So welcome to the Develop Your Construction Business podcast. This is your number one resource for tips and strategy on how to grow your construction business successfully.
So if you're in the building trade, whether you're an electrician, a plumber, carpenter, general builder, and you want to learn how to grow profitably, then you've come to the right place. So we're going to discuss lots of content here, but things like best business practice, marketing, operations, finance, the best software and apps that are available in construction. We'll look at how you can find and keep the best subcontractors and staff, you name it. If it helps your business grow, then we'll have it covered here. Now, just to give you a heads up on who I am and what my experience is and why you'd potentially even listen to me.
So, my name is Greg Wilkes and I'm an Amazon number one best selling author of the book Building Your Future how to Grow a Million Pound Plus Construction Business, currently rated five stars on Amazon, which is fantastic and I'm pleased about. So hopefully that will continue. So let me give you a bit of a background into my experience. So I've now been in construction for some 20 plus years, so quite a while. But I didn't always intend to get into the construction industry. I always knew I was going to work for myself, but I didn't really have construction as my aim. And I think when I was 14, I started out doing the usual sort of paper round and car washing business I think I had for a while. And then I even started a window cleaning round. Actually.
When I was young, I used to manage to perch the ladders on my bike and I used to ride around the streets with this ladder somehow perched on my saddle and handlebars. So I always had an entrepreneurial spirit. I always knew that I was going to work for myself. And I was quite passionate about creating businesses. Didn't really know back then what I was really going for. But like most who end up getting into construction, you sort of fall into it, really. It's either because you don't get the grades you want at school and it just seems a natural path that gets pushed upon you, or it could be you've got family members that are in construction, so it's easy to get your first job and that was really what happened to me.
I sort of lost interest in school when I was 1516 because I was out earning good money and working for myself. I pretty much switched off at school then. I always knew that I wouldn't really need my qualifications, so that was a bit of a downhill spiral for me at that point. So didn't do fantastic at school, to be fair. And then at 16 I just had a taste for earning money. So I started up an apprenticeship with my dad. Funny enough, I did a carpentry apprenticeship, but he was actually a bricklayer, believe it or not. So that was a challenge. Doing a carpentry apprenticeship, learning from an experienced bricklayer who didn't really have a clue about carpentry. So that was quite funny. So that probably explains why I'm not the best carpenter in the world.
I have been known to hang the OD door upside down in my time in my apprenticeship. Certainly not proud of that, but there you go, that's what you get from learning from a bricklayer. So, yeah, did my carpentry apprenticeship, that was about three years and then once I'd completed that, I then decided, yeah, I wanted this goal of working for myself. So what I did is I got a partner who was a roofer who was a bit older than me, and we decided to get together and we wanted to do loft conversions. That was our big aim and were pretty successful at it, actually. It wasn't long before we got our first loft. We're given a chance by a mentor who trained us up on how to do them and were absolutely flying.
Once we got our first loft underway, were just doing loft after loft, we won work pretty easily and were earning really good money. I was in my early twenty s and were earning an absolute fortune, to be honest, doing these loft conversions. So that was really my start in construction and it went on from there. I've run my own business ever since. I'll tell you in later episodes about some other challenges I had in that business. I ended up splitting up with my business partner, who's also still one of my best mates, but we had a split in the business, so that was challenging. I'll tell you more about that another time. And then I started out on my own and grew the business really successfully and we ended up getting it up to about 4 million turnover a year.
So had a lot of experience in construction. I've experienced the highs and lows. I know all the pain points of not earning any money on jobs, pricing them wrong, the pain of having to meet the VAT deadline and not having enough to do that, and having to put calls into HMRC, begging for time to pay. I've experienced a business going bust that was absolutely awful and certainly something kai wouldn't want to repeat, but fortunately learned from those mistakes and revisited my strategy and was then able to create a really successful construction business that did well for many years. So there was a good outcome from it. So really, this podcast is going to go for all the highs and lows that I've experienced in the industry. Now I no longer work for clients, but I'm a full time property developer, but more passionately.
My passion really is business coaching. I love seeing construction businesses grow and learning from everything that I've done well, but also learning from my many mistakes too, because I've certainly made a few mistakes in my time. So what you're going to see really in the following episodes is really going to be warts and all coverage of what's worked for me and what hasn't, and what's working at the moment for my clients and maybe what doesn't work so well. And I'm just going to bring all this experience together to give you some really valuable information that I hope you can apply and benefit from over the coming episodes. So just give you a brief heads up on what's coming up over the next three months or the next twelve episodes.
We're going to be looking at things like the importance of goal setting and aiming big. We'll discuss why a million pound business is such a significant number to aim for. Why do I always stress go for a million pounds? We've got episodes on finding your USP, how to understand your numbers, and the best software and apps that are out there for your business. And even better than that, I've got some brilliant interviews lined up with some experts on finding financial freedom, how to master your brand, and how to market effectively in construction. So there's some real big hitters in this space that I'll be talking to and sharing with their wealth of experience too. So lots and lots of content coming up there'll. Be nice, short and punchy episodes, so make sure you subscribe and ensure you don't miss an episode.
And if you do get some value out of an episode and be sure that give me a five star rating, that'd be great. Give me a like and share the content with anyone else in the trade so we can spread the knowledge. Let's spread the love. So, looking forward to hearing your feedback and delivering some fantastic content for you to come. Let's go out there and let's smash it. If you'd like to work with me to fast track your construction business growth, then reach out on www dot developcoaching. Co UK.