kind of mentioned having like a really clear vision about what you want. And, you know, for me personally, that's what I would take away is just having that. I don't know whether you do like a dream board or something like that, but you kind of, you spoke about the office as as, you know, your dream location. But, you know, for me in my own personal business, or in our business, you know, just knowing exactly what the organisation is actually going to look like, where are we going, what does it actually feel like in, you know, 3, 5 years' time, you know, provides so much clarity about what you need to focus on now and what you need to plan for in the future.

Yeah, I definitely try to think 12 months ahead, 2 years ahead, 5 years ahead, 10 years ahead. I think it's important not to let yourself get overwhelmed by that. Like you said, you've got to have a vision of where you want to be. Believe it or not, if I'm honest, like, mine isn't to be like the most profitable business out there, you know. I certainly don't want to be the biggest. I do really want to lead by example. I want to try and build a team of people or a company which are all in it together., and we all benefit from that. You know, I want to lead by example by having a good work-life balance, by being able to pay people really well for how well they do. I think that's one of the biggest problems in the UK right now. A lot of people would say they're probably not paid enough, or the rate of inflation and the rate of cost of living— a lot of wages haven't caught up to that, you know, and that's where people are really feeling the pressure. It is sad to see over the last 10 years, especially working in the domestic sector, you're working in people's homes, you get to you get really close to them, you get to find out about their jobs, their family, what their life's like, you know. And I would like to be that company that people look at and think, that's really well run and he looks after his people really well. One day, I'm all for trialing different things like 4-day weeks maybe, or bonuses, or we've just did— we just did a holiday giveaway, and I would love to even be able to do that to my own team. As well, you know. Yeah, that's, that's my vision. For me, it was always time, I think, after being in the, in the army for so long and, and building a business for so long, going through COVID and everything else. I am a dad, I do have kids. I would love to have my— some time back to be more of a dad and a family man and enjoy memories. I've certainly— the older and deeper I've gone into business learned the finer things in life and what's really important. And I think you do really need to keep grounded in that way. I think it's really important.

Yeah, because if you lose that, you lose the drive. And yeah, there's just no point in having a business, really.

Yeah, of course.

Yeah. Well, thank you very much for coming on, Brent. I really appreciate your time and your insights, and I hope that's helpful for other engineers who are going down a similar path. So thank you.

No problem, uh, it's much appreciated. Thank you very much.