Tulloch PriestCo-founder, Gas Engineer Software · Co-founder of Gas Engineer Software

The thing most engineers don't prepare for when taking over a business

9 Sept 2026 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

0:30

Tulloch Priest took over Andy Gass's business and discovered that technical skill doesn't run a company. By 11 am on day one, he was drowning in calls and hadn't installed a single radiator despite a house full waiting. Without systems, processes, and staff, customers vanish fast.

The first day that I took over Andy Gass's phone line, I was probably a little bit naive to think that I was going to be essentially answering the phone, taking the calls, and working. And it got to about 11 o'clock on the first day, and I was meant to be fitting a house full of rads, and I hadn't even hung one radiator on the wall. So yeah, just having systems in place, people there to do, you know, because otherwise you can be quite sort of overwhelmed quickly. And, you know, if you're not getting back to people or not doing what you say you're going to do, you're going to lose those customers pretty quickly.