Carolyn and her husband Malcolm set up their building and landscaping company six years ago with £1,000 and four children to feed.
Six years on and they now turn over £230,000, and haven’t borrowed a penny to finance their business at any point.
I talked to Carolyn about how they did it, ask her to share her secrets about working in a traditional man’s world, and how she keeps her (legendary collection of) boots clean when she's out on site!
“I’m the Goffa,” says Carolyn, with a smile, “The one that goes-for-that and goes-for-that, I even had it on my business card at one point!”
She might as well as said “Gaffer”, because although she insists the business is “very equal” and husband Malcolm is certainly the one out there doing the do, Carolyn is the one who hires and fires, negotiates the best deals on the raw materials, and draws up the contracts. She makes sure everything and everybody is on site when they need to be, she raises the invoices and does the credit control, and she is the one called to site whenever there is a problem that needs sorting. She’s the one the hired helps are scared of, but you’ll also notice that if she needs something moving or doing, it gets done immediately. So the gaffer, then? And how does that work when you are working with your spouse?
“Malcolm doesn’t like confrontation”, she admits, “and is a big softy, whereas I am very straight talking and actually thrive on a good heated discussion! There’s nothing I like better than sorting things out and making sure what needs to happen, happens now.” In another world, perhaps the corporate world, she’d have been a superb Operations Manager, but then these are exactly skills any small business needs if it is to survive and thrive.
And thrive it has, and without borrowing any finance. So how did they do it? “Malcolm was working under contract, and he got paid £1,000 on the Friday for a job he had just finished. We set up on the Monday and that was our start up fund. It was really tight at first and we had the four children to feed, so I had to work part time for the first two years just to feed us. The baby, Bree, was only three when we started, although the others were all at secondary school, so I relied on my mum for childcare, or I took her with me on my hip.”
“It works for us.” She goes on, “Malcolm and I never argue between ourselves, but we talk continually. We never text, but might talk 8, 9, 15, 30 times a day and I’ll often come on site to sort stuff out. On my birthday this year I had to go on site in my new stiletto boots and give one of the contractors a rocket – I had them all lying the planks down for me and handing me across so I didn’t get my boots muddy! I can be a real princess sometimes, but that’s how you maintain the respect, isn’t it, you can’t ever be too chummy or one of the lads, because you aren’t one of the lads, you’re the boss.
“Malcolm and I are still very romantic and we run away from the business and the kids whenever we can, even if it’s just for a MacFlurrie in MacDonald’s car park on our own! And I think that’s important. That, talking, and being friends first, there are probably the essential things when you are working with your spouse.”
“Our eldest son now works with Malcolm, and that can be a pain because he still lives at home, so when they have a fall out at work it usually continues over dinner, and Jason expects Mum to sort it out, just like I did when he was a child. But I tell him, this is business, and if you have a problem with the boss, you stand there and sort it out yourself and don’t hide behind your mother’s petticoats!”
Carolyn had no formal training when they started the business, and yet now she reads site plans, can tell architects when they’ve got things wrong, and even does the company tax returns. “It’s all a case of learning on the job, and being open to whatever comes your way,” she says. “I’d much rather be discussing plans, negotiating a deal, or out on site than doing the invoicing or tax return, but someone has to do it and that someone is me unless we pay someone, and I don’t want to lose the control, so I psych myself up and one day a week I turn the living room in to the office and bury myself in it. And I make sure I can do it the easiest way possible because I want to get through it quickly – no point hanging about doing something you don’t want to, is there?”
So what does the future hold?
“We want to specialize more in building work rather than landscaping because there’s more profit and Malcolm prefers it. We’ve discussed growing the business, but we don’t want it to get really big, so we are consciously avoiding taking on extra staff or large contract jobs."
"Our client base is built from recommendations, we never advertise, and you start to get an intuition about things after a while, so you avoid the bad payers and the problem clients, which makes things much easier. Give it another 10 years or so, once we are in our 50s, we want the children to all be independent, to be able to buy our house outright, and be starting to wind it down. “
She smiles, and stretches out her wonderful pink "worker boots" to admire. “And then I might start something else, perhaps to do with clothes or shoes... or interior design... who knows?”
Want to go in to business with your spouse? Check out our tips on how to make it a success.
Contact Carolyn and Malcolm at M&S services on 07738239887 to discuss all your house renovation and extension needs in and around West Berkshire.